The ratio of failed rolls in this game is absolutely absurd. Tracking the number of failed rolls I have had, you are 75% guaranteed to fail a roll if it requires a 5 or lower. I mean for gods sake I failed a roll that required a 2... a stinking 2... and I roll a 1.

I've started choosing skills I have no proficiency in because I will succeed more often. The random number generator is not really that random or balanced. I roll 6 or lower 75% of the time and my skills don't seem to even make a difference.

That sounds perfectly right. If you require a 5 or lower (so, a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5), you have a 25% chance of success, and thus a 75% chance of failing.


That happens. About 5% of the time.


Skills only affect your roll target. Say, if the Difficulty Class (DC) of a skill check is 11, and you have proficiency in the skill (giving you a +2) and 14 in the associated Ability Score (giving you a +2), you have a total bonus of +4. Instead of computing 1d20+4 and checking whether this is greater than or equal to 11, the game rolls 1d20 and checks whether this is greater than or equal to 11 - 4 = 7. This 7 is the roll target. Skill doesn't affect it : the roll target has already factored in your skills.

Now, if you must roll 7 or more to succeed, you fail if you roll 6 or less, which you have a 30% of experiencing. If you have data to support the fact that you roll 6 or less 75% of the time, I'd be happy to see it.

Random number generators are not super difficult programs to write. So I think a serious amount of data would be required to test the random number generator they are using and reject the hypothesis that it's a good one.

Does this game have some kind of log file that I can track rolls? I'll be happy to start tracking and provide all the data you want.

Bottom right corner in game, there is an expandable combat log that shows most of the rolls that take place and the modifiers that are added/subtracted.

This is what I am talking about. I started my game over and made the exact same choices as before. I even put my stats in there for you to see. 80% failure rate on rolls doesn't make for a very enjoyable game. I will continue to keep track. The log in the the bottom right corner does not give rolls when talking to people. I also have critical miss and misses quite frequently.



Roll reason Skill Target Rolled
Investigating egg Investigation 9 2 Failed
Remove Brain Investigation 9 8 Failed
Remove Brain Dexterity 7 2 Failed
Pod on ship Arcana 6 7 Succeed
Dying Midflayer Persuasion 15 8 Failed
Free Le'zel Deception 10 5 Failed
Astarion - Roll Away Dexterity 7 4 Failed
Scared Boar Animal Handling 6 13 Succeed
Druid Camp fight Persuasion 15 5 Failed
Talk to Rat Animal Handling 6 2 Failed

Race: Wood Elf Class: Ranger
Str 12 Skills
Dex 17 Magebreaker
Con 13 Outlander
Int 8 Wasteland Wanderer: Fire
Wis 15
Cha 10

The die can be fickle sometimes friend. My party has had sessions that our DM designed as some easy combat for us, but turned into characters nearly dying because we couldn't roll... well to save our lives that night. On the flip side, sometimes in boss fights that were designed to push our limits with an intense chance for a TPK, we rolled multiple criticals and wacked it around like a rag doll.

Sometimes you just gotta pray to Tymora and hope for the best.

You're being clever but you know what he means. If the minimum you must roll is five or lower, he's saying it feels like the stats are 75% for it's 75% against.

I combat the RNG gawd with my "Finger of Reload".

I don't know the stats, but it does seem like there are some encounters the chances of failing the roll is built in, regardless of what you "need" to roll.

Don't get me wrong. I actually don't mind taking my losses with the die. There is a qualitative difference between this and PnP gaming. The DM can make the losing roll just as interesting (or even funny). Or even when you are playing with other human players, there is a way to have each other's back. There is a human flexibility that the game does not (cannot?) have. There is a way that the roll isn't the final say, even when it is.

I don't know if that made sense.

That said, I'll give Larian props that failing most throws isn't game altering. Or rather making the roll is more game enhancing. Now if he can make losing the roll also game enhancing.

Joe

As an actual Masters of Statistics, let's do this.

1. You must have 100 or more d20 rolls. Not the pass/fail value, the actual roll result. For practical purposes, the actual count needs to be a multiple of 20, so 100, 120, 140, etc. rolls.

