Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Large battles are nothing but a chore

sorry my quotesse is complete garbage.

Well you know old war injury, causes my leg to shoot out for no reason at all. Bloody wars and all that. besides spanking them is frowned upon, or so I've been told.

Yeah, I've not tried a Cavalier in any campaign, ones we've been doing are either warehouse, sewer or other hard to get to places. Which also rules out my playing centuar.... so their goes the idea of centuar ranger, with halfling archer on her back... I almost cried, but realized I lost my feeling again, blasted thing keeps running off.

Yeah the one you mentioned is it. I myself prefer the okay it's OP combo of tunnel fighter, polearm master, and sentinel. to keep my squishy companions safe from harm. Especially in tight places.

POOR KIDS!!! did you not read what my youngest did to me!! made a mockery of me, and there were witnesses as well. Luckily they knew I had to drive them to the hospital to get their ribs looked at so they refrained from mentioning it.

Anyway back to OP. Currently I think again not sure if I posted this in this one about Large battles or the other one...ones? Alot of my issue with large battles from non cheese. See my thread about battle with Guts. if you don't wanna look shoot me a pm and I'll put it up. for now also playing. Is the scripting really which slows things down immensely one person do to something in their script causes them to just stand there master debating, before most times simply repeating what they did previously. Which can make it a pain, and time consuming books are forums are a good thing at that point. or a nap.. was it this OP that decided they needed a cat nap? Then there is just the sheer amount of aoe, and actions they can preform.

On the other hand, the relevant question isn't whether a gnoll could make use of an acid arrow, the question is where would he obtain it? Unless we are positing that they order them through Acme-Coyote Mercantile, they have to obtain the acid, manufacture the glass container that contains said acid, as well as some means by which to attach said glass container to an arrow in a manner that doesn't interfere with firing the arrow. Not sure that gnoll society has actually provided for the development of these crafting skills and techniques. While there may be a shaman here or there that has learned how to work with acid and glass - they would be in short supply, as would such arrows. While they might trade with more advanced societies such as goblins or orcs, again they would only have limited amounts of such arrows - not enough to arm every gnoll, dick and harry archer with them. I think the use of such things needs to be toned down in certain situations - a bunch of drow would have all they need, as would a group of bandits, a small pack of gnolls should have maybe one arrow they looted from an earlier victim, but not an armory.

There is relevant data in the goblin camp that covers this. For those not caring for spoilers I'll mark it as such.

There should simply be a way to speed up the AI and have them take their turns faster. If we cannot interrupt them (which we currently cannot) then there's no reason not to allow a speed up option. As it is, the camera in large areas, makes it impossible to even know what just happened since the camera won't follow the attack, necessitating the combat log which is just annoying on top of it all.

+1 Speed up AI aspect of combat.

This is basically why I've stopped playing, I really just can't face doing the Goblin camp again. Big complex battles are fun from time to time. When every time I sit down to play I do about two encounters it's gone a bit far.

Edit: Also entirely agree about speeding up the AI. Also from a DM perspective, secretly rigging initiative to favour the player speeds combat up a lot.

a good part of it as I mentioned somewhere is scripting going into a panic. Which causes enemies to simply stand there for a little while. Watch the meter at the top to see what I mean. When it is working properly it's not nearly as bad. though it can get really bad 12 enemies and 4 of them standing there for minutes at a time.... it was horrible. need to go see my therapist again do to it.

The worst part of these mega-encounters is when enemies who are further away/ have a poor chance of hitting you just hang back and "plot their move" without actually doing anything at all. I mean, it makes combat easier (so I'm not complaining about that) but it also makes it fairly tedious. As somebody was saying, 2-3 encounters is about all I can manage in one sitting.

thats what I was talking about.

A lot depends on how you see their culture. Do they trade? Do they have organization in terms of gathering OR manufacturing OR bartering/bribing for equipment.

There is an awesome guild to gnolls as seen "through the eyes" of the DnD franchises here:

http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/2017/12/dungeons-dragons-guide-to-gnolls.html

Depending on the source/timeperiod, there is some thought that gnolls intelligence (average) is around 8; which (again, depending on how you compare) might be comperable to an IQ in the 80s. There is a really interesting discussion of behaviors and descriptions of abilities and activities related via intelligence.

The link is here:

https://paulcooijmans.com/intelligence/iq_ranges.html

But the relavant discussion of an IQ in the 80s is as follows:

"80-89 — Below average

Above the threshold for normal independent functioning. Can perform explicit routinized hands-on tasks without supervision as long as there are no moments of choice and it is always clear what has to be done. Assembler, food service.

This is also the I.Q. range most associated with violence. Most violent crime is committed by males from this range. This does not imply that all males in this range are violent, nor that all violent males are in this range. But when the modal I.Q. of a group is in this range, one may expect trouble with with many male members of that group. When the modal I.Q. of a society or population is raised upward of this range, violence decreases as fewer males fall in this range then, given the shape of an even remotely normal distribution. When the modal I.Q. of a society is below this range to begin with though, raising it may increase violence. The causal mechanism behind the (statistical) relation between crime and below-average I.Q. is likely that lower I.Q. levels inherently tend to go with having less impulse control, being less able to delay gratification, being less able to comprehend moral principles like the Golden Rule, and being overstrained by the cognitive demands of society.

And, this is the range into which men of average or just above average intelligence sink when under the influence of alcohol; alcohol reduces I.Q. by up to about 25 points while drunk (own data), which explains why many drunk men are violent and aggressive (own hypothesis)."

As there are known to be exceptional specimens of Gnoll-hood (Flinds are depicted as having an average intelligence of 13) I think there is plenty of range, and potential support for the idea that they could do some crafting/trading and so on.



In another thread I head that Larian warned people playing in multiplayer NOT to skip quickly through dialogue as it made the game more likely to be glitchy (I'm severely paraphrasing). I would worry that the same might apply to combat. I'd rather go a little slow than crash.



This comment kind of squinked me out because it reminds me of how a bully would think "I don't want THEM to be able to hurt ME"; and hopefully that's not how it was meant; but hey, there is a reason that the University of Minnesota used RPGs (D&D specifically) as part of personality testing.

Anyone tried the multiplayer version ?

When splitting the team in 2 (each player control 2 characters), the combat flow become faster when their turn are right after the other.
That's because each player can do their action at the same time.

Applying this to ennemies seems like a possible step to a solution.
Simultaneous movement by having them split in 2 groups.Each one led by 1 "virtual player"

TBH I think whenever the AI gets fixed/better this would not be a problem so much anymore. When you are bored by what happens to the battleground you are currently in as long as you cannot do anything this game may just not be for you. Also I would recommend never to try the tabletop, as that takes way more time. Sometimes even an encounter vs just one powerful enemy can take an hour.

I agree. When the ridiculous amount of time the AI plans its next move and sometimes does literally nothing is fixed, big battles will be as good as small encounters.

Honestly I read the pupito quote like this "I want to be OP, not challenged or have to think. I want the unoriginal boring troped out of this realm enemy, so I can just waltz through the game." or maybe it's because I'm an ass, but I would not play any game, that involved walk cast, walk cast. Okay I did but even Skyrim made you think at times. Thats what 5e is about and what some are missing. Your spose to think, plot, plan, strategize think of new ways.

the rest of you post I enjoyed, glad you looked that stuff up, my google is often times like my quotefu utter trash.