Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Clear Examples That Show We Need Proper Reactions

My comment on inconsistency was about how they approach game flow and player input , not about whether they show a die roll. If showing dice everywhere you actully have a roll were done consistently, you would also show attack and damage rolls, no? It's certainly as meaningful there.

To be clear, I'm not particularly bothered about them showing the dice in dialog resolution ( though resolution could stand to be quicker and less visually intrusive if it is just there for show ), I'm just highlighting the contrast between dialog and combat.

I somewhat agree. First of all I am a flat-skill check kind of guy but if I were to wish a roll based skill check I think I would prefer if it worked the following way:
1) When having a choice of what to do, we not only see available options but exact chances of success of each one as well.
2) Then the activity plays out and we discover success/failure though action.
3) at the end I would like to see a popup with the number we rolled (though that one is optional)

I think the reason why we have the dice thing is because BG3 doesn't show your odds until after we commit to a check. Then we are shown the difficulty check and get a dice to roll. I might be wrong, but I think that how it works in DnD5, if I remember it correct from watching Critical Role. If that is so, then I think the dice bit, when you get to see your odds and make a roll is rather important. Whenever it is good to have player commit without knowing it's difficulty is another matter entirely.

As to your question from the other thread on the same subject. Absolutely the game should make our chances to hit clear without having to dive into the log and create a suspension of seeing if we succeed. One of my favourite additions in recent TB patch to Kingmaker, is addition of tooltip showing what a character rolled vs. what he needed to roll to succeed. It is immensly helpful to gauge situation without having to search through the log and do the manual calculation.

In combat BG3 they display percentage based chance to hit, which is excellent. The attack animation properly replaces the feelind of rolling a dice. You see your character swing - which is like you rolling the dice, and then you see with anticipation if it connects (waiting for dice to stop rolling). I think ideally they would translate the feeling in the same way with skill checks, but they opted for simpler and more universal feel of rolling an actual dice. I can take it or leave it. I think it's a-ok.

The only way i see reactions working like that if the prompt is timed.
Otherwise it ends up like the MTG video games where every turn takes forever because you have to manually decline reactions a lot.

My thought is that it doesn't take players long to decide to use their reactions while playing at a table. So, the same should be true in a video game. So, how about this for an idea:

Keep in mind this is a rough concept I just thought of, so the idea may not be perfect, but perhaps could be iterated upon into something great. What if there's a "rewind" mechanic built into the game where players have a small window of time to hit a button in real time so that they can return to the beginning of an enemy's turn before it ends? At this point, they then have to use their reaction (so that players can't keep deciding to rewind and then immediately deciding against it multiple times per round).

Once you decide to react, the game rewinds to the beginning of the enemy turn and pauses, allowing the player to decide which thing the enemy did that they wanted to react to, then allowing the player to decide how they wanted to react. This puts agency in the player's hands and doesn't interrupt the flow of combat more than once per player character per round, if that.

That sounds too complicated and unwieldy, and more importantly, it takes too much time.

ok how about this:

When toggling reactions player can exclude enemies. "Yes, I want to perform attack of opportunity but not against THAT enemy. Maybe also not against that one". With a clear action cue, and presumably smaller engagements this should be enough to have a pretty good control over to whom characters will "react to" and with what.

Exclusion would be per-reaction. So you could not include one enemy in "attack of opportunity" but have his tagged with something else.

The problem with this is that you don't necessarily know if you want to react to a specific enemy or not until you see what the enemies do. I may intend to save my reaction to shield against that barbarian that is low on initiative order, but if I see the spellcaster casting some huge damage spell instead of the cantrip I expected he would, I might change my mind and try to shield or counterspell the caster instead, and my choice of which to do might depend on whether the spell the caster is casting is save-based or attack-based. So, combat flow has to be able to stop at any given moment to allow players to make an informed decision on the fly.

If it was predetermined reactions, players have to be able to set multiple different possible reactions that they could take per enemy for it to in any way reflect actual 5e mechanics for reactions, and if you allow setting multiple possible reactions per enemy, you then have to pause combat to give the players an opportunity to decide which one they want to do. No matter what, to properly reflect how 5e is played, at some point there has to be room for player choice in the moment, not in advance.

What would you do to improve it? It would take less time than prompting players at every possible moment that there could be a reaction and would avoid the MtG game feeling. Since players may choose to not even use their reaction for a whole round, sometimes combat would only get paused one or two times in a whole combat round. So, it seems as though it would take up much less combat time than yes/no prompts every time a reaction could happen. I can't really think of a way to give player's the freedom of choice in the moment and also reduce the amount of combat interruptions any more than this. I'd be happy to hear any further ideas, though, because obviously I'm only one person and don't have a monopoly on ideas.

