Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Problems with non-simultaneous turn-based mode start. PH2 “cool system”

I use this all the time, for instance, you can place your ranged out and use a rogue as bait. Once he gets aggro he can cover the most ground/turn to lead the group into an ambush.

First let me say that I highly doubt that anyone would leave their party members so far away not for demonstration or exploit purposes. But I would like to see some comments from other players on the matter. Maybe someones playing style is all about scattering the party around the map.

2. There are a few enemies, who can be approached in stealth from different angles, and that's exactly what I'm doing. My first character to engage gets his initiative roll appropriately. After that I need to switch to each one of the rest of my characters to get them engaged, they are now considered to be late for the fight and forced to skip their first turn. That doesn't feel even partially fair, they were right there and prepared for the fight. Why are they late for the fight?

They dont need to be so far ...
That happened just bcs Swen wanted to show us that he will deal with Hag solo with his druid ...
When i approached Hag, i had all my party prepared just there in that gate, stealthing ... then they sneak inside and attacked her one by one.
Bcs its effective as hell, Hag had almost half HP gone before her first move.

Im not quite sure if that is conciderable as exploit,

I believe i know answer for this one ...
If you sneak them to battle properly, you are able to attack from real time - world ... that is your first attack you are skiping otherwise ... pretty powerful tho since all your characters are attacking at same time and NPC have no way to defend themselves against it (except AC and saving throws ofc.).
And if you dont, well that is your price to pay, when you decided to try to use this approach ... not sure, but i take it as they are simply surprised. :-/

But I would like to see some comments from other players on the matter. Maybe someones playing style is all about scattering the party around the map.

You know? I watched the video, I know what and why happened. And that's irrelevant.

I'm not talking here about the most clever ways to kill the Hag

I'm talking about the system involved in Swen's attempt, which he praised a bit in the video (I gave the link), and how so far for me and one another person that system was more a source of frustration, than a helpful thing.

No, you don't know the answer, because you didn't understand the question and should read how "surprise" works.

Player characters, who's looking right at their enemies from stealth, cannot be surprised, and they are not surprised.

They just start living at different time pase the moment one character attacks and even if NPCs are surprised player characters will be forced to skip the first turn, because again the game considers them as ones, who joined the fight later.

They can attack from their stealth, ofc, like in your example with the Hag, but then they won't have their opportunity to fully utilise all their points (action, bonus action...). They attack, they are getting flagged as "ones, who joined the fight", as well as "ones, who are slightly late for the fight" and will be allowed to act more only on the next turn.

You technically get the same exact situation if you leave the party around a corner and start the fight with just one character.

If you'll bring the rest of your party, they'll start with skipping one turn. That's more or less fair, they really wasn't there when the fight started.

In the case 2 I described in OP post I'm talking about player characters, who are sometimes nearly breathing in a neck of an engaged NPC, but they'll still skip the turn, because we can't tell the game that all of our characters are going to engage and should join the turn-based mode simultaneously.

The only way to reconcile is to think of it as you can only control 1 group at a time. So in real life, you might maneuver Gale into a fight from the south while Lae'zel from the east and your main from the north and Wyll from the northeast. In real life, they all move at the same time. Since you can only control 1 in real time, you might have to move Lae'zel, get her into the fight, then your main, then Wyll, then Gale, all in real time 1 after another. Doing this in Turn-based would be real slow and clunky.

So if you are a realist, don't abuse. If not, yeah, you can totally abuse it. Its up to the player.

Edit* A better solution would probably have people not chained stay in real time while people that are chained together join the fight at the same time.

Bombs, spells, and abilities that would kick you out of stealth will do there feature like intended going into combat. So say I have Gale shoot a fireball into the characters already in combat, the fireball will apply its damage and Gale will roll initiative and act on the next turn.

To be honest I nearly felt personally addressed, cause I didn't see anyone else criticizing the scheme (ofc, maybe I just missed those posts).

On PH2 Swen drew some attention how he splitted the party, entered the fight only with one character far-far away from others and then could run to help that character with another without "losing" turns. And that was his example on how the current scheme of work is helpful. Youtube stream recording with Swen's explanation at 1:58:47.

Currently, I have the greatest difficulties in doing a very simple thing : ambushes. That is to say, I want all of my team to have a turn before any single enemy can take a turn. It might be that the current mechanisms are sorely lacking, that some bugs are to blame, or that I'm stupid and didn't figure out how to do it (these alternatives are not mutually exclusive).

A character on their own can easily-enough take up to 3 actions before enemies can do anything (a shot before combat is official, an action during the first round with surprised enemies, and a third action if they got first place in the initiative track). But as soon as I have more than one character, some enemies will sometimes play before some of my ambushing characters ! In what is possibly my worst example, I wanted to ambush Gimblebock's group. Lae'zel fired an arrow. Thanks to the use of Sleep, the 4 enemies proceeded to play 2 fulls turns before the game would give me a chance to do anything.

This is an extremely frustrating experience. When achieving such a simple thing is so hard and my attempts sometimes result in diametrically opposite effects, I feel something is very wrong.



Surprise.


What are the rules for creating surprise ?

Sometimes I manage to surprise enemies, sometimes not. And I can't really tell why.

