Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The partial nature of turn based combat

When you start combat, all NPCs and characters that are in the combat move to 'turn based mode', but NPCs that aren't in the battle continue to have their turns in 'real time'.

I really hated this feature in Divinity games, and I hate it here. It breaks emersion, makes no sense, and is annoying. Here's a short list of where it matters:

1) In goblin camp, the floating eye thing doesn't aggro. It continues moving around near the frozen combatants, living as many turns as it takes the player to take his turn.

2) Whenever some enemies have not detected you yet, they continue having turns asynchronously to the turn based combat and move around until they happen to detect one of you and enter combat.

3) your invisible imp, any other invisible or hiding party member can spend as many turns as they want getting to position before they enter combat. Also their buffs/debuffs tick out.

4) you can send a party member out of combat range/escape, let her heal to full, go to camp, buy stuff, teleport to different waypoints, then come back to combat from whatever direction they want after spending as many turns as she wants dipping weapons on surfaces, buffing etc.

I understand it may have some merits for multiplayer (one player initiating combat doesn't interfere with another player kilometers away), but I would really appreciate being able to turn this feature off in my single player playthroughs.

Yes, we've complained about this many times. It's ridiculous and annoying when you've got units who weren't pulled into the combat for whatever reason. But some players like to use it to 'cheat'. They'll rationalize it various ways, none of which I find compelling.

Even knowing about this "feature" I still sometimes forget to bring party members into combat if they are stealthed, or too far when combat starts.

It's simply so counter-intuitive that you don't think about it and end up missing turns on some characters. Being able to exploit it is hardly a good way of "balancing" it.

It would help if the combat radius would be greatly increased to the point where it would be impossible to forget your characters, and exploiting it would be much more difficult. Invisible or stealthed characters in combat radius should automatically enter combat.

They've introduced the visible "radius" for torches in the last patch, while you are in a sneak mode. May be something similar can be done here - introduce a radius around any hostile character that pulls characters into the turn based mode?

I don't see how radii should be relevant at all, the way I see it while I'm taking my turn the whole universe is supposed to be frozen, not just a part of it next to me.

Turn based combat is just a way to resolve and understand combat that took place concurrently. The rest of the universe should not feel that the characters in combat slowed down relative to them.

Fires should not die down if I'm taking too long to decide what to do in my turn.

Why do you care about the other world when there is no NPC life cycle in the game?

Whenever I scroll away from the combat to catch a glimpse of NPCs moving back and forth and spamming their idle conversation lines, it breaks the illusion that turn based reality is time-frozen, and makes me see it as "these few characters are for some reason standing and waiting instead of fighting", and I don't like it.

Why should turn basedness be localized anyhow? It just complicates things.

Makes sense. It hurts immersion, true. May be it somehow cripples the performance, I dunno. Only Larian would know, but I doubt they'd tell us...

I agree that, in single player at least, the fact that time effectively speeds up for characters outside the player’s active combat zone(s) has far more negatives than positives.

One of the places I particularly dislike it is if the druids and tieflings turn on each other in the grove, and so much of the battle plays out without any opportunity to affect it because they’re killing one another in real time while I’m stuck in turn-based mode fighting those hostiles closest to me. I wouldn’t want to wait for everyone not in active combat with my party to take turns, but surely there’s some way to make sure their turns are synchronised with the player party’s.

I can’t speak to how that might impact multi-player, though, as I’ve never tried it.

Yup, now when reactions are on the way to being perfect, this is probably my next major issue with the game. Unless I openly walk into an engagement with my party all grouped together, the transition from exploration to combat modes is just very unpleasant.

I personally do not see this is a problem myself, quite the opposite I enjoy seeing enemies join in on the fun while I'm in battle. Makes them more dynamic and unpredictable that way, especially seeing a gobo walk in and start banging the drums. Bring them all I say ^^

Also only speaking for the first three, the 4th example is excessive exploiting which I do not commit.

I agree with this, and wouldn’t want the whole world to come to a stop for the duration of my fights. I just don’t want characters not in the fight to be able to have multiple “turns” to my one, but instead to operate on the same cadence.

To OP: I agree this makes little sense for single player (I didn'r realise no 4 worked, haven't tried that - I also didn't like this in DOS, but I think distentangling it for single player only may be too hard (everything seems to be geared towards MP)? I think there are a few threads about this (or related issues) - esp around ultra-abusable (an unbelievably pixel perfect) stealth - I was complaining about this a week back ;-) I suspect we are stuck with it.

well if cheeze sneak attack is that bad for you i guess you can allways just walk in and not use it

anyway it's due to multiplayer and it's not going anywhere so forget about it. It's clear as day...

