Just prior to the fabulous new patch I played as a Bard and prior to that as a Sorcerer. Often, for seemingly random reasons, perfectly happy PCs would suddenly aggro on me, ruining all sorts of gameplay and forcing me to load. There were many examples of this, but the most awkward was after Kagha wholeheartedly thanked me for convincing her not to join the shadow druids. Then all of a sudden as I was walking through the grove to claim my reward for saving the grove all the druids, including Rath, stated turning hostile. Midway through the second playthrough I was annoyed at what I thought was bugginess in the game and had no idea why this was happening. Then I realized why: the friends spell.
If I am trying to resolve a conversation peacefully through charisma skills, no one is upset when Shadowheart casts guidance in the middle of the conversation, likely because it is cast on me. Yet if I use friends, it casts on the person I am talking to, who then goes hostile once a timer ticks down after the conversation. This might be the way the spell works in PnP, but is not the way it should work in BG3.
This may seem like a nit-picky issue, but it really made my last two playthroughs where I tried out charismatic characters much less enjoyable. Not only did it make the spell not worth casting, but I had no idea why all sorts of situations were going dramatically south. I am familiar with DnD and have played both prior Baldur's Gate games and was confused by this, and I have little doubt that players not familiar to the game will be even more confused.
Personally, I think this spell should be changed in BG3 to simply apply to the person in dialogue, to give them advantage on the roll, just like guidance gives them a bonus on the roll. I don't think a spell granting advantage on charisma-based skills is too overpowered, and encourages different ways of competing the game. I've even thought of making certain characters high half-elves instead of wood-half elves because access to this as a high-elf cantrip would give open up opportunities for non-cha based characters to use skills meaningfully on occasion. I also think that this will be much less confusing to players new to the game who, like myself, will be constantly wondering why people start attacking them out of the blue.
If for some reason Larian deems the above change too powerful for some reasons, please just cut the stupid spell out of the game. It isn't worth using to face such drastic consequences for those in the know and it risks ruining the game experience of those who are not in the know.
Thanks for making an awesome game and your kind consideration in thinking about this change.