In certain ways and to certain degrees, BG3 will not be able to play like a genuine D&D session. If we aren't realistic about this as regards reactions, the end result is going to be what it currently is: automated reactions with no player input beside on or off. What ever you come up with, it cannot be too costly in time and money, nor be at odds with the flow and style of the game. A proposed solution that requires us to act on enemy turns fails the latter, and very likely fails the former. Compromise is needed. If we can set some conditions for our reactions on our turn, we can easily get more than we are set to get.

Perhaps, but at least from outside perspective, "betting" on what enemies might do, does sound like an interesting implimentations to try.

Using your example:
Do I assume that the wizard will cast cantrip and just set my reaction to react to the warrior? Or do I take precaution against both? Maybe I can try to disable Wizard or Warrior by some other means with another character before he gets to act?

That might require an adjusted balance, but I find this kind of implimentation potentially appealing, even if not fully faithful to the Table-Top version.

Solasta comes to EA in fall as well. It will be interesting to compare the both.

It will indeed be an interesting comparison. I suppose we fundamentally disagree about what sounds like good implementations to try because, to me, severely limiting player control in what is most often the main mechanism of survivability for some classes/subclasses mostly just makes me think those classes are going to die way too easily compared to classes which don't rely on reactions for survivability. If they change it so that the baseline survivability of a class increases and those reactions used for survivability are not even present in the game, it's not the end of the world, but it also isn't really in the spirit of 5e. This is why I didn't like Sword Coast Legends. It was supposed to be based on 5e, but all the classes were heavily changed and it didn't even feel like I was playing 5e. Between the changes to reactions, the changes to cantrips, the changes to the action economy across several different actions/bonus actions, the changes to short rests which allow less resource restrictions than tabletop, etc, I'm kind of wondering exactly how much of the feeling of playing a 5e-based video game is going to even be present in combat and its supporting systems.

Just here to point out that an automatic reaction system as opposed to a pop-up that offers the option of using it doesn't just limit builds in edge cases.

While not a true reaction, paladin's smite is something you can apply after knowing that an attack is a hit, which has lent itself to being used on crits for maximum value. While it's not the only time you would want to smite, if you are low on smites, it may be the preferred use.

Counterspell, as another example, can be used to counterspell another counterspell. Sometimes, this is the preferred use of the spell - to ensure your own cast goes off. In an automated system, I'm struggling to see how a toggle handles this. It's a hefty balance change to have an option explicitly for a particular spell, since you can't be sure of the spell beforehand. I suppose you could have a toggle that counterspells only on a reaction, but at what point is it 'too much' when comparing UI clutter to the slow-down of combat the bespoke alternative offers? I would be much less pleased with an automated system that either can't be done on the fly or is a mess to go through than I would with a system that slows combat for a single decision that can be made quickly.

I'm interested to see how in-depth the system is when we get our hands on EA, and willing to eat my words about reactions if it turns out to be some excellent solution I'd not thought of.

I completely agree with everything you just said, Annyliese, including being willing to eat my own words. I already know the game is going to be great. That's not even really the issue. I just want it to be a great 5e game, because there really aren't any otherwise. But, as a big fan of both D:OS games, it's not like I'm going to hate the game if it's more like that than D&D.

Showing die roll animations in dialog checks makes the game feel MORE like 5e table-top.

Removing control of reactions makes it feel LESS like 5e table-top.

I think this is a fair comparison since both could "slow" the game a bit, but add value (IMO).

The designers just need to get-on-the-same-page.

Very good point and I actually had that same thought. Glad you said it.

Its literaly as easy as press a button when an enemy does something and time stops and you pick a reaction.

its not rocket science.
You could use this as an alternative system to the defautl one, so people who want tot ake itslow dont complain.

>Slow a bit
you obviously never played one of the newer MTG games.
it slows the game TO A CRAWL.
It requires you to check a box on every enemy turn. Probably several times each enemy turn, especialy if you play single player with 4 characters.

I personally have played several MtG games and it never bothered me much. Having said that, I do think a player-initiated pause and/or rewind option for selecting reactions would be better.

Let's create the new TBWP game genre

This is not how counterspell works in D&D 5E.

All your character would know was that a spellcaster within 60 feet of them was casting a spell. You do not know what the spell does. You do not know if it's a damage spell. You do not know if it is a cantrip. You do not know the level of the spell. You do not know if it is save or attack. The choice must be made immediately with zero additional information.

In your scenario the choice you would have is to use your reaction to counter an unknown spell or save your reaction to cast shield against that barbarian.

Exactly the same information you would have had you clicked a checkbox before combat.

That is a fair point. I could have used a better example. For instance, I could have said "I may intend to save my Uncanny Dodge for the Barbarian that is late on initiative, but if I see a Paladin with a Greatsword coming up to me casting a spell on himself, then swinging his weapon at me, I might decide to react to that instead." There are always examples where it is necessary to give the player the ability to make the decision, even if the example I gave there wasn't accurate.