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Originally Posted by JandK
why do you keep using it turn after turn?
Wanna advice from someone who was on your path in the past?
Dont go there, you only cause yourself a headache and they never accept it anyway ... they just do it bcs they want to do it ... therefore they need system restrictions, bcs they simply dont want to control themselves.

Its that easy. smile

Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 05/08/22 10:53 AM.

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Later when enemies have more attacks and dish out enough damage to kill and not just down, the problem will be a new one. The nice unconscious buffer 5e has that is meant to save PCs from dying no longer works. Cheap resurrections are pretty lame from a narrative point of view so I really like that the unconscious state exists to protect the PCs from dying all the time.

Another problem is the AI that keeps attacking downed PCs. From a tactical point of view it makes no sense to waste attacks on unconscious targets when there are other enemies still trying to kill you. Unless of course you know reviving them to full combat capacity, albeit at 1hp, is just an easy action available to anyone and no one actually ever stays down. But that's the problem this whole thing started from. And it's much more metagamey than logical.

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I usually use healing spells or healing potions instead of help.

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Originally Posted by Icelyn
I usually use healing spells or healing potions instead of help.

Well, spells and potions cost resources while help does not.
Sure it cost you an action, but unless you have a very powerful potion or spell or the enemy is very weak the party member will go down with the next hit anyway.

If you are cynical you could argue that attacking downed party members shows how clever enemies are because they know other party members can bring them up any time infinitely.
The AI has learned that focussed fire on downed party members increases your chances to win.
Or maybe enemies are programmed to attack the party member with least HP and zero is less than any positive value.


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Originally Posted by Madscientist
If you are cynical you could argue that attacking downed party members shows how clever enemies are because they know other party members can bring them up any time infinitely.

Yeah this is a double, or actually triple failure. First they make a system where the player has an unfair advantage over enemies, being able to bring back downed PC's indefinitely with no resource cost or other penalty attached. Then they fix this unfair advantage they created by making enemies act all suicidal and unfair against the player by doing their best to finish off PC's who are already incapacitated. Then they fix that mess by making cheap resurrections available. Which undermines a setting where death and murder is at the center of the story, making death, including being incinerated in a river of lava, feel like a minor inconvenience. And all of this starts going wrong from the top from a simple "Help" action doing what magical healing does, indefinitely and for free.

Bringing back downed PC's during combat should only be possible with magical healing, and even so they should suffer some sort of fatigue. Perhaps only on Hard or Core Rules difficulty, but still.

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Originally Posted by lamaros
"just pretend you can't do X" is one of the worst responses to people raising legitimate points going around.

Don't like shove? Don't use it? Don't like stealth bonus action? Don't use it! Don't like..

At some point the game should function well when people are playing the... You know... Actual game, not having to make up their own rules for everything to try and make the experience better.

This mechanic is one of them, and something simple like a cumulative count per combat after which a character dies is a pretty simple and reasonable one.

Just looks like an excuse to bitch about something to me.

"Look at this thing I keep doing that I don't want to do."

Okay, whatever.

*

How is it substantially different from: "The game allows six character, but only use four if you only want four."

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May be it could be done in a way that on easy difficulty you need to pass a medicine check of 0, on normal a check of 5 and so on hmm

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Originally Posted by JandK
Just looks like an excuse to bitch about something to me.
Of course it does, because you are you and self-awareness is not really your big thing.

From when you joined this forum you have done nothing but belittle, dismiss and scoff at people for having unfavorable opinions about aspects of the game, in a fairly misguided attempt to play the role of Larian's police.
How is that not "bitching" in itself is not really clear.

That aside, as some have already pointed to you several times, it shouldn't be the player's task to apply self-restrain from using the most optimal solution to come on top of a fight (i.e. "No, I think I'll let this companion die, otherwise it's too easy to save him").
It should be the job of a designer to notice the holes in the system and patch them out.

In this case, for instance, a simple and effective solution would be to limit how much you can "help" a character getting up (i.e. three times) before the next one becomes an instant kill ("accumulation of injuries").


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How is it substantially different from: "The game allows six character, but only use four if you only want four."

In a million ways.
For one, one is leveraging a mechanical exploit that could be easily solved, the other is deliberately choosing with what (and how many) companion you want to go through your adventure. Maybe even solo.

Last edited by Tuco; 05/08/22 03:02 PM.

