Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Reactions Need A Pop-Up Dialog - Change My Mind

Reactions are SO MUCH more than attacks of opportunity in 5e. They are a core part of the system's balance. Predetermining reactions will not work because they often use limited resources. Predetermining reactions will change the balance of class abilities, spells, etc. in REALLY BAD ways.

Larian staff seems to have an overriding directive to make combat faster. That's fine, but the trade-off in this case is unbalancing. Watch any video of Solasta gameplay and you'll never see anyone spend more than a second responding to a reaction dialog.

Change My Mind...

Explain how spells like Feather Fall, Counter Spell, or Shield could work without unexpectedly burning through all your spell slots? How about class abilities like Warding Flare that can only be used a few times a day? And since you only get one reaction per turn, even taking a simple opportunity attack may or may not be ideal every time you could take the attack.

Well, that´s the point.
One thing about reactions is that in the TT D&D5e game you can choose to take your reaction or not, or to whom you want to react. That´s logical because you only have one per turn.
Maybe you want to use your shield against the ogre´s greatclub bash, not against the goblin´s knife stab. Perhaps you want to use your AoO against the mage that flees, not against the armored knight. Maybe you do not even want to spend your spell slot in it this turn.

sounds like the perfect kind of thing for RTwP; when it's available, you can choose to pause to use it.

Woah, it would be very chaotic to play in RT that way. I mean, you and the enemies have one reaction per turn, and one round has 6 seconds, so, if you have a 4vs4 fight that would be 4 pauses for input minimum every 6 seconds

And I said minimum because you can choose not to use your reaction so the game will ask for input for every time you are able to use it. Imagine using it with the shield spell: a wizard gets attacked by 3 goblins and an ogre. That would be 3 attacks of the goblins and two of the ogre. You want to use your shield against the strong hits of the ogre, so If the ogre attacks last the game will have to ask you to make the decision 5 times in 6 seconds, and that would be only one of the characters).

I think a potential mod in RT would make better use of the Predetermining reactions as the ones that are used in this game (I still do not get why they use them, but...) so you do not have to manage them.


Back on topic, spells like Feather fall, resist elements or the shield protection style seems more suited to predetermined actions, because they apply if you and your ailles are attacked, you receive damage or if you fall, you have less to decide here. Only if you want to use your spell or not. Others like Shield or Hellish rebuke and abilities like AoO would be more useful if you get to decide the objective.

Some of us have discussed this in other threads as well.

It seems obvious that taking the first "enabled" reaction, the way Larian appear to be thinking at the moment can lead to poor outcomes. Solasta interrupts the game at every point where a reaction can possibly occur to ask if you want to take a reaction, which is a perfect interpretation of the rules, but can be clunky and slow.

Our suggested alternative is to have some transient UI element indicate ( maybe available for a few seconds ) whenever a reaction is possible; if you activate the UI element while displayed, you go into a pause mode so you can then take your time to decide if you do want to take that reaction ( or not ).

I don't know how many different reaction types there are, but I think there is a need for a fairly sophisticated preferences system, allowing the player to choose to enable/disable each reaction type, and to choose ( again, for each reaction type ) whether to auto-trigger, always ask, or ask only if the player selects the transient UI element. That should cover most possibilities.

There are only 4 Spells in the Player's Handbook that are reactions (No material outside of the Player's Handbook has been confirmed):

Shield, Hellish Rebuke, Feather Fall , and Counterspell .
As readying an action will likely not be implemented the only other use is Opportunity Attack.

I think it's a little dramatic to call 4 spells and attack of opportunities a core part of the systems balance.

Shield is automatic for mages when hit. They don't know how much damage they are going to take and it covers them until the start of their next turn.
Hellish Rebuke is also automatic. When you're hit you use it.
Feather Fall is also automatic. If you're falling you use it.
Counterspell is a choice.

As a mage if I had all 4 spells prepared I would prioritize Shield, then Feather Fall, then Counterspell, then Hellish Rebuke, then Attack of Opportunity.

For all other classes Attack of Opportunity is automatic. I've never saved one in case someone else moves.


Is it worth devoting a serious amount of development time to overhauling the engine to devise a system that gives mages more agency with respect to exactly 4 spells?
I'm not convinced.

I'll be playing the hell out of Early Access and if it turns out that I find it annoying or that I burn through spells too quickly I will definitely provide that feedback.

As of now however I don't know if a system overhaul is worth it for four spells.

The fighting style with shields "Protection", the lore bard´s "Cutting words", the "Defensive duelist" feat, Battlemaster´s "Parry" and rogues "Uncanny dodge" of the PHB are also reactions.

And if they end up using Xanathar´s, an official extended-rules book of WOTC that it´s been for three years you can add the druid of spores halo & more spells like gift of gab, absorb elements, etc

For initial release only the Player's Handbook has been confirmed so it is irrelevant how long other source books have been around.