2. You must pick them in an unbiased manner, i.e., you can't wait until you have a set of several low (or high) rolls in a row and then start keeping track. Or sample some, then ignore some, then start sampling again. Or run multiple tests and choose the results you want. There are LOTS of other ways to consciously or unconsciously bias the results, also, too many to go into here. Suffice it to say that if you are actually looking for a specific result, you are more likely to find it.

3. Go to https://www.icalcu.com/stat/chisqtest.html

4. The expected values for 100 rolls would be 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 in their format, or 5 of each number. Or all 6s for 120 rolls, all 7s for 140 rolls, etc.

5. The actual value would be the count of 1s, followed by the count of 2s, followed by the count of 3s, etc. So something like 4 8 3 5 6 3 5 6 10 4 4 2 0 6 5 8 6 4 4 7 would indicate 4 1s, 8 2s, 3 3s, etc.

6. Stack the rows as it shows in the site example. (Or if you want to use my sample data, just copy and paste from below.) Calculate.
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
4 8 3 5 6 3 5 6 10 4 4 2 0 6 5 8 6 4 4 7

7. The P-value is the likelihood that the actual rolls come from a completely unbiased die. By convention, if it is 0.05 or less, you have significant evidence that the rolls are biased.

8. For an interesting thought exercise, how do you think the numbers above come out? Write it down. Then do the calculation. Surprised at the result?
9. Stop griping until you do the actual test.

There are lots of other tests you can do looking for various things, but the number of ways to do things wrong far exceeds the number of ways to do things right.

I think everything is correct. What I think is wrong is the percentage associated with chances to hit based on the modifiers. I think its actually lower. Not sure what calculation there are using but its off a bit. 50% to hit, is not really 50% to hit but more like 25%.

To be fair, the rolls are not truly random - and your computer lacks the ability to generate genuinely random numbers. You need a quantum computer for that - they run in the millions of dollars right now and are incapable of handling a program of this size. Your rolls are based on the internal measure of time on your computer's clock - so it is your fault for rolling at the wrong millisecond.

Can you give an example to support this? If possible, linking a screenshot of the percentage, your modifiers, and the enemy AC?

It's pretty simple to convert a # needed on the d20 (even considering advantage/disadvantage) to a percentage. I'd be shocked if there was an error in that calculation; it's much more likely that Larian implemented some weighted/weird rng than this.

AFAIK, the only percentage displayed incorrectly is when the games says you have a 100% chance to hit. This is due to rounding 0.9975% to 100%, as opposed to an actual calculation error...

Funny things - dice.

Wife and I were fighting the Hyaena Gang.
We weren't exactly well prepared and got slaughtered.
Reload
Manage to turn the "leader". He/It helps, or tries to help. Get absolutely slaughtered by some bow wielding former friends. We die as well.
Reload
Manage to turn the "leader" He/It helps out. And he whacks them all. Because of constant shifting "who gets to fight next" wife and I get to attack ONCE in the whole fight.

And I have had plenty of rolls where I'm thinking - "hmm this is because we have to fail on acount of the story line".
On the other hand I have had SUCCESS in four or five successive rolls and after a Reload I failed all.

Definitely makes for an interesting game. I actually really love that I can't be certain to win a roll, and always have to make allowances for the possibility of failing.


------------------------------------------------------------------
If Superman is so smart, why does he proudly stick his chest out and deflect the flying bullits, but still duck when the criminal throws the empty gun at him??

Let's see how tables come out... Answer: I ~!@#$%^&*()_+ hate that web browsers automatically collapse multiple spaces to single ones. I had to use spacers per Baraz's suggestion.

Target Flat - Advantage - Disadvantage
1 ---- 100% - 100.00% --- 100.00%
2 ----- 95% -- 99.75% ---- 90.25%
3 ----- 90% -- 99.00% ---- 81.00%
4 ----- 85% -- 97.75% ---- 72.25%
5 ----- 80% -- 96.00% ---- 64.00%
6 ----- 75% -- 93.75% ---- 56.25%
7 ----- 70% -- 91.00% ---- 49.00%
8 ----- 65% -- 87.75% ---- 42.25%
9 ----- 60% -- 84.00% ---- 36.00%
10 ---- 55% -- 79.75% ---- 30.25%
11 ---- 50% -- 75.00% ---- 25.00%
12 ---- 45% -- 69.75% ---- 20.25%
13 ---- 40% -- 64.00% ---- 16.00%
14 ---- 35% -- 57.75% ---- 12.25%
15 ---- 30% -- 51.00% ----- 9.00%
16 ---- 25% -- 43.75% ----- 6.25%
17 ---- 20% -- 36.00% ----- 4.00%
18 ---- 15% -- 27.75% ----- 2.25%
19 ---- 10% -- 19.00% ----- 1.00%
20 ----- 5% --- 9.75% ----- 0.25%

