Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Fix surprised

I think the way it should work is your party should just roll with advantage for turn placement. Enemy should not skip turns.

Erm, nope, then they would take the solo player out of the game completely. That's the purpose. They do that I along with many will be outa here, ever tried the hag solo with no way to break her invis and surprise?

That's just cheese.

How surprise works is not the purpose for solo play, but neither is it implemented cheese. As I understand it, it's actually quite just like it's described in the phb.

Agree Raccoon, my point was they take that out and I have to be honest as I use knowledge and sneak a lot on many of my solo plays I would get one shot on boss encounters without the extra turn, we need to be able to get some advantage on the die. Well until I can get to LVL 5, as lets face it it's the sweet spot so they have to make it like the game. It's obviously why they limited the level. But I demand +6 capability for my pains

The reason you can solo the patrol with surprise is because its cheese.

Surprise is a completely valid DnD tactic. Sounds like you just want everyone to play like grunting idiots who announce themselves to the enemy as they rush in. No thanks. The part I call cheese is when we can often keep attacking until the enemy is dead without being pulled into initiative. Surprise should basically give us one free attack before combat starts and hide should not be available each turn for everyone, this should remain a rogue ability.

I would say there ere things that could be fixed about surprise ...
For example when another party member join the fight later ... he allways skip his first turn. :-/

I mean it wpuld make sence (even tho its against the rules) that he wpuld be suprised IF (and only if) he was stealthing and his roll failed ...
But if your character get stuck somewhere on the way ... or even worse you accidentaly hit C and he stop hiding ... dont tell me that he should be surprised about that everyone around is fighting.

Surprise is a valid tactic in D&D but BG3 gives you two surprise rounds instead of one. If you win initiative you get three turns before the enemy gets to act. It makes surprise attacks far too powerful. You can murder the toughest encounters before they even get a turn. And it will get MUCH worse when the PCs level up beyond the 1-4 weakling range.

Solasta got it right. After you surprise attack something the rest of your party also get a turn while the enemy have the surprised condition. After that you roll initiative normally. BG3 needs to do it the same way.

I thought even that was powerful. I liked how Pathfinder handled it with “half-turn” surprise turns.

Yeah probably when you factor in the amount of metagaming you can do in a video game, any amount of surprise turns is too much.

You know where the invisible hag is, you know where the reinforcements will spawn, how to exploit the AI... The characters don't know these things so it's just one more case of BG3 constantly reminding you it's a game rather than a story that makes sense from the PCs point of view.

I don't think surprise attack is as fun a mechanic when there isn't a human DM to run things. It's fun when you can plot and prepare against a superior enemy. In a video game it's just 95% of the time about cheesy exploits the enemy can't respond to and it trivializes challenging encounters.

Combat where you have a lot of back and forth and reactivity is much more fun than just skipping dialogue and surprise murdering everything.

This is what I am hoping they will do. Would love a way to queue attacks so everyone strikes once then initiative starts, rather than the annoying micromanaging crap that happens now.

It would be really depressing and immersion breaking for stealth players to remove a core part of gameplay. Also, not everyone does research before playing a game, ambushes make perfect sense when you don't know what you are getting into. A second playthrough could be done as a screaming idiot if the player found the stealth play too easy, or just pretend to be one mid playthrough. I do not find a tedious back and forth to be fun at all, for me, the ambushes and stealth stuff are way better (just not the current level of cheese involved with it.)

Never played this, can you explain how it worked?

In a Pathfinder surprise round, characters can do only one "thing." Translated to 5e terms, each character that acts in the surprise round could take one of: an action OR move OR a bonus action. And that action could only be used for a single attack even if you have Extra Attack.

It lessens the potential for absolutely nuking the enemy during a surprise round, while still allowing a surprise round to be impactful.

You mean I shouldn't be able to easily move out of cover, shoot, move back into cover, then hide again without ever entering combat or provoking attack and solo absolutely every enemy in the game? /scarcasm
As it stands with the right build and enough patience you should be able to beat this game without ever even taking damage.

That sounds almost exactly how my 5e sessions play out. Not sure if that is core rules but it makes sense to us. You stealthily move into position which is free movement, not part of a round. Everyone attacks at the same time, then initiative starts. Doesn't matter if you have multiple actions that can be done in a turn, you only get one for surprise because the enemy obviously knows you are there at that point.

The sad part is you can do it with any build because of all the cheese.

I don't think anyone is suggesting to remove stealth or attacking from stealth here.

It actually takes the fun out of playing a stealthy assassin when it's ridiculously OP and too easy. I would love to play a stealth character in BG3 but the way it plays is just stupid and cheesy.

My problem with playing a stealthy character is that everybody's stealthy. It's like, what's the point of having the stealth skill? If I'm in the red, they see me. If I'm not, they don't.

I'd love to make a stealthy and play through the game carefully, but that's basically the same thing as making a clumsy fighter in half plate right now.

There's that too. Larian needed to have their own vision cone mechanic instead of D&D stealth. As if hearing wasn't the primary way to detect people sneaking up on you anyway. Everyone is also a magician. Just circle behind the enemy on your turn and disappear or attack with advantage. In full plate with -1 Stealth and Disadvantage.

But the whole concept is SO asinine at the moment that it CAN'T be a design, right? Just completely unfinished, right?

I was referring to the ambush part. Maybe it is just me but in all games I play whether solo or with a party, the first attack is always done like that. I never attack without observing first and having good positioning (unless it is an immersion breaking cutscene where I supposedly ran into a room like an idiot.)

Yeah, the cone crap is a bit too simple. There should definitely be a hearing and smell radius. Light should play a more important part as well. There is so much more they can do to make stealth play better.

Can only hope so, but I think you were being sarcastic. Games nowadays seem to cater to the instant gratification types and they don't have patience for proper stealth mechanics.

I feel Larian likes to bite more then they can chew.

This is a cool addition - a detailed mechanic like that is more interesting to interact with then just abstract “roll to stay hidden”. Add to that Thief-like environment interactions (dousing light sources) and we have a promise of genuine stealth experience. Except it’s all broken and doesn’t work, as stealth games don’t design themselves. It’s not a functional stealth-system in itself, and it creates issues with already existing, complete systems like combat.