Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General It's almost hard to believe this game was going to ship without reactions/interrupts

I was just fooling around with the game again in these days and once I reached level 5 again and got through a couple of battles I found myself thinking "I can't believe this game almost shipped without the Interrupt/Reaction system".

It's even weirder to think that at some point there were users on this very same forum arguing AGAINST its addition.

I feel like it adds so much to the quality of the engagements and that some classes would be basically crippled by its absence.
I doubt I'll ever get tired of activating a Counterspell at the right moment, for instance. And my hope is to see the whole system expanded with the missing spells and abilties.

Admittedly a thread that doesn't have much going for it, but there was no other one where sharing this realization was particularly pertinent.

I'm right with you. This is something that really adds to the system, I'm glad they put it in and I'm glad people pushed for them. And it's not lost on me that since their inclusion I've not heard anyone complain about them.

Ignoring a third of the potential actions of players that a system offers sounds very - let's call it 'different'... but like I said often, my biggest issue with the game is Larian's design philosophy in the first place.

Yeah and it makes combat flow much faster than when you had to be searching your hotbar for stupid toggles and pressing them on and off all the time. I think among this change and Swarm AI Larian did great job at speeding up combat.

Is there any kind of confirmation that Larian actually planned to ship the game with the original reaction system? I personally find that a bit hard to believe, but I could be mistaken!

I played EA before either of these were added, so I am excited to give them a go! That was one of my biggest worries when initially playing. I was like... this game is great in a lot of ways, I even think the combat is pretty engaging... but it is so slow, like way slower than DOS2... and it is going to be hard to trudge through 100+ hours of this.

Im perfectly happy with the amount of changes ive seen in this last panel from hell, im not sure if they where gonna have all these absolute changes but hopefully i will be able to climb ladders without issues because day 1 of early access i had an issue woth a ladder this last week i ran into an issue with a ladder.

I agree,I'm also happy about the reaction system.

Agree, definitely a game changer and in my opinion one of the best changes we've seen through EA.


I have only been browsing the forums for a couple weeks now, so I completely missed this discussion when it was relevant, but the only counter argument I can think of is that some players might not be amused having their combat slowed down by constant interruptions. But the interruptions can be toggled on and off, so even those players should be satisfied. It's a win-win situation, I wish this approach of letting the players choose how they interact with the systems was more common and applied to some of the more controversial decisions Larian made.

In the recent interview released for Multiplayer.it they basically admitted that the entire system wasn't originally planned and they decided it was important to work on it exclusively on the base of the feedback/pressure they got from the user base during EA.

Hmm i wonder who pressured them into gay bear sex and breaking dnd rules 🤨

What im about to say will probably sound smug ... but i think we all thought about it at least once.

Yes, it was good call from Larian to listen to us about this one. ^_^

DnD rules are not laws, they are guidelines and DMs are encouraged to ignore them if that makes the adventure more fun and enjoyable for the party.

Frankly I don't believe Larian ever planned to ship without them, it's just that reactions are a difficult thing to tackle in a video game. They put a lot of emphasis on making combat flow as smoothly as possible (which is great), so it's no wonder coming up with a reaction system that doesn't break that flow took some time and deliberation.

keyword "enjoyable"

check the forums and tell me how the party is enjoying it.

I gotta ask my DM and the rest of my table how much fun they are having when I'm rolling 5 dice for my attacks and pick the best one.

I wonder how useful counterspell will be in BG3. One of the big reasons you want counterspell in D&D is to stope powerful enemies from using magic travel means to escape and killing a powerful enemy rather than having to keep chasing after him. I wonder if those type of situations will happen in game where an enemy decides it doesn't want to die and if we can use counterspell to prevent escape.

First thing that comes to mind is if you try to engage Ethel in the teahouse, she bolts after one round.

Yes, adding the reaction system is clearly a massive improvement, and thank goodness for all the folk who had a grasp of 5e and how it should work and therefore were able to highlight the inadequacy of what Larian initially seemed to be planning.

I confess I wasn't one of them, as a newbie to 5e when BG3 EA launched. It wasn't until I played Solasta a while afterwards, partly because of all the feedback I'd seen here praising its superior handling of reactions, that I really understood what people were talking about and how much it would improve the game to be able to set reactions to prompt us for action if we wished.

Everyone who pushed hard for a proper reaction/interrupt system is owed a huge thank you in my opinion!

It’s hard to believe they gave out advantage for high ground and standing behind an enemy, and that disengagement was a bonus action and was merged with jump.