#also this is more of a 5E problem than a BG3 problem (although BG3's map design exacerbates it) but ranged damage is broken

[kirbyddd]

though i love the game, i think baldur's gate 3's biggest design problem is its map scale. the creators are clearly still in their generic turn-based tactics map design mindset and didnt really study actual DnD battlemap design

the encounter areas are almost all these massive open spaces with enemies placed at huge intervals that end up exaggerating the distances between all the combatants, like to the point that melee combatants often take several rounds to even reach a target with Dash, which more often than not is only one of many equally spaced targets

from a graphical standpoint it looks fine, which is what the maps and encounter layouts were clearly designed around, but DnD's encounters aren't built around this scale and the interplay of party mechanics and battlefield effects are really neutered by the design. feels like in the majority of encounters see party members who would be fighting alongside one another in any tabletop game having to go out of their way to get within range of another party member to assist them, AoE effects are usually reduced to the equivalent of 1 target spells, centered-on-caster spells are practically unusable, and melee characters are basically just there to try to distract enemy AI while bow users and casters actually do the fighting. counterintuitively, the larger battlefields actually decrease the complexity of encounters by breaking them up into compartentalized zones that are picked off one at a time rather than one big clash of forces bringing a full suite abilities and interactions

even with the scale problems the gameplay isn't bad and still stands head and shoulders over DOS2, but I feel it could be much improved if the designers studied how play in tabletop-sized maps typically works, instead of scattering enemies around inflated cinematic setpieces