If you're a traditionalist who wishes Baldur's Gate 3 had stayed true to the series' classic roots of real-time combat with breaks instead of veering into novel turn-based territory, there is now, as they say, a mod for that. Sort of.
Modder tinybike has just released (thanks PC Gamer) what they're calling a “very, very, very rough draft” of a real-time combat mod for Baldur's Gate 3. That is to say, the real-time part of the equation is already there, but the critical “pausing” part is currently unimplemented, meaning players will likely be wiped off the face of Faerûn before they make much progress.
Still, tinybike doesn't think adding the pause feature should be particularly difficult. “I think because of the way I run combat, which is basically forcing everything to technically stay out of combat,” he explained in a comment below a video of the mod in action, “pausing should actually be pretty simple.”
“I think it's just a matter of clicking the button to go into turn-based mode,” he continued. “While I'm not 100 percent sure this will behave how you'd expect a NWN-style RTwP system to behave, I'll have to test it out and see.”
And if that's not enough to dissuade players from trying out the “VERY basic” mod, tinybike has an additional warning, noting that there's a very good reason players should avoid attempting the campaign with it installed right now: it doesn't play off particularly well with Baldur's Gate 3's wealth of conversations. “You will be slaughtered in real time,” they explain, “as the dialogue unfolds.”
It's a promising start to a mod that could warm the nostalgic hearts of Baldur's Gate purists, though. And you can expect a lot more than you might have expected now that Baldur's Gate 3 has official mod support – though its absence hasn't stopped eager modders from getting to work before then.