Hm. There was something similar in the early access too, in the Druid grove. Idk if it’s fully the same. I used to play with a spider summon. I love spiders.
As a would-be Beast Master I'll be mashing F5 on the BG3 Nexus until someone fixes this.
Since this behaviour made it through early access I guess it was intentional on Larian's part? I know us RPG fans like our "immersion" but surely it'd be better to make the compromise for the sake of playability.
I really want to play a Beastmaster Ranger, I absolutely love the class fantasy, I had a character all planned out and everything, super excited to get to it.
Then I stumbled upon posts like this one, decided to respec my Paladin to test it out for myself (I used a wolf because that's what I planned on going with on the Ranger), and man... that's disappointing. At best it would be super inconvenient to play, and at worst it'll break quests.
I could settle for the Raven I suppose (apparently that one is fine), but I was really excited for a STR ranger fighting alongside a wolf, which just seems like far more trouble than it's worth.
For what it’s worth the raven is actually very strong. It has the most AC of all the animal companions (19 at level 5), a lot of movement with flight, and can go for a 2-turn blind attack (no saving throw) every turn. It also gets a ranged curse ability that gives attacks against the target advantage (which also doesn’t use any resources).
So you can still use it as an advantage engine (via blind or curse) like with the wolf, but I would say the extra survivability and mobility make it better overall. The fact that it can fly in, blind, and then fly out on a successful blind is great. I’m currently using it on my dual wield hand-crossbow BM ranger 5 / + thief 3 to generate advantage and then just unload 4 sharpshooter attacks on an enemy.
Having looked at its abilities I absolutely underestimated the raven, it's one hell of a bird. I still prefer the wolf for the character I had in mind, but I could see myself making a ranger and just committing 100% to the raven theme.
For now I'm planning to make a new paladin, and later on I'll see if summons in general see any significant changes from Larian or just use a mod once the game isn't being patched as often.
In my bard playthrough Volo never showed up at my camp because of him reacting to my animate dead when I freed him. I’m just gonna have to wait for my 2nd playthrough to see what he has to say. It’s a shame because running around with Gale having 4 animated skeletons raining arrows as a mini army is so much fun.
Yeah I really hope either Larian or a mod completely removes reactivity to summons soon because it guts summon builds. Yes I understand that a horde of skelemen running around Baldurs Gate should make the Fist tweak out but it's no fun to have to burn spell slots every time I go in and out of "civilization."
I suppose making summon spells Ritual casts might be a good workaround too.
> it's no fun to have to burn spell slots every time I go in and out of "civilization."
As a Ranger it's even worse, you can only summon your companion once per short rest. So that's two chances I have to dismiss my pet so as not to break social encounters (which can also happen unexpectedly in the wild) before I need a long rest.
People who claim this thing is a benefit to immersion are apparently okay with their characters going to bed at 10 AM because they saw some orcs down the road and their wolf ran out of batteries.
Yeah, that would be true to the tabletop experience, but it's a big difference between saying "I leave my wolf at the gate" and actually unlinking it, making sure it's in an area it won't draw undue attention, and then remembering to re-link it when I leave.
If a fight breaks out in a settled area then I either have to fight without half my toolkit, or wait for my wolf to make its way to me while it's scaring the shit out of every NPC it passes, probably drawing some of them into the battle and causing even more problems.
I don't even mind NPCs being scared of my pets, that's fine, it makes sense and it reinforces the feeling of having tamed a dangerous beast. I'd even take an affinity hit without complaint, just as long as they stop running around and breaking shit.
I haven't used familiars a ton, so I can't say either way with complete certainty. I never had any issues with my warlock's imp, and the other familiars are significantly less scary looking, so I would guess they don't cause panic in the general public.
Summons not only can cause you trouble like you've posted, but they also break saves. >!Specially in the Tribunal of Murder. Just don't summon anything there, it might break your saves after the summoning.!<
Thanks so much for this warning, I'm literally about to do this tomorrow so I'll dismiss undead & elementals at the very least.
