a r(ule)ant about game design
a r(ule)ant about game design
spoilers for baldurs gate 3
so i'm playing baldur's gate 3 right, i'm exploring this cave, and I think "oh, there's a route to that temple of shar over there, i'm gonna jump down and climb a pillar that got knocked down to see what's going on at that temple." only to be greeted to this.
alright, this is fine, there's probably some really cool reveal that they have whenever you get there or something leading up to it. I figure how to work the forge, and I start this boss fight, after 3 party wipes, and I see that none of my attacks are dealing damage to the boss, so I have this idea to use the environment to my advantage and use the lava around the arena to damage it instead. this is what happens when I tried it.
I think outside of the box and i get punished for it? isn't this supposed to be dungeons and dragons, where you can basically do whatever you want to in order to solve a problem and have it work? i mean, my expectations were lowered significantly when i found a ordinary wooden door i couldn't break down (former nethack addict), but come on, this should've came in playtesting.
Wait, what on earth are you trying to do? Jump into the lava?
Jump onto the rocks get it to follow me, then jump to another patch of rocks once it gets to me. Have it follow me again, then use a scroll to turn myself into a cloud and GTFO, hopefully have it follow me throughout the lava to slowly kill it. I would have astarion slowly pick it off but at that point it had become immune to piercing damage.
Btw, this was a hail Mary, I didn't have any other ideas, this really was the best I could I come up with. In retrospect, it very well could've gained immunity to melting damage, but it was still worth a shot.
From the perspective of a DM in a real DnD game, the enemy would simply not have an incentive to follow you. It wants to guard the forge, not kill you at any cost.
If you really wanted to, I'd have let you go that way, but I wouldn't just let the creature run into suicide or abandon it's only task for no reason, so I think BG3 does this fight really well. Especially because this is actually a fight where using the environment can make the fight much much easier and there are environmental clues before the fight that hint towards a weakness in the boss.
Throw the switches on the forge. They release lava into the arena.
BG3 is pretty lenient in general, but I think your solution is really more of an open-world style kiting solution.
I gotta come to BG3's defense I'm not sure where you're trying to jump to. At least in my head I see that as "out-of-the-map fluff" meant to be present instead of a boring black void.
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Also the boss you're fighting can only take damage while the lava is out I believe. There's definitely moments like that in D&D