Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous vs BG3

It would be complicated to explain, and it´s not my expertise, but I have a friend that is modding the game. From what he and the modders of the WoTR discord say, If you take a look at the code the formulas for auto-battle are purely mathematical, with a slight bias to favor the player. It does not make an "actual simulation" of the combat.

It happens the same as the RNG, it causes the same perception of unfair randomness. I´ve seen plenty of posts and threads in this and other games (Bg3, pf, wotr, Solasta, phoenix point, etc) stating that the dice is bugged, it´s not just or messes with the players... when it's simply a pure d20 dice. There are games that include the option to load the dice or add less randomness to the dice, or simply use crooked dice to avoid too many misses in a row, like XCOM.

Humans are very bad at calculating probabilities

Yeeeah, but we aren't really talking about a misalignment between expectations and results, we are talking about wildly inaccurate estimations.
Like, you can engage a battle that is literally mathematically unwinnable with your units (even just considering the sheer stats involved, with no special ability whatsoever) and the autosolve could give you a flawless victory.
Or the other way around.

With all due respect, unless you take a look at the code, tried the numbers available for damage and the formula and made a study that proved the p-value was not statistically significant, the results may not be as "wildly inaccurate" or "mathematically unwinnable" as you may think

And I´m not saying you are necessarily in the wrong, I just pointed that those are very strong statements you are making without numerical sources to back it up. As I said before, humans are very bad at calculating probabilities. That´s why they invented psychometrics (not the paranormal one).

That said, I agree with the assumption that the formula does not take into account the tactics that the IA and the player uses in manual combat, so it may be worthwhile to use manual combat when the enemy general has some powerful abilities that could wipe out your army ( like scorching ray, bane, etc)

Jesus Christ, I know the difference between a "tough battle with uncertain odds" and one where playing manually the enemy stack can literally curb-stomp your whole army barely taking any damage in the process (but somehow takes a crushing one-sided defeat when played with auto-solving).

And as I said it's not even a matter of taking into account "tactics" or "special abilities". The AI constantly fucks up even just dealing with rough numbers.

Example: attacking 30 gargoyles with 10 archers. You play manually and the AI comes to spank your archers upclose before you can even put a dent on their stack, you play with auto-solving and the computer gives you a one-sided triumph where you don't lose a single archer.

"People are bad at calculating odds" is cheap excuse that you can spare for whiners.
I spent the last 3 years or so eating XCOM 2 Legendary/Ironman for breakfast. I understand how "unlikely odds" works, generally speaking.

Well, if you consider yourself an expert at calculating odds at games and the proof about your statements is that "you know what you are saying"; I do not think this conversation could be productive in any way, so... maybe we could move on?.

@_Vic_ Yeah it's not quite about "optional bosses are more difficult", but - according to what I've seen people say - it's the way Owlcat throw them at you. These super strong enemies tend to be dropped out of the blue on your party, and sometimes right after a major fight or some hard puzzle. It's unexpected, and there are a lot of such encounters in the game. Unlike Kangaxx or Demogorgon when you know or at least guess there will be a fight, because there's a lengthy buildup prior. People who forget to save just for a minute, or simply do not expect there will be a "puzzle fight" just around the corner, tend to lose progress when their party get wiped.

Yes, that's why I googled it. I more or less guessed there's something special about the fight (like a cutscene triggered under special condition), so I looked it up just to figure out what I should focus on, so I didn't have to waste time suffering unnecessarily. When I tried again I insta-gibbed the guy. It was the result of not caring about doing everything in one go without rest anymore. I rested one whole day right outside the boss room, after beating the guard squad. Was able to buff the party more proper and got the chance to try out Cave Fang. I spammed Cave Fang within the 1st round until the guy failed his save and fell prone, then in just a heartbeat the fight was over.

@_Vic_ @Tuco I think the key here is that "slight bias toward the player".

I keep restarting WOTR.


I like the game but find a few things odd.

I'm playing a class that has cantrips. But when I start it none of the them are set on my quick access bar or whatever it's called. And the game doesn't really tell you how to do it. I mean it's not too hard to figure out but still. Why not have them already set?

Also I'm not well versed in Pathfinder but it seems like they expect you to be? Like all the different classes and sub classes can be daunting. For me at least

And when I rest one of the things you watch out for is something like decreasing corruption or something like that. The first one. Not sure what they're getting at.

Oh and just as a side note the Owlcat boards are a lot more critical of the game than here. One poster wants a refund after playing for over 150 hours or something close to that.

Steam's refund policy of 2 hours really isn't enough for a game like this, since you can easily go over that just in character creation. You won't find out most of your class abilities or broken, or your Mythic path abilities are broken, until many hours later.

The key here is that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
I'm telling him that the numbers were COMPLETELY busted and he keeps talking about "people being bad at having an intuitive understanding of how odds work".

It's like telling someone you've been assaulted by a serial killer with a chainsaw in a dark alley and getting advices about how to improve your posture and facial expression to make a better first impression with strangers.

Not at all an expert on Pathfinder but I do know 3.5

3.5 just hates casters. Even with everything the game did to buff casters (sooo many options) the 3.5 base of the rules make single class mages the weakest class in the game.

Unlike 5th ed, cantrips soon become useless you have a magus or a multiclass because you need to roll to hit and with enemy AC and you never will. You are better off giving your mage a crossbow and better still using the mage as a buffer.

Again, not an expert on the lore but from what I've gathered from the game: A scientist / mage opened a portal to the abyss called the worldwound. That bleeding from that wound corrupts everything. Think: radiation. (it looks like pathfinder borrowed some stuff from Gamma World) You need to get some place with a holy shrine set up to to undo the radiation.