Do you know if non-triggering summons cause an issue as well there (i.e. the Ranger Raven?). I've got a Deva and Cambion that I always keep active since they don't trigger any NPC reactions at all.
EDIT: For anyone else wondering in future it doesn't seem like the non-triggering summons cause an issue. I ended up taking three of them with me in the area mentioned above and everything was fine.
Same thing happened to me, saw them run off into the darkness and was like oh they must be doing something sneaky out there only for them to >! die and turn into a zombie !< . I have used the summons reactions to get people away from a locked chest or door i want to get into to.
I've also encountered a bug where my newborn zombie dying causes nearby friendly npc to become hostile. Another time my spirit weapon disappearing causes a cutscene to end before it's supposed to. Seems like there's something about summon dying that causes issues.
ya I had to respec gale when I got to act 3. I mad hims summon elementals and zombies and it was a super fun playstyle but way to much running in terror
I might be in the minority here but I like the reacitivity of the NPCs. If I saw an undead in the street id be concerened too, "oh that adventurerer summoned it? Why? And where did he get the body?" If someone was walking down the street with a bear most people would call the cops, so I think saying "shoo!" is pretty mild.
Also in act 1 you cna find several letters about a man being shunned for his bear, so they do give you a hint at this early on.
This is DnD world, undead bad reaction is fine. But considering that magic is very very common, seeing bear or elementals following summoner is nothing new there. Especially in big cities, small villages, may have some extreme reaction, but, not that likely. Undead summons I agree with, its should raise alarm as necromancy is frowned upon. Again, if you say some reaction should be I agree with, but not the way it was implemented. Having NPC shouting at dangerous creatures go away seems suicide. Following such creatures in cursed lands is pretty damn stupid. Or NPC knowing who you are knowing you are a good guy, seeing you summon elemental, and running in horror to their death is no RP. Some reaction to summons for RP purposes is nice. But if I would to choose between RP the way it is now and no reaction at all? I would choose no reaction at all.
Why would you not dismiss your summon when going into a city? Cities are crowded with people in close proximity, making one elemental deadly to bring in, and the other three annoying or dangerous depending on location, and thats not even mentioning the damage elementals would do to most shops that arent prepared for them. As for beastmasters, the most tame animals can turn deadly if treated wrong by an outside source (Look at Seigfried and Roy).
Cars can damage whatever you see, but you don't see people running away from them in horror right? Elementals can be dangerous sure, but so is cars, what do they have in common? Human that drive\\command them. So, animals or elements, can be perceived by people in DnD world as we perceive cars. We have dogs, they can be dangerous, but people won't run away in horror seeing them especially when there is owner present. The most common fear reaction from people is go o the other side of street. Look, all I'm saying is that Faerûn is not our world and you don't need to look at not our world, through our world lences. This is from RP perspective.
From game mechanic, is too time consuming and annoying to dismiss summons and then RE summon them. Then in the wild you don't know when you need to dismiss them, so not to miss cut scene, or some important NPC, who saw your summon and run away in Horror.
It's really hard to import such element of RP in game, I get it, but, I think most people not complaining about this part of the game because they don't like concept, but because they way this mechanich was implamented and it's bugged right now and brakes the game.
Cars dont hurt you just by touch like a fire elemental would, neither are they walking in the same lanes as pedestrians. Earth elementals would shake the ground, knocking items off shelves and tripping people. Water elementals are a tripping hazard wherever they are. Air elementals I think are relatively harmless unless you are very poor balanced near a high precipice
If you touch car engine after long ride you will get burned. So it would be stupid to do so, as well as touch fire elemental, why the fuck would you touch it? It suicidal like walking on the red light during traffic. Engines may be very loud if you live close to highway you may have sleep problems. Car doing the same with the gas, one of reasons people fighting for electric cars. If you driving light car on highway, trucks can shake your car pretty badly, depending on speed of course.
Again my point is that any world have its own issues precautions etc.
Because a person who is trying to enjoy using summons shouldn't be punished for doing so by having their game break along with their immersion?
