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

This has been pretty well said already but some people in this thread still weren't getting it so allow me to say this more plainly for anyone that needs it to get the point:

The turn based combat is meant to present real time events. One round of combat is 6 seconds of time, not matter how long it takes you to go through that round.

When the party does an ambush, from the real time perspective that the turns are meant to enact, all four party members attack at the EXACT same time. No pause, no delay, no turn order. The ranger fires an arrow, the rogue stabs a back, the wizard sends a fire bolt, and the fighter charges in, all in one singular instant. THEN combat starts, AFTER *ALL* those attacks. Then you roll iniative. Then round 1 begins.

Now, to be clear, the surprise round is meant to be how that is simulated. Mechanically, you can't actually do all those attacks at once, so you shoot the rangers arrow first, iniative is rolled for round *2*, and the rest of round one is the other attacks from the same instant. The surprise round is supposed to be a special round that is only an instant long, instead of the normal 6 seconds.

Except it doesn't work like it's supposed to, because a single enemy not being surprised ruins the fact that those attacks all happened at the exact same time.
The one or some non-suprised enemy causes mechanics to function as though the attacks did not happen at the same time, when they did, making only the "first" have been a succesful ambush attack, when they all where.
If they enemy didn't notice the party in time to react to the first of those attacks, then it didn't notice the party in time to react to any of the other ones, because there was not a gap between them.
Ergo it is a *requirement* that every enemy drawn into a fight without having already spotted a party member get a surprise round. Anything else breaks the translation of real time actuality into turn based mechanics. Anything else breaks the game. Anything else is wrong.

"But Soul, that's not how it works in DnD" That's because in DnD, you can say to the DM "We all do these attacks at the exact same time." DnD lets you start combat using real time with pause to enter everyone's commands at once. DnD doesn't need the absolute suprise round; turn based video games based on DnD require it.

The other aspect of this thread, about bringing the whole party into combat no matter what, is a lot more on the nose. A round is 6 seconds. You should not be able to interact with a fight by doing something that takes more than 6 seconds within that 6 seconds. We are not playing as Flash. We are not playing as Quicksilver. We are not Time Lords. The only way to prevent them interacting with the fight as such, is to put them in the 6 second rounds no matter where they are or what they're doing, or to altogether forbid them for joining the fight at all. The first option sounds better to me, but if enough players want Larian to give the latter as an option to characters that were way too far away to have any hope of reaching the fight that's fine too.

There is no debate to be had on that. "But the other player of co op wants to join the fight." Then they should have been there when the fight started, and the first player shouldn't have started it without them there. Their mistake is not rationalization for physics breaking design choices. "But they player not in the fight will be bored waiting for the turns." Their temporary boredom is entirely worth the permenant solution to this design failure. Plus there's always that option someone else brought up and I added above about letting them keep their seperate real time as long as they are forbidden from joining the fight they couldn't have reached.

Lastly, the aspect of the present design failure about breaking time by being the Flash applies to npcs just as much as it does players. Same as how the rogue should not be able to spend 2 minutes sneaking around the enemies being ambused within a 6 second round, the enemy guard that's been doing a two minute patrol route should not suddently do that whole route in under 6 seconds.

Super minor spoiler from very early: Just after the goblin fight to get in the druid grove there is a bugbear assassin that murders a tiefling lady if you don't get on top of the hill fast enough. Once you're close enough to the hill the game activates those npcs, and the bugbear goes to attack her. In real time, while you aren't there. In order to save her, you have to run up the hill fast enough to get into the bugbears line of sight and be detected fast enough to start combat before it reaches her. If you try to sneak up it doesn't stop and will kill her before you do your attack.

Imagine for me, that when you reach the bottom of that hill, something unrelated attacks you. Maybe that squirrel, maybe some remaining goblin, it doesn't matter, you end up in turn based combat with it. And the bubble for that combat doesn't reach the top of hill. Or maybe it does but the bugpear is in stealth anyway so it doesn't join. You the player are only seeing it throught the sky camera after all, not your character's eyes. So now you, desperately trying to save this tiefling woman but trapped in the turn based combat flow, watch this bugbear walk over and kill her while you aren't allowed to move. That's how all the enemies feel while you move around your out-of-combat characters while everything in combat is frozen in time. Both problems are solved by making world time flow consistent by bringing everything into the 6 second turn based round, instead of letting things outside of the fight stay real time.