Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Failing dialogue rolls is fun

Could people be a bit more specific on why this is fun?
10 hours in and 90% of the time this leads to COMBAT. SO I am not sure what people are talking about all these <possibilities> that makes failure GOOD. Maybe I haven't played enough. Are there any major branching story-lines due to this??

My new run has been so stacked against me in the rolls! OMG my rolls have been so bad.

On the last patch my rolls never were this bad continuously, is that just bad RNGesus or did Larian tweak the numbers?

I agree with the fact that it isn't necessarily so fun. It needs to be balanced.

Yesterday, I wanted to save the child. I had an inspiration point and my success chance was 16+, 25%. I reloaded the game 12 times... So yeah, my 23rd attempt was a success on a 25% chance. So I don't know if some players got luckier since the latest patch, but definitely not me.

Here's my question to you. Why did you reload that many times? You get nothing extra for saving her. It only slightly changes the grove interactions, Kagha is still a bitch. Is it just because you just had to win there?

Here's my point. Most of these dialogue choices are flavor only. Some might lead you to getting some minor reward if you succeed and some may lead to unprepared combat if you fail but so what? If you're playing table top D&D and your DM tells you to roll for something and says you failed, do you make them let you have a re-do 23 times? No, nobody would do that so why do you want/expect to do it in this game?

I just think people make way too much of this issue. For me personally, it helps to keep the game fresh and adds replayability factor if things don't happen exactly like they did the previous 10 times I ran through the game. If I fail a dice roll, I just find another way or I write off an opportunity lost. It's not a big deal folks.

It's not fun for the most. There is one instance in the game in which it is, and another with a lot of potential to be one, but this specific story bit is held back by bad writing

No, I am just testing different outcomes and different builds. I am on my 4th playthough and I wanted to check more dialogue options. Just like when you don't recruit Shadowheart and she eventually comes to your camp by herself sort of things.

I think it's important to distinguish between failing a roll requiring a change of tactic, versus it causing a total failure of a mission.

Like, if I fail a persuade check, and go into combat, that's not a big deal. But when I fail to save the child in the Druid encampment - or the dude in the burning building - I savescum over and over again.

While it's real to life, it's just bad game design to allow a roll on something which invariably causes a critical mission failure with no ability for the player to consider alternate paths. Games are supposed to be enjoyable and give you a sense of agency - not make life feel futile and you feel like a piece of crap for being completely irrelevant.

But there are some rolls you fail which are really dramatic. For instance, in my previous example, if you fail the roll with shadowheart, you end up killing her. Really bad on a story arc stand point. It's not like with Lae'zel where you just decide if you side with her or against her.

The only DC you can fail that lead to combat are DCs you take to avoid combat or take to ask people to do something that should piss them off. The combat on failure is the expect result.

For the others, depends what the situation is. The "fun" was mostly to say that failures didn't lead to nothing happening or game over. It wasn't about the failures looking like another color of success.



People are used to play interactive movies adventure games labelled as RPGs where each dialogue options is a deterministic option and chance isn't a factor. "You want to avoid combat, press A. You want to do combat, press B." They think role-playing is building a narrative based on outcomes and they want to make that "perfect" playthrougth.

BG3 doesn't allow them to do that unless they cheat or savecums the DCs.

It's not fun. Beings that the cost of failing, is more times than not you wiping.

The general rule if you want to discourage compulsive save scumming is that a failure should open a scenario that is as interesting as a success, if not as positive.

The game so far is pretty hit and miss in this sense. I can think of barely a couple of episodes where failing made things more interesting rather than just denying the player an option (for instance when dealing with Priestess Guts).

That said, Osprey39 has a point there: there's very often a lot less at stake that people are suggesting.
Saving the child from the snake changes virtually nothing but a minor "flavor" interaction and the difficulty of the roll itself should suggest people that the "bad" outcome is supposed to be the default scenario, with the rare success being the "fringe outcome".


Also, let's not forget that at least in the current build, at times "winning a roll and avoiding combat entirely" is the option that pays way less exp and items, compared to the alternative.

The Gith patrol fight wipes my party at level 4 unless I cheese it or go there when I have done everything else in EA, so I reroll to get the deception check right to make them go away. Sometimes that rerolling takes a dozen tries.

Can't wait for a mod that removes rolls or sets them 100%, because the loading screen takes very long time, even on top systems.

I don't know what "table top D&D" means, never played such a thing, but doesn't sound fun at all to me, if this is how those work.
Life is bad enough as it is, don't need it simulated in games. Don't need that hell to follow me in games as well.

