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)

Getting to pass 3 checks to save yourself from overlooking some major red flags is pretty generous IMO. Nettie cant even heal a fucking bird, so not sure why people would think she could deal with the tadpole. There's a dead drow that she says was infected, so not a great patient recovery rate. Her demeanor changes and she's very obviously hiding something and if you bother to ask questions on the cure her rather than letting some random stranger stab you with a branch you will catch on that something is up. Gygax would have killed Tav with no saving throw allowed lol.

Also if you fail your check you can make the cure yourself in the cauldron with herbs you picked up.

I'm afraid Larian's solution for this will be the loaded dice Swen mentioned.

But the swingy d20 is only one part of the problem. And it's not about succeeding every check to begin with. Loaded dice would let everyone succeed more while the actual problem remains the same.

The actual problem is that if I make an intelligent and highly charismatic character with a Criminal background and put every point into Deception I possibly can, I expect this character to be very deceptive and manipulative. But they are not. That amounts to a +5 modifier to any checks which is a 25%. It's simply not significant enough. Someone who put nothing into Deception or Charisma can beat me at my own game. And with loaded dice it could actually get even worse.

It's Larian's own fault how they design these checks, really. They could open up passive Deceptive dialogue options at +1, +2, +3, +4 , +5.. and only make you roll d20 if you are under pressure or in some extreme situation. Or they could make the consequences of a failed roll much less severe for skilled characters.

Somehow the difference between 0 and +5 has to be much more significant than a 25% difference in success rate. Especially for a specialized skill like Arcana or History, that should require proficiency to even be allowed to roll in the first place. An uneducated Barbarian with 8 Int will not remember details of the Netherese hierarchy structure, natural 20 or not.

I think Larian need to rethink how skills work in BG3. Bring thresholds into the mix to make skill levels more impactful. And be very careful where to use the d20 rolls.

Thissssssssssssssssss.

+9999

+1

It was a shit idea and Larian already acknowledged the feedback and is aware of many people not liking it. But they are a bit stubborn, they will let it in the game and maybe add an option to disable it or change it to a different system.
Thats at least something.

Swen mentioned loaded dice.

Basically meaning everyone would succeed more regardless of character skill. A horrible fix for a bad system that makes it even worse.

We don't want to succeed every check, we want our character builds to matter. If skilless characters succeed with loaded dice, our character builds do not matter.

Or simply lower the DC's. 10 is the standard per the D&D rules, which results in a 20% failure rate for those with a 16 stat and proficiency. People who cant stand any chance of failure can install the inevitable mod.

Incidentally, it doesn't appear as though spells like friends, charm person, etc do anything.

Lets fix those, and the clearly bugged dice rolls (average result of of 5 on a d20!) before throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Oh, the dice are loaded... against the players. Track your rolls, the average is god awful.

I'm with you on the second point but to be fair he also said that the unaltered dice always be an option in the game. Which is how I will play.

BG2 had loaded dice for PCs who rolled for hit points -- if you got two bad rolls in a row you would get a good roll on the third level up. This prevented people from walking around with a high level mage with 10 hp because of some unlucky rolls.

Oh I missed this reply, my bad. So your saying the D20 is not being influenced enough for rolls to matter. If anything this would be a complaint about 5e or BG3, so lets break down social skills for this edition, start with a level one character.

BG3:
Based off BG3 you can't get any better than a 17 for ability score (doesn't matter if you have a +2, +1, or nothing), so ability modifier is going to be +3. There is no skill points in this edition only proficiency which can be gained via background, racial, or class. At level one for proficiency is a +2, generally any race/class can achieve this +5 right from character creation.

Leveling up you gain +1 ability score at: 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th. Proficiency goes up by one at: 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th.

level 1: Ability Mod:+3 Pro: +2 = +5
level 10: Ability Mod: +4 Pro: +4 = +8
level 20: Ability Mod: +6 Pro: +6 = +12

Social skill challenges don't normally go up, so the higher level you go the better you get at said skill. This also doesn't include spells or potions that can give you the upper hand at skill checks.

Now normally in a d&d game you don't cap at 17 so the ability mod for racials actually comes more into effect giving possibly a 18 or 20 ability score. Class features seem to be missing, off the freebe pdf you can get from d&d beyond rogues get a expertise feature at level one. Which doubles skill proficiencies for 2 skills or 1 skill plus thieves tools.

Probably more junk I'm missing but I hit my limit on researching. Over all you have a problem with BG3 and how they implemented the 5e rules, 5e rules period, or just d&d all together. I'd recommend go finding another game if you don't like the d20 system in d&d.

Edit* Oh I did forget about inspiration points where you can spend a point to give yourself advantage in a skill check.

Edit2* Digging through the PDF and looks like 5e does cap your ability scores at 17 at least for point buy (racial mods included) rolls still can be 18s, interesting

This is why I thikn there needs to be an optional rule (one that can be turned off) to roll lock, locking rolles for all skill checks permanently in that profile for that character, so when you reload its always that same number.

Totaly agree, nothing more to say.

