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I'be been analyzing the game play seeing how closely it would emulate 5e rules. What stood out to me most was a lack of reactions. After digging around I learned that they were not implemented to avoid tying the players up in menus.
And honestly that makes a lot of sense, reactions can be very complicated, especially with multiple opportunities to active. After a lot of thinking though, I feel they are imperative to the experience.

This got me to thinking how best they could be implemented without drudging down game play. I flipped through and picked out some Bonus actions form the game and thought about how best to activate them in game. The key ones I looked at are: The Shield Spell, The Counterspell spell, Hellish Rebuke, and the Protection Fighting Style. Each of these functions differently and would be hard to implement on an automatic system.

However, if the system were not automatic, I believe these could work flawlessly. Consider if instead of being presented a menu on what your reaction should be, your reactions were skills you had, that used your reaction point to activate on your turn, and went off when a valid scenario presented itself.
The way I see it, Reaction skills can be broken down into 3 types: Counters (attacks that target an enemy after a certain action) Support ( Actions that target your allies, and often respond to an enemy action apply a buff at the last second) And self Buffs (Actions you use at the last moment to protect yourself.)
As such I see it playing out like so:

Shield: Activates when you take an attack that requires a roll to hit. granting you +5 AC until end of turn.
Hellish Rebuke: Targets an enemy, when that enemy attacks you you respond with your hellish rebuke after the attack resolves.
Counter spell: Pick your target ahead of time, if they cast a spell during that turn they ether fail or make a Save DC to cast it.
Protection Fighting style: Choose an ally in range that ally either just gains advantage against the next attack or could be taken one step further by selecting an ally to target, then an enemy to protect them from, though I lean more towards the former.

This system isn't flawless however, as the first round of combat you will not be able to take any reactions if you lose the initiative roll. And it takes more anticipation than in 5e, as you have to chose your targets before the action happens. It also seems pretty safe to say that in order for the AI to use reactions effectively they should remain single target.
Their is also the matter of what happens if your skills condition is not met, in most cases I believe the reaction should just be preserved to be used on another turn if it didn't activate.

However this was the best system I could think of that could allow reactions without severely altering the flow of the game.

A few concerns however Counterspell is very potent and if resting in the game is easy, having a say no button to most spells in the game ins't going to be good. But I feel this could be said about most abilities as well, and will simply have to hope they are balanced accordingly.

I was hoping to get some feedback from others as to how viable that might be, or if you even feel it is necessary to have them. As well as to brainstorm alternatives, or if you notice a fault in my idea that I overlooked.

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I mean, it could be as simple as allowing a prompt to players when they have a reaction ready and can react to whatever is happening (for example fighters won't recieve a reaction while a spell is being cast, only people with counterspell available get it) then they have like a second to press a button - if they press it, they get a menu of what they can do (and as much time as they need to do it) and if they do nothing during that second the action takes place and the reaction isn't used. I would do the same with attacks of opportunity as well (I don't want to stab away at a guy in full plate armor when I know it'll most likely miss and just waste my reaction).

However, I would put in the whole range of reactions like monks catching arrows and uncanny dodge as well, limiting the reactions to 4 abilities seems somewhat arbitrary.

If you're willing to go afk in combat during enemy turn then you won't get to use reactions and you won't slow down play time too much with just a second here and there - I say that's fair.

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Hmm I read the interview and they didn´t make it exactly for that, they are just trying options on how to implement the reactions in a multiplayer combat. As the 5e-based game Solasta showed us, it is not a big issue in single player (It´s a TB game in the end)

I think they should implement that, yes or yes.

I mean, they are one of the core features of many classes and a vital part of the combat for some builds. They are also one of the few things that they salvaged from 4e to 5e, for good reasons. Reactions offer great options in combat and also they are very fun to use.

There are plenty of games where you have reactions in combat, but most of them are automatic reactions, like attacks of oportunity, ripostes, etc and even though those are great mechanics the good thing about reactions in D&D5e and the thing they made it worthwhile is that you decide if you use your reaction or not, when or against who. That is the spirit of the reaction features and the best part of it.


Since you have only one reaction for round in a turn-based game for each player, and reactions are made in the enemy turn, and as we saw in the gameplay the enemies do not move at the same pace, they take alternate turns in the same round I fail to understand what is exactly the issue with using some kind of prompt (maybe timed like in The last remnant) so you can decide that you want to use the shield spell reaction against the smash of the big ogre, not against the stab of the little goblin, or maybe you want to AoO the almost-dead guy that is charging your mage or the caster that is casting, not against the full armored dreadnough coming to you.


Last edited by _Vic_; 01/03/20 04:15 PM.
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I didn't mean that they couldn't add more, I was just trying to pick out 4 abilities that seemed pretty different to use as examples.

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Oh sorry, I misread it. Please disregard my comment! smile

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Reactions are an important part of 5e and one of the better parts of it.
Eithe rmake it with readied actions (like Overwatch in XCOM) or with a real time prompt.

Just be brave about this

Why not instead of prompts, you press the space bar in an apropriat emoment, this freezes time and gives you a few seconds to select a reaction?
How hard can that be in a game that already lets you pause in the middle of action

Last edited by Sordak; 01/03/20 04:42 PM.
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Originally Posted by Sordak
Reactions are an important part of 5e and one of the better parts of it.
Eithe rmake it with readied actions (like Overwatch in XCOM) or with a real time prompt.

Just be brave about this

Why not instead of prompts, you press the space bar in an apropriat emoment, this freezes time and gives you a few seconds to select a reaction?
How hard can that be in a game that already lets you pause in the middle of action


That actually brings up an interesting question about some non-reaction things... how do they do the paladin smite ability? Do you first roll for attack and then decide if it's a smite (as is the case in the 5e rulebook) or do you have to use it in advance? If they're going for the latter then I fully agree and this might be a good way to do reactions in general - press space bar to pause and use your reaction according to what you're seeing!

