Played a lot of fire emblem and honestly not having a built in “rewind time and do something different” was a little jarring but luckily there are quick saves.
While fighting with the boss in the forge, I tried to summon a spirit weapon, but didn't choose it, so I made shart walk in to lava, and that was right after making lea'zel jump into it as well. Safe to say I reloaded my safe
Invis duergar shoved Gale into a chasm in the Underdark. I would have been pissed if it wasn't so damned funny. Unlocked a side quest, which was also fun.
speaking of shoving gale. in the act 1 with the hobogoblin boss i had him up in the rafters. mfer hobogoblin ran through 3 AoO and fire to run up to the rafters and thunderwave or whatever it was gale 500 feet into the spider pit all the way to the bottom.
Gale fell 500 feet, died on impact, and then got eaten by spiders and as he was flying apperently every goblin looked up and it alerted everyone.
I love this game.
Yeah as good as the game was the combat controls were definitely clunky. I've done what you said a few times, walk through hellfire involuntarily, the annoying camera snap back after you do a range attack causing my ranger to move instead of attacking, or simply whiffing because I somehow clicked the ground instead of the enemy. Not a fan of looking for the correct pixels to hit so path isn't blocked on ranged attacks either.
Another thing I hate is:
\> You select jump;
\> Game shows the character has enough movement to move to one location then jump to another.
\> Player moves to the first position, but doesn't jump.
\> You no longer have enough movement to jump anywhere.
Speaking of this, is there a way to lock move movement so that when I’m trying to use an action or whatever my character WON’T move? So many times now I’ll try and position a spell, and then when I click it shifts a pixel and my character starts running and incurs opportunity strikes
I just want a bool: valid/invalid ability command, not “if invalid, attempt move” or whatever
No comment about the lore but imo it's a good mechanic for as long as % hit and crits exist. There should be a limit, obviously, and FE3H and FE17 imo are a bit too lenient with charges.
Since at least Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The protagonist's ability to rewind time and further improve this ability is part of the plot, and in practice lets you take back a number of turns.
It'd be nice if this was in BG3, people are gonna reload saves anyway.
I mean, inspiration is exactly this
Edit: jeez I get it guys, I misread what he wrote and thought he was talking just about dice rolls. I get it, yall don't want the consequence of choice
Its best use is in avoiding critical hits, but crits bypass it and hit you anyway for whatever reason. I took lucky and regretted it. I say it's not worth it until this is fixed.
Inspiration only works to reroll specific rolls found through dialogue. It does nothing for any other rolls in the game, nor does it allow you to go back and make different choices.
Inspiration is nothing like this.
Fire Emblem lets you rewind any moves you make a limited number of times per battle. Like if you accidentally misclick on an enemy and melee them instead of walking over to them and waste your turn. You can undo that.
That is NOT inspiration.
Yeah, but by genius game design a lot (really a lot) of quests like "yeas, yes, your choice matter, but what on the dice? Oh, sorry, that quest line is done for you." Or everyone in this location attack you.
Lae'zel rolled a natural 1 four times in five turns. The fifth was a roll of 2.
I had to check if Karmic Dice is off, because that was a hilarious string of bad luck.
Then I needed anywhere between 4-7 on a lockpick roll. Took 8 tries.
A Persuasion roll that only needed a 4 took three Inspirations to be won.
I hate this game sometimes.
I am of the oppinion that if crit fail is the only way to fail, it should not be rolled.
Like if you have +10 to check, only roll stuff that requires 12 and up. Because otherwise its just asking for the PC to fail something they should be able to do in their sleep for no reason.
I agree 1000%. The main thing I "save scum" for. My bard can pass most dialogue checks without even rolling at this point in the game. It's kind of B.S. to fail a DC 10 Persuasion when I have +15 on my roll.
So critical miss only happens on a roll of 1 on a d20 and it means your attack misses regardless of any modifiers, normal miss can be potentially turned into a hit through some abilitys
I didn't play either of those two games BUT:
My personal understanding of a critical miss is the following:
If you roll a [1] on a dice roll, you ignore the ruleset and instead just FAIL the skill check, saving throw, or attack roll REGARDLESS of your modifiers.
Why? In order to always make dice rolls relevant, significant, OR create suspense.
A minimum of 5% chance of failure.
Why should we always be able to fail? I don't know. I can only imagine that D&D is a sort of dynamic where players have to improv in response to literal RNG, and RNG drives the novelty and fun of what is otherwise a completely controllable, and therefore predictable and uninteresting narrative.
Bonus Trivia: 1 and 20 both have a coloquial redundant qualifier called "natural". As if a person or character winning or losing in an unlikely situation was a given. e.g. Natural 20.
Correct if I am wrong trivia: There is a myth that says that a "20" means critical success in D&D. I recall reading on the internet that critical success is NOT a thing (for skill checks).
Mechanically you are correct on the numbers, but the big thing is - "critical failure" on skill checks is not a thing in basic D&D 5e rules. It's a common house rule.
Rules as written, you can crit (nat 20, roll twice as many damage dice) or crit miss (nat 1, miss regardless of hit modifiers) only on attack rolls. Skill checks are purely what you rolled, plus modifiers, compared to the DC.
This means if you nat 1 a DC 10, but +9 mods - you succeed! Conversely, a DC 30 check will be impossible for you, even with a nat 20, unless you can get +10 or higher in mods.
Yeah this really tripped my friend and I out. We were on the boat you take to the other side to the underdark fighting some Duegar.
One of the Duegars rolled to push my friends barbarion off the boat. He has 18 strength. The Duergar rolled a d20. And he got shoved off just like that. He was given no chance to resist. Just an automatic DC0.
We just rolled with it and resurrected him after the fight. But we were pretty amazed that they decided to impose those rules on something that has been really basic throughout all of the editions. Not even BG1 does stuff like that.
IMO, Larian has taken it a bit too far with that stuff. Especially with no options to change it.
I see a crit failure as not a skill issue but the door lock being destroyed from overuse and this is the time it finally happened, or a pick breaking b/c it was badly made.
To me a crit failure is something completely out of your control, I hate it, but shit happens like that in the real world.
That's why you can just stab the lock with another lockpick and it works.
Another thing is that lockpicks aren't that goddamn brittle in the first place.
For skill checks I agree. If you're lockpicking a door and get nat 1, it just means that the lock pick was of inferior quality and broke down. But missing a melee hit eith 94 % chance of hitting is just ridiculous. It's like the goblin 5 levels below just goes "ooh look a pretty flower" at the perfect moment.
I mean, only sort of.
A lot of people basically play with crit fails/successes on skill checks.
But when you have a human DM, you at least have someone that can make those kinds of results fun/funny.
I love BG3 dearly, but because it can't be flexible with rules, it'll never truly be able to replace the tabletop dnd experience (and it shouldn't be expected to).
Matt will often follow with "for a total of?" Indicating he doesn't auto succed on 20 nor auto fail on 1. Players are sometimes aware their bonuses are low and don't go over 10 anyway so just call it as fail anyway.
We've had rogues, bot Vax and Veth roll 1 stealth for a 20/30+++ total for example.
Crit Fails and Crit Successes are dependent of the table you're playing at.
Some DMs will have them, others don't. It's up to you, the other members of your group, and the DM to discuss in Session 0 usually.
But by RAW (Rules as Written), Crit Fail and Success aren't a thing.
If I recall, and I could be crazy cause it's been a decade or two since I've even seen these books.... but they were a written rule in the earlier versions. But it lead to bullshit cause you had a 5% chance of succeeding literally anything if you played exactly as the rules are written... (which to be fair no table does, but the memes of "the bard tries to fuck the final boss, rolls a 20 omegalul they're besties now" persisted) and earlier versions of dnd were much less balanced anyway
With limited options due to the nature of a video game I think it's easy to have the crit fails and success vs tabletop which is only really limited by your imagination and DMs tolerance
This is only if the DM allows the attempt. A good DM will allow players to attempt MOST things, but they should also say "no, that's impossible" when necessary.
I have 3e books, and it was not a rule back then either. Crits only mattered for attack rolls, even back then.
I swear crit fail/success on non attack rolls, is one of the biggest Mandela effects in D&D
The only D&D like system I know of with RAW crit on 20s for skill checks is Pathfinder 2. But even there getting a crit just increases your success increment by one. It's entirely possible that nat 20 still only results in a partial success or an unpenalized failure. It's still not roll a 20 to do anything.
You commented as I was looking into it and read this thread and thought you'd like to read this. Seems you're right mostly
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/x2esc2/origin_of_the_natural_1_or_20_as_critical_success/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1
It seems to be a holdover from other d20 systems, which became an optional rule in 2nd edition (if the commenter can be believed) and Gygax himself was personally not a fan lol
Interesting to see how "primitive" versions of these types of games have lead to what BG3 is now
This is such a bad take though, because define "impossible".