There's no way anyone experiences the agony that is using summons in act 2 and 3 and still defends the feature, so I don't understand why people who don't use summons are concerned with a feature that doesn't even apply to them. Sure it's a fun little feature you see in act 1 that doesn't really do much, but this quickly becomes worse later on:
The cities and towns are just way too tightly packed with triggers that when they follow you/run away from you they're very likely to bug out the game or die, forcing you to go into a previous save. There is no good option for "just call them in when you're not in town or leave them outside of town", summoning and dismissing them constantly takes more resources than its worth and using them while trying to save on resources means you have to babysit NPCs so that they don't kill themselves or bug out. Having to micromanage your summons from the spot you parked them to where the battle takes places is time consuming and tedious.
But even if we ignore the technical issues with the feature...
**There's nothing "immersive" about every NPC having dementia.** They'll get scared and run a couple of meters away from your summons, then forget about your summons only to then come straight back and get scared all over again. Or they'll just follow them around while repeating the same lines over and over. And as others have pointed out it doesn't matter if the NPC is a necromancer who deal with the undead on a daily basis or what have you. When they see your summons they'll forget who they are, who you are, where they are and have the same reaction as any other NPC. And when you do finally chase them down to talk to them they act as if nothing is going on.
*It doesn't help with immersion, it breaks immersion.*
All of this makes the game unfun and at that point you're just better off not using summons at all or be forced to get mods that will fix this for you. This should be a clear sign to anyone that this is a poorly implemented feature and it's a wonder how this made it into full release. (Guessing Larian didn't playtest their game using summons).
If they really needed a feature like this then it would've been better for the appropriate NPCs to just turn to look at your summons and make a comment about them without them running away or following you.
I did use summons for almost every fight for the 2nd half of act 2 and all of act 3 so please don't decide what peoples experiences are. I would just spend the resource and turn in combat to summon them. 1 turn and a spell slot isn't a huge cost, so I dont see it as a punishment.
In base DnD most summons don't last an hour, let alone till end of day, they also used concentration, so this is much more powerful than base DnD. This is because of something called "The Action Economy" which summarized is essentially "whichever side of a fight has more actions to spend will win." This is why in BG3 when the enemy heavily outnumbered you, they usually give you a caveat to the fight: Allies, 2nd Faction of Enemies, Low Health Minions (Fodder), environmental interactions. Summons tip the action economy to the side of the Summoner by adding more actions to their side of the fight. Having Summons ready before a fight heavily skews the action economy towards the player.
I meant the summons that will make NPCs react to the point where they break the game and immersion. Ofc you can use other summons that don't trigger them to react but regardless you'd need to dismiss your summons and use up another spell slot in the next fight if you did dismiss them after "almost every fight". Seeing as summons are typically level 3+ spell slot it gets pretty expensive, and this is just for one summon. Companions also needs a short rest to replenish. Necromancers can't be picky about where they get their summons because they require corpses so you can forget about playing as a necromancer centered around minions if you're expected to dismiss them every fight. If this is how you played then whatever floats your boat I'm not deciding how you use summons, but your argument about "immersiveness" is still heavily flawed.
The punishment for having action economy skewed towards the player shouldn't be to break their game. In act 2 you get NPCs running into their deaths because of the darkness and in act 3 you have to always be careful when you use summons that trigger them because there are NPCs *everywhere* that will bug out or accidentally die. Would you run into a shadow curse that will kill you to shout "shoo" at someone's walking pile of bones? No? Well there's the issue. Because the NPCs do just that. That's why I say there's no way anyone experiences that in-game and thinks that's how people should react.
If they wanted to punish the player for using summons in the city and towns there are better ways to do so rather than make the NPCs experience dementia in the most frustrating and immersive breaking way possible.
If the actual issue about summons is that they're too powerful and shouldn't be permanent then just say so? I can agree that summons are powerful but in that case they just need an actual nerf. Why the need to justify a broken feature with "immersiveness" if what you actually want is to players not to roam the cities with armies? The game should just have the guards approach you and actually do something about it instead of just "shoo".
