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

I mostly agree. Here's why I'm trying to make the presets work:

Solasta method: Paladin has Smite levels 1-4. Rogue with Uncanny Dodge. Mage has Counterspell. Druid has... well. Druid has AOO like everyone else. This is my current party in Solasta.

Combat begins. Skeleton runs up to Paladin and attacks. Skeleton 2 runs up to Rogue and attacks and hits. Pause/Popup. "Uncanny Dodge? Yes/No?" You hit No. Skeleton 3 runs up to Rogue and attacks and hits. Pause/Popup. "Uncanny Dodge? Yes/No?" You hit No. These skeletons are only doing like 8 damage or something on average. Why halve that when there's a Defiler in the room who can do a whole lot more? Skeleton 4 runs up to Rogue and attacks and hits. Pause/Popup. "Uncanny Dodge? Yes/No?" You hit No. Enemy Mage is casting Darkness. Pause/Popup. "Counterspell? Yes/No?" You hit Yes. Spell stopped. Skeleton 5 runs past Paladin to get at my mage. Pause/Popup. "Use AOO? Use Smite?" I pick Yes for AOO and pick level 1 smite. Skeleton dies. Defiler attacks Rogue and deals 25 damage. Pause/Popup. "Use Uncanny Dodge? Yes/No?" I pick yes. Rogue only takes 12 damage.

This is a very similar scenario to what I've had happen with my present party in Solasta. At first, I'm like, "Yeah. No big deal. However, after a bit, it turns into "Oh my gosh! This is really happening a lot."

I think a compromise could work well. Separate AOO and reactions altogether so that you get one AOO and one reaction per round. AOO can continue working as it does (automatic when an enemy moves away from you without disengaging) and it wouldn’t use up your reaction, so no issue with it messing up your strategy. Then just have the reaction prompt for anything defensive like when a spell hits you and you want to use shield, counterspell, etc. and make offensive reactions like Smite a separate ability you can select on your turn - if it misses, it doesn’t use your spell slot. I know you wouldn’t be able to choose it after seeing the damage roll, but again, it’s a fair compromise that cuts down on the amount of prompting IMO.

Yeah, but Reactions like Uncanny Dodge would still be frequent prompts unless some form of preset was done.

Honestly, I don't think the presets would be as bad as people think. For the most part, you set your presets like once and never worry about them again.

Uncanny Dodge. Go to Reactions screen. Set it to only trigger if damage done to rogue is, let's say, more than 10. Done. Never mess with it again.

Smite. Set Smite Reaction preset intervals to every 10. Done. Never mess with it again.

I mean... Unless you want to tweak it a bit and do like every 12 for intervals, or something like that.

Most Reactions could be handled like this. I don't think it would be that much pre-work.

In my opinion, popups like in Solasta are easily the best way to handle reactions. While they can slow the game down, I think it's possible to limit this slowdown by speeding up the combat in other areas. For example, one of the suggestions I saw on Reddit was to have pop-ups only show up when they would be able to actually change the result or have an effect (the shield popup only shows up when it would block a hit, protection popup only shows up when it could potentially prevent an ally from being hit, etc.).

On-hit effects like smite would be pretty easy to handle and speed up with this pop-up system. Smite really only has two use-cases: you know you want to unload a smite into an enemy before you make the attack roll so you just wait to see if you hit before declaring a smite, or you're waiting to see if it's a critical hit. In the case of the former, they could just handle them like battlemaster maneuvers, whereas in the latter case they can just add an optional popup on critical hits to smite retroactively. This wouldn't really slow the game down much since you'd only get popups for critical hits (5% of attack rolls).

Another suggestion I saw was to add a QTE system for reactions. This would mean that players would need to "opt-in" to reactions they're interested in rather than having to "opt-out" of each possible reaction proc. This would speed up fights while still giving you full control over reactions. However, I don't really know how they'd time the QTEs so that players with worse physical dexterity and reaction times won't accidentally miss the window.

Well, not particularly? How many time do you expect your rogue to be targeted by an attack in one turn, exactly?
And once you take a reaction of any kind you defuse all the other possible prompts, anyway.

Reactions likes Solasta is never going to happen. This is even more apparent with Swarm AI implementation that there isn't anything left to be discussed here.

Larian just disappointed a lot of people, but we already paid our $$$.

