Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Allowing other characters to speak in conversation

So I'm playing as a main character ranged Warlock with high charisma and speaking skills. As we wander the wilderness I usually control the cleric so she is out in front when we run in to a combat encounter. The problem is that sometimes we run into a conversation encounter. In this case the cleric is the speaker and the only speaker meaning my main character with the high charisma and speaking skills does not get to roll any of the checks. There is a button to switch to another character but that character is considered "outside" the conversation and still can not participate.

Just wondering if this is how conversations are intended to work in single player or not fully implemented. Or maybe I'm missing something.

I hope that eventually you would be able to swap who is talking, but that sort of thing seems like it could be quite tricky to implement with many possible edge cases which could be hard to account for.

But if a conversation can be triggered at any point when you enter an area you would always need to be using your "face" character at all times just in case which doesn't seem right either.

Not tricky at all (I think they even did it in their previous game) - just include dialogue options and highlight what character would say it in the same list as your own.

I agree. Not just for conversations, but gameplay moments as well.

When you get to the first open area, for example, you can find the Mind Flayer who tried to turn you and you have to pass a series of insight/wisdom checks to avoid getting tricked into feeding yourself to it. I failed my last check and my character basically leaned towards the mind flayer slowly for a "kiss" and it basically consumed me right in front of my companions. None of them said or did anything to stop me from sacrificing myself.

If the game had made it seem like they were also getting mentally manipulated I'd have understood, but it literally just looked like they were passively standing in the background staring at me getting eaten.

I'm assuming this is just an early access problem. A lot of the checks aren't even face character checks. I've seen lots of Arcana checks for instance. The game should let every party member roll vs some of this stuff.

This is also true, and if an NPC succeeds, they can interject into the conversation with what they know. Probably with it only taking into account NPCs within a certain range of the conversation.

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Either we need our companions to be able to automatically jump in when we hit their area of expertise (highest bonus in the party), or a way to manually swap out characters. The 1st is harder, but in my opinion better.

+1000

That was a major negative point for me in DoS1-2. My team members don't interact with PNJ by theirself. They are not lifeless puppets, they are my companions and they need to give a point of view during a conversation.

+1

Yes. Kingmaker does this. For example, if you have a dialogue option that is a diplomacy check it will use the stats of whoever has the highest diplomacy score in the roll unless the situation specifically requires the main character like you are making a speech to inspire your troops, your companions can't do that for you. Works great. For this game, the character models and conversations are so nice it might be better to actually switch the camera to see the companion speak up.

Yes
And in that case, you can do a leader with no charisma but still try to do a persuasion test with another team member

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+1

many interactions are forced on the player as a complete surprise, we should at least be able to choose who makes the roll if that character is present.

Pillars of Eternity 2 did this pretty well, imo. Your party members could add their skills to conversations, and in certain scripted encounters you could pick which party member would do which item. In a jungle and see some footprints? Make sure the ranger inspects them rather than your wizard. Have to cross a chasm? Send the barbarian to jump over it with a length of rope.

This is something I would love to see. To be honest I think it's super important to implement some sort of group conversation into the game just for the sake of the multiplayer piece. When we play online it feels like whoever starts the conversation drives the whole story for the party. Leaves no room for PC character conflict. In DOS 1 they had a rock paper scissors system that had you battle it out for who got to pick the big discussion ending choice. I'd be happy with that or maybe even some sort of roll off system. Every time a major choice comes up in conversation all players involved do a roll off. The player with the highest number used their character stats to roll on whatever choice they make. This would work well for those wanting to meta game and always use the best stats but in the opposite end it would also allow for those hilarious moments where the highly moral paladin has his first naughty moment with x npc. It also makes all pcs feel like their character is involved with the conversation and they contribute to driving the plot. When you sit there and watch the first character to talk to the npc make all these curcial decisions you may not enjoy it kind of sucks. However if you have a chance to speak an you lose each role fair and square it makes it feel like you were still involved and helps you RP the character out. I hope this makes sense to everyone.... I just tend to ramble sometimes.....

Yes, this would be awesome.

+ 1

Same here. I have a Fighter main character that goes in the front (because also you can' really make a party formation and I don't want my Cleric or my Wizard to go the first in case I encounter a conversation because if I enter a combat they will die fast) and when i'm faced with conversations I am in real trouble unless there's something involved that I am actually good at (Mostly Intimidation or Animal).

There should be an way to make it work that the character in the party which works best for that situation can be chosen or the option appears. For example if you have the option to be persuasive, the character with most persuasion should be the one to roll the dice and so on.