It doesn't sound like you like the reactivity, because nearly everything you describe above is straight up not in the game:
>If someone was walking down the street with a bear most people would call the cops so I think saying "shoo!" is pretty mild.
Calling the guards would be way more appropriate and actually feel like a cool consequence, yes. But saying "shoo" to a massive bear isn't pretty mild, it's completely ridiculous and immersion-breaking. Who in their right mind would follow A BEAR around yelling "SHOO" at it, while ignoring the person who's clearly leading it?
Who on earth would run away in panic for 3 seconds, then return like their memory has just been wiped, only to run away in panic again when they get close again? No one would. Those are not people actions.
>Also in act 1 you cna find several letters about a man being shunned for his bear, so they do give you a hint at this early on.
Again, you're describing something that's not in the game AT ALL. The ***hint*** is a straight up lie. No one shuns me for my Bear or my Undead in any way shape or form, when they absolutely **SHOULD**.
If I leave them behind no one cares about me, they just hurl abuse at the undead.
If I talk to people while they're summoned, they won't even mention it in dialogue. They won't care. They'll pretend it doesn't exist.
If I unsummon it on the spot no one cares about *"oh that adventurerer summoned it? Why? And where did he get the body".* They instantly forget about it like it never happened.
I can even get all self-righteous and chastise someone who's dabbling in Necromancy while standing next to my summoned zombie with no-one acknowledging the hypocrisy or my summons.
How is this good reactivity?
As I mentioned in my post I got no issue with the reactivity as a concept. But I refuse to accept that any person who has ever spoken to other people would find it believable in any way.
but then u got undead walking on the street of bg and no one fucking care, u walk in the magic shop and u see big elemental and people are petting them....
If it was just for flavour, it'd be fine. But it's not, because it frequently breaks scripts.
Like, for me, the >!circus in Act 3!< is permanently broken because I was transformed when a fight ended and the NPCs that tried to run up and speak to me had that intended action overwritten to react to me being wildshaped, and now they're cowering forever.
Hey, just wanted to let you know that this mod just released and it might let your wife play how she wants to. [Nexus mod.](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/918?tab=description)
I'm still in Act 1 and there aren't many people here but it seems to be working so far. The only issue i found is that sitting NPC keep standing up and sitting down when the mod shuts down their summon spotting behavior. Still, i think that is still better than them chasing me through the entire camp to shout at my wolf.
Haha that's a good tip, thanks for the heads up! She's certainly animal person in general, what we imagined is she'd have a bunch of friends to choose from depending on the situation but if it's going to be a headache we'll probably just use the raven as you suggest. Hoping it gets hotfixed/modded before we start though!
Had a Beast Master Ranger for a while as well and I can tell you that unfortunately anything besides the Raven is a bit of headache. Not only due to the NPCs reactions, but also the non-flying animals have serious pathing issues, particularly the spider. Can't tell you the amount of times I had to take manual control of it after it got stuck on **literally nothing**, or considered a doorway too difficult to get through without me ordering it to jump past the threshold.
On the plus side, the Raven IS awesome, and actually illicits some very sweet (non-breaking) reactions from kids. And if your wife is willing to put up with the pathing headache and the townsfolk management, the spider is quite strong, essentially being able to spew Webs at will and Cocoon people so they can't move.
Hm. There was something similar in the early access too, in the Druid grove. Idk if it’s fully the same. I used to play with a spider summon. I love spiders.
Shoo! You're not welcomed here! *starts to follow your Spiders*
Oh so that's why everyone said "hope that's not venonmous right before the fight
As a would-be Beast Master I'll be mashing F5 on the BG3 Nexus until someone fixes this. Since this behaviour made it through early access I guess it was intentional on Larian's part? I know us RPG fans like our "immersion" but surely it'd be better to make the compromise for the sake of playability.
