I've seen many a thread both here and on the Steam forum with people complaining about having incredibly bad luck with dice rolls (missing repeatedly when the tooltip says 90% chance to hit, etc.) I think I have discovered where the actual problem lies though. In my opinion it's in the tooltips themselves.
In my current game, I decided to kill Kagha just because she is a raging b#tch and deserves it. I am fighting her right now as I type this after dispatching all her minions. I attacked with Lae'zel with her long sword. The tooltip said I had 84% chance to hit but I whiffed. My party is running out of spells, a couple of them are low health and I have no more heal pots. I kind of needed a hit there badly so I pull up the combat log and take a peek and see this:
Kagha's Armour Class: 14
Attack Roll: 8 (1d20, Advantage) + 2 (Proficiency) + 3 (Strength Modifier) = 13
A near miss, but still a miss. Let's take a closer look at those numbers though. The numbers clearly indicate I would have scored a hit on a 9 or better, as I missed (barely) with an 8. Obviously anything less than 8 would also result in a miss. Now I wasn't a math major but I know that 8/20=.40 and .40 = 40%. That means I never had an 84% chance to hit at all, it was only a 60% chance. That puts things in a completely different light. Missing with a 60% chance to hit doesn't feel like nearly as bad a beat as missing on an 84% chance. 60% is pretty close to 50/50. Hell, my luck is bad enough that I'd expect to miss on a 60% chance.
The tooltips are giving us bad intel and I think that is a big part of why people are complaining about getting so many bad beat rolls. This is bad and needs to be fixed asap. Those tooltips are the only information we have to make decisions on prior to the resolution of the roll. They need to refect the actual chances of success.
Yes the tooltips should be fixed. But I also feel the mechanics are too punishing. Especially if the game is played on normal. I have 17 charisma and proficient in persuasion and my rolls fail more than half the time. I've rolled a 1 multiple times. Qualitatively its not fun to play when the mechanics are so punishing with better than average stats. They maybe trying to be true to tabletop D&D math but for the average non D&D gamer like myself looking for a fun RP game to play this is not rewarding nor fun.