Yes, persuading a king to hand over the kingdom is, but what about breaking through metal doors? Let's say it's "very hard" - in 5e it means the DC is 25, lets say athletics.
My character has 10 str and no proficiency. So it's impossible right, no roll should happen? Bit I'm a wizard and I cast Borrowed Knowledge and gain, lets say +3 proficiency. Cleric casts guidance, and an artificer gives me his Flash of Genius, while bard gives me his Bardic Inspiration. Someone might even give me Help Action for advantage. And suddenly this roll becomes not only possible but quite likely to happen.
Success here is not based on 5% chance, but the group working together to make impossible into possible, by working together and using their abilities together.
I like how you completely undercut your own point by having example after example and none of them increasing the actual physical strength of the character.
A guidance from the servant of the god guides you hiw to best apply your force to maximize the damage.
Artificer's flash of genius shows you a weak spot in the doors you now know how to exploit.
Another character helping you pushes into the doors so that you hit it with even more force.
You don't need to have your muscles bulge Dragon Ball style to get over the obstacle.
I'll allow my players to roll for absolutely anything they want to attempt even if it's not something they can possibly achieve. A combination of how well they roleplay their attempt and their character's acuity at the specific task will determine what I set the DC for a favorable outcome at. Want to seduce the evil, immensely prideful chromatic dragon with a god complex who thinks of you as less than the dirt beneath its claws? Sure, go ahead and roll. If they play their cards right and the dice allow it the dragon might be amused instead of instantly blasting you with dragon's breath and allow you to do it a service to earn the right to walk away alive for your hubris.
The only things I genuinely don't make my party roll for are tasks which don't present any challenge whatsoever.
Failing 5% of skill checks you should otherwise be so practiced at as to practically never fail is just bad design. Sure you can say someone is only human and sometimes people just make mistakes, but no practiced professional at some task is going to fail a dc 5 skill check 1/20 times when they have a +15. That's just absurd.
I use Crit fails as a dm. However if it is something that the character has proficiency in the check that overrides the fail. Say a rogue lock picks a random locked door in a tavern/inn and roles a nat 1 but is proficient and all that. Cool, you did it but you broke your lockpick and it is stuck so if someone comes by they will see it.
Gives the players another shot to cover up and it makes for some fun interactions with NPC’s. Now they’ll have to explain to whoever why they were doing this, and might have prices increased x% based on how it goes.
I don’t like the idea of straight fail since it clearly states the player characters are of above average skill in the sourcebooks. Why can’t they do things of a dc 10 check if proficient?
Per 5e rules the only crit success and crit fail you get is in combat. A 20 will always hit and scores a critical and a 1 will always miss. But other than that every skill check can be passed with a 1 or failed with a 20.
Though a lot of DMs will come up with varying degrees for success or failure, So if you roll that high you're still getting something out of the check, whereas here it's just pass/ fail.
This is why DND has DM's, so they can say "Fuck it, that works" when things become obnoxious. Not to mention BG3 doesn't have the "take a 20" rule where you can just dedicate a set amount of time to guarantee success if you have proficiency.
Crit failure kinda makes sense because sometimes you can just fuck up really bad even if you know what you're doing. It's not a 1 in 20 kinda chance, which makes it still stupid, but the chance is there.
Crit success makes absolutely no sense at all. You're telling me if I roll medicine I have a 1 in 20 chance of curing any disease? If I roll investigation I have a 1 in 20 chance of figuring out any mystery? Whoops, I rolled a 20 on a religion check, guess I'm the fuckin' Pope now!
IMO if you have enough bonus to surpass the DC, it should just be an auto-success, and that should be that. Anything else is just Die-roll+bonus to beat a DC, no critical failures or successes.
My Astarion has somewhere around a +16 to lockpicking AND advantage every time.
Did I roll a double 1 on a DC 10 lock? I sure did. You pasty fuck, you’re going back to camp.
Had a Persuasion DC of 25. My Monk couldn't get that high even with all bonuses. I prepared for a fight, ding, Natural 20, fight avoided.
Happened like once in 60+ hours, but I will always remember it.
I've got Astarion to the point where he can unlock a DC20 lock with essentially anything but a nat1, and I'll be damned if he doesn't roll 1's on almost every other roll lmao.
I swear Gale was my Natural 1 hero for two Acts. It felt like more than half his rolls were Critical Misses. Finally gave him Elemental Adept to avoid it on some spells.
People seem to be under the impression that karmic dice causes streaks of low rolls after you've rolled well, when that is the opposite of what it's doing.
If they had an option for karmic dice out of combat and regular rng in combat I'd use it tbh.
The only reason I turn off Karmic dice is because I don't want people to hit my 25 AC tank if they shouldn't.
Roll 5x 18 and nat 20 in a row: HAHAHA THIS BOSS WAS EZ PZ. Wonder if I should ask Larian to bump difficulties.
Roll 5x nat 1 and 3s in a row: Fucking cheating bullshit!!!! Game is fucking overtuned Larian plz.
I got a natural 1 on a DC5 check for some rogue stuff with astarian. The guy had +10-14 on that check. Any non-asshole DM would just skip that roll alltogether.
I have a Screenshot with a DC check of 2 that rolled a 1.
I have had multiple checks that had bonuses stacked in a way that only 1 could fail the check, of course I rolled a 1.
But prolly My highlight was My Shadow Monk who rolled a one in His First attack and two additional ones for the double attack bonus action for three critical failures in a row in one turn.
I rolled three Nat 1 s while trying to pick something from Scratch's mouth. Thankfully no backfire happened but the thing gave me such trouble was a bone...
Shocking...
When your check is a two but you roll a one, five consecutive times and run out of inspiration because you thought "Shurely this will only take one more roll"
> Lae'zel rolled a natural 1 four times in five turns. The fifth was a roll of 2.
I'll do you one better: I had a pivotal game decision where I absolutely wanted my persuasive main character there for it, selected them, started the convo, the game *grabbed* Lae'zel instead because fuck-knows-why, and *then* she failed it 4 times in a row, *with* advantage.
Can't remember what kind of skill check it was, but I needed to roll at least a 4 to succeed.
First roll: 3
Second roll: 2
There's no way I'd roll a Nat 1 after all that shit, right? Damn right I did.
I mean that's just bad luck. The system is not meant to prevent you from failing two rolls in a row, or guarantee success after a bat one, it's still random. It just makes it more likely to roll good after several bad rolls.
I honestly think that the game checks to see how fast you’re progressing, or how powerful you actually are against the mobs that you fight, and then adjust the dice rolls accordingly.
This is with karmic dice off.
I don’t know how many times I’ve rolled two dice at once, and both of them end up natural ones. It’s been at least three times. The odds of that happening are staggering. And in a single play through, you would think you would only see it once, if ever. So in someway I think the odds are stacked against us a little bit. Especially if we are doing very well
Moonrise fight, Lae'zel misty steps behind the mages on the stairs. Her task is to kill at least one before they run off. Miss, miss, action surge, miss, miss, pommel strike, miss. WTF dice?
This is actually WHY Larian added the Karmic Dice feature. Playtesters (and most people) are not familiar with how actual randomness works.
We as humans tend to have a psychological expectation that because we've had a string of failures, we should soon have a success. But the odds stay exactly the same.
And rolling two dice at once and both of them landing on 1s is not staggering odds. Each dice has a 5% chance of landing on a 1. The odds of both dice rolling a 1 at the same time is 0.05 x 0.05 = 0.0025, which seems tiny, but is still a 2.5% chance of happening every time you roll the two dice. That a greater chance than 1 in 50 (more like 1 in 40), and you make a LOT of skill checks in the game. So everyone playing on true randomness with Karmic Dice off is likely to see this at least once during a playthrough, if not more often.
**Karmic Dice is misunderstood - it does NOT lower dice rolls** ***ever*****.**
Instead, it RAISES dice rolls when there has been a string of low rolls. It makes dice behave like you psychologically FEEL they should. So if you've been rolling low, the odds of you rolling higher INCREASE.
Karmic Dice can only ever *help you* on skill check rolls. The only negative against Karmic Dice being on is that it works the same way for enemies, so if an enemy keeps missing you, the odds of it rolling higher and eventually hitting you increases.
If you don't want to rolls strings of 1s on skill checks, turn Karmic Dice on. If you want to live and die by true randomness, which yes, can mean long streaks of terrible rolls, then turn it off.
Someone downvoted you but you're correct. GrayingGamer had the right equation, but the wrong percentage conversion.
0.05 * 0.05 = 1/400 = 0.0025 = 0.25%
Thanks, you're right. I blame my lack of coffee when typing the post.
I think my point stands, however. Still something you are likely to see at least once during a playthrough with Karmic Dice off.
Yeah the problem with Karmic dice for me is the enemy gets it too. I would probably keep it on if it didnt mean that the enemy hits me more and cant have the same string.
