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

But Sawyer has also said very clearly that he doesn't believe Obsidian (unlike certain other studios) will ever walk away from making RTwP games in the future because he acknowledges there are a lot of fans of RTwP, that there is a market for those games, and that RTwP can be a fun system for combat in RPGs. Furthermore, in a more recent post he also said there are many devs including senior devs (not himself) at Obsidian who are very interested in returning to the PoE franchise at some point in the future once they've had a chance to do some other things first.

I like both styles of gameplay but I really feel that turn-based gameplay is a better fit for Fifth Edition. Compared to D&D2E, the tactical options and turn rulesets are quite a bit more complex (at least RAW). Of course I have a great deal of nostalgic fondness for the RtwP combat of the Infinity engine games, but those systems were designed with the technological limitations of the time in mind, not to mention that style of combat worked really well with D&D2E.

Also, it's worth noting that the reigning king of PC gaming was Diablo at the time of Baldur's Gate 1's release. Diablo was rock and roll compared to the stodgy, slow, elevator music of the old Gold Box AD&D titles of the late eighties and early nineties, and every publisher under the sun was trying to recreate it's thunder. The infinity engine was the compromise that was devised by Bioware and Black Isle (who were responsible for the turn-based Fall-Out series), and it was simply amazing for its time.

However, turn-based tactical gameplay is at a great point right now (X-COM, DOS, Wasteland, etc...) and creating a D&D game with turn-based combat seems like a no-brainer. I'll admit that the gameplay is much slower, however, I prioritize a plethora of tactical options over the speed of gameplay (within reason). It's all about the implementation, and so far, I think it feels fine.

We aren't talking about other crpgs we are talking about THIS game you dingus!

THIS game is turn based. As it should be. Go back to archaic BG 1 and 2. Emulate them if you don't want TB combat. THIS game is turn based and if you don't like it don't effing play. Its really simple if you have an intelligence score over 3.

The worst thing about a game with RTwP is RTwP.

It doesn't matter what the other flaws in the game are, it doesn't matter how good the game is, it is always the worst part of the game. I've been playing D&D and D&D video games since they were using 16 bit color isometric maps and they were all turn-based. I don't understand why the original Baldur's Gate games were given that mechanic of the Infinity Engine other than "Lets try this out, it'll be action-packed and give you lots of freedom!." But in the end, it becomes a chaotic mess of things happening that you can't see to understand what's going on half the time. It is also a huge departure from D&D in general which works on turns bound by initiative. There are so many D&D rules purists out there complaining about action economy and here we have this thread saying to throw actions and action economy out the window in favor of a 20+ year old mechanic that wasn't the best then and hasn't aged well (I'd love to play Pillars of Eternity but w/RTwP? HARD PASS, I've tried).

I suppose it's the Baldur's Gate purists that say that it's not BG without RTwP and you know what, if you get what you want you'll be butchering this game for a sense of systematic nostalgia that should have never been born.

Oh yeah I'm looking forward to that. The series deserves a closure proper.

RTwP would be wrong for a game attempting to actually follow the D&D 5e rules, the way actions work just doesn't fit well with it. It really is as simple as that. Reaction based spells, other reaction based abilities. Can't all trigger, each round you need to decide which reaction ability to use. Bonus action abilities similarly often onlly become available after performing specific other actions, that stuff just doesn't work either.

If you don't include that stuff, you essentially gut the system. No two ways about it.

Pathfinder Kingmaker is an excellent example of this, play it RTwP and it favours the fighters and single target spells, because any kind of actual tactics based within the ruleset just don't work properly anymore. Which is why they had such a hugely popular turn based on get made and why turn based was added to the official game and will be in its sequel. Now, i know the next comment would be "but it supports both!" yeah it does, but only because pathfinder doesn't have reactions outside of AoOs really, if that's all there is, it CAN work, it just guts the rest of the mechanics along the way.

p.s. I'm a BG fan and have been since BG1 first got released, back then I had barely tried D&D using some old books of my mums I'd found. Now I've played every edition of D&D and Pathfinder from 2nd ed D&D onwards and really BG1 & 2 are excellent stories but would be better games with a proper turn based mechanic.

In speaking of Kingmaker, please don't make unsubstantiated claims such that the TB mod was "hugely popular." There is zero evidence to support such a claim. The game was very popular and sold really well way before any TB mod appeared. And its RTwP combat system works exceedingly well and is great fun to play.

It's the third most endorsed mod on nexus, the only ones being higher is the bag of tricks cheat mod and the respec mod. It's hardly unsubstantiated.

RTwP was okay in it, but turn based is far better and more tactical and makes spells like AoE considerably more useful - like they are in pnp.

You're allowed to like RTwP of course, but again, the comment isn't unsubstantiated at all. Nor is the point that RTwP doesn't allow for the same level of tactical flexibility or even the ability to implement certain rules at all. Kingmaker misses out on a LOT of the pnp rules because they didn't work as well with RTwP.

fwiw, I've also modded for Kingmaker (A touch of magic, if you're interested), i'm not saying it's a bad game, its a great one. But it was much better after turn based combat was modded and then added to the actual game.


edit.

also, because not everyone endorses, just checked and it's 4th most downloaded, only behind the above two and the mega portrait pack, and third most unique downloads. Also worth noting that it's a fairly recent mod all things considered, only being a little over a year old.

I wholeheartedly agree with those 3 things. They'd make the game perfect in my eyes and I would never ask for anything more. Well, maybe more dogs to pet.

How do the real time with pause crowd see all the reaction abilities of 5e working?

Keep in mind many of them are based on finite resources so you cant have them just happen every time they /could/ be triggered. Also only 1 reaction a round, so 1 reaction every 6 seconds too.

