Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Suggestion about Food Consumption and Enter Turn-based Mode

About Food Consumption:
1. Allow companions who take short rest to eat or drink
1.1 The amount of food that was required for each companion during the short rest can be varied, depends on the combination of one's proficiency on Str, Dex, Con, all three add together, with a minimum value of 1 on each. Say, I got a Tav that has 14 Str, 14 Dex, 14 Con, to let my Tav having short rest and heal, I need to assign him at least 2+2+2 = 6 amount of food value. Say, I got another Tav who has 8 Str, 8Dex, 8Con, then for this Tav to take a short rest, he need to eat at least 1+1+1 = 3 amount of food value;
1.2 If I assign alcohol for a companion during a short rest, after short rest, this companion should be drunk for a short while depends on the alcohol item's food value and this companion's Constitution proficiency. Say, a wine of 6 food value was drunk by a char with 2 Constition proficiency, then after short rest, he got 6-2 = 4 minutes of Drunk effect;
1.3 If I assign multiple alcohol item for a char during a short rest, when calculate how long the Drunk effect lasts, instead of adding their food value together, multiply their food value. Say, a 3 Con proficiency Tav drunk a wine of 6 food value and a beer of 2 food value, the Drunk effect shall last for 2*6 - 3 = 10 minutes;
1.4 Vampire companion if any, maybe they don't need to eat at all, I'm not familiar to BG lore about if vampire eat normal food or not.

2. Make long rest food consumption amount to be more dynamic and more related to player's party
2.1 Similar to 1.1, for each companion player has, assign food amount equals to their Str, Dex, Con proficiency add together;
2.2 If a companion don't have enough food to eat during the long rest, they should lose Approves on Tav. The Approves drop amount can be: if someone don't have enough food to eat during a long rest, every 10 percent of missing food on this companion gives this companion a 1d4 disapprove dice, each Charisma proficiency from Tav reduces a disapprove dice from this companion, then roll the remaining dices. If the roll result was larger than Tav's Charisma, then this companion disapprove Tav for 1d4 amount;
2.3 Pets should eat as well. Dogs can eat whatever normal humanoid eats, and other creatures maybe only eat raw meat or fish;
2.4 Let idle companion to lurk around the camp to hunt or gather or fishing, depends on type of camp site, and make their Survival proficiency to be related to the hunt/gather/fishing's result;
2.5 NPC camp followers, if any, can eat their own food.

About Enter Turn-based mode:
3. When combat happens, all NPC and all player's adventuring party members in the area should be forced to go into Turn-based mode. Just like how player actively enters Turn-based Mode.
The current combat engagement is terrible: I can use a companion to sneak attack a group of foe, this will surprise them. then control other characters one by one, to sneak around the area for as long as I want and as far as I want, if the map allows me, I could have my Tav move all the way from Druid's Cove to Baldur's Gate and double back while Shadowheart and some enemies got time stopped in combat for the whole time. Or, since the group of enemy was been surprised by Shadowheart's sneak attack, their detection area got freezed as well, so I can move my worst sneaker who wears the loudest armor to easily infiltrate in between these enemies' position and get to the weakest target. This is a bad design.

Yes. When combat start, all my party members in the vicinity should be drawn in.

Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to perform ambushes that turn out half as well as what I meant to do. (And ambushes have been advertised by Larian as a feature of the game, it's not as if I'm trying to do something the game isn't meant to allow. But that wouldn't the first thing Larian advertised on which they under-deliver.)

The fact that we can currently abuse the dual timelines is probably a bit of a lost cause. For Larian, this is a cool system. Personally, I am wholly unbothered by the fact that some players may abuse the system. But I am really bothered by the fact that the current system can turn out to be penalising, when I did not try to abuse it at all.

One example is if I cast pre-combat buffs. When not all my characters are drawn in combat at the start of it, by the time I manage to get everyone in, some people have 9 rounds of Bless left while some others have already gone through their 10 rounds of Bless.


(As for the super-stealthy noisy-armoured, 8-Dex Barbarian, that's an independent issue. The current Stealth system is a bit of a joke, and that's in part because the game basically has little concept of sounds.)

I've not much to say about food consumption suggestions, except that I'd like to see consequences when dining entirely on booze.

Yesterday, while sneaking through the Underdark, I accidentally triggered two simultaneous but seperate fights with Hook Horrors. I cast Bless during the first fight, killed the horror in two turns while the other fight was on hold and rushed over to help Astarion. By the time I got there, Bless was expended on the targets but Shadowheart still had several turns of concentration left on the spell.

The realtime and turn based timelines mesh really poorly. I still can't tell if surfaces last for a set number of rounds or real time minutes, or if it matters under which circumstances they were created.

The "cool system" link Drath provided shows why Larian thinks the system is cool : it papers over a bunch of issues with the movement system. If a PC forgets how to walk and gets left behind by the party (hardly a rare occurence), you can effectively retcon the situation by running them to the fight.

I'd rather have reliable movement and time than broken time as a fix to broken movement.

Yes, 10000000000%. There isn't enough zeros to say how poorly this movement/party/combat system is implemented.

Anyone who is even remotely close to combat should just be pulled into turn mode. No if, and, or buts. Also, having only cones of vision trigger Sneak checks is very poor implementation. Sneak checks should be always done, and then maybe provide a +5 bonus if your within the cone of vision of someone. Then, you can add modifiers, like if your in the dark or low light areas, and the other NPC/PC doesn't have Dark Vision, Ultravision, light source, ect, then you nullify the +5 check.

This is just so many other and better ways to implement than the system now.