How to use this? Example: Your enemy has a 12 AC. You have +4 to hit. That means you need to roll an 8 (=12-4) to hit. Find the '8' in the first column.
---Without advantage or disadvantage (flat), you hit 65.0% of the time.
---With advantage, you hit 87.75% of the time.
---With disadvantage, you hit 42.25% of the time.

For targetted spells (roll to hit, but no save allowed), it works exactly the same, just substitute your spell +to hit.

Example for spells with a save: You have a 13 spell save DC. The spell saves with DEX and your opponent's DEX is 15, which means +2 to save. They have to roll an 11 (=13-2) to save. Find the '11' in the first column.
---Without advantage or disadvantage (flat), they save 50% of the time.
---With THEIR advantage, they save 75% of the time.
---With THEIR disadvantage, they save 25% of the time.
Reverse the last two percentages if you are counting YOUR advantage, so in this case it would be 25% save with your advantage and 75% save with your disadvantage.

The plusses and spell save DC are available on your full-screen character sheet. The enemy's AC and stats are available by examining them (right-click).

The display rounds that to the nearest percent, so back-calculations are a bit more tricky.

- You could add separators like __ -- ||
- The % in the first column all end with .00 which you can remove to simplify the view.

Target Flat Advantage Disadvantage
1 ----- 100 % | 100.00 % | 100.00 %

It's luck.

Sometimes I wasn't able to beat easy mobs, next time I was able to get rid of phase spiders and matriach spidy.

Sometimes I fail persuasion rolls with target 5 or less (I recall lossing to a target 2 ), sometimes I win persuasion rolls against the unthinkable (I recall a winning roll against a 19).

I get the frustration (specialy when in a fight bad luck means a lot of miss or 1 damage point) but I think is just bad luck [I'm a master to natural 1s rolls. I remember my first tabletop play with Vampires The Masquerade, my first scene was meant tobe be: awake, explore your lair start exploring the neirghbourhood, it ended with the lair burned down, the master of my vampire pissed of, ambulances and firetrucks at the door and my character running from the police and the mob. All the result of an epic trail of 6 consecutives natural 1s ]

The one roll issue I have is the illithid wisdom ones that require you get to 1. That's a failure by the DnD rules. I got a 1 on one of those and passed - why bother rolling at all if there is no chance of failure? I'm not going to get more content if I roll a 20 which is the only reason a DM might try something like that.

Well, it's not forever, you'll have to pay for it with your brain. >D If you use a worm, you already conditionally get more content, but pay for it.

@VeronicaTash

To-hits of 1 are automatic failures; skill rolls of 1 are not. That was clarified by WotC. Same for automatic successes: to-hits of 20 hit; skill rolls of 20 do not work if the DC is greater than 20.

My patch 3 campaign now brought me back to the blighted village well and the ettercap + phase spider battle.
Party was completely wiped out two times in a row now, by not being able to hit anything, except for Gale's magic missiles.
I'll retry a third time another time maybe. Pffffff...... (I already won this fight in earlier games, it's really rotten rolls here)
You can't really do much to prepare for this battle, the spiders are always in the advantage at the beginning.
And then continually missing with hit-probs between 56% and 75% is quite frustrating. A real-life DM would probably find some way to save the campaign.

It is technically possible to give a little more control to players around RNG, for example if the player see they would need to roll too high to hit the enemy, they would be able to choose to aim their strike a little longer (which would mean some kind of penalty to speed or defense or damage) so the strike has more chance to hit. This can matter a lot if the enemy only has a few hit points but you are not able to hit it. Though in the end in dnd the fight still depends on luck.
In a game i play a lot called Battle Brothers there are multiple ways of attacking with a weapon and usually the standard of these is for an easier hit (but less damage/effect), in case you dont have enough attack you can choose that attack. Also the game adds more bonuses for positioning (beyond high ground) for flanking enemies which is nice as once you realize it you can increase your chances greatly.
Some defensive options like spend our whole turn to defend ourselves would be also nice

Got to the fight between Druid's and the Goblin camp army with Minthara.
Looks like it will take a day or 5 to get through it like the gnoll fight. Trying till the stars are in the right positions, so the random generator generates something higher than 1.
My character is a cleric (my favourite class). I"ve also got Shadowheart. We're level 4.
All of the guiding bolts missed. The necormantic spell used against the spiders, they all missed.
The % hitchance shown must surely be a promille chance actually.

