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

Well personally I won't bother with rtwp. I prefer full control of turn based because it is more "I control my mc" rather than "I gave orders to my mc". The whole middle ground of rtwp being half way action really bothers me. Either go full action uninterrupted similar to bioware/tales of/star ocean or let me take my time and be tactical turn based like wasteland. Just my preference. The only play style i've seen that benefits from rtwp over others is summoning and pets. Which is the play style I loathe. Everything else is better in the other modes in my opinion.

I think the 5e rules are "bland" enough to have a more cinematic Realtime approach with pause. A big negative point from BG2 where overpowered mages with alot of Immunities and Instant Kill magic. When the power curve is flatter and the combat normalised the Realtime approach sounds better.

What really matters is execution of either. Both can be fun.

In theory yes but be realistic. A Fighter is a bland Melee class with very few options infight. The current combat system looks boring for melees.
To have placeholder Animations for "combat" was one big point in BG2 because the illusion of "flow".
After a hard mission to go into the streets and a group of lowly Robbers attack you? Let the Fighters clean up this mess with Weapons Sounds, combat screams and a pile of death bodies.
This illusion will BG3 never reach. The combat looks simply not fun. And larians approach to bring much more monsters on the field slows it down alot.
Not every encounter must be a chess game.

The best BG3 combats are those with few, more capable enemies, such as the Minotaurs or Bulette in the Underdark, because then, at least, YOU are playing the game most of the time.

When there are many, weaker enemies, BG3 combat is astonishingly dull, as you watch the same 6 seconds of real time played out again and again with no active input. Unfortunately, that is what the simplistic 5e rule set gives you. I hope Larian find a way to allow us not to have to watch so much "nothing" happening.

*Cough* increased party size *cough*

I've seen it come up a few times in this thread, but I disagree with the argument that RTwP is a better fit for D&D because it matches what playing D&D SHOULD be like. People claim D&D is only turn-based because, at a tabletop session, real time is impossible because everyone would be shouting over each other and nothing would ever get done. They then go on to claim that, what Gary Gygax really wanted in his heart of hearts was an immersive real time game, but had to settle for TB, and through the magic of video games, we can finally grant Mr. Gygax his wish.

That may be entirely true, I don't have a time machine to go back and ask. But for me, the D&D I fell in love with and would like to see recreated in a video game is TB. It was designed with the knowledge that it would be played in turns, and thus was optimized (through its action economy) for TB play.

You can see this with PF Kingmaker. It's a great game that was designed very well, but there's simply no getting around the fact that the Pathfinder ruleset was not designed to be played in real time. Things like extra attack, reactions, or a smite don't work when everything's happening at once. I don't care if it is closer to "the true spirit of the game", it's not how the ruleset was optimized, nor how I have grown to love playing it.

So, for me, any video game built using existing tabletop rules really needs to be TB. The only RTwP games that I could really get into were ones designed from the bottom up with the mechanic in mind, like DA or PoE.

At the end of the day, I don't care if the original designer of football really envisioned the game set in zero gravity and played against velociraptors. As awesome as that sounds, when I pick up Madden, I want to play the game as a I've seen it on TV, and played it in the backyard with my buddies.

Fair enough. But other people have a different idea of how D&D should play in a video game, myself included. For me, the ruleset doesn't matter that much and it is the game-playing experience I get from my video game that matters. And that experience is waaaaaaay better with RTwP. This is also why I am very strongly in the camp of those who do not care if a developer changes/modifies D&D rules in a D&D video game or adds in house rules. If rules have to be changed/modified to make the VIDEO game-playing experience better, that's exactly what should be done. And at the very top of my list of D&D rules that are part of the tabletop D&D experience but which are horrible in a D&D video game: TB combat.

Thats why the guys from owlcat implement BOTH... TB and RTwP into Pathfinder. They listen to Feedback. And by the way since this cant be toggled on off whenever you want, it results in having RTwP for trashmobs and for some realy tough fights you can go TB.

All of that is perfectly valid.

I'm not a huge fan of trash mobs myself, I feel like they're normally just placed on the map because the developer felt like "I've designed this huge map. I should probably put SOMETHING here." If given the choice between a trash mob and a story encounter, or even a non combant encounter, I'll always pick the latter.

At the end of the day, it just sounds like we want something different from the game. I want an emulation of the tabletop game I enjoy and view a D&D game without turns like I do a chess game without turns.

Personally, when I really want the visceral experience of being an adventurer, I don't feel like RTwP takes it far enough. I'm surprised I don't see more people advocating this game go even further and become an open world, Skyrim-style ARPG.

Yes, and that's why P:WotR (which I backed) is my #1 most anticipated RPG right now.

Totally agree with this.


I've actually become more accepting of open-world ARPGs recently on account of really loving Witcher 3. Even DA:I is okay with me. But I need such games to be third-person. Just can't handle first-person.

This is an honest justification for wanting TB, and I respect it. It's just that it is decidedly NOT for me. The primary reason I would play a tabletop game is for the camaraderie of friends and drinking beer, eating pizza, and cracking questionable jokes. For the game itself I much prefer playing by myself, and indeed a huge part of my love for video games is that they are my escape from the real world and from annoying people (hence why I will never play multiplayer).

The turn based combat is the ENTIRE reason that I made the decision to go ahead and purchase this game. There was a whole lot of allure to everything else about it, but not enough to make me jump at the chance to play it. I set calendar reminders, watched rabidly for updates, and made sure that I got it on the very first day of EA. Without turn based combat I wouldn't have bothered to buy it until it popped up on a $5 deal list somewhere.

On the other hand that TB makes tough fights just too ez. Like when I fought with dragon: one of the strongest enemies when I played RTwP just cast 1 buff per turn on itself so it died before actually did damage. Or lich (also strong opponent in RTwP) that died in 2 turns. And some classes and characters look like cheat with TB (Ekan).

It would be nice if we could speed up the combat process. Waiting on all of the other NPCs during large fights and them "thinking" for 30 seconds makes me want to pull out what little hair I have left.

I would prefer for RTwP to stay out of this game.

For one it does not allow for multiplayer option as it can't be implemented well in RTwP.

Second they would need to cut back on so many features that it would not even resemble a 5e play style.

Three they would have to redesign the entire game & AI to be more simple & easy that it would give a terrible turn based mode like the crappy & suboptimal turn base mode in Kingmaker.

All this has already been tried in DOS2 by RTwP fanboys that it failed miserably. It is easy to turn a RTwP game into turn based but not the other way around as the AI in DOS2 was too harsh & fast for RTwP. Much like Final Fantasy changed play styles from the current & first iterations let this one be more true to d&d as RTwP was unfaithful to ad&d in BG 1&2.

In my recent play through I've noticed that the AI is moving faster than in previous patches.

*Hands you a handkerchief...No thank you!

As someone who has played pretty much every DnD CRPG out there and is also a PnP player all I'm going to say is turn-based, turn-based, and only turn-based is the way to go. RTwP seemed like an annoying accommodation we always had to make to fans of shooter games in order to earn the privilege of playing something resembling real Dungeons and Dragons on the computer. It was not invented by Larian for DoS. Successful implementation of great turn-based combat in DoS by Larian simply qualified Larian uniquely to finally give us what we've always wanted, namely, real Dungeons and Dragons on the computer. Finally. I recently was considering purchasing Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Once I learned it was RTwP I wasn't going to purchase it, but then I found out that turn-based had been implemented and I bought it and had a great time. I can never go back. I realize that others may have different opinions and I respect that, but I couldn't not make my case.

I prefer turn based.