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

As someone with an honours degree in literary theory and criticism, with a published dissertation on the effect of ergodic interactivity on narrative catharsis ...

listening to all of you try and talk about "what is simulation" and "what is story" hurts my brain.

a lot.

please go to school before you start professing your opinions to be facts.

it's okay to have opinions, and it's even better when our opinions differ because that is how we learn and grow, but for the love of actual god ... stop acting like you know more than you do. because you don't.

and it's embarrassing.

Yes, the fact that people move and act one after the other during specific phases feel "less like real life" to me. Is that a "very selective application" ? It sounds strange to me because that could sumarize the main difference between TB and R(eal) T(ime).

According to me the flow of the story is broken each time you face an ennemy. Each time I engage, a parenthesis in another reality of time opens in front of the story and close when every ennemies are dead.

I like lots of TB games for many reasons but I don't experience them the same way. If you consider the "RPG" dimension is at the same quality level, I like DoS a'd Wasteland 2 because it's about strategy while playing Baldur's Gate feels more like and adventure.

I bet. Sharing with your insight would be more appreciated though, then stating the obvious.

This assumption is probably the source of your disconnect with BG3 game concepts. The last version of D&D to use one minute rounds of 10 x 6 second segments was AD&D 2e, the last version produced by TSR, and the last with any sort of input from Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, who invented the game and the RPG genre in general.

In 2e, as you correctly state, weapon speeds, spell duration and movement orders determined in which segment activities took place, and 2 actors could simultaneously act, possibly killing each other ( specifically noted in the manuals ). And the whole choreography was the responsibility of the DM, taking orders from all actors at the beginning of the 1 minute round, and determining how those orders would play . It was also explicitly noted in the manuals that most of the 1 minute combat round was maneuvering, feinting, non-productive attacks etc.

After WotC bought out TSR, and Hasbro bought out WotC, the new version, D&D 3e, completely changed the basic structure of game time. The combat round became 6 seconds, within which all actors were explicitly arranged by an initiative system that does not allow ties. Although choreography based on actor orders was still the responsibility of the DM, the more restricted combat round timespan led to 3e being much more governed by explicit rules about exactly what action(s) can be performed; and, of course, 6 seconds meant a much reduced potential for movement.

Ignoring D&D 4e ( which annoyed most of the player base ), D&D 5e has doubled-down on the 6 second combat round by removing the concept of choreography based on actor orders, which is no longer a responsibility of the DM. Instead, 5e has serialised actor-time within the combat round. Each actor ( in accordance with strict initiative order ) performs their allowed action(s), while the entire world around them looks on ( with the exception that there are a number rules-based cases allowing reaction-actions to occur ). Orders are not given until it is an actor's turn to act, so each actor sees the situation according to the results of previous actors actions ( assuming they have not been killed by such actions ). This is more akin to a traditional rules-heavy strategy game than Dave Arneson's original vision for RPGs.

If this above description makes sense to you, you will probably now see why BG3 ( which is using 5e ) will not look or play at all similarly to BG2. The original Infinity Engine games used a set of rules that were essentially for simultaneous action, that could be paused, either at breakpoints, or in realtime. BG3 uses a set of rules that essentially discards time and replaces it with sequenced actions. Some people like that, and some people do not. It would not be impossible to turn it into something that works in a more realtime manner ( which, arguably, Larian are already doing with reactions ), but doing so would lose some of the character of the 5e rules ( as, again, some feel is true of the BG3 reaction system ).

This is indeed what it comes down to. And it goes to the debate going on here about "pausing" in RTwP versus TB combat. Yes pausing is present in both systems. But actors acting by taking turns is present only in one. It is not the pausing that is immersion-breaking or unrealistic in either system. Pausing is merely the temporary stopping of time to help facilitate your actions. It is the turn-taking that is the problem. Actors acting in turns, and that too in turns during combat of all things, is the problem. I can never accept combat at the tactical/individual person level happening in turns as being a realistic simulation of anything. It is the turn-taking that I describe as unrealistic and fake, and then by extension immersion-breaking.

