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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Oct 2023
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So here is my issue. i do not understand why the turn base cancels out 1 turn combat effects on enemies.
so to give the image you have 2 characters. 1 enemy and 1 player.
the order for the turns goes like this. Enemy first then player.
Turn 1 Enemy strikes player for 10 damage. end turn. Turn 1 Player has a quaterstaff causes enemy 6 damage and uses topple skill. Succeeds check. Enemy toppled for 1 turn. Turn 2 Enemy stands up. ?!? attacks for 10 damage. end turn. Turn 2 player etc etc. repeat the above.
exactly where does the 1 turn of prone count? my issue/logic is that it should follow as:
Turn 1 Enemy strikes player for 10 damage. end turn. Turn 1 Player has a quaterstaff causes enemy 6 damage and uses topple skill. Succeeds check. Enemy toppled for 1 turn(I.E its next turn Turn 2 Enemy prone. Turn 2 player attacks with quaterstaff causes another 6 damage.
The games logic follows the principle that 1 turn means: A cycle of during the whole turn for all individual characters. The reality of this is that there is actually no 1 single turn that the enemy remains prone for. It remains prone during the same turn it was made prone. Meaning the player will never get the benefit of the prone. This bizarely is also how it works if the enemy made the player prone. The next time the player stands up. This feels like there is misdirection in the actual term of what it means to be "made prone" for 1 turn.
So apply this to Mind whip. 5e spells mod. Turn 1 Enemy strikes player for 10 damage. end turn. Turn 1 Player casts Mind whip causes enemy 6 damage and applies 1 turn missed action Turn 2 Enemy Recovers form miss 1 turn of action and takes an action anyway. Turn 2 player etc etc. repeat the above.
This is where the opposite happens to prone now if we switch in game who goes first
Turn 1 player cast mind whip Player casts Mind whip causes enemy 6 damage and applies 1 turn missed action. Turn 1 Enemy misses 1 turn of action and then either makes a bonus action or not and ends turn. Turn 2 Player casts mind whip causes enemy 6 damage(again) and applies 1 turn missed action. Turn 2 Enemy misses 1 turn of action...etc etc etc.. until the spell slots run out
The logic is lost on me.
please give your take and insight on this...
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Mar 2021
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Initiative RULES this game from a tactical perspective. So yes, the thing you outlined above is correct. If your enemy is in front of you in the turn order and you use your action to topple then you won't get the opportunity to attack them with advantage unless you have multiple attacks/actions or another of your PC's attacks them.
The reason is because when you are knocked prone you are not unconscious just on the ground, and you can get up by spending half your movement to do so - which would logically happen during your turn. The game automatically has you stand up (although RAW you could just crawl around at 2x movement penalty, but you can't do much from down there) - so yeah.
Mind Whip on the other hand is supposed to act like Stun where they don't recover their action until end of your next turn. So that is where BG3 and RAW diverges greatly.
So apply this to Mind whip. 5e spells mod. Turn 1 Enemy strikes player for 10 damage. end turn. Turn 1 Player casts Mind whip causes enemy 6 damage and applies 1 turn missed action Turn 2 Enemy Recovers from miss 1 turn of action and takes an action anyway. <-- This is incorrect. Should not be able to take an action until next turn. Only Larian knows if this is broken or intended. Turn 2 player etc etc. repeat the above.
So yes, you are correct. The way stuns type cc's are being handled is wrong, or it's not RAW.
Last edited by Blackheifer; 13/10/23 01:16 PM.
Blackheifer
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jun 2020
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Formally speaking, in 5e, effects are quite specific about their timing; there isn't really a 'round 1, round 2' situation, just an initiative order that progresses by individual character. The most common timings you see are "Until the start of its next turn", "Until the end of its next turn", "Until the start of your next turn" and "Until the end of your next turn". these are all quite specific timings that cannot be conflated with one another, because they affect the ability of many features to even be able to work at all.
When you knock a creature prone, for example, they cannot stand up until the start of their next turn - yes, this means that if it's *Just you and the target involved in the fight, and you only get one attack per turn, then there is unlikely to be any benefit in doing this (though there still may be: the creature will had disadvantage attacking you if you move away and provoke opportunity, and you may be able to move out of its reach, forcing it to spend its next turn dashing to get to you, for example), but in most cases, it's not just you and the target - there's your party to consider as well, and the creature should remain prone for all the turns between yours, and its, when it can stand up. If your turn is directly before the creature's, you can still work it to your advantage, in formal 5e, such as by using the ready action, to hold off until after the creature has just taken its turn - such as readying to knock the target down when your ally approaches to attack it).
Other effects, such as ones that cause stun, the timing will denote specifically that the stun lasts "until the end of the creature's next turn", specifically denoting that it will spend an entire one of its turns stunned, regardless of where in the initiative it is in relation to you.
