Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Non Lethal Attacks and Questlines

I am pretty sure P9 introduced non-lethal attacks, I had taken a break from the early access around P7 wanting to wait now for the full game, so it may have been added before but I am pretty sure it just got added.

The use of non-lethal attacks, however, breaks continuity in many quest lines and needs further development. Example, you meet Ethel and the two brothers arguing in the woods, failed dice rolls leads to a fight with the brothers, you switch to non lethal and knock them out. Does the game recognise this? No, it records the two brothers as dead and now you can inform the sister you killed her brothers or try trick her into thinking Ethel killed them. All the while the two brothers are forever lying out cold in the woods. I am sure there will be lots of examples of this happening in quests now and it is something that I think Larian should address to make everything make more sense and fulfill immersion.

Firstly, the game should know when we chose the non lethal approach in quest lines and instead of telling sister her brothers are dead we can tell her there fine, a slight headache but fine. Further, new dialogue should be possible with people who have been knocked out. Some NPCs should get up and move on, these two should realize they can't win a fight against my party, apologies and beg for help, which we may very well give after seeing poor old Ethel suddenly teleport away. This will also require a mechanic by which those knocked out eventually wake up, either after a certain number of turns, or after the player uses the help ability on them like with down characters and defiantly after rests. After a long rest, at least, these guys should have moved on back to the grove where we could, perhaps, eventually return their sister to them despite the disagreement.

This does seem like it would be a lot of work, adding a lot more dialogue and interactions for the many questlines this could affect, but unless Larian do that, what really is the point of the non lethal mechanic?

Yeah agreed 100%

As far as I remember they've been in the game since the very start. Even in Patch 7 you had them.

Though yeah so far it's just a niche feature used for maybe one or two quests. Ferzerk in Blighted Village is supposed to be knocked out in order for Wyll to have a conversation with him. But otherwise knocking out NPCs basically deletes them from the game and treats them as dead.

Considering this is the final Early Access update and nothing was ever mentioned about the feature from the development side, it is most likely going to get scrapped completely or they might surprise us in a pleasant way on release and make it really cool. They did say that they are intentionally withholding a lot of stuff and a lot of the things in the latest trailer are actually not available to us right now, so might or might not be in the final release done properly. We'll know on release, but considering they cut out the fishermen from the game also makes me think it might just get scrapped.

I agree wholeheartedly though, it needs addressing one way or another.

Maybe they have been around longer than I thought, but I think this is the first time I noticed, them, maybe added in 7 or 8? I am sure it wasn't there the last time I played. Either way, it is something that they ought to expand on, although I can see this being another 'why did we add that dam box' moment for the team as it would require every single quest to be reconsidered with the question of, okay, what do we do if the player chooses the non lethal approach?

Mind you, with all that said, things like this are what make me worry that August 2023 isn't our release date, its just the day we get to start game testing acts 2 and 3.

It is one of the possibilities, yes. But I have not enough early access experience to make predictions on how the final product might turn out. As far as Early Access goes, it is a sloppy unfinished buggy mess for the most part, but quite a lovable one in my opinion. Which is normal because features are being implemented, shifted, changed, cut out and so on.

However considering how polished and amazing Divinity Original Sin 2 was with all the intricate little details, it also makes me believe they will do the game justice in time. I cannot say for certain naturally because they cut out the fishermen, didn't even finish Arka's minor side story yet and made no mentions of knockouts, along with other badly designed aspects such as story being locked behind rests and so on. But then again, you can see in the trailer new things that they made such as new masculine body types and such, which are not available to us yet exist in the final version.

My naive expectations of early access were that the game will progressively be better and better, however the stability and quality peaked at Update 7 and has been going down ever since with each update. I don't mean by that the quality of the game, but the amount of new bugs being introduced and left unattended.

So who knows, we'll see once the game releases. I have faith that they will do the game justice though.