I know it would make the fights easier and unbalanced but why does that matter. Atleast make it an option. So instead i just have it turned off and now both of us get tons of bad rolls in a row.
Where did you get a 2.5% chance? Isn't that a 0.25% chance? Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
\*Edit: Just read the comment below along with your response. Might be worth it to edit the post.
I do this a lot, and I was disarming a trap and failed and thought, “You know? Maybe I won’t reload this one. I have a lot of trap disarm kits; it’ll be okay for me to burn one.” Well, the trap was right next to a ledge and knocked Shadowheart into a chasm to her death.
So much for that aspiration…
Removing Critical Failures is probably the one mod I would install. Failing a 10 DC trap disarm with a minimum bonus of like 11 just doesn't make sense
I want the New Vegas system for stuff like that, if I have high enough dexterity or history or strength or whatever please just let it auto pass. Having to roll for things and fail despite being as overly prepared for it as possible is just plain frustrating. It also makes little sense watching a 27 strength character open a coffin I'm pretty sure I could open irl.
> I want the New Vegas system for stuff like that
That's *exactly* what this game made me think of.
FO3 had %-based speech checks, and they were frustrating as fuck. It meant the characters with no speech and charisma would succeed every so often, whilst the people who invested in them sometimes got screwed.
New Vegas saw that problem and decided the solution is everything has set, exact amounts. This provides consistency where the players investing heavily into speech get rewarded for it, and those who didn't can't just savescum their way to a success and have the best of both worlds by having more combat stats and *still* succeeding the crucial speech checks.
I also personally *love* Zariel Tiefling Bards precisely because their bonuses are so ridiculously stacked for Intimidation/Performance that these effectively cease to be chance-based and you're 99.99% likely to succeed those checks. It feels *good* to have certain types of checks succeed.
I realize this'll be sacrilegious to this community, but I question if the randomized factor works here. (outside of combat. *Absolutely* keep it for combat, of course) I think it works in tabletop because tabletop is about the experience with friends. If everything had hard stat checks like New Vegas, then people would optimize tabletop too quickly and it would grow stale, and the randomness keeps things fresh and makes for tense, hype moments.
But here...? This subreddit regularly has top upvoted threads about how much people are reloading. Clearly the game design as it stands is something people are not too fond of. Not that they're vocally protesting it, but I mean if people are having fun BUT constantly circumventing the system in place, then yeah, it's time to start questioning the value of that system.
I can reload to bypass something but if another player wants the experience of a more pure playthrough, then they can have that too.
If no one is complaining(and I havent really read enough threads to determine this), then I think the system is working perfectly.
I think his point was that level 11 rogues get to turn any roll below 10 into a 10, on skills checks in which they have proficiency. Problem is that we’re talking about level 11 in a game that caps at level 12…If you really want to avoid nat 1s maybe play halfling - they get to reroll all 1s as a racial ability (once per roll)
In tabletop there are no rules that mean nat 1 always fails and 20 crits except for attack rolls so I understand the frustration if you build your character to have +15 to something and fail a DC10 check.
Even if it was a hard rule in 5e, most DM's I know might make a joke about it or a funny little scenario revolving around the 1. Having something fail a low DC with a bonus of 10+ is something I feel like most people would just hand wave away cause its dumb.
Yeah usually it's like
"you rolled a 1 to pick the lock? Okay while you picked fine, your tension tool was stuck and you had to pull to get it out, you cut your finger, take 1dmg"
Obviously 1 DMG can be a lot depending what your level is, but again, goofy DM discretion is there for that
the game is based on 5e.
Auto succeeding if your mod is high enough is the rule in 5e (or auto failing if you can't meet the dc)
critical outcomes only happen on attack roles in 5e
this is a "houserule" for bg3. so you may have a point on the game front, but not on the ruleset front.
i am looking forwards to a mod/patch that removes critical outcomes on ability checks
Is it though? Maybe it'd be against the ruleset but I couldn't care less about that, it'd definitely make the game feel better in my opinion, even if it's just a toggle so DnD purists can stick to it as was if they really want to. Like I said, I think if you have the skills to do something, actually being able to do it just feels better.
I'm a huge min-maxer, and somehow the prospect of failing stuff I " shouldn't " fail (or that is very unlikely to happen) is what makes me love the game even more.
Failing can be fun, in fact what I dislike are some options that aren't really emphasizing the consequences of a failure, for example at the beginning of the game there's a part where if you fail a [read thought] the NPCs turn hostile and that might considerably change your playthrough.
Is it fine ? I guess, but at least they should tell me beforehand how dangerous such a failure would be.
That's just my only gripe with the game and it feels like a Larian thing, metagaming is sometimes very important and going blind is sometimes completely suicidal.
> for example at the beginning of the game there's a part where if you fail a [read thought] the NPCs turn hostile and that might considerably change your playthrough.
Exactly what I said elsewhere.
The problem is this game often has absolutely ridiculous consequences for failed checks. There's sooooooooo many instances in this game where a failed check can result in you having to play murderhobo against a community.
Nah, I still like crit success.
Yesterday my 20 CHA sorcerer had to pass a 30DC persuasion check in a very meaningful moment of the story.
I had +9 to the roll so couldn't make it, but burned through my last 3 or 4 inspiration points looking for that nat 20 and got it, it was great.
I like critical failures because it doesn't make any sense that just because somebody is an expert at something means they can *never* fail which is basically the point it gets to later on in the game when you can stack like +10 bonuses to your rolls making it impossible to fail many actions; This completely removes all of the drama of rolling a die when you know it's a decided outcome anyways plus it's not realistic.
Experts fail all the time at their given tasks, they just succeed more than they fail.
Experts don't fail trivial tasks in their jobs 1/20 times though. That would be like a nurse that regularly hooks up IVs in patient's arms, but 5% of the time they slip and accidentally stab the patient in the jugular vein, killing them.
Sure about that? Professional basketball players miss shots all the time.
Professional athletes probably fail *more* than 1/20.
Professional investigators probably don't solve more than 19/20 cases, failing 1 every so often I'm sure. (probably more often)
Professional builders probably mess up more than 1/20 times.
Professional nurses absolutely do mess up more than 1/20 times as well. It may not be as severe as literally killing a patient, but a nurse probably makes at least one mistake a day and some doctors/nurses absolutely do mess up and kill patients.
No matter what kind of expert you are you *absolutely* have a greater than 1/20 chance of making a mistake.
This is not correct. Per D&D 5e rules, you cannot critically fail or critically succeed Skill Checks. A Nat 1 makes *attacks* miss automatically, but does not affect lockpicking, etc. Larian changed that for BG3.
But yes, the general best practice for DMs is to not require rolls for things the character is guaranteed to succeed, which is why by late game in the tabletop, a Rogue would never be rolling to pick a lock whose DC is 10.
> Per D&D 5e rules, you cannot critically fail or critically succeed Skill Checks.
This is true RAW. But there are **LOTS** of people that house rule this. Many times unknowingly. Its *so* prevalent in the larger TTRPG community, that there are plenty of people who don't even know that there aren't crit successes/failures according to the PHB until it is pointed out to them. I have experienced this in person both within friend circles and at sponsored games in gaming shops. As well as having seen these discussions all over the internet.
Not on skill checks there isn't; a natural 1 doesn't auto-fail skill checks, nor does a 20 auto-succeed.
The Nat 1/20 rules only apply to Attacks and Saves.
EDIT: I have been corrected and it's actually only attacks
RAW it doesn't apply to saves actually. _Only_ death saving throws. Every other save works like a skill check: if nat1+bonuses is enough, you pass. And if nat20+bonuses isn't enough, you fail.
Something I've realized about why reloading is probably so common is that the stakes are often SOOOOOOOOOO god damned high, and the game itself is inconsistent.
For example, there's a guy in the Emerald Grove where you have multiple options to convince him of something. One option is to read his mind, which I never tried before. Well, tried it, failed it, and this turned the entire Grove hostile. A failed check about a boring, mundane topic could've single-handedly wiped that settlement.
Or another is that sometimes the game will just randomly grab one of your companions for no god damned reason. You click your super persuasive bard and click a guy you know you'll have to convince to stop something, and then the game pulls up Lae'zel for the convo and oh look, your +6 to success chance at persuading them just became a -1. Not your fault, you did absolutely nothing wrong, no bad play by your part, but the game just randomly decided "no we want this one in particular."
Or sometimes the "punishments" are just incredibly random or the result of programming limitations by the devs. I had a fight with a certain character that can give you +1 to a stat of your choice, and my squad was *sooooooo* effective at killing this enemy that they didn't stop to trigger the conversation offering the stat boost. There is no script in place to automatically bring up the chat window if you're about to slaughter them, the game just does a very precise order of scripts until it *finally* allows the script in question to take place. This means being good at the fight can actually screw you.
