Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Defuse Fight Option

It would be nice if we had the option to defuse some fights, particularly when they are accidental or could be talked through. To be able to talk our way out of tricky situations and also gain experience for that

A good idea. But... it often hard to do even with a human DM. A pre programmed DM that doesn't have the concept of improvisation wouldn't be able to do this in majority of situations.

they could code it so you can only persuade someone when you haven't inflicted any damage during the fight yet, so if you want to defuse it you have to refrain from hurting. And then you can roll persuasion or intimidation or whatever to try and talk them out. Not for every fight though, only when you are fighting an NPC that can see reason.

And they could put some generic messages like "I mean no harm" "I'll be on my way" "This has been a misunderstanding" etc

I have no expectations in this sense, but at very least I'd like if on small scale fights with humanoid characters we were given more options to use non-lethal takedowns and have an unique interaction out of it.

Yes that would be good, sometimes there are characters you don't want to kill and I hate to have to reload just because I triggered a battle in the area and an important NPC joined. That also needs fixing, sometimes the battle area is too big and NPCs join when they shouldn't have a clue of what is going on.

You bring up a good point. For instance, I'm not a big fan of the Aribella stand off dialogue. There is literally only a skill check for her life and nothing else can save her but your skill check. The whole instance just makes it something ridiculous that you can't even make a dexterity check to catch the snake or jump in front of the snake to take the hit. Or give you the option to give her a potion or antidote. Or cast a spell to save her life. You get tons of checks to get Us (intellect deviourer), but a tiefling girl gets only one skill check to save her life. Don't get me wrong I don't mind there being checks that determine such things, but you literally get only one line of dialogue to determine the DC to it. I mean Nettie poisons you (possibly) and yet you still can save your life by convincing her or even fighting her. There are so many options, but Aribella literally has live or die by one skill check. Seems just a tad extreme and doesn't allow for many options to deal with the problem. Perhaps that will change as EA progresses. I am just not a fan of social skills literally determining even an NPCs life to just one check. Even the Illithid gives you plenty of chances to escape certain death.

I'll repost a suggestion I gave in a thread way back.

Allow a dialogue (persuade or intimidate) check for ending a fight, representing a "whoops my bad, let's chill" or "surrender or else I'll murder you all" option.
-The DC could go down by 1 or 2 for every enemy you killed/knocked out, and by ~5 if you incapacitate their "leader."
-You only get a limited amount of tries (2?) before the enemy won't speak to you anymore. This prevents just spamming it every turn to eventually get a high roll.
-It costs an action to try. Again, prevents spamming.
-Maybe only allow this for certain fights (e.g., Githyanki patrol would probably fight to the death. Enemies have to have some level of intelligence. etc)

Assuming Larian eventually fixes knock-out so knocked out enemies stop being hostile, this would fit very well.

Many CRPGs should do this.

Animals, for example, do not fight to death unless cornered or feeling they have to. That is just an example for wild creatures that should flee when heavily wounded or losing many pack mates.

Humanoids should often surrender or try to beg for mercy, buy your clemency, etc. There is one who does that near the windmill.

It makes things way more immersive and it can be done without being too moralistic.

Good points here.

I'd specifically add "sorry, I meant no harm/that was an accident!" option when you hit someone by accident. It was possible in Oblivion and a nice feature without which close combat would be massively aggrevating (well, worse than it already was...). Of course, it was much more needed in a first person action RPG, but I think it would be worthwhile to add it to BG3.

To prevent abuse, it could be used a limited number of times within a timeframe and/or the damage would be healed upon making peace.

Many fights can be avoided by dialog. Fishers, Gobbos in Village, Gobbos in Gobbo Camp, Tomb Raiders, Gith Ck point, Paladins of Tyr, Birdie, Spike, Spiders in Gobbo Camp, etc. Is there a particular one you are referring to?

Does it matter? The point is that we want an option, once we are in a fight, to end it other than through killing everyone, knocking everyone out (which is more tedious and more harmful to future gameplay), or reloading.

But if you want examples:
-The tieflings aiming a crossbow at the goblin: If you step in front of the crossbow and fail the persuasion check, you then have to fight to the death. What?!?! That's a complete overreaction on her part. No, give me an option to deal some serious damage to her and then intimidate her into not messing with me.
-The initial goblin attack on the grove: you can't avoid combat there.
-Zevlor: if you tell him that you're here on the behest of Kagha to get the tieflings to leave, he attacks you and you have to fight to the death. Again, what, no! Give me an option to intimidate instead of murdering him.
-Betraying Minthara at the grove. Give us an option to ask for her surrender, and then maybe could question her or have the tieflings/druids execute her.
-I accidentally attack a random NPC. Give me the option to say "my bad" instead of reloading.
-The goblin camp. Sure, I could spend 10 rounds and an hour of waiting through the goblins' ineffectual turns. Why can't I instead, after killing some of them, intimidate them into surrender? Do I really have to wait for 5 goblin turns, take one of my turns, and then repeat endlessly?!?
-Inside the building after killing Dror Ragzlin. I literally just killed (all of) the goblins' leaders. Are they really going to fight me to their death? I should be able to intimidate them into scattering.

Torment: Tides of Numenera had this. There were many encounters where you could still initiate dialogue with characters even in the middle of combat, and sometimes end the fight by talking to them.

Sorry, I didn't understand the topic until you put it that way.

I still think player should be taken responsible ...
More like ok, i will not kill you ... but you are going to jail anyway!

Otherwise it seem just odd ...
*Smash NPC's head with a two-handed sword* "Oh sorry, that was an accident, i mean no harm."
*Both halfs of NPC head* "Yeah, no biggie, have a nice day."

Yes I believe this mechanic would be good to end fights that drag too long and are pointless because you are going to win anyways, you don't get any good loot or xp for killing a bunch of goblins. Also like someone else pointed out is more realistic than some creatures flee or surrender when they are outnumbered or heavily injured

Sure, it is important to make it in a way that cannot be abused, but sometimes is only logical when both parties would rather not fight

I'd add that in real life it's much more difficult to smash someone's head with a two-handed sword on accident. In a game "I meant no harm" would be more of a "misclick antifrustration measure". Like telling that to the game more than to the NPC, so to speak.

I was thinking Elder Scrolls, but if I remember correctly you could only stop fighting with gurds

From the wikia:



Was pretty useful in Oblivion, like I mentioned above.