Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Chance to hit in percents is anti D&D

This is a very complex solution. How would you animate this so accurately that the player can see it clearly. This would also require more animating every single unit which seems set in stone already. Devs could do what you said by writing everything in the combat log but then you would be checking combat log the whole game and not pay attention to animations.

At this point why play bg3 ? You can just play games based on text if you are gonna look at enemy AC, combat logs constantly. I am not completely against the idea of not showing % to hit from the get go but looking at text constantly Is extremely annoying. That's what I did for fire emblem 3 houses in maddening mode. It is just tedious work especially if you replay all the time. I like XCOM 2 style of % hit. It makes the game more fluid and actually let you focus on strategy.

The goal is that, after you've faced an enemy once or twice, you pass your nature/arcana checks and the enemy's AC is added to your bestiary. At this point, the percentages to hit are shown. It's only for your first fight against a type of enemy that you don't know the AC (for these purposes, all goblins could count as the same creature, even the goblins with differing ACs).

So you won't have to look at enemy animations for most fights.

I don't know how much work creating animations is or how easily one creature's animation can be copied over other creatures, so can't really comment on that. But that's a cost-benefit analysis that should be done by Larian, not us.

My idea is that a "miss" or "blocked" or "dodged" text would pop up over the enemy along with the animation. It also doesn't require animating every single unit. At the very least, all humans(+elves/tieflings/etc) can use the same set of animations.

There is one major disadvantage to your way of thinking. It is unlikely that in most cases we will encounter a given creature more than once during the game. Of course, this does not apply to enemies that are related to the plot, such as goblins or standard humanoids.
Of course, there is also a chance that we will meet opponents with the same model later in the game, but they will most likely have different stats anyway.
It is also not stated that a given creature cannot differ from another of the same type (like minotaurs)

I don't think it's fair to ignore "enemies that are related to the plot, such as goblins or standard humanoids," as these enemies will be in a larger percentage of fights.

But even if we do face most enemies only once, a partial solution is to allow additional nature/arcana checks after killing each enemy. As long as there are multiple enemies of that type in the fight (pretty likely, unless it's a boss-type enemy) then as the fight progresses you'll learn more about how to better kill each enemy.

I'm not sure where the line would be drawn between same creatures of different classes/abilities (i.e., a human rogue will obviously have different stats/AC than a human Paladin)...lumping all humans under a single check/bestiary entry is a bit unrealistic, but requiring a check for every human, however slightly different, would obviously be too much. This depends on the variety of enemies in BG3, which we can't know without having played through Acts 2+.

Ok, let's say we do that. And what action do I use to make that check?

* Action - seems excessive, I could just attack another creature.
* Bonus action - can be the case, but classes that have little to do with bonus actions will benefit from this more
* Reaction - may work, but reactions can be incredibly powerful for certain classes
* Free Action - seems like the most fair one to me, but at that point why roll at all? Plus, if you roll an check and roll badly, you may never know how hard it is to kill a creature.

For me it creates more problems than it is worth, that's all.

There's no action. The check is automatically made by all party members when combat starts, and then again once the enemy is killed (because of experience gained fighting them or from investigating the dead body). Importantly, the check is made again when you encounter an enemy for the 2nd, 3rd, etc time, making it likely that you'll know something about the enemy by the 2nd encounter. Additional successful checks and/or higher rolls on those checks would give you more information: abilities, saving throws, lore. It rewards putting points into nature and/or arcana and makes you feel like you're learning more about enemies as you face them.

It would also tie in well to a bestiary, which is really something that BG3 should have. Encountering enemies would slowly fill out your bestiary which you could look at any time.

I don't know, that seems just tedious. How do I figure out how likely I am to hit:

* Check the bestiary and do some quickmaths - boring, plus, I am playing a video game, the game should do it for me
* The chance to hit appears after successful checks - now we implemented a good qol feature, but locked it behind some random rolls.

Plus, why would killing an enemy with say Thunderwave or any Save spell reveal its AC. Maybe we should only reveal a creatures AC to the companion that killed it, only if they killed it with an attack and only if they succeeded on a check...

This is a game, and we are going to make abstract rules. So why not make those rules simple?

Locking something behind “some random rolls” is the heart of this game.

Want to know your enemies’ weaknesses? Invest in skills to mitigate the randomness.

I like pathfinder kingmaker way of revealing enemy stats. You can learn by rolling and killing enemies as far as I know.