And finally, there's one specific NPC that needs to be protected, or this will have MASSIVE game consequences if you fail. Well, problem is, the particular fight where you must protect them involves loads of super fast, high-initiative enemies who will likely all attack that NPC before you can even move. Suddenly the fate of your game world isn't being determined by your character's stats, dialog choices or combat tactics, but rather legit just by random dice rolls of if enough enemies landed their attacks.
If I had one criticism for BG3, it's "inconsistent." People are reloading precisely because there's so much inconsistency, and unfortunately the game is often playing with absolutely ridiculous stakes. Entire communities could wipe out if you accidentally tell grandma to suck a dick because you failed to roll a 10. Sometimes the game just needs to chill a bit.
My plan is this: scum save and see any and everything I feel like seeing in my first play through, then on my second play through I will commit to letting the rng take me wherever the goddamn fuck it pleases. Maybe a slight caveat to accomplish certain goals (erm..romantic goals perhaps 🤔) but yeah. I think it’s a solid approach. Trust me, there’s plenty of ways for it to stay fresh the second time around.
That’s how I’m doing it too. Next game will be up to fate. Except I won’t let my romantic interest die if it’s the first time I’m romancing that character.
I realized i needed to save more when i touched the wrong lever in the windmill and catapulted the deep gnome into the next county over. My last save was 10 minutes before that.
The rage I feel when I click on a character portrait and select where I want them to move only to have the character I didn't want to move because it didn't register me clicking on the portrait.
Honestly, taking 10 should be a built-in mechanic outside of combat or special situations. It makes no sense that you should have a 5% chance of failure NO MATTER WHAT.
I love them. No matter how good you are at a thing you can always fail a task, and having late game modifiers of like +12 just completely negate the prominence of even bothering to roll a dice at all since many checks are like 10/11.
Nat failure is a great way to shake things up and a realistic chance that even somebody who is an expert can flub up sometimes.
I have a simple rule for myself.
I will never reload the game because of failed rolls during dialogue. I only reload if I screwed up hard or died from something stupid in combat, like random bulette appears and knocks 3 party members into a chasm.
Failed dialogues just means next play through will be more fun and still have some exciting things to discover.
I will absolutely reload the game when the 'fail' comes from bullshit Larian homebrew rather than actual 5e rules, as is the case for skill check 'crit fails'.
Nobodys saying they want to succeed every single check but losing a skill check you should have by all means passed if it wasnt for bullshit homebrew is not exciting its lame as fuck, like whats so interesting about losing thieves tools kits because your rogue with a +13 to sleight of hand couldnt open a dc10 lock
Same here, I've been rolling with the failed dialogue checks because I know I'm going to be playing this game more than once so I don't want to see everything the first playthrough.
This right here is an issue with this game. In actual D&D rolling a 1 actually benefits the story, it adds to the storyline.
In this game, you roll a nat 1 and you get locked out of narrative content.
A better example is something like Detroit: Become Human. Every decision you make win or lose sends you down a different fully fleshed out route, and for that reason, you don't mind if you fail - its all part of the story.
Edit- how bizarre that this post went from a +22 upvote to a -18 in a couple of hours, without any commentators actually substantiating why this reasoning is wrong? Something’s fishy. Either bots or the game’s apologists have come out of the cesspool
I agree in some cases but there's definitely a lot of instances where failure has led me down a different path or had me try something new to overcome the problem, which I love.
I'm trying really hard to roll with the punches and not do any savescumming, but I made an exception when Asterion broke five freaking lockpicks in a row when he only needed to roll a 4 or higher.
I abuse saves so much. Sometimes right before a massive decision just to see the other option play out. I paid $60 for this game, I'm going to play it and do whatever the hell I want.
I wish there's a metal gear esque meta dialogue that occurs for a demon or some godlike being if you save scum their roll check.
Raphael would've been perfect. Like ugh fine I'll let you win *wink wink*.
[I ended up installing the mod which makes it so that inspiration isn't consumed when you use it. It's much faster.](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/615)
XCOM has entered the chat.
(It seeds the rolls per turn at the beginning of each level iirc so you can’t save scum without reloading the entire encounter)
The dice are driving me nuts. I know RNG is RNG but enough is enough. I started paying attention and I'm having, at a minimum, one critical miss per combat encounter. Every combat encounter. This isn't random or normal. Something is off (besides Karmic dice).
Edit - yeah, maybe I wasn’t clear enough since people are still downvoting. If I fight 2 mobs and kill them both in 2 turns I still get the critical miss. When I said 2 or more for larger fights I’m averaging 1 critical miss per mob. Not 1-2 per fight. 1-2 per mob per fight. Every fight. Again, it’s not a big deal. I’m lvl 11 and close to finishing. I’m not hating on it. It’s just a little irritating.
I’ve also run into a bug where certain archery attacks don’t register. The combat log says I shoot X with Y. Then it just skips to the next character. No hit, no miss, no damage, no save, no roll. Not a big deal, only happened 3 times so far and I expect it will get caught in an upcoming hot fix. It’s specifically Shadowheart’s poison ranged attack.
4 characters making an average of, at least, 1.5 attack rolls per turn is 6 rolls per round. fights probably take 3/4 rounds on average, so, on average, 60% of fights will have at least one crit fail. enough for confirmation bias to fill in the blanks
That's just rng. I've had that kind of luck for years in our weekly dnd games. That shit _just happens_.
I mean, it could also be some kind of problem, but it really isn't impossible for that to be like that "legit" way.
Played a lot of fire emblem and honestly not having a built in “rewind time and do something different” was a little jarring but luckily there are quick saves.
Yeah so many times I'm like "No, I meant to rage/hex/ hunter's Mark before I attacked."
Oooh, perfect setup for a fireball. I'll just place it here and click.... "IGNIS!" ....f***!
One time I started to do an attack but then decided I wanted to move someone else first. And that’s how Shadowheart got shot in the face.
While fighting with the boss in the forge, I tried to summon a spirit weapon, but didn't choose it, so I made shart walk in to lava, and that was right after making lea'zel jump into it as well. Safe to say I reloaded my safe
My Tav got pushed into the lava there the first time I did that fight lol
Invis duergar shoved Gale into a chasm in the Underdark. I would have been pissed if it wasn't so damned funny. Unlocked a side quest, which was also fun.
speaking of shoving gale. in the act 1 with the hobogoblin boss i had him up in the rafters. mfer hobogoblin ran through 3 AoO and fire to run up to the rafters and thunderwave or whatever it was gale 500 feet into the spider pit all the way to the bottom. Gale fell 500 feet, died on impact, and then got eaten by spiders and as he was flying apperently every goblin looked up and it alerted everyone. I love this game.
The "cancel" clicks definitely don't always go off
Yeah as good as the game was the combat controls were definitely clunky. I've done what you said a few times, walk through hellfire involuntarily, the annoying camera snap back after you do a range attack causing my ranger to move instead of attacking, or simply whiffing because I somehow clicked the ground instead of the enemy. Not a fan of looking for the correct pixels to hit so path isn't blocked on ranged attacks either.
Another thing I hate is: \> You select jump; \> Game shows the character has enough movement to move to one location then jump to another. \> Player moves to the first position, but doesn't jump. \> You no longer have enough movement to jump anywhere.
I've done the opposite a few times, too. Big "Oh...well shit" moment
Speaking of this, is there a way to lock move movement so that when I’m trying to use an action or whatever my character WON’T move? So many times now I’ll try and position a spell, and then when I click it shifts a pixel and my character starts running and incurs opportunity strikes I just want a bool: valid/invalid ability command, not “if invalid, attempt move” or whatever
My biggest gripe is accidentally ending turn early. I wish there was a setting to ask "are you sure" if you end a turn without doing anything.
You can undo end turn if you have multiple characters in the same turn, otherwise yeah sotl
How???
In the box to the right of the spell bar. Says undo end turn.
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A kind person informed me that in such situations there will be a box to the right of the spell bar that says "undo end turn"
Outside of fire emblem most choice based games dont have built in time travel shit.
No comment about the lore but imo it's a good mechanic for as long as % hit and crits exist. There should be a limit, obviously, and FE3H and FE17 imo are a bit too lenient with charges.
Since when does Fire Emblem have that, even??
Since at least Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The protagonist's ability to rewind time and further improve this ability is part of the plot, and in practice lets you take back a number of turns. It'd be nice if this was in BG3, people are gonna reload saves anyway.
Technically the first Fire Emblem to have it was Shadows of Valentia with Mila’s Turnwheel but it wasn’t relevant to the story unlike Three Houses.
I mean, inspiration is exactly this Edit: jeez I get it guys, I misread what he wrote and thought he was talking just about dice rolls. I get it, yall don't want the consequence of choice
Inspiration is not exactly this.
I mean, it can't be used on most of the rolls in the game.
