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#746891 25/12/20 07:59 PM
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I have 18 int but I can't tell what kind of explosive mushroom I'm looking at until a die decides I don't have amnesia. How does that work?

How about just tying these checks to character traits like WIZARD/HERBALIST/SCHOLAR or whatever?

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Because having 18 intelligence doesn't make you a walking encyclopedia. Many people with 20 Int walk around in real life and don't know certain things or even forget the names of people they're talking to.

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I would just say failed rolls are stupid. If I failed it "behind the screens" then don't tell me it in front of the screen, because you know...I failed to noticed it. Just show me when I succeeded the roll.

Or they could try this crazy idea. Just prompt when there's an interactive world roll, and pop up what kind of roll it will be. Either religion, nature, intelligence etc. When the controlled character selects to interact. All members in the group roll for it. You know like a "Hey guys I found something, let's all take a look, and see who can figure it out." Since we know it's like a nature roll, and noone in the party is good at nature. It would prompt the exchanging in the party to bring a nature tagged character to take a look for a better roll chance. Idk just a work around thought

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If they utilised passive checks more (actual passive checks, not what Larian are calling passive checks, which are, in actual fact, just active checks that they roll for you), then they could set the DC to knowing about those mushrooms to 14, and most scholars would be certain to know the basics automatically. If the DC were 16, then intelligent characters with proficiency in nature would meet it with their passive and know, while everyone else would have to roll.

Larian seem hesitant to use the actual 5e systems that were put in place though.

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Failing a knowledge check doesn't mean your character forgot something. It means they never knew that bit of trivia in the first place. Knowledge checks are mostly a way for players to establish what their characters know without tempting them to metagame or argue with the DM that their gnome wizard from Baldur's Gate should TOTALLY know what that strange mushroom from the Underdark is and what it does because they absolutely read about it in a book off-screen.

It is an abstraction designed so the player doesn't need to sit down and decide every single book the character has ever read before the game starts to know what their character does and does not know.

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I hear all your arguments about what real life is like, and what real D&D is like and I have to be honest, I don't care.

It's weird, and it's not fun. I'm looking at a bright red glowing mushroom, in the underdark, with the name TORCHSTALK. What could it be?


You can add religion rolls and all the other ones to the pile too. No more goofy dice rolls, please. There's too much already.

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Originally Posted by YT-Yangbang
I would just say failed rolls are stupid. If I failed it "behind the screens" then don't tell me it in front of the screen, because you know...I failed to noticed it. Just show me when I succeeded the roll.

Or they could try this crazy idea. Just prompt when there's an interactive world roll, and pop up what kind of roll it will be. Either religion, nature, intelligence etc. When the controlled character selects to interact. All members in the group roll for it. You know like a "Hey guys I found something, let's all take a look, and see who can figure it out." Since we know it's like a nature roll, and noone in the party is good at nature. It would prompt the exchanging in the party to bring a nature tagged character to take a look for a better roll chance. Idk just a work around thought
Good suggestion. I think that follows in the spirit of party game play really well.

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Originally Posted by adkfina
I hear all your arguments about what real life is like, and what real D&D is like and I have to be honest, I don't care.

It's weird, and it's not fun. I'm looking at a bright red glowing mushroom, in the underdark, with the name TORCHSTALK. What could it be?


You can add religion rolls and all the other ones to the pile too. No more goofy dice rolls, please. There's too much already.

And this is how people die from eating the wrong mushroom, in real life.

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Isnt the point of video games to escape real life
Originally Posted by VeronicaTash
Because having 18 intelligence doesn't make you a walking encyclopedia. Many people with 20 Int walk around in real life and don't know certain things or even forget the names of people they're talking to.

Uh, yes it SHOULD.
This is a game not real life.

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Bladder check!


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Just because someone has an 18 or 20 intelligence in this game doesn't mean they should know everything. Like the mushroom in the Underdark if they've never seen it before or never heard of it they shouldn't know a lot or anything about it.

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Originally Posted by Veilburner
Just because someone has an 18 or 20 intelligence in this game doesn't mean they should know everything. Like the mushroom in the Underdark if they've never seen it before or never heard of it they shouldn't know a lot or anything about it.

So a dice rolling over rolling out of nowhere makes more sense? Go back and read the literal lower half of what I said

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Originally Posted by adkfina
So a dice rolling over rolling out of nowhere makes more sense? Go back and read the literal lower half of what I said

They should fix that indeed. You shouldn't know that is called torchstalk - you should know it as "strange glowing mushroom" until you pass your nature roll.

Rolling dice makes sense. It was clearer why that made sense in 3.5e than it is in 5e, but the principle is the same. Someone who studies a little about nature - or perhaps underdark lore alternatively - would know a little bit. Someone who spends 6 ranks in it studied 6 times as much and is going to know about more obscure things than the person who only studied one. You lose a bit when it is only a proficiency with a standard growth in the size of those bonuses, but that would be for someone who actually studied nature. You can have someone with a degree in nature studies who doesn't know everything - even a PhD would specialize in one subset of nature and wouldn't know everything about nature - but your average Joe might have heard about torchstalk in a tavern one time while that PhD focusing his studies on herbivore foraging never heard of it. The PhD is more likely to have heard about it than our average Joe, but that isn't guaranteed. You get a better dice roll with proficiency in the subject than you do without one - and it used to be that you had a better dice roll with every rank you invested in the subject. You may think that is torchstalk - it doesn't mean you're right from a roleplaying viewpoint (though it is hardcoded in the game as torchstalk). There is a reason that pyrite is known as fool's gold - those with low ranks in mineralology IRL saw this shiny golden hard thing and thought it was gold - they misidentified it.

