Aren’t we as a players supposed not to know an armor class (as well as save throws) of any specific creature without making a successful check?
I also acknowledge how not knowing the probability to hit anything can upset some of the fanbase. And as such again kindly asking you Larian to deliver a raw D&D option for those of us who value this system’s depth above all.

Even though I am a pnp D&D player, I would never use this option in the game. When you play with a tactical combat system, you want to know what the odds of success are before making a decision. Guess work is fun around a table but detrimental to winning a battle in a video game in my opinion, especially in harder difficulties.

Are valuing system’s depth, if you ask to not have information on which to make information? Or is “a valuing system dearth” mean - I have AC of every monster in the playbook memorised? We also should get details log info as well right? Just miss, not miss.

I don’t know, I can see how DM could use descriptions to suggest what we are doing wrong, which defences we should attack, or what protective spells the enemy has. In computer setting, I find it less fussy if the game just shows that.

We have a great portfolio of PnP PC adaptations which stick to this rule and there’s a reason for that. This is why passive skill checks are so important to get an information about environment and creatures. This is how D&D is supposed to be played. I want that option in the game.

Thank you, OP, for saying it.

I remember a session where we were fighting enemies with high AC. I worked out for myself that, with a +8 to hit, my chance of hitting it was 60%. I didn't know their ability scores, as I new to the game and had never seen these creatures before (ropers), but I noticed that they were big and slow. I figured they had low dex scores, so I went with spells that forced dex saving throws instead. Turns out, I was right, and I felt good. Praise god.

No one will ever have that experience in BG3. I just cycle through spells, aiming each one at the enemy I want to hit, and pick the one most likely to land. There's no surprise, no learning about my enemy in the thick of battle. It's spoiled. It's stupid. It's wrong. Woe to us, the consumer.

Not a problem to me, it's a convenient solution.

I'm also fine with the system used in Solasta that looks closer to RAW.

Yes it’s a huge simplification of everything. You don’t have to think about what kind of creature you are dealing with when digits can tell you everything. Does it have a magical weapon, what is its nature, does it have night vision, what weaknesses could it possibly posses? It’s not a convenience at all. Not to say it’s immersion breaking.

Seconding this.


And also this. BG3 is shaping up to be a more cinematic game where sillier stuff happens than what is expected or usual with RAW. And for RAW-purism you can still look forward to Solasta or the eventual RAW-BG3 mod that gets rid of surfaces, jumping and barrels.

Mods suffer from balance issues. And it’s not about purism for the sake of it. It’s about how this game could be much more interesting. Implementing dnd mode won’t hurt barrels lovers much.

I don't mind the % as much as the ability to "examine" anyone's stats revealing everything including AC, saves, resistances and vulnerabilities.

You should be able to learn that information through skill checks, or gradually by experience in fighting them. Once you would know their AC, I don't mind seeing a percentage to hit since you could calculate it anyway and the game just makes it more accessible.

Well yes, the way this information is represented in game isn’t actually the problem.

Gaming <<<convenience>>> is now king. Only way for market share to grow.

I like % shows but I also agree with not knowing the enemy but already knowing their AC and Hit % is OP a bit.

To be honest I am conflicted, i am playing pathfinder kingmaker as a newbie. No % and getting to know the enemy is cool but when I know the enemy it takes a lot of work to check the stats which I dont want to do constantly.

I think % should be shown but if you do not know enemy AC yet it should show "???" .

I also absolutely disagree with people that % just showing is the worst thing ever. Actual QoL changes like % is a great thing, some people might not like it and I am absolutely fine with that but removing it completely is just silly imo. Computer does the math for you and I am all for that.

I cant imagine how else its suppose to work ...

You have 3 enemies ... two in Leather Armor, one of them with shield ... one in Chainmail armor with shield ...
You attack an enemy ...
You have no idea if the strike will land or not, since you dont have any estimated %, or info about their AC ...
You missed.

And now what?

How would you know if you missed, just bcs you rolled 2, or bcs their AC is 25 ? O_o
Based on what would you decide if you want to try your luck with another enemy, or try the same one again?

