Buff/Debuff Timers.

Skydree

I was toying with the idea. I kinda liked not having them for realism issues, but I don't know. Putting the idea out there for practical issue. Add timers to the icons to tell you whenever a spell is about to end or not. Especially those pesky charms, they last forever!

Corvino

Most charms should have their duration reduced if using the ToB engine. I know what you mean - it's nice innovation for modern games to have but as you say it's a bit immersion breaking.

In games like WoW where you need to meta-game or you fail then yes, it's essential. In Baldur's gate where you can solo the game with a bard, less so.

Skydree

My thoughts exactly. But after re playing BG, after years of WoW, I found that a bit... annoying. But yeah, as you said, kind of an immersion breaker with it. After all, a mage should be cleaver enough to know the duration of spells. But sometimes effects would be nice to have a timer. Poison and such.

Kithrixx

I'd like to see a timer. Either an actual clock over the icon, or have the icon shrink or have it slowly disappear from the top down.

I don't really know how it would be an immersion breaker - More often than not, my characters have at least a third of their portraits taken up by buff icons, if not more. It's never bothered my immersion, and it would be incredibly helpful in gameplay.

The_New_Romance

Don't think this is necessary. You can guesstimate the durations from the spell descriptions and from experience (when you used them a few times), and personally I think this is more fun than timers. Those would become unwieldy, as well, when a dozen buffs on six different characters are running wild.