You are mistaken. a vocal minority is not a vast majority. Solasta didn't even implement any reaction-heavy class, because it's reaction system is so bad having a bard will turn the combat into pop-up hell. People praising Solasta's reaction system are a very niche group of obsessed 5e rules fans who derive some perverted masochistic pleasure from enacting a clunky and unbalanced DnD 5e ruleset in a videogame. DnD works in a real-life table-top environment because it only serves as a foundation for DM's story-telling, not some Holy Scripture of Irrefutable Dogmas.

Oh, so we've rounded right back into purist strawmen. Neat.

...Do people not even know that Solasta is adding in all of the remaining classes soon? I wonder what the goalposts are going to get moved towards after that? There's something to be said that the vast majority of people who have actually played both games believe that BG3's handling of reactions is wildly insufficient as it currently is.

As someone who thought playing a party of four paladins would be neat in Solasta, I can see both sides of the argument there.

Larian's chief concern here seems to be avoiding anything that breaks the flow of combat, in order to make it go as quick as possible, so any kind of pop-up system that would pause the game doesn't seem to be in the offing.

I'm sorry if this idea came up before, it's a little similar the QTE suggestion, but a compromise might be locking the camera to the opponent's turn and having a button appear above them, that if it, or the spacebar were held down would pause the game, and bring up a dropdown telling you what the action is, and who is in range with what reaction, most people following the combat will know what they're looking for, so it wouldn't disrupt combat unnecessarily.

There, we can put this to bed finally.

Larian will let us act during the enemy turn eventually, right?

I understand if this is something Larian is concerned about, and I'm pretty much in the acceptance stage in regards to knowing that proper reactions aren't making it into this game. But I sincerely wish they would have actual consistency in applying that kind of philosophy to literally everything else in the game as well.

Why are there so many empty containers? Why does every single NPC need a special close-up cinematic even if they only have one sentence to say? Why is it even necessary to have so many random junk items like forks and plates that only sell for 1 gold each, and then not automatically mark them as junk items to be mass sold in bulk? How come when food items are sent to camp storage, we still need to fish them out of said storage to even use them to long rest? What the actual hell is the chain system even supposed to achieve compared to a simple click and drag thing that literally every other developer uses?

Isn't stuff like that even more disruptive to the overall pacing of the game than reactions theoretically are? It's just, stuff like this is something any other cRPG developer would get absolutely raked over the coals for, and yet it somehow feels like the BG3 community lives in a completely separate dimension from the rest of the cRPG enthusiast community in how much they are willing to tolerate or ignore.

Feel free to corect me but arent reactions supposed to happen BEFORE strike even land? O_o

Some reactions are in response to something landing, and they reduce the amount of damage taken or retaliate with damage.

Uncanny Dodge is among them.

No, I'm not.
You have just to check any discussion pretty much anywhere, especially on places with explicit visible user rating like reddit, to see that every suggestion to imitate the Solasta reaction system is drowned in upvotes while the opposite happens to guys like you who love to complain about how "bad" Solasta is.
And that's true EVEN in a fanboy den like the BG3 subreddit, where opinions are OVERWHELMINGLY over-defensive in favor of Larian on average.

Last but not least, I'll stress that I chose my words very deliberately there: "the vast majority of players who are familiar with both". Meaning "players who actually had their chances to play both games for a meaningful amount of time".
It doesn't mean your random-ass clueless casual guy picked gods-know-where to give some impromptu feedback, maybe based on sensations and first impressions.

P.S. Any argument about the problems with the things that Solasta DID NOT adapt is intrinsically stupid to use against what they successfully implemented, by the way.
As I already pointed in the past, few specific abilities being an issue and requiring either a custom solution or a revamp does not work as a reason to ditch the entire reaction system, even if you seem to think otherwise.

When an attacker hits you... It doesn't really specify whether before or after damage is rolled in the case of Uncanny Dodge.

Regardless, I'm trying to figure out a way to make presets work, so in this case I don't know how you'd set a preset for Uncanny Dodge that would satisfy a player other than to base the preset on damage dealt to the rogue.

I do find it interesting that the vast majority of people who have played Solasta ARE the ones saying their Reaction system isn't really invasive to the flow of combat. There are a few reactions that are, but the vast majority of reactions in that game do not drive people crazy and make combat suck. In fact, one thing Solasta does better than BG3 IS combat. Frankly, Solasta blows BG3 combat out of the water. It's more strategic, balanced, easier to learn, actions are easier to find and understand...

