Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Reactions like Solasta!

The biggest argument I can think of is for multiplayer. Reaction pop-ups will result in many more times where most of the players are forced to wait for a single player to make a selection. Thus, everyone would have to pay attention to the entire combat and not just their own turn.

But honestly, this isn't a very compelling argument. Is it really the worst thing if, once in a while, you have to wait like a minute or two for your friend to come back from getting a snack?

Finally, here are many ways of addressing this:
-Allow the option of toggle or pop-up reactions
-Add a timer to the reaction pop-up window

Yeah, it's not compelling at all. If your friend ran off to get a snack, the game gets delayed regardless if it becomes their turn when they are off to the fridge. I mean that's the nature of multiplayer. You will be delayed at some point if everyone isn't paying attention to the game.

I don't like toggles because there's too many times I forget to turn it on or off. But I'm guessing that's how Larian will handle reactions. It'll be cumbersome, just like everything else in the game.

I can see timers but if it's too short, then players may feel too rushed in their decisions (not that reaction choices are that complex).

Their engine should definitely be able to handle a reaction system as it'd mostly just be adding a pause and then allowing player to to choose something. I think it'd be less having to remake things and more just adding to what is already there. But this might be too generalizing or completely and utterly wrong.

I hope so but I suspect the reason we aren't seeing any reactions (attack of opportunity) is because Larian doesn't really have a good solution. It's probably why we haven't seen paladins yet as a major part of their core powers is reactionary smites.

But I lost hope with Larian after their patch 4 reveal. What we are seeing is what we are getting, with only minor changes.

I should mention that Solasta actually added an option to have a reaction timer in the latest patch. No one really talks about it because hardly anyone found reactions to be a problem with how *fast* the game still manages to be to begin with.

There literally isn't any downside anymore.

I just started playing Solasta and man, have I been missing out sticking with BG3. The Ready Action, which works like Reactions, is really cool. My party was sneaking around a camp full of goblins and I set my wizard's action to Ready Action - Cast Cantrip. The moment a goblin came within line of sight of her, she stood up, cast firebolt, killed it, and then went right back to sneaking. Or my Paladin would set the Ready Action to perform a melee attack and then put him next to my party members, so that the first enemy that comes within range to attack the party gets a sword in his face.

The wizard has the Shield spell memorised and when attacked, I get a pop up asking if I want to cast Shield. If I think it might do a lot of damage if it lands, I'd cast the spell. This is such a cool power in 5E and it's a real shame that BG3 simplifies all Reactions to a passive toggle.

EXACTLY!!!!! It's *SOOOOO* much better with those amazing options!!! I wish SO DAMN MUCH that Larian implements something like that, because it enhances the gameplay by a ton!!!

I honestly don't have many issues with the gameplay of the game and feel like most of the D&D problems this game has (some rule changes like height and backstab, lack of subclasses, etc), while not ideal, could be changed in the future with some modding, I feel like this one is a real big one and will be much more difficult to implement for modders, so Larian has to find a way to figure it out themselves. And I do feel like this one is a really big one to leave out of the game. feels like adapting a Yu-Gi-Oh game without implementing trap cards.

Welcome back Abits

I wish I had as much faith as you.

Yup. Now that I've seen what a true CRPG representation of the DnD core rules is like, I just can't enjoy BG3's combat anymore. BG3's fights are now just annoyances I have to get through to advance the story.

In BG3, the wizard is just a poorer damage dealer than the fighter or the rogue, and whose main worth is casting Magic Missiles, and maybe Feather Fall if you wanna go to the Underdark through the spider lair.

But with reactions, you get to feel like the wizards in movies and novels. Look! The enemy's mage is launching an attack at us! The wizard looks up, and discerns that the spell Slow is being cast, and quickly mutters an incantation that counters that spell, completely nullifying it. The wizard is more than just a second rate damage dealer playing second fiddle to the martials. He is your defence against the enemy's magical attacks. Without him watching your back, your party would be at the mercy of enemy wizards and could be Slowed, Charmed, Poisoned and hit by all sorts of maledictions.

Not having proper reactions in BG3 does a huge disservice to DnD 5E and makes new comers to DnD think that wizards and other casters are useless, and that a party should just have martials and a bag full of pig's heads.

I'm just going to add how quick and smooth combat is in Solasta. The game has pop-up reactions AND combat is faster than BG3.

The logic that pop-up reactions may slow down the pace of combat, is not true at all.

The enemy can use reactions too. So it'd be a structure similar to...

• add a reaction table for the round (reactions are bound to the round, not the turn). It'd be similar to maintaining initiative order.
• when character uses reaction ability, reaction point is spent
• for each character with initiative, reaction point refreshes on start of turn
• create conditional classes/statuses to prompt use of reactions
• use those classes to pause combat (player side) and prompt the player
• create combat AI for enemies that may use reactions (probably always will, unless out of spell slots, out of reactions for the round).