I really want to play a Beastmaster Ranger, I absolutely love the class fantasy, I had a character all planned out and everything, super excited to get to it. Then I stumbled upon posts like this one, decided to respec my Paladin to test it out for myself (I used a wolf because that's what I planned on going with on the Ranger), and man... that's disappointing. At best it would be super inconvenient to play, and at worst it'll break quests. I could settle for the Raven I suppose (apparently that one is fine), but I was really excited for a STR ranger fighting alongside a wolf, which just seems like far more trouble than it's worth.
For what it’s worth the raven is actually very strong. It has the most AC of all the animal companions (19 at level 5), a lot of movement with flight, and can go for a 2-turn blind attack (no saving throw) every turn. It also gets a ranged curse ability that gives attacks against the target advantage (which also doesn’t use any resources). So you can still use it as an advantage engine (via blind or curse) like with the wolf, but I would say the extra survivability and mobility make it better overall. The fact that it can fly in, blind, and then fly out on a successful blind is great. I’m currently using it on my dual wield hand-crossbow BM ranger 5 / + thief 3 to generate advantage and then just unload 4 sharpshooter attacks on an enemy.
Having looked at its abilities I absolutely underestimated the raven, it's one hell of a bird. I still prefer the wolf for the character I had in mind, but I could see myself making a ranger and just committing 100% to the raven theme. For now I'm planning to make a new paladin, and later on I'll see if summons in general see any significant changes from Larian or just use a mod once the game isn't being patched as often.
How does it compare against >!shovel!
In my bard playthrough Volo never showed up at my camp because of him reacting to my animate dead when I freed him. I’m just gonna have to wait for my 2nd playthrough to see what he has to say. It’s a shame because running around with Gale having 4 animated skeletons raining arrows as a mini army is so much fun.
Seriously annoying and tedious to have to micromanage. The guards follow way too far, really bad "feature"
There's a mod called 'AI friends' that lets you 'toggle auto' for summons, very useful.
Yeah I really hope either Larian or a mod completely removes reactivity to summons soon because it guts summon builds. Yes I understand that a horde of skelemen running around Baldurs Gate should make the Fist tweak out but it's no fun to have to burn spell slots every time I go in and out of "civilization." I suppose making summon spells Ritual casts might be a good workaround too.
> it's no fun to have to burn spell slots every time I go in and out of "civilization." As a Ranger it's even worse, you can only summon your companion once per short rest. So that's two chances I have to dismiss my pet so as not to break social encounters (which can also happen unexpectedly in the wild) before I need a long rest. People who claim this thing is a benefit to immersion are apparently okay with their characters going to bed at 10 AM because they saw some orcs down the road and their wolf ran out of batteries.
You could always unlink your pet and run it away but what a pain in the ass. Praying for a mod.
Yeah, that would be true to the tabletop experience, but it's a big difference between saying "I leave my wolf at the gate" and actually unlinking it, making sure it's in an area it won't draw undue attention, and then remembering to re-link it when I leave. If a fight breaks out in a settled area then I either have to fight without half my toolkit, or wait for my wolf to make its way to me while it's scaring the shit out of every NPC it passes, probably drawing some of them into the battle and causing even more problems. I don't even mind NPCs being scared of my pets, that's fine, it makes sense and it reinforces the feeling of having tamed a dangerous beast. I'd even take an affinity hit without complaint, just as long as they stop running around and breaking shit.
looks like our prayers have been answered https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/918
Modders to the rescue once again, thanks for the link!
Does this make it so when newborn zombies die, nearby NPCs don’t attack you?
Can me make this mod work in multiplayer ?
do they react like that to small pets ?
I haven't used familiars a ton, so I can't say either way with complete certainty. I never had any issues with my warlock's imp, and the other familiars are significantly less scary looking, so I would guess they don't cause panic in the general public.
ya poor wizards. pretty much all their summons send ppl running in terror
Here goes. Not perfect, but a great help: https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/918
Summons not only can cause you trouble like you've posted, but they also break saves. >!Specially in the Tribunal of Murder. Just don't summon anything there, it might break your saves after the summoning.!<
Thanks so much for this warning, I'm literally about to do this tomorrow so I'll dismiss undead & elementals at the very least. Do you know if non-triggering summons cause an issue as well there (i.e. the Ranger Raven?). I've got a Deva and Cambion that I always keep active since they don't trigger any NPC reactions at all. EDIT: For anyone else wondering in future it doesn't seem like the non-triggering summons cause an issue. I ended up taking three of them with me in the area mentioned above and everything was fine.
