Baldur's Gate 3's real-time combat mod now allows you to get your party involved in battles, but you might not want to rely on them to save your bottom
Modder tinybike has also implemented a rudimentary pause function, so the mod lives up to its real-time with pause billing.
As part of the explosion in interesting and advanced Baldur's Gate 3 modding projects that have popped up since Larian unleashed the official toolkit, one modder's busy swapping out the game's turn-based fights for real-time ones. After originally being shared in pretty basic form, their work now features both a working pause button and the ability to get your party involved in these frenetic skirmishes.
In addition the the likes of custom maps and custom quests involving clown noses, modder tinybike's project to swap BG3's turn-based fights for RTWP ones that're similar to the first two Baldur's Gates has certainly been worth keeping an eye on, and it's gradually growing into something you could actually use from a playthrough without issue.
In the latest YouTube video the modder's put out of them testing out their work, they show off the fact that they've now managed to get the ally/companion AI working to the point that you can delve into a battle and they'll actually help you out, as well as having already implemented the pause function that was previously lacking. Previous versions of the mod had been limited to just the player character, since the likes of Lae'zel and Karlach would presumably just have been standing about, their original code not having prepared them for this kind of thing.
Now, though, you can be less lonely, with tinybike having employed Lae'zel and Shadowheart to help them tackle one of the early fights while you're still on the Nautiloid. Writing in the description of this latest test video that the mod - which you can check out here - is still in a "very rough draft" state, tinybike adds that "The companion and ally AI (using the term "AI" very loosely here haha) is still super basic, but they actually do stuff now!"
"Many people have commented that combat seems really imbalanced, which is 100% true," they explained in the description of a previous test video, "Right now, I'm just trying to see if this system fundamentally works, or if there are show-stoppers that would make RTwP impossible in BG3. "The main challenge right now is that the built-in BG3 combat AI is only accessible during normal turn-based combat. Just to test things out, I'm using some simple handrolled 'AI' logic, but I suspect this won't work well for more complicated encounters. I'm currently digging through the Osiris APIs and Larian's goals (scripts) looking for a way to poll the built-in AI ("what would you do, hypothetically, in this situation?") outside of turn-based combat."
There's still a lot of work to be done, with plenty of features listed as yet to be implemented - including the likes of multiple attacks, stealth, and both haste and initiative. That's in addition to all the already added bits that need futher tuning, but it's still incredibly impressive to see how far the mod's come in such a short time.
If you're after more news about interesting Baldur's Gate 3 modding project, a couple of modders are working on a "Wyll Cinematic Universe" that'll allow you to spend more time with the Blade of Frontiers.