Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Conversations - Should I worry?

Hello there,

So, everything we saw so far can make us think that larian haven't implemented group rolls nor the possibility to change who leads in a conversation. Am I right?

Now, this were the same situation in DOS2 and it was a minor inconvenience there, even though it was ugly nonetheless.

I feel like that in a D&D game this would be a major issue if not a deal breaker, due to how different is the system underneath, having conversational and exploration skills distributed between the party.

I haven't played the early access, so I wanted to ask you people, how bad is the situation? Should I get worried about it or, despite everything, it's not much of an issue?

Its subjective ...
Some people claims it makes game unbareable, others just shrug and go on.

It depends a lot on how do you play.
As far as i know, in lot (not all tho) situations, you can quite easily start conversations with any of your companions ... so if you feel like this situation will be hot and you should use someone with at least *some* skills in diplomacy, you can send there Wyll (or ... well, i gues thats it, i dont think any other companion have high Charisma ) ...
But as long as you play your charcter only, you simply have come to therms that some of your rolls will fail, even tho there is expert standing right next to you. :-/

I feel like there should be an option to auto join dialogs and be able to argue the choices you or your partner choose if you want too , like its a real dnd party

I think it suits Larian's philosophy of rolling with the punches - you don't need to succeed every check to experience the story. So for me that isn't a big issue if you like to just role play the characters. Tough sometimes it would be nice if the talking character could ask the teams experts on a subject (doesn't need to be an option of the party members are too far away). If you like to min-max and have the best stats in every situation its a different story.

A bigger issue for me is that the whole thing isn't designed with your MC as main character and the others as NPC that chirp in and comment. I don't remember that happening during conversations just in the usual 'xxx approves/disapproves'.

It's a d20 system. With maxed stats or not the die will always rule the outcome, and I like it. I'm not worried about failing checks.

The issue is that I feel like there is not much reason to bring a person around other than for their fighting skills. As soon as the fight is over the companions will cease to exists, other than the occasional utility spell thrown around.

As you said, having an expert around. My grumpy monk should be smart enough to say "wyll, talk with these guards or I'm going to talk with my fists". If I'm in a magical dungeon with magical writings and magical stuff around, I'd like to bring gale to be helped to understand what's happening.

About main character and others, I actually like it. I think that the protagonist should be the party, not a single person. Which is one more reason to act as a party during dialogues.

I would say if you plan to do a lot of smooth-talking like deception and persuasion it's definitely a good idea to make sure your main character has high charisma as it doesn't seem like we can have other party members do the talking. Classes that use charisma as their primary stat for combat as well like Warlocks and Sorcerers are my recommendation. If you roll with a character that doesn't do charisma to talking then definitely plan on more combat. I can see how this might be annoying but I don't mind it. It's just nice to see an RPG where charisma is actually somewhat important and not just a dump stat. Personally I'd rather play as a wizard but alas Sorcerer or Warlock it will have to be.

I did a play through where I chose a different party face for each encounter. It played well.

Sure, sometimes NPCs started dialogue and I got party leader or whoever was closest, but even then it was seldom completely unpredictable.

Thats exactly what i mean ...
You can do that both, you just need to do that right at the start of conversation, once speaker is picked, its set in stone ... as everything is in this game.

I had simmilar complaint about combat ...
Hostile and Friendly targets are set on the start and nothing in the universe changes it ... Aradin and his group will still concider you a friend and will heal na buff you, even if you murder every last of them one by one while completely ignoring Goblins.

This game is just made this way: Set it ... and hold to it.

That's weird, I remember that in DOS2 there were neutral people in fights and if you hit them they turned against you.

Neutral, yes ...
Friendly, nope.

Its one of reasons i specificaly said "hostile and friendly".

I think it allows you some control over interactions between characters and perhaps advantages depending on who is talking. Recall the latest and last panel from Hell with Shadowheart talking with the mad doctor (Malus Thorm), because she is a cleric of Shar the man was more favorable predisposed towards us, didn't stop him from trying to 'cure' us but totally to be expected from a zealot of Shar, one of the most evil beings in the D&D setting.

Each conversation is lead by the character that initiates it, and only that character gets to speak via dialogue options. Other companions occasionally interject with their opinions, receive approval/disapproval depending on your choices or grant an optional bonus to skill checks if they have spells like Guidance or Charm Person, but they won't be able to switch places with the active speaker or handle any checks for them. If you want Wyll to persuade the guards instead of your Tav, you'll have to select him and have him initiate the interaction. Strangely enough, Wyll speaking and making decisions can still generate approval or disapproval for your Tav, but (someone correct me if I'm wrong on this) not from Wyll himself. Also, if Wyll would normally have a unique comment on your conversation with the guards, you won't see it.

As for non-conversational skill checks, companions are worth having. The world is littered with skill check prompts such as Perception checks when walking past buried treasure, Arcana/Religion/History/Nature checks upon spotting a strange idol or an unusual plant, as well as Medicine/Investigation checks triggered by a corpse with identifiable wounds. Each companion rolls their check separately when approaching the prompt and a single success is all you need, which makes having a party of 4 with a diverse skill spread valuable (at least for these interactions).