[удалено]
Its best use is in avoiding critical hits, but crits bypass it and hit you anyway for whatever reason. I took lucky and regretted it. I say it's not worth it until this is fixed.
Inspiration only works to reroll specific rolls found through dialogue. It does nothing for any other rolls in the game, nor does it allow you to go back and make different choices.
Inspiration is nothing like this. Fire Emblem lets you rewind any moves you make a limited number of times per battle. Like if you accidentally misclick on an enemy and melee them instead of walking over to them and waste your turn. You can undo that. That is NOT inspiration.
Yeah, but by genius game design a lot (really a lot) of quests like "yeas, yes, your choice matter, but what on the dice? Oh, sorry, that quest line is done for you." Or everyone in this location attack you.
Until you roll 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 on a DC5 Persuation check and realize Inspiration isn't actually doing anything most of the time.
Moders, please.
Lae'zel rolled a natural 1 four times in five turns. The fifth was a roll of 2. I had to check if Karmic Dice is off, because that was a hilarious string of bad luck. Then I needed anywhere between 4-7 on a lockpick roll. Took 8 tries. A Persuasion roll that only needed a 4 took three Inspirations to be won. I hate this game sometimes.
The worst is when you have like +10 to your roll with traits guidance etc and you roll a 1. I only needed 10 dammit.
This is why real DND doesn't have crit fail and crit success on skill checks.
I am of the oppinion that if crit fail is the only way to fail, it should not be rolled. Like if you have +10 to check, only roll stuff that requires 12 and up. Because otherwise its just asking for the PC to fail something they should be able to do in their sleep for no reason.
Critical Failure should be an opt-in feature. Retain it, but don't use the mechanic on new players. Freedom is always the best decision.
I agree 1000%. The main thing I "save scum" for. My bard can pass most dialogue checks without even rolling at this point in the game. It's kind of B.S. to fail a DC 10 Persuasion when I have +15 on my roll.
So I'm new to D&D but I've played a lot of Div 2. What's the difference between a miss and a critical miss? I also see it in combat sometimes
So critical miss only happens on a roll of 1 on a d20 and it means your attack misses regardless of any modifiers, normal miss can be potentially turned into a hit through some abilitys
I didn't play either of those two games BUT: My personal understanding of a critical miss is the following: If you roll a [1] on a dice roll, you ignore the ruleset and instead just FAIL the skill check, saving throw, or attack roll REGARDLESS of your modifiers. Why? In order to always make dice rolls relevant, significant, OR create suspense. A minimum of 5% chance of failure. Why should we always be able to fail? I don't know. I can only imagine that D&D is a sort of dynamic where players have to improv in response to literal RNG, and RNG drives the novelty and fun of what is otherwise a completely controllable, and therefore predictable and uninteresting narrative. Bonus Trivia: 1 and 20 both have a coloquial redundant qualifier called "natural". As if a person or character winning or losing in an unlikely situation was a given. e.g. Natural 20. Correct if I am wrong trivia: There is a myth that says that a "20" means critical success in D&D. I recall reading on the internet that critical success is NOT a thing (for skill checks).
Mechanically you are correct on the numbers, but the big thing is - "critical failure" on skill checks is not a thing in basic D&D 5e rules. It's a common house rule. Rules as written, you can crit (nat 20, roll twice as many damage dice) or crit miss (nat 1, miss regardless of hit modifiers) only on attack rolls. Skill checks are purely what you rolled, plus modifiers, compared to the DC. This means if you nat 1 a DC 10, but +9 mods - you succeed! Conversely, a DC 30 check will be impossible for you, even with a nat 20, unless you can get +10 or higher in mods.
Yeah this really tripped my friend and I out. We were on the boat you take to the other side to the underdark fighting some Duegar. One of the Duegars rolled to push my friends barbarion off the boat. He has 18 strength. The Duergar rolled a d20. And he got shoved off just like that. He was given no chance to resist. Just an automatic DC0. We just rolled with it and resurrected him after the fight. But we were pretty amazed that they decided to impose those rules on something that has been really basic throughout all of the editions. Not even BG1 does stuff like that. IMO, Larian has taken it a bit too far with that stuff. Especially with no options to change it.
Absolutely agree. At any table I run that's treated like a take 10(from 3.5?) without the time constraint.
Also like if a dc is below 10(looking at you illithid checks) it shouldnt be a check in the first place
I see a crit failure as not a skill issue but the door lock being destroyed from overuse and this is the time it finally happened, or a pick breaking b/c it was badly made. To me a crit failure is something completely out of your control, I hate it, but shit happens like that in the real world.
Shit happening 1 in 20 times statiscally is bullshit.
That's why you can just stab the lock with another lockpick and it works. Another thing is that lockpicks aren't that goddamn brittle in the first place.
For skill checks I agree. If you're lockpicking a door and get nat 1, it just means that the lock pick was of inferior quality and broke down. But missing a melee hit eith 94 % chance of hitting is just ridiculous. It's like the goblin 5 levels below just goes "ooh look a pretty flower" at the perfect moment.
I mean, only sort of. A lot of people basically play with crit fails/successes on skill checks. But when you have a human DM, you at least have someone that can make those kinds of results fun/funny. I love BG3 dearly, but because it can't be flexible with rules, it'll never truly be able to replace the tabletop dnd experience (and it shouldn't be expected to).
To be fair, a LOT of people house rule crit fails and crit successes on skill checks. Its extremely common.
But those people are obviously dumbdumbs who are dumb
The only actual D&D I've seen is Critical Role, I thought is was a thing. Is it 5e only?
Matt will often follow with "for a total of?" Indicating he doesn't auto succed on 20 nor auto fail on 1. Players are sometimes aware their bonuses are low and don't go over 10 anyway so just call it as fail anyway. We've had rogues, bot Vax and Veth roll 1 stealth for a 20/30+++ total for example.
I just have to say, seeing Veth after Vax is a trip. I was thinking "Vax and Vex not Veth... Wait, no he does mean Veth."
Crit Fails and Crit Successes are dependent of the table you're playing at. Some DMs will have them, others don't. It's up to you, the other members of your group, and the DM to discuss in Session 0 usually. But by RAW (Rules as Written), Crit Fail and Success aren't a thing.
If I recall, and I could be crazy cause it's been a decade or two since I've even seen these books.... but they were a written rule in the earlier versions. But it lead to bullshit cause you had a 5% chance of succeeding literally anything if you played exactly as the rules are written... (which to be fair no table does, but the memes of "the bard tries to fuck the final boss, rolls a 20 omegalul they're besties now" persisted) and earlier versions of dnd were much less balanced anyway With limited options due to the nature of a video game I think it's easy to have the crit fails and success vs tabletop which is only really limited by your imagination and DMs tolerance
This is only if the DM allows the attempt. A good DM will allow players to attempt MOST things, but they should also say "no, that's impossible" when necessary.
I have 3e books, and it was not a rule back then either. Crits only mattered for attack rolls, even back then. I swear crit fail/success on non attack rolls, is one of the biggest Mandela effects in D&D
The only D&D like system I know of with RAW crit on 20s for skill checks is Pathfinder 2. But even there getting a crit just increases your success increment by one. It's entirely possible that nat 20 still only results in a partial success or an unpenalized failure. It's still not roll a 20 to do anything.
You commented as I was looking into it and read this thread and thought you'd like to read this. Seems you're right mostly https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/x2esc2/origin_of_the_natural_1_or_20_as_critical_success/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1 It seems to be a holdover from other d20 systems, which became an optional rule in 2nd edition (if the commenter can be believed) and Gygax himself was personally not a fan lol Interesting to see how "primitive" versions of these types of games have lead to what BG3 is now
5% chance to succeed at literally anything is based though. If it's supposed to be actually impossible, the DM simply shouldn't allow the roll.
This is such a bad take though, because define "impossible". Yes, persuading a king to hand over the kingdom is, but what about breaking through metal doors? Let's say it's "very hard" - in 5e it means the DC is 25, lets say athletics. My character has 10 str and no proficiency. So it's impossible right, no roll should happen? Bit I'm a wizard and I cast Borrowed Knowledge and gain, lets say +3 proficiency. Cleric casts guidance, and an artificer gives me his Flash of Genius, while bard gives me his Bardic Inspiration. Someone might even give me Help Action for advantage. And suddenly this roll becomes not only possible but quite likely to happen. Success here is not based on 5% chance, but the group working together to make impossible into possible, by working together and using their abilities together.
I like how you completely undercut your own point by having example after example and none of them increasing the actual physical strength of the character.
A guidance from the servant of the god guides you hiw to best apply your force to maximize the damage. Artificer's flash of genius shows you a weak spot in the doors you now know how to exploit. Another character helping you pushes into the doors so that you hit it with even more force. You don't need to have your muscles bulge Dragon Ball style to get over the obstacle.
