Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Games
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Ive played a lot of these tactical rpg over the years, its prob my favorite game type and as I understand action economy in pretty much every game like this is how much you can accomplish with each character per turn. In this games case its an action, bonus action and a reaction if available. In some tactical games movement costs action too so that could be included in the action economy as well. I guess it does to a point in this game too since movent does not cost an action but tactically you could be setting up for the next move or the current one with movement.
Other games have an action point system, where you spend a given amount of points, typically 5 per turn to use powers, skills, move, attack etc and each action is worth a given amount of points, the more powerful ones cost more and some of the more powerful ones have cool downs so you cant just spam them every turn. Xcom had a 2 AP system where you could either spend both on attacks or one or both to move.
I personally like the 5 AP system or xcoms 2AP system plus the cooldowns since its more balanced for a video game instead of using the dumb rest thing which kinda does not make sense and breaks immersion in a video game setting.
Other games have an action point system, where you spend a given amount of points, typically 5 per turn to use powers, skills, move, attack etc and each action is worth a given amount of points, the more powerful ones cost more and some of the more powerful ones have cool downs so you cant just spam them every turn. Xcom had a 2 AP system where you could either spend both on attacks or one or both to move.
I personally like the 5 AP system or xcoms 2AP system plus the cooldowns since its more balanced for a video game instead of using the dumb rest thing which kinda does not make sense and breaks immersion in a video game setting.
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Caliane
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"Action economy" can refer to the entire scope of player actions versus enemy actions. Quality of an action, and raw amount. Its creation, and its most common use is as stated, raw number of actions per round however. (I feel like people are saying this, but dancing around the key point)
In any party turn based game you have a massive problem. 4-8 players> 1 enemy. A level 30 dragon lich is trivialized by 6 level 10 players, just by raw number of actions. Assuming the dragon lich only gets 1action per turn. He'd have to kill the entire party in one hit to win. 6 players spaming CC, or crits, or just playing wack a mole as the enemy can only hit/kill one player at a time. and then the opposite is true as well.. 12 level 6 goblins are more dangerous to the party then that level 30 dragonlich..
Remember DnD has DM's and game designers. its a design focused game. Action economy is not really a player term, its a game design/DM term. Its from Dm/designers discussing this number problem and how to deal with it. more enemies, minions for bosses. lair actions. multiattack on nearly every enemy. bosses were given legendary resistance, legendary actions. the DM has to customize every single encounter with "action economy" in mind. he has to know sending 10 level 6 goblins will murder his 4man level 7 party.
DND has CR to help design encounters. and theres online tools that also help customize encounters. But CR is that 1 enemy against a 4 man party solo.
Then we have game balance/design. resting to restore spellslots/abilities. careful choices on using potions, moving, equiping gear, swapping gear, etc. and what consumes an action, in the game design period.
"too many dice" probably would also fall under action economy. Again, if your a DM, you don't want to throw 10 enemies at your player party of 6. it'd balance the action econ... but holy shit balls would that take forever to manually roll dice for 10 enemies.
Players focusing on action economy is frankly metagaming, and would be a giant dick move in tabletop. it'd be just fucking hell to design encounters for players actively trying to subvert and exploit it. because you aren't playing against the monsters, you are playing against the DM when you do it.
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Tuco
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Burns
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Yes, because when distilled down it still falls within the spending and acquiring of action points/resources (player and npc).Burns do you agree with this definition?
Caliane is looking at it from a game designer/DM standpoint of encounter design. I can see why trying to play optimally in a PnP game is generally frowned upon, because there is no reloading and it would be hard to find enough people, of the same skill level, with a DM that was willing/skilled enough to get the encounter balance right, every single time.
From a player perspective in turn based video games, the programmers can develop very hard difficulties that maximize the enemy actions. Which means if you want to win, you need to maximize your actions, which leads to talking about the action economy. In the same vein, when playing on hard difficulties, it is helpful to extract just the individual classes ability to exploit the actions given to them, to compare how they perform and are balanced, again, leading to talking about the action economy.
I really liked the two Pathfinder game's difficulty options, in this regard, and it shows they spent time thinking and testing a whole slew of different builds and parties. So, for the top two difficulties, mistakes in class building and action spending were penalized, but if you wanted to play an underperforming class, you can do so on lower difficulties.
It's great that Larian wasn't trying to fine tune balance, but it would have been a nice bonus if they added another difficulty, that they tested and took into account the player using at least 50%+ of the OP builds/stuff. There is only so much they can do with the resources they have though, and some things must be sacrificed.
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Caliane
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yeah, to be clear when I say exploiting action econ is a dick move/metagaming, I mean specifically in tabletop, where you have a living DM sitting there trying to design good encounters on the fly. and, actively trying to exploit action econ is just making their job harder on purpose. you are targeting and exploiting the game system, not engaging in the ecounter.
in crpg's its just good tactics.
in crpg's its just good tactics.
Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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So would you consider the simple act of casting the spell "Slow" a dick move in tabletop? I'm not really understanding your argument.
Caliane
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obviously, the line between optimum play and being a problem player can be fine.
slow is not being a dick. Taking 10 summon spells, and summoning 16 wolves in every fight to overwhelm the enemies action econ is.
there is a point where you as the player know the enemy has 1 attack per turn, and it doesn't matter if those wolves only have 1 hp, the enemy can only kill 1 per round. so you are putting the DM into a box, where they now need to design every encounter around your cheese. And thats super not fun for anyone. Because you are now going to bitch when they start sending 20 enemies at YOU every counter, or every enemy has massive AOE attacks. "the DM is unfairly targeting me!"
slow is not being a dick. Taking 10 summon spells, and summoning 16 wolves in every fight to overwhelm the enemies action econ is.
there is a point where you as the player know the enemy has 1 attack per turn, and it doesn't matter if those wolves only have 1 hp, the enemy can only kill 1 per round. so you are putting the DM into a box, where they now need to design every encounter around your cheese. And thats super not fun for anyone. Because you are now going to bitch when they start sending 20 enemies at YOU every counter, or every enemy has massive AOE attacks. "the DM is unfairly targeting me!"
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Tuco
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A harder difficulty mode is definitely a requirement for a future, DLC-bolstered playthrough of BG3 for me.
Burns
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Historically, Larian hasn't done DLC, so we may only get their final polished "enhanced" edition with cut content, in a year or so. Which I am fine with, as I dislike the DLC model bullshit, and would rather have a full blown xpac. A related story for levels 13 - 20 would be great, but I wont hold my breath.
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Caliane
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harder diff might be hard to do with bg3. saying this without playing it... however.. 5e itself is more narrative built, not a tactical system. 3.5e/pathfinder can be built to be harder, and more tactical easier. Additionally, the smaller party size. which may seem like it would naturally make things harder, and does, but also makes making good tactical encounters more difficult, as there is less room for choice. in a 6-8 man party, in the owlcat pathfinder rpgs for example, you can swap people in easy, or have useless characters that others take up the slack for. Like say my witch in wrath of the right. she's a godly buffer, heals, and godly "mind effecting" spells and hexes with slumber, phantasmal killer/weird, etc.. but, her powers versus anyone immune to "mind effecting" such as undead, is greatly limited. so pathfinder lets you build encounters that can nullify one or two of the party. but bg3's 4 man party doesn't let you do that.
Tuco
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It'd be feasible to add a harderer mode. You'd just need to use the power of action economy. And by that I mean, yeet out a bunch of extra mobs for a bunch of encounters and increase the stats/levels for enemies across the board. Especially initiative.
BG3 on hard-mode is notably easy, especially for anyone who choses what are obviously builds. Act 3 was a faceroll for pretty much any non-potato gamer who was trying to build a strong party, even for total 5e newbies like myself. You don't need something that is ballcrushingly hard to have an engaging hard mode, just something a bit more than what there is now, especially in act 3.
Through the second half of BG3 I was wondering what I'd do if I ran into a mimic of my party with two big dick barbarians and a sorcerer that hastes them and runs the fuck away. If the enemy party did this and had higher initiative than me, they'd probably destroy my party with their overwhelming "action economy". And by action economy I mean they'd hit *somebody* with 8 actions of "Fuck you up" enraged barbarian swings before I could pop any of my defensive options.
Frankly, the whole turn-based combat system breaks down when stressed. BG1/2's semi-turn-based approach was much more scalable.
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Seananigans
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Speaking of initiative, does anyone know what the fuck BG3 is doing with it? Cause whatever it is, it ain't DnD Initiative.
-edit- to be clear, I mean it doesn't appear to be d20 based. I'm aware they group by team affiliation for greater flexibility, and actually consider that a solid design choice.
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sleevedraw
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d4 + dex mod instead of d20. Alert is +5, so anything with it as a perk is pretty much guaranteed to go first.
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Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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Weird. I'd love to see their thought process for this. What does it accomplish, and why is it desired?
Tuco
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By Act 3 I took Alert on all my characters, even my barbs with very high initiative. It's just too critical to go before any big bads.
Burns
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Mod fixes it back to 5e rules:
True Initiative (D20 Initiative Rolls)
Changes the base game's Initiative rolls from a D4 to a D20. Allowing actual balancing and accurate depictions of stats around Dex, feats and overall builds. True DnD Rolls.
www.nexusmods.com
Burns
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Also, there are multiple AI (difficulty) mods out now, and I am sure more will be developed/refined. I am using one that gives NPCs more unique powers, in effect expanding the "classes" available to them. I just started a new game, since my DUrge saves broke with updating mods, so don't have much experience with it yet.
