Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Living with Preactions

I hate the preaction system.

To be clear, that includes all decisions which BG3 makes the player take before the same decision would have happened in 5e. This means reactions and Bardic Inspiration.

There are two things to be done: whine until I either get my way or drop dead; provide constructive criticism so the current system becomes at least bareable.

I’ll start with the second option, if only to make my whining more incisive. Luckily, the bard seems specially designed to highlight every problem with preactions.


The preaction system works in four fundamentally different ways based on the ability that uses them.

• Abilities that will always be turned on.
• Abilities that depend on a party member’s actions.
• Abilities that depend on an enemy’s actions.
• Cutting words.

Preactions are great with abilities you’d always use. For most PCs, that’s Attack of Opportunity; for most of my runs, it’s Lae’zel’s riposte. In one exquisite exchange with the Mask of Vengeance, she smacked him, he replied but missed and her riposte ended his life, all within a gasp. Two thumbs up.

Preactions start to smell when they depend on a party member’s actions. Right now, those only include Bardic Inspiration, but they share an UI issue with Great Weapon Master which will be discussed further on.

Bardic Inspiration is serviceable thanks to the fact that you can plan the outcome of your own turn. Bless + Faerie Fire + Great Weapon Master + Bardic Inspiration = Good.

HOWEVER, the ability is severely hampered because the decision to use it happens before knowing the d20’s value. This will be the central topic of my whining at a later date because not only does it nerf the Bard completely, it could actually be adressed under the preaction system.

Please, Larian, I beg you: USE THE BARDIC DIE ONLY IF ROLLING IT WOULD MATTER.

The game already rolls dice conditionally. Why not just make sure that the d6 is never wasted on a crit or a lost cause?

I’d be surprised if this were a balancing issue. Larian have a far better track record of buffing classes rather than nerfing them. Bardic inspiration currently matters so infrequently it’s absolutely maddening.

It’s also banana cuckoo town that the game applies the same logic to skill checks, when the UI could easily handle showing me the roll before asking for my bardic die.

Speaking of which, THE TOGGLE UI IS TERRIBLE.

The main issue here are the status effect indicators. They’re all important, they’re all close to your character portrait, they’re all completely estranged from the preaction system. They neither show whether a PC has inspiration (only shown on the character portrait), nor what those inspiration toggle settings are (those are off on the right) nor does it say anything about other impactful toggles like Great Weapon Master.

Because BI toggles aren’t listed with passive toggles, the current UI expects me to gather information from 3 or 4 different places to make an informed decision about my turn. While I don’t usually care about AoO, I always care about GWM and BI, especially since the latter has a bunch of variations.

The problem is especially salient in two cases. The first is when I give Bardic Inspiration before combat, switch all toggles off to make sure I don’t waste it before it really matters, then forget to turn it back on when I had planned to.

The second case is a segue to the truly stinky abilities that depend on your enemy’s actions. While in combat I’ve finally figured out the worst case scenario, given inspiration to the right PC, and some doofus runs past them, triggering an AoO which consumes the bardic die before they get nailed with the predicted status effect.

Part of living with preactions will mean accepting that if Lae’zel doesn’t have a turn between the bard and Minthara, I’ll never get the chance to adjust those toggles. But please let it be more easy to make sure the clutch ability is used at the most pivotal moment by letting us know at a glance what might use our reaction/bardic die.

It’s a crazy hard thing that’s currently being asked of players. Guessing what enemies might do to properly set defensive reactions ranges from difficult to impossible.

With an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, you might follow along combat, reading the floating text above characters as they perform actions, and know what spells used saving throws rather than spell attacks and where they’re coming from. Otherwise, you’re stuck with the combat log.

THE COMBAT LOG IS TERRIBLE.

If this is the primary source of information for one of the three combat ressources, it needs a major overhaul. Two issues come to mind.