Good catch on the additional usages but as these are for non mage classes they are only competing with attack of opportunity which could be handled by the currently proposed system.

I'm not saying the current implementation is going to be perfect and given infinite resources and development time an interrupt system might be better, however I'm not convinced an combat system overhaul is necessary for what IMHO is going to be a minor impact on game-play.

I'll be able to give better feedback after Early Access.

That would be true if D&D would not have a thing called "multiclassing", you know, something that allows you to be a mage with reaction spells but also a rogue with uncanny dodge, a fighting style, bard´s cutting words, battlemaster´s parry, etc... and AoO, something that any character could do.

(ED) "Defensive duelist" "Sentinel" "Shield Master" "War Caster" and "Mage slayer" are feats that use a reaction and any character could get them.

Even a single class fighter could have AoO, defensive duelist feat, Protection fighting style and parry battlemaster maneouver, all competing for a reaction.

All of the above is from the PHB, just to clarify.

Anyway, I respectfully disagree with your reductionist statement from above about the reaction mechanics, both in D&D and in BG3 and, even if they do not include the usual rules of the core extended rulebooks; the reactions are a core mechanic of D&D5e that in my experience is used extensively so IMHO any resource expended to make it work smoothly and following the 5e rules would be a time well spent.

Agreed. You've identified 15 different reactions, so it seems a strong possibility that the current auto-activate system will not work well; particularly when there are many combatants.

It does not seem to me that there is an overhaul needed. If you can handle reactions which auto-activate, you can handle reactions through player agency. The main work needed would be UI for activation and preference setting.

Solasta is turn-based, and on the enemy's turn, if something provokes a reaction, the game gives you an opportunity to pause so you can decide whether you choose to spend it.

In Solasta's case it always pauses for reactions with a yes/no choice ( judging by the demo, anyway ). I can see circumstances where that approach may be tiresome.

If the game is TB then it is already tiresome. So I would rather have the decision to react or not, and how to react if I choose to react, be entirely within my control as the player. Put another way, if the game is in RTwP, then BG3's approach may be a good way to include reactions in a RT setting. But if the game is TB, might as well have Solasta's approach so that I at least get to retain full control as the player.

Forgot to add, the point that Solasta allows readied actions and BG3, to my knowledge, does not, is an important part of this discussion. In Solasta, I believe you can have your readied actions trigger, based on a preset condition being met, as part of your reactions. In these instances, the reactions happen automatically, resulting in surprisingly smooth-flowing combat. So the inclusion of readied actions seems to be a crucial element to making all of this come together well.

Agreed. The implementation we saw in the demo would make sense for RTwP, but It wasn't clear what benefit it had in TB. The pop-up dialog isn't really "interrupting" anything in TB.

Solasta's implementation was simple and clear to the player that a resource was being used. I'm not sure why Larian is overcomplicating this. There's enough inherent complexity in coding 5e that creating a problem where it doesn't exist seems misguided.

In the brief Solasta demo, I also didn't think it was a problem. But, IIRC, the only reactions used were mage shield spell, attack of opportunity, and blocking an attack on an ally; and they were not all available to all party members. With 15 reaction types and a large combat, it *could* become annoying to have to keep dismissing offered reactions. On the other hand, the temptation to use a reaction when offered ( in case you do not get another chance ) is quite high, so maybe it will normally be OK.

As for BG3 reactions, I guess that it is based around the event-based triggering mechanism they would have to develop to allow for ready-actions and ready-spells. Since these operate as reactions themselves, Larian possibly just chose to extend it to all reactions? But even that would be wrong, since ready actions and spells do not *have* to be taken when the triggering event occurs, the player is supposed to be able to choose.

I imagine play-testing and EA will show whether or not players think it is good enough.

If you think turnbase is tiresome you really should be following a different game.

BG3 is clearly not for you.

Honestly it's actually pretty easy you don't even need a popup on the screen:

When it's not your turn your toolbar flips to the reaction toolbar and if your character procs a reaction you just hit a button in the 2 second window. If you're too slow that's on you. You should know roughly what you want to do before hand, and 2 seconds is the perfect amount of time for shit like "I DIDNT KNOW I JUST REACTED" aka. Reactions.

If anyone played games like "the last remnant" or "Armello" they have time-sensitive mechanics that you use in the enemy´s turn.

To be fair those are simple reactions, like block or retaliate; I do not know if that would fit the amount of tactical choices the four characters you play in SP mode could do but at least you know it could be done, and maybe that would be an improvement about the current system.

I have to say I´m not really a fan of the present system. Basically they want us to be psychics so you can divine what the enemy is going to do and set your reaction accordingly before it actually happens, instead of react with the tools you have at your disposal like in 5e when the enemy does something (IF you even want to react, because maybe you need your reaction for other things or you do not want to spend a spell slot this time).

Just hard lock people in if they decide they want to hit a reaction they dont get to cancel it and they must do what they clicked. Only issue is if you're controlling 4 characters how that would work Not sure.