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.