Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback skill check dice rolls, a really shit idea (turned savescumming into a core game mechanic)

So...

Looking at DnD balance, the player can't even reach level 5. Which means you are weak, a nobody, and will have a hard time in encounters (Be social or combat).
- Mostly DnD players are used to failure in this early levels, it is expected. (Game starts hard and get easier when you are strong)
- It is also normal for DnD players to dislike the early levels and begin the adventure at 5th level
- Even when you do all correctly, the Critical Failure will strike, and you will have to adapt.

Looking at PC single player game, it is hard to newcommers not used to failure, they will savescum their way to success, as failure is just "time lost".
- Mostly gamers in this spectrum are accostumed to a ramping difficulty, starting easy, and getting harder. (Game starts easy, and you become powerful as the challenges get harder)
- It is common to save scum in order to get the desired outcome.
- If you do all correclty, the expected outcome is always the same.

Possible solutions:
- Easier difficult to the game with lower DC
- Separate the Social and Combat difficulties to meet different standards
- Lower the Social DC as a whole in the ares up to level 4.

Downside to choose the difficulty:
- Some people will expect to be able to cope with harder difficulties, and whine when they can't.

Zefhyr:

Larian games have a Story Mode difficulty; I have no problem putting an infinite re-roll ability here. Of course, if this is implemented, why not just let people automatically succeed any dialogue check?
Larian games also have an Easy Mode: Maybe all dialogue DCs could be decreased by 5? And/or you get 1 re-roll per check.

Normal or Hard or 5e RAW mode should NOT have infinite re-rolls. If I select a hard difficulty, I don't want to be tempted at every failed check to roll again. That would not be fun for me. If I re-rolled, I would feel like I'm cheating. If I didn't re-roll, I'd feel like I was purposefully missing out on content. Neither is fun (for me).

An "infinite re-roll" should not be present in every game mode. (An optional check-box that is, by default, turned off would also be fine with me)

If this wasn't an issue,
Larian wouldn't have posted an official message to players to "please don't savescum, have fun experiencing failure", like that is a message that resonates with the human spirit lol.
And yes, I'm assuming savescumming is 99% the situation. If you think it's not the case, I have nothing to tell you, you're being deliberately blind..
As soon as larian release analytics about this, you'll see it's the truth.


Go on BG3 forums, see how people are talking about how to minimize savescumming using skills etc. in every situation. Savescumming is the game. It's actually become a game mechanic in this game because of this design. It's a shit design.



That is why I suggest the D:OS way, which simply avoids it altogether, where successes are locked behind long-term decisions.
You automatically succeed/fail on checks according to your
1) race
2) backstory
3) basic stats
4) skills
5) proficiencies
6) spells
7) companions
8) items in inventory
9) character class
10) past choices in the game
etc.
There are so many factors that can be taken into account that I think it'll still guarantee a unique experience through the game each time.



That said, this also is not a good solution necessarily, given the gravity of some choices in the game (little girl murdered or little girl saved) so in this case some choices should probably be taken away in order to refine the story. That situation with Kagha should probably be re-written entirely, to happen later and under specific conditions (like, if the player agrees with her that the tieflings are pests and vermin, or if the player chooses to oppose her and fight, then the girl tries to run away and gets bitten, etc, while if the player brings in the real druid the situation is avoided etc).

There is (almost) nothing fun about failure right now.
As I said before, the main problem with this mechanic is that there's just way too much of it in the game, and it has way too much power.

There will also never be anything fun about failure here.

Failure means "you didn't get what you wanted".
What are you gonna do?
"You didn't get what you wanted, u failure, but here's a piece of candy instead" ? It just doesn't work here. Which is why savescumming became a core mechanic.

It works excellent in actual tabletop D&D because there's no save/load anyway, because the players don't even know what they want exactly, since they're not given a list of possible dialogue choices with a reasonable understanding of what the desired outcome of each is, and its usually a stressful or humorous thing that happens and the whole group is there and it just works.
But in a pre-scripted computer rpg it doesn't.



Another solution btw is to just disallow saving at all except in some few checkpoints in the game, but that's very impractical given players may play for a while without reaching a checkpoint, and people hate not having a save function.

There is actually one very good example of "failing is fun in the game". If you are captured by gut and fail all your escape attempt rolls, you get a suprise visit from Raphael's minion. That's a cool way to use this mechanic. But it's a single case out of dozens (possibly hundreds) of rolls.

I don't condemn save scumming; this just needs to be a difficulty setting so you can by bypass rolls if that is a part of the game you don't want to engage with. I don't feel like it will degrade game play for anyone else who chooses not to use that setting.

Personally i like some of the failure options in this game but not everyone does.