The clock step on modern computers is measured in nanoseconds.

IMy main campaing in the underdark got a bit stuck, so I thought that I'd create a new class (ranger) and redo some fun stuff.
Knowing now, that there is no real great rush to get to the helm, I thought I'd put the dying thralls on the ship out of their misery.
So I hit on the dying student and missed him twice !

I wanted to investigate and see if there were any issues with the RNG.
So I recorded all of my player combat rolls on a new playthrough. I had a hunch advantage/disadvantage may be skewing the distribution, so I notated each advantage and disadvantage roll. During the playthrough I tried to get as many normal attack rolls as possible. Here are the findings.

For all rolls recorded |Frequency| column; a roll of 17 was further than two standard deviations from the average. The sample from my playthrough looked like rolls may be biased towards the player.

• N=176
• St.dev 3.3
• Average 8.8

Note: if one of the 17s had been any other outcome this sample would have been completely normal.

After stratifying for normal rolls (Frequency Adv/Dis Removed); all outcomes were normal.

• N=117
• St.dev 2.6
• Average 5.85

Advantage and disadvantage are so common in Patch 3.0 that d20 rolls can be skewed for or against the player. Overall, I don't think the RNG is flawed.

Data
Roll_|Frequency|_(Frequency Adv/Dis removed)
01---------|05|----------(03)
02---------|08|----------(07)
03---------|10|----------(05)
04---------|09|----------(06)
05---------|14|----------(11)
06---------|04|----------(03)
07---------|05|----------(03)
08---------|06|----------(05)
09---------|06|----------(04)
10---------|14|----------(10)
11---------|12|----------(07)
12---------|07|----------(03)
13---------|09|----------(07)
14---------|10|----------(06)
15---------|06|----------(04)
16---------|08|----------(05)
17---------|16|----------(11)
18---------|11|----------(08)
19---------|07|----------(03)
20---------|09|----------(06)

EDIT: While I am saying the ratio of rolls isn't flawed. There is still a possible case to be made that pseudo-RNG might be better. On the Nautiloid I started out with a long streak of 5s, 10s, and 17s. A 5 will usually hit on the Nautiloid, so I wasn't bothered. That was a streaky start to the game and I can understand that if a player streaked with 2 instead, that could be an annoying experience.

Pseudo RNG that avoids long streaks may be better for the game. Each session, the player only experiences an hour to a four hour window of the game, which will always be a small sample size.

Nooo, not for a game based on D&D and dice rolls, not for combat. Streaks of (un)luck are part of the tabletop experience as well... And the playing window is typically the same, though the amount of rolls very much depends on the whole session and its DM.

For dialogues, however, I would remove ALL random elements and use expected value instead, those dice rolls are just dumb.

xD overall I'm in the camp that the solution is that misses shouldn't just be represented by "miss".

And disadvantage from attacking an enemy one foot elevation higher is silly.

Either you didn't play DND, or you are a loser and put up with it (no toxicity). Yes, dropping unsuccessful dice rolls is something natural for board games, but not when FAILURE occurs in 70% of situations from all team, be it combat or dialogue. According to this logic, modifiers do not need to be increased, but simply hope for luck

lol

What's so funny? I'm serious, if someone fails in 80% of cases in dnd, then he is a loser, provided that he maxed his modifiers for success and this shit did not help

After 4 months of gameplay, my expectations are:

65% hit chance : miss
80% hit chance : you get a hit about once in 2 attacks.
90+% hit chance : Yep, good chance to hit.

Can I guess you're unfamiliar with DnD? You have a 0 modifier in CHA and -1 in INT, +2 WIS +3 DEX.

From your 10 records, you passed 2, failed 8.

Of your passes, one was at -1 but on a very easy check. The other was at +2 also on an easy check.

