I'm struggling to think of any other D&D computer game that actually implemented out of combat skill checks naïvely. Certainly none of the Bioware or Obsidian games did. I think DDO, maybe? DDO isn't exactly a strong single-player narrative though. I can't remember what ToEE did, it was pretty groggy being ToEE, but I think they just had simple thresholds.
[E:] Thinking back the Bioware NWN might have done them, actually? Pretty uncommon in the video game implementations, in any case.
Clearly there's no requirement that you must roll d20s for everything or you're not a D&D game. That the game is run on a computer with a fixed set of possible outcomes should -- must! -- have impact on the design. You can debate exactly what should be different, but since you're starting with a rule system explicitly designed to leave aspects up to human interpretation a fixed translation will have to make some judgment calls. I think this is definitely one of those things that should be impacted, and that previous games opted to not take the BG3 approach for good reasons. Equally clearly not everyone agrees with that.
Last edited by Xerophyte; 12/10/20 04:16 PM.
