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)

I agree with the OP; pitch active dialogue checks. They LOOK like D&D, they don't actually reflect the way skill checks work at the table and they're bad video game design.

At the table, the players are generally the ones planning what they're going to attempt and then how they deal with the results of skill checks made to impliment their plans. Checks aren't pass/fail at the table, they're opportunities to add twists to the story, they're storytelling tools, but to work the story has to be fluid and the details made up on the spot.

In a video game, everything is already written and players are only selecting options off a menu. The only agency a player has navigating a conversation tree is which of the presented paths they take. Active skill checks in BG3 take that agency away from players by arbitrarily saying, "No, you can't have the option you picked, now this is what's happening." If the results for failure are more interesting than the results for success, then that's how the conversation should go, with no checks. Don't remove the player's agency in conversations.