Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Core 5e mechanics missing. Dodge, Disengage

There is no digengage in this game. Nor is there dodge. 5e action economy provides 5 basic actions, and you left two of them out. Making jump immune to attacks of opportunity isn't the same. When I jump out of trouble, I am subject to the landing restrictions, and sometimes I move to get to a location that allows me to jump which itself draws an AOO. This is a core 5e gameplay mechanic and a broken implementation of jump is a poor substitute. Either decouple them, or make it do what it actually says (both). In either case, implement disengage. The ability to sacrifice your action for the mobility of not drawing AOO's is a core mechanic of 5e. As is the inexplicably missing dodge action.

The balance between sacrificing 5e elements for a workable game is skewed strongly towards a system that resembles and reuses more of DDOS2 than 5e mechanics. It should be the other way around. Reuses the good stuff from your older games that makes sense in a gamified 5e system, don't shoe-horn 5e mechanics into your existing engine. That's not a 5e based game, it's just a mish mosh of unpredictable systems that users can't anticipate based on expectation.

I agree with you. Also, Jump/Disengage is treated as a bonus action in the game, while "Disengage" should be its own action, same goes for "Dodge" should they ever include it.

Complete agreement here.

Dodge is going to be coming.

A full Disengage action is a good idea as well, because even if you want to move out of the way,as you said, sometimes you have to move to jump to a spot where you aren't near an enemy, and that triggers the AoO you were trying to avoid in the first place.

Maybe keep Jump -which does not disengage- as a bonus action, and leave disengage as a full action?

You got a source for that? IMHO this should be front and center in the main UI.

I would have Dodge \ Disengage as Actions.
Jump simply costs Move points.

+1 ... no wait, +10 000

Dodge is essential in tactical team based combat. Wonder why it's not in EA since it seems pretty simple to do.

+1
Exactly my thought, but I can actually live with jumping being a bonus action.

Yeah I find it weird that dodge isn't here to begin with.

As much as I want disengage to be an action, it will further slow down combat, which isn't great. Especially in larger fights, which there is a decent amount of in the game so far.

They may change the jump=disengage mechanic at some point. I say that because enemies disengage without jumping all the time so at least for them, disengage is already in the game.

+1

Jump should just use movement, imo. They could approximate the 5e rules AND make the athletics skill actually useful by giving you a distance that you can just jump as part of your movement equal to your strength score (or str score + proficiency if you have athletics). Those are you baselines for those things based on your stats, and then items/abilities, etc... modify them further. Jump spell becomes a modifier, like x1.5 or x2 or something. It would have to also modify your tolerance for falling, but that seems fairly balanced to me. It'd be even nicer if the Pathing could just jump effortlessly for PC's with the jump distance needed. Then your spells would feel a lot more useful and the ability scores would seem like they matter for more than just attack and damage.

What we have now feels a lot like "Wow, we figured out an awesome jump mechanic and we want this awesome thing we're proud of to work the same for everyone so they can all enjoy the fruits of our labor on equal footing." And that's probably fair for EA, but by release it needs to be a lot more like "This is an RPG and you have stats that matter, and if you invest in those stats you can you really get the most out of this very cool nuanced mechanic that works without getting in your way, until you want to really tweak it. So go have fun . If you want to see how far you can take it, pump strength, athletics, and boots that cast the jump spell."

I'd appreciate them adding in proficiency bonus for their jump distance calculation with athletics proficiency. It's not really spelled out in the PHB, but it does mention Str (Athletics) checks to increase jump distance (it just doesn't give a formula for it like in earlier editions).

I'd like to see jump not be tied to disengage, and I'd like to see disengage cost an action (same for Hide, so that the Rogue's cunning action really stands out).

I mean as long as they keep the surface element port from DoS2, jump should at the bare minimum be an action. It allows you to skip out on surface damage or effects, gain advantage with high ground, and avoid AoO...

But preferably they will separate Disengage and Jump into their own and later introduce a dodge as well.

Stabbey is usually correct, but I would also like to know the source.

I don't think jump should be an action or a bonus action. It slows down play too much. The controls should be there for fine tuning when needed in or out of battle for clearing surfaces, or tweaking positioning. Someone mentioned big fights, and I think there especially is where "free" jumps would be a major improvement.

Big fights super hectic and when it comes to moving around the battlefield and establishing favorable positioning, it's a big mess. It mostly works, but it's frustrating and slow AF in its current iteration. Wasting an action on jump to clear a surface between you and an enemy means you have to endure another round of like 8-10 enemies before you get to attack. That takes forever and the target might not even be there on your turn again, requiring you to waste actions on positioning again and dragging things out even more. Making it a bonus action could help. In EA, that seems like it'd be a good middle ground, since a lot of classes still don't have useful bonus actions. I'm sure individual class action economy will get a lot of tweaking before release, but making jump free "solves" it for everyone so Larian can focus on other issues.

100% agree on disengage and hide costing actions. Thief archetype gets even better with that.