Originally Posted by undermine
Originally Posted by DragonSnooz
I've started a new playthrough to collect data on dice rolls to see if anything is out of the ordinary and so far I'm not. (so far mostly d20, d10, and d6). I just got through 100 rolls in combat and had around 12 misses (the AC on some of these enemies are so low). I'm going to do a more thorough review after 500 combat rolls. (hopefully before patch 4 comes out).

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I popped in here to add some Youtube videos I found as reference for issues in combat. I debated if I should make videos myself, but I'm grateful most of the issues in combat are shown in these "guides".

High Ground, Jump, Backstab
Dip > Spells

For me the main issue with combat is these general mechanics all characters can use outshine anything a single class can do (Higher Ground, Backstab, Jump, and Dip).
Reactions don't work like we would expect in DnD 5e and saving throw spells are underwhelming after lowering AC and buffing HP for enemies.

I like that scientific approach to the broken dice complaint.

I don't like that Larian mislabels flanking as backstab. When hosting a game with terms that mean very specific things, one reduces unnecessary confusion by using the proper terms.


I posted the findings in this thread. Ratio of Rolls

Originally Posted by DragonSnooz
I wanted to investigate and see if there were any issues with the RNG.
So I recorded all of my player combat rolls on a new playthrough. I had a hunch advantage/disadvantage may be skewing the distribution, so I notated each advantage and disadvantage roll. During the playthrough I tried to get as many normal attack rolls as possible. Here are the findings.

For all rolls recorded |Frequency| column; a roll of 17 was further than two standard deviations from the average. The sample from my playthrough looked like rolls may be biased towards the player.
  • N=176
  • St.dev 3.3
  • Average 8.8

Note: if one of the 17s had been any other outcome this sample would have been completely normal.

After stratifying for normal rolls (Frequency Adv/Dis Removed); all outcomes were normal.
  • N=117
  • St.dev 2.6
  • Average 5.85

Advantage and disadvantage are so common in Patch 3.0 that d20 rolls can be skewed for or against the player. Overall, I don't think the RNG is flawed.

Data
Roll_|Frequency|_(Frequency Adv/Dis removed)
01---------|05|----------(03)
02---------|08|----------(07)
03---------|10|----------(05)
04---------|09|----------(06)
05---------|14|----------(11)
06---------|04|----------(03)
07---------|05|----------(03)
08---------|06|----------(05)
09---------|06|----------(04)
10---------|14|----------(10)
11---------|12|----------(07)
12---------|07|----------(03)
13---------|09|----------(07)
14---------|10|----------(06)
15---------|06|----------(04)
16---------|08|----------(05)
17---------|16|----------(11)
18---------|11|----------(08)
19---------|07|----------(03)
20---------|09|----------(06)

EDIT: While I am saying the ratio of rolls isn't flawed. There is still a possible case to be made that pseudo-RNG might be better. On the Nautiloid I started out with a long streak of 5s, 10s, and 17s. A 5 will usually hit on the Nautiloid, so I wasn't bothered. That was a streaky start to the game and I can understand that if a player streaked with 2 instead, that could be an annoying experience.

Pseudo RNG that avoids long streaks may be better for the game. Each session, the player only experiences an hour to a four hour window of the game, which will always be a small sample size.

It became difficult to push for 500 rolls because advantage/disadvantage is everywhere. The fights in the Underdark are balanced to where you are either going to be level 5 or using backstab/high ground. So it became unfun rather fast trying to collect more data. By the time you're in the Underdark, if Gale isn't using Magic Missile or Shatter repeatedly he's usually missing.

As for loaded dice, psuedo RNG is an okay solution. A DM in real life might fudge rolls if the players are streaking with low rolls too much, and a computer DM won't have empathy for the players.