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Originally Posted by Icelyn
I usually use healing spells or healing potions instead of help.
This is what I want to see. Required use of resources (consumables or spell slots) to get people back into the fight.

I would like to play against the game, not against myself or the UI via forcing myself to not use options that are shown directly on my screen.

Also, Larian theoretically designs encounters with all the mechanics in mind. Honestly, the contribution of the Help action probably doesn't play that much into encounter difficulty, but it might play a small part. A Larian employee/Swen might playtest a fight, make use of the Help action to cheese it and win, and thus conclude that the fight is fine - tough but doable (or maybe even too easy). I don't want fights to be balanced around mechanics I consider unfun/cheesy/breaking immersion - help, shove instakill, stealth exploits, etc.

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Originally Posted by Tuco
Originally Posted by JandK
Just looks like an excuse to bitch about something to me.
Of course it does, because you are you and self-awareness is not really your big thing.

From when you joined this forum you have done nothing but belittle, dismiss and scoff at people for having unfavorable opinions about aspects of the game, in a fairly misguided attempt to play the role of Larian's police.
How is that not "bitching" in itself is not really clear.

That aside, as some have already pointed to you several times, it shouldn't be the player's task to apply self-restrain from using the most optimal solution to come on top of a fight (i.e. "No, I think I'll let this companion die, otherwise it's too easy to save him").
It should be the job of a designer to notice the holes in the system and patch them out.

In this case, for instance, a simple and effective solution would be to limit how much you can "help" a character getting up (i.e. three times) before the next one becomes an instant kill ("accumulation of injuries").


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How is it substantially different from: "The game allows six character, but only use four if you only want four."

In a million ways.
For one, one is leveraging a mechanical exploit that could be easily solved, the other is deliberately choosing with what (and how many) companion you want to go through your adventure. Maybe even solo.


You say it's different in a million ways. I say it's different in one. In that you don't like one option, but you do like the other.

After all, it "shouldn't be the player's task to self-restrain" down to four players instead of six when the "most optimal" approach to combat is using six characters.

As for your insight into self-awareness, I'm afraid I'm not impressed with an argument that says "complaining about complaining is complaining, so hah!" That said, I would ask--again--that you try to have a conversation without slinging personal attacks about people's memory or self-awareness or whatever other insult that translates to "they disagree with you."

Thank you.

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Dudes and dudetess.

Don't feed the troll.

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Originally Posted by JandK
You say it's different in a million ways. I say it's different in one. In that you don't like one option, but you do like the other.

After all, it "shouldn't be the player's task to self-restrain" down to four players instead of six when the "most optimal" approach to combat is using six characters.
"The Help action brings downed characters back to 1 hp, but don't use it if you don't want" is different from "The game allows 6 characters, but only use four if you want four" in a lot of ways.

  • The "Help" action being implemented as such prevents playing a certain way (e.g., a way where you can't just easily heal any downed ally, but you can still attempt to stabilize them), whereas an optional variable party size doesn't prevent playing a certain way.
  • There are positives and negatives to 4-vs-6-person parties. A 6 person party offers more flexibility and additional party banter, but requires more work managing them - both UI-wise and possibly getting them all to approve of you. However, the Help Action restoring allies to 1 HP is a strict positive since enemies don't typically get Death STs and would often attacked downed/stabilized allies anyway. Not using it is a strict combat nerf.
  • Ideally, the game can be balanced for all party sizes via scaled exp (or other solution), so a 6-person party wouldn't be the optimal solution. This ties into the above point; the Help Action would still be the optimal choice in many situations.
  • BG3 currently allows for 1-3 player-parties. This is fine, because it is a quantitative change in playstyle AND clearly not the intended experience. Similarly, having an optional 6-person party would be equally as not-intended. Not using the Help action, however, would be going against the intended experience and would be a quantitative change, completely ignoring a mechanic instead of just having less or more of it.


You are correct that, if 6 players is strictly superior option, it shouldn't be the player's task to self-restrain down to 4 players. For this reason, the option to play with 6 should need to be manually turned on in the game settings, and not be available in-game without doing so. Having players opt-in to a broken system is much better than continually forcing players to opt-out of a broken system. It matters what the default is.

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I think what was meant by the party of 6 is that you can recruit 4 characters and reject other and play only with those 4, OR you could do a little switcheroo here and there to experience all 6 companions. But I might be wrong in my interpretation.

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Originally Posted by 1varangian
Someone getting knocked out and woken up 7 times in the same fight is stupid no matter what. I don't care if it's only cheesable when there's one or two enemies. I don't want to see combat turn into whac-a-mole.

