If Baldurs Gate was a DM i would have left the table and probably slapped their food/drink out of their hands and wipe all their dice to the floor as i left.
I become so annoyed with the Medium difficulty and the almost necessity to Save scum or die at the hands of monsters that are a lower level that i started doing Min\max meta builds and eventually started Recording the scores.
So let me first start by stating that Ive played Table top D&D since i was like 12 and played All of the D&D games, even the crappy ones. I am a HUGE D&D fan and really do enjoy the dice rolling aspect to add a level of variance.
The Second thing id like to point out is the strategy and Tactics in game do not take a genius to figure out and exploit, please DO NOT comment about this as it will prove to me that you're not comprehending the point i'm going to make.
Third and last premise here, each individual roll is a percentage in and of itself and is not affected by save scumming nor other rolls. 70% chance to hit could result in 12+ save scum attempts to actually hit because each individual roll has a 30% failure rate which is not enforced.
The average chance to actually hit (attack roll) is actually about 13% lower than shown on average. I started to run save scum and found that a 65% chance is actually closer to 45% when i reload the same sequence 100 times. (i really did reload exactly 100 times to make sure i wasn't getting frustrated for no reason.)
The Average Damage that players can produce is only about 50% of the Total damage your character CAN produce, so a 4d8 will hit for 27 or below, and out of 100 reloads never reached maximum damage of 38; with average damage being around 16.
While the Average damage for an enemy NPC is about 70% of the total damage; an enemy casting the same 4d8 spell will have an average damage of 25, and can max damage at 38 about 5% of the time, with a critical rating i will discuss below. Its not lost on me that a 3d8 spell could do just 3 damage... yup i got that and its VERY rare to do that low of a damaging strike (somewhere around 3%) but the NPCs, performing the same spell as the same class, will produce more damage on average which is the problem. I want to have the Big D*ck energy, not the NPC.
The chance to crit as a player is something like 1% as out of 5000+ reloads, i NEVER critically hit. I have seen only 1 critical hit from Lae'zel near the beginning of the game but did not save the log and therefore couldn't add it to my stats; i have however seen the enemy combatants crit with an average of about 12%. Again, i bought this game and expect to feel like im Powerful and strong and instead it a LOT of "oh better stealth the entire party in to the fight other wise my Fighter and Barbarian are going to just get WRECKED". i want my fighter and Barbarian to walk in like the Bad asses i built them to be, not skulk around like scared and sheepish weaklings. even the rouges stealth is more defensive than assassin like.. its pathetic.
This is the reason people are Save Scumming... the game has a Garbage DM and the game creators probably thinks they are making the game more fun with difficulty, which as a DM myself i do as well to make sure the players feel that fear of death with the EVER PRESENT RELIEF OF VICTORY...... BG3 does not have the second part.
The NPC's do more damage on average with no real pendulum back to the players favor, outside of game mechanic competency. All Players like to feel powerful and strong, but REALLY enjoy the struggle in Boss fights! no one wants an easy win; having said that, a goblin trash mob that's half my level should NOT be able to KO any of my characters in the first round of combat. Or Worse my characters suddenly go limp noodle constantly rolling in the low 25% of whatever my damage dice happens to be: Player 1d6 AVG damage: 2; Player 1d8 AVG dmg: 3; Player 2d8 AVG Dmg: 5 while the SAME Dice roles for NPCs are closer to 3, 5, 7 respectively. That needs to be switched at least for Trash NPC fights. Maybe for boss fights i could understand buffing the NPC "for the struggle" affect, but not for low level patrolling NPC's.
Again i have about 200 hours / 5000 Save scum reloads and i KNOW i cant be the only one getting numbers like this with the amount of posts on Steam, this forums, and even the D&D discussion boards all complaining about the same thing. Players are Sand-bagged, NPC seems to naturally roll higher and there is NO SKILL IN RANDOM DICE ROLLING; with the constancy of my numbers it doesn't seem to "just be a luck thing". My log suggests the enemy NPC's rolls are far too consistent in higher damage against the player UNLESS you save scum, which really sucks the fun out of the game, but its better than getting a party wipe.
I am not sure if this is an attempt to be like dark souls which is annoying and sadistic. That game genre completely ignored basic martial prowess and although it was extremely satisfying to beat the game and had an excellent story... the creator was insulting the idea of martial discipline and its art. i don't expect to maneuver like the Devil My Cry game mechanics either but Dark Souls characters wouldn't be able to make a sandwich without loosing all of their stamina. Neither of these Games should be considered when creating D&D games nor should they even be considered as a comparison.
Equally Dragon age is also a poor comparison despite the combat and game feel being very similar, the entire Random Number generator of the "dice rolls" in D&D completely ignore forced stats. Dragon Age you can Force Accuracy and Crits with some respect to the Enemy NPC's states, where as D&D its entirely Chance with some mod buffs to dice role depending on the class, specialization, and thankfully some of the equipment. Otherwise it doesnt matter, this is gambling without money.
The only saving grace in this game seems to be entirely GEAR which gives you some actually ability to start feeling powerful around level 5 but very little to do with your character and feats until about level 12 only to fall back into that same pattern around level 15.
Buff the player roles by a point or three... debuff the NPCs by a point or three.... make the players feel strong. in boss fights sure makes sense, otherwise stop making every single fight a set of super sayian NPCs versus my completely weak but tactically and strategically focused group.