I agree to leave it as it is - dice outcome is the dice outcome - thats D&D and its imitating luck/lack of .....the skills etc are taken into account in the figure - use the guidance cantrip to get +4 .....pretty simple really.

If only you had posted sooner, no one would have to say anything

I just hope they fix it. I don't think it works. I failed a rolls several times under the influence of guidance, even when my score was higher than necessary.

mrfuji3
it's nice to talk with someone who accept a different opinion.
It gives me the opportunity to moderate my point of view.
Because, this is not like if I was radically against the roll-dice (I mean, I played a looooot of game, especially rpgs) but here it feel really random and not fun.
There are times where I could accept failures but there are more times when it just feel... not fun and most unfair.
I... Ok, I though (pretty sure I write it bad... think with past grammar) I was familiar with D&D but maybe I'm not because when peoples said "it's like is in D&D" it doesn't satisfy my unsatisfaction. So i guess I don't really care about D&D and more about how I feel playing the game.
And I swear I could live with this roll-dice if it was.... better.
For now, it feels random (but like reaaaaaaally random) and I feel... powerless.
I'm the kind of guy who put everything in charisma and socials skills cause I love to resolve conflict by talking as I love to understand the others.
But in this game, it feels like I had no charisma, no social skills. And this is why the explanation about the D&D and +2,3,4, etc didn't ring a bell for me.
After my first game I just thought "damn so many skills points and charisma points wasted"

So maybe I don't understand D&D system at all, but... I don't care. I just focus on the feelings the game gives me. And with this actual roll-dice system, the feeling is wrong (and yeah, the kids killed cause I failed my persuasion was just... out of nowhere... like "shit all the points I spent in charisma and social skills are actually a penality"... But this is not the only case. So maybe the problem isn't only in the roll-dice but also in the... perfectionnable dialogue junctions...)

And so, yeah, for now, I would like to have some options who make me feel that I can be, indeed, socially skilled (which need more than a +4 onr my roll-dice...)

I'm disagreeing with what was posted here. The post said "need to deal with her about to kill a kid". This is not what we walk in on. It's not even in her head, from what she actually says. "Lock her up" =/= "kill the kid". I don't need to read any other threads to understand exactly what I'm arguing against here, it's right there in print. There is a misconception about what's going on. A link was provided to show what an excellent GM the poster is, and yet, even with spoken dialog expressing her intent, they claim "need to deal with her about to kill a kid". That tells me everything I need to know.

I 100% believe that out of context snippets that you use to reinforce pre-existing opinions without attempting to view something charitably and see if there is merit is all you need when reading something you don't feel you immediately agree with. I think we are in accord.

What's to view charitably? When did "lock her up" become the same as "kill the kid"? I must have slept through that Merriam Webster edit of the English language.

Does she ever attempt to lock the child up? Lets just walk through this one and see what I may have been referencing.

Zefhyr
I agree that the d20 makes a lot of checks feel random and easy to fail even if you made a charismatic character. And you not having fun continuously failing checks is valid feedback.
I made this point in some other thread, but something missing from BG3 compared to PnP is: group checks. Often, in PnP D&D, party members will work together on conversation checks which mechanically gives advantage on the check. This is not present in BG3, and unclear if it will be present. Advantage is incredibly powerful, and would allow you to succeed on checks ~50% more often.

Also, of course, Larian should
-implement degrees of failure: failure by 1 leads to a different outcome compared to failing by 10
-make failing more fun, as they claimed they were trying to do.


I've mostly stopped following your conversation with robert, but yes Kagha is clearly intending to lock the child up. See subtitles https://youtu.be/lJ1g13BMxB8?t=15 and https://youtu.be/lJ1g13BMxB8?t=33

I was so shocked when the kid died when i failed that check; and her intent wasn't to kill the kid in the first place. It was an unforeseen circumstance surprising to all involved but the snake who was acting on instinct. That outcome was unfortunate but wonderfully executed.

and the fallout from it was *chef's kiss*

This + ironman mode, so people cant save scum due to our nature

Well, Teela is her snake, that she commands. She had set Teela on watch over the child as it was and that was an opportunity to kill. If you play Drow, Kagha is proud of it and "knows" you understand that you bite when you protect your brood. There wasn't a whole lot of *gasp, how did that happen* from Kagha on that one. She was minorly bothered after the fact, if thats what the emotion of the twitchy face grab animation was, but then was like whatever, bury her, focus on the rite.

Oh yeah, Kagha is the absolute worst but that is by design. especially when you find her back ally deals and motivation. I'm sorry didn't mean to bury the lede; i wasn't trying to paint Kagha in a sympathetic light.

Fixed grammar lol; thanks Orbax