Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General How Does The Dice Rolling Work?

I've actually just run into a real issue with the Skill Check system as it is now:
If you manage to have a Skill Check modifier high enough to reduce the DC to 0 it's related tooltip math starts to break down

As much as I miss THAC0 (seriously, THAC0 was a great system), this feels really backward.

I do like that they explain it in a tooltip, though. I'll probably get used to it.

I agree with the people wanting to change it, mostly because I want to use it as a reference point. I don't actively keep track on my current modifiers, even though I know what my character is good at. So, instead of seeing an altered target I would like to see how hard it would've been to roll successfully without good/bad modifiers. Another solution (for me) would be to put the unmodified target in brackets, but that would probably be very confusing to everyone else.

+1 to this

I noticed that if I click the dice again while it's rolling it stops immediately. Most of the time the force stop roll seems to be a significantly high 15+ number or maybe the RNG gods are favoring me.

More to the topic I would definitely like to see my modifiers added to the roll and get to roll my D4 from guidance buffs. It enhances the "progression" feeling that all us RPG fans love.

Currently this implementation of D20 isnt very fun...
The point of the die is the thrill of rolling a 20 and the horror of rolling a 1. Each has a 5% chance of coming. Taking it a step further, and actually put different special effects on 17, 18, and 19, as well as the 1 and the 20 would make it so much more interesring.
That means that there’s 25% chance of something extra special happening on any given action–5% bad and 20% good.

Agreed. This needs to be changed.

This, so much this.
The approach with the lowered target number looks terrible.

Bigger numbers look better.
Why do we have to explain this to Larian? Especially for DnD already exist several approaches that do this, giving ample comparision. (cough THAC0 cough)

For example:
- Show a target number or show a question mark if you want to keep it unknown if the player succeeded.
- Show a die or two dice that you roll. Color code them to make it obvious what is rolled. Like a second golden die for advantage and a second grey die for disadvantage.
- Allways list the total bonus. More isn't needed in most cases. When hovering with you cursor over this value, show the detailed bonuses. (Strength 3 + Proficency 2 + Magic item +1)
- Some people are a bit slow to calculate such a comparision. There are several ways to resolve that.
-- Fuse, after the roll, the bonus and the dieroll to a single result.
-- Or show the target number die and the results die proportionate to their results (a big die is a big roll includen the bonus. A small die is a bad roll)
-- Or show a big glittering 'SUCCESS' or 'FAILURE'
-- Or .....


Displays of dierolls take up too much of the scene.
The die roll covering the whole screen distracts from what I'm doing. Most such die rolls were done when talking/interacting with people. Interrupting an agonising decision with a fullscreen picture of a dieroll feels jarring to me. It disrupts immersion for me. Just cover the lower quarter of the screen or a corner with the roll.

And very importantly: The diece rolling animation is just there to look good. The computer already calculated the result.
Larian could show us the die in the lower right quarter of the screen and meanwile show off the successfull/unsuccessfull resolution for the character. The interruptions when talking are simply unneccessary.

Having the current settup takes some of the tension out of the interaction, by showing us beforehand how well we did. Larian could show the actual die roll AFTER the character interaction is shown on screen. This would let it look much more fluid.

To echo many of the opinions here, I strongly believe that the DCs should be shown in a more intuitive manner. Seeing a "low" DC and failing feels infinitely worse than failing against high DC, especially if the character I'm playing is proficient in the ability. In the latter case, I knew the difficulty of the challenge before me and tried anyway, thinking my character's training might help so failing isn't as bad a feeling.

I also believe that the DC for skill checks should be reflected in the bottom-right log so that we might be able to see just what it is we're fighting against.

Take the three Arcana checks on the sigils on the console where Shadowheart is kept on the nautiloid. My wizard with Arcana proficiency failed two of them with outcomes of 8 and 13 but passed with a 17. I could infer that the DC was 14+, but I wanted to check the log to be sure. However, instead of seeing my dice roll+modifiers vs. the DC, the log only displays the calculation that resulted in those outcomes. For example, the 13 came from the following calculation: 8 (rolled on the d20)-5 +2 (Proficiency Bonus)+3 (Intelligence Modifier) +5 (Arcana Modifiers [i.e. INT+Prof]). With everything else being labelled, the -5 was frustrating and confusing to see but I came to understand that it was necessary otherwise my bonuses would have been essentially added twice. But why? Why couldn't the log just be (my roll+Arcana Modifiers) or even (my roll+prof+INT) vs. DC? Seeing a MINUS felt bad. Worse yet, I still didn't know what I was fighting against; just that 13=fail.


I'm fine with failing rolls but at least show me WHY I failed. If I see that the DC is 14 and my roll and modifiers combined still fail that, then I know what I was trying to overcome. As it is currently, I only see the outcome: a number that says I failed with no indication as to what I failed to overcome. It's different than failing and not knowing the DC at a real tabletop as the DM could give you an explanation.

