Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Stealth Mechanics and shared initiative

Hi, I love the game so far, but the stealth mechanics and shared initiative have started causing some serious issues for me.

Maybe it's because I don't understand the system and how it works but the game often seems to skip the turns of people who have shared initiative for party member that have shared initiative, when I activate the first in the chain, go through their turn, and end it, the game often skips the turns of those later in the chain unless I manually go and select their portraits which isn't very intuitive and has lost me combat encounters just due not being able to act. Is there a way to turn off shared initiative or make it more obvious when the game is going to skip the turns of people who haven't acted yet?

The stealth mechanics seems to punish me for trying to use stealth. If I attack something and then stealth away, it heals to full but any resources I spent are gone (spell slots, consumables etc) and I haven't noticed anywhere in game that tells you when or why hostiles will suddenly fill to full health...a notable example for me was fighting the phasespider matriarch, I used a summoned imp to get the matriarch down to 45hp, and then killed the imp by summoning a new one and moved my party in to finish the spider off, but to my surprise the spider had healed to full health but still had the rage buff it gets for being below half health. A party wipe shortly ensued.

Othertimes I've stealthed up and remained a good distance (so it seemed) outside of a monsters perception range (indicated by UI) and then cast a spell, this pulled my character out of stealth and pulled agro for all the enemies in the area even though I should have been stealthed, and outside of the perception of the monster that the game showed me, and it *didn't* add the characters near me to the initiative order which resulted in the entire encounter starting combat ahead of my 1 character and focusing them down, even though they should have been at the very least surprised.

I think there needs to be clearer mechanics and explanations for how stealth works and what/when an encounter will be triggered, and what will "break" stealth as right now it has made trying to set up ambushes for monsters I've scouted extremely counter intuitive and aggravating. I've even tried doing it by preemptively entering turn-based mode, but all that seems to do is pull me out of turn-based, trigger "Combat Start", and put me back into the turn based combat initiative but without surprise on the enemies and at the end of the initiative order.

Am I doing something wrong? And if so, could the game explain the mechanics here better?

Right now stealth is broken for a lot of reasons.

It also has problems even if you intend to join combat with a stealthed character, because the combat will proceed automatically once someone triggers combat, and you need to manually get a stealthed character to act.


I think there are some ways the game could improve its handling of stealth in combat.

• Whenever initiative is rolled, it should be rolled for EVERY party member, no matter how far away they are or if they are in stealth.
• If a party member is within 60 feet of any active combat, or upon entering that 60-foot radius, they are FORCED into entering turn-based combat.
• A PC approaching within 30 feet of a hostile character or one on guard requires a stealth check contested against the other character's passive perception.

This should help prevent most of the stealth cheese which lets you freely sneak up behind someone facing away.

The problem with”stealth cheese” is not that it’s hard to fix.
It’s that Larian LOVES that it’s broken and exploitable.

I often find myself soloing encounters because of this bug. As only the character that initiated the combat (when whole party is hunkered down trying to sneak) ends up in the combat pool. So that character then has to solo the encounter, because any other toon that "joins" in... cant attack and stealth again (even if they are a rogue).

Man are they still not good at implementing stealth? As an assassin main this is quite disheartening.

Yeah, surprisingly, in last few months, where there was no major update or changes ... nothing actualy canged.
Shocking huh?

I havnt played since patch 2 aha

imo Stealth is *supposed* to be cheesy and busted, you're literally trying to be as unfair as possible by sneak attacking and ambushing, but its also a much slower and more involved way of playing requiring lots of stealthing, using armour that doesnt give disadvantage on stealth, not using light sources etc

if you set up an ambush you should be rewarded for taking the time and effort to do so instead of just running in and slinging magic missile at everything in sight

I think it would be nice if as a party you could enter stealth as a group, or have an "Ambush" button you use to go into a group stealth where you can select actions but nothing happens until you click Ambush again and then have all the actions be resolved at the same time, similar to how breeching works in XCOM, and how Holding your Action would work on table top

trying to recreate those time on tabletop where your party sets up an ambush and all holds their actions to strike at once and get the drop on a baddie or baddie patrol is definitely something that should be possible and effective

It is not just Broken, it is Ultra Broken. You can abuse it infinitely inside battle too to break Enemy A.I. forever and make all fights insanely boring or Snipe things from the other side of the Continent with enough Height. So far it's a game that hates anything that even remotely resembles a Class Meta.