Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General How can you not savescum? Please share your opinion!

Hello guys,

So, I am on my 3rd playthrough, as a light domain cleric, and I've come across the book of the dead in the Dank Crypt. On all three playthroughs I have failed to get past the second skill check witch only required me to roll a 4! I decided to savescum just to see what's in this book, and I this is now my 6th or 7th attempt and I still can't get past a sub 6 roll.

Other times when I have the wrong character selected and they pass a hard persuasion check when my charisma stacked, thaumatourgy and guidance buffed warlock failed a much easier one just puts me off the mood and makes it feel pointless that I am making the effort to make a character that is suppose to be good at these things.

On another playthrough Laezel failed a low strength check to push some burning wood with the burning hand, but apparently the man for the job was Gale of all people in my party! He passed the same strength check with much lower strength.

I just feel like I am getting cheated by the game. At this point I am just missing out on content for no reason what so ever, or reasons that don't make any sense. Why is it that on 3 different characters with completely different skill sets have I not managed a simple skill check? How many times do I have to play this game to get access to this content? How much content am I missing out on just because of bad rolls across multiple playthroughs, and why should I be content with missing out on content after I have made a character just to be able to experience this content?

I am fine with failing dialogues sometimes, it feels natural that I might fail to convince someone during a conversation, because that's how conversations work. You can't always have it your way. But tasks? I am not so sure. How is it normal for my rogue not to be able to disarm a simple tripwire trap? It's not even funny how many times I have gotten blown up on ridiculously low rolls. It ruins the emersion. How is it normal for my warrior who carries around and swings a weapon the size of a person not to be able to push a plank of wood, but my wizard who can't even handle wearing light armour can?

My suggestion would be to eliminate dice rolls for things that should pose absolutely no challenge to your character. An experienced thief wouldn't fail at unlocking a simple lock, just an experienced chef doesn't fail at cutting vegetables. If there is an object on your way, you either are strong enough to push it out of your way or you are not, why would chance play a role? Why not place a roll every time your character swaps weapons to see if they drop their weapon? How about a roll every time they dash to see if they trip over and fall down?

This is what has been bothering me the most about this game so far, even though on a whole I'm having a great time with it. What about you guys? Do you agree? If yes, what are your suggestions?

TLDR; I don't mind RNG for hard tasks or feats, but some trivial things that should easily be handled by your party should not come down to luck, in my opinion.

first off... theres too much to steal, too early. I am sure this is just an EA thing but we are talking about refugees here, how the heck can I fully gear my heroes with +1 weapons and armor from people who are supposedly homeless, sounds like stolen goods... also sounds fishy that they would have a problem with gobbos when they have all that gear.


Save scumming is something that will always exist in CRPG, the alternative inevitably has the player replaying mundane and nondifficult stuff 90% of the time just to ensure they dont have too much fun by ensuring success too much.


Just make a hardcore version of the game for harcore players that dont reload.... in fact it would easily be a multiplayer option that would be very much desired for public games

Charisma or other stats have very little influence on dice rolls, if any at all. Maybe it's just bugged, and the logs doesn't show anything about these rolls (just fight related), so remains a mystery.

It's all about just a nice random dice roll and then good luck the next playthrough, if you intend to replay it ever, otherwise you either reload or have to enjoy the failure. No other way for now.

No do not take rolls out of the game, it's a d&d game. I don't really care if I miss something when I play, if it really bothers you just reload.

There is a common line of thought amongst DMs (of more than just D&D) to basically not bother to ask for skill checks when failing doesn't matter. Unless the room is filling with water, if you fail to pick the lock you can just pick the lock again. Why waste everyone's time? I agree with this line of thought, and it's interesting how some of what you've expressed falls into this.

On the other hand, something like a tripwire does have an immediate price of failure. Maybe Gale sneezed when your rogue was delicately trying to take the trap apart I will note there is an ability for high level thieves to automatically roll 10s on skill checks they are proficient in if they choose, which is a way of smoothing over the "I'm far too experienced to make this mistake" scenario.