The way it usually works, in my experience, is trial and error. You can see your rolls and know which ones hit and which ones didn't. So you try a few different things, prodding your enemy's defenses, to figure out "how difficult is this guy to hit?" and then adjust your strategy based on what you learn. If you make a bunch of attacks that feel good (high rolls) and you're still missing, you adjust your strategy.

There's no reason, upon seeing someone that you've never encountered before, that you would immediately know the best way to fight them. I could see spending some time to study an enemy before a fight to roll a perception or insight check to get some clues.

Actual numbers for your example:
Leather armor is AC 11 + DEX mod. If leather armor gives you an AC of 19, your DEX would have to be at least 26. Anything over 20 DEX is very difficult to attain.
Same goes with the Leather+Shield guy.
Chain Mail is AC 16, where leather armor typically maxes out.

Giving use to the Insight and Nature skills might be useful, like have a stat that can be used to examine an enemy and thus get said information.

This is actually a very good idea. More use for skills.
Different creatures may require different skill checks. That’s kind of depth I’d like to see in the current year dnd.

That's is very un-fun. And then spend way too much time replaying encounter again and again, casting various debuffs and dispells hoping that you will figure out what you are supposed to do.

I can only see it work, if game had ways of communicated why and by how much you missed without showing actual numbers (as I would imagine a good DM would do when describing the action).

Another vote for turning misses into what they actually are:
-miss if you roll < 10
-blocked if you roll between 10 and the enemy's Armor bonus
-dodged if you roll between ^ and the enemy's Armor+Dex
-shielded if rolled between ^ and the enemy's shield bonus
This way, you can visually tell why most of your attacks are missing. Does the enemy have high armor or high dex?

The above combined with a bestiary that updates via arcana/nature checks upon encountering and defeating enemies would be perfect.

I think percentages to hit are fine. As already said, players figure out AC's of creatures quite quickly anyway.

It also has the added benefit of letting people unfamiliar with DnD know how likely they are to hit.

Having to look at enemy animations to figure out what AC they have sounds cool in theory but will become tedious. At least for me.

Not to mention having to know how each animation looks like on different creature and the need to create those animations in the first place.

Plus, whenever I run DnD I tend to "highlight" AC by describing the enemy a bit more, particularly if it is not humanoid. That is absent from the video game, since all you are relying on is the player looking at a model and making the conclusion themselves.

This is a very complex solution. How would you animate this so accurately that the player can see it clearly. This would also require more animating every single unit which seems set in stone already. Devs could do what you said by writing everything in the combat log but then you would be checking combat log the whole game and not pay attention to animations.

At this point why play bg3 ? You can just play games based on text if you are gonna look at enemy AC, combat logs constantly. I am not completely against the idea of not showing % to hit from the get go but looking at text constantly Is extremely annoying. That's what I did for fire emblem 3 houses in maddening mode. It is just tedious work especially if you replay all the time. I like XCOM 2 style of % hit. It makes the game more fluid and actually let you focus on strategy.

The goal is that, after you've faced an enemy once or twice, you pass your nature/arcana checks and the enemy's AC is added to your bestiary. At this point, the percentages to hit are shown. It's only for your first fight against a type of enemy that you don't know the AC (for these purposes, all goblins could count as the same creature, even the goblins with differing ACs).

So you won't have to look at enemy animations for most fights.

I don't know how much work creating animations is or how easily one creature's animation can be copied over other creatures, so can't really comment on that. But that's a cost-benefit analysis that should be done by Larian, not us.

My idea is that a "miss" or "blocked" or "dodged" text would pop up over the enemy along with the animation. It also doesn't require animating every single unit. At the very least, all humans(+elves/tieflings/etc) can use the same set of animations.

