Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Ratio of Failed rolls is absurd/Flawed RNG

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.