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

There are a lot of TB games you react in the enemy`s turn, like "The last remnant" "Armello" "Jhon Dever´s Lone wolf" etc

In those games there are several mechanics that show you can make reactions in the enemy´s turn without compromising the animation nor the pace of the combat.


I will say it again: You only have one reaction per turn. You do not want to waste it.
Also, only for Attacks of opportunity (that´s only a reaction out of 15-25) you usually have the option to choose if you hit or not, what enemy do you hit if there are several opportunities to do so (You may want to try to hit the hurt shaman that flees or the enemy that charges your squishy wizard instead of the damage-resistant earth elemental that comes first)
You may use (depending on class and feats) your attack of opportunity when an enemy enters your "killing area" instead of fleeing, users of "War Caster" feat may choose if they use a spell or a melee attack to deliver your attack of opportunity. So maybe you want to use a spell instead of your mace to attack that damage-resistant elemental.

That would be a hell of a lot of automated choices to make. And that´s only one reaction, one of the simplest. If you do not have all this choices to react against the action of the enemy instead of being a psychic that have to divine what the enemy is gonna do and put the levers on accordingly beorehand; I do not know how that´s "give more control to the player" instead of narrow down your options to a few general all-purpose on-off reactions you set just-in-case.


You do not need to be a D&D hardcore player or whatever to want a game where you have more accurate ways of dealing with your enemy or more options for different builds and you do not want easily exploitable quirks just because you know reactions are automated so they´re always against the first attack and you can use it in your benefit.

I think we need to be realistic. I could be wrong, but I very much doubt that Larian would be willing invest the time and money to modify their combat system to the extent that it would allow for us to act on an enemie's turn, as appealing as that may or may not be. And I agree that we don't want to waste our reactions, which is the point of the discussion. I'm just starting from what we have now, and what we are going to get (i.e reactions that blindly trigger on the first opportunity), and looking for a way to give us more, even if that "more" is still far short what we would ideally like to be able to do. In other words, it's not "more control to the player" in the absolute sense, but relative to what we currently have and with realistic expectations of how much work would be needed to get it.

All in all, I think we're all in agreement about a lot of things, but I'm getting the impression (rightly or wrongly) that there is some miscommunication afoot.

The absolute most efficient approach I think, would be to record yourself interacting with reactions once EA drops, and document/visualize your feedback based on current content and constructively suggest what and how certain changes could be better for the game. That way it invites internal discussion and has tangible materials to refer to and compare with. Not that it's wrong here and now, just a suggestion to what I would have done in order to have a best possible impact from a feedback point of view 😁

Absolutely. It's nice to be approaching a stage where we can get deeper into matters like these instead of having to content ourselves with pure speculation and abstraction.

Aye! Pure speculation and abstraction often leads to worries or concerns that needn't be so at all, or different to a point where it'd change ones opinion to something else entirely (in a matter of how, not necessarily a positive/negative aspect). So actually getting hands on EA will do a lot of good for debate and feedback, and future ideas I think.

Amen.