Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Any Word On tagging Out For Dialogue/Skillchecks?

This is definitely a frequently requested feature, but I don’t think we’ve had any comment from Larian on it.

Personally, I’m single-player only but this would be so good for making my companions feel more alive and important, and I can see how it would be even more essential for multiplayer.

There are, of course, different ways of letting the party be part of conversations, and there have been discussions about this on this forum before. Thinking of single-player, personally I’m not a fan of a solution that would automatically use the best skill check in the party and would like to have my low charisma fighter try to persuade if I want to. But I really, really would like to be able to swap to another party member and have them interject if I preferred that.

Yes, it should 100% be an option that people can use or not use as they decide. I do agree with that.

That way people who want to 'tag out' with party members can, and people who want their party leader to make all the decisions and skillchecks ALSO can.

There are, of course, different ways of letting the party be part of conversations, and there have been discussions about this on this forum before. Thinking of single-player, personally I’m not a fan of a solution that would automatically use the best skill check in the party and would like to have my low charisma fighter try to persuade if I want to. But I really, really would like to be able to swap to another party member and have them interject if I preferred that.

Some people don't like pop ups (I remember the discussion about reactions) but I would like a pop up (optional from the settings) before the dialog where in nice words (Shadowheart thinks you are too dumb to answer. The dialog is in need of a real hero, me, Wyll. or so) the companions offer their help and their stats are shown, then you can choose.

Yeah. I just wish they'd come out and say they're adding it.

Eh. They either
1) won’t be adding it, so saying it straight will only upset people who hope for such feature

2) they will be adding it, which is better saved for 1.0 release to generate positive reception from people who want such feature.

Some people don't like pop ups (I remember the discussion about reactions) but I would like a pop up (optional from the settings) before the dialog where in nice words (Shadowheart thinks you are too dumb to answer. The dialog is in need of a real hero, me, Wyll. or so) the companions offer their help and their stats are shown, then you can choose.

Sometimes (quite often) I also want to fail dialogs, so I would take the person with the least chances to succeed, as often there is sadly no "Attack Goblins." option in dialogs.

Honestly, the way I see it working is as follows:
If there is dialogue options that are class or race dependent, the game shows (And I'm making up this dialogue but you get the point) "4. (Druid) (Character Name) I will not let you attack anymore beasts!" or "4. (Githyanki) (La'zeal) We will enter the creche! Move!"

And if it's a skill check, then the boosts at the bottom (Where you can choose to cast Aid before rolling, if you have it) will also show who's best for the roll. You can click on them to make them roll, or just roll with whoever is doing the skillcheck.

This way, you can see that there's an option for proper dialogue, or see that a party member has a better roll, but you can also ignore it if you want.

Not sure I’m picturing what you mean here. This sounds like what we already have, except are you saying that we should be given all the class/background/race options for everyone in the party not just the person who originated the dialogue?

I’d also hope that protagonist dialogue options are given different flavours for origin characters and even potentially for Tav depending on how the story progresses, which could lead to this getting really messy if there were an option for every single different line anyone in the party could say at any point.


Are you saying here that when there’s a skill check option that is common to dialogue that could be spoken by multiple characters, we are given a further option to pick who makes it on the dice roll screen? If so, I’m not sure about that as I would want the person who is saying the line to make the check, and to be able to pick the speaker before the line, as well as to choose who replies even for dialogue that’s not character-specific or doesn’t involve skill checks.

It also feels a bit too much like hand-holding for my taste. I’d still prefer to be able to see what an NPC says then decide who would try to respond to it, select them, and see all the lines they could say. I feel I should know my party well enough to make a choice of who should respond to a specific point without having it all laid out in multiple-choice fashion, and the game does give us a reminder of how good the selected character is at particular checks if we hover over the check type.

That’s for single player. Multi-player, I think each party member involved in the conversation should see what they personally could say in response to an NPC, but not exactly what their companions might say. There could then be different ways of handling who actually responds. It might just be a matter of who clicks first, which would rely on good manners or offline conventions to make sure that someone didn’t always hog the conversation by racing to select an option. Or perhaps the conversation stays with the current talker but the rest of the party have the option to indicate if they’d like to be tagged in and the current conversation controller would have the option to then hand over to them in a similar way to a single player selecting another party member. This would be done without knowing exactly what they might say or how good they might be at any checks involved, but this feels more true to TT than having everything laid out to everyone.

I am saying that ANY skillcheck where one of your party members can do it better should have the option to let you pick said party member. You can decide not to use it if you want it to stay with your primary character. But other people could use it if they want.

Hmm, well that’s not the way I’d prefer to do it as I see the skill checks as inherently linked to a specific character speaking a specific line rather than something that anyone can step in and roll. I want to be able to pick the character (from within my current close-by party) and what they say but NOT directly who rolls a check.

As I said, there are lots of approaches possible here and it’s clear that different folk have different preferences. We’ll see how Larian square the circle, but hopefully they’ll at least do something as almost anything would be better than the current way we get locked into one character in dialogue.

I just think it should be an option. People can use it for dialogue or skillchecks or both or neither.
No need to deny everyone something just because you don't want t use it.

I know I've brought it up before, but this is reminding me of the encounter with the Gith if Lae'zel is in your party. I think she should be the one Kithrak Voss addresses, and I don't think someone should be able to sub in for her possible deception check.

But there are certain other checks have clear justifications for other characters to pop in and comment, Shadowheart and Gale in the catacombs for instance. In fact having characters interrupt your characters musings to comment on something is an underutilized way of giving our companions so more opportunities to be fleshed out.