this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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Yeah dnd has quirks that aggravate that problem. Fighting at full capacity until you drop dead, for one. Limited options for fighting defensively (bg3 took out the dodge action).
Some stuff you can win by being really tedious. Assassin sneak attack, then run until you reset the fight and repeat. Real Dm wouldnt allow that.
This is an actual military doctrine used by the people of Afghanistan to kick the shit out of most of the biggest imperial powers of the world with a staggering win rate since basically forever, by TE Lawrence (kinda) to take out the ottoman empire, something similar by horse nomads since bows were invented, and by one part of the Vietnamese resistance during the american invasion(also I think to kick the French in the dick).
It has an extremely good record for doing exactly what it does in the game, and for ruining morale of the big guy getting shoot-twice-then-run'd in addition.
I have spoken to people who fought against it, and even a decade later they're still pissed. It is absolutely bullshit and it absolutely works. Ask an afghan war vet about their nightmares.
While that is fascinating and worth considering, I think the way it's implemented in the video games is kind of unsatisfying. Specifically, how the NPCs just go back to their idle routine even if that means standing casually on the bodies of their friends. For days.
The "for days" part is also particular to DnD. You can sleep for days while the world remains static. The rite of thorns never completes. The prisoners are never executed. Not even if you kill half the guards and take a snooze.
I think the Batman video games did a better job of NPCs freaking out and not just calming back down, but most games don't invest in that.
Also bg3 specifically let's you teleport to safety once you're 30 meters away, which is extra cheesy.
You're complaining that the game where the wizard who fucked a god and the vampire with an ancient alien brain parasite from the future are just table stakes is unrealistic?
I don't know what to say. Are you trying to say it clashes with the design? Are you saying every game should have every feature and 'StarCraft' should have the nemesis system from the 'shadow of' games? I don't get it.
The whole thing is an abstraction. Doing everything is a lot of developer hours and this one in particular aas shackled to a system made for tabletop play with a human gm, and not even one of the good systems fit that.
Here's another way to think about it: what would you have cut to include that?
I didn't use the word realistic. I called it unsatisfying.
Also, it's kind of tired to be like "oh you want rEaLiSm in your game about elf magic??". You know what people mean when they say that. Given the premises presented, nothing is contradictory enough to break suspension of disbelief. People use "realistic" as a shorthand. Sometimes people use "Verisimilitude" for this.
Having NPCs react reasonably in some cases (eg: scripted encounters, some law breaking) and not in others is jarring. You see the NPCs standing around the tavern having a chat and you go, "That's a reasonable scene. I can imagine this." Then you explode one of them, and they all run around in a panic. Still pretty reasonable. Follows from the premises given. But then you run away and come back, and all of them are back to drinking and chatting. All of them except the one you exploded, who's still a bloody mess on the floor. For some people, such as myself, this is too much. It's too high a contrast, and it foregrounds the limits of the game too much to easily suspend disbelief.
I don't feel like you tried very hard to "get it".
The game has a stealth and murder system you're encouraged to use. I'd like for them to have gone a little further with it. The NPCs sometimes look for you if you fire from stealth, but it's janky. The rest of the game is generally pretty immersive-sim, but the wheels fall off if you play one of the main playstyles. Unsatisfying.
I'm not a game developer and I expect you aren't either, so I don't know how complex it would be to make the responses to stealth more robust. Maybe add a "There's been a murder!" state to scenes. But they did a lot of other stuff to cover more niche scenarios, so it wouldn't be out of character.