I haven't spent that long with the game, but I already found an incredibly easy way to trivialize combat.
Example:
Stealth your entire party outside NPC view, then send one party member into combat.
From this point on, all NPC's are frozen in time as long as you don't enter their view with the remaining (out-of-combat) party members. You can then in-turn have each remaining party member enter combat exactly how they please. ignoring patrol paths and getting into perfect position before unleashing a strong attack and finally entering combat. When they are all eventually in combat (after dealing a severe blow to the enemy forces) and ended each of their turns. The enemies then have a "Surprised" non-reaction, before it's your go all over again. Needless to say, this is a devastating advantage.
I surely can't be the first person to bring this up. Is this working as intended?
My idea for a solution:
When a party member enters combat, force everyone within effective range into Time-Based mode, and into the combat initiative queue at the top of the screen.
Even if out of combat, everyone within effective range of combat should adhere to the laws of time dilation and queue order.
This "fix" would absolutely awful for me and probably others who do not enjoy the "standard" party setup and combat style. Stealth definitely needs some serious work but not to the point of making it impossible to set up ambushes.
Once a character has made a surprise attack, they should be added to the initiative order. This should apply separately to each character, since we are stuck moving one at a time a group surprise attack is impossible. Definitely shouldn't apply to the whole party as this would completely ruin some playstyles. If the out of combat characters haven't been spotted, they should still get to move into position and make their opening attack before being pulled into the combat. Maybe they could be forced into TB mode, but definitely not into the combat itself.
If there was a way to maneuver everyone into position at the same time then click one button to make everyone attack, it would be much better but unfortunately we don't have this ability. Multiplayer with communication can probably do this, but I don't think it can be added for single player, since entering TB mode out of combat doesn't properly pause the world.
It occurred to me after one of the previous posts, Nebuul's, that we do have the ability to maneuver each character into ambush positions simultaneously via Turn-based mode. If you want to set up an ambush by sneaking 4 characters into positions, you can maneuver them in turn based mode as if they are already in combat without initiative order. Then, if 1 gets spotted, it makes sense that all are pulled into combat. All characters may not have been spotted, but they all act in initiative order.
The issue is still with multiplayer. If one player triggers combat, everyone is sucked in. This, however, could be fixed by making it so they are only pulled in if within a certain radius. If outside that radius, they aren't. If within, they are. End of story.
After Nebuul's post, I do think that is a major issue with not sucking everyone in. You, the player, have no ability to react in time to 1 character getting sucked in. The 1 character gets ganged up on before you can get the rest into any kind of position to attack. I can tell you from experience, that sucks. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, it's not fun.
Also, I've had numerous times when I didn't realize until after several rounds that a certain character wasn't pulled into battle. That also sucks. You wind up wondering where Astarion is in the combat order only to discover he's just picking his nose at the edge of the battle. I actually just had that happen with 3 characters during the harpy fight and the goblins in the secret tunnels. I assumed they were all pulled in, but they weren't.
