Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please consider giving companions a brain

Having picked up Dragon’s Dogma again recently, I’m reminded how much there is to admire with their pawn system. While I’d love for several of the ideas to make their way to BG3, one aspect in particular seems highly appropriate and entirely doable. Let the companions take care of some of the busywork while exploring.

For instance, let the druid in your party be the one to run around harvesting herbs, mushrooms etc. Perhaps the strong fighter is the one who loots heavy weapons and armor from fallen enemies. Maybe the barbarian likes smashing crates. The ranger dissects and skins hides from beasts you’ve slain. It could actually end us saving a bunch of inventory management fuss if the load is spread more automatically.

This can be handled in several ways, it doesn’t need to be locked to class or skills – those are just examples. Building on this you can add several new lines of dialogue to accompany these tasks, to bring them to your attention. Especially say if your rogue finds a particularly interesting item.

It would of course need to be optional to suit different play styles – some people like total control. I however would like to feel that I’m in a party of adventurers with their own personalities. Clicking through dozens of containers to find items isn’t what I’m here for, but I totally understand some people love that aspect of RPGs. I like focusing on story and combat, perhaps saving rifling through everyone’s backpacks for while we’re taking a rest. It would feel more like co-op even while in single player. Watching people stream Dragon’s Dogma, there’s usually someone in chat asking if what they’re seeing is co-op because the companions are so active.

That doesn't even require " a brain". just the basic UI mechanic already implemented in several games of this type to have the person in the party with the best skill/inclination for the task doing the action.
Pathfinder Kingmaker does it by default.

If you pick an herb/mushroom or loot an animal, the character with higher Nature goes first, if you pick a lock it's the one with the highest lockpicking skill, if you select an athletics check your most athletic character moves forward to do it, etc.

I’m talking about letting them get on with it without needing any user interaction. As I said there are different ways this could be implemented. Maybe there’s a slight delay to let the player investigate containers etc if they want to, before the companion goes and does it. And again, it needs to be something that can be toggled off. DD has a short questionnaire when you create your pawns to establish their propensities – I’m not saying you need to go to those lengths but it does feel more natural than turning on a bunch of toggles.

What you’re describing would also be a welcome addition though!

Ah, ok.
I'd be COMPLETELY against that.
I'd imagine "companions going on on their own doing things" when I don't want them to something that would turn into a complete mess rather quickly.
Also, something that would directly work against the "better party/formation controls" I've been campaigning for months.

I was actually thinking about you when I made this post, hence saying it’s not for everyone’s play style. I’m sure some people would try it and love having more independent companions, find it innovative for a BG game and a shade closer to ‘D&D'. Those who prefer to be in complete control of every single action of the entire party can turn it off. I think options are good. Some people want story mode because they don’t care for combat, I’m sure some would like smart companions because they grow bored with micromanagement.

Not exactly the same thing, but it might get at a common underlying need - I'd love a Search Area button that would essentially montage you going around to every corpse and container in the area and just present you with a single window combining all of the things that you found. Maybe how good of a search you do is based on e.g. an investigation check. If you find something that you can't open or needs more attention, it could be called out for the player. Anything to not have to micromanage looting so much would be nice.

Going back to DOS2 on PC after playing on consoles, you really miss this feature. It would be even cooler if the whole party got involved, in some kind of montage like you say. I definitely think there should still be secret items that those who go the extra mile can find – which could be called out by high passive perceptions/investigations too. As long as there are clues and a chance for things to be discovered without a prerequisite. I didn’t really like how some items were locked out due to low perception/wits in Divinity.

I think it's an interesting idea.

The best would be to be able to choose when they could be independant.
For exemple, I just raid a room full of ennemies. This is when I could activate the "autonome mod".
It would be interesteing to look at our companion go all around the room take the loots, etc.
And then I deactivate the "autonome mod" so i can take back the control.

Great idea here.
(It would free us from a lot of boring, useless and uninteresting "opening empty boxes x333" !)

I can’t imagine a time I wouldn’t want my party to pick up herbs, mine ore, skin animals etc. Personally I don’t get a lot of satisfaction from clicking on every plant or mushroom as we walk around – this is of course assuming crafting is going to be fleshed out and resource gathering is important.

I think that if you're going to automate resource collection without player interaction, you should just do it. I think it would be silly going to the effort of cluttering the environment with resources just so you can click a button and have companions play the game for you.

