Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Enemies Should Not Always Fight To The Death

Though about this with Damays and Nymessa, the 2 tieflings who captured Lae'zel. They’re outnumbered and although they want revenge for gith killing their friends, it's not motive enough to die for. I think they should be allowed to run for the grove to escape from the MC and party if we attack them.

There are other fights like this where enemies shouldn't fight to the death. Not many,, but some. Like if you decide to attack any origin characters. Why would Astarion fight you to the death, or Shadowheart, or Gale or even Lae'zel? So why not make it so they can flee too?

Yes.

Reason : this is one easy technique to make more credible enemies and a more immersive world.

Sure, this wouldn't apply to an army of Goblins with Minthara behind them who'd probably kill any deserter on the spot. Also, faith in the Absolute, fanaticism, all that.

But for some/many fights, the general goal of the enemies' A.I. should be : "survive and kill my enemies, or flee if I'm in danger of death".

By contrast, the A.I. goal of "eh, force player to consume as many resources as possible, I guess" is ... just not as good.

For EA, I always side with Lae'zel and knock them out to get XP and to loot them. After release, I'll just deceive them and let them live bcs I hope to see both again at Baldur's Gate... Too bad we can't already meet them at the wreck of the Nautiloid or defending the Druid Grove. If you save the three stranded fisher, you can still find them on the beach... So why not an (earlier) reunion with the two Tieflings too?

Would love to see that implemented tho.

Would be even fine opourtunity for joke ... imagine:
Bunch of Goblins fight our party ... lets say 3 of them gets really low ... o their turn they gain "run for your life" buff and start runing ... Goblin boss (there is allways some) one-shot one of them ... their buff switch to "faith restored" and they keep fighting.

Best would be that if you would kill the Goblin boss first, they WOULD run away. :3

This is a thing that should be present in all games of this type, and really I would encourage every GM to take this lesson to heart in tabletop.

Amen. I understand situations like spider lair. You're invading her domain. Fight to the death. But I don't get the tieflings.

Again, most fights are fine, but I do like Drath and RagnarokCzD suggestion about the boss goblin shooting deserters. That's fun right there.

Other fights where fleeing Enemies make sense:

1. Zhents in Defiled Temple. Cultists ain't their fight. If you killed Gut, etc., they might fight a bit but then get the flip out of there.
2. Goblin cook. Fighting starts, she runs arms flailing.
3. Loviatar priest. Like Zhents, not his business. No reason to fight.
4. During the 30 goblins camp fight after killing the leaders, because no leaders, those not branded just start to flee. The crazy branded stay because they're zealots. They fight to the death.
5. Wind mill - oh wait! That already does exactly what I'm talking about. Hit the leader and the others retreat.

Again. Not every fight or even most fights because that would be boring, but where it makes sense.

In the windmill fight when they flee they just vanish. You have no chance to kill them anyway for loot or to reduce the goblin population. Monsters should flee using Dash like players do.

Having some enemies flee makes sense (especially when you get down to the last 1-2 mobs out of 10-12) but it would decrease the overall XP the party can acquire from a particular area, which would make it harder for the devs to balance combat encounters further along in acts 2 and 3 - unless fleeing enemies still gave XP (just no loot).

If fleeing enemies gave 0 XP, then something like the old BG random encounters could be added added (ambushes in goblin infested areas, wolves or bears when camping in the woods, bandits in the mountain pass, various beasties in the Underdark) to help mitigate the XP loss.

Maybe encounters should reward a fixed amount of exp (valid even for "diplomatic solutions" rather than going on a kill count basis? I've always preferred goal-based exp rewards to granular ones, anyway.

P.S. Not to mention that "enemies attempt to flee" doesn't have to mean "You'll let them do it".

+1

Completely agree. And the extension of this is of course that there ought to be more situations where an enemy group, after assessing their odds against your group or for some other reason, chooses to not fight you.

They do. I want to say this was implemented last patch, though I could be wrong.

Just as an example, the group of adventurers outside the crypt at the beginning provide 50 EXP if you convince them to leave you alone and not engage in combat.

Yeah... That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the fact that you should, for example, get a fixed amount of exp for getting rid of them regardless of how you do it.
Currently fighting them pays significantly more.
Not to mention that you can get rid of them with "diplomacy", force turn-based mode as they are leaving and STILL kill them and get the kill exp reward, too.

Sure, for once is the kind of min-maxing you need to actively search for and not a particular vulnerability Larian has implemented over other games of this type... But still, a temptation for the player that could be entirely sidestepped if there was ONE exp reward, period.


P.S. I'm kinda hoping for a chance to meet these guys again in the final game if you let them go alive, as a side note.

Broading Tyco's point, XP management is generally lacking. I don't like how fast you can outscale the content in EA and I m frankling concerned about how larian would handle the difficulty. (Nowadays difficulty is very low in video games beside a few exception)

So yes a diplomatic solution should grant a reward (XP, inspiration or long term gain), but more importantly XP from kills should imo be capped somehow (max level per zone?)

That sounds dangerously close to the PoEs do things, which would be bound to upset some. Of course, they could always count how much XP killing gives and give just that for making them go.

However, even if there is discrepency in XP gain, I don't think it is a bad thing as long as the discrepency isn't too bad - as long as player who chooses diplomatic options won't lag behind enough to struggle with later content, or if player who often confronts enemies finds himself lvling up too fast.

And what if discrepency is intended? What if we get to encounter the ruffians later in the game? Perhaps we forfit for XP and items now, but get more minor content later?

Unfortunately, with XP being given for different outcomes, with enough systemic freedom there will always be a way to stack multiple outcomes together. The only solution I know is like you mentioned is limiting XP source - like Deus Ex1 or PoE1&2, which IMO is a more elegant design. Alas, some people get offended if there is no XP for killing stuff.


I wouldn't worry about it too much. Raise your concern for feedback purposes but don't loose sleep over it. As long as Larian keeps a track of XP available in each chapter they can adjust numbers for 1.0. Right now we play early access build. Stretching 4 levels over entiretly of the content would be greatly undesirable. As they add content, encounters and stuff the progression will get thrown off anyway. The chapter isn't even completed so it's not like they have solid content they can balance.

Having overabundance of XP is an issue in many RPG, but Larian has been pretty good with encouraging more thorough play - I hope they will continue this trend. Favouring a "crit path" hasn't been their philosophy so far.