Unfortunately, even since the earliest days of BG3's EA, we have been telling Larian that their handling of effect timing is very bad, and that the way they have implemented it globally causes major problems for the game. Every crowd control effect is saved against functionally with advantage, for example - a creature must fail twice in a row before you gain any benefit ,due to them getting the effect's save-out at the start of their turn, rather than the end, frequently causing a spell that did stick to still not have any actual effect or benefit. In the case of some other abilities, it's make them completely non-functional in their entirety, such as effects that only last one turn, but which time-out at the start of the target's turn, and so effectively last no turns at all, and do nothing, even when they 'work'.
Larian have been told again, and again and again, endlessly since the early days of EA that this is a problem, both in large threads and in direct bug reports, but they have never done anything about it in any way.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Oct 2023
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@chronicx
Situations like this make the Alert Feat adverse because you'll always go before they do except for Sarevok and Lorroakan. In order for the scenario to occur that you want, you need to be 'last' in initiative on Turn 1, and then 'first' in initiative in Turn 2. But it can happen.
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apprentice
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apprentice
Joined: Oct 2023
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Conditions can be removed prior to expiring in a number of ways either by the bearer or ally. In your first example the condition prone is being removed early by the enemy. The ruleset however is not designed specifically for a 1v1 combat encounter. I offer a more typical example within this game.
Turn 1 Enemy 1 attacks doing 8 damage. Turn 1 Player 1 hits Enemy 1 with topple for 2 damage applying the prone condition. Turn 1 Player 2 now having advantage on enemy 1 (turning their chance to hit from 50% to 96%) lands their weapons special ability doing 30 damage and applying the burning condition. Turn 1 Enemy 2 douses enemy 1 with water (ending the burning condition). continue.....
Still simplistic, but... Conditions are handled differently form the PnP 5e ruleset. Agree or disagree as you will on how the conditions work in BG3, but any attempt to claim that the way conditions are implemented is broken fail considering the rules apply to all combatants. Any perceived advantage the enemy may encounter, your party can claim as well.
Aside from that some things are indeed not working as intended. At least fixes no longer require you to call a game company within a short time window and pay, at the very least a shipping and handling charge, so that a working version will arrive in 6-8weeks.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jun 2020
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Agree or disagree as you will on how the conditions work in BG3, but any attempt to claim that the way conditions are implemented is broken fail considering the rules apply to all combatants. Any perceived advantage the enemy may encounter, your party can claim as well. It's actually quite possible to denote an obviously broken mechanic where it exists. That it affects everyone equally does not make it any less broken or obviously improperly done. Here's an example from the system itself: You have a spell which says "The creature must make a wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the creature is frightened of you for one minute. The creature may repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the condition on a success." This is a pretty stock standard crowd control formulation. You'll even find tooltips in the game right now that read (when popped out in full) a description denoting this timing. The spells, however, do not work that way - They provide the targeted creature with a save at the beginning of their turn, and, if they should succeed it, permit them to take their turn as normal, unaffected, because the condition has been ended already. This is clearly and unarguably broken, irrespective of the fact that it affects your party in the same way for enemy control spells. It means that when you or an enemy casts one of these spells, the tooltip misleads. It also means that when it reports that the target of the spell, you or an enemy, would be making its save normally, it is actually making the save with advantage, because it gets to save twice, and if it succeeds either save, it is unaffected by the spell at all. If it happens to be making the save with advantage, it's actually making it with hyper-advantage - gaining the benefit of four rolls, and resisting the spell entirely is a single one of them should pass. This in turn means that the reported percent chances of gaining the spell's benefit are also incorrect and misleading. It does not matter that both sides suffer equivalently of this issue, and it does not matter that many other creatures may have turns in between the caster and the target (I selected a condition that specifically gives no benefit until the affected creature's turn); it is a faulty implementation and thus a broken mechanic that throws out intra-systemic balance considerations completely independent of the player/enemy division.
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Bard of Suzail
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Bard of Suzail
Joined: Oct 2020
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The system is further broken with the bazaar choice Larian made to forgo the D20 initiative system and instead use a D4.
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apprentice
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apprentice
Joined: Oct 2023
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You backed yourself in a corner by trying to make a point on the assumption that the save failed and ignoring that the majority of the spells also alter the environment that may, albeit may not, still limit options. So, you believe that all spells should have an immediate impact. They do not, therefore "broken". Looking through your posts...the developer did a poor job, and the game is bad. Why exactly are you so active here then?
Using 1-4 rather than 1-20 does significantly reduce the possible range and would put more emphasizes on bonuses from other sources. Care to explain why that is bizarre and broken?
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Bard of Suzail
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Bard of Suzail
Joined: Oct 2020
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Using 1-4 rather than 1-20 does significantly reduce the possible range and would put more emphasizes on bonuses from other sources. Care to explain why that is bizarre and broken? In my opinion it creates clumps within the turn and even actually negates a lot of the bonuses you can get. Consider that the roll is based on 1 to 4 and the bonuses do not, that I am aware actually take you outside that number. So lets say you roll a 4 with a +2, that means anyone else rolling a 4 goes at the same time as you, as does a 2 with a +2. The D20 spreads out the combat and the bonuses have the potential for a more meaningful impact. Also means they could be worse as well but that is just the luck of the roll. Additionally D20 is standard DnD and there is no real, meaningful reason to change it.
