Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Option to reduce RANDOM combat (suggestion)

Option to reduce RANDOM combat (suggestion)

As someone who played a lot of DoS games, there are two major 'issues' that both me and my coop friends have with BG3:

1) Random misses - high chance of misses. Game use 20 sided (1d20) dice roll to decide if you hit, then dice roll to decide how hard you hit ( for example 1d12 ). Miss chances of 40% are not uncommon, and that can be *very* frustrating. Also, your damage averages in above example 6.5, with +/- 100% (can be 1, can be 12). And low hits ( say 1 with 1d12 ) could be also source of annoyance.
2) Single action per turn - you can do in most cases just one attack per turn. Also, those are mostly simple actions (sword/bow hit, attack spell), with very few opportunities for tactical decisions or synergy between different actions both for single and multiple characters

I do not think second issue ( single action, no synergy ) would be easy for Larian to address as it is inherent in DnD 5e rules and action set. For comparison, in DoS you can do 3-4 actions per turn ( 2-3 ap per action, 6-11 APs per turn ), with numerous chances for tactical decisions or synergy ( eg. use Enrage to improve damage in next few turns at a price of no casting, use Haste to increase attack points in 2 next turns at a cost of points in this turn, use Teleport to reposition enemies for better advantage, some choice of area effects even for rangers/melee... ). Currently only "synergy" I use in BG3 is one character casting light spell so other characters do not have "target in shadows" disadvantage.

But first issue ( annoying randomness in combat ) can be solved fairly easy, despite also being inherent in DnD rules. To be clear, some people like it that way, so I do not suggest it should be changed by default. For other people it is either source of frustration or incentive to do excessive save scrumming. So what I suggest is :

** Reduced randomness in combat ** (gameplay option, disabled by default)

When enabled, main effect would be to replace random miss chances and damage ranges in combat with their average representation, while still keeping exactly same effect of AC and weapon damage, in two main ways:
a) instead of base 1d12 weapon damage being random value between 1 and 12, it will be AVERAGE value ( for 1d12 average is 6.5, for 2d6 it is 7, for 1d8 it is 4.5 etc ). Of course, features like GWF ( reroll on 1-2 ) would effect averages ( so 1d12 become 7.33 instead of 6.5, 2d6 become 8.33 instead of 7 etc), and enchants, STR/DEX or GWM +10 would increase that average.
b) instead of enemy AC class determining chance to hit/miss ( vs 1d20 plus your modifiers), it will directly reduce damage by that chance to miss. So if now your hit chance is 70%, instead of having 30% chance to miss, your base damage will be reduced by 30%. So 1d12 from above will have 6.5*70%= 4.55 damage
c) final damage can be either rounded, or it can keep small randomness factor and decide to randomly round up or down based on fractional part. So above 4.55 dmg will have 55% chance to round up ( so 5 damage) and 45% chance to round down ( so 4 damage). If damage was 4.15 instead , it would have only 15% chance to round up to 5.
d) tooltip when hovering over target should now display that expected damage instead of chance to hit, so "4" or "4-5"


Important advantages of this approach would be :
- solve #1 issue from above : remove misses or low hits as reason for many people to be annoyed or to be forced to do save scrumming
- should be easy to implement, only change damage calculation code slightly
- all effects/benefits of armor class or proficiencies would remain and have exactly same effect. If you have +3 on weapon damage due to strength, it is added to those average 6.5 to be 9.5 ; your +2 proficiency will improve your hit chance eg from 70% to 75% ; so your average damage will now be 9.5*75%= 7.125 , so rounded 7 instead of 5 ( or 7-8 with just 12.5% chance for 8 , instead of 4-5 with 55% chance for 5 )
- it is optional and can be switched on/off as desired, without balance issues.

So not only people who like randomness can keep it always OFF, but also people who do not like randomness but would occasionally like using save scrumming to their advantage can still do so. For example, you have GWF and GWM and 1d12+1 weapon with +3 from STR, so your expected damage is 21.33 reduced by hit%, and your hit chances are usually around 50% ( due to GWM -5 reduction), so your usual damage is 11 - and you are mostly ok with that. But if someone is in a situation where they really-really need that max 1d12+1+3str+10gwm=26 hit instead of 11 hit even on enemy with high AC : they can turn off option, do save scrumming reloads until they get that big hit, then turn option back ON . Point is, even save scrummers would not need this option disabled except in rare cases. And rest of the time everyone has less annoyances with misses.