Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Clear Examples That Show We Need Proper Reactions

I've always known Larian Studios to be a company that strives for perfection. Often, at first, they will underpromise due to fear of massive amounts of development resources being needed, such as when they originally said Divinity: Original Sin 2 was not going to be fully voice acted, then at the last minute did it anyway because they are perfectionists. I have great respect for Larian, but I also feel they are either cutting corners or pretending to cut corners again with the combat systems of 5th edition.

Many things are not true to the 5e experience in combat, such as parts of the action economy, cantrips gaining effects they don't have in 5e which increase their power (and step on the toes of spell slot-based spells like Bigby's Hand, for instance), and reactions not working like 5e. One of the biggest is the latter, and I'd like to give some clear scenarios which show that reactions having player agency is a core part of the balance in 5th edition. Changing reactions to not be actual reactions will require reworking a LOT of features in the game from class features, spells, feats, etc, to function differently.

I would like to present some scenarios in which not allowing reactions to have a prompt/interrupt but instead only allowing them to act preemptively with a toggle feature will hamper the experience for the player.


Scenario #1: You are a rogue who has ended up in the midst of combat with multiple foes. Before your turn comes, there will be 2 people attacking you. Let's say in this case, the first one is a Wizard that uses Fire Bolt cantrip on you and hits you, but rolls a 1 on damage. Next, a Path of the Berserker subclassed Half-Orc Barbarian runs up to you and crits you with his first attack with his Greataxe, getting Savage Attacks racial which increases his crit damage by another die roll, and potentially getting Brutal Critical class feature (if the enemy is 9th level or higher) for at least one more die roll of damage.

As a rogue, you have a class feature called Uncanny Dodge. This means you can (read: not must) use your reaction when an attacker you can see hits you with an attack to reduce that attack's damage against you by half. With a preemptive "set it and forget it" system where you use up your reaction the first time it is available to be used each round of combat, in this scenario you would use Uncanny Dodge on the 1 damage Fire Bolt cantrip, effectively wasting the ability. You could have used it to reduce the damage of the massive Barbarian Crit that is probably going to one-shot you to 0 HP.

Since they don't have the best armor, and their whole thing is that they're supposed to be quick and dodgy, Rogue's rely heavily upon Uncanny Dodge for survival, as you are allowed to use the feature when you know you're going to be crit but don't know how much damage it is going to do yet.


Scenario #2: You are a Cleric that went down the War domain path so that you could wear heavy armor and use martial weapons and get into the thick of the fight. Because you plan on using either a 1h and shield or using a 2h weapon, you decide to take the War Caster feat. The War Caster feat allows you to do better at concentration checks to maintain spells, allows you to cast spells that require somatic components (a lot of spells do) while having both hands full with said shield or 2h weapon, and additionally allows you to use your reaction to replace an Attack of Opportunity with a spell that has a casting time of 1 action that targets only that creature. This is a very common feat to get on "battle caster" type builds.

To use the reaction component of your feat would require a dialog option, followed by a player choice of what spell to cast. Otherwise, you would have to preemptively choose a single spell to cast in place of an opportunity attack, and your choice could potentially be wrong in many cases. For instance, you could have preemptively chosen a spell that you now know the enemy you are fighting is resistant or even immune to, but you have no choice to use something else because the reaction just happens without your approval.


I could list MANY more scenarios than this, such as Counterspelling a cantrip instead of a 6th level spell, but I think the point is made. The balance and integrity of the combat experience is severely hampered when players do not get to properly control their characters. In my opinion, it is worth it to make combat minisculy slower to ensure the game is played properly. The majority of time in combat isn't even spent deciding reactions, anyway, even when you play actual 5e D&D at a table. In fact, usually reactions happen rapidly as players quickly state they want to interrupt the DM's action to use it. What takes forever is players deciding what to do on their own turns for their action and bonus action, and that crap isn't going to change regardless.