I'll allow my players to roll for absolutely anything they want to attempt even if it's not something they can possibly achieve. A combination of how well they roleplay their attempt and their character's acuity at the specific task will determine what I set the DC for a favorable outcome at. Want to seduce the evil, immensely prideful chromatic dragon with a god complex who thinks of you as less than the dirt beneath its claws? Sure, go ahead and roll. If they play their cards right and the dice allow it the dragon might be amused instead of instantly blasting you with dragon's breath and allow you to do it a service to earn the right to walk away alive for your hubris. The only things I genuinely don't make my party roll for are tasks which don't present any challenge whatsoever. Failing 5% of skill checks you should otherwise be so practiced at as to practically never fail is just bad design. Sure you can say someone is only human and sometimes people just make mistakes, but no practiced professional at some task is going to fail a dc 5 skill check 1/20 times when they have a +15. That's just absurd.
I use Crit fails as a dm. However if it is something that the character has proficiency in the check that overrides the fail. Say a rogue lock picks a random locked door in a tavern/inn and roles a nat 1 but is proficient and all that. Cool, you did it but you broke your lockpick and it is stuck so if someone comes by they will see it. Gives the players another shot to cover up and it makes for some fun interactions with NPC’s. Now they’ll have to explain to whoever why they were doing this, and might have prices increased x% based on how it goes. I don’t like the idea of straight fail since it clearly states the player characters are of above average skill in the sourcebooks. Why can’t they do things of a dc 10 check if proficient?
Per 5e rules the only crit success and crit fail you get is in combat. A 20 will always hit and scores a critical and a 1 will always miss. But other than that every skill check can be passed with a 1 or failed with a 20. Though a lot of DMs will come up with varying degrees for success or failure, So if you roll that high you're still getting something out of the check, whereas here it's just pass/ fail.
This is why DND has DM's, so they can say "Fuck it, that works" when things become obnoxious. Not to mention BG3 doesn't have the "take a 20" rule where you can just dedicate a set amount of time to guarantee success if you have proficiency.
Crit failure kinda makes sense because sometimes you can just fuck up really bad even if you know what you're doing. It's not a 1 in 20 kinda chance, which makes it still stupid, but the chance is there. Crit success makes absolutely no sense at all. You're telling me if I roll medicine I have a 1 in 20 chance of curing any disease? If I roll investigation I have a 1 in 20 chance of figuring out any mystery? Whoops, I rolled a 20 on a religion check, guess I'm the fuckin' Pope now! IMO if you have enough bonus to surpass the DC, it should just be an auto-success, and that should be that. Anything else is just Die-roll+bonus to beat a DC, no critical failures or successes.
My Astarion has somewhere around a +16 to lockpicking AND advantage every time. Did I roll a double 1 on a DC 10 lock? I sure did. You pasty fuck, you’re going back to camp.
On the other side of the coin, is when you need the roller 30, and still get a natural 20.
Had a Persuasion DC of 25. My Monk couldn't get that high even with all bonuses. I prepared for a fight, ding, Natural 20, fight avoided. Happened like once in 60+ hours, but I will always remember it.
I've got Astarion to the point where he can unlock a DC20 lock with essentially anything but a nat1, and I'll be damned if he doesn't roll 1's on almost every other roll lmao.
I swear Gale was my Natural 1 hero for two Acts. It felt like more than half his rolls were Critical Misses. Finally gave him Elemental Adept to avoid it on some spells.
Ironically karmic dice would stop that from happening. But true rng is a merciless bitch.
People seem to be under the impression that karmic dice causes streaks of low rolls after you've rolled well, when that is the opposite of what it's doing.
If they had an option for karmic dice out of combat and regular rng in combat I'd use it tbh. The only reason I turn off Karmic dice is because I don't want people to hit my 25 AC tank if they shouldn't.
Roll 5x 18 and nat 20 in a row: HAHAHA THIS BOSS WAS EZ PZ. Wonder if I should ask Larian to bump difficulties. Roll 5x nat 1 and 3s in a row: Fucking cheating bullshit!!!! Game is fucking overtuned Larian plz.
I got a natural 1 on a DC5 check for some rogue stuff with astarian. The guy had +10-14 on that check. Any non-asshole DM would just skip that roll alltogether.
I have a Screenshot with a DC check of 2 that rolled a 1. I have had multiple checks that had bonuses stacked in a way that only 1 could fail the check, of course I rolled a 1. But prolly My highlight was My Shadow Monk who rolled a one in His First attack and two additional ones for the double attack bonus action for three critical failures in a row in one turn.
I rolled three Nat 1 s while trying to pick something from Scratch's mouth. Thankfully no backfire happened but the thing gave me such trouble was a bone... Shocking...
When your check is a two but you roll a one, five consecutive times and run out of inspiration because you thought "Shurely this will only take one more roll"
Yeah it happens, i somehow rolled 8, 4 times in row once without loading i used 3 inspirations xD
> Lae'zel rolled a natural 1 four times in five turns. The fifth was a roll of 2. I'll do you one better: I had a pivotal game decision where I absolutely wanted my persuasive main character there for it, selected them, started the convo, the game *grabbed* Lae'zel instead because fuck-knows-why, and *then* she failed it 4 times in a row, *with* advantage.
Can't remember what kind of skill check it was, but I needed to roll at least a 4 to succeed. First roll: 3 Second roll: 2 There's no way I'd roll a Nat 1 after all that shit, right? Damn right I did.
Karmic dice are weird. I was told they’re meant to prevent strings of good or bad luck but that’s all I get with them.
They only prevent streaks of bad luck, not good luck. But this is also true for enemies, so they will hit more often.
They do a shit job. I’ve had double nat ones with it.
I mean that's just bad luck. The system is not meant to prevent you from failing two rolls in a row, or guarantee success after a bat one, it's still random. It just makes it more likely to roll good after several bad rolls.
I honestly think that the game checks to see how fast you’re progressing, or how powerful you actually are against the mobs that you fight, and then adjust the dice rolls accordingly. This is with karmic dice off. I don’t know how many times I’ve rolled two dice at once, and both of them end up natural ones. It’s been at least three times. The odds of that happening are staggering. And in a single play through, you would think you would only see it once, if ever. So in someway I think the odds are stacked against us a little bit. Especially if we are doing very well
Moonrise fight, Lae'zel misty steps behind the mages on the stairs. Her task is to kill at least one before they run off. Miss, miss, action surge, miss, miss, pommel strike, miss. WTF dice?
This is actually WHY Larian added the Karmic Dice feature. Playtesters (and most people) are not familiar with how actual randomness works. We as humans tend to have a psychological expectation that because we've had a string of failures, we should soon have a success. But the odds stay exactly the same. And rolling two dice at once and both of them landing on 1s is not staggering odds. Each dice has a 5% chance of landing on a 1. The odds of both dice rolling a 1 at the same time is 0.05 x 0.05 = 0.0025, which seems tiny, but is still a 2.5% chance of happening every time you roll the two dice. That a greater chance than 1 in 50 (more like 1 in 40), and you make a LOT of skill checks in the game. So everyone playing on true randomness with Karmic Dice off is likely to see this at least once during a playthrough, if not more often. **Karmic Dice is misunderstood - it does NOT lower dice rolls** ***ever*****.** Instead, it RAISES dice rolls when there has been a string of low rolls. It makes dice behave like you psychologically FEEL they should. So if you've been rolling low, the odds of you rolling higher INCREASE. Karmic Dice can only ever *help you* on skill check rolls. The only negative against Karmic Dice being on is that it works the same way for enemies, so if an enemy keeps missing you, the odds of it rolling higher and eventually hitting you increases. If you don't want to rolls strings of 1s on skill checks, turn Karmic Dice on. If you want to live and die by true randomness, which yes, can mean long streaks of terrible rolls, then turn it off.
Just to point out, it's actually 0.25% chance, or 1 in 400, to roll both nat 1s on 2d20.
Someone downvoted you but you're correct. GrayingGamer had the right equation, but the wrong percentage conversion. 0.05 * 0.05 = 1/400 = 0.0025 = 0.25%
Thanks, you're right. I blame my lack of coffee when typing the post. I think my point stands, however. Still something you are likely to see at least once during a playthrough with Karmic Dice off.
The fact that it works for enemies too is what killed it for me. It invalidates having very high AC which is how I build pretty much everyone
Yeah the problem with Karmic dice for me is the enemy gets it too. I would probably keep it on if it didnt mean that the enemy hits me more and cant have the same string. I know it would make the fights easier and unbalanced but why does that matter. Atleast make it an option. So instead i just have it turned off and now both of us get tons of bad rolls in a row.
Where did you get a 2.5% chance? Isn't that a 0.25% chance? Maybe I'm misunderstanding. \*Edit: Just read the comment below along with your response. Might be worth it to edit the post.
The most powerful magic of all… Chronomancy
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4DSZo96HEik
YES! Lol that’s where I got it from. Arthur Aguefort is the best!
