Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Desperate last-minute request - please roll initiative for the whole party at once

Stealth has been a broken mess and the topic of many discussions since launch and for years its many problems have gone unaddressed. Changing Hide to a full action and preventing hiding within threat range were good changes, but they're not enough to prevent the system from being excessively abusable. This was demonstrated to the whole world during the last PFH.

Being able to sneak around enemies freely while they're locked in a stationary trance during combat is horrendously broken. This remnant of Divinity enables a great deal of abuse, it detracts from the turn-based exploration mode which would otherwise be great for synchronizing stealth movement and it teaches the player that splitting the party in a dangerous location not only goes unpunished but is actually preferable, which goes entirely against the spirit of DnD. However impractical this may be in some multiplayer situations, it's just not worth it.

Larian, I'm seriously asking you even at this late hour: roll initiative for the whole party when anyone gets detected regardless of how far everyone is.

That whole thing was actually implemented before early access was a thing. They showed it off in February 2020 during the gameplay reveal.

They changed initiative due to the backlash they received over it.

Hard pass. If I am not anywhere near the combat why should I be pulled into combat?

if you said, "Roll initiative for anyone near combat" that might be different.

I don't understand... are you saying initiative used to be rolled for the whole party before EA launch and they changed it to per-character due to feedback, or are you saying it was rolled on a per-character basis before EA and they later changed it to full party due to backlash? Either way you made me double-check just in case.

If you're talking about this gameplay reveal from 2020, it clearly shows Astarion being alone in initiative despite Gale being alive here
In the recent PFH the very same mechanics are shown around this timestamp

So, how was initiative changed? Am I missing something?

One turn of combat represents 6 seconds of real time. If Astarion is sneaking up on goblins deep inside their fortress while the rest of the party waits patiently outside, why should they be able to just walk all the way over to him? How would they even know he's in danger? That's how this is handled in tabletop, at least. It makes sense.

Good suggestion, though 'near' is somewhat vague. Imo if you choose to send someone very far ahead, there should be significant risk to it.

If I am in the Druid grove and one of my companions starts a fight in the blighted village then that should not affect what I am doing.

+1

Before EA started, original intention was that initiative will be calculated for whole groups, rather than individuals ... and then, party that had more, acted first (whole) ... then the other party (whole) ... and first party again ... and so on and so on ...

This ofc presented several problems, tho.
For example ... i highly doubt any group was able to overoll WHOLE Goblin camp.

So they decided to go to individual intiative rolls ...
Wich (just by the way) works exactly the same way, they just no longer count together for whole party, as they did before.

Anyway, from your description of person moving trough enemies frozen in time ... i would dare to presume this is completely unrelated to your topic.

There is still one problem in your logic tho:
Just by this itself, you can gather one thing ...
That it "works" exactly by design.

After all, you said it yourself, there was many, many, many, and once more many, other topics about this ... none of them ever got any atention.

Personaly, i dare to presume that Larian checked gathered telemetry ... wich contains data from quite litteraly millions of players, from wich many had several playtroughs ...
And seen how much people is using this feature ... wich would most likely be a lot.
One cant really blame them to get the idea, that people just like it this way.

So ... in short, hope for mod.
I doubt you get anything better.