Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback What is ONE ROUND? and this and that

Heya!

Just to add on to some of the things others have said here, it sounds like most of your gripes are from things that Larian have changed or homebrewed, rather than the D&D system they're supposedly derived from (the game started from a point of being D:OS2's ruleset, that had a 5e coat of paint, with gradually more things tweaked towards 5e rules as time has gone on... but it's still not really close to a proper or well balanced system)

It's unfortunate that you stopped at 4e; a lot of folks agree that 4e was an overall poor move, and the system only lasted a couple of years before it was replaced. It was more made-for-video-games than other editions, and oversimplified a lot of things. 5E brought the tiller back substantially, and blended ease of accessibility and simplicity of system with something more satisfying and crunchy than 4e; not as complex or drowned in different numbers as 3.5 or PF, but still mechanically meaningful. It's a really good balance, even if it's not perfect, and there's a reason it's now approaching the longest running edition of D&D; it's a good edition.

In terms of what you can do: each character has things they can do on their turn; most things cost a portion of your turn economy – characters have an Action, possibly a Bonus Action, and Movement. Each character also has one reaction, which are specific things triggered possibly outside of their turn by other factors, and they have one free interaction per turn as well – this can be grabbing something off a table, drawing a weapon, or any number of various small things. If you want to interact with more things than that one freebie, though, you'll need to use your action to interact with an object. Each ability, feature, perk or other action will tell you what part of your turn economy it takes; most things take your action. There are no more 'full-round-actions' that have other rules related to what other parts of your turn they cause you to not be able to use, or partially use, or anything like that; it's direct, simple and straight-forward, and everything takes up the portion of your economy that it says it does.

So... in 5e, characters are presumed to be competent and proficient enough to do most of what they are doing without opening themselves up to awkward attacks mid-action; whether it's casting a spell, standing up from prone, moving around an enemy, or grabbing something out of your pocket, none of that provokes opportunity. What does provoke opportunity attacks, primarily, is moving out of another creature's attack range. A few other effects can as well, if certain feats are in play, but moving out of range is the main one. Taking an opportunity attack is also an expenditure of effort on the attacker's part; it takes up their reaction, of which they only get one per round. This is sensible (and a lot more so than 3.5's “you provoked six attacks of opportunity when you moved around this character – yes they made all six during the half a second it took you to take those three steps, no they can't attack that often on their turn normally”).

A round is still about six seconds of time, but mechanically it is the time from the beginning of your turn, until the beginning of your next turn. There is no universal 'round timer', though if you prefer to yo can always imagine it as starting at the first initiative character's turn – many do. Most effects that have lasting duration don't consider or care about 'rounds', and it's not a function much used. Rather, effects last longer durations and the save-out comes at either the beginning or end of the affected creature's turn, if one is available.

So, for example, you can cast hold person on a target, and they will immediately have to make a save when you cast the spell; if they fail, they are paralysed for up to one minute. The affected creature will have a chance to save out at the end of each of their turns, so, regardless of anything else, the caster will always get at least one of the target's turns value for their spell, and the target still loses that turn – being out of action for at least one full round, usually more. Right now, in Larian's programming, they've screwed this up terribly, and affected creatures will save out at the beginning of their turns, meaning that, under Larian's homebrew, you can stick your hold spell, and still get zero value for it, because it won't deprive the target creature of even a single turn, if they make the second save-out. This issue affects all spells with on-going effects; if you look at the focus thread on spells, the spell timing problem, and other issues with spells are discussed in more depth there. Focusing by-turn rather than by-round ultimately works a lot better for game flow, and saves futzing around with changing initiative orders, which gets messy; in active play, it's an all around improvement over 3.5 in this regard.

The next gripe you mention is pure Larianism, unfortunately, and they've shown no inclination to change it yet, despite a lot of forum voice taking issue with it. In normal 5e, a target that falls asleep, such as from the sleep spell, falls prone, is incapacitated, unconscious and drops what they're holding. If it's the spell, they sleep for a minute, or until they are woken – and specifically, it takes another creature's Action to wake them up. Then they are awake, but they are still prone, and can't do anything about that until their turn, when they can spend their movement to stand up, and use their one free interaction to grab one thing they were previously holding when they do; if they were holding more things, such as a weapon and a torch, they'd need to use their action to recover everything and so on.