Ideally, it should have multiple mushrooms that you can go through and not tell you if you failed a roll and merely thought something was torchstalk when it wasn't - but there's always room for improvement.

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How about just tying these checks to character traits like WIZARD/HERBALIST/SCHOLAR or whatever?

The problem there is that you'd be declaring that no-one who doesn't have those specific tags is allowed to know at all. That's far more unfair and unrealistic than being in a situation of maybe knowing, or maybe not having covered that particular detail in your studies.

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It's weird, and it's not fun. I'm looking at a bright red glowing mushroom, in the underdark, with the name TORCHSTALK. What could it be?

It could be any number of things. Did you know, in advance, the very first time you saw one, what it would do? No, you didn't. You might, possibly, have made a guess, and your guess might even have been right, but you most definitely did not know.

How, pray tell, if your character has never heard of or seen it before, do they even know it's called a Torchstalk? You know it is, because you can read the nameplate. Those nameplates don't actually exist. Your character can't see them, or read the nifty tooltip that pops up for you when you highlight them with your mouse.

Even if they did; even if your character knows the name of the plant, perhaps it is named such because it's the best source of easy and safe bio-luminescence in the local underdark region, and safe to use as torches? Perhaps it's called such because when it's exposed to flame it burns continuously for an exceptionally long time? It's not a given what it does, and it's not obvious without experimentation... to work out whether or not your character knows something about it in advance, and can recall that specific information right now, without needing to experiment, we make a check.

Having high intelligence represents academic learning, and ability to recall order and collate information in your mind. There are many things you might know... you as a player don't want to have the task of pains-takingly sitting down to catalogue your character's entire sum of knowledge. Your character might know things that you, the player don't, because they actually live in this fictional world and you don't. Equally, just because you do know something about that world doesn't automatically mean your character knows it too. there's also the possibility that they do know something but can't bring the specifics to mind right now when pressed to - it happens. It happens less often to someone with high intelligence, who is by defintion better are retaining and recalling information.

If you don't want to make checks for these things, then the natural method in 5e is to rely entirely on passive checks - these are fixed values that require no die roll, that are checked against the DC of the task or activity. They're functionally equivalent to taking 10 on the die. Larian doesn't use passive checks in this game. They Call some things passive checks, but they aren't. They're just active checks that the game makes for you without prompting.

In non-dangerous situations, where you have time or are not pressed, or there is no immediate pressure, you should never be treated as achieving below your passive - whether it's for knowledge checks, perception checks or anything else. For simple (pass/fail) DC checks, players who don't meet it with their passive but still might be in a situation to pass it might be offered the opportunity to make an active check, or they might simply fail, but characters who meet it with their passive should generally not be obliged to roll in those circumstances.

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Originally Posted by SaurianDruid
Failing a knowledge check doesn't mean your character forgot something. It means they never knew that bit of trivia in the first place. Knowledge checks are mostly a way for players to establish what their characters know without tempting them to metagame or argue with the DM that their gnome wizard from Baldur's Gate should TOTALLY know what that strange mushroom from the Underdark is and what it does because they absolutely read about it in a book off-screen.

It is an abstraction designed so the player doesn't need to sit down and decide every single book the character has ever read before the game starts to know what their character does and does not know.

As someone familiar with skill checks in D&D, this is pretty obvious but I can see how someone with minimal tabletop experience would think it is strange.

But people should know in 5E which BG3 is supposed to be based upon, has skill checks like this all the time.

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Stats and proficiencies should simply have more of an impact on what a character can and can't do. I guess it comes down to liking this random adventure system or not, but it's not really a matter of opinion that a character with a maxed out stat and a maxed out proficiency more often than not has a 50% chance of failing rolls of their given skill.

If i effectively gimped my character by giving them 18 int and however much nature just to fail every other one of the few nature checks that are there in the game i'd be annoyed too.

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I agree with many things said above.
I have studied physics ( I guess that means I am intelligent) but I do not know much about underground fungi. Somebody with a PhD in biology is very intelligent and profient with nature skill, but even this guy might not know this when his PhD thesis was about lions in the desert.

Having a high Stat value and Profiency increases your chances of success but there is no guarantee. Skills represent the abilities and knowledge of your char to avoid meta gaming, such as the player reading the monster manual.


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they probably wouldnt all look identical, and you can GUESS (as the player) what it is

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I've forgotten a lot of the stuff that is related to my master degree, even while working in the that field, since it wasn't my focus and not connected to my day-2-day work. I think skill checks are a much more realistic abstraction than automatically connecting knowledge to an attribute like intelligence.

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I really get it. You all agree that there should uncertainty, and with that added, the game is a more realistic abstraction of real life situations

I have a two issues with that:

1. Adding a dice roll to achieve that still makes no sense. It's a weird gimmick that abstracts nothing about real life

2. I'm playing a character in a video game. I don't care about real life to begin with

Excessive dice rolls are annoying. *I* would rather have a fixed trait instead of dice rolls. I'm literally having a conversion with an obese, telepathic mushroom. I'm good on the realism part.

In conclusion,

Originally Posted by Innateagle
Stats and proficiencies should simply have more of an impact on what a character can and can't do. I guess it comes down to liking this random adventure system or not, but it's not really a matter of opinion that a character with a maxed out stat and a maxed out proficiency more often than not has a 50% chance of failing rolls of their given skill.

If i effectively gimped my character by giving them 18 int and however much nature just to fail every other one of the few nature checks that are there in the game i'd be annoyed too.

Last edited by adkfina; 27/12/20 12:18 PM.
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