Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides The Turn-Based/Real Time with Pause topic

Here is a twist for y'all: for me BG was never about DnD. For me BG was the first 2 games of the series. DnD was secondary to the particular story, characters, gameplay. For me DnD part of BG was mostly of narrative kind: places, gods and demons, etc.. I didn't (and still don't) care about DnD mechanical part. If they keep the narrative, story, characters and RT party based gameplay I don't care if it's DnD or not.

DnD was always just a tool to deliver the narrative of the game. Analogy would be: game engine. I don't care what game engine is used as long as it plays as fun and is a continuation of the same narrative. A lot of people get hung up on "how DnD it is" argument, and specifically on mechanical part of it which is not why I (and probably many others) love BG.

I also don't get why then DnD purists don't bring up the stink about it being 5e instead of adnd2, if it's mechanics what bothers you so much. 5e is quite different from adnd2 that was used at the time (and in a sense more limiting).

Again, imo if anything was lackluster in original games it's probably DnD gameplay mechanics part. IMO the further we go gameplay wise from tabletop towards more engaging and fun digital - the better. Trying to closer emulate playing tabletop for me is a negative thing. What I liked in BG DnD ruleset adaptation (and by the way, they didn't do a 1:1 with the adnd2 ruleset) was that it removed the worst parts of DnD (or at least moved them under the hood) - the annoying and boring TB and all the obnoxious rolling for everything. It made game play as something actually enjoyable instead of wasting your time at every step "cause tabletop digital game".

If I wanted to play BG, but closer to DnD and tabletop I would be looking at the physical game market and board games, not digital games. cRPG are supposed to be the striving to become a role-playing experience without frustrations and limitations of physical games. Trying to be "closer to tabletop" simply sounds backwards to me.

That may be an increasingly popular opinion as the years go by (though I have read that table top games are making a comeback). However, as it stands now, that is not the case. Most importantly, the people making the game wouldn't agree, being old school D&D enthusiasts.

Moria is at the heart of all RPGs.

So it should be a first- or third-person action rpg? That would make it really engaging to the big mass of players out there. They are a clear majority over us all on this forum.

About 7 minutes to kill a bunch of goblins.

A goblin army with wargs and commander.

Hi everyone,
new to the forums here but jumping straight into the hottest debate here...

As a long time fan of both the PC Games for D&D (specifically BG1&2 + NWN series) and TT RPG's, I have to say I am ok with Turn Based vs RTwP. Both have their pros and cons and whilst RTwP is a staple of the BG series to date, Turn based has been used well in other titles (ToEE for example) and I do not see a big issue personally to porting that over to a BG title.

As demonstrated by the goblin battle above, TTk or Time to Kill is a factor in TB games, "simple" battles can feel a little like a chore IF you are having to load into them (see XCOM for details), but can provide some truly awesome experiences if the player is given enough options.

It should be noted that in the fight above, there is no true Tank or Tanks to get stuck in, it's predominately ranged combat, so time is taken woth positioning and verticality ane ensuring opponents are kept at arms length as much as possible. It's more like chess, itcan be clever and imaginative, but it can feel slow and soulless if not carefully managed.

RTwP in the original BG series was a lot about having Tanks up front and centre auto hitting as much as possible and spamming heal. They weren't great fights either, tactically basic and often chaotic. That chaos however did "envoke" peril though. The Pause after a taking a critical hit sending you into a sweat of what best to do, keep as is, retreat said injured character but risk being killed as you ran, when un paused, the chaos was unpredictable and to a degree fun. Don't tell me though that fights in BG where always quick, especially when low level (or lower level than your opponents), but yes, quicker turns, more dice rolling did allow for fortuitously quick fights, bu also sometimes meant a quick death and a reloading of the game to do it again and again until the fight went your way.

This for me at least is the heart of the debate. Baldur's Gate games do not HAVE to be one system over another, but they should invoke a similar spirit at all times. So far I see a game shaping up to be a really good D&D game set in the Baldur's Gate world, but I do not yet see a Baldur's Gate game. So far that won't put me off purchasing, I like the look of a lot of what is going on here, but I also understand the other side of the debate, even it is often a nostalgic cry to the past.

I personally believe Turn Based (which looks better in Multiplayer), can look to mitigate the lack of urgency by adding small things back in. This is Pre-Alpha, so one assumes things like animations and voice-lines will be added and improved. Music can dynamically change based on the health of your party, but i think the main one for me would be reactions, the feeling that it's not I hit you and then you hit me, but that this is a fight. Climb to push me off a ledge, I should get a reaction (as long as you aren't sneaking), disengage my Fighter to swarm my Mage, Give me a swing. Fill the empty space!

Thanks for reading, these are just my initial musings on this topic and I look forward to further healthy debating!
R.

Well, with armies of that size it's no wonder the goblins haven't been able to capture that fort yet.

