Cutscenes interacting with "Environmental Damage"

[tempest.of.emptiness]

A guardian totem throwing bolts of fire isn't environmental damage, it is an enemy attacking you. This *should* be obvious, because the totem has heath and can be attacked, but never-the-less the game treats it as environmental and so does not trigger combat when the totem starts attacking.

The result is that in the time that it takes to enter into turn-based mode manually you have already taken several "rounds" of attacks (ymmv depending on your reflexes), and then you have to try to run away or destroy the totem before you die. That sucks, but okay, it's a lesson you can learn from and avoid in the future...

... unless you happen to find yourself escorting Sazza to her people and you click to run past what you expect to be a friendly totem and up to her friends, and then surprise, a cutscene triggers right after the totem starts burning your party down. And then, surprise again, the totem keeps getting rounds while the conversation happens, so you have to skip past the cutscene to try to save your party... except surprise, Sazza's "friends" are now hostile for some reason that you don't know because you skipped the cutscene, so at least you are in turn-based mode now but good luck surviving that mess.

With that background, here are the suggestions:
1) The game should automatically drop into turn-based mode whenever you take damage from any source for any reason. At the very least it should be an option that you can enable, but honestly I cannot see any benefit to not enabling such an option.

2) The game should interrupt any cutscene whenever you take damage from any source for any reason. The game should be able to recover from the interruption by allowing you to resume the cutscene at a later time (in cases where that would make sense, like an innocuous conversation being interrupted by one of the participants erupting in flames) or with the outcome of the conversation being determined by the interruption (in cases where the interruption determines the outcome, like a friend of one conversant attacking a friend of another conversant in sight of that conversant).

If for some technical reason it is impossible to implement this then the only acceptable alternative is to make participants in a cutscene immune to all damage and effects caused by sources that are not a part of that cutscene. No one is going to stand around burning to death while having a conversation, and if the game forces them to do that then it should also have the courtesy to pause the immolation until the conversation ends.

3) If helping Sazza isn't going to make the guardian totems friendly then Sazza should know that and warn the party before they walk into one and get Sazza and themselves killed. She might not know that the other goblins are going to attack her, but the behavior of the totems should be something that she can anticipate.