A suggestion that might make everyone happy:
- Reactions get their own small menu (doesn't make sense to mix them with abilities you can trigger during your own turn!)
- Each reaction has three settings: OFF - AUTO - MANUAL
- OFF means it's deactivated and never triggers
- MANUAL means you get a popup with 3 seconds to react
- AUTO means the reaction is triggered whenever its conditions apply
- Each reaction has a default setting chosen by the devs (AUTO for attack of opportunity, MANUAL for counterspell,...)
- In multiplayer, the game host could get an option to only allow the "dev choice" to make the game more fluid.
- Having all reactions in a separate menu would easily show you if you have enough viable ways to use your reaction or if you should learn an additional spell.
- Bonus actions could get their own menu, too. It makes no sense to mix them with actions if you need a different kind of "fuel" for them.
- A sperate bonus action menu would also show you clearly if you have sufficient viable ways to use your bonus action.
Good suggestion. Saying that, I think 3 seconds for an input is a bit too twitchy for a turn-based game.
Some of the reactions can be called before the end turn too.You could pick defend/overwatch before you move to the enemies turn and characters will take the appropriate reaction if available. It's more proactive than reactive, but it would avoid having popups.
Saying that, I think Larian's issues with the reactions are self-inflicted. They decided to go with turn-based combat, but they want it to flow very fast for some reasons. So they decided to play with the action economy and initiative of 5e instead of playing with the encounter balance (especially the number of participants in an encounter) which resulted in other changes to the ruleset to compensate. It's a vicious circle.