I also loved the DOS 1 & 2 games, and their predecessors (although Ego Draconis suffered from trying to jump of the modern fads of the time) but I also remember that neither of those games where perfect on release day, very polished beginnings but Act 3 of DOS2 was in a state for a good year following release and us not having seen acts 2/3 of BG3 leaves me with some anxiety. We have all invested almost 3 years of time in waiting for the final product, there can be no excuses on day 1 for BG3.

From a game play perspective though, I do hope BG3 is very different from DOS2. I loved DOS2 but it never felt as grandiose in scale as BG 1&2. You know its a game of 4 mid sized, largely unchanging, environments that you troll your way through. Don't get me wrong I appreciate the highly intricate and detailed density of those environments but at the same time, after you scape fort joy and go to that little fishing town, it is odd that no one notices the three near world ending calamites happening with eye shot of their bedroom window. BG, while being made of much smaller environments, felt epic in scale, like you where traversing a continent and visiting various different cultures, much like the Pathfinder games do today as well. I hope we get some of that and that Act 1 isn't an example of the full game, where we will just trough one mid sized setting to the next as each act closes. I hope we travel a world map, have encounters along the way, get a few smaller environments to add flavor to the main settings, I hope progressing results in changes in those settings and return to a previously explored area opens up new adventures.

I really don't know what to imagine we are getting in August at this point though. I have a real love hate relationship with Larian.

There was indeed some Patch 7 feedback concering the non-lethal attacks issue: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthread...ethal+attacks&Search=true#Post830790

Reading that this has been pointed out before and no mention that LS intend to account for it really makes me worry about the scope of the game. The permutations are so broad that you gotta worry about whether LS have bitten off more than they can chew you know.

Non-lethal attack was there from day one. Initially it was an activable low damage attack, so players would need to bring characters HP low and the finish them with that strike to knock them unconcious (I liked it more that way - at least it made an act of not killing unique). Later on (when they split jump and disengage into desperate skills) disengage took un-lethal’s spot on UI, and non-lethal attack became part of the reaction UI - honestly that UI was so small in those days and would cut off most of reactions so non-lethal’s existence could easy be missed. For some patches now non-lethal was hidden under passives, and really, one has little reason to visit that window.

Unfortunately, so far it feels like a mechanic they implemented but forgot about. I have seen no progress made on it. Except for few specific interactions it is not recognisable as a thing.

Is that the change that we have had in 9th, the UI change, because that might be why I am just discovering it.

I really hope they don't scrapp it out bcs it was one of the things the community was asking for and has its very helpful occasions:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=834190#Post834190

I also hope for non-lethal attacks to matter (for instance Nettie, in my case 😅) on full-release instead or being scrapped 😕.

Edit : yes, the Maryrina's brothers and the masked people are also good examples!

And especially Auntie Ethel herself is often forgotten and then accidentally killed before any dialogue occurs.

No, UI was changed in update 7. here is a video feedback I did when it was release - I very briefly click on passives around 13:10 and if you stop you can see no-lethal attack aside attack of an opportunity. I suspect it is the focus on reactions in this update that made you notice the non-lethal options as well

Ah that make sense then, I barely played with 7th, deciding to wait for the main game (although at the time I thought we'd be getting full release Dec/Jan not Aug) so I probably didn't clock it back then.

I don't use these forums much, does Larian ever comment on posts or give updates on discussion in the forums as to what their intentions with certain features are?

Yep, agreed. I also hope it’s kept. In fact I’d want to keep it even if it’s still as wonky as now, as at least it helps me RP my less violent characters, though obviously would prefer it to be meaningful and to make more sense.


I’ve not seen Larian make any comments here about suggestions in specific posts or give any new info about their intentions that’s not part of a community update that will also be published elsewhere. But the community management team do say they read the forums and that posts here help them collate feedback to the development team.

Ah I see, I suspose we are dependnant on enough players submitting tickets for there to be any chance of real work done on it then.