Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Allow Attacks to Miss in BG3

According to the recent PC Gamer article, the Baldur's Gate III combat system will not feature attack rolls having a chance to miss their targets as per D&D and Baldur's Gate tradition/standard. The justification given for this decision is that the hit-or-miss combat "doesn't work" in a video game format.

Look, I get it. If a game has RtwP combat, having to wait around for your character to make a successful hit, especially on early character levels, can be a frustrating experience. However, I ask that you guys reconsider this decision. Having a bit of frustration early on is not a bad thing in an RPG, in fact it lets you appreciate more the journey your character makes from a level 1 scrub to a higher level, highly competent, expertly geared adventurer. It's ludonarrative resonance at its finest.

Both of the previous installments of this franchise utilized hit-or-miss combat mechanics masterfully. Please don't be so quick to abandon a staple of the genre just so that your game could throw more instant gratification to the players' feet right out of the package. Take a stance in favor of RPG mechanics and reimplement this feature, for the good of your game and for the sake of offering a more genuine experience.

Thanks for reading.

Links:
PC Gamer article: https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-will-combine-the-best-of-divinity-and-dandd-5th-edition/

a "miss" is not a character swinging where the enemy isn't specifically. unless you roll a 1 that is. the target may have blocked/parried/dodged the attack as well. kotor and nwn games implemented this perfectly. as long as you have nice animations for parries and ripostes and whatnot, not every attack has to be a hit. just don't make the characters whiff wildly into nothing like it's 1999 and we should be fine with 2/10 of our attacks actually doing dmg in early game =D

I would also like an explanation for what this actually means. This is getting brutal comments on forums all over the net.

AS i've said on beamdog forum

An small decision will lead to a chain reaction of changes as i've mentioned here https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/75721/will-be-close-to-pnp#latest

"Increasing the hit chance means that you need more HP or the combat will end quickly. Then you need more and more healing available because everyone has a lot of HP and get hurt with every hit. Every weapon swing hits the gap of enemy armor and no armor can deflect an arrow, regardless of the angle, distance and type of arrow. No archer misses, doesn't matter the windage, distance, moving target, etc, so ranges and damages needs to be redone. Now OHK spells like Wail of the Banshee are too strong since everyone has 50 hit dice of HP. Now you need to balance the magic system or have spells like Finger of Death being the best spells in the game and weak skeletons since always hit can destroy everything so summoning/creating undead needs to be balanced. Now the entire magical system needs to be "rebalanced" and.... The game is SCL2 with BG3 name."

I wanna

- No mechanics like cooldown
- No ultra slow animations making the fight takes an eternity
- A lot of cool spells like time stop
- No artificially inflated enemy HP
- Multiple summons
- No longbows with nerf/toy-range
- Misses
- Dice rolls
- Checks and saves
(...)

I really hated DOS2 by a reason. Fells more like an puzzle game than an immersive RPG. Longbows with 13m range, cooldowns, the armor mechanics that works awfully, the gimmicky puzzle battles, etc. Note that another game already tried to remove dice rolls and failed misrably. Is called sword coast legends.

I agree with this %100. Making such a fundamental change will effect all other areas, and we will eventually come to a point that it doesn't look like D&D anymore. The reasoning for removing misses was very unconvincing too, based on what Swen is saying, nobody likes playing Baldur's Gate 1, 2, Icewind Dale, and a lot of other games who uses D&D to hit roll system. Funny, because Baldur's Gate series is considered one of the best RPGs of all time, I would have imagined Swen to know that much at least.

Please, don't make another Divinity game under Baldur's Gate title. Make a proper Baldur's Gate game, with D&D rules. Obviously you will adapt rules where needed, but To Hit rolls is too fundamental to change.

agreed as well. Especially with 5e Bounded Accuracy the dice rolls are a key to balancing encounters. The core of what D&D is relates to the player considering options, determining a battle plan/strategy and executing that with backup plan(s) for if/when the dice don't go their way. Without the simple 5% chance of an 'automatic' miss (1) or hit (20) a critical element of what makes D&D mechanics is missing. In addition several classes get key abilities which are diminished when you remove the attack roll.