I'm a huge fan of 2d10 to put emphasis on character building. d20 has always felt way too swingy to me. Not just for skill checks, but for combat as well. Modifiers EARNED by characters, matter more when "Average" performance is more likely to happen than extremely poor/excellent performance. I made a heat map in spreadsheets to help visualize the difference. The vertical axis represents the Difficulty Class of the action (the roll required to succeed). The horizontal axis represents the modifier being applied to the action (based on associated ability/proficiency/status effects). The resulting number taken from the color shaded table shows the % of success. Highlighted yellow values are in the 50% range. And can be used as a control to easily tell on sight how the overall difficulty of dice rolls is changed when different dice are used. The shaded colors also help visualize the contraction in possibilities when using more dice.

*Note*: 2d10 chart is built so that a critical failure occurs when rolling (2, 3, or 4) and critical success on (20)

Failure needs to be a fair option. Its okay to fail successfully and still enjoy an outcome if its not the polar opposite of the action that was trying to be preformed.

My one thing that I'd like to see, is to see what my target number to succeed is. I hate thinking, "sweet a dex roll, I got a mod 4, and then I see to succeed is a 11 (15)". Like I would have chosen a different option then.

the problem comes with locking quests and dialogue/NPCs/routes behind some checks, disco elysium here has the best take on it where white checks can be retried and red checks have a shitton of failsaves written in to provide alternative routes to destinations should story impacting checks fail, this made exploring both the fail and success route a great addition to replay value, the d20 here I think is fine but larian has to do considerably (read: a metric ton) more work to write alternative routes and failsaves to quest triggers and dialogue, this means if they want to continue having the game fully voiced (still wondering why NPCs with generic 1 liners and no full dialogue tree need full voice acting, honestly seems a waste production wise considering the work still ahead of them) then this means a lot more time has to be spend on writing additional quest triggers, additional cutscenes for alternative ways for quests to work themselves out and a ton more dialogue (with voices if they want to keep that up) to accommodate those alternative routes and quest resolutions.

For example the quest to this to me means that there's still a lot of work to be done quest/story wise where larian needs to really bring their A game if they want to map out these quest triggers and dialogue options to include a ton of failsaves and alternative routes to completing quests.

for example despite being hinted at it lacking dialogue choices and alt routes currently

the game also does and does not take into account exploring and sneaking:



it also means that if I don't take the exact right type of choices in dialogue when confronting

and in order to remedy any of this they'd need to do a lot of rewrites and re-record a ton of dialogue or add a lot of additional dialogue/quest writing in order to make the experience as good as it should be to not ruin the immersion when you run into soft locked quests because of wonky triggers or because you didn't pick the exact right combo of dialogue options. This more than anything feels like it removes my player agency and I start playing by outcome instead, instead of playing how I want to I'm now pidgeonholed into using guides in order not to fuck up quest triggers because I don't want to risk breaking the game by accidentally doing it in the wrong order (which is already poorly indicated with how the terrain often barely guides you along any intended path seemingly encouraging exploration and sandbox play only to break when that is attempted)

As it stands now I am constantly savescumming at almost every bit of dialogue because 1. autosaves are inconsistent and spaced way too far apart from one another to be relied upon at all, 2. picking the wrong combo of dialogue choices or quest triggers can ruin a quest or make it significantly harder when not needed or just flat out locks you out of some routes to solving quests or sometimes just softlocks em

Isn't that what a role playing game is about tho? You explore, discover, and work quest lines in ways that you find them. I love the fact that random things can happen because one thing led to another, as long as it felt organic.

My first time playing I had the whole tiefling group welcoming me as a hero at the gate, next time I played, I just played more callously and wow did everyone hate me haha. I only save scum if in combat something glitches out or I criticality clicked something I didn't mean to do. Or I clicked a talking option clearly from mistake because my fingers pushed the wrong number.

But imo, the story should just ride out from your decisions, if you messed up something or found an accidental work around that chopped some of the story up. It's still a viable story and its now your own true experience.

+1

If you want to save scum and not play the game as intended; that is a choice. Personally, I would go a step further, and NOT SHOW the DC for any skill check, so the player is unaware if the chances they face on a given challenge. This would reinforce the idea that failure is an option, and that you can't always get what you want in D&D. You think save scumming sucks now? Wait till you have to alt-tab to google the DC any given check because the game doesn't give you this info on a silver platter! HAHA!

People are far more likely to save scum in EA because they specifically want to see a variety of things, especially if they are "playtesting" scenarios. I think seeing how many people save scum here is not indicative of how people would act in a normal game.

I'm not so sure you can make that assertion on behalf of other players. Speaking purely for myself here but I will definitely be guilty of save scumming in the final game, mainly because I find the dice rolling mechanic utterly frustrating and there doesn't seem to be any interesting alternatives with failing them?

Two clear examples come to mind:

1. There's no way I will tolerate Kagha killing the child (regardless of some of the rumours about the Tiefling refugees). Cue endless reloads to save the child.

2. I don't want to have to fight Nettie either and prefer the option of talking her out of it. More endless reloads.

I think I have seen it suggested in the forums that a simple ability score check would be a viable alternative but I don't see that happening.