Sometimes, it’s plain unusable when nearby NPCs keep looping lines that are recorded in real time while the battle is recorded turn by turn. If you’re trying to see what happened three turns ago, you’re out of luck because by the time you scroll up to read the info panel, the log has scrolled back down to show you Chickeeeen

If you really want players having a recording of those NPC barks, why not place them elsewhere? Why not a tab in the journal panel entitled “Overheard Conversations”?

When there are no dumb ogres about, the information doesn’t exactly pop in the log. Why not use icons instead of words? All the highlighted words in the log already have pictures associated with them.

Larian, if you’re going to make your players guess what the AI will do, make its past behaviour as clear as possible. And don’t punish players who do the work by lumping the valor bard’s +2AC with the saving throw. Give them at least that bit of control back.

Edit: I forgot to point out IT’S REALLY HARD TO KNOW WHERE A CHARACTER IS IN TURN ORDER.

When I hover my mouse over an enemy, their portrait should be highlighted in the combat order. This is crucial information that is currently cumbersome to find on a big battlefield.
End of edit.

Lastly, exhaustingly, is Cunning Words. Why does it cost your reaction on your turn? I don’t know. What does it actually do? I’ve no idea. Why doesn’t it show up in the combat log? Please stop asking questions.

There are many of those left about preactions. Will they be tweaked? Overhauled? Stay as is? In any case, I hope they’ll at least settle in a place we can live with.

I really freaking hope they give the OPTION at least to control your reactions, for those of us who like to have control over our characters resources.

+1

I want to thank you for taking the time to write this post. I like posts that take the time to analyse why something is problematic and how the current rules and systems can lead to player frustration. I find them a lot better than simple "I don't like feature X" posts.


This had been reported since the beginning. If you hover your mouse over a portrait, the creature is highlighted on the battlefield. But the reverse highlight, where you hover your mouse over the creature and the portrait is highlighted in the Initiative Track, is very lacking. There is in fact a highlight of the portrait in the Initiative Track, but it is very hard to see.

This is a tiny point of a long post filled with many good points, but in my view it is indicative of how much care and attention Larian gives to UI, usability and quality-of-life in their game.

Assuming that Larian isn't currently overhauling the Reaction system, I think a good compromise is to allow a player to pause the game at any time and turn on/off Reactions on any PCs. This allows players more control during an enemy's turn.

And your suggestion of not using/burning a Reaction for any reason unless it was needed in the attempt was something that didn't cross my mind but is easily automated.

- Divine Smite Reaction: Land Hit with Damage Roll did not kill the enemy; Use Divine Smite for Extra Damage
- Bardic Inspiration: Running pass NPC which provides an Attack of Opportunity and NPC Missed; Don't Use Bardic Inspiration
- Bardic Inspiration on Spellcaster with the spell Shield available: Run pass NPC with AoO attack of 17 vs 12 AC; Use Bardic Inspiration first, and if not pass, then if Shield would make me pass, cast Shield

The third automation is more difficult to assume, but I think the following priority would work for multiple available Reactions: free non-spell, non-action Reactions > action Reactions > spell Reactions.

Also, the third thing above couldn't really happen in PnP D&D because the Bardic Inspiration, you can't know if the action succeeded or not before using it. You just get to see your roll first if you want to use it. But, Larian's current implementation wants complete automation, so...

Edit: Heck, Featherfall is also a Reaction, with which how Shoving is done right now, should be allowed to cast Featherfall on any target pushed and is going to suffer falling damage.

bump

Thanks for the compliment! As to Larian, I feel they’re most receptive to feedback about usability. Seeing as preactions are barely usable as is, Larian are either still iterating on the real version of reactions or they’re attentive to these kinds of UI remarks.

That would be wonderful. Incidentally, it could also work under the preaction system, with a simple toggle and an UI upgrade to let me know it’s on without having to check my toggles each turn.

Sort of necroing this thread to reiterate my disgust for the preaction system and to thank Drath Malorn for pointing out that “there is in fact a highlight of the portrait [of any selected enemy on the battlefield] in the Initiative Track, but it is very hard to see.” I saw it once I knew to look for it, which was very helpful. Thank you.