Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Save Scumming

I think this is kind of a non-issue as the previous games included Honor Mode and this one will most likely include it too.

I think save scumming is antithetical to gaming and role playing but to each their own and I wouldn't endorse anything past the inclusion of honor mode.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you counter your closing argument in this post. Your given example is trying to convince the NPC that she should just let the thief go. The thief, meanwhile, didn't just nab a few apples, or a few coins, but an idol to the temple's deity. Why shouldn't this be a really hard check? One side thinks that it's harsh, and remember, at this point, the goal is to just lock the thief up, which the other side feels is justifiable. The thief panics, and that results in what happens if you fail the roll. As it stands, I'm 50/50 on it, I've passed it once, and failed it once. The point of the roll, however, is to get the NPC to go against what they think is the right thing to do. Why should this be easy? It's not even that I'm a fan of the outcome of failure, it's just that I do understand what I'm trying to do when I decide to roll that die. A more lenient DM may let that conversation play out for an hour, but pacing is a thing in video games, and if we want every conversation to play out 100% in our favor every time, why not just do it on the first line of dialog, and be done with it?

This should be a hard check, because we're trying to assert our will on the NPC. We did, in fact, make a choice, we chose to interject and try to assert our will on the outcome. Things like this are what add replay-ability to games. "my next character will get this" sort of scenarios, and I don't take issue with that. I'm looking to spend thousands of hours in this game, after release. Things like this will make that easier to do, so I hope there are a lot of things like this going on as the game progresses.

The girl's actions are outside the control of the players. This should be hard, yes. But when you reduce things to a single die roll, that's not hard, that's arbitrary. You're replacing actual difficulty with random chance. This should be a dialogue tree puzzle, something you have to think through and consider. The die rolls should open up paths to make things easier, but they should not determine success or failure in and of itself. Not on such a plot point.

By saying, well, this NPC did such and such and etc etc, so you have to make this one die roll that might as well be a coin flip both robs players of a chance to feel like THEY accomplished a thing and punishes them for what is essentially the GM's actions. Both are things that breed resentment and frustration.

That conversation oozes potential to be interesting and clever, but it is instead reduced to a single die roll.

By comparison, the single die roll of the meeting with the Githyanki as to whether you get Lae'zel to play along with the dragonrider or not is fine. That IS a detail in the story, it is not a crossroads. Regardless of the results of that roll, the dragonrider is marked as Lae'zel's enemy and you don't get closer on your quest to deal with the tadpole. The only difference is whether or not he leaves aware of Lae'zel's annoyance with him or not. By and large story trajectory has not changed.

Now, if this encounter were prefaced by an encounter with Arabella where you can talk to her and your dialogue options with her result in her trying to do this then suddenly it IS a result of player choices and that one die roll is a last ditch chance to recover from their own mistakes.

But this feels like "The GM feels like you should randomly roll a die."

It's even worse that this is a quest that is solved essentially by walking to a place and rolling a single. No challenge. No difficulty. No thought. No puzzle to navigate. Just a die roll.

I hate to say this, but it would have been a better decision just to have no quest and simply have the girl die as an establishing fact rather than do this half-assed encounter. (EDIT: I don't want this to be their answer...I want them to expand on this encounter, not eliminate it.)

And yes, eventually, such a dialogue puzzle would have guides published somewhere, but that is the same for any puzzle in any game.

A random die roll is not a substitute for making things difficult. A high difficulty single roll can be a good end-cap to a "you made a mistake, this is your last chance" or "you've worked hard to open a slim opportunity at a nearly impossible task."

It a terrible thing to do for "This is the first influence of any kind you've had on this matter have a die roll and that'll be the last influence on the subject at all. Oh did I say you'd have influence? I lied, the die will have all the influence.""

Make me work my way up to that die roll. If it were prefaced by several different dialogue choices with that die roll maybe being at the cap of a number of badly chosen arguments and be that last ditch effort to save the girl. Make the better chosen arguments lead to just saving the girl and the middling arguments lead to a moderately easy roll. Then I'll be happy.

Allow for other skill options, maybe an Acrobatics roll to snatch the snake before it strikes. Maybe Athletics to snap the girl up and get bitten yourself, requiring you to waste resources of some kind on curing the poison.

These will all improve the encounter.

Any persuasion or intimidation check is a die roll, and should be. No matter how you're going about it. In the specific example, again, we're trying to subvert what she believes is the correct course of action. Since her intention was not to kill the thief, initially, we do have the potential to make it worse, and we should have that potential. I get people will feel bad about the outcome, I certainly did, but we made a decision to interject ourselves into their internal struggle, and I'm not even sure that's the right word, the better concept is we're interjecting ourselves, and our opinions, into something that is none of our business. Do we want to save the child? I certainly did, and I did, once out of two tries, so far, but it shouldn't be something where we spend a half hour in a dialog tree trying to find a way to manipulate the druid into changing their mind. How many hours of the dialog we're having now would it take to change your mind about what happens with this scenario? Will we both be holding the same position in a week? I would be, because I understand that I likely will not be able to change your mind, and I know it's possible that I won't change the druid's mind either. Not every dialog puzzle should be solvable by just cycling through choices until they relent, and, in fact, w/out a skill check to persuade them one way or another, why should we be able to convince her to not lock up someone that stole a holy relic from the temple?

In a PnP situation, where the dialog isn't scripted, a DM can roll a die check on every point raised by the players. In this instance, that's both impractical, and covered, by giving the player a chance to use dialog skills to manipulate the druid to our desired outcome. It could have just as easily had no way for us to influence it, given the nature of the druid in question. I don't know what happens if we just ignore that, and hammer her about needing a healer, and then leaving the dialog, and I'm not even sure it's possible, but if it is, is there another outcome? Could it be that, by sticking our nose where it doesn't belong, and failing that check, we are responsible for a death that may not have happened under any other circumstance? What happens if we say nothing, I seem to recall that that's an option? "You roll the dice and you take your chances" is an expression I've heard a lot. It's associated with gambling, I believe, but the sentiment remains the same.

Save scumming is really useful, what with the crashes and all. At best add some sort of ironman man mode for those who want it. Others should not be forced to use it.

I've been discussing this in other topics already, but my feelings are pretty much summed up by the quote.

It could be handled multiple ways. It could be

1) an initial dice roll, opening up more dialogue options on success

2) a branching dialogue where you select maybe 3-5 lines, and in the end you roll with a target that is determined on your dialogue choices. The target could be raised, lowered or stay the same, depending on your choices.

3) as it is today (see next point)

4) along with any of the above options you could get additional dialogue options, or additions to the skill check based on the what information you uncovered. A very relevant point in this case could be to prevent the Tiefling refugees to go into conflict with the druids - this would require a slightly different narrative than we have in game today, but it would definitely be worth considering for someone in Kargha's position.

Savescumming is a "you" not a "me" problem though. It's one of those issues where it comes down to the player.

1. Some people don't do it, at all.
2. Some people do it, and like that they can
3. Some players do it if they misclicked, or got an unexpected outcome.
4. Some players do it, and hate that they can do it.

I'm sure there are more scenarios, but in most cases it's a minority issue, that I don't think should be addressed by making it harder to do, as it hurts more players than it helps.

Besides: they should be more lenient with inspiration points. It's a cool mechanic, but one you got once, and probably used on a meaningless roll. If we had more of them then more people would maybe not want to save scum?