This is very well said.

So yes, the ultimate blame lies with WotC for what they have done to the concept of time in 5e. It is a travesty. You can even see this in how time has been bastardized within 5e spellcasting. Larian's share of the blame is that they have bought into this 5e way of completely replacing "time" with "turns" and have chosen to remain completely faithful to those TT rules centered on turns even though this is a video game and NOT a TT game. And the argument that Larian didn't have a choice here is fallacy. Larian themselves have said they are changing things in the rules if they feel a particular rule won't translate well to a video game compared with how it may work in TT. So they have this freedom. Furthermore, clearly WotC doesn't care either, because in their new Dark Alliance game, also a 5e game, "turns" have indeed been reverted back to "time."

Some games go for a realistic simulation of combat (e.g Kingdom Come), some don't (e.g BG3). Simulation is one way to go, but not necessarily the best, or at least, not the best for every type of game. If Larian is trying to simulate anything it is not the actual experience of physical combat, but the the experience of playing table top D&D.

Just wanted to express my thanks for that post. It was an interesting read. I think I understand now a bit better where people come from when claiming that BG RT implementation was more faithful, at least when it comes to earlier versions.

Sure. I accept this. And I also need to clarify that I too don't want my cRPGs to be some real-life combat simulator (e.g. Mount and Blade, Kingdom Come: Deliverance). But at the same time, I also don't want cRPGs - and especially ones named Baldur's Gate - to be TT simulators.

You are welcome; but, in fact, I was not actually correct! The change to sequenced actions took place when 3e was released; each actor ( in initiative order ) completed their 6 seconds of actions before the next actor decides what to do, and the DM lost their choreograph role at that point. What 5e added was an explicit categorisation of actions/bonus actions/reactions etc.

This means that the NWN games were using 3e stats, but still operating under 2e concepts of simultaneous choreographed action - a hybrid of sorts. My initial incorrect assumption about 3e ( which I just checked and found to be wrong ) came about because I did not play TT after 2e, but did play the NWN games, not realising they did not represent the new TT rules accurately.

Oops!

I want to thank you for being one of the only other people I've seen to bring up the differences between 2e and editions beyond it regarding this.


It's something I try to bring up in RTWP vs TB discussion when I can, but I have a rough time describing it aptly enough for it to make a ton of sense.

https://online.anyflip.com/ofsj/cxmj/mobile/index.html#p=167

Time is very much still broken down in to 6 second combat rounds in D&D 5e.

Who ever says they stopped doing this back in 2e is 120% dead wrong.

It's the last sentence of the first column under the heading 'Time' in the PHB. Page 181 for those playing the home game.

Every combat participant takes one turn within a 6 second round. It doesn't matter if there are 100 participants or 1 participant. The time span of a round in which all players take their turn is 6 seconds.

Combat being 6 seconds isn't what changed. The format of turns, rounds and how the flow of combat works is. In 2e, there was no strict turn order for a combat - it was an order of operations *after* stating what you would be doing, determining when that landed after declaring the action every turn by rolling a d10 and applying things like weapon speed.

Which still tracks for me. I enjoy BG1&2 a whole lot, but not so much NWN2, Kingmaker gameplay wise - I find there is too much to control and micromanage to make it transparent and enjoyable. An odd one is Icewind Dale2, which was based on 3e I think and I remember enjoying it a lot, but I don't remember it being as detailed with various modals or attacks of opportunity that are found in later games.

Wouldn't this be the more appropriate page to look at?

As for 2e, I think weapon speed and such comes into play only if initiatives of the two groups are tied.

No it hasn't changed.

This is the same thing that happened with THAC0.

THAC0 is still that way that AC is calculated, except they reversed the formula so you add instead of subtract.

It's still the same function: roll d20, add modifier. The ONLY difference is that instead of trying to get below the AC, now you need to get above the AC to hit.

It's the same thing with combat.

