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

I will just shoot from the hip ...
And gues bcs they dont want to.

Oh yes, I absolutely loved the customisable tactics in DA:O and DA2. That said, I find using the Larian TB system makes for a different and interesting challenge, with advantages as well as disadvantages compared to RTWP, and personally am happy with it as an approach for BG3. Can see why others come down on the other side, though.

Dnd 5e is written with a turn based system in mind. ALOT of things dont work if you suddenly make it RTWP. Heck, alot of feats work with reactions that just completly fall out of the window if you make it real time.

BG1 and bg2 did it very nicely but it was still a big departure from the rules set. Which were written with turn based rules. And considering theyre trying to stay close to the pnp rules set I dont see them making it real time.

DnD is turn based. I feel bg3 should be as well.

This game is designed around turn based. Pause with real time is for when you get bored with the game and want to rush combat.

I personally like to chew my steak, but this isn't about me alone.

Adding a feature like this would probably take away from the overall quality of the game because it would take away from development time elsewhere.

My 2 cents.

Yes BG1 and 2 did it very well even though 2e D&D was also TB. So you effectively admit that just because the TT rules are TB, because they HAVE to be as there is no other way to play a TT game, does NOT mean the video game rendition of a game also needs to be TB.

Well, BG3 combat IS boring. A real snooze-fest. So yeah, I want to get through the mind-numbing boredom of combat in BG3 as quickly as I possibly can.

Even though BG seemed real time every action was still locked to a 6 second “round” cycle. It was just the turns went so fast it appeared real time. The 2e rules about rounds and turns were respected.

Mmmm... Not quite. In BG, weapons had various hits per second. So, it wasn't really 6 second rounds. Spells also took certain amounts of seconds. Everything had to be adapted for this kind of gameplay.

Now, I will say that I've always kinda wanted to see a variation of turn based where you have 6 second rounds played out in realtime.

So, start of combat. You select spells, attacks, etc. And you pick targets for each character. Initiate combat round. Everyone moves and acts for 6 seconds trying to do what you commanded. It would be kinda like X-wing miniatures. You may not actually attack if your enemy does something you didn't predict.

Example: You tell Gale to cast Scorching Rays on Goblin 1. You tell Lae'zel to attack Goblin 2. You Start Round. Gale begins chanting while Goblin 1 moves. As Goblin 1 moves, he is loading his bow. He gets to a spot just before a tree and fires at Lae'zel. Then he darts behind a tree. Gale finishes his spell but it's too late. It slams into the tree because the goblin made it to cover before he finished the spell. He didn't win initiative, so the goblin was able to finish his move before Gale completed the spell.

Meanwhile, Lae'zel runs forward to attack Goblin 2, but Goblin 2 darts away and loads his bow. He pauses and fires at Lae'zel. Then he runs again. Lae'zel does no attack because the player didn't predict that the goblin would fall back. The player should have used a ranged weapon for her instead.

End of round. Game pauses while you again enter commands and hope you predict your enemies' moves better.

Sounds a little like that model Larian used in pre-EA builds ... where they tryed team turns, instead of specific characters ...
Guess there was some problems since they leave it.

Team turns are not similar to what was described here by GH4Him, because you can still adjust each character's actions based on the outcome of the previous character's action. Also enemy and friendly actions would still occur at basically the same time.

But it sounds like phased combat - the Wizardry series had that and it was quite good. Basically you gave your party orders and then they got executed in initiative order.

However, I think movement is what makes any model like this hard to implement. Imagine given the order to attack one of two identical enemies right next to each other and then the one you selected moves away for some reason - if it would work by naively following the target you would provoke an attack of opportunity. It would need some sort of flexible instructions, like engage nearest enemy or intercept enemies approaching the wizard. So it could easily be frustrating.

In my opinion the big issue that D&D always had with turn-based combat was the importance of initiative, alpha-striking and general order of actions. I've played a lot of the old Gold Box games and if you fight equal level spellcasters the one who gets to cast first used to win. Or look at WotR where moving into enemy melee range first is often a tactical fail, because that way you get only a single attack while on the enemy's turn they will be able to unleash a full attack.

This can be ok, like XCOM embraces this kind of gameplay.

In P&P a GM can hold back a bit and have the enemy sorcerer cast some buffs first instead of dropping an empowered fireball on the party before they can do anything - in a CRPG that is more of a problem. Even more if you do not respect the action economy and give out full actions when hasted. In BG 3 it might as well be 2 fireballs in the first turn of the first acting character. As an aside, I think this is the real reason they dropped team turns - it reduced initiative to a single roll that is even more impactful.


That's why I think having level 5 in early access is so important - it's one of the point where things can easily break down.