Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Hit - Miss - Deflection?

The new Reeling property that triggers on hits or misses got me thinking about this again. Why does Heavy Armor make you better at dodging in BG3? It's probably a choice to make combat easier to understand where it counts. But with properties like Reeling, should it actually be a bit more complicated? And would combat just FEEL better if heavy armor made characters tanky instead of evasive?

Let's play with the idea of adding in a Deflection event into misses when the attack is actually deflected by Armor or Shield AC as follows.

Example 1.
* Defender has Half-Plate, Shield and 14 Dex. Half-Plate AC 15, +2 AC from Dex and +2 AC from a Shield. Essentially, the defender has a Dodge AC of 12 and an actual AC of 19. Any hit that lands between those numbers is deflected or absorbed.
* An attacker has an attack bonus of +6. The d20 roll would break down as follows:

1-5 Clean miss. Dodged. (25%)
6-12 Hit that is deflected by Armor or Shield. (35%) (currently represented in BG3 also as a clean miss)
13-20 Hit for damage. (40%)

Example 2.
* Same attacker attacks a knight in Full Plate with a Shield. AC 20.

1-3 Clean miss. Dodged. (15%)
4-13 Tanky Deflection by Full Plate or Shield. (50%)
14-20 Hit for damage. (35%)

Example 3.
* Same attacker attacks a Rogue with 20 Dex and Studded Leather Armor. AC 17.

1-8 Clean miss. Dodged. (40%)
9-10 Hit absorbed by Studded Leather (10%)
11-20 Hit for damage. (50%)


Let's quickly compare misses against the two extremes, Tanky Knight vs. Nimble Rogue.

Dodging: Knight 15% vs. Rogue 40%
Deflection: Knight 50% vs. Rogue 10%

----> I sense much better flavor and feel for combat.


Why else could a deflection event be good?

- "On hit" properties like Reeling could trigger logically without having to always do damage. (This would be too complicated for tabletop but not for a video game.)
- Combat animations where steel clashes on steel would make combat more exciting with proper impact. That's what's actually happening in combat according to the D&D system so the feedback would be more accurate.
- PC's wouldn't look incompetent doing clean misses all the time
- Tanks would be tanky (more deflections), lightly armored rogues would be evasive (more dodging)

It would be cool, but I'd also be glad if :
- Shield = deflection with Shield animation / VFX
- Heavy armor = armor deflection animation / VFX
-- Medium / light / no armor = dodge animation.

- and eventually an animation that randomly appear showing our characters parrying with their weapon(s)

Deflection should be animated of course.

I'm sure they could come up with a really cool system if they decided to do one.

+1 for different animations instead of always dodging.
Sounds like you're arguing for Touch AC here?. You're saying that rolling a to-hit between their Dodge AC and Actual AC could inflict Reeling, correct?

Interesting idea, but this would open up a huge can of worms in 5e. There are a lot of other abilities that it'd be ~reasonable to have an effect "upon touching the target" even if you don't get past their armor. And we'd be trusting Larian to properly balance this homebrew...at the very least this would exacerbate the "too many homebrew (and regular) conditions" that we see currently in BG3, especially as prone still inflicts unconscious = loss of concentration.

Mechanically this would open up attacks that require contact but not necessarily damage, like what touch AC used to be, yes.

But making tanks feel like tanks would be a more important thing I think.

I definitely agree that tanks should feel more like tanks. They should defend against blows with their armor and shield as opposed to nimbly dodging.

Even if Larian simply coded "miss" animations as percentage likelihoods depending on your armor, that'd be a fine solution. They don't need to actually compare the to-hit with your Dex Mod and your armor AC. E.g.,
- If wearing light armor (or mage armor): 80% chance to dodge a missed attack, 20% to block with armor.
- If wearing medium (or natural?) armor: 50% chance to dodge, 50% to block
- If wearing heavy armor: 10% chance to dodge, 90% chance to block
- If wielding a shield: 20% chance to block with shield, and appropriately decrease the above percentages

Seems to me like you made this whole system too complicated ...
For me programing there moves like "missed, dodged, blocked by armor, blocked by shield, parried with a weapon" ... and let random number generator decide wich will play will be totally sufficient ... i mean, our hit roll is random anyway, so ... why the hells not?

Because having someone who isn't using a shield block with an invisible shield, while being exactly the sort of thing that I'd expect to see in a Larian game, would be silly and undesirable.

But if you make the rng for miss effect sensitive to that - so only shield users rng a miss as a shield block, and only armour wearers can rng an effect as an armour deflection - well, then you've more or less got something very similar to what the original post is suggesting.

I thought that i dont need to state the obvious ... :-/
Seems i was wrong.

Regarding armor i always liked damage reduction. If we look at this realistically, wearing heavier armor would make you easier to hit but harder to wound. That was one thing that always annoyed me in D&D...i still fondly remeber the Thac0.

Not sure if thats implementable in 5e.

It's also effectively damage reduction in D&D. You wear heavier armor > you take less damage. But mechanically, instead of absorbing X amount, armor absorbs all or nothing.

It's more abstract, just like the whole concept of HP, but mechanically you still know when armor "does it's thing". Hence it should be presented correctly in a video game instead of only using dodge animations for misses.