Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Josh Sawyer about the DICE in a low level D&D + HP bloat is no solution

This is my number one problem with by-the-rules D&D, and ESPECIALLY especially with 5e. I call it the "Tyranny of the d20". It's been a problem always, but it became less of a problem in 4th edition, and WAY more of a problem in 5th. (Note that I am mainly talking about skill checks here, but also applicable to attacks.)


Here's what else Sawyer had to say in that Twitter thread:

The difference between a character with Proficiency and without is 2, a measly 10% on the d20. With rogue expertise (for example) it's doubled, but that's not usually where these checks come up. A good or bad attribute can easily overshadow that.

So it's not just that it's random, it's that the range of the die and the distribution of results is wider than the typical range of bonuses for starting characters, which means that the die result is more consequential than how you build your character.

Feels bad man.

Cf. Disco Elysium, which uses 2d6 (bell curve, not flat distribution) for its skill checks and adds to it a range of values that are comparable to (if slightly lower than) D&D's.

The dice are generally less important than how you built the character. Feels better man.



This is what I'm talking about. The d20 is SO swingy. It can be a 1 just as easily as a 20, and either of those just as often as a result in the middle. You can roll very low several times in a row, and that isn't a rare occurrence. And in 5e, you don't get to add much to your roll. At first level in 5e, you can have a maximum of +5 to a skill check, or +7 IF you are one specific class. And you're usually rolling against a number between 10 and 20, most often (for anything meaningful) around 15. If you're a "specialist" in that skill, and not a Rogue, you're still only looking at a 55% chance to succeed. A 65% chance if you're a hyper-specialized Rogue. There's simply no way to be better at that skill. Any skill. When you can only add +5, and you are rolling the ENORMOUS swingy range of 1 to 20, your character's own capability means very little compared to the pure random chance of the die.

In 3.5, you could have up to a +13 to a given skill at level one, if you specialize in it, and that's without being any certain class. This allowed you to be really good at something, if you wanted to be, and thus made the roll of the die much less important in comparison to your actual character's build.

In 4e, you could have up to a +17 (!) to a given skill at level one, if you went all-in. Now, you really could be actually a specialist in something, and the die roll could hardly screw you over at all.

5e, let's dial it all the way back to +5. Now, when people have to make skill checks, it's about who gets lucky, not about which character is good at something. DM says, "everybody roll Stealth", and oh look, the max-investment Rogue rolls a 3, while the chucklehead with an 8 Dex and no proficiency rolls an 18. Isn't it hilarious? The supposed expert sucks at this, and the inept clown is actually really good! What a funny anecdote! If that happened ONCE, it would be a funny story, "remember that one time when...?" But in 5e, it can happen over and over and over again, because the result of the d20 roll HUGELY outweighs the way a character is actually designed/concepted/built.

How many times in your games has it been the 8 Int Barbarian who has somehow come up with the clutch Arcana knowledge, while the Wizard is scratching their head, because "lol crazy die rolls, am I right?" The swingyness of the d20 is too great. The possible bonuses for characters needs to be higher, in order to compensate for it. And while I'm using skill checks as my example here, it also does apply to attack rolls as well. 3.5 and 4e gave PCs more options for becoming extra accurate, whereas in 5e, you're pretty much stuck with the same shitty bonus to hit that everyone else has. "Cool, I guess we're all at +5, then? Yeah, looks like it's +5s all around."

Like Sawyer says above, this FEELS BAD. It feels bad to build a character who is supposed to be specialized in Persuasion and Deception, and helpless at Religion and History, yet find that you fail those social checks over and over simply because of the Tyranny of the d20, and yet somehow you're making all the knowledge checks because "lol, these dice man". At that point you don't even have a character concept. Who your character is and what they're good at is just randomly determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on the capricious whim of the dice.


Lurking in the shadows, Darkstalker Shadowcloak whispered, "I can get past those guards unseen. I've spent years mastering the arts of stealth. I am a ghost in the night, I will slip past them as easily as..."

"Hold up there a second, buddy," Bumblefoot Mugbreaker interrupted. "I'm pretty sure you actually just have about a 10% better chance of doing it than I do, and I've got this club foot here."

Quietly, at least 10% more quietly than others spoke, a voice from the darkness muttered, "Fuck this game."



Applicability to Baldur's Gate 3? Uh, I dunno. They have to do it the 5e way, I don't think it's something they can really fix. Unless they use some cheater RNG that doesn't actually model a d20.