Could be fun to someone who enjoys being beaten (it's a thing), "keeps the game fresh" or whatever, but I don't want replayabilty this way: just feels a ruined playthrough, or game over. There are no choices, just randoms, mostly.

If I want a different playthrough, then I would accept a dice roll only when I agree with both or many alternatives. And not even then, because the dice would just mix up "my choices", as in would be all just random. And role-playing the random, with minimal input, reminds me too much about life & death, about what isn't fun.

I had so much fun so far, though lots and lots of loading screens... just pointless load on my system, that can be solved with a mod or custom options. Otherwise I wouldn't play this thing. So much hate random and loot boxes, unexpected surprises and bad things that just keep happening all the time. Would be easier enjoying life & this game, as it is, would mean less loading screens. But if I would enjoy that, wouldn't need to play games, could play life itself.

Not sure what you're saying here. But in general, remember that good drama does not equal good gameplay. Like, a game can totally railroad you into a very dramatic plot moment which makes your agency as a player seem totally futile. Dragon Age II comes to mind.

Of course, allowing for that sort of critical mission failure is - as I said - more real to life. But is it how PNP is really played? How many DMs would make you roll to save the life of a child, and offer no alternate means of solving a quest if you failed the roll? I think most players (if good aligned) would argue with the DM until some other option presented itself. And if the DM kept doing shit like that, they'd be less liable to play with them.

Here's the thing I don't get about the dialogue dice rolls. Sure, we're rolling a D20, but where is the actual math behind the roll results? Why show us the combat math, but not the dialogue math? How do I get a 3 result on my dialogue roll when I have a +5 to my roll and guidance which I believe (not in game atm) gives me an additional D4 roll? I haven't played tabletop in over 30 years, so I don't know the 5e ruleset at all, but it seems it should be mathematically impossible to roll a 3 in such circumstances. Likewise, why do some dialogue rolls allow 1-2 reroll attempts, and others don't?

Bottom line, something seems very sketchy about the dialogue rolls in the EA. Either they aren't taking bonuses into account, or the dice roll pools are predetermined to advance the story. Love the EA, but the dialogue rolls irks me near as much as all the visual clipping. How do you design so many long eared humanoid models an not take those ears into account when designing hair, helmets and other things. Everything clips through those ears, or the ears clip through everything.

Have Fun !

I will say I find it frustrating that while you can see your roll bonuses for dialogue options, until the roll starts you don't know if you need to roll a 3 or a 17. A DM would generally tell the player what number they needed to hit before the player chose to make the roll no?

I've also noticed in general you can tell in dialogue if you're going to roll high or low before the dice actually lands. Like, the animation tends to show mostly low/high numbers, rather than being truly random.

I perfectly agree with this. Very dramatic moments shouldn't be decided through dice rolls. And it's clear they made it right with the Lae'zel example and wrong with Shadowheart's.

Player agency should weight on key moments in the campaign and more minor decisions could be left behind a die roll. Or at least, there should be a back door for key moments if you found the right clues. Which maybe is the case but players haven't gone through all the dialogues options yet and didn't unlock everything. I don't know.

Note that I don't put the child death into a very dramatic moment. Because it doesn't have a real impact on your character story arc in the long run. But whether a companion dies by your hand or not should always be avoidable by taking the right decision.

The DC you see is the number you need to equal or be greater than on the D20 to have a success. Your bonus are already reduced from the DC, not applied to your result. You can see them if you mouse over the DC.

Guidance is in the game but bugged.

The reroll are allowed via inspiration points. You get them for doing things, I haven't paid attention to when or why you get them.

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I will say I find it frustrating that while you can see your roll bonuses for dialogue options, until the roll starts you don't know if you need to roll a 3 or a 17. A DM would generally tell the player what number they needed to hit before the player chose to make the roll no?

I've also noticed in general you can tell in dialogue if you're going to roll high or low before the dice actually lands. Like, the animation tends to show mostly low/high numbers, rather than being truly random. [/quote]

Yeah, like I said I haven't played pnp D&D in over 30 years, but I do seem to recall the DM telling us what we needed to hit before we decided to roll or not. Even when pickpocketing in this game we know what we need to hit before rolling to steal, so why not give us this same option in regards to the dialogue? If I know I need to roll a 17 in order to be successful in a dialogue check before deciding to roll or not, I'm probably going to pass on that option and look at an alternative. I would also love to see the math behind dialogue rolls show up in the log on the right, just like the combat math. It seems I roll a 20 on all the nonconsequential rolls, but a 4 on anything that really matters, and that simply isn't very much fun, nor statistically likely.

Have Fun !