Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Reactions like Solasta!

I had a discussion on Discord recently, where we agreed that "Popup" is actually a bad term in this case as it's more a functional meaning than a literal one. Most people associate popups with something that gets in your way in the middle of the screen (think websites, recent GDPR annoyances is a good example) but rather a prompt. Something that becomes available and clearly communicated to the player.

I made a quick photoshop image for visual example of what we were talking about, that when a reaction opportunity occurs, player can immediately choose their reaction, or press spacebar to skip (to be consistent with spacebar skipping in dialogue, cinematics etc). Ideally available reactions would be immediately and dynamically represented in the react option with a much prettier UI design than I could ever do.

Screenshot from feedback doc if you'd like to expand on and comment for further iteration.

That's basically the same thing I suggested for a while (and other people with me, not pretending the exclusive there).
And I made the same argument about the reaction needing to be more a confirmation prompt rather than a crude pop-up a million times.

Personally I'd go for something even more immediate like "left click to confirm, right click to skip" (and of course, the possibility to bind both to two alternate keyboard presses just as a backup option, like Y/N or ENTER/SPACE).
And I'd be a bit more "flashy" with the presentation, in general. I.e. Camera quickly zooming in on the character at the center of the screen and slowing down the action to an alt waiting for confirmation.

But once again we are basically arguing flavor at this point, the core system remains fundamentally the same: asking each time a confirmation of the reaction.
THEN eventually giving to the people who hate to actually play games the option to skip and automatize the process, I guess.

Pretty much. Pointing out ability to re-bind keybinds (while it should be obvious tbh) is a fair addition to feedback just to absolutely leave no room for missing the obvious.

The ONLY thing that I worry about prompt systems is chaining prompts (one prompt leads to a different prompt) and animations (having to prompt after the roll before making a decision).

Beyond that, if Larian went with prompts, resolving those issues, I would have no problems.

+1 to Composer's feedback screenshot. It basically exactly matches with my opinions on reactions:
- We should have the option for full flexibility of reactions, being given the choice to use them or not instead of them being used automatically or according to some preset script.
- It doesn't *need* to be a central pop-up window. That is just a stand-in term for being asked, but I can see how that term has certain implications and people wouldn't want a pop-up in their face. Having a mini-hotbar show up (one might say, pop up :P) below with available reactions, along with whatever slowing-down/cinematic effects are applied to combat, would be great (also credit @GM4Him).
- less clicks = better

In your examples, I might specify that "Wizards should have the ability to counter specific spells, rather than e.g., automatically counterspelling the first spell cast at them (possibly a cantrip)"

+1 for prompts as depicted by The Composer.

I wonder how the Portent ability would work under that system.
I’m all for maximum control over reactive abilities (though this one doesn’t technically use a reaction) but Portent would trigger a prompt any time anyone does anything. Is this ability in Solasta? How does it work there?

I love it. Case closed. Now let's tackle something harder, like Shove. 👹

Similar is true for Bardic Inspiration, although to a lesser extent. Solasta doesn't have divination wizard (or equivalent, I think) as it's not in the 5e basic rules, but such an ability would probably be implemented to prompt for anything (like Paladin's Smite prompts on every attack). I agree this could get annoying.

Best solution is probably to rework this specific ability to make it a free action. Something like:
- If given to an ally: The next time this ally misses an attack or fails a ST/ability check, they instead succeed
- If given to an enemy: The next time this enemy hits an attack or succeeds on a ST/ability check, they instead fail

That's literally the same case of the hypothetical "INTERRUPT" mechanic I was talking with GM4Him few posts above:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=822832#Post822832

I'm not sure how to feel about the mechanic, but it would be the ONLY way to be faithful to the tabletop without a confirmation prompt at literally every action taken.

As I posted in the other thread (I think. Honestly I've lost track at this point), I want zero time-dependent things in my TB mode. Especially since BG3 combat currently might be too fast to actually allow "Interrupt" actions, and I certainly don't want combat to be made slower. I'm willing to sacrifice some 5e faithfulness/balance for this. E.g., a single subclass-specific wizard ability like Portent

Cutting Words...is a bit more complicated. It could only prompt you if the roll would make a difference in whether the attack hits or not (Yes I know technically you're not supposed to know whether the roll succeeds or not, but in BG3 - and often in tabletop - you'll almost certainly know. You can inspect enemies after all.) which would reduce the number of prompts, but it'd still be a LOT.

I'm not sure how I'd implement Cutting Words, but I'd prefer a pre-action system (or almost anything) over a time-dependent Interrupt. Of course it could have 3 options: Interrupt / auto / off.

Sorry about missing your post on the issue, following mega-threads isn’t easy.

I can see an alternative to a time-based system for Cutting Words that doesn’t prompt incessantly. If the prompt appears only when the d6 matters, there would be far fewer (if any) unnecessary interruptions.

The pop-up would only appear if the enemy’s d20 roll plus modifiers beat the target by 5 or less. If the roll either failed or succeeded by 6 or more, subtracting a d6 wouldn’t matter so no pop-up would even appear.