There is one major disadvantage to your way of thinking. It is unlikely that in most cases we will encounter a given creature more than once during the game. Of course, this does not apply to enemies that are related to the plot, such as goblins or standard humanoids.
Of course, there is also a chance that we will meet opponents with the same model later in the game, but they will most likely have different stats anyway.
It is also not stated that a given creature cannot differ from another of the same type (like minotaurs)

I don't think it's fair to ignore "enemies that are related to the plot, such as goblins or standard humanoids," as these enemies will be in a larger percentage of fights.

But even if we do face most enemies only once, a partial solution is to allow additional nature/arcana checks after killing each enemy. As long as there are multiple enemies of that type in the fight (pretty likely, unless it's a boss-type enemy) then as the fight progresses you'll learn more about how to better kill each enemy.

I'm not sure where the line would be drawn between same creatures of different classes/abilities (i.e., a human rogue will obviously have different stats/AC than a human Paladin)...lumping all humans under a single check/bestiary entry is a bit unrealistic, but requiring a check for every human, however slightly different, would obviously be too much. This depends on the variety of enemies in BG3, which we can't know without having played through Acts 2+.

Ok, let's say we do that. And what action do I use to make that check?

* Action - seems excessive, I could just attack another creature.
* Bonus action - can be the case, but classes that have little to do with bonus actions will benefit from this more
* Reaction - may work, but reactions can be incredibly powerful for certain classes
* Free Action - seems like the most fair one to me, but at that point why roll at all? Plus, if you roll an check and roll badly, you may never know how hard it is to kill a creature.

For me it creates more problems than it is worth, that's all.

There's no action. The check is automatically made by all party members when combat starts, and then again once the enemy is killed (because of experience gained fighting them or from investigating the dead body). Importantly, the check is made again when you encounter an enemy for the 2nd, 3rd, etc time, making it likely that you'll know something about the enemy by the 2nd encounter. Additional successful checks and/or higher rolls on those checks would give you more information: abilities, saving throws, lore. It rewards putting points into nature and/or arcana and makes you feel like you're learning more about enemies as you face them.

It would also tie in well to a bestiary, which is really something that BG3 should have. Encountering enemies would slowly fill out your bestiary which you could look at any time.

I don't know, that seems just tedious. How do I figure out how likely I am to hit:

* Check the bestiary and do some quickmaths - boring, plus, I am playing a video game, the game should do it for me
* The chance to hit appears after successful checks - now we implemented a good qol feature, but locked it behind some random rolls.

Plus, why would killing an enemy with say Thunderwave or any Save spell reveal its AC. Maybe we should only reveal a creatures AC to the companion that killed it, only if they killed it with an attack and only if they succeeded on a check...

This is a game, and we are going to make abstract rules. So why not make those rules simple?

Locking something behind “some random rolls” is the heart of this game.

Want to know your enemies’ weaknesses? Invest in skills to mitigate the randomness.

I like pathfinder kingmaker way of revealing enemy stats. You can learn by rolling and killing enemies as far as I know.

Alternatively, I think revealing enemy stats after hitting them would make sense. For example if I use a fire cantrip, I learn if the enemy has resistance to fire. I never played dnd but I watch some games on youtube, dm would say here that " it hurts the creature but not as much as you thought." So you get a clear idea of their resistances like that. And once you know you can just know forever for that specific type of enemy. This way even if you encounter an enemy once you can still learn their resistances in combat.

Or I could open the chat log and do some quickmaths to figure out that the creature probably has X AC, because rolling X hit but rolling X-1 didn't. Without investing into skills. Like people do when they play 5e.

Or I could notice that I rolled X on my firebolt but it only did 1/2*X damage and figure out that the creature is resistant to fire.

At that point I am just doing the calculations in my head. Why not just tell that upfront? Or at least after your first hit.

There are many good ways to implement this mechanic. Main message of this topic is that current state of this mechanic dumbs down the important aspect of the game.

That's where we disagree - I don't see it as an important aspect. In BG3 or tabletop.

There are no rules for identifying target AC from what I remember. There are few classes that can figure that out (like the battlemaster), but that is pretty much it.

You use trial and error, but depending on your party you may find out the ballpark AC almost immediately.

