Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Romance is the Wrong reason

I've said it already, but it's a problem because the companions are trying to romance the PC, not the other way around. (And they do so in a "weird sex cult" way, addtionally making most/all of them seem... very horny, to put it politely, which would be only fitting for Astarion imo.)

Romance should always be player-initiated - or, even better, there should be a toggle for blocking all romance interactions.

I am more conserned with "cover your nose boo, we will leave no crevice untouched, squeek".

The OP is arguing the exact opposite.

The romance options in this game definitely feel forced and sometimes more like sexual harassment than "romance." I think the best thing would be for a dialogue option to gracefully turn down each companion and let that be the end of it. Maybe there could even be a setting option for those that find this especially bothersome.



This has been extremely rare in my D&D games. That said, there have been a couple examples over the 15 years I've DMed.

In 2012, my group had wrapped up a long-running time travel campaign that had spanned two editions of D&D (B/X and D&D 4e, if you're curious) and started on the playtest of D&D 5e. We kept the same setting, still a time travel game, but everyone made new characters. This time, they had traveled to the world's distant past when dragons ruled the skies and dragonborn ruled the land.
A quest had led them to the imperial court of the dragonborn emperor, and after performing a number of tasks for various minor nobles, the PCs had secured invitations to a costume ball being held that week. One of the characters, a dragonborn herself, caught the attention of the emperor, and after a fun filled night, had ended up laying an egg a few days later.
They player declared her character now had two new quests. She would protect the egg with her life, and after returning to the present day, unite the nations under her child as emperor/empress.
I'd like to say that went well for her, but by that time we all decided to go back to Basic Edition D&D and since she didn't want to play as a dragonborn in that edition (I literally converted 12 races from AD&D 2e just so they could play the same characters) they decided it was best to create new characters.

The other time someone decided to romance an NPC was more recent. This player, disappointed that there was no "seduce" skill in B/X D&D decided to abuse Charisma checks for exactly that purpose... with every female NPC. One night, one of the players went for pizza and the group decided this would be a good time for a shopping trip. Naturally, Mr. Charisma had to try to seduce every shopkeeper. He wanted a discount on arrows, so he tried to use Charisma to talk down the price.
The shopkeeper told him he seemed like a good lad, a good fit for his daughter in fact. Why, if he'd agree to marry the shopkeeper's daughter, he'd be happy to supply all the arrows he could ever need, and he'd even give him the family beach house for their honeymoon. Mr. Charisma thought he'd won the lottery, so he agreed to marry the man's daughter on the spot.
What wasn't explained was that the man's late wife, died in childbirth God rest her soul, was an ogre, and his daughter was a half-ogre. Mr. Charisma was an elf. He tried to talk his way out of his promise... he rolled a 1 for Charisma. He tried to sneak away before the wedding... he rolled a 1 for Dexterity. He tried to survive the wedding night... he rolled a 10 for Constitution. He ended up with visible bruises from head to toe.
The party was really looking forward to having a beach house between adventures. But unfortunately, Mr Charisma died in the first encounter on the way there, leaving his newlywed wife, Thud, a widow. The party escorted her safely back to her father in the city and delivered the bad news. The shopkeeper offered to finance the resurrection, but the player insisted he'd have a new character ready before the next encounter.

So, romance stories may happen in tabletop RPG's, but they're far from the norm. I think I've heard more horror stories (mine included) than I have of romance subplots done right. I tell that story about the dragonborn character to my players so they know, if they're going to try to "seduce" my NPCs, they had better make it fun for everyone at the table and not just some cringey gimmick like Mr. Charisma did (maybe that didn't come across in my story, but it was seriously bad).

I never said that they're the norm tho, something doesn't have to be the norm to be a part of PnP.

I think that the reason why it's more rare in PnP is because people are shy and it can feel awkward irl, but I still think that people consider it a significant aspect of RP:ing in RPG's and ultimately DnD is a RPG.
The reason why I brought it up was because the OP tries to dismiss romance in DnD games by claiming that they're not a part of DnD.
There's some people who think that DnD is literally just about fighting goblins and dragons and that's it and that other things don't matter.
That's probably the most generic way of thinking and playing it, not saying that it being generic makes it bad but to act like it's how it '' should be '' and that anything else is invalid is just straight up gatekeeping and wrong.

As someone who doesn't usually use the romancing features in RP games, I still don't see the need to remove it. Many people enjoy it as another aspect of their RP and most likely if they were just doing it for the cutscene they could probably find it on YouTube or something. That being said, it would be cool to see more complicated relationships that aren't friend/tolerate each other or sex. I imagine the grey area between the two could add some interesting RP aspects. I understand the feelings behind this post but I doubt the implementation of these romantic features (that many players enjoy) would take away from other aspects of the game. That's just my opinion though, feel free to disagree