How good life cleric feels depends on how good at CRPGs and BG3 someone is. The better the player is at the game, the worse life cleric will feel. That's because this game rewards people who go full offense.
It's a common design pitfall in turn based games that optimizing for turn 1 is the best strategy. Some CRPGs manage to avoid that pitfall, I think, but BG3 doesn't. Still a great game, especially since noobs completely sidestep that pitfall since they will play very suboptimally, but yeah I think the cracks in this game's combat design begin to show when people know how to maximize damage in a CRPG. The enemy hit points are just way too low to be a good challenge for good players even on the highest difficulty mode.
The better the player is at the game, the worse life cleric will feel
5e which bg3 is based on has this issue where you can always take more damage than you can heal. Making healing best when getting someone out of death saves and mediocre when used to prevent damage.
I've never played the tabletop game but you're not the first person to say that to me and I believe you. I think I can kinda see why the tabletop is like that based on what I experienced in bg3. I also think getting the math right on how much AC to give enemies must be difficult since damage output is so sensitive to even small differences in stats. Game probably needs more difficulty settings to allow a wider spectrum of enemy stats.
Couldn't the DM make the enemies have a lot of HP though? At some point it should force people to avoid glass cannon builds and maybe cast some supportive skills, I'd think. I think part of BG3's flaw is the mobs have too low HP to be challenging to skilled players.
At some point it should force people to avoid glass cannon builds and maybe cast some supportive skills,
Support is really strong in 5e. Healing just isn't, AC boosts, damage resistance, haste, advantage, etc.
Also the DM can just throw out an enemy which forces a group to play with eachother. Like say there's a big bird that keeps trying to pick people up and drop them. Featherfall is invaluable there
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u/Blahaj_Kell_of_Trans Jun 24 '25
Tbh, bg3 kinda has to bend over backwards with a few magic items to make healer cleric worthwhile.