I would tend to say that a neutral creature who can perfectly see me walking around, but has no reason to suspect that I will attack, should not be on their guards and thus should probably be surprised.

I would tend to say that a creature who cannot see me and receives an arrow should certainly be surprised. (Whether that creature was neutral or hostile, it does not matter.)

Yet, that doesn't seem to happen systematically.


Who gets surprised ? Why is it not everyone or no one ?

Sometimes, not all enemies are surprised.

Example : I ambushed a large group of hostile creatures who couldn't see me (in the hall of Priestess Gut, with the goblins having turned hostile). When the fight started, some got surprised (those close to the target of my first arrow), but some didn't.

Suggestion : if one enemy is surprised, they should all be surprised.


How come a party member can be surprised when I am the one triggering the fight ?!

This has happened to me a couple of times. Needless to say, it makes my palm fly to my face. In fact, it might be at the top of my Epic Facepalming Scoreboard. This make zero sense. As in, absolute-zero sense.

I wrote earlier that I'd like my party members not to behave like free-riders when somebody is talking. I would also like them not to be completely utterly incompetent. If we discussed a plan to ambush the enemies, and they don't have 3 in Intelligence, they should remember our plan by the time the first person to act triggers combat, as per the plan.



Out-of-combat party members, joining the fight.


When a fight starts, all party members should be in the fight immediately.

At the beginning of a fight, some of my ambushing companions are included in the fight, some are not. Some enemies then get to play before the party members that were included in the fight. I have wait until the turn of one of those, then select an out-of-fight character, and only then can they finally throw their ambushing arrow.

This is part of a family of situations (a family which is way toe large) where the way things turn out in the game can be miles away from what I meant to do, not because of ball rolls or any other sort of randomness, but because of the UI or mechanisms. This case might not be the most blatant one, but it's pretty close to the top. And it's never a good thing.

I cannot tell the criteria for who is included in the fight or not. I hope that this does not have anything to do with the chaining : unchaining is the only way to dispatch the group in some specific locations, and the current combat inclusion mechanism should not penalise us for doing something that we are forced to do given the (poor) controls you gave us.

Below are other remarks, but they all become mostly irrelevant if it is simply made impossible to have out-of-fight party members, which I very much hope will happen.


When there is a party-member in a fight, the rest of the world should be turn-based.

Examples of ridiculous situations that otherwise arise :

- My squishy warlock comes across a bugbear assassin, while the rest of the party is still near a tiefling smith. Combat starts. Oh no, poor warlock ! Wait. My mistake. Not a problem at all. The rest of the team can finish their shopping, pick up a free meal and come to reinforce my warlock at a leisurely pace, since the rest of the world is not turn-based and the combat is on hold so long as my warlock doesn't play.

- A rogue who didn't get noticed at combat start can circle the whole battlefield and come in from behind an enemy for the sneaky backstab, in what would have taken 5 rounds.


Transition from turn-based mode to fight mode.

If I have activated turn-based mode before a fight, I would very much like all my team to have their turn before the fight starts. All of them. My party's turn should not be interrupted by the world or combat.


Companions walking into a fight and missing a turn.

When an out-of-combat companion enters the fight, they lose their first turn.

If have selected an action before the fight (typically a ranged attack), they lose the rest of their turn (bonus action and movement). Even if they end up being ranked after my "currently playing" character in the initiative track, they don't have a turn when it should be their turn (i.e. when the active creature progresses to where their portrait is in the initiative track).

Everything would be way simpler if everyone was drawn in the fight at the same time.


Some summarising suggestions.

- If a fight starts and at least one enemy is surprised, then all enemies are all surprised.

- If a party member is included in a fight, then they are all in the fight.

- If I trigger a fight by an attack-like action, the character who triggered the fight is automatically first in initiative among the members of my team.
-- If the enemies don't have the Surprised status, then all my team is grouped in the initiative track and will thus play before any of them.
-- The action or bonus action that I used to trigger the fight is counted as consumed. Otherwise said : my first action was part of the fight and the fight continues from that point, with the guarantee that all my teams plays first.

This won't work in most cases. If you are sneaking around to ambush enemies, most likely you unchained your characters.

Except if combat started because of a dialog and your character didn't roll the highest initiative you are now in situation when your real time party members have to use there ability faster than AI notises them. What we are geting is your real life reaktion time affecting gameplay in a TURN-BASED game.

First quote: It would work, first group starts battle, additional groups come in stealthed? make a stealth check vs enemies perception. It would work as if you tried to make a stealth check and hide mid combat. Either way your late to the fight and don't get to act till next turn, roll initiative and welcome to the fight.

Second quote: What are you even talking about, you quoted a example of me explaining how the game is currently for non-ranged characters...yeah

My personal preference would be fairly simple:
-If one character is in turn-based mode, the whole world is in turn-based mode.
-Dialog is considered turn-based mode.
-If one character is in initiative, the whole world is in initiative.

It's a turn-based game. We can ignore that when wandering around and doing things that don't really care about timing. But as soon timing matters for a character, anyone or anything that could possibly affect them also needs to be on the clock.

I'm not suggesting that the UI needs to actively track every person in the world, but definitely all of the characters (wherever they are) should be in turn-based mode and any NPCs and monsters in the world that are not close enough to matter should default to stopping instead of continuing to walk around.