Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Initiative By Character..And other stuff

On your turn, you set your reactions, likely through some kind of "Reactions" panel. A mage would turn off "Attack of Opportunity", and turn on "Cast Shield Spell" and/or "Counterspell", and if the condition which triggers Counterspell occurs, it goes off automatically. No prompt required.

Yep they pretty much confirmed that you setup your reactions before the end of your turn and it then happens automatically.

Guys, you know where the TBRTwP topic is. Further off-topic replies will likely be deleted.

at some point you're just going to have to accept that people switching from two decades of RTwP are going to need to talk about changes, and that shoe horning that discussion into a single thread marginalizes their access to open discussion on this forum by making them feel like criminals for doing so outside the "quarantine zone" of RTwP discussion as if it were some dirty word. we are here for information and to look forward to the new game as much as any one else.

We moved it there for a good reason because it was derailing so many other topics as it has done with this one. Please resume further discussion of the subject there.

Absolutly, never have I played a game with party initiative in my life. Let the individual have there own initiative what is everyone copying xcom.

Party initiative is the only thing that makes this combat system even remotely palatable.

For me it's almost makes me want to not even try the game. I never played BG1 or 2, I've never even played a RTwP game at all, but the fact that this is based on 5e D&D and is already confirmed turn-based, I don't agree with team initiative, it just seems like it will lose the feeling of the whole game. The most glaring issue is balance...it seems like the side that goes first has a huge advantage. Since they are wanting this to be as similar to PnP as possible it just doesn't make sense. If you win initiative, you can focus fire and take out bosses or the stronger enemies in one single round. This is very uncommon in PnP as initiatives, on average, are broken up allowing everyone to at least take one turn before potentially dying. I understand that it supposedly allows for more cooperation since one player is controlling the whole party, but you still can have that in character-based initiative.

There is so much I am looking forward to with this game. I've been itching for D&D but I can't seem to find a PnP group to play with and I don't really want to do online groups. This one feature though, for me, is such a massive turn-off. I really hope they allow for the choice between party-based or character-based. Even if they said it would make the game more difficult, I'd rather play it on 'hard' and get that feature.

Well for me, I have yet to play a game with TB combat that was any good. So literally anything that makes the combat go faster in a TB system is a very good thing for me. I would even support having an auto-resolve combat option available to be able to bypass combat. The best option of course would be to have in-game options for resolving encounters without combat. If that were possible for every single combat encounter, that would be ideal.

As for your specific concern, I agree with it in principle, but the devs have said the way they intend to get around that is to have enemies widely dispersed and far away at the beginning of combat so neither side can immediately attack anybody right away.

Some RPG's with strategy elements do this. They usually use the term "phase" Games which come to mind immediately are the Disgaea series, where turns alternate between player and enemy turns, and Dragon Commander's strategy portion (not the dragon-controlling RTS part).

Alternatively, what about the team that goes second in the first round and first in the second round? No matter how I look it at, it seems like group initiative is a bad idea, but I have my doubts that Larian would institute it if it was such an obviously unbalanced mechanic. In any event, we'll get to try it out in EA and if it is as bad as it seems, I'm sure there will be changes.

Larian wants it to be as close to 5e D&D, but not in the way sense some hardcore fans would - they are not simply copying mechanics into digital setting with no consideration for the medium, and they are not afraid to make changes, if they feel they would make for a better experience. While one might argue against need for some changes, the core principle is sound.

Balance is a valid concern. This might lead to rewarding Alpha strikes - doing as much damage as possible before enemy gets to act - that is FiraXCOMs problem, where combat initiation has the most overwhelming influence on the encounter's outcome. Perhaps, something like Pathfinder:Kingmaker turn-based mod system could be implimented? In it initiating party gets only half actions in the initial attack - which means some damage and moving into position, without a full turn of slaughter.

Even though it is a team initiative once everyone is involved in the fight. You can initiate a fight with one party member, say your assassin with all there bonuses before others in the party engage by unchaining the party members. You can maneuver your party members into place and attack before the team initiative takes over.

alpha striking is also the most impotant factor in dnd... and real life.
That beeing said, its a bit boring when initiaitve is that important outside of ambushes / surprise rounds.

One way of alleviating this is by using an escalation die, this at least somewhat nudges you to prioritize not using all your heavy duty spells in the first round

The devs announced that they are going to create encounters where the parties will be far away from each to avoid one-sided alpha strikes but I do not think that would be always possible and the gameplay implies that you can sneak to place your party near the enemies or divide the party in exploration mode to lure the enemies in a Mutant Zero style, so I think they will have to do something to make the encounters balanced.


That said, there are games with group initiative that makes the combat challenging even if you go first, like the Age of wonders: planetfall, x-com games, etc.

age of wonders solves it by having large distances between combatants.
i personally dont liek the way AoW does it because its all about that annoying "dancing around each other" till someone has the balls to strike first.
basically whoever moves in close first is the one getting attacked first.
so realy it doesnt solve the problem.

Modern XCOm solves the problem by giving aliens off turn actions and having overwatch.
a feature id like in DnD.

The problem of AoW was fixed by pre 5e editions by the charge maneuver

Yeah, I´ve never understood why they forbid charge in 5e and turn it into a feat. It limits greatly the options of the melee characters in box-to-box encounters. The original "charge" has lots of limitations of use, to begin with, but at least you have it.

yeah and it exists for a specific reason. nameley to not turn every melee encounter into a glorified game of chicken where neither side wants to make the first move