Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The Problematic "Friends" Spell: The Number One Annoyance from my Last Two Playthroughs

Feeling like i allready answered this question.

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=835253#Post835253

Ah yeah. I actually didn't really understand understand what you were talking about with that. No idea who Gibblebog is. Should have asked for clarification before.

Can't you pay some gold to stabilize the situation? I think that was the case the last time I played with friends.

Gibblebog is that Gnomish leader of raiders around Dark Crypt.

Ok few another examples:
When you try to persuate Lump (i believe?), leader of Ogres to fight for you.
When you try to intimidate Kithrak, leader of Githyanki patrol.
Eeeeeh ... that would be about it ...

Unless you want to count every other NPC (wich would mean that examples are all of them) on wich you can use any Charisma roll, and then you can simply walk far away to let them cool down.

Example of such behaviour would be Leader of Zhentarims ... you can persuate her with Friends, then walk back to previous room, cancel your concentration, walk back and she is still friendly. Or at least she was last time i was bu... i mean testing it.

This is relevant bit and I agree.

I'd like to add that commoners, or anyone sane for that matter, shouldn't make senseless suicide attacks against 4 armed adventurers no matter how hard they got charmed or influenced by a spell. They should go tell the guard.

A flirty enchanter getting into trouble with the law and having to talk their way out of it is a really fun concept. They are very comparable to thieves, stealing your free will partly or entirely. I'd love to play one if it wouldn't be a mechanical nightmare of aggroing entire factions.

It works exactly like you've described. It initiates a convo and you can talk your way out of the situation. At least it worked that way for.me in the grove.

Treating it as an aggressive action by default generates some really weird situations. The one I ran across was using it on the Bard specific charisma check to encourage guards to knock down the door to a burning building. A minute later they stop trying to rescue the duke and decide to attack my party. Simulating what the consequences should be in a consistent and sensible way is difficult, but dealing with that by leaning toward the harsher side makes it useless. Even the situations where it triggers a conversation, the end result is you've triggered either an extremely high material cost for a cantrip or traded a charisma check for charisma check with advantage and a charisma check, while still lowering attitude. As implemented it's situational to the point of being near useless, you need an edge case and the meta knowledge where the NPC stops existing by the time spell ends. Cantrip known are a really limited resource, and trap options are d-move.

If this type of spells is leading always to aggressive attitude, I will not use them. According to the target, if you could have a opinion decrease and a chance to avoid unwanted fights, why not.

Yes, it's quite good when you want to *cheat* someone. Though, them immediately trying to kill you is strange, as is the amnesia that they wanted to.

Once you understand and accept how Friends works it totally makes sense. It's basically a "Fast Talk" con that confuses your target in such a way that the con is forgotten as long as you are no longer around when the spell wears off. It's useful to quickly get past someone or get a better deal but only if you can get away before the spell fades and the target realizes what just happened and confronts you. It's not useful and obviously detrimental if you stick around so either don't use it in situations where you can't quickly GTFO of there or face the consequences.

I use it with quite a few of my characters that I have developed but I am careful about when I use it given the drawbacks which probably won't change. As far as the story goes I don't mind that Kagha going nuts if someone was to use it on her as it seems in character for her given the tensions and her stress level. "Outlander attempting to influence me with magic? Of course I slit their throats"

In the end Niara already said all there's to say about the topic. As it-s often the case.

The "Friends" cantrip should come with drawbacks, but they should ideally be a bit more nuanced than a "Everyone will go immediately berserk after using it".
A steep drop in "attitude", a line addressing that they aren't too fond of the player screwing with their mind and EVENTUALLY even going aggro if the starting predisposition wasnt too hot to begin with would do the job in most cases, outside of specifically scripted scenarios.

Friends works that way in 5E. Deal with it. You make someone a friend temporarily. Then you need to face The consequences.

I mean, half of this thread so far was precisely dedicated to explain in painstaking detail why that's not true.

I don't mind that the friends spell has a consequence. I do wish that whoever you used it on though would need to roll a check (perception, wisdom, whatever) to realize you used it on them.

Enchantment spells should give you a lot of utility in manipulating NPC's behavior, actions, and beliefs. And they should come with proportional consequences if the subject of the spell figures out what happened. Soft mind control, hard mind control, you're still making people do things they wouldn't otherwise do. You should be able to do it, and face the consequences for doing it.

Having subjects roll for awareness of their being manipulated could help. But I hope this thread isn't taken as discouraging Enchantment spells.

Virtually no one at this point is even arguing against the idea of "consequences", but about how these consequences should manifest specifically.

Indeed. Technically, a lone child stranded in the under dark could decide to kill your party... because you used friends to make them calm down.

It's the instant murder for me. And them only realizing if you stick around. Why??

...Understanding if it was to the target's benefit?
...Annoyed if it was inconsequential, but still undermining free will?
...Angry if it undermined their free will and it was negative?
...Violent if they don't like you and you undermined their free will?
Whenever they realize what happened.

you cheat and there will be consequenses. Why do I use the friend-spell? I really really want the the knowledge from that one NPC and my charisma to get it is not high enough. So I make him friendler towards me for awhile and maybe he tells me because im he's best chum. Afterwards when spell ends he will know he got cheated. He would never tell me those things. Of course he gets angry. I would be too. You made a choice to 'cheat' him out of some knowledge.