Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Suggestion: Make it possible to switch roles in the dialogue

It is hoped that the role can be switched during the dialogue to perform check rolls, and the passive environment check during the dialogue can be performed by all team members within a certain range instead of only one person in the dialogue.
(I imagine that an exclamation mark can be used on the teammate icon to indicate that he has discovered something, and the new dialogue option can be used when switching roles)

advantage:
1. It is not necessary to re-dialogue for a specific option because the character attributes of the dialogue are insufficient.
2. Let teammates not be silent like a wooden man in the dialogue. In fact, proper participation of teammates can make the dialogue more natural.

shortcoming:
1. Players may want to switch through the confirmation option for each character in each dialogue

Maybe my ideas are naive, or there are some difficulties that I haven't noticed, but I still hope to put forward some ideas to make the game better, thank you!

PS: This is translated, I am sorry if there is any grammatical incomprehension!

+1

Yes, this aspect definitely needs improving. There have been previous discussions on this topic, but it’s worth boosting as it’s not addressed in the latest patch.

As has been talked about before it’s not totally straightforward to have party conversations if Larian want to preserve the ability have one party member in dialogue while others sneak about and do other stuff while the NPC is distracted, which I do think is a nice feature. I’ve thought in the past that it might be good if all party members chained to the one that initiates conversation are considered to be part of the discussion, or others have suggested just everyone within a certain distance who is visible.

With respect to active and passive checks, I agree that all party members participating in the conversation should get a chance to roll if the option is one available to their class/race and chip in if they succeed and the conversation leader fails. I’m not sure how well the exclamation mark suggested by the OP would work, and in fact I don’t think you can currently see teammate portraits in dialogue, but the party member or narrator could to have an appropriate line of dialogue to interrupt and handle the handover.

But then there’s the question of how the handover works. Is it just that the game manages a temporary involvement of another party member when they pass checks the leader fails, or can we actually change who the conversation leader is during the course of the conversation? And if the latter, how? Do we use the existing function to swap party members in conversation which is a bit clunky, or is something better needed? And if we can swap dynamically, I think we’ll need new dialogue lines for characters responding to lines of dialogue that an NPC that would not have said to anyone of their class/race.

Plus there’s all the complexities because dialogue also needs to work in multiplayer.

The game’s dialogue system must already be hugely complicated and adding the ability to have other party members contribute will surely make it worse, so I’m okay to accept that whatever system Larian end up with will need to make some compromises to avoid truly unmanageable numbers of lines of dialogue. But I think it’s hugely important that at least some effort is made to include the wider party more in conversation.

+1

Personally I'd like just to be able to switch the conversation to my main character when NPCs decide to pull in my companions to talk. This would solve so much headache for me when it comes to dialogues. And it's a great suggestion for companions to be able to do passive environmental checks as long as they're close.

I've been playing with a 3 custom character party and I think I see why Larian is doing it the way they have it now. Each proper player character (not companion) has its own answers/progression stored. So all 3 'player' can have the same dialogs with the party NPCs (also reputation for each player/npc combination is kept separated).

This would mean jumping in the middle would most likely cause some serious issues for how their system works, as the paths to an answer would be missing in the saves - which is problematic.


On the other hand they already have it that some dialogs with quest NPCs are unique and thus shared between all party members - in this case it shouldn't be a big issue to switch (just my guess)?



For me personally the biggest problem with this current state is that knowledge skills within the party seem to be ignored. For example my ranger has low charisma but arcana as skill. My paladin is the face but the party doesn't profit from the ranger actually knowing something - he basically doesn't listen when the paladin is talking and can't pick up info or share it

This leads to having to use characters that are both the face of the party and have as many skills as possible (hi bards), while others are just for the environment interactions.

Thanks for sharing this. I’ve never played multiplayer (even to just have multiple custom characters) so have only the haziest idea of how it works. Would using the chain system to determine groups of characters that could be part of the same convo help here, as I’m guessing that characters controlled by different players wouldn’t ever be chained together so would continue to be able to have independent conversations as currently?

Chained might be a way for the game to understand who is suposed to be there, but i think there are 2 things to consider:

1. I think Larian wants to maintain the option for every player to have custom relationships with the companions therefore no shared dialog in this case (keep in mind there is already a distinction between companions and regular NPCs so that shouldn't be a problem).

2. This mechanic is just for player created (and probably origin characters selected at creations) mechanic, so I think it could be possible to have companions in generel to join discussions (there is no issue with guidence either no matter who has it in the party).



Basically, I think the only place it might be an issue is the personal dialogs with the companions, as I think the other dialogs could be already using a different dialog-system. But its hard to say what systems are connected on code-side. I hope Larian gives us there some options.

Thank you for your valuable ideas,
about what you mentioned

I would like to ask how the current game handles partner tasks,
Lae'zel's Companion Quest "find Zorru"
In single-player mode, if the player does not prevent Lae'zel from asking to bow, Zorru will move (flee) after the dialogue is over (this plot will affect the partner's attitude),
At present, the single player mode does not seem to be a task that can be triggered repeatedly. I would like to ask if you still have an impression of the multiplayer mode.

If the situation is the same, can it be understood that the attitude of the NPC companions only changes for the player character who speaks, but remains unchanged for the player character who does not speak?

And partner attitude seems to be difficult to deal with in multiplayer mode,
In extreme terms, partner Lae'zel has a good attitude towards player A, but a very bad attitude towards player B,
If the attitude is extremely bad in a single-player situation, it will trigger the plot of leaving the team (assuming there is, or the plot of betrayal).
How the multiplayer mode will be expressed is also very troublesome.

+1, big time.

If anything, it solves the problem of "why is the wrong character handling this dialog?"