The artists doing the banner actually tried out a bunch of concepts, specifically to avoid similarity to D:OS 2. However, not centring the logo would be an insignificant difference, and not featuring the characters/companions would mean not focusing on the party. Since gathering your party is a core part of the design, the cosmetic similarity was not as bad as other options.




And also the fact that they were not intending to make Baldur's Gate 3.

Yes?
a good and interresting encounter? jesus christ how horrible!
I, an intellectual, want to fight hordes of endlessly repeated goblin trash mobs without hand placed encoutners and sub objectives like saving NPCs.

also you tell me, how long did you take for the starter goblins in icewind dale 1? because im pretty sure a lot of people got filtered by those and took way more than 7 minutes.

>urgency
you saw the gameplay with the cleric getting one shot and bleeding out right?
thats not urgency?
Wheres the difference between activeley pausing after getting shrekked an trying to scramble to a heal, or beeing shreked and then, in your turn, scrambling to make it out of there alive?

>simple battles
you realize thats not a simple battle?
If previous larian games are any indication there wont be any simple battles.
There wont be canned randomized encounters.
In most DnD campaigns this is also the case. Combat in most editions after 2e takes too long to go full japanese TTRPG style "i roll a random encounter every 5 minutes". It just disrutps the gameflow too much.
most DMs i know, and certainly myself included, go with fewer but more thought out encutners that fit more into the overall theme of whats going on in the campaign

Well the Baldur's Gate series obviously didn't have "randomized encounters", though it gave the impression of stumbling upon encounters the more you explored amd I would not be against that here either. I certainly don't want every encounter to only exist as part of the main cinematic narrative.

I.e. Exploration and side quests you may never see are important. Depending on when you encounter them they may also be "trash Mobs" by that point, who knows, but I get your point about having to have lots of meaningless encounters to f"fill" the world.

That's again part of the debate here. RTwP allows for more "generic" combat because it can be quick and give you the feeling of being powerful. It's good mechanic within a computer game, it's often not so great on table top.

On the flip side, trash mobs that are only there to drain some potions out of me so that by mob 5 or 6 without finding a healing potion or a town I sweat, well that's not great design either.

RTwP allows for combat heavy games, but a majority of fights become a forgotten blur.

What I would hope for here is that fighting isn't always the only option (obviously the goblin encounter is scripted to be a fight), but if other stats are to be as meaningful, then there might be less combat or different combat and in that case not every fight is a chore but more a decision.

How about simoultaneus turn-based?

Okay so is every fight in BG3 going to feel like chess and be limited to a handful of units on screen at a given time? No trash mobs, no large-scale battles, no random encounters? Regardless of the fact it's turn-based, that's going to be pretty disappointing.

It took a while as I had my thief sneak up on them from behind and then my other party members drew them out one by one. That was fun but as I leveled up combat became slightly more varied. I have no idea how long the goblin siege of Fort Targos would take in turn-based combat though.

Considering that the turns are simultanous now, having more enemies on screen should no tbe a problem.

Do what lazy DMs have done for years: let all goblins of the same type move at the same time

I am not sure anyone is saying that right now. It could turn out that way, but I see no reason why larger scale conflicts with "trash-ier" mobs can't be a thing once you of an appropriate level so that you can handle a goblin more easily/one-shot (as an example).

I certainly do not remember anything in BG1 or 2 that was truly large scale. Most mobs came quickly one after another (i.e. were just out of sight in the fog), but was there anything with so many on screen at the same time? Because no one said one can't do reinforcements arriving to simulate larger scale events.

Oh ok... Take the exact 3 same elements (logo + characters + nearly random fantasy picture) as for DoS is just an option as another.
Sorry I thought it was for it to inspire DOS2

I always hated the AC and THAC0 system.
Light and heavy armor basically operate the same

Back in the day I modded BG2 to give all armor damage reduction (%) and damage absorbtion (flat negation).
I also normalized HP, so it didn't change much as you leveled up. Pretty much everyone started with 100 HP and ended up at 200 if they were very lucky and heavy on the CON.

It ended up a far more interesting gaming experience.

Truly large scale? Nah, I don't think most computers could have handled such a thing but for its time I think the scale was just fine. Icewind Dale even more so.

I don't like the idea of trash mobs at all.
I don't like the idea of the PC becoming god-like. Some people might like a power fantasy, I don't.

A battle with no stakes and sense of danger, where my party slaughters the enemies in 1 hit and I could just auto-play the entire thing while I read a book is not satisfiyng to me.

Less filler fights. Less mook. More smart enemies. Enemies that use terrain in a smart way. Even goblins can be a treat is the GM (and in this case dev) is capable.

But the biggest problem if D6D in general, at least to me, is the power scaling. When you get into high levels it becomes absurd, and I prefer low-level campaigns because of that. Every just ends up bloated. Bloated HP, bloated modifers, punching gods in the face. It doesn't make my PC feel pwoerful, it makes the god and world feel pitiful.