Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Let's make combat faster

Personally, I would be interested to see someone implement a quasi-turn-based system. Something that is between RTWP and turn-based. So, if you've ever played the X-Wing miniatures game, it would be similar to that.

Here's the idea:

Combat is initiated. Initiative order is set just like it is currently. However, the player selects their characters one at a time and issues orders. They select their fighter and choose the ranged weapon and select a Target. Selects their rogue and select the ranged weapon and select a Target. They select their wizard, pick a spell, choose a target, and pick a spot where they want the wizard to move after the spell is cast. They choose their cleric, select the bless spell, And give the order to have the cleric charge forward after the spell is cast. After issuing orders, the player clicks the ready button, and unpauses combat.

Well the player was issuing orders, the AI was also issuing orders for all NPCs. So when the player indicates that they are ready, all characters act at the same time. So they move and act at one time, simultaneously, but their attacks occur in initiative order split seconds from one another.

In this way, the player still has control over each character in the party in can strategically plan out the round. However, combat occurs all at once, playing 6 seconds out simultaneously so that you could see how it would literally play out in real life. This would dramatically speed up combat while still making it turn based. It is different from rtwp because after the 6 second round is done the game pauses again and allows you to issue new orders. Action allowances are still maintained because it is all transpiring in one round.

But what if my fighter has two actions per turn and she kills her Target with one action? There could be a simple programming setup where if this kind of scenario occurs your character automatically selects the closest, weakest enemy and a text that one. This has been done in other games like Pathfinder.

Again, the difference between rtwp and this is that it is more controlled. You wouldn't have scenarios where your party members are just standing around doing nothing because you didn't realize that they just finished an enemy and the AI didn't direct them to attack the next one. You wouldn't have characters just running off randomly after enemies were wandering into traps because you would have more control over all your characters. By forcing a stop after every 6 seconds, the game would control how many actions occur in that 6 seconds.. what I'm trying to say is it wouldn't be so chaotic like rtwp is. It could also still manage the 5e rule set without requiring a bunch of extra work.

I honestly have no idea how hard it would be to implement that, but it sure would be fun to see someone try it. As the round is initiated, all characters move and as they are moving they are shooting or taking swings at each other and initiative order. Reactions would be triggered as enemies past one another and so forth. I think the biggest problem I see with it is the reactions. Like BG3 right now, it would be hard to implement certain things like smite. But anyway, I still think it would be cool to see something like this.