Baldur's Gate is by its very definition a D&D game and I believe it should follow those rules, for better or worse.


With regard to skill checks:
I agree it feels very random, and it strongly encourages save-scumming. This is made worse since the roll is so visual. If this was done in the background (e.g. reaction rolls in BG1 and 2 were), it wouldn't stand out this much.

I don't think limiting the die to a D12 or something is a good solution. Rolling the D20 does make it feel very D&D.
One option could be to introduce a feature from 3e as a house rule. In 3e, you were allowed to pick 10 on the roll without rolling for things you were skilled at, assuming they weren't done during a high pressure situation.



5e was intentionally made very simple and this has been the right approach for tabletop, since the simplicity has allowed bringing many more people to the table. However, combat in 5e is very simple, borderline boring. This is more noticeable in some classes like the barbarian or warlock who will typically do the same action every round of combat.

For a computer game, I think the system is too simple. Ironically, 4e would be a better choice to adopt to a pc game but I don't think that would be received very well. In order to make combat still be interesting, Larian has decided to add lots of elevation and surface effects to the world. However, this unbalances the system and the surface effects don't feel very D&D. The same is true for the jump/disengage bonus action.

I am personally a big fan of turn based combat, since it allows for much deeper and strategic combat. Despite this, I think the solution to the simple combat problem might just be to introduce real time with pause. The action that you are doing with your characters every round can be set as automatic and you pause if you want to do something special, like casting spells or a disengage action. You're not confronted with how repetitive the combat is, and you can just sit back and enjoy the spectacle.