Sure, when I DM I try to narrate the hits to give the player a general idea, but that goes out the window when the druid conjures 8 boars and they are all rolling for an attack.

I see it as an important aspect because in current state it makes you just choose the most affordable target without evaluating both visually and intuitively its strengths and weaknesses. It’s a big simplification of everything that dnd is about.
I guess we can agree to disagree.

+1

True, but when you play dnd you don't see your actual target. You imagine what they look like (unless your DM splurges on minis). And the way you imagine them is based on how the DM describes. So if the dm describes the Bulette as having "large metal-like plates" I can infer that it has a high AC.

But looking at a model in a video game I will have to rely on my intuition.

Which I don't think is a fair comparison.

This is why having a mechanic to rely on your character's intuition makes sense. Assume that they see more than the player does and let them roll some appropriate skill check to see what they can figure out about an enemy. It could involve studying a potential enemy before a fight. It could involve noticing things in the middle of a fight. It could involve studying the bodies of the enemies after a fight. A player doesn't need to be handed any of this information at all, certainly not up front for free; you can figure it out through trial and error. But tying useful information to skills that don't have a lot of other use in a video game makes attribute and proficiency choices much more important in shaping your character, which I like.

I guess I just don't see the appeal of this.

Basically we end up with the same percentage to hit, just after X skill checks.

I can understand researching Legendary creatures or the like, but doing the same for a random goblin archer or fighter - that is just tedious in my mind.


Sure, we don't need to be shown HP pools either, but would you advocate for removing those too? To be fair, that could be much easier remedied with an intuitive "traffic signal" system.

I wholeheartedly would.

Yeah, I would totally not show an enemy's HP. Health bars without numbers or stoplight are acceptable.

As for the rest - you absolutely don't need to know an enemy's AC/resistances in order to fight them. No one is forcing you to research a random goblin - you can just kill them. Having more information makes it easier to win a fight, but my preference is for that information to be earned through conscious choices (either deliberate actions or how you build your character) rather than given freely.

I really don't. The issue I had:
You run into enemy above your level. You can't see his level and resistances, or buffs, or anything, so on top of being numerically underpowered the game also withhalds tactical information. It would be fine, if game would do good enough job visually to let you know what you could try to do (like BG1&2 did) but it doesn't. That made Kingmaker a wikipedia game. I run into a difficulty wall. I can't proceed becuase I don't even know if I can proceed. So I google - can I kill that enemy or have to return later. What defences does it have. What buffs should I try to dispel.

Those are vital information, and I don't believe game gets more interesting if you don't have access to those things.

There might be a benefit to keeping things vague - for example BG1&2 health descrition was alright. Full health, injured etc. - it have an idea of how much HP enemy has, without throwing out actual numbers. Is it in anyway beneficial, though, over healthbars like in enhanced editions? I think not, as far as UI is tastefully done. It is topdown, roll based RPG so immersion isn't even a thing. I see no benefit in withholding vital gameplay information.

Still for immersion sake I could get behind something vague - stats being described rather then given numerical value, Strength - high, dex - average etc. Skin resistant to ..... Still, as a long time gamer my first step is to understand what those things mean numerically anyway. When I play a tactics game and read: threat level: high, my question is: WTF does that mean? It's just a layer of annoying obfuscation, like using a slider for FOV in graphical options. I can stumple my way to the right solution, but giving me actual numbers is just more helpful.

Health bars are straight from arcade games, should be abandoned completely. There was a feat in fallouts (not bethesda abominations) to know approximately your enemy’s hps. This is what I call a good mechanic.

Making a research is a good practice when you want to enjoy a game with complex mechanics, can’t see any problem here. I hope these casual features will be left for story mode or something.

A game can have complex mechanics and give us convenient informations like the %to hit according to me.

If combats were made arround D&D rather than Larian's wtf/OP layer and if the mechanics were properly implemented the game would be complex.

Obviously it's not at the moment but, still according to me, it's more about things like "turning arround a turn based frozen ennemy means advantage/surprise" than the %to hit.