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apprentice
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apprentice
Joined: Oct 2023
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That clumping emulates delayed action that would be extremely difficult to achieve directly coding into the game otherwise. If 2 more characters are adjacent to each other in the initiative a player can alternate partial moves between them to achieve a coordinated effort. For me the standardization to the D20 did not occur until 3rd edition, so I may be more inclined to accept the variance. While your example is technically correct, look at this way. Larian knows the available options. This makes it easier for Larian to provide encounters in manner they intend. This is not just to make certain mobs more likely to react first either. I point to the Ancient Forge Encounter which by design was created for the automaton reacts last and plays into my first observation.
So, I reiterate. The alterations change the dynamics of play, compared to standard. But such changes do not break the game and (here is opinion) falls in line with the only answer we ever receive from Larian (or from any other game developer) about the changes.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Oct 2023
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@Zentu
I was unaware of the D4 change. That explains why the Alert Feat is so OP then. +5 to the +4 guarantees your party goes first on nearly every encounter.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jun 2020
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You backed yourself in a corner by trying to make a point on the assumption that the save failed and ignoring that the majority of the spells also alter the environment that may, albeit may not, still limit options. So, you believe that all spells should have an immediate impact. They do not, therefore "broken". Looking through your posts...the developer did a poor job, and the game is bad. Why exactly are you so active here then? This is pitched as though you're responding to me... but what you wrote bears no relation or relevance to what I said. I didn't make any assumptions about anything - I gave an example that illustrated one way in which the mechanics as designed for the game conflict with the way spell and effect timing has been programmed, leading to non-functional abilities, and affects that are substantially more disadvantaged to use than they report to the player. It does not matter than many other spells and abilities do not fall prey to this design problem; many do. The fact that some elements of the game work well does not negate or detract from the fact that other elements do not, and are functionally broken; the OP to this thread is not here to comment about the elements that work well and as expected, they came to comment on the elements that do not seem to work properly, and others are responding to let them know that, unfortunately, this is not a but or a technical issue, but rather the way that Larian designed it, with seemingly no intention of fixing it. Your other comments are either false or vague-in-order-to-defend... - No, the majority of spells do not alter the environment, and even though some do, that has no relevance to the effect timing issue that impacts the very many which do not. - No I do not believe that all spells should have an immediate impact, and I'd be curious to know what part of anything I said led you to make that assumption. What I do believe is that spells and features should have their stated effects, when they describe those effects occurring, and that if spells or features succeed, the benefit that they describe for succeeding should occur... the complaint is that in many cases, due to the timing issue, that is not happening, and it is a valid complaint. - (sic) They DO, therefore, 'broken' ^.^ - I have contributed a great deal to various topics in this community for several years, and if you're going to post-check me, then I welcome and encourage you to actually do so. I've spent multiple years contributing what I can and as much as I can towards helping this game be the best that it can be. If I didn't care, I would not be here. The same can be said of many folks who are often critical of the game on these forums. - No, grouped initiative would not be 'extremely difficult to achieve' by any other coding method; what makes you think it would be? Grouped initiative is a simplified way of determining initiative in the DMG, but changing every roll to a d4 roll, and not allowing natural bonuses to exceed that, is not how it works, and for valid reason. - Having specific creatures take turns at important points in the initiative order is also easily done, simply by writing it to happen that way, or having the creature have a fixed initiative score. Lair actions are an example of fixed initiatives, functionally speaking. This is not complicated, and it does not require destroying the initiative spread of the rest of the encounter. - Group initiative also has the issue in that it leads frequently to gank-squad situations, and over multiple generations of the game, the overwhelming feedback from players has always been that that's just not very fun in the long run. Larian, however, love gank-squad situations and alpha-strike 'strategy' - they designed around it, in many cases, in their previous games, so it's no surprise that they favour the idea here. That does not, in any way, mean that it' a good idea; it was one of the things that people grew exhausted and bored of the fastest, in previous titles. You can reiterate as much as you like that some of these things are just 'dynamic changes' - but with the effect timing issue in particular, it is demonstrably a broken situation that leads to some effects and features not functioning at all, other not functioning as advertised or described, and others functioning at severely penalised rates, which they do misinform the player about. The game should never lie to the player. Characters can (and sometimes should), but the game itself, through its UI and supplied information, external to the game story, should not. Abilities and features should function as described, and their effects, when landed successfully, should cause the effect they describe. There are many cases in the game right now where, because of the timing issue, this is not the case. this is not a design philosophy question - it's a broken mechanic, pure and simple.
Last edited by Niara; 13/10/23 11:52 PM.
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