I totally agree with you.
Actually it's really unfriendly and Impossible to understand.

Even new players that will try to understand the rules won't understand why their proficiency/modifiers aren't a part of those rolls.

This is very confusing for everyone.

Hi everyone, as one of the people that's feeling that the game doesn't feel as baldur's gatey as I would like it to, one of the things that I fondly remember about BGI and II is that they thaught me how to play Dungeons and Dragons LONG before I knew it even existed. I think I was 11 when I played them and later on found about pen and paper.

I don't mean to start a misplaced rant on the subject, but rather point out another argument to have this settled as in 5e, if you could watch de dice, and then have the modifiers added (specially with guidance, which is a random value, not a fixed one as in proficiency) would be more entretaining and DnDey and also clearer on how the system works.

From D&D perspective the whole discussion doesn't make much sense. Your DM will not tell you DC. They will ask for a roll and let you know if you succeeded or failed. They might reveal it from time to time for some drama when DC is 25 or higher.

From video game's player perspective spending several seconds on the same screen hundreds of times? Probably not either. It might look cool the first few times you do it.

For people with no D&D background, the way they implemented it makes more sense. There is a number and I roll a D20 to beat it. The problem is us DnD people think it's backasswards. Then if you look in the log it is even more confusing and hard to verify if it was done correctly. IMO Keep it as is but make sure all checks/rolls/etc are in the log and much more clear. We DnD people should build a bridge and get over it to make it more accessible to a wider audience.

I agree with this.

Honestly the rolling in this feels incredibly bad.. Two to three rolls to get a result is not fun, and failed attempts lead to losing story and death.. Not fun gaming experience at all and feel like you are playing with a hateful spiteful DM..
Honestly i love tabletop D&D but this game does such a poor job of it, i'm surprised anyone would buy 5th edition after playing BG3.. I can't wait until they overhaul the dice in this, its not fun and just slows the game down, while forcing save scumming, sucks that we can't have a good D&D experience like old 2nd edition was.


It is ass backwards, its very poor and its not D&D at all.. it gives no checks or save numbers, hides everything off screen behind a tiny log thats off by default.. and everything calculated is all back to front, thats not newb friendly thats completely non friendly.. Also when i mouse over my dice i get no popup??



Totally agree THACO made way more sense.

The way it's currently implemented basically is THACO, right?
THACO takes into account all your modifiers and tells you what number on the d20 hits each AC.
BG3 dialogues take into account all your modifiers and tell you what number on the d20 passes this DC.

THAC0 was one of the most obtuse and convoluted stupidities to ever be in D&D.

Sort of. If I understand DanteYoda correctly, they are talking about the checks in a row. Which makes the probability of getting to a desired result much less than meeting a DC 15 on d20. With Thac0 you only had a single number to beat but when you have check 1, check 2, check 3 all in the same dialogue you need to calculate not just the probability but the chances of making a check but the likelihood of making three in a row.

I like the dice as they are, they feel like fair dice to me but I think a DM who asks the player to make three persuasion checks in a row in the same dialogue is being a bit of jerk.

Edit: I agree with everyone saying this needs to be in the log and we should know why we failed.

Edit2: Thac0 was brilliant and completely intuitive. Long live thac0!

LoL, NO. Lets just start with the absurdity of AC in the days of THAC0. So I equip a shield and that raises my AC? Nope. AC is an inverse, so the better yours is, the lower the number? Yep. So the best I can get is 0? Nope, we can go into negative numbers! Well I rolled a 14, does that hit? Ok, take the 14 and you were using a dagger +2 so add 2. Now we are at 16. Ok so did I hit? Well you were swinging at an invisible target so thats a -4. Ok so 12...did I hit. Well The orc was wearing armor of ridiculousness that gave him an AC of -3. So you started with a THAC0 of 12 which means a roll of 12 or higher is a hit. Ok so I hit because my modified roll was a 12, right? Well no because now we have to subtract the orc's delta from AC 0 from your THAC0 so 12 - a -3 and - - =+ so 12+3 = 15 so you need to roll a 15...you missed.

Yeah that system was AMAZING. One of the few things I DON'T miss about AD&D 2e.

Yeah the people who didn't like it didn't like working with negative numbers. I find negative numbers pretty intuitive you get 'lower is better'. And I'm not a math geek but it's not any different that what you use in the supermarket. The advantage of the Thac0 system is that the bounds were right there -- you could never have a raw AC worse than 10 and the gods themselves cannot do better than -10. So from +10 to -10 with zero as the midpoint.

As soon as I heard that the system would be changed for 3rd edition I thought -- sure you can say it makes no difference if you go up rather than down people are going to push that number to absurd heights. And I think that's what happened.