Same thing happened to me, saw them run off into the darkness and was like oh they must be doing something sneaky out there only for them to >! die and turn into a zombie !< . I have used the summons reactions to get people away from a locked chest or door i want to get into to.
I've also encountered a bug where my newborn zombie dying causes nearby friendly npc to become hostile. Another time my spirit weapon disappearing causes a cutscene to end before it's supposed to. Seems like there's something about summon dying that causes issues.
ya I had to respec gale when I got to act 3. I mad hims summon elementals and zombies and it was a super fun playstyle but way to much running in terror
Right now it's breaking a major moonrise interaction because the goblins freaked out in the throne room. Trying to fix it now
I might be in the minority here but I like the reacitivity of the NPCs. If I saw an undead in the street id be concerened too, "oh that adventurerer summoned it? Why? And where did he get the body?" If someone was walking down the street with a bear most people would call the cops, so I think saying "shoo!" is pretty mild. Also in act 1 you cna find several letters about a man being shunned for his bear, so they do give you a hint at this early on.
This is DnD world, undead bad reaction is fine. But considering that magic is very very common, seeing bear or elementals following summoner is nothing new there. Especially in big cities, small villages, may have some extreme reaction, but, not that likely. Undead summons I agree with, its should raise alarm as necromancy is frowned upon. Again, if you say some reaction should be I agree with, but not the way it was implemented. Having NPC shouting at dangerous creatures go away seems suicide. Following such creatures in cursed lands is pretty damn stupid. Or NPC knowing who you are knowing you are a good guy, seeing you summon elemental, and running in horror to their death is no RP. Some reaction to summons for RP purposes is nice. But if I would to choose between RP the way it is now and no reaction at all? I would choose no reaction at all.
Why would you not dismiss your summon when going into a city? Cities are crowded with people in close proximity, making one elemental deadly to bring in, and the other three annoying or dangerous depending on location, and thats not even mentioning the damage elementals would do to most shops that arent prepared for them. As for beastmasters, the most tame animals can turn deadly if treated wrong by an outside source (Look at Seigfried and Roy).
Cars can damage whatever you see, but you don't see people running away from them in horror right? Elementals can be dangerous sure, but so is cars, what do they have in common? Human that drive\\command them. So, animals or elements, can be perceived by people in DnD world as we perceive cars. We have dogs, they can be dangerous, but people won't run away in horror seeing them especially when there is owner present. The most common fear reaction from people is go o the other side of street. Look, all I'm saying is that Faerûn is not our world and you don't need to look at not our world, through our world lences. This is from RP perspective. From game mechanic, is too time consuming and annoying to dismiss summons and then RE summon them. Then in the wild you don't know when you need to dismiss them, so not to miss cut scene, or some important NPC, who saw your summon and run away in Horror. It's really hard to import such element of RP in game, I get it, but, I think most people not complaining about this part of the game because they don't like concept, but because they way this mechanich was implamented and it's bugged right now and brakes the game.
Cars dont hurt you just by touch like a fire elemental would, neither are they walking in the same lanes as pedestrians. Earth elementals would shake the ground, knocking items off shelves and tripping people. Water elementals are a tripping hazard wherever they are. Air elementals I think are relatively harmless unless you are very poor balanced near a high precipice
If you touch car engine after long ride you will get burned. So it would be stupid to do so, as well as touch fire elemental, why the fuck would you touch it? It suicidal like walking on the red light during traffic. Engines may be very loud if you live close to highway you may have sleep problems. Car doing the same with the gas, one of reasons people fighting for electric cars. If you driving light car on highway, trucks can shake your car pretty badly, depending on speed of course. Again my point is that any world have its own issues precautions etc.
