Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Hit chances and elevation again

So I messed around with the githyanki patrol fight yesterday. It started when my Ranger wanted to finish off that boss lady ( forgot her name ) and I found that I had a hit chance of only 55%.
It wa even ground, clear LoS, with Lae-zel standing slightly to the left, and another Githyanki slightly to the right.
I saved at that point and started moving around to see how I could increase my hit chance. As long as I stayed on the even ground, I couldn't increase it. I could easily decrease it, if I moved too closed. It then dropped to 30%.
I finally moved up that little hill. It's only a couple of meters. Halfway up I was still at 55%, but as soon as I reached the top, I got to 80%, so I finally felt good to release my shot and kill the boss lady.

Thoughts about that:
The change in the hit chance I noticed is massive. From 30% while standing even slightly too close to 80 % less than 10 meters away with slight elevation. Is that really workng as intended? Even the 25 point swing from even ground to slightly elevated seems way too large. THat is a whopping 45% increase in my hit chance.
Secondly, I have no clue about 5e rules. So I have no idea why my hit chance was so low, or why hit chances generally seem to change at random. To be honest, I just want to play the game. So the fact that I felt compelled to check this out, because it is never explained, and because the swings are so massive, suggests to me that something is broken here.

Just to make it clear: This is not a complaint that there is a change in your hit chance. I am absolutely in favor of positional modifiers. But the changes are in my eyes ludicrously large - I would go with a swing of 5 to 10 points in either direction. It is no wonder that every mob is trying to get to higher ground.
It just beggars the question why we don't carry stepladders around...

They are just using the advantage/disadvantage system for elevation and rolling whether you hit or miss twice and taking the better result. In your example, thats 1-0.45^2, which is a 79.75% chance to hit.

This is a bit of a problem with them showing a % to hit in general, while there technically is always a % chance to roll a number high enough to hit, the actual chance to hit is all completely random. You could have a 1% chance to hit and get stupid lucky and roll a 20, or the % to hit could say you have a 99% chance to hit and then you miss 3 times in a row because you got bad rolls. It's all completely random and showing a % chance to hit makes it feel like you should be hitting more often, all you can really do is stack the deck in your favor by getting advantage from high ground or other skills and hoping lady luck is with you.

Nah, I'd say it's a fairly correct approximation of your chances. And no matter how high a chance is, if it's not 100% it's reasonable to miss.

there are just to many possibilities to get advantage and disadvantage in bg3.
in 5e you need to actually make sacrifices to get advantage like:
shoving prone (using your action)
reckless attack
spells like fairy fire

advantage is really strong but in bg3 you can just walk around your enemy and backstab them

Are they gonna redesign reckless attack, fairy fire, true strike and etc? they feel useless.

I have no qualms with the % hit chance, and I am aware that it basically translates into a dice roll. But that 25 point swing in the hit chance in my example translateys to a +/- 5 modifier to the dice roll. +/- 1 or 2 I can relate to but 5? Sounds a bit overboard to me.

They already buffed true strike to last for the next two turns instead of one.
That makes it... uh, situational rather than completely useless, at very least.

As far as I am aware the currently displayed hit chances are accurate and the dice are not weighted in any direction, although they are considering weighting them in the player's favor in future. If they do that, I would rather have a difficulty option with non weighted dice, since I am not a fan of weighting to begin with. The human mind is notoriously bad at grasping probability, there are a lot of studies on this. So even if the hit chance is perfectly accurate, people will "feel" it is wrong, because our grasp of probability as a species is flawed. If you wish to read up on the subject, here is an example of a very simple puzzle to which most humans will choose incorrectly, even though pigeons will choose the correct answer. Here is another paper on the topic. Game designers are also well aware of this, the probability of hitting is skewed in the player's favor in XCOM for example. My favorite example though is probably this talk given by Tim Cain, at 25 minutes into this video.

It's a poorly implemented system carried over from Divinity... Doesn't make much sense in this game.

