But D&D doesn't do outcomes well, and never has.[/qquote]
It most certainly does. Again, I suspect you'd benefit from better Dms if that's been your experience.
Most players of the "white box" edition that I knew disliked separation of hit and damage rolls, and the complete lack of correlation between the two. It would have been simple enough to use a single attack roll to scale the damage an attack might cause, but over 40 year's later, D&D still uses the same poor system, bar the reversal of the armor classes for players that had difficulty with subtraction.
THACO was stupid, and only the most irrationally mired-in-the-old-ways individuals don't acknowledge that. Defending it makes you look silly. I've mingled with many D&D players from many play backgrounds over the years that I've been playing, and I've never once encountered an individual who took issue with having attack rolls and saving throws rolled separately from damage rolls; not one. This is actually the first time I've ever heard that complaint, from anyone, ever, so I'm going to reject your argument to authority (popular opinion) there, flat out.
There is no "intent" to 5e.
This is incorrect. The system was designed, moving forward from what was learned with previous editions, with deliberate intentions for how it should work, what it should feel like, and the ways in which the system would be balanced for engagement, approachability and longevity. What rules were kept, what rules here changed, what rules were invented fresh and how things were altered were all part of that intent. Removing the auto-success and auto-failure (and to be clear here, we're not talking about critical success and critical failure - we're just talking about auto-success and auto-fail; a 20 being a success whether it would have been so by the numbers or not, and a 1 being a failure whether it would have been so by the numbers or not), of 1s and 20s from everything except combat-related mechanics was part of that intent. To supposes that a system versioning and release might be done without a directed intent behind it is ridiculous, and you are not a stupid person, so I can only presume you are using a completely different meaning for the word intent than I am. What is the definition of 'intent' that you are using, when you say that 5e didn't have one?
One thing 5e is definitely not, is balanced.
Once again, you're using a different meaning and definition for the word balance here than I am. 5e is the best balanced edition of D&D we've had to date - it's not perfect by any stretch and it has various weakness, breaks and unintended consequences of various choices and builds, but it's very well balanced
overall. Why are you assuming that I am using a definition of the word that cannot be applied to the genre of game system we're dealing with as a whole at all, when that would make no sense whatsoever? Why are you using that definition in your response?
We seem to be playing different games ( or you always play the game the same way, perhaps ) as I have found that there are many ways of approaching most of BG3's content, and many (apparently) different outcomes.
Really? Could you suggest a few? Because so far I've found that in virtually every situation - and it's easy to demarcate because each situation in BG3 is an isolated set piece that exists in its own bubble, more or less - has a whole bunch of things you can say and ways you can kick the set piece off, all of which have precisely zero effect on the actual outcome, barring the binary possibilities that ultimately exist. There are a few individual cases where this is not the case, but they are rare.