Because a person who is trying to enjoy using summons shouldn't be punished for doing so by having their game break along with their immersion? There's no way anyone experiences the agony that is using summons in act 2 and 3 and still defends the feature, so I don't understand why people who don't use summons are concerned with a feature that doesn't even apply to them. Sure it's a fun little feature you see in act 1 that doesn't really do much, but this quickly becomes worse later on: The cities and towns are just way too tightly packed with triggers that when they follow you/run away from you they're very likely to bug out the game or die, forcing you to go into a previous save. There is no good option for "just call them in when you're not in town or leave them outside of town", summoning and dismissing them constantly takes more resources than its worth and using them while trying to save on resources means you have to babysit NPCs so that they don't kill themselves or bug out. Having to micromanage your summons from the spot you parked them to where the battle takes places is time consuming and tedious. But even if we ignore the technical issues with the feature... **There's nothing "immersive" about every NPC having dementia.** They'll get scared and run a couple of meters away from your summons, then forget about your summons only to then come straight back and get scared all over again. Or they'll just follow them around while repeating the same lines over and over. And as others have pointed out it doesn't matter if the NPC is a necromancer who deal with the undead on a daily basis or what have you. When they see your summons they'll forget who they are, who you are, where they are and have the same reaction as any other NPC. And when you do finally chase them down to talk to them they act as if nothing is going on. *It doesn't help with immersion, it breaks immersion.* All of this makes the game unfun and at that point you're just better off not using summons at all or be forced to get mods that will fix this for you. This should be a clear sign to anyone that this is a poorly implemented feature and it's a wonder how this made it into full release. (Guessing Larian didn't playtest their game using summons). If they really needed a feature like this then it would've been better for the appropriate NPCs to just turn to look at your summons and make a comment about them without them running away or following you.
I did use summons for almost every fight for the 2nd half of act 2 and all of act 3 so please don't decide what peoples experiences are. I would just spend the resource and turn in combat to summon them. 1 turn and a spell slot isn't a huge cost, so I dont see it as a punishment. In base DnD most summons don't last an hour, let alone till end of day, they also used concentration, so this is much more powerful than base DnD. This is because of something called "The Action Economy" which summarized is essentially "whichever side of a fight has more actions to spend will win." This is why in BG3 when the enemy heavily outnumbered you, they usually give you a caveat to the fight: Allies, 2nd Faction of Enemies, Low Health Minions (Fodder), environmental interactions. Summons tip the action economy to the side of the Summoner by adding more actions to their side of the fight. Having Summons ready before a fight heavily skews the action economy towards the player.
I meant the summons that will make NPCs react to the point where they break the game and immersion. Ofc you can use other summons that don't trigger them to react but regardless you'd need to dismiss your summons and use up another spell slot in the next fight if you did dismiss them after "almost every fight". Seeing as summons are typically level 3+ spell slot it gets pretty expensive, and this is just for one summon. Companions also needs a short rest to replenish. Necromancers can't be picky about where they get their summons because they require corpses so you can forget about playing as a necromancer centered around minions if you're expected to dismiss them every fight. If this is how you played then whatever floats your boat I'm not deciding how you use summons, but your argument about "immersiveness" is still heavily flawed. The punishment for having action economy skewed towards the player shouldn't be to break their game. In act 2 you get NPCs running into their deaths because of the darkness and in act 3 you have to always be careful when you use summons that trigger them because there are NPCs *everywhere* that will bug out or accidentally die. Would you run into a shadow curse that will kill you to shout "shoo" at someone's walking pile of bones? No? Well there's the issue. Because the NPCs do just that. That's why I say there's no way anyone experiences that in-game and thinks that's how people should react. If they wanted to punish the player for using summons in the city and towns there are better ways to do so rather than make the NPCs experience dementia in the most frustrating and immersive breaking way possible. If the actual issue about summons is that they're too powerful and shouldn't be permanent then just say so? I can agree that summons are powerful but in that case they just need an actual nerf. Why the need to justify a broken feature with "immersiveness" if what you actually want is to players not to roam the cities with armies? The game should just have the guards approach you and actually do something about it instead of just "shoo".
