Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [BUG] Skills checks (with Guidance?)

For whatever reason, I'm seeing a lot of incorrect target numbers on my D20 rolls. Right now I'm once again in the Druid Grove, trying to persuade Kahga to release the tiefling girl. When I check the mouseover information on the target number, the modifiers are correct but the resulting final DC is displayed incorrectly. This leads to rolls where I don't reach the displayed DC but still succeed, or I surpass the DC and still fail.

All my reloads and attempts were made with active Guidance cantrip.

https://imgur.com/UG830BK

From what I've now seen, it definitely seems to be caused by Guidance. Straight rolls with just CHA modifier are fine. Whatever Guidance is doing, it's doing it incorrectly. Perhaps the d4 roll is made once for the actual calculation and again for the mouseover information box.

I've cast Guidance before a few conversations, and it seemed to work on a second skill roll, but not the first "persuasion" roll in some cases. I don't have any hard numbers though.

(Wish I could paste screenshots here....)

I am going to once again note that that conversation is the worst implementation of skill rolls in dialogue in the game so far. That should dialogue tree puzzle. The skill roll should be a short cut at best and setback at worst. The girl's fate should not be determined a single die roll.

Having just a dialogue tree negates any skill the character is supposed to have. We can choose the approach (e.g aggressive, compassionate, etc) but skill should determine how effective we are with that approach. And the way to gauge that is with a roll.

The OP point, I need to pay more attention. I have tried Guidance, but I don't recall any benefit.

Having it down to a skill roll takes away a feeling of either earned consequence or achievement. You didn't do anything. You just rolled a good number. It's empty. The Githyanki encounter where you need to persuade Lae'zel to play along is a well implemented skill roll. But this one just feels arbitrary. And the only thing that's going to happen is me reloading the conversation because it's not my choices that get the kid killed it's a die roll, so I'm just not going to accept it. And I doubt I'm the only one that feels this way.

Guidance modifies the target number as opposed to the roll, the same way all bonuses are handled. There is actually a bug here which attribute test without a skill aren't affected, when they should be (technically there's no such thing as a skill check in 5e, just attribute tests with proficiency bonus).

Yeah, this is why Bards get their Jack of All Trades bonus to Initiative rolls. Initiative rolls are ability checks that don't have proficiency, thus they get the half-proficiency Bards get to non-proficient ability score checks.

I understand. But you aren't doing the talking any more than you are swinging the sword. Your character is.

I think it not even guidance well for me anyway... each time i reloaded trying to save Arabella.....it always falled me..... I reloaded the game 13 time and each time i have different target to pass and I failed all 13 time....with the same character buffed with guidance and sometime just not with guidance. Sometimes I would need 10 to succeed never secceed the roll and other time it would ask me for a 17-19 or even 20 to suceed in saving the girl.

A combat isn't decided by a single die roll. Player choices still have a lot more impact, especially when you through a robust and complicated environment to take advantage of. Unless you wouldn't mind ever combat coming down to a single die roll.

It's also pretty limited in what characters can face this. The average Fighter is just going to fail over and over. At bare minimum there feels like there should be a Dex or Str option to pull the girl away from the snake.

If guidance works the way it has been explained in this thread, that would account for why you need various targets to pass on all your reloads. Failing them all regardless? I would have to recall how many rolls are needed and know what target was needed for each roll before I say if you were unlucky or not.

Some dialogues have more than one roll (and some battles don't). But even so, it doesn't change the basic premise that it is your character doing the talking. To make dialogue more like combat, there could be a series of back and forth exchanges, each requiring a roll, but it still wouldn't change your feeling of just having "rolled a good number" or not.

That's the thing...I mostly succeed ALL the other rolls... It kind of annoyed me that I always failed that one.

Which is why I prefer conversations to be a dialogue tree puzzle more than a die-roll based thing. Dice should give an opportunity to skip the dialogue tree puzzle but fail just means you still have to do it. Or the die roll should give you clues as to where to take the dialogue. Not final determiner.

Or a matter of choice of circumstances. A consequence that you don't feel you earned is worthless for game experience. On tabletop, I'd let the RP happen and only bring in die rolls when I am uncertain of the reaction to the argument or when both success and failure are equally interesting. Or when the player is uncomfortable with doing the RP (shy or some other reason). I hate making dice the primary determiner of success/failure in such things save in, as I said, cases where the player is uncertain and/or uncomfortable.

This sort of use of skill rolls is just as bad as the people that think Persuasion skill is magic mind control and a natural 20 automatically turns their completely inappropriate request to be accepted.

Mouseover of the target number does list an additional modifier from Guidance (included in "Roll bonus"). It's just that the modifier (+1 to +4) shown there seems to be a different d4 result than what's used to display the target number. In the screenshot of my original post, the base Difficulty Class is 18, my proficiency is listed as +2 and Roll bonus as +4, which should result in a final target number of 12. You can see that the game claims the target is 14, but at the same time declares my roll of 13 a success. So it seemed to use a target number lower than 14 (very likely the 12 that results in 18 minus 2 minus 4 from the mouseover info).

So perhaps just an error in the displayed figures. I'll look more closely next time. Thanks