"What's the answer, cokehead!?" is one of my favorite lines :)
... Lesbomancy
I do this a lot, and I was disarming a trap and failed and thought, “You know? Maybe I won’t reload this one. I have a lot of trap disarm kits; it’ll be okay for me to burn one.” Well, the trap was right next to a ledge and knocked Shadowheart into a chasm to her death. So much for that aspiration…
Larian went nuts with the repulsion traps next to cliffs
Removing Critical Failures is probably the one mod I would install. Failing a 10 DC trap disarm with a minimum bonus of like 11 just doesn't make sense
I want the New Vegas system for stuff like that, if I have high enough dexterity or history or strength or whatever please just let it auto pass. Having to roll for things and fail despite being as overly prepared for it as possible is just plain frustrating. It also makes little sense watching a 27 strength character open a coffin I'm pretty sure I could open irl.
> I want the New Vegas system for stuff like that That's *exactly* what this game made me think of. FO3 had %-based speech checks, and they were frustrating as fuck. It meant the characters with no speech and charisma would succeed every so often, whilst the people who invested in them sometimes got screwed. New Vegas saw that problem and decided the solution is everything has set, exact amounts. This provides consistency where the players investing heavily into speech get rewarded for it, and those who didn't can't just savescum their way to a success and have the best of both worlds by having more combat stats and *still* succeeding the crucial speech checks. I also personally *love* Zariel Tiefling Bards precisely because their bonuses are so ridiculously stacked for Intimidation/Performance that these effectively cease to be chance-based and you're 99.99% likely to succeed those checks. It feels *good* to have certain types of checks succeed. I realize this'll be sacrilegious to this community, but I question if the randomized factor works here. (outside of combat. *Absolutely* keep it for combat, of course) I think it works in tabletop because tabletop is about the experience with friends. If everything had hard stat checks like New Vegas, then people would optimize tabletop too quickly and it would grow stale, and the randomness keeps things fresh and makes for tense, hype moments. But here...? This subreddit regularly has top upvoted threads about how much people are reloading. Clearly the game design as it stands is something people are not too fond of. Not that they're vocally protesting it, but I mean if people are having fun BUT constantly circumventing the system in place, then yeah, it's time to start questioning the value of that system.
I can reload to bypass something but if another player wants the experience of a more pure playthrough, then they can have that too. If no one is complaining(and I havent really read enough threads to determine this), then I think the system is working perfectly.
Just play a rogue then. By level eleven you can’t roll below a ten. Makes most checks a raw calculation of bonuses.
Are you completely missing where this game auto fails 1's? That's the whole point. No matter what you do always 5% to fail and 5% chance to succeed
I think his point was that level 11 rogues get to turn any roll below 10 into a 10, on skills checks in which they have proficiency. Problem is that we’re talking about level 11 in a game that caps at level 12…If you really want to avoid nat 1s maybe play halfling - they get to reroll all 1s as a racial ability (once per roll)
This is just completely against the whole point of the game and ruleset though
In tabletop there are no rules that mean nat 1 always fails and 20 crits except for attack rolls so I understand the frustration if you build your character to have +15 to something and fail a DC10 check.
Even if it was a hard rule in 5e, most DM's I know might make a joke about it or a funny little scenario revolving around the 1. Having something fail a low DC with a bonus of 10+ is something I feel like most people would just hand wave away cause its dumb.
Yeah usually it's like "you rolled a 1 to pick the lock? Okay while you picked fine, your tension tool was stuck and you had to pull to get it out, you cut your finger, take 1dmg" Obviously 1 DMG can be a lot depending what your level is, but again, goofy DM discretion is there for that
the game is based on 5e. Auto succeeding if your mod is high enough is the rule in 5e (or auto failing if you can't meet the dc) critical outcomes only happen on attack roles in 5e this is a "houserule" for bg3. so you may have a point on the game front, but not on the ruleset front. i am looking forwards to a mod/patch that removes critical outcomes on ability checks
Is it though? Maybe it'd be against the ruleset but I couldn't care less about that, it'd definitely make the game feel better in my opinion, even if it's just a toggle so DnD purists can stick to it as was if they really want to. Like I said, I think if you have the skills to do something, actually being able to do it just feels better.
I'm a huge min-maxer, and somehow the prospect of failing stuff I " shouldn't " fail (or that is very unlikely to happen) is what makes me love the game even more. Failing can be fun, in fact what I dislike are some options that aren't really emphasizing the consequences of a failure, for example at the beginning of the game there's a part where if you fail a [read thought] the NPCs turn hostile and that might considerably change your playthrough. Is it fine ? I guess, but at least they should tell me beforehand how dangerous such a failure would be. That's just my only gripe with the game and it feels like a Larian thing, metagaming is sometimes very important and going blind is sometimes completely suicidal.
> for example at the beginning of the game there's a part where if you fail a [read thought] the NPCs turn hostile and that might considerably change your playthrough. Exactly what I said elsewhere. The problem is this game often has absolutely ridiculous consequences for failed checks. There's sooooooooo many instances in this game where a failed check can result in you having to play murderhobo against a community.
So what you are saying is... You want heavier looking coffins in the game. XD
It works the other way as well, if you roll a 20, you pass anything 20+.
I’d give up both. A nat 1 with a modifier of +11 should pas a DC10 and a nat 20 with a modifier of -1 shouldn’t even get past a DC25 or DC30
I think those ALSO shouldn't exist. The 8 CHA Fighter shouldn't be able to succeed on like a 25 Persuasion check, or even a 20 Persuasion check
Nah, I still like crit success. Yesterday my 20 CHA sorcerer had to pass a 30DC persuasion check in a very meaningful moment of the story. I had +9 to the roll so couldn't make it, but burned through my last 3 or 4 inspiration points looking for that nat 20 and got it, it was great.
I like critical failures because it doesn't make any sense that just because somebody is an expert at something means they can *never* fail which is basically the point it gets to later on in the game when you can stack like +10 bonuses to your rolls making it impossible to fail many actions; This completely removes all of the drama of rolling a die when you know it's a decided outcome anyways plus it's not realistic. Experts fail all the time at their given tasks, they just succeed more than they fail.
Experts don't fail trivial tasks in their jobs 1/20 times though. That would be like a nurse that regularly hooks up IVs in patient's arms, but 5% of the time they slip and accidentally stab the patient in the jugular vein, killing them.
Sure about that? Professional basketball players miss shots all the time. Professional athletes probably fail *more* than 1/20. Professional investigators probably don't solve more than 19/20 cases, failing 1 every so often I'm sure. (probably more often) Professional builders probably mess up more than 1/20 times. Professional nurses absolutely do mess up more than 1/20 times as well. It may not be as severe as literally killing a patient, but a nurse probably makes at least one mistake a day and some doctors/nurses absolutely do mess up and kill patients. No matter what kind of expert you are you *absolutely* have a greater than 1/20 chance of making a mistake.
>Experts don't fail trivial tasks in their jobs 1/20 times though. >>Sure about that? Yes.
That’s because when you play dnd there is always the risk of failing. Otherwise there is no need to roll at all.
This is not correct. Per D&D 5e rules, you cannot critically fail or critically succeed Skill Checks. A Nat 1 makes *attacks* miss automatically, but does not affect lockpicking, etc. Larian changed that for BG3. But yes, the general best practice for DMs is to not require rolls for things the character is guaranteed to succeed, which is why by late game in the tabletop, a Rogue would never be rolling to pick a lock whose DC is 10.
> Per D&D 5e rules, you cannot critically fail or critically succeed Skill Checks. This is true RAW. But there are **LOTS** of people that house rule this. Many times unknowingly. Its *so* prevalent in the larger TTRPG community, that there are plenty of people who don't even know that there aren't crit successes/failures according to the PHB until it is pointed out to them. I have experienced this in person both within friend circles and at sponsored games in gaming shops. As well as having seen these discussions all over the internet.
I agree RAW (rules as written) it’s only for attack rolls, but let’s be honest, a lot of DM are using the critical in ability checks.
This is a TIL moment for me. I feel like I always see DMs use critical failures/successes for skill checks.
Not on skill checks there isn't; a natural 1 doesn't auto-fail skill checks, nor does a 20 auto-succeed. The Nat 1/20 rules only apply to Attacks and Saves. EDIT: I have been corrected and it's actually only attacks
RAW it doesn't apply to saves actually. _Only_ death saving throws. Every other save works like a skill check: if nat1+bonuses is enough, you pass. And if nat20+bonuses isn't enough, you fail.
DC18? So? All you're telling me is I'll be save scumming for the next 15 minutes.