A much better system would be one that had some actual use for the Medicine skill and where having characters knocked out would have meaningful tactical consequences.

+1

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"Help" isn't into dnd. And yes it trivialises the encounter when you can simply healing word as a bonus action with Shadowheart.

Help is however often in tactical RPG and I understand why Larian would want something like this to help the players having a familiar mechanics.

I have would opt to go the middle path and replace help with stabilize (e.g. xcom) another tactical RPG standard that stop player from bleeding out, is more realistic (not everyone is a cleric), and not game breaking.

I would also introduce the throw potion healing mechanics into the tutorial somehow to make them familiar with it.

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Originally Posted by 7d7
"Help" isn't into dnd. And yes it trivialises the encounter when you can simply healing word as a bonus action with Shadowheart.

Help is however often in tactical RPG and I understand why Larian would want something like this to help the players having a familiar mechanics.

I have would opt to go the middle path and replace help with stabilize (e.g. xcom) another tactical RPG standard that stop player from bleeding out, is more realistic (not everyone is a cleric), and not game breaking.

I would also introduce the throw potion healing mechanics into the tutorial somehow to make them familiar with it.

Stabilise - that is, you use your action to make sure the dying person is not dying, and won't have to make any more death saving throws (they don't regain consiousness, or any hit points, but they are no longer dying, and are 'sfe' until thehy nca be healed, or until they take damage again)... is literally what the D&D 5e rules have for helping a downed ally when you don't have potions or spells. In 5e there is a medicine check involved, so it's possible to fail to stabilise the party member, and I'd happily accept forgoing that check and making stabilise a simple action that just works, in the video game setting, butt other than that, that's actually the ruleset that Larian decided to ignore and not implement.

Healing word doesn't trivialise encounters because it's a limited resource that you're spending, and every spell slot you spend on healing word is one more that you don't have for stronger healing, buffs, or damage-dealing.

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Originally Posted by Niara
you use your (help) action to make sure the dying person is not dying, and won't have to make any more death saving throws (they don't regain consiousness, or any hit points) … I'd happily accept forgoing (a medicine) check and making stabilise a simple action that just works, in the video game setting … Healing word doesn't trivialise encounters because it's a limited resource that you're spending.

Agree on all points.


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The best way to go about it, in my opinion:

Normal Difficulty - Help restores 1 HP
Hard Difficulty - Help stabilizes an ally. Medicine Kits can be used in combat to grant 1 HP, or out of combat for a heal
Tactician - Medicine Kits can be used in combat to stabilize an ally in combat, or out of combat for a heal

Seems like a pretty fair way to go about it for each difficulty.

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Originally Posted by 1varangian
So I marched into the Owlbear cave without spell slots. Thought I'd see if I can just cheese it somehow. Party of 3: Oghmar (Dwarf Cleric of Moradin), Shadowheart, Gale.

Fight goes:

Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers
Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers
Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers
Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers
Owlbear misses both attacks, everyone attacks
Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers
Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers
Owlbear misses both attacks, everyone attacks
Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers
Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers
Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers
Owlbear misses both attacks, everyone attacks
Owlbear downs Oghmar, Gale "helps" Oghmar, Shadowheart stabs away with dual Daggers, Owlbear dies.

How has this stupidity persisted for 8 patches? I should have lost, but instead it was the Owlbear who never stood a chance. How do mechanics like this not get fixed? It felt just as stupid as it looked.

Nevermind that the brightly lit area of the lair was considered "obscured".

ROFL seriously why is this a thing still. Wonder if npcs still bombard the caster first round also. good times.

Last edited by fallenj; 08/08/22 06:35 PM.
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Originally Posted by Noraver
Normal Difficulty - Help restores 1 HP
Hard Difficulty - Help stabilizes an ally. Medicine Kits can be used in combat to grant 1 HP, or out of combat for a heal
Tactician - Medicine Kits can be used in combat to stabilize an ally in combat, or out of combat for a heal
Awfull idea ...

I dont quite understand why people are so fixated to this old (and frankly quite outdated) system, where everything need to be "intact part of difficiulty" ...
What if i want to use Medicine Kits, but dont want stronger enemies?

Isnt it much better when you have just difficiulty PROFILES, that can be adjusted with this being just optional setting so you can turn it on or off, regardless of what challenge you want from your combat?
Hint: It is! :P


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