Say my buddy is interacting with something and there is an investigate option, but his chars intelligence is not up to par, can my char attempt the skill check without him cancelling the interaction and me initiating it again?
No, the character that initiated the interaction is always the one to do the skill checks. Only way to swap characters after a fail is to reload a save pre skill check.
Unfortunately not, and it seems like a quality of life oversight to me not to be able to select.
Honestly, given the length of early access (and the fact that this isn’t a new complaint) I wonder if it’s actually a choice rather than an oversight. My hope would be that it’s not difficult to implement, and can be modded in now and added to the game later. Fingers crossed it’s not due to a technical limitation
The devs did mention in the weeks before launch that it was something that they wanted to address but that it was very difficult to implement with their current system and how the conversation cutscenes work. They did try different things internally that they never added to Early Access but they weren’t happy with any of their solutions and so they opted to focus the efforts on polishing other aspects of the game.
I have a very limited understanding of game development, but isn’t it as easy as checking which characters/players are currently participating in a conversation, be it actively or just listening, and then allowing the player(s) to choose a characters stat for a given skill check?
It might have to be limited to stuff like investigating, arcana checks, athletics checks, etc. and not include conversation relevant checks, like intimidation, persuasion, and deception
Pathfinder already solved this problem, any time there is a skill check in dialogue it automatically uses the skill check of the character in the party with the highest bonus, no matter who is “talking”, and mousing over the selection will show you whose skill check you’re using. It’s pretty seamless and it works because the party engages in conversations as a unit, just like a real tabletop party does. You usually have a main character that’s driving the specific conversation but party members interject or argue frequently.
Often times those seemingly trivial fixes can be quite more complicated because of how the code is structured.
It’s possible they tried it and didn’t like it or thought maybe it made conversations too easy. You’d probably have to ask Larian to be certain. They are probably going to do a dev stream some time soon. Might be able to get an answer then if you submit it.
It does seem to be the easiest solution if they were to try but it’s possible they just let modders work it out since they are working on releasing mod tools for BG3 later this year.
It’s been a while since I played it, but I feel like something like this was in the Divinity: Original Sin games. So you might be right that they simply didn’t want to or couldn’t implement it in a way they liked in BG3.
That’s sad to hear :/ maybe some modders will come along and fix that if Larian won’t
I think it’s a travesty you can switch characters in dialogue but it doesn’t actually do anything except prevent you from selecting the dialogue options until you switch back. It’s extremely frustrating when the conversation was started by just walking into an area because sometimes it starts it with a character I wasn’t even controlling.
Yeah especially if you are just scouting with a character that has low charisma or your fighter had to kick in a door.
You should be able to choose who takes the initiative by default in talks if it’s possible
What OP wants would be even better but probably impossible to solve without it resulting in awkward dialogues if you can switch the talking character each sentence
It is sometimes possible to leave a conversation or scene. We’ve done this before and had another character jump in to run the skill check.