Ranger Deep Stalkers get Advantage against anyone who has not acted. If everyone hits what is the benefit to this?
Fighter Cavalier gets a crit on 19 or 20
Rogue gets advantage to land sneak attacks (iirc)
Everyone can get advantage in specific situations

The game is BALANCED around utilizing a party with synergistic abilities to enhance your chances to land an attack/ability/spell/whatever. If there is no chance of failure a key component of mechanics that make D&D enjoyable is gone. You're left with a story that has bland mechanics and is a clone of every other recent RPG. The thing that made Baldur's Gate (especially II) great is the strategy involved with the simple added nuance that any strategy might need to change based on the roll of the dice. This should not be taken away as it is a key piece of what keeps players continuing to play the games to this day.

The whole hit or miss thing seems like they are making an action game with RPG mechanics (maybe similar to Skyrim) which is a game I guess, but wouldn't be worthy of the BG3 title.

Just wanted to say that "missing attacks" is the most hated, massively hated feature in Firaxis Xcom games.

Don't think this is important. It only adds another random factor to combat.

I think Misses are very important in a D&D game like Baldurs gate.

The question is: Is it RTwP (real time with pause), or TB (Turn based)

If it is RTwP then misses are easy to include.... You can sit back a little and watch the show a bit.

TB however you would need to change the rules, because misses are not as much fun in turn based... Xcom and DoS2 are TB... hence why people who play these games don't like misses (didn't worry me too much though)....

If you were to play a TB game like this (and I so hope they don't)... You could reduce the misses by using some sort of logarithmic algorithm on the difference between the roll and the target number (THAC0 - AC etc), and apply that to the damage (percentage on top of an already random roll). That could work, but messier IMO

TLDR: IMO misses are ok in RTwP, and if misses were reduced with a TB play, it would deviate from D&D too much

Turn Based or Real Time with Pause, D&D mechanics are balanced around the fact that you might miss your attack and strategies exist within those mechanics which can drastically increase your chances. Flanking, class abilities, stealth, spells for buffs/debuffs, grappling and other strategies can grant advantage (roll d20 twice, taking the better of the 2 rolls) and of course there are ways to force disadvantage (2d20, lower of the 2 rolls) alongside flat bonuses to your attack roll. These are all major factors in how the game is balanced and a computer RPG only speeds up the rolling and calculation aspect.

As to XCOM, I was always fine with misses even when I played it way back on the original Playstation in college. Similarly to D&D you had behind the scene's mechanics which improved your chances (taking a knee, aimed shot, thrown grenades, etc. A solid strategy was to have a soldier with a lot of movement points and high reactions go out and 'sight' for enemies while character(s) with higher accuracy then take a knee and fire at said enemy upon sighting).

I fail to see why players would 'hate' these mechanics other than their own unwillingness to read the manual and understand how to increase the chances of a hit while decreasing their chances of being hit. Story is only one part of an enjoyable game folks, some of us actually enjoy combat that is difficult when you just run in guns blazing vs. understanding the abilities/spells/environment/whatever mechanics which allow you to increase your parties effectiveness while decreasing the enemies. This is what made Baldur's Gate II so popular! Spells that remove resistances/immunities from enemies, combat abilities that improve your chance to hit and/or do damage, mixing up parties to have synergies which allow you to be more effective as a unit than a given character is on his own... Remove the strategies and luck factor and your left with a rock/paper/scissors form of combat 'puzzle' mini-game which I for one find far to boring to spend time playing.

XCOM is a strategy game. Missing on XCOM is very different than missing on BG1/BG2 or on M&M VI, M&M VII, M&M VIII, NWN, IWD, NWN2, IWD2, action focused games such as diablo 1/2... An small tweak to missing can lead to an chain reaction of changes on ranged weapons, spells, feats, etc. When an better solution is simple let the 'charname' start at lv 3 or make armor rarer.

And i don't wanna "puzzle mini game", i wanna an immersive BG experience.