Alternatively, I think revealing enemy stats after hitting them would make sense. For example if I use a fire cantrip, I learn if the enemy has resistance to fire. I never played dnd but I watch some games on youtube, dm would say here that " it hurts the creature but not as much as you thought." So you get a clear idea of their resistances like that. And once you know you can just know forever for that specific type of enemy. This way even if you encounter an enemy once you can still learn their resistances in combat.

Or I could open the chat log and do some quickmaths to figure out that the creature probably has X AC, because rolling X hit but rolling X-1 didn't. Without investing into skills. Like people do when they play 5e.

Or I could notice that I rolled X on my firebolt but it only did 1/2*X damage and figure out that the creature is resistant to fire.

At that point I am just doing the calculations in my head. Why not just tell that upfront? Or at least after your first hit.

There are many good ways to implement this mechanic. Main message of this topic is that current state of this mechanic dumbs down the important aspect of the game.

That's where we disagree - I don't see it as an important aspect. In BG3 or tabletop.

There are no rules for identifying target AC from what I remember. There are few classes that can figure that out (like the battlemaster), but that is pretty much it.

You use trial and error, but depending on your party you may find out the ballpark AC almost immediately.

Sure, when I DM I try to narrate the hits to give the player a general idea, but that goes out the window when the druid conjures 8 boars and they are all rolling for an attack.

I see it as an important aspect because in current state it makes you just choose the most affordable target without evaluating both visually and intuitively its strengths and weaknesses. It’s a big simplification of everything that dnd is about.
I guess we can agree to disagree.

+1

True, but when you play dnd you don't see your actual target. You imagine what they look like (unless your DM splurges on minis). And the way you imagine them is based on how the DM describes. So if the dm describes the Bulette as having "large metal-like plates" I can infer that it has a high AC.

But looking at a model in a video game I will have to rely on my intuition.

Which I don't think is a fair comparison.

This is why having a mechanic to rely on your character's intuition makes sense. Assume that they see more than the player does and let them roll some appropriate skill check to see what they can figure out about an enemy. It could involve studying a potential enemy before a fight. It could involve noticing things in the middle of a fight. It could involve studying the bodies of the enemies after a fight. A player doesn't need to be handed any of this information at all, certainly not up front for free; you can figure it out through trial and error. But tying useful information to skills that don't have a lot of other use in a video game makes attribute and proficiency choices much more important in shaping your character, which I like.

I guess I just don't see the appeal of this.

Basically we end up with the same percentage to hit, just after X skill checks.

I can understand researching Legendary creatures or the like, but doing the same for a random goblin archer or fighter - that is just tedious in my mind.


Sure, we don't need to be shown HP pools either, but would you advocate for removing those too? To be fair, that could be much easier remedied with an intuitive "traffic signal" system.

I wholeheartedly would.

Yeah, I would totally not show an enemy's HP. Health bars without numbers or stoplight are acceptable.

As for the rest - you absolutely don't need to know an enemy's AC/resistances in order to fight them. No one is forcing you to research a random goblin - you can just kill them. Having more information makes it easier to win a fight, but my preference is for that information to be earned through conscious choices (either deliberate actions or how you build your character) rather than given freely.

I really don't. The issue I had:
You run into enemy above your level. You can't see his level and resistances, or buffs, or anything, so on top of being numerically underpowered the game also withhalds tactical information. It would be fine, if game would do good enough job visually to let you know what you could try to do (like BG1&2 did) but it doesn't. That made Kingmaker a wikipedia game. I run into a difficulty wall. I can't proceed becuase I don't even know if I can proceed. So I google - can I kill that enemy or have to return later. What defences does it have. What buffs should I try to dispel.

Those are vital information, and I don't believe game gets more interesting if you don't have access to those things.

There might be a benefit to keeping things vague - for example BG1&2 health descrition was alright. Full health, injured etc. - it have an idea of how much HP enemy has, without throwing out actual numbers. Is it in anyway beneficial, though, over healthbars like in enhanced editions? I think not, as far as UI is tastefully done. It is topdown, roll based RPG so immersion isn't even a thing. I see no benefit in withholding vital gameplay information.

Still for immersion sake I could get behind something vague - stats being described rather then given numerical value, Strength - high, dex - average etc. Skin resistant to ..... Still, as a long time gamer my first step is to understand what those things mean numerically anyway. When I play a tactics game and read: threat level: high, my question is: WTF does that mean? It's just a layer of annoying obfuscation, like using a slider for FOV in graphical options. I can stumple my way to the right solution, but giving me actual numbers is just more helpful.