Well, speaking for myself, I will be honest and blunt in saying I don't give a damn about the PnP rules. The whole point of making a video game is to not be limited by PnP rules and mechanics. What you see as greater tactical depth with these rules, I see as pedantic tedium in combat. The greatest way in which combat can be tactical is being able to handle the complexity of everyone going at once, simultaneously. Actors acting one by one in sequence automatically means simplicity and less tactical depth for me. I would go so far as to even call taking turns a form of cheesy cheating. So I have no problem with, and am exceedingly happy to see PnP D&D mechanics getting significantly changed (i.e. improved) in a D&D video game (and the same for a Pathfinder game btw). So a developer saying they are closely adhering to the PnP mechanics in a video game is not a selling point for me. Quite the opposite.

My thoughts exactly. All I can see now is another Original Sin, but I'm fan of BG not DOS so I have no reason to buy it.

I'm cool with how it is. It feels like D&D -- having to wait ages for it to be the one character's turn again, etc. But I really need a pause feature that is a full stop, not a minute wasted, type of pause when I'm in the menu. Fine during multiplayer, but when I'm playing on my own, I don't want *anything* counting down while I go to the bathroom, get a snack, etc, without having to save and reload. I had a hard time adjusting to D&D IRL because I assumed it was akin to BG 1/2 where the turn based was less...clear. Then there are the games like D2: ED/DKS where there is a full out tactical pause. Tactical pause is nice, but I don't think it's true to D&D.

Well-done, I think RTwP is great, but the best turn-based systems are always better than the best RTwP systems.

Turn-based games always need a proper pause, though. Forcing in-character decision-making to be timed forces the player to break character. If I'm playing a character who thinks very differently from how I do, I need time to consider whether the action I've chosen is indeed the action that character would choose. This gets especially complicated if the character's method of reasoning is different from mine. If my character has a lower standard of evidence, for example, I need to go back and consider whether I dismissed as irrelevant any information she would consider.

The player should never be on a clock in a single-player RPG.

That's something I mod out of every game in which I find it, if I can. I hate it when they voice my character for me.

If they were actual improvements, I'd kinda agree. But so far, they arent. Kingmaker improved by turn based and the extra stuff that added.

As far as BG3 goes, it's a D&D game, it's based in a D&D setting with more complex functional rules. The thing is that there going to be a large proportion of players who went in expecting a D&D 5e game because that's what they were promised. And tbf, theyd be in their rights to request a refund if that isnt what they get.

We all know there will be some compromises, but the sheer amount of them required to do RTwP for D&D 5e is even higher than something like pathfinder.

I'm a massive BG fan too - but for the story, not the mechanics particularly. I played the BG games every year for most of my life at this point. Thing is, it was D&D 2e, they were never going to recreate that because there is no way wizards would have bought into it.

Most of the RTWP games I've played included in the settings page instances when the game would automatically pause. It is during these paused times that a reaction could be done. These instances included:
- At the start of each character's turn,
- When a character was hit, (By changing this slightly, i.e. When an enemy attacks a character (rather than when hit), you could include reactions like "cast Shield".)
- When an enemy was hit, (This could work for things like Sneak Attack that only happen once per round)
- When a character critically hits,
- When an enemy critically hits,
- When a character is reduced to 0 hit points,
- When an enemy is reduced to 0 hit points,
- At the end of every round.


Other instances of pause could also be added like:
- When a character rolls an ability check
- When an enemy rolls an ability check
- When a character begins to cast a spell
- When an enemy begins to cast a spell (This could work for things like counterspell)
- When a character provokes an opportunity attack
- When an enemy provokes an opportunity attack

I remember playing Icewind Dale 2 and more recently Pillars of Eternity and setting the Pause setting to trigger on pretty much every instance. So that it played sort of like a Turn Based game, but that I did not have to control or micromanage EVERY single party member's actions EVERY single round. This was due to the fact that these games had decent AI settings that meant that they already had default actions every round based upon their own positioning, other party member positioning, their own own health, other party member health, and the enemy's health.

So Blindhamster, you asked how would RTWP work with Reaction abilities? In my mind, its simple. Give each individual character a single reaction each round (per the rules). Then include settings that pause the game for the most common triggers of reactions, namely those listed above. Its not that complicated, although in my opinion RTWP is only really worth it if you include decent AI settings for each class that automatically know when to use their reactions (spellcasters using counterspell or shield, rogues using sneak attack, etc).

As one example. Misty Step is cast as a Bonus Action and not a Standard Action. Or Rogue's Dash ability. Which is also a Bonus Action. I've been taking copious use of attacking then using Shove in combat. So lovely, gives me more breathing room. So yeah, 5th edition is all about Action Economy.

And the thing is, what matters most is the setting and the story.

Being able to play an actual Dwarf Cleric and not something that calls itself a Healer (Sorry PoE, but I couldn't stand your healer class) is part of what truly matters.

I'm not going to give my views about RTwP vs TB. I'm just stating that too many people are obsessed over the fact that its not Baldurs Gate unless it HAS real time with pause.

Well you know what? Times Change. The Ultima series started out as as a 2 dimensional overhead game. They later changed it to an isometric view and then finally tried to make a full 3d style game (I won't discuss why that failed abysmally). Times change and the games change as well. That's a simple fact of life we as gamers must come to accept. So long as the turn based combat does not destroy the story or make combat something to be hated, then the fact its turn based should be of zero importance.

So long as the HEART is intact, that's what matters.

Active-pause-mechanics kills all in-game action management

Turn-based-action is still BASED

So this is all about Avarage APM Fans VS TBA Enjoyer debates