As for the dialog checks (like that book) I have actually found (to my disappointment) that a lot of these don't actually lead to more content at all.
For example, Underdark spoiler:


It's hard not being sure you're going to miss something, but I think in general if you treat it like a D&D game where you have to role play and adapt to what happens you can get a lot of fun out of it. Sure, maybe on another play through you really want to go down a different path and you gotta try really hard for that other outcome, but so far I haven't seen many of those (decided by the dice). That being said, keep up your feedback, I think there is a tight balance between giving us choices and taking those choices away with a bad roll, so that's something Larian is going to have to iterate on.

It would be nice to see how stats actually affect a dice roll. I have also noticed while reloading that I have gotten different roll requirements for the same object under the same circumstances, so either something must definitely be bugged.




My suggestion is not to take rolls out entirely. What I don't understand is what warrants a roll and what does not? When does a task become, or is considered, so trivial that it does not require a roll?

I guess I wasn't going to post anything about this since I not sure if it's actually messing up the rolls or not.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2270220694 (for the life of me i don't know why this pic isn't showing up, its just a pic from my steam account)

there is a bug where sometimes you'll get a negative and a positive for proficiency eliminating proficiency all together.

For any skill related to Charisma (Persuasion, Intimidation, Deception) it certainly does. It lowers the target (DC) so it's not as obvious, but if you try the same thing with 2 different characters you can see the target change. I had to use Wyll a lot for starting conversations to take advantage of his high Cha. That being said, there certainly are bugs (maybe just visually) - I've seen succeeds where I rolled below the target and failures where I rolled above. I think I read that things like Bless or Guidance don't show up correctly but work under the surface.

That's taking a 10 + bonuses when not under stress. There aren't that many situation not under stress in the EA. Also, level 1 to 4 aren't what I would call experienced.


Failures aren't the result of "I don't have the strength to do that" unless you can never succeed (i.e. DC is higher than 20 + your bonuses). A very strong person can fail to lift a wood plank if they have a cramp for example. 5 minutes later they might be able to do it.

Well at some point they'll add difficulty levels and in most games that have dice rolls and difficulty levels they also have rule variations for the dice rolls for each difficulty level. Right now I'd say the dice rolls are true random, meaning that it's totally possible for you to fail 20 times in a row but once they add difficulty levels, depending on what difficulty you play at, you should be failing / missing less.

Some random thoughts...

Yes I have the same concerns rolling on conversations, someone stated the game will ship with a loaded dice option for dialogs, if so ok I'm good.

Is everyone rolling low here? If so then it could be possible they hard coded a low roll here because the content isn't done? Yeah long shot but it crossed my mind.

And to your comment above, yes like when a NPC is bleeding in front of you, still alive but will die shortly, why doesn't my heal potion or healing spells work here? I mean my guys bleed and are on deaths door all the time and viola I can snap them right back to 100%. So yeah games...

I used to save scum as a kid tbh. Not saying it's childish just saying back then I felt like " I absolutely need to succeed at this or this". And then I realized you don't. You don't need to always succeed. It became my way of playing games and living my life. Works well. Less frustration, more success.

BG3 reflecting the reality of life where you fail or succeed where you didn't expect it is after me the best possible option for a game naming itself BG3. BG2 changed our gaming lives. Let BG3 do the same.

(ISaveScammedTheBookICouldntResistItDidntWorkDespite5ReloadsIWantedToEatMyKeyboard)

Thanks for this reply. It has cleared my mind a bit in terms of how things play out in actual D&D.

With what you have said I think I would now say that the main issue is that we are playing a D&D game without a DM, where as actual D&D is suppose to be played with a DM.

I think a DM has a grasp on what tasks can and can not be failed at certain times, and that is lacking in the game.

I do want to point out again that this is not a "screw this game and RNG" thread. I actually do enjoy it. I just think it can be made better.

I have a hard time avoiding it because I want to know what I'm missing out on. I prefer to play it without reloads and blind to the consequences though, so I'm kind of destroying the experience for myself.
I would've loved for the dialogue rolls to be hidden (or hidden but with an indication that your options could've been different) and take place before you chose an option.