This is huge already! I remember from some old PFH seeing those perceptions checks, but I forgot about them. It's great that they are implemented also for other abilities, I were expecting to have those checks only relegated to conversations.

Thanks a lot!

If it isn't already there, a simple fix for this, that you do see already in some places, is "Let X do the talking". If that was just a toggle somehow, or mandatory setting for multiplayer, I think it would solve some of the issues. When both players want to answer, it might be cool to have a roll of some sort that has some sort of 'forgiveness system' i.e. a player gets a plus one to the roll for each time they lose the roll in a row.

I think it's ridiculous, we have someone standing right there that might be a religion expert, but no, because my barbarian clicked on the item, oops, that knowledge is forever gone, sorry. It just encourages save scumming, and extra micromanaging, which isn't fun.

It's also terrible for multiplayer, if other players can't jump in/take over conversations. I don't want to be an observer in someone else's game, and I don't want to have to be constantly considering whether I need to hang back to avoid getting in certain conversations or rushing forward to make sure I'm the lead for others.

Combined with the (at least earlier patch??) detail that you had to manually click on allies' conversations and thus would often miss the first line of dialogue...ugh.

I don't know if you've been following EA much, on Reddit or Discord, before joining the forums (hi and welcome btw). But just so you know, regardless of the platform, there have been requests to let the party act like a party during conversations, from Day 1 of EA. These resulted in no improvements so far, and I am under the impression that this aspect of the game has still not improved, as of the latest PFH.


In my view, saying "this is a D&D game after all, and in a D&D game it would be bad not to be able to act as a party during conversations" is not the best argument for why we should be able to act as a party during conversations. (Although "I don't like this" is, overall, always perfectly acceptable feedback.)

Larian has said they derived their combat mechanics from the 5E ruleset, indeed. But that doesn't mean they are making "a D&D game", in the sense of a game that feels like playing D&D.

Now, they have also said that this game will be like having them in he GM's seat, and that this is their campaign, with their house rules, like in any D&D campaign. So they have well and truly claimed that they aimed to reproduce the tabletop D&D experience, in a video game. I'll grant you that.

But what's the D&D experience, heh ? D&D means different things to different people. Maybe, for Larian, D&D is not about working as a group, and it has little to do with ... gathering a balanced party to make everything in the adventure easier, from combat to conversations. Who knows ?

Fundamentally, I feel that any argument along the line of "this is a D&D game and thus players really should be able to make use of all of their party during conversations" is telling the devs what their vision should be. This is just my opinion, but I generally prefer sticking to what Larian stated as their vision, and pointing things in the game that don't work with their vision.


Having said that, I want to point out that Larian said in an interview
They've also used the motto "gather your party" in many places.

They also said that gathering a balanced party would make everything in the adventure easier, from combat to conversations.

So it's quite clear that they're aiming for a party-based RPG. Consequently, we really should be able to use all the strengths and tools of our party, including during conversations.



It's funny, I think I once described the feeling of companions that can't take part in conversations as "party members are sacks of HP, actions, BA, and other combat resources, for use in combat exclusively". Aside of combat, I really don't agree that Companions cease to exist. Rather, they become Glorious, Useless Bystanders. You'll see them hanging in the background during conversation cutscenes, putting their weight from one leg to the other, and generally doing nothing useful.

One of my favourite moments is when your PC is trying to crush the tadpole that crawled out of Brother Edowin's corpse. If you fail, the tadpole crawls aways, and the nearby Companions disapprove. "Thanks team. Do you think it would have been asking for too much to lend me a hand, or rather a foot, in order to crush that tadpole ?".

Sadly, for all their uselessness, they don't consume less food at night.

100% Agree. I know it's not game breaking. I'm still super excited about the game, and yes failing a save is not the end of the world but the whole point of D&D is to build a well-rounded party with vaired skills to tackle different situations. What's the point of having Gale or any other compaion even having skill proficiencies when whoever started the conversation has to make any religion, history, arcana checks that come up? If I pick up a book that seems magical in nature, I can't turn around and ask Gale to take a look at it? Who cares if Wyll, with his high charisma, has proficiency in Intimidation he's never going to use it. Even if you exit the conversation and restart with a different character, the conversations usually have a variety of skill checks, and one person has to try to pass all of them for no good reason. Having to save and reload is just a stupid waste of time. This along with poor inventory management is probably why the game takes 80+ hours to finish! LOL.

Given how much work Larian has put into making every other aspect of this game awesome, it is shocking that they looked at this and thought, yeah that's fine.

That's a thing to which I agree a lot. Devs have worked all their life to reach the point where they can design games as they like, and thats their moment to shine now. That said, even with the best intentions, everyone can make mistakes and being critical, in a constructive way, is always important.

You said it yourself, it's a D&D.
If anything, metagaming highly discouraged in P&P version. It not like during ongoing conversation, DM asks for deception roll, and another player can jump with "oh, i have much better deception skill, can we quickly swap conversation to me?". It goes naturally, and any "missed" opportunities just have to be accepted.

P.S. I actually still on fence even that perception roll are visible to players. In actual D&D it's done silently by DM, and reveled only if roll actually successful.