A round of combat is 6 seconds. Within that 6 seconds EVERY SINGLE PARTICIPANT in combat gets to take ONE TURN. If there are 100 participants, ONE TURN for ALL PARTICIPANTS still equates to ONE SIX SECOND ROUND OF COMBAT.

All they did was swap the word ROUND and TURN for people who cannot SUBTRACT, but can only ADD.

Combat in D&D has NEVER CHANGED because D&D IS NOT A COMBAT SIMULATOR IT IS A COLLABORATIVE STORY TELLING GAME.

THE ENTIRE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WARGAMES INC AND TSR WAS THE DIFFERENTIAL FOCUS ON COMBAT.

If you sit here and try to break up the semantics of a six second round and try to tell everyone that a turn does not last 6 seconds, YOU ARE BEING A DISINGENUOUS TROLL WHO IS ONLY HERE TO CAUSE FIGHTS AND ARGUMENTS AND DON'T ACTUALLY PLAY D&D. You are nothing but a rules lawyer who can't even read. The worst kind of player to have at a table.

I swear to god the only people who think otherwise are the few people who think D&D is a combat simulator.

When you read a book, does the action happen turn based? When you read the Dark Elf Trilogy - was it turn based? When Wies and Hickman ran Dragonlance, it was turn based, but were the books? No. Because the turn based combat is an abstraction of real-time events. Characters in D&D don't stand around waiting their turn to take action. You don't need turns in a video game where that abstraction can be handled by the internal game clock.

D&D is not a combat simulator, it is a collaborative story telling game.

Alright, I'm gonna do my best to break down what you've said so I can address it piece by piece.

Yes, THAC0 is identical in practice to what we have now, this is a well known fact, and perhaps used a bit too freely to say that D&D hasn't changed when it most certainly has. Combat in particular has changed a great deal over the course of D&D's history, which brings me to something else you've said.

The thing is, though, you're quite wrong - and so was I in agreeing with something I shouldn't have. Combat did not even work in the same timeframe in AD&D. I had forgotten something crucial; A single turn in AD&D is ten rounds, and a single round in AD&D is one minute. The rest of what I said applies, still - initiative was an entirely different beast back then. I haven't played much AD&D, but I have indeed played it. EDIT: I am still unsure about this, because when I played we really did just treat it similarly to 3.5e in combat. The point here is just that combat has changed a great deal, and while the six second standard is well founded, combat in 2e at the end of the day worked better as a RTWP system than 5e does. I wish I remembered more about AD&D firsthand, or had the books on hand.

It's funny that you bring up the difference between Wargames and TSR... because D&D had its roots in wargames.

You'll see a lot of argument about whether or not D&D is a combat simulator that people find ways to RP around, or if it's a proper collaborative storytelling system like SCUP.

All of this said, I do agree that a video game does not need to be turn-based to be fun or even true to the D&D roots, but for 5e, turn-based makes a lot of sense. Reactions alone make a RTWP system seem unwieldy for the action-economy-centric version of D&D.

I always hated that. It is needlessly cumbersome and unintuitive, especially for new players. I am glad that they did away with it.

Yes. RTwP is an abstaction of real-time combat as well.

No one is standing around in TB, just as no one is standing around when you press pause in RTwP. Turn represent individual character's actions - afterall it is combat of individuals, rather then a Team Commander Simulator. Turn order represents their reaction speed (character A has quicker reflexes so he will get to act before character B does). Reactions allow characters to act throughout the round.

Hi all ,

My beef with RT vs Turns is how AI and game play handles this . Dont get me wrong i play RTS games but have diferent set ups .

The problem is the engine and Larian dev on this .

One last video i've seen today ( cant link here ) has one goblin archer left on the roof of a house .... well to get to him with 1 char or the 3 left is a shit show of "dash" + " end turns" that takes quite some time .

I mean thats a fun killer right there . Given this game for some reason
has like 3 layer of elevations and map is bad to navigate is gona be painful to play .

So ajustments need to be done or is going to be a pain . ( imagine reaching that said enemy and he gets a good roll and downs you , then waiting for other two to get there ..... will suck big time )