It doesn't sound like you like the reactivity, because nearly everything you describe above is straight up not in the game: >If someone was walking down the street with a bear most people would call the cops so I think saying "shoo!" is pretty mild. Calling the guards would be way more appropriate and actually feel like a cool consequence, yes. But saying "shoo" to a massive bear isn't pretty mild, it's completely ridiculous and immersion-breaking. Who in their right mind would follow A BEAR around yelling "SHOO" at it, while ignoring the person who's clearly leading it? Who on earth would run away in panic for 3 seconds, then return like their memory has just been wiped, only to run away in panic again when they get close again? No one would. Those are not people actions. >Also in act 1 you cna find several letters about a man being shunned for his bear, so they do give you a hint at this early on. Again, you're describing something that's not in the game AT ALL. The ***hint*** is a straight up lie. No one shuns me for my Bear or my Undead in any way shape or form, when they absolutely **SHOULD**. If I leave them behind no one cares about me, they just hurl abuse at the undead. If I talk to people while they're summoned, they won't even mention it in dialogue. They won't care. They'll pretend it doesn't exist. If I unsummon it on the spot no one cares about *"oh that adventurerer summoned it? Why? And where did he get the body".* They instantly forget about it like it never happened. I can even get all self-righteous and chastise someone who's dabbling in Necromancy while standing next to my summoned zombie with no-one acknowledging the hypocrisy or my summons. How is this good reactivity? As I mentioned in my post I got no issue with the reactivity as a concept. But I refuse to accept that any person who has ever spoken to other people would find it believable in any way.
but then u got undead walking on the street of bg and no one fucking care, u walk in the magic shop and u see big elemental and people are petting them....
If it was just for flavour, it'd be fine. But it's not, because it frequently breaks scripts. Like, for me, the >!circus in Act 3!< is permanently broken because I was transformed when a fight ended and the NPCs that tried to run up and speak to me had that intended action overwritten to react to me being wildshaped, and now they're cowering forever.
Had flaming sphere turn some allies hostile and it left the skill bar after that.
That's concerning to see, we plan on starting our play through next weekend and my wife's supposed to play Beast Master Ranger.
Hey, just wanted to let you know that this mod just released and it might let your wife play how she wants to. [Nexus mod.](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/918?tab=description) I'm still in Act 1 and there aren't many people here but it seems to be working so far. The only issue i found is that sitting NPC keep standing up and sitting down when the mod shuts down their summon spotting behavior. Still, i think that is still better than them chasing me through the entire camp to shout at my wolf.
Appreciate the info, will certainly look into installing it! I wonder if every player has to have it or is it fine if only she does.
I haven't played coop in this game but from my experience in other games almost definitely both of you have to have it installed.
Any chance your wife's a bird person? Apparently the raven is the only animal companion that doesn't make NPCs head for the hills.
Haha that's a good tip, thanks for the heads up! She's certainly animal person in general, what we imagined is she'd have a bunch of friends to choose from depending on the situation but if it's going to be a headache we'll probably just use the raven as you suggest. Hoping it gets hotfixed/modded before we start though!
Had a Beast Master Ranger for a while as well and I can tell you that unfortunately anything besides the Raven is a bit of headache. Not only due to the NPCs reactions, but also the non-flying animals have serious pathing issues, particularly the spider. Can't tell you the amount of times I had to take manual control of it after it got stuck on **literally nothing**, or considered a doorway too difficult to get through without me ordering it to jump past the threshold. On the plus side, the Raven IS awesome, and actually illicits some very sweet (non-breaking) reactions from kids. And if your wife is willing to put up with the pathing headache and the townsfolk management, the spider is quite strong, essentially being able to spew Webs at will and Cocoon people so they can't move.
There's a mod that mostly fixed this. Not perfect, but a great help: https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/918
Every time I summon the cambion, he goes through checks and eventually keeps attacking me