Of your fails, 2 were very unlucky DEX fails, 1 an unlucky WIS fail. The other 5 were in categories you either had no bonus, or a penalty, and 2 of them were very hard checks.

So overall you had a mildly unlucky run, but most fails were in checks you had no real advantage in, and 2 were rolls you could not reasonably expect to make with your skillset.

That said there is currently no difficulty setting for the game, and I'd be amazed if it doesn't influence Skill Checks when it comes. Also they just announced optional dice weighting which should have kicked in by the time you rolled your third 2.

Lastly, circling back to my original question about DnD experience, I only mention it because if you aren't familiar with it, the process behind checks explained above would possibly be lost on you when you first started.

EA doesn't have a great deal in the way of tutorials, but I'm convinced that is because features aren't locked down yet. Tutorials are generally the LAST thing you want to do in order to avoid wasting dev time explaining something that might be changed or removed down the line.

Have you tried to control your roll by stopping it early? Or do you just let it roll till the end? I have found when I stop the roll, I get way better outcomes. It takes some practice, but once you get the timing down, I pretty much win the majority of my rolls.

yes but only on an even number, on odd numbers you should let it roll and you're more likely to get a better result

My new patch 4 game brought me to the blighted village. I entered peacefully and then decided to attack the roofguards treacherously.
Party was blessed, Lae'zel started the conflict with a surprise pushing melee attack on one of the roof guards. Percentage success was indicated as 96%
She rolled a 3 and missed. (She had 3+3+2 bonus, so she missed with 11. I think she needed 12. )
But if she needed to roll a 4 in 20, then the percentage of success shown should be only 85% right ?

I always wondered why Shadowheart almost always missess her guiding bolt with 65+% hit chance, but if the percentage shown is 10% too high , yea well....

The percentage shown is correct*. You must have had advantage.
Probability to roll a 4+ with a single d20: 85%
Probability to roll a 4+ with Advantage: 1-(3/20)^2=98%

*Guidance and Bless are messed up atm. Currently, these roll twice, once before the roll (shown in the UI for % hit chances) and once for the roll (actually used to determine if you hit/succeed). Your first Bless roll must have been a 1, making it so you needed to roll a 5+ with Advantage.
Probability to roll a 5+ with Advantage: 1-(4/20)^2 = 96%

*Oh, also there's currently a bug where it matters where you select an enemy. If you hover over their foot, the UI might say that you have Advantage. However, when the attack is made, the game targets their torso which is higher, and thus you don't actually get height advantage.

I hate the RNG in this game. 30 years of tabletop gaming, some D&D and some Challenger 2000 (both D20 based), and I can't think of anytime I rolled so many dam ones!

If I see a 70% pop up when I mouse over, I know I'm highly likely to miss, especially with Shadowheart - she seems cursed.

5 Crit Misses in a row with Patch 3 (team based not solo), 3 in a row with Patch 4 not uncommon. Missing 88% chances twice in a row with Action Surge is also a thing for my runs.

I had Astarion disable traps in the Underdark Zhent area, the target for the floor traps was 2. I rolled 2,2,3. OK I passed, but that was a rather crap run. Then the chest was a 7, I rolled 3 again - boom. It seems, for me, to get stuck on runs low rolls mostly. The up side being the enemy miss and crit miss way more than they should. Astarion burning through lockpicks is also common as is using up multiple re-rolls in checks against Khaga with a low target (sub 10).

I'm not using cheat dice, I turned them off with playthrough 3 when I found out they were on automatically. They worked for Shadowheart, meaning she actually hit more often. But because she used up all the bonuses, everyone else was crap. Also It was very common for Crit Misses, but extremely rare for Crit Hits with cheat dice active.

On the other side of the coin I can count one instance of a good run - 3 crits in a row for Andarin and his crew in the Grove fight. I've also had Gale max out Magic Missile twice - same run.

I recently played one of my Neverwinter Nights 1 (D&D 3.5) saves just to compare the RNG. A Paladin, level 3, soloing the Prison District in Act 1. She died rapidly, so I can't just rage at Larion for having a poor RNG.

I've learnt to just accept the crappness of the RNG and just utilise every advantage my human brain gives me to speed up and survive the fight. Plus the AI suffers just as badly from it, missing many sitters to my relief. Except Gith, Duergar and that dam Bullette.