When it comes to npcs join combat i wish the game had way way more patrols. Right now we have none, apart from a poor goblin that almost never gets in combat anyway and is always left all alone in the village.

It is far more layered then that:

1) you enter combat but others in your vision range do no - for a game investing that much into presentation it is an incredibly sloppy show. Not that BG3 is remotely competent in creating a believable world, but different characters existing in different time&space within players vision range must be one of the sloppiest designs I have seen. The only game that did that is Deadfire and it had an excuse of it's turn based mode being a small budget late addition.

2) the system is abusable in favour of the player - like it or not, it is still an issue. Avoidable one on players discretion, but it is an issue nonetheless

3) the system doesn't do the transition from complete stealth to combat. You can only initiate the combat with single character only - that character gets massive advantage: it gets to make a free attack, and then it gets a full round while enemy is surprised.

Anyone who will join after that will have to skip a turn - so the only way to get a decent "ambush" is to sneak attack one by one - that way the rest of the party will gett to make a single attack and skip their turn. It is ok, but it's unpleasant to do in terms of "game feel" (4 separate combat cues and the awkwardness on moving in real time around freezed enemies) and is tedious to do due to micromanagement involved, clunky controls and having to keep your characters at a distance to avoid situations I will go into below. Fail in navigating through cones with any of the late joiners and they will skip a turn.

4) things can go easily to shit if your initial stealthed character gets spotted:

If your character is spotted he will be put by himself into combat que with entire enemy party (even if the rest of the party is nearby stealthed) - if he is not at the top of the que to stop combat from proceeding the combat will proceed at incredibly fast rate and the character can get murdered before you get to act. If he gets stunned in anyway you won't get a turn or chance to react at all. You have to control others in real time (even if you initiated turn-based mode before) and controls are just not remotely suited for snappy real time control.

If enemies move on your spotted character and spot any of your remaining characters those will be added as "late joiners" and won't get to act for a turn. That can lead to two full enemy turns before you even get to react.

And then there are those small annoyances when you are all unstealthes but are spread out and you run into an enemy, but not all are pulled in because they are a bit more spread out then the game wants you to be.

So that's the list of problems I have run into. My question would be: when does BG3 stealth system works well? I can't think of a situation. It ranges from being barely serviceable to broken. The biggest perk is that it can be outright ignored and as someone who doesn't stealth much in RPGs it is not a deal breaker, but it must be the weakest implementation of the system I have ever experienced. Ignoring major gameplay concerns engaging the system feels finnicky and tedious.

I agree, @Wormerine. It’s not that sneak attack can be cheesed to the player’s advantage in the current situation that’s the biggest problem, but that the current implementation of turn-based areas causes multiple potential problems that disadvantage the player. Those cannot all be avoided.

Here is my question though - how many of you play multiplayer in a 4 people party and don't do encounters/exploration together? How often do you split the party beyond what you would realistically reach within 1-2 turns?

Is this feature of partial real time something that has value or is it just Larian once more loving their 'creative' gameplay for exploits?


I rarely play multiplayer games, but when I do, I actually play close to my other players just so we play together and experience the story/game together.


I don't see how this feature benefits singleplayer at all beyond exploits. You can have random enemies join a fight either way by doing their movement in turnbased when they are within a certain range - like they are currently moved when you are within a distance that you could get them on screen (naturally their actions and movement are not calculated/simulated when their are further away due to optimization/performance).

I completely agree. In single player, I think it should default to a mode where all characters are either in turn based mode or not. The current system is detrimental for single player games.

In multiplayer, I can understand why they would want to keep the current system.

I expect most people are playing this as a single player game, so I think it makes sense to spend time and resources on this.

I would simply force everyone within a 120 feet range to join turn based movement. This prevents exploits while still giving multiplayer situations enough wiggle room if they split the party. 120 ft can also be crossed in just 2 turns of dashing. I absolutely see no reason to maintain partial turn based combat with others moving around combatants freely.

That’s me as well. Though even if this system is beneficial for multiplayer, can’t we have both? Can’t we have different rules for party under player control, and a more separate engagement system for character(s) controlled by different players?