BG3 is getting better, mind you, and I have high hopes for it. But it's not there yet. Reactions is a BIG part of that.

And yeah. Bard is coming to Solasta soon. I'm sure they're also trying to figure out how to not have a pop-up hell.

Part of Solasta combat being better isn't just Reactions, but balance.

Anyway, the current system might be manageable if you could interact with your character when it isn't your turn. Like, you had your UI turned into only the available Reactions you had on your hotbar and could use one every round.

That's the most feasible and realistic of Larian's limitations.

Within the framework of the game, there would be no focus on shortening combat with Swarm AI and Swen saying they were averse to pop-ups, only to do the opposite.

Though I still maintain that part of that was an excuse to cover up the poor foresight of their engine and its constraints on a proper 5e system and not what we were delivered.

Regardless, they did not just include Swarm AI for its effects to be negated by everyone having to do pop-ups.

- The yare not mutually exclusive ("Swarm AI" just moves unities in group and still does attacks individually).

- They don't need to be "pop-ups", there are smoother ways to do prompt confirmation, including ones that take virtually no interruption if the player is quick on the click.

I'm not sure how it would look like if let's say 4 archers were attacking Gale at the ""same time"" (Swarm AI) when he could trigger Shield.
It would really disrupt the new system... or at least its purpose and its appeal.

No interruption is absolutely not possible imo with this new and very fast AI.

OK. Let's face it. Larian is looking to do something for reactions that won't create popups/prompts or whatever you want to call them. If they were just looking to go the Solasta route, they'd have implemented it a long time ago.

I mean, it's all my best guess and all, but I'm thinking that the reason we haven't gotten true reactions in BG3 is because they are attempting to come up with a preset-style solution so combat will be quick and crisp without interruption. That's part of why I'm even spending time trying to figure out how to make presets as simple as possible. I figure that Larian would probably rather avoid even including Reactions at all than to have it mess up the flow of the combat.

Still, I have to agree with Tuco. There really are ways to make the prompts quick, which Composer kinda showed us, and I think it was Tuco mentioned (left click to React and right click to skip; you wouldn't even need to click on an on screen button).

Seriously, a prompt doesn't occur THAT often in Solasta for most classes and their abilities. It's not like enemies are triggering AOO every round or triggering Counterspell every round. Like I said, Paladin Smite pops up a bit too much, and Uncanny Dodge almost once a round IF you get your rogue into close range or there are archers. But, again, like someone said, if you use Uncanny Dodge on the first enemy who attacks you, it doesn't pop up again. It's rather unusual, too, that you'd NOT use it on the first enemy. And, if you don't use it on the first enemy to attack you, why is that? It's because the game asked you, and YOU decided that you should hold off. If you don't get a prompt, YOU wouldn't decide such a thing at all. The game would.

Anyway, I'm still going to try to work on developing an idea for presets just because - well, I'm bored and I find it interesting - maybe Larian needs a bit of help in this regard. So, why not at least try?

Shoot. If we are able to come up with something that they develop and let us test it and find that it actually makes the game faster and more fun, why shouldn't we at least try something besides prompts? Now's the time for testing. If Larian were to put out a Preset Reactions system in Patch 9 for us to test for them, I'd be 100% for it. Let's give it a go - as long as they give us at least the prompt system should player feedback show them that we, the player base, do in fact hate the preset system.

Are you guys seriously not open to at least trying some sort of preset system?

Incidentally, if you are willing to give up "crit fishing", Smite is exactly one of those abilities that would MOSTLY work just fine as a direct-use ability (like Battlemaster superiority dice maneuvers already do) except for when it's applied on top of a AoO as a reaction (THEN it would need a prompt).

And yes, GM4Him nailed what I meant with "virtually no interruptions". If you are paying attention to the action and expecting the reaction to come by, as soon as the "dramatic slow down" is even beginning you'd be quickly able to left click to confirm your reaction or right click to skip it.
Then the action would go by with hardly any actual pause. And even some eye candy on top, if you like that sort of thing.

If anything, a compromise I could see is that when a "spell slot use" is required (i.e. Smite), the game could set for a compromise (i.e. "Always use the lower -or higher- level spell slot available instead asking which).