As far as I understood, the "karmic dice" setting should "smooth things out". As there is no ingame description, I expected that this just means that the overall roll distribution stays the same, but it tries to break lucky/unlucky streaks. However, it seems to consistently make enemies hit more than they should, effectively working as a significant AC penalty.

Explanation posted on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/zwqaem/psa_having_the_karmic_dice_setting_turned_on/

Data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...JpkP9anhPshxjVinoXwKdYByYhQkhIxm/pubhtml

Suggestions made by the community:

  • Disable karmic dice by default
  • Add more finegrained settings (karmic dice only out of combat, or both)
  • Add more explanation what the effect of this setting is
  • Rework the karmic dice rolls


As far as the data indicates, this setting mainly makes the fights faster and more unforgiving, which is especially punishing for newer players.