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

I'm really sorry, I know this is a 47 page thread I am replying to, but I really want to figure out the controversy without watching the gameplay video, or getting involved with the flamewar.

I hate spoiling new games by knowing too much about them.

I've also never played a Divinity game so I have no idea what to expect.

With the turn based system, I heard there was some sort of simultaneous team action?

Is this like Civilisation style turn based, where you make all your decisions and then choose 'new turn' and watch the results play out?

Or is it the game like Chrono Trigger/Final Fantasy turn based, where you only get to decide the actions of one character at a time?

I can really get behind the Civ style version, but I am not that in love with the "One at a time" please style of combat.

It's team action, so you can do something with one character, switch to another character, then if the first character still has something they can do, you can have them do it.

I think I haven't quite grasped it.

Is it a process where the actions you take play out one after the other, or is it a simultaneous process, where you choose all your characters actions, hit a turn button, and watch everyone act in sync?

edit: actually, probably easier question: Will playing Divine Divinity be a good example of how it will be, or is BG3 going to be different from that?

edit2: I think I have it. It's a hybrid approach, where the whole party takes a turn in sync, then the enemy party does their turn..

I think?

From my understanding its the same way turns work in X-Com. ie all your characters get a turn (in whatever order you wish), then all the enemy characters get a turn. The actions still happen as you make them, they dont all queue up and then play out at the same time when you hit Go

It's a bit of a surprise, I wouldn't have expected them to change the trademark Infinity Engine formula.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. One of my favorite parts of all those games is spending 10 minutes of planning to watch 6 seconds of complete chaos happen on the screen. It was pretty bold of Bioware to take the D&D rules and squash them into a sort of 'simulation' of sorts.

I would have thought if they were going to change it, they would polish or tweak the formula, rather than replace it...

Fans can be dangerous, after all

D&D started out turn-based, so it's less of a mess to follow the rules instead of try translating them into realtime.
Also, Larian knows turn-based combat, so they're able to make a stronger TB system instead of going outside their wheelhouse & try to make a (possibly weaker) realtime system.

I'm not saying realtime is weaker, mind. I'm saying that it's not Larian's strength, so they might not do it as well.

I know D&D, I get turn based.

I just mean Bioware created something unique and unusual... a 'real time turn based game'.

It's probably going to be a fine game, it's already looking like a must play for me, but that's still a style of play that is really going to be missed considering it has the name 'Baldur's Gate'

The irony is that it is much easier to play the infinity engine games if you play them in a turn based style, but the fact that everything is happening at once added a serious extra layer of tension.

There must be some design that takes the best of both worlds, right?

Here's how combat works in D&D 5E, which BG3 is based off of.

Everyone rolls initiative and that establishes the turn order. Everyone then gets one action, one bonus action, their movement and a reaction during the enemies turn.

What determines your bonus actions and reactions are your skills and your class. A magic caster could have the spell shield or counterspell because they are reaction spells. Meaning someone attacks you you can then react to that by casting a spell to increase your armor really quickly to avoid taking damage, or stopping an enemy caster from casting a spell.

Other classes, like fighters, rogues and barbarians have a lot less reactions than the magic classes but have a variety of bonus actions like a Fighters second wind to heal or action surge to attack again or a rogue using the cunning action to dash, sneak or disengage. They could also use their reactions to have an attack of opportunity, meaning if someone is in melee range and they try to move out of melee range then it's a free attack. Or you can use your action to disengage without taking damage but lose your attack action, whereas rogues can use their bonus action to avoid that.

It's a combat system that is entirely reliant on a turn-based system.

BG3 is simply having the teams share initiative so we don't have to wait for individual characters turns. We can just move and use everyone as needed. This process will also sort-of bypass the held-action action. Meaning I hold my action, like a spell, for something to happen that I tell the DM. Like "I'm holding firebolt for when an enemy comes around the corner." and my action is held until an enemy comes around the corner but I lose that action if an enemy doesn't.



I'm not sure what that design would be. We would have to radically shift every mechanic from D&D 5E to make it some kind of RT combat. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were based off of AD&D 2E and its combat had to just cut a lot of features out of the game to make real time work. A lot of D&D fans at the time said it ruined the whole dynamic for the game.

They more or less work the same, mechanics wise. I still need to roll dice to beat your AC (Armor Class) and then roll dice to determine the damage, just like BG 1 and 2 did. I still need to distribute my attributes wisely to fit my class, same as BG 1 and 2 did.

The real differences, I feel, come from the differences between AD&D 2E and D&D 5E and that Bioware preferred RTS games at the time they developed BG 1 and 2 and Larian prefers making TB games.

There aren't even that many similarities between the Divinity games and what we've seen of BG3. The mechanics for how combat works is completely different between them. The only similarity is that they're both TB.

I can’t of course speak for Larian, but from the interviews I gathered that they believe that real-time combat in BGs was a necessity due to popularity of Diablo rather then bold creative choice. They might even be right, one would need to ask Bioware folks about it. Larian doesn’t do real-time, because they don’t believe it is a good fit for the system. And they are not wrong, even If audience found things in it to love.

In addition, their Divinities sold really well and serving their existing audience is financially smarter then old Baldur’s Gate fans,who might/might not like this game no matter what approach Larian takes, also Larian is very coopfocused, and making game turn-based just makes things easier and that’s design Larian already worked with.