Having a %to hit doesn't mean you cannot discover informations about your ennemies.

%to hit just give clues about the AC (and/or about ST/abilities if you highlight all of them with very specific spells to create his character sheet in your head, which is tedious).

Resistances as well. How in the nine hells do we know about their resistances? Just scroll over and choose the less resistant target with your spell. You just know this, because tadpole.

It's called an abstraction.

You see you theretically could create a game, that would fully symulate things like damage - perhaps every character model would have bloodvessels and with every every strike of the sword cuts would be tracked, blood would spill, and character would bleed out in simulated way.

But that would be difficult to do, and not very fun to engage with. Not in a game, not focused on cutting things to pieces at least.

Therefore - abstraction! We represent character wellbeing with HP. Each strike decresses HP. When HP goes to 0 the character is dead! So instead of finding tricky way of communicating how injured the create is, one can say: this create has 2HP out of 10HP total, and the player can easily translate it to: "This create is very hurt!". We can do it with numbers, we can do it with health bars. Pick your poison, it doesn't really matter.

BRILLIANT!

Same applies with resistances, and AC etc. And sure, perhaps ideally, devs could find ways to communicate those information in diegetic way (I am always a big fan of that), but the more stuff there is in the game, the harder it is to do. So an abstracted number and dice roll will do!

If, on the other hand, you just meant to criticise how tactically shallow DnD is, and that if players understand how system works there isn't much actual choice in how to proceed - you are right, it is not a very good system from gameplay perspecitve. But I never felt DnD was about being good gameplay wise - BG1&2 certainly weren't. It's about an ability to create adventures, and having systems which will give expression to various characters and creatures. If the game says: this character has high dex and will dodge your physical attacks, but will easily succumb to will attacks - yeah, that's not tactically interesting, but it's doing what it was designed to do. A DM might use numbers to spin a tale, but a cRPG is limited in that regard - so they will just show you enemy stats, and let visuals and your imagination to the storytelling. Not communicating that this enemy is agile, doesn't help in defining this enemy, which is worse, then simply showing you stats.

I am well aware how it called: arcade casual games. There’s no place for them in dnd cause they inflate many important things which were discussed already. Except maybe in a story mode.

lol. If that makes you feel better about yourself, sure.

Mechanical abstraction is one thing. I don't think anyone here is arguing about that.

Starting the game with perfect knowledge of things you haven't encountered before handed to you, on the other hand, doesn't make a lot of sense. Personally, I enjoy the learning process. I like when my character isn't static and can take in new information about their world; particularly in situations like this, where the information is useful but not at all necessary to have.

I am just making a guess here, but in TableTop DnD sessions does DM conceal enemy stats, resistances, their health? Does gameplay revolve around some kind of "Battleship" mechanic? Swinging blind and seeing if you hit or miss? Casting counter spells until we find out what buff the enemy has actually active?

Or do players have limited access to info to encourage communication between players? DM needs to communicates how the battle is progressing and he hints enemy weaknesses and strenghts when describing it, players act out their health state after calculating damage etc.?

Because if it's the latter, that means game needs to communicate those things. Showing stats and health is the simplest way to do it, but if we want to remove healthbar and chances to hit, for immersion sake, fine. But how do we communicate this information in a different way? BG1-2 answer was creature health status descriptions, which is essencially a health bar. How do we communicate not only how much we missed, but also by how much. Was out miss caused by a magical effect? As it was discussed before, all those things could be conveyed through in-game graphics, but question remains if it would be practical, or effective.

It varies by DM, but generally in tabletop games that I've played, the DM reveals nothing off the bat (apart from a very rough physical description that you could get at a glance). You don't know any numerical value for a creature. If you want to know more, you can take time to study someone (which usually involves some kind of skill check and probably a stealth check if you're trying to be discreet). This might give you some more information about what to expect e.g. notice unusual things about the armor that suggest that it is magical or something about how they move or something about this creature's skin or how it reacts to things in the environment; you get clues, but it is very unusual for it to be in the form of "This creature has a 17AC and resistance to poison damage."