In Larian-verse, everyone has been given the ability to shove with their bonus action at all times, that shove wakes up sleeping targets and always succeeds, the target is moved 15 feet or more in a direction for free, and they automatically stand up when woken – all Larian homebrew, which so far they've shown no inclination to change, despite a lot of calls for it.

Unfortunately, your gripe regarding the gnoll bowman is correct, and there's no fault with Larian there, apart from their slightly overblown gnolls with more attacks than they should have for 5e balance at this level. In 5e, combatants are presumed to be combat aware and competent enough to not be constantly exposing themselves to extra attacks all the time; you can stand up and be combat aware enough to do so without provoking opportunity attacks, and if you are inclined to shoot your bow, you are presumed to be competent enough to do so without endangering yourself as well.

If you fire your bow while you have targets threatening you, the peril of doing so and keeping yourself safe, and the capacity of those enemies to hinder you as you're trying to shoot, imposes disadvantage on your attacks; you roll two die and take the lower result, for your attack rolls; that is the penalty for attempting to shoot in melee range.

Tactically speaking, this just means that you should try to capitalise on when you make someone vulnerable, so that you and your team can get the most out of it – knocking someone down directly before they get their own turn will give you very little value or chance to make the most of that opportunity. In 5e, you can take the 'ready' action, which allows you to take an action outside of your turn order, using your reaction and a specified trigger; you can ready to trip a target just before your fighter and your barbarian act, for example. In BG3 right now, however, we do not have access to the Ready action, and Larian have shown no signs of giving it to us, despite many calls for it, so this tactical ability is not available.

Don't get me started on Larian's Fly.....

Don't worry... in 5e Fly works like you'd imagine it should... do worry, however, because Larian's game engine is actually two dimensions, and operates on layers, and has since the D:OS2 days (for example, if you throw a fireball at three goblins on a set of stairs, and you aim it at the middle one, the middle one will get hit, but the one above it and the one below it will not, despite being only 5 feet away... because they are on different levels and the spell is actually a 2-dimensional circle, not a sphere).... they cannot have creatures in the air, because they must exist on a ground point at all times. So all flying is just fancy jumping, and it's completely dumb and ridiculous.

Last rules gripe – yeah, in 5e, Dash, Disengage and Dodge are all standard actions that everyone can take. Dash allows you to use your movement again, Dodge imposes disadvantage on any incoming attack rolls (and grants advantage on dexterity saving throws), and Disengage protects your movement from provoking opportunity attacks. Normally, these all cost your Action, and are costly investments to take for most characters. Any time your Wizard is dashing, dodging or disengaging, they aren't casting spells, usually.

Jumping is just part of your movement, if you choose to, and it consumes the same amount of movement as distance you cover. There are some rules that govern how far you can jump in various ways (as well as caveats for athletics checks to make additional distance beyond your normal ability) – but suffice to say the scrawny wizard will not be able to jump very far or high, compared to the fighter.

In Larian's rendition, they've passed a lot of those things into bonus actions, and given them to everyone as bonus actions for free all the time – hugely stepping on the toes of the individual classes that can get some of those actions as bonus actions as special class perks. This is a very bad move for balance, amongst other things, but so far they've shown no inclination to pull it back to 5e rules, despite many voices calling for it.

Normally, the Help action allows you to grant advantage to an ally on whatever they're trying to do – it costs your action, and benefits them. There are also a number of spells and effects that will use the action of another ally to break – such as sleep requiring an ally action to wake you up, or allies being able to use their action to free you from being entangled, and so on. There is also the Stabilise action – which is using your action to make a Medicine check on a dying character to stabilise them. It doesn't restore hit points or bring them to consciousness, it just takes them out of the dying state.

Combining many of these into the general Help Action makes a certain amount of sense for a video game – help should be applicable to all of the spells that require an action to break, for example, and it should equate to a medicine check on a dying character, too. Right now, however, we have a very haphazard and broken implementation from Larian: We cannot use Help in the traditional sense, to assist an ally, at all, we also cannot use it to wake sleeping characters or free them from vines – even though Larian's own tool tip for the entangle spell lifted the text of the spell directly from the 5e handbook, and says that you can. Help on a dying character heals them and brings them to consciousness... and of course, in Larian's implementation this also means they immediately stand up from prone as well, which makes it completely broken (basically, if you have more characters than enemies, you cannot lose, since you can just bring each other up endlessly). It's not great in its current state.

Sorry for the ramble – I just tend to want to clarify when people lean into blaming 5e for the things that Larian have done ^.^ Hope some of this was helpful!