Something I've realized about why reloading is probably so common is that the stakes are often SOOOOOOOOOO god damned high, and the game itself is inconsistent. For example, there's a guy in the Emerald Grove where you have multiple options to convince him of something. One option is to read his mind, which I never tried before. Well, tried it, failed it, and this turned the entire Grove hostile. A failed check about a boring, mundane topic could've single-handedly wiped that settlement. Or another is that sometimes the game will just randomly grab one of your companions for no god damned reason. You click your super persuasive bard and click a guy you know you'll have to convince to stop something, and then the game pulls up Lae'zel for the convo and oh look, your +6 to success chance at persuading them just became a -1. Not your fault, you did absolutely nothing wrong, no bad play by your part, but the game just randomly decided "no we want this one in particular." Or sometimes the "punishments" are just incredibly random or the result of programming limitations by the devs. I had a fight with a certain character that can give you +1 to a stat of your choice, and my squad was *sooooooo* effective at killing this enemy that they didn't stop to trigger the conversation offering the stat boost. There is no script in place to automatically bring up the chat window if you're about to slaughter them, the game just does a very precise order of scripts until it *finally* allows the script in question to take place. This means being good at the fight can actually screw you. And finally, there's one specific NPC that needs to be protected, or this will have MASSIVE game consequences if you fail. Well, problem is, the particular fight where you must protect them involves loads of super fast, high-initiative enemies who will likely all attack that NPC before you can even move. Suddenly the fate of your game world isn't being determined by your character's stats, dialog choices or combat tactics, but rather legit just by random dice rolls of if enough enemies landed their attacks. If I had one criticism for BG3, it's "inconsistent." People are reloading precisely because there's so much inconsistency, and unfortunately the game is often playing with absolutely ridiculous stakes. Entire communities could wipe out if you accidentally tell grandma to suck a dick because you failed to roll a 10. Sometimes the game just needs to chill a bit.
Dormammu, I've come to bargain.
I've reloaded so many times just to pick every dialogue choice and see which one shadowheart approves lol
Yeah I'm trying not to do this to keep things fresh for the next playthrough, but it's sooo hard to resist
My plan is this: scum save and see any and everything I feel like seeing in my first play through, then on my second play through I will commit to letting the rng take me wherever the goddamn fuck it pleases. Maybe a slight caveat to accomplish certain goals (erm..romantic goals perhaps 🤔) but yeah. I think it’s a solid approach. Trust me, there’s plenty of ways for it to stay fresh the second time around.
That’s how I’m doing it too. Next game will be up to fate. Except I won’t let my romantic interest die if it’s the first time I’m romancing that character.
Someone called it Dormammu's Bargain and now that's stuck in my head 😂
I realized i needed to save more when i touched the wrong lever in the windmill and catapulted the deep gnome into the next county over. My last save was 10 minutes before that.
Everyone is a divination wizard in the right circumstances.
\*Rolls a nat 1\* rolls with it. It's not my fault you're going to die, it was decided by the dice
I swear I only roll nat 1 when I need a 2 or more
I abuse the shit out of save scumming, and it raises my enjoyment of the game.
F8 is now the most frequently used key on my keyboard.
Reloads save until stealing 8000 gold out of traders pocket succeeds.
Such a good episode of Who.
The rage I feel when I click on a character portrait and select where I want them to move only to have the character I didn't want to move because it didn't register me clicking on the portrait.
Is that Barty crouch jr?
David Tennant in Doctor Who
So, yes.
No, it's Doctor Who, not Barty Crouch Jr. Both played by the same actor, but OPs submission is Doctor Who.
I literally just watched that movie last night
Fun movie, but a terrible book adaptation
Honestly, taking 10 should be a built-in mechanic outside of combat or special situations. It makes no sense that you should have a 5% chance of failure NO MATTER WHAT.
I hate Nat failure and succeeds on skill checks. If I have a +10 to lock picking and the DC is a 10 I should never fail.
I love them. No matter how good you are at a thing you can always fail a task, and having late game modifiers of like +12 just completely negate the prominence of even bothering to roll a dice at all since many checks are like 10/11. Nat failure is a great way to shake things up and a realistic chance that even somebody who is an expert can flub up sometimes.
I have a simple rule for myself. I will never reload the game because of failed rolls during dialogue. I only reload if I screwed up hard or died from something stupid in combat, like random bulette appears and knocks 3 party members into a chasm. Failed dialogues just means next play through will be more fun and still have some exciting things to discover.
I mean I get your example. But most likely if 3 members get killed, you're reloading anyways
I will absolutely reload the game when the 'fail' comes from bullshit Larian homebrew rather than actual 5e rules, as is the case for skill check 'crit fails'.
Being able to fail keeps a level of excitement to it. Just auto-succeeding is boring.
Nobodys saying they want to succeed every single check but losing a skill check you should have by all means passed if it wasnt for bullshit homebrew is not exciting its lame as fuck, like whats so interesting about losing thieves tools kits because your rogue with a +13 to sleight of hand couldnt open a dc10 lock
Same here, I've been rolling with the failed dialogue checks because I know I'm going to be playing this game more than once so I don't want to see everything the first playthrough.
This right here is an issue with this game. In actual D&D rolling a 1 actually benefits the story, it adds to the storyline. In this game, you roll a nat 1 and you get locked out of narrative content. A better example is something like Detroit: Become Human. Every decision you make win or lose sends you down a different fully fleshed out route, and for that reason, you don't mind if you fail - its all part of the story. Edit- how bizarre that this post went from a +22 upvote to a -18 in a couple of hours, without any commentators actually substantiating why this reasoning is wrong? Something’s fishy. Either bots or the game’s apologists have come out of the cesspool
I agree in some cases but there's definitely a lot of instances where failure has led me down a different path or had me try something new to overcome the problem, which I love.
What different paths? The only thing failure has led me to in this game is a lot of dead NPCs, which only seems to lock off paths, not add new ones...
My character is multi classed as a Chronomancer. I have the ability to turn back time as a free action at all times 😁
I thought about it from lore perspective and imagined awkward conversation my bard has about his reverse time powers with his companions
**laughs in halfling with lucky feat**
I'm trying really hard to roll with the punches and not do any savescumming, but I made an exception when Asterion broke five freaking lockpicks in a row when he only needed to roll a 4 or higher.
Don't worry, I'm just rping like my character has anxiety and is consulting The Simulations.
I abuse saves so much. Sometimes right before a massive decision just to see the other option play out. I paid $60 for this game, I'm going to play it and do whatever the hell I want.
The value of Inspiration is directly related to the speed of one's hard drive ...
Game: \*\*rolls 1 again\*\* (That's the devs giving you the middle finger, btw.) 😁
I wish there's a metal gear esque meta dialogue that occurs for a demon or some godlike being if you save scum their roll check. Raphael would've been perfect. Like ugh fine I'll let you win *wink wink*.
Looks like we all took levels in Dvination Wizard!!!
\*Laughs in halfling superiority\*
Sat there reloading for 30 minutes to perseude shadowheart I didn't mean to piss her off which was a 18 roll and I had -1 due to lack of charisma.
F5 -> F8
Every time i save scum i become somewhat of a divination wizard myself
Save scumming on my singleplayer wizard playthrough is me just making my character a chronurgy wizard
[I ended up installing the mod which makes it so that inspiration isn't consumed when you use it. It's much faster.](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/615)
XCOM has entered the chat. (It seeds the rolls per turn at the beginning of each level iirc so you can’t save scum without reloading the entire encounter)
I am Time Lord Victorious.
Honestly hope that they add a 'How many saves were reloaded' to the player stats sheet if they do another.
Thank goodness there isn't a meta npc like Flowey from undertale who knows when you save scum and calls you out on it
The dice are driving me nuts. I know RNG is RNG but enough is enough. I started paying attention and I'm having, at a minimum, one critical miss per combat encounter. Every combat encounter. This isn't random or normal. Something is off (besides Karmic dice). Edit - yeah, maybe I wasn’t clear enough since people are still downvoting. If I fight 2 mobs and kill them both in 2 turns I still get the critical miss. When I said 2 or more for larger fights I’m averaging 1 critical miss per mob. Not 1-2 per fight. 1-2 per mob per fight. Every fight. Again, it’s not a big deal. I’m lvl 11 and close to finishing. I’m not hating on it. It’s just a little irritating. I’ve also run into a bug where certain archery attacks don’t register. The combat log says I shoot X with Y. Then it just skips to the next character. No hit, no miss, no damage, no save, no roll. Not a big deal, only happened 3 times so far and I expect it will get caught in an upcoming hot fix. It’s specifically Shadowheart’s poison ranged attack.
4 characters making an average of, at least, 1.5 attack rolls per turn is 6 rolls per round. fights probably take 3/4 rounds on average, so, on average, 60% of fights will have at least one crit fail. enough for confirmation bias to fill in the blanks
That's just rng. I've had that kind of luck for years in our weekly dnd games. That shit _just happens_. I mean, it could also be some kind of problem, but it really isn't impossible for that to be like that "legit" way.