Of course more needed code would come out of the woodwork when implementing/optimizing. I think it's totally doable as well.

I'm just going to leave this here.



I had never really appreciated the concept of Counterspell until now. Characters that are able to see the actual spellcasting get to roll an arcana check to identify the spell, and then if any one of those characters have Counterspell, they get the option to counter it. If you fail the arcana check but are still in range to interrupt, you can still counter it, but you won't know what spell you're trying to halt.

There's a lot of strategic layers to unpack here, and that's just weighing the risk of stopping a spell or letting it continue - if you even have a reaction available to counter to begin with, and the enemy didn't bait it with something like you using Shield or an opportunity attack beforehand.

Also, I had been previously concerned that Solasta was actually pretty easy before. This patch made some fights brutally hard, but still feeling very fair within DnD rules (it's almost like you are encouraged to use everything you can when you don't have a blatantly easy answer like shoving an enemy down a cliff isn't thrown in your face in nearly every fight). Almost feels like I'm playing a X-COM game at times, really - and those games are considered the pinnacle of tactical turn-based combat for a reason. The below is a level 4 boss fight, and I came dangerously close to a party wipe - but managed to turn it around with some quick thinking. Granted, I did not come into the fight with stealth because I had grossly underestimated its difficulty (and I really should have been blasting them all with Scorching Ray).


That said, one could argue that BG3 combat is lacking partly due to the fact that we're capped at level 4 there, and will probably stay like so for at least another year. Solasta's full release is estimated to be within the May-July period, so Larian will have plenty of time to take some notes before finishing development on BG3. (I say another year for BG3, because no one sane should really want BG3 to be finished this year. Unless WotC is spiteful enough to force Larian to rush it out the window to directly compete with Pathfinder WotR, which will most likely release in the July-September period - and it would be a fight that BG3 in its current state would most certainly lose.)

Yeah, and there are reasons for and against countering the harmful spells. Since Counterspell is a level 3 spell, and you need to have the spell memorised and have the spell slots to cast it, you'll have to consider the potential harm should the party members fail their saving throws vs burning a spell slot to counter it. This is an example of the tactical considerations players get to make, which is sorely missing in BG3.

I'm trying to think, as it currently stands, how they would even add Counterspell into BG3 right now. And perhaps this, and other L3 spell mechanics, is why the level cap is at L4 to postpone having to deal with Larian having to think about things like this.

I can't even wrap my mind around how they could implement Counterspell "Larian style" and make it seem impactful. I honestly think they would make it where like "creatures in x range of you cannot cast spells for 1 turn" or something. LOLOLOLOL.

The spells and mechanics only get more complicated as levels increase, as multi-classing comes into play.

Well, since I don't know the technical details of the engine, I can only judge based on what is in the game currently. If Larian were to implement reactions using what's currently in the game, then the wizard toggles on Shield and Counterspell in the Reactions tab. A goblin shoots a fire arrow at your wizard. The game forces your wizard to cast Shield. The fire arrow misses, hits the ground at his feet, sets it on fire, and does 2D4 guaranteed damage to the wizard that he can't roll Dexterity save against, and then rolls a Constitution save to keep maintaining his Concentration spell that he'd previously cast. In the next round, a goblin booyagh casts Sacred Flame at the wizard, forcing him to cast Counterspell, burning a level 3 spell slot to nullify the enemy's cantrip.

Also, ready actions add another layer of tactical consideration, but not really as much as reactions. Still important if you don't have any other viable options, or are hoping to successfully predict an enemy to come close to another party member during their turn so that you can immediately punish them with a sneak attack, as I demonstrate in the video below.

This was a really fun fight that I went into blind, and while it may look easy, that's because I built my party to be very defensive (as in, 3 of the 4 party members have access to the Shield spell, for one). I quickly figured out that the Spirit Guardians spell (a Cleric spell that summons an aura that inflicts radiant damage if an enemy enters its area of effect or begins their turn within it) was my best defense against those enemies, because fire elementals realistically aren't smart enough to realize what it does.


(And for those of us not too familiar with DnD beyond BG3 - treat this as a preview of how crazy Paladin can be at tanking and smiting with huge amounts of burst damage, especially from level 5 onwards.)

LOLOLOLOL. Or it's just a targetable buff you can place on yourself or others that negates the effect of the next spell cast on target. No reaction mechanic implemented.

PRECISELY!!! Perfect example of PERFECT implementation in a game! In BG3 now, as it stands, it's all just automatic and whatever happens first just happens. No strategy, no thinking, no options and no INTEGRITY and indepence over your own character choices!!!

Yes!!! Hahaha!! Spot on. And *THAT* is why it sucks. I just wish Larian read these things. I really hope they do and understand the problems here!