How many times have u used the new true strike and do u think it is ok?

Not even once, frankly.
But still, the change they made makes sense, in principle.
Giving up an action just to have an advantage roll in the next turn was beyond stupid, when attempting two attacks could have a far better payoff or at worst a comparable one.
Now at least you are giving up your action to have TWO advantage rolls in the next two turns. Which can at least be... situationally convenient (i.e. When you are not reaching attacking range to your target anyway, for instance).

Height grants Advantage to attacking and defending. Advantage works out to be on average approximately +4 to a roll. That's pretty big when you're rolling a D20 - that's an additional 20%.

The system for player AC and player health is 5e standard, and doesn't take into account the extra +4 to hit enemies will get from having high ground, nor the extra damage you'll take from fights dragging out longer from the -4 to hit when players are on the low ground.

Try that Harpy fight from the low ground and see how that feels.

I've noticed you can often target enemies you can't see. You're not close enough to the ledge to see someone down there but can fire an arrow there with advantage anyway. Something's wrong with the LoS calculations.

Honestly, that sums up the problem your experiencing. You don't know the rules of 5e.

The reason why you're experiencing such a drastic change is because there is such a big swing going from Disadvantage (roll 2 d20 dice, take the lowest result) and Advantage (roll 2 d20 dice, take the highest result):

When you are attacking, here is the math that's going:

Roll 1 d20 dice. Take that result, and add your Proficiency bonus (+2 at this level) and your Ability modifier (Strength for most melee attacks, Dexterity for most ranged attacks, so usually +3 at this level). This, the math can be seen as 1d20+5. Compare the total result to the enemies AC. If you match or exceed the enemy AC, you hit.

So that means, for a basic attack, you have a chance to get any result between 6 (1 on the d20 +5 from your Proficiency and Ability modifiers) - 25 (20 on the d20 +5. 6-25 are your possible results (ignoring crit miss/hit for now). As you can see, the overwhelming majority of your chance to hit something depends on what you roll on the d20 dice!

Now, what happens if you roll the d20 *twice*? If you're taking the lowest, the math works out that Disadvantage (again, on average) is the net effect of having -5 to your total result. That's huge! It's literally the same as removing your entire static modifier (the +5 from above). The math is the same for Advantage, now you have +5 to your total result, again that's huge!

So compare the results. A normal roll is 1d20+5. A roll with Disadvantage is 1d20+0. A roll with Advantage is 1d20+10. The difference between attacking with Advantage versus Disadvantage is literally 50% of your possible roll (+0 versus +10)!! If the Enemy has an AC of 10, you'll almost never miss with Advantage but you'll miss 50% of the time with Disadvantage.

That was the math. A roughly 50% swing going from Advantage to Disadvantage. You think that is too drastic, so what are the solutions?

Well, we can change Advantage/Disadvantage to work differently. Please trust me on this one, that is NOT the right answer. The rules of 5e rely heavily on the Adv/Dis system. Changing how it works is the equivalent of removing 2 tires from a car. It might still 'work' but you've thrown away everything else it can do. It is a beautifully elegant system that removes so many small factors from having to be considered.

Alternatively, what if we just removed some of the factors *granting* a character Advantage or Disadvantage? What if having even just slightly higher elevation didn't grant Advantage? What if the range for an enemy to "Threaten" your character was much closer, meaning your Ranged character wouldn't have Disadvantage to attack with their bow unless the enemy was right up in there face?

Suddenly the swing isn't so drastic. You go from Disadvantage if an enemy is right up in your face (1d20+0) to Normal if you're attacking from range (1d20+5).

There are a ton of other factors that having a height advantage can be used to help players/enemies. But, by just removing Advantage from having a slight height advantage (something that is *not* in the rules of 5e by default), and making it so enemies only Threaten you when they are able to make a melee attack against you (which is how the rules of 5e work for imposing Disadvantage on a Ranged attack) we've solved this huge problem you're experiencing. Basically, by following the rules of 5e, you've solved the problem.