Larian head and founder Swen Vincke put on a 90-minute show yesterday as part of Dungeons & Dragons Live, an online event showing what’s up and coming in D&D (and performed in collaboration with IGN’s Summer of Gaming festivities). This gives us a good look at how Baldur’s Gate 3 has evolved since last we checked in earlier this year, which can see in the video below.
Initiative is the biggest change since February’s gameplay trailer. Previously, Baldur’s Gate 3 used side initiative where either the entire friendly or enemy side goes first, depending on who wins the initiative roll. Now, the game uses a more traditional initiative system where everyone rolls individually, but with a few twists.
If two or more friendlies are adjacent in the initiative order, you can decide which character goes first regardless of how each individual character rolled. This provides greater tactical flexibility, provided there aren’t any enemy turns between your characters.
Additionally, you can even swap between characters with multiple actions, having one character perform one action, then another a different action, and then swapping back to the first character for their second action. In this way, you get some of the benefits of side initiative without the overwhelming power of one side being able to attack with all their characters first.
Inspiration is also in Baldur’s Gate 3. Although we don’t know how Inspiration points are handed out, characters can retain Inspiration in order to reroll skill checks for a more favorable outcome.
This brings us to reactions, which was a touchy subject earlier this year. It seems that Larian Studios have settled on a sort of reaction toggle where each character sets their preferred reaction and then waits for it to be triggered. If a character is set to “Opportunity Attack” then they’ll take a stab at any enemy that moves out of their combat radius. A character with Feather Fall can set that as their reaction in order to prevent themselves from getting splattered on the cobblestones after falling from a tall building.
It’s a bit clunky as this reaction system would prevent a character from using Feather Fall if they have their reaction set to Opportunity Attack. Hopefully this gets further tweaked before the game’s eventual release.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is set to arrive in Early Access later this summer.
Source: IGN