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We alos know that battlemaster is in.
so the same applies for the battlemaster Maneuvers.

my guess is that youll have to select the ability first before you make a roll.
But of course thats the lazy way of doing it and i dont want that

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Well in that case how do you do reactions like shield then? Wait to get hit first, pause the game and then cast shield to make it not hit? Feels kinda... cheap? I dunno smirk

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well youd pause it before the hit connects i suppose
once you see the animation start, or just at the start of the enemy turn.

i didnt exactly think about this a lot

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I mean I love the idea, I'd just hate to "waste" a valuable reaction on something I don't have to, which is why I'm bringing this up. I think there's some potential there, I just don't know how to incorporate it, which is why I was hoping you had an idea

Maybe you hit the pause during the animation and the dice rolls are made before the animation even begins... that's an option I suppose smile

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Has there been any comment on delayed (ready) actions?

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Looks like any ability or spell that takes place after a roll (to hit or for damage) will be an activate in advance ability instead, which will erata a lot of skills and spells

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limited reactions are lame anyway, i preferred when you got one reaction per enemy turn

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All reactions should be toggle-able through their icon
(so you can deactivate attacks of opportunity for your mage who should rather counterspell).

Most reactions should be triggered automatically if toggled on because they would be too bothersome to activate manually
(like attacks of opportunity, protection fighting style or the shield spell).
The first possible reaction is performed, no choice to not perform it if the toggle was on (to not slow down combat).

Counterspell could be activated through a glowing "interrupt" button that appears during a hostile casting animation
(you may specify details in a second menu that pops up, hitting interrupt is the only thing that needs to be done within a short timeframe)

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Originally Posted by Tomice
All reactions should be toggle-able through their icon
(so you can deactivate attacks of opportunity for your mage who should rather counterspell).

Most reactions should be triggered automatically if toggled on because they would be too bothersome to activate manually
(like attacks of opportunity, protection fighting style or the shield spell).
The first possible reaction is performed, no choice to not perform it if the toggle was on (to not slow down combat).

Counterspell could be activated through a glowing "interrupt" button that appears during a hostile casting animation
(you may specify details in a second menu that pops up, hitting interrupt is the only thing that needs to be done within a short timeframe)


That seems like a lot of fiddling to save time. I know people usually roll both to hit and damage dice to speed up combat so I understand the mentality of "every second counts" but I'm starting to think at which point do we draw the line...

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The question is going to come down to "how much do we want to interrupt the flow of combat?"

I like Tomice's idea of toggle-able reactions. I could make my fighters automatically have attacks of opportunity while my spellcasters are free to cast reaction spells.

Perhaps some programmable AI could solve the issue of interrupting the flow of combat? "Cast Hellish Rebuke if hit for X amount of damage" / "Use Uncanny Dodge if hit for X amount of damage" and so on.

I admit, how to use counterspell eludes me. You don't want combat to pause every time an enemy casts a spell and you have spell slots to utilize Counterspell. I suppose you could have a real-time reactionary button press to make, the window of which might be narrow.

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Originally Posted by Ugmaro
Originally Posted by Tomice
All reactions should be toggle-able through their icon
(so you can deactivate attacks of opportunity for your mage who should rather counterspell).

Most reactions should be triggered automatically if toggled on because they would be too bothersome to activate manually
(like attacks of opportunity, protection fighting style or the shield spell).
The first possible reaction is performed, no choice to not perform it if the toggle was on (to not slow down combat).

Counterspell could be activated through a glowing "interrupt" button that appears during a hostile casting animation
(you may specify details in a second menu that pops up, hitting interrupt is the only thing that needs to be done within a short timeframe)


That seems like a lot of fiddling to save time. I know people usually roll both to hit and damage dice to speed up combat so I understand the mentality of "every second counts" but I'm starting to think at which point do we draw the line...


Triggering each possible reaction manually is probably overwhelming considering the huge amount of encounters per game session in a computer game.
In P&P, a fight might last an hour or more and you usually won't have more than a handful of fights per evening.
On a computer, we might do 20 fights per evening, meaning we'd have a reaction popup every few seconds, annoyingly slowing down enemy turns.
I can't imagine this would turn out fun.


A suggestion that might make everyone happy:
- Reactions get their own small menu (doesn't make sense to mix them with abilities you can trigger during your own turn!)
- Each reaction has three settings: OFF - AUTO - MANUAL

- OFF means it's deactivated and never triggers
- MANUAL means you get a popup with 3 seconds to react
- AUTO means the reaction is triggered whenever its conditions apply

- Each reaction has a default setting chosen by the devs (AUTO for attack of opportunity, MANUAL for counterspell,...)
- In multiplayer, the game host could get an option to only allow the "dev choice" to make the game more fluid.

- Having all reactions in a separate menu would easily show you if you have enough viable ways to use your reaction or if you should learn an additional spell.

- Bonus actions could get their own menu, too. It makes no sense to mix them with actions if you need a different kind of "fuel" for them.
- A sperate bonus action menu would also show you clearly if you have sufficient viable ways to use your bonus action.


Last edited by Tomice; 02/03/20 07:28 PM.
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The off/manual/auto setting looks good

Then comes the problem that something could trigger several possible reactions.
Should players sort reactions in a list and the game uses the first usable entry in this list (bad if you want to use a different one in this event)
or you get a list with possible reactions for this situation (bad for multiplayer if you have to wait for another player even if it is not the turn of that player.


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Originally Posted by Madscientist
The off/manual/auto setting looks good

Then comes the problem that something could trigger several possible reactions.


Is this a common problem?
Could it be solved by having a dev-created, invisible list of priorities?

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