Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Reactions Need A Pop-Up Dialog - Change My Mind

"the basic rules of turn based combat"

Where does it state that?
All board games work like that.

JRPGs had timing based abilities since forever.

Expanding the conditions to more exactly reflect how you might use each reaction type would certainly reduce the number of "bad" reactions being taken; although it might be quite a task to maintain all the settings.

Similarly, you could have an order of preference for reaction types, which *might* help under certain circumstances ( e.g. if the game knows it will trigger 2 or more reactions, it can choose your preferred one ).

Still not the same as true situational choice, of course.

Yeah. I have no idea how difficult or easy it might be to implement something like this. We can only come up with ideas, though. Still, it seems like it would solve the whole 'animation' issue of reactions. The game would know, based up the parameters set up, when to initiate a reaction and adjust the animation accordingly. For example, the game knows when an attack is going to be killing blow and produces the correct animation without any kind of hiccup. The game could potentially do the same for reactions.

Another potential problem with the current system is the Reactions of NPCs. If enemies will have Reactions too (I don't know how it is in D&D but I think they should), it would be too easy to exploit them because of how predictable they would be.

Yeah, all creatures have a reaction.

Particularly powerful or elite creatures also have "Legendary reactions" too.

If you`re right, tecnically you could force all enemies around to spent his AoO in your familiar, summoned creature, your tank, shapechanged druid or a character with mirror image simply moving around and escape with your squishy bard or mage unscathed.

Regarding how it currently is, can reactions be at least toggled on and off, or are they passives that fire off whenever the cooldown or whatever is up and something triggers them? At the absolute least, they need to be toggled (e.g on any given turn, be able to click a reaction icon to make sure that reaction is active or not). Now, if reactions can be toggled (i.e activated when you perceive an incoming use for them), you would think that the AI would be given the option to do so as well, which would be performed by establishing certain conditions, such as when AI knows to drink a potion (basic AI stuff). If conditions then exist, wouldn't we be able to use them too?

(Yeah, I know, lots of "ifs")

That makes quite a bit of sense. It wouldn't be great for enemy AI reactions to be predictable, used on the first attack no matter what, and that means coding the AI to be smart about the reactions. And if the AI is smart about how it uses its reactions, it would be quite annoying for the player's reactions to be dumb, always used on the first attack no matter what.

That's kind of my point. If they AI is smart enough (and don't they have to do something so enemy reactions aren't trivialized?), then the coding for conditions to trigger reactions will already be there, which should then just be made available to us.

Yes.

Mmm... even with the best AI there's going to be a lot of instances where a player would prefer full control.

Well, I´m sorry if I repeat myself, but I still cannot fathom why do you have to make an IA or make automatic reactions if the combat is turn-based. I mean, what´s the point? Just let the player decide. You have time to do so between turns.

I definitely want more control. I am not saying AI should be in control of our reactions. I am saying we should be able to set some conditions for when our reactions are triggered, not just a simple on/off.


Yeah, I agree. Instead of just clicking a button to turn a reaction on or off, how about a window that pops up that allows us to set at least some parameters for if the reaction will trigger or not (e.g. on a killing blow, an attack that would CC you). If the coding will be there to allow the AI to know when to use a reaction, we can be given something that will allow us to have some control over when our reactions will trigger as well.

This is something I talked about in a previous post or another thread and I totally agree. You manage your spells, your items, your characters evolution... and you manage your reactions. Another feature that gives complexity to the game, give us the control and which makes battles more dynamic and even less predictable.

Yes exactly! The game is already TB. What is the point of taking away this control from the player? The only way automatic/AI control will make sense is if we're allowed to preset the system for every possible contingency.

As long as it's toggleable and completely an optional choice, I don't see any harm with wishing for the possibility to have reactions be automatic; Particularly if it helps speeding up the pacing of turns and thereby duration of combat. People enjoy and play for different reasons, there's not only hardcore D&D pen and paper players out there that are likely to play, but all sorts of players. Another, albeit off topic point of feedback, is that some people would like to just hide the dice roll on screen completely; It's not important to them.

So contrary to seeing it as taking away control from the player, I'd say having more options in how the game plays for you, gives more control to the player.

You are right. This is my dilemma on this issue. I very badly want combat and turns to move faster, a whole lot faster, in a TB system. But at the same time, I also greatly value my control as a player. How do you balance those two competing needs?

Yeah, for sure. I think we all agree that the current system is not so good, but the problem has been how to "give us the control" without causing animation issues (as explained by the devs) and/or disrupting the turn-based nature of the game (which a pop up window on enemy turns or a timed reaction bar would do). I think that by allowing us to set some conditions for our reactions instead just having them on or off we would have some of that control.



I don't know who has been advocating for taking control away from the player. And ideally it would nice if we could preset for every possible condition, but that's not going to be possible. Better to have at least a few loose conditions than just the reaction being on or off.

Well, so long as one of the conditions was "Any," than the player could choose to keep the pacing a bit quicker. For example, consider if the player could select Uncanny Dodge reaction to trigger (a) Never, (b) Any Attack, (c) Devastating Hit, (d) Killing Blow, or (e) CC Effect. The player could select "Any Attack" and forget about it. Another player, though, might wish to adjust these as needed, perhaps every turn.

Okay, fair enough. I can agree that trying to program for every possibility will likely not be realistic. And yes, if the alternative is just a simple on/off or yes/no, then a system with at least a few options for triggering reaction would certainly be better.

I had to say that I'm a little bit confused atm.
Control the situation is very important to me and reaction NEED something so player can choose when they trigger.

The custom conditions is a thing I like but there's another point that I'd really love to see in the game : more dynamics combats...
I mean it would be very cool if, for the first time in a TB game, we weren't only spectator during ennemies turns. I'd like so much to have to stay focus because it could mean death if I'm not...
That's my main concern about TB. I love many TB games but I think a Baldur's Gate game deserve and has to be something different than "just" another TB game...