Essentially you have three sleep cycles before you start suffering unless you have high religion score and you put that person in charge of running religious rituals before sleep. Then you might get 4 sleep cycles.

Agree that for a lot of the optional bosses in WoTR, they don't do a good job establishing build up and merging it with the narrative. Most of the hardest fights are fights that happen out of nowhere with very little dramatic tension built in.

Despite overall loving the game, my biggest complaint on the gameplay is definitely the lack of proper AI and weak encounter design. This leads to Owlcat leaning really hard on statistical buffs to increase difficulty - since the AI is never going to outsmart you, and there are rarely environment or other non-stat factors (i.e. time limits, secondary objectives, etc) inflating the difficult. This leads to two common solutions for encounters:

1) Brute Force - just out-stat the enemy. i.e. 70+ AC on enemies doesn't mean anything when you can just get your attack bonus to 90+ (probably the easier but more boring of the two)

2) Find the Gap - just examine the enemy for its weakness, and figure out what you have that can be used against that gap (i.e. Touch AC, low Will save, etc)

This means most of the difficulty comes simply from acquiring game knowledge (mainly what stacks), as opposed to making a lot of strategic decisions in reaction to smart decisions by the AI. It ultimately isn't very mentally stimulating once you've figure a few things out. Mind you, most RPGs are like this to some extend - but I feel like Owlcat has the tendency to really really lean into the high stats = difficulty more.

I do not recall you giving any proof of the numbers being busted besides your subjective perception and your bold but empty words.
I asked modders that actually saw the code of the game and told me otherwise, and they explained to me why, didn´t ask me to believe in their word without further proof. To me, it´s pretty clear who knows what he´s talking about and who does not.


Just for the record, I never said it´s not possible what you said, I only pointed you have no basis for your claims besides your (allegedly) expertise, that may be enough for you, but I prefer to be sceptical than believing in the supposed savvy of some random guy in a forum.

The key here is you are not giving more facts to back up your claims than "It´s like that because I say so and I know better because I´m an expert, I played XCOM2! ", numbers and maths be damned.
As I said before, talking about anything with anyone on that basis is a waste of time, so it would be a good moment to move on.

Yes please, time to move on.

I'm not sure what numbers do you want me to bring to the table out of a beta that doesn't even exist anymore.
The problem here is that you are having serious issues grasping the scale of the problem. You think this is about confusing a 90% with a 100% or something of that sort, when the degree the auto-resolve was failing (or favoring, in some cases) the player was on an entirely different scale.
We are talking pretty much flipping the results of a 10 vs a 1000, according to what solution was picked (manual battle vs auto-resolve).

I even mentioned you a very specific example I experienced during the beta (10 basic archers vs 30 gargoyles, no useful heroes abilities or spells involved on either side, complete inability to inflict noticeable damage in one scenario, flawless victory on the other) that you conveniently decided to ignore.

You're right, this is a waste of time, but that's not because of my lack of credentials as much as your fail to get a grasp the situation described.

If the entire battle comes down to a d20 roll then its very likely that weird results will occur in lopsided battles if 20 is an auto-win and 1 is an auto-lose.

The formula is irrelevant.
The point is, once again, that the auto-solver gave the player victories in battles that were mathematically impossible to win if played manually or, on the contrary, crushing defeats on battles that you would have a hard time losing on purpose.


But let’s keep blabbing in abstraction about how people may have a slightly misaligned perception of how probabilities work, instead, despise that having literally NOTHING to do with the issue at hand.

With a d20 it would be much easier =D but no, it´s about the autobattle.

And just to be clear, Tuco did not have access to the formula used in the game to calculate that, at least prior to his posting, I asked modders how to get it. That´s why I´m sceptical.



I can already tell you the deviation you assume for the flipping (results from 10 to 1000) are numerically IMPOSSIBLE according to the formulas used in the game, so you are exaggerating at best. Cannot post the code because I do not know if it's trademarked but that part is clear.
I always agreed with the assumption that the game engine favours the player, but not to the extent you claim. Not even close.

Numbers do not lie, mate. You can keep believing what you want, but do not expect me to agree with anecdotic impressions if I have access to pure numbers.

At least we can agree do disagree and you may want to let that go already, as I asked twice and the moderator too.

The formula that calculates how the combat in autobattle is resolved is irrelevant? Now you made my day

Yes, for the sake of what we were talking about it absolutely is. Knowing the exact formula can just help identifying how the system fails, it’s not necessary to be aware that a complete failure is happening.

It’s like we were talking about a decapitated corpse in an obituary and you insisted that a detailed police report of what happened to it was necessary to establish if it was dead or alive.

Man... a doctor is needed to declare death for a reason. Because he studied to know that and have the abilities and knowledge about the inner functions of the human body needed to be sure the guy is really dead. Because someone that does not have that deep knowledge could make a false assumption and send a non-deceased guy or one with narcolepsia to the morgue. In the victorian era in UK they made coffins with a bell.
it´s the same here, you may suspect the guy is dead, but you cannot be sure without a minimal knowledge about medicine, or in this case, the game, no matter how intuitive and expert the person thinks he is.

So yeah, to me the code used in the game is relevant. The formula and maths are relevant. The opinion of the modders that work with the code daily to make mods matter. 3 years playing Xcom2, for this, not that much.


we all agree that the auto-battle gives better results than manual battle in many cases. I do not really get why do you keep discussing this nonsense. Are you really that bored?