I think many people have already discussed it. It's only recently that I found out that BG3 will be a turn-based combat and it was very shocking news for me. Ｉknow that TB is the best solution for faithfully reproducing D&D 5E rules. However, BG3 should rather aim to faithfully express the attractiveness of BG series. I believe that one of the attractiveness is RTwP.

BG1&2 had to cut/shrink some elements of AD&D 2E in order to realize RTwP. This had been criticized by the core AD&D fans at that time, but had succeeded in creating a gaming experience not found in tabletop D&D. I wanted to expect the same for BG3 based on D&D 5E.

If you push TB, it obviously needs improvement.

In BG, it was possible for multiple mages to sudden attack a group of enemies found by a stealth thief with a simultaneous cast of FB. This was a combat system that added value to a party build of thief and multiple mages. This is not contrary to the reality of the fantasy world. But we can't do the same in DOS2. Even in the search mode, two mages cannot cast at the same time, and TB starts just after the action of the first mage finished.
Since the time flow of search mode and battle mode is different, the act of buffing up(Summon up) before battle is meaningless. This narrows the breadth of the strategy.

It would be impractical to change the battle design to RTwP from now on. I hope you to solve the narrowness of TB's strategy and improve it.

To be frank, considering how some other RTwP games that have come out recently have sold (Pillars of Eternity 2), it wouldn't surprise me if the difference between how well that did in the market and how well Divinity Original Sin 2 did on the market that that became a driving force for the motivation to stay as true as possible to TB and D&D 5E rules.

Thanks for the explanation, I didn't mean to make anyone go out of their way to break role playing games down for me though, I've played tabletop before and even though I haven't played 5th edition I get the gist of what you are saying.

These are completely different experiences we are talking about though. In turn based pen and paper games, it's a very sociable setting, there are rules and every one gets their turn, but it is a very amicable affair and there is much more back and forth engagement than people give it credit for, round by round. That is arguably 98% of the experience.

This simply does not exist in a computer game, especially a single player one. There is no DM, there are no other players, and there is no banter. I have never thought DND translates well directly into a computer game, and I never will, because most of the ingredients are missing. The more slavishly a game tries to follow its tabletop rules, the more empty it feels.

This is why BG and its siblings were uniquely interesting, they were not completely beholden to their pen and paper roots.They appreciated that they were tapping into something different. They managed to slice time into increments of less than 1 round, and nobody objected. And this was only in slices of 10!

I really appreciate what you are trying to tell me, that this is an innovative style of gameplay, but I just don't feel it.

This actually worries me quite a lot. It feels a little bit as if a gameplay style that I greatly enjoyed, probably 500 times from start to finish, wasn't ever really truly understood for what made it great.

in 1998, Bioware took D&D and turned it into some sort of cross between Final Fantasy and Command and Conquer.

Your move, Larian Studios :P

Ceolfrith, I just couldn't agree more!
I also think RTwP was unique, was very Bardurish and was a Great way to adjust D&D rules for video games.
I am only afraid that Larian will not be willing to change the course they had allready chosen and invest in it.
Wchich they make something like Obsidian made with Deadfire, to create a different combat aproach later on.

Considering the Dragon Knight Saga and Divinity Dragon Commander, I think the battle system Larian is best at is TB.

Larian may be best at that particular combat system. But that does not make that combat system the best system. Two separate issues.

True; however, this is D&D and turn based is the best combat system for D&D. Now, in my opinion, RTwP would be worth looking into and added, eventually, for the players that want it but 5E fits the best with turn-based combat.

Never said otherwise. Some things work better for other things. Strategy games work better with TB, hack'n'slash games are better in real time, same as fighter games. Roleplaying games kind of fall into several niches. Action-adventure, strategy, third-person shooter, first-person simulator and any other number of subgenres.

D&D is a classic rpg with a certain degree of strategy involved. How 5E works is entirely dependant on the turn-based system to take into account the action, bonus action, reaction and movement mechanics.

In order to make a game based on D&D 5E as its base it would almost have to be TB for it to even work.

I'm not sure they will even be able to do 5e TB exactly. My understanding ( not a PnP player since 2e ) is that you can have 1 reaction per turn, but there could be many opportunities to take that one reaction. So the game would effectively need to offer each player a reaction every time one became possible, until the reaction is taken. That would make an already slow combat experience even slower.

I believe that reactions will be automatic. Probably something like a menu players can open on their turn which will let them select which reaction (or reactions) they'll look for, and what the trigger will be. If the trigger is met, the reaction will be used automatically.

Yes, I understood something like that was the case; but issuing ahead-of-time orders is not the same as PnP where every possible reaction is considered by the player as the opportunity arises. It could also become tedious to manage triggers for things that *might* happen every turn...or might not. Selectable triggers with automatic activation also still leaves room for getting it wrong. For instance, as the enemy characters take their sequence of turns, you may change your mind concerning your "reaction orders", but no longer be able to influence them.

An alternative might be for the player to have a "reaction panel" UI element pop-up when the enemy is taking their turn. This might be something like a ribbon-bar of icon-buttons, one for each of the reaction types. All would be grayscale and not selectable until an enemy action made a reaction possible, at which point the icon-button for that reaction would light up in a coloured version for a short period to indicate you can click the button to take that reaction.

I'm not sure if that is a practical idea, as in single-player you might need to monitor 4 reaction panels at once, or whether it's a bit too "real-time" for some turn-based players. It seems to me that it would give you a more PnP-like control/choice with less needless management, and also give you more engagement while the enemy characters are taking their turns, which may improve the game-play experience.

I'm sure some will disagree.