In Expeditions: Viking, you have a camping mechanic where you give characters jobs such as "cooking", "hunting", "collecting herbs", "crafting", etc. I think that it's much more interesting way to have characters use these kinds of resource-based skills as part of a camping minigame. (It would also allow you to implement the camp ration mechanics from D&D instead of ditching them entirely.)



I do like the Pathfinder: Kingmaker method of having doors automatically unlocked by the best lockpicker, but again, it kind of means that Pathfinder is playing the game on your behalf. I think the problem here is that the game is presenting a choice that isn't meaningful or interesting. (It's just about remembering which character has the highest lockpicking stat.)

The game designers might need to review whether the lockpicking skill (etc) could be handled differently so that utilising it isn't such a boring chore that the game would need to just do it for you.

But...they already GIVE you a brain, at the very start of the game. It does seem to wander off during the crash, but you never know..

Oh, that's not what you were referring to?

I call dibs on this joke.

I’ve watched several streamers playing DOS, BG3 and Dragon’s Dogma and there are definitely a wide variety of playstyles. Old school gamers in particular seem to find enjoyment in doing the looting themselves. In DD you can build/hire pawns that will never do any looting, but on the other end of the scale you can get ones that avoid combat totally and will run around doing all the looting for you. It’s really up to the player how they’d like to play the game. Personally, I’d rather avoid the chore of resource gathering – working out how best to use or spend the resources is more fun for me. I wouldn’t impose my preference on others though.

People can enjoy busywork but many won't. So it's best to keep busywork limited to optional meaningless "bonus achievements" that don't have a significant effect on the main game.

Loot is probably a bit too important to be relying on busywork.

Having a button to "switch off busywork" seems like a poor solution too.

Previous BG games had settings for companion AI behaviour (even if it was purely combat focused). I would prefer that to an on/off button. I want my companions to feel less like mindless thralls as we go exploring. Right now we have the odd dialogue exchange to mitigate that, but I think we can ask for more.

It was a necessary evil.

Controlling every single combat action for every single party member could get tedious.

Bioware struggled with translating D&D mechanics (where each character is controlled by one player) to a single player but party-based video game without it getting tedious, so they arranged it so that you could automate parts of the combat.

Later Bioware games evolved this further. For example, in Mass Effect, your companions will perform standard combat actions on their own, but you could issue commands and you were responsible for telling them when to use their most powerful abilities. Additionally, when it came to loot, you would automatically pick up loot as soon as enemies are defeated. They realised some parts of the game are boring, and tried to address that with automation.

So "automating" stuff is one way to solve the problem, but it is a waste of development resources to design parts of the game (eg meticulously placing environment loot) that will not be manually interacted with. Automation is also inferior to just fixing the game element, ie making it fun.

I do agree it might be nice for there to be a "feeling" of characters having personality during exploration. However, I think there might be a bit too much that can go wrong in terms of companions triggering traps, etc, for this to be implemented in a manner you'd be satisfied with.

I'd be satisfied with having better control over party formation while also having a bit of party banter.

Companions triggering traps is classic D&D in my experience, not opposed to that at all. And exactly the kind of risks you could run by opting for the convenience of less busywork.

I understand it would need to be handled well or it could do more harm to the game than good though. I think it’s a good direction to push in for ‘next gen’ CRPG experiences. I’ll be interested to see what Dragon Age 4 brings to the table.

This is a cool-sounding mechanic, but I don't think it's one that would really fit for this game. It's already really easy to miss stuff in the game thanks to the sheer amount of stuff to interact with in the world (I'm someone who thinks the amount of interactible stuff should be reduced by a bit) and if companions can go out and interact with stuff on their own, that could make keeping track of where there is and isn't stuff to find a real pain. Plus it sounds like you want characters to actually wander off and explore on their own during gameplay, which sounds like it would be incredibly difficult to manage with the current control scheme. Things like traps and potentially getting into combat or just losing track of your companion when you need them for some kind of skill check all make for compelling reasons not to include this feature.

What you've described is, in my opinion, a cool mechanic that should not be in BG3. It sounds like the sort of thing that needs to be conceived of as part of a game from the beginning so that everything else within the game can take it into a account. Adding something like it this far in, when clearly so much has been designed, seems as though it's just asking for trouble. But you're right that it's got a lot of potential in another game.