Or, you can just try attacking and see how effective it is. If an enemy has resistance to the kind of damage that you're dealing, the DM might say "that didn't seem to be as effective as you expected". If your attack roll of 17 misses but your ally hits with a 20, you have a pretty good idea of your enemy's AC. If there's magic involved, you will usually see someone casting a spell or doing something to activate an item - most magical buffs aren't just running 24/7. Your DM might mention when an enemy starts to get low on health (usually around 50% and/or 25% of max HP remaining, though it varies a lot). I've had some battles where knowing the HP of a large enemy really mattered and the DM let you spend your action making a perception check to assess the health of a creature you are fighting.

There are plenty of ways to communicate this information in a video game - I just don't want it given away for free; it should be earned.

@grysqrl Thanks for the reply. I am still sceptic, as to benefit of hiding such info in a video game but will let you guys argue otherwise in peace.

Yeah, I don't think hiding AC or HP are good ideas either.

I am playing BG3 for the story and for combat. And not to read chat logs so I can figure out which target should I go for.

But to each their own I suppose.

That's why my suggestion is that it should be automatic but over time. I also do not want to do the tedious work of keep checking everything for every fight. Over time your characters will get to know them and show the numbers on screen.

If they hit with fire they learn if it is resistant to fire or not. They keep that knowledge with them forever so if the same type of another enemy shows up you just know what they are weak to. The circle not only should just show % but should also show if they are resistant to the damage you are doing after that. For example it should say %80 to hit, enemy resistant to fire. Below it.

In easier difficulties, they can just know anyways. No need to do anything.

I know this isn't extremely dnd but my reasoning for this is that from what I see in dnd games combat comes second and story, role play, info gathering comes first. In this game you are in combat QUITE a lot. Which I like because this is a strategy video game, making a QoL improvement like this will make combats smoother rather than "oh I should check this" or " let me look at the combat log 200th time because I forgot what goblins were resistant to"

I have no problem with either the % to hit or the knowledge of resistances / vulnerabilities / remaining hitpoints. You have a party of several knowledgeable people, it's conceivable to say that they pooled their collective knowledge on these things at camp one night. Failing that, I have no problem with the "because tadpole" explanation, because it actually does do a fair job of explaining this.

As far as % to hit goes, just pretend the DM is giving you a penalty to hit because of the terrain / obstacles. It works out exactly the same, you just aren't seeing the attack roll.

I mean, the party isn't really that knowledgeable when you consider their backstories. Lae'zel has probably been isolated in Gith-world; Shadowheart doesn't remember a bunch; Tav is blank; and Astarion has lived as a slave for the past hundred years. Gale and Wyll are probably the most knowledgeable, and to me Wyll seems like he exaggerates his skills and Gale seems utterly absorbed with magic so it's reasonable he doesn't know much about goblins/etc.

Plus, in the full game release you'll be able to create an entire party of custom characters with 8 intelligence, 8 wisdom, no skills in nature or arcana, and all with the hermit/acolyte/urchin background. They will know exactly as much (everything) about the enemies as a party full of super-intelligent, super-wise rangers/scholars. I'd like it if nature and arcana checks, and just the Intelligence stat in general, were more rewarded.

I suppose it's possible that the tadpole is giving us specific knowledge about all enemies we encounter, but if so I'd prefer that it is presented in game. I don't remember any evidence of it giving us knowledge other than through dreams and telepathy...

There is a system built into 5e to tell you exactly how knowledgeable someone is - you roll an intelligence check (of the type corresponding to the knowledge you are seeing if they possess) to see if they know a thing or not. This seems like a really natural way to reward players for investing in skills that don't necessarily get a ton of use otherwise. And it avoids the very weird notion of "well, my character is very knowledgeable; so if it's a thing that can be known, they definitely know it."

It seems to me that giving % to hit only dumbs down the game for folks who aren't concerned to improve. Different characters get different percentages with different types of attacks. It's up to the player to process that information and figure out what, if anything, to change in order to be most effective fighting that type of enemy in the future.