If I roll over the strength and charisma requirement but under the dexterity requiremenet, I will end up with a dialogue branch showing the str and cha options but not dex. It could be rolling or a pre-determined ability requirement, but I would've really enjoyed that design.

I don't see why the core game mechanics would need to change because you don't like the consequences of your actions and/or decisions.
Things won't always go your way even in the most ideal circumstances, and that's echoed here.
Want a different outcome? You could always do another playthrough.
Besides, some of my most memorable situations have arisen because of failed rolls and bad choices.

You are right about the level part, I have to do a better job at viewing my party members as noobs for now (even though its hard to do with some of them, because their back stories make them out to be powerful already).

I can see the point with the lifting, however such instances would happen on very rare occasions and you would need some scenario to make it work. For example I could be running a party of characters all high in strength. It's unlikely that everyone would fail. Right now though it does not feel unlikely at all. It feels like I have very close chances to lift that obstacle regardless of what my party composition is.

It is a psychological thing really, if you fail something and it has dire consequences or little reward there is a huge incentive to reload unless you are a rather solid fellow. So it is curiosity and the fear of missing out on something. Also sometimes, especially in dialogue, it is not quite clear what a check or option is going for. Is it just additional information, or a totally new way of solving a task. Mass Effect is horrible in that regard (Fallout 4, too), you choose dialogue with keywords and the tone of the answer might not at all fit to you, and it could result in a fight that you did not want or in a conclusion that you did not want and could not see. BG3 has a couple of those as well, an innocent skillcheck might totally block other information that you wanted to obtain, end the conversation altogether, or initiate fight.
On the other hand they use the checks on a large scale in a not fully transparent way, and to reach a certain goal you might have to pass three checks on different or the same subject, which makes succeeding rather hard. You could argue that saving and reloading is intended, but it does break the immersion and the gameplay flow a fair bit.

So there are multiple ways to tackle this: Making choices clear, so that everyone understands the consequences at all times. Give hints to possible other solutions. Make the prerequisite clear: Show all modifiers of a skillcheck, both positive and negative. Make sure there is a decent reward and/or conclusion to all ways. You can also have hard limits on trying a certain check, so you miss out, but are not incentivized to reload ten times. You can allow multiple ways/skills to pass a check, sometimes with a 100% chance. Like solving something only a Drow would know.
Nettie is a great example of doing things really wrong: If you want the peaceful/good solution you will have to pass 2-3 checks, or kill her. These are obvious, but the good way is incredibly hard. What you might not know is that you can also use a cauldron to brew your own antidote and you can steal it from her. You might also be able to just go and get healing elsewhere.

This post is not so much about dialogue checks. It's about trivial task checks, or other skill based checks that determine if your character is able or unable to perform a task.

I save scum because I am testing the game. And as I don't want to do a 40 hours playthough for each permutations of dialogue, I should be able to check it the way I want. But when the game releases, I will definitely not save scum. I will just follow the flow of my adventures.

I do hope there will be an ironman mode with only one save when the game is out.

OP Quote "just an experienced chef doesn't fail at cutting vegetables. " Well in Real life it is possible for a experience chef to roll a 1 and cut their own finger but I digress.

as for how I do it.. I play long sessions and I dont use quicksave. I only save when Im done playing.. so if I wanted to save scum I would have to redo 4 -8+ hours of content .. is it worth it? maybe but highly unlikely.


I do agree on some of the easier tasks.. its a simple task and absolutely no one is around I would just keep trying till it worked cause why not. That said this is a slippery slope cause one could say the same thing when you are in battle with 10 goblins that have 5 hps. I know I'm going to win why don't they just all lay down and die right now instead of making me fight. Extreme example but only you can prevent save scumming.

All that said .. for early access and trying to do all the content its not that big of deal to have save paths for major discussions and conversations and just follow each to their outcome scumming along the way ... .. for science





They said it better .. this ^