Since this is a buff to Cutting Words, I recommend not telling players what the actual roll is at this stage, just that CW could work. (The game already reveals all ACs and DCs anyway, so showing the roll the way 5e does it would let players calculate exact odds, which 5e doesn’t allow without some work.)

This has the added bonus of not requiring a special UI for Cutting Word’s prompt, since the prompt’s very appearance on screen would be all the information a player needs as to the enemy’s roll: it’s within CW range.

I hope a similar system gets implemented for Bardic Inspiration, though it wouldn’t work for Portent. But if I understand mrfuji correctly, Portent isn’t in the player’s handbook, which neatly solves any technical issue by not being implemented in the first place.

Well, what you prefer is a bit beyond the point. There are no two ways around it: if you want an ability that can affect basically anything going on in the game you either need the option to "call a time out" and stop things on the fly OR you'll have to change how the ability works.

The other option would be asking for confirmation after every single other roll is made, but I don't I need to explain to you why that would be ridiculous.

No, it's exactly on-point. I am providing feedback about what I want along with (in my opinion) a reasonable explanation, just as you are. The game is TB -> there should be no time-dependent mechanics, at least not while in TB mode.

I agree that there's essentially only 3 ways of implementing such an ability, and I agree that asking for confirmation after every single roll is terrible. But between "call a time out" and "change how the ability works," my +1 is for the latter.

Not exactly. Portent IS in the PHB but it isn't in the basic rules, which is why *Solasta* cannot use it with their limited license. Larian, however, has the full D&D license for BG3 so they can and should implement some version of the Divination Wizard with Portent

Yeah, but it's not a fight between me and you about what we like the most.
I'm telling you what the situation is: you either allow for an arbitrary interruption from the player or you give up on the mechanic entirely.

What happened to changing how the ability works? If that's what you mean by "give up on the mechanic entirely," then sure, that's better than having an ability with a mandatory real-time component in a TB game.

Those are literally the same thing. It's exactly how it works in Solasta and how everyone is calling it.

No. It's not.

Solasta be like: Big window telling me "Enemy is going to run away from you and you can do an attack of opportunity. Would you like to do an attack of opportunity?"

Lots of words. Big window.

I was saying something more like as the enemy is trying to run away, the game pauses and the UI flashes, showing your melee button. This lets you know that you can attack as a reaction. No words except maybe in the combat log if you open it. Also, first time it happens, tooltips tell you it means you can do a reaction.

Similar mechanics. Different presentation.

I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out a more fast paced Reactions system with Scripted Reactions. Most of the reactions in 5e really could be managed fairly well with Scripted Reactions. This would minimize the number of Reactions that would actually cause the game to pause

I see. Well, it that case I think that the window is better because you can place all reactions there at the same time in case of several characters reacting. In the case of UI flashing, highlighting the melee button, you'd have to switch to other characters to see if they have AOO available and choose to use it or not if so. Imo Solasta system is functionally perfect and can be just visually imporved that's all.

Don't get me wrong. I like Solasta. However, the paladin Smite popup is WAY too frequent. I put up with it, but it is a bit much.

I do very much enjoy the faster combat of BG3, but it really does make Reactions difficult to implement and still keep the fast pace. I mean, already we have people complaining about how slow combat is. Imagine if they implemented a choppy Reaction system that is pausing the game every few seconds because your Paladin could use AOO with Smite, Astarion can use Uncanny Dodge, Lae'zel can use Maneuvers for AOO, and Gale could use Counterspell, Shield, Featherfall or whatever. Astarion's Uncanny Dodge would be EVERY turn if someone hits him.

Oh man. Imagine Cutting Words popups. It'd be like every single time an enemy hits. That would be brutal.

I am now thinking that a blending of the two is probably what is best. Uncanny Dodge would use simple presets based on HP. You set the preset. If you take less damage, it doesn't trigger. If you take the damage you set or more, it triggers.

AOO could be preset pretty easily based on target selection during your turn or presets based on enemy current HP. Any enemy with 10 HP or more, something like that, would trigger AOO.

Shield could be done similarly with presets like Any Attack or Magic Missile. Smite Reaction could trigger based on HP presets.

Battlemaster maneuvers could be set easy enough. Activate it as a reaction on your turn. If someone triggers AOO, they also trigger the maneuver you selected.

But then spells like Counterspell should probably still pause game and ask. I just don't know how you'd preset that one well.

Cutting Words would need a more complex preset system. I'm not sure how that one would work, tbh. Maybe a Select Target(s) that would apply preset and if one of them hits, it simply triggers a "React" thing like Composer posted above

For most Reactions, though, I think presets could work well and really cut down on pauses.

You can call it a "prompt" rather than popup if it pleases you all but the result is mostly the same.

We'll just have to manually react this prompt each time to pause the game and read "a popup" (called micro action bar in The Composer's feedback doc) just to understand what every prompt is about...

Then we'll also have to choose the target if there are multiple ones, switch to our companions tab, select the spell level,...