So far I just think there's too much dice rolling. I'm fine with combat having tons of dice rolls under the hood, but there are just too many occasions in dialogue where you have to roll for outcomes, sometimes for things that shouldn't be left to chance, or situations where someone with 18 in an ability simply should never fail the check unless they're dead drunk. It encourages savescumming which I'd rather not engage in.
Absolutely agree that this is a big problem and the game would be substantially better without it. My party's rogue has a 95% chance to unlock almost every single lock I encounter, and anything that is possible to unlock for anyone else is near impossible for him to fail. Every single chest or lock is just a 5% chance for me to lose an item through chance. On the flipside, there's no actual punishment for making different choices either. My twig of an elven sorcerer can frequently just pass strength/dexterity/religion checks with the help of guidance/savescumming, so there's no real reason to care about the tradeoffs.
What having dicerolls for checks like this means is that you just emphasise being good at rolling dice and de-emphasise character-building and the choices you make in it. Competent RPGs have known for a long time that social rolls/skill checks like this should just be flat prerequisites rather than random rolls, because making it random is bad for the game. I can't really blame someone for savescumming when their super-strong barbarian can just, through random chance, end up actually being an erudite scholar who can't do basic athletic tasks because of a funky role distribution. It reduces the distinction between playthroughs and makes your choices in character creation/levelling that much less impactful. Game will be a lot better when a mod comes out that just replaces all of the rolled checks with flat bonus requirements. I also think a cheat mod which gives you guidance at all times when there's a caster with it in the party would be a net improvement along those lines as well.
I think dice rolling on screen is immersion breaking, you don't need to remind me your game is a toy every 5 minutes, it's like a movie zooming out every half hour to show the director shouting instructions to the cast on a soundstage.
In general hard stat-checks are preferable to dice rolls. On tabletop there's a communal gambling element to it, which can be fun, but in single-player games (and I'd guess 90%+ of BG3 players will primary or entirely play single-player), stat checks reward you for building your character in a certain way without subjecting you to the arbitrariness of dice throws. It doesn't make sense either, you either have the charisma to be charming or the strength to lift an object or you don't.
I think if the game (a) removed the "nat 1/20 is an auto-fail/success on skill checks" and possibly gave you the option to "take 10" 3e style on a bog-standard check (or take 20 outside of conversation at the cost of a short rest), that'd go a long way to solving the problem.
That drove me nuts when I played paranoia, since the more you roll, the more 5% chances you have to have something horrible happening to you. It makes you never want to do anything, since even opening an (untrapped) door can be hazardous.
removed the "nat 1/20 is an auto-fail/success on skill checks"
Note this isn't actually a rule in 5e for skill checks, only for attack rolls automatically hitting/missing. It wasn't a rule in 3.x either. It's just people keep misapplying the attack-roll rule to other rolls and inadvertently houseruling it even though it's a stupid change, sometimes including D&D developers and now apparently including Lorian Studios developers.
In 3rd edition it only applied to attack rolls, but then in the Deities and Demigods supplement they added a special rule for gods:
Deities of rank 1 or higher do not automatically fail on a natural saving throw roll of 1.
Yes, if you attain godhood you don't automatically fail saving throws on 1, just like everyone else. Then in 3.5 they actually did add automatic success/failure to saving throws (which I would argue was a negative change) but still didn't have it for skill checks. (3.5 came out a year after Deities and Demigods so they could have been consciously trying to make it backwards compatible, but I'd guess they just forgot it didn't work like that and then in 3.5 rewrote the rules to match the way they played it.)
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So far I just think there's too much dice rolling. I'm fine with combat having tons of dice rolls under the hood, but there are just too many occasions in dialogue where you have to roll for outcomes, sometimes for things that shouldn't be left to chance, or situations where someone with 18 in an ability simply should never fail the check unless they're dead drunk. It encourages savescumming which I'd rather not engage in.
Absolutely agree that this is a big problem and the game would be substantially better without it. My party's rogue has a 95% chance to unlock almost every single lock I encounter, and anything that is possible to unlock for anyone else is near impossible for him to fail. Every single chest or lock is just a 5% chance for me to lose an item through chance. On the flipside, there's no actual punishment for making different choices either. My twig of an elven sorcerer can frequently just pass strength/dexterity/religion checks with the help of guidance/savescumming, so there's no real reason to care about the tradeoffs.
What having dicerolls for checks like this means is that you just emphasise being good at rolling dice and de-emphasise character-building and the choices you make in it. Competent RPGs have known for a long time that social rolls/skill checks like this should just be flat prerequisites rather than random rolls, because making it random is bad for the game. I can't really blame someone for savescumming when their super-strong barbarian can just, through random chance, end up actually being an erudite scholar who can't do basic athletic tasks because of a funky role distribution. It reduces the distinction between playthroughs and makes your choices in character creation/levelling that much less impactful. Game will be a lot better when a mod comes out that just replaces all of the rolled checks with flat bonus requirements. I also think a cheat mod which gives you guidance at all times when there's a caster with it in the party would be a net improvement along those lines as well.
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I think dice rolling on screen is immersion breaking, you don't need to remind me your game is a toy every 5 minutes, it's like a movie zooming out every half hour to show the director shouting instructions to the cast on a soundstage.
In general hard stat-checks are preferable to dice rolls. On tabletop there's a communal gambling element to it, which can be fun, but in single-player games (and I'd guess 90%+ of BG3 players will primary or entirely play single-player), stat checks reward you for building your character in a certain way without subjecting you to the arbitrariness of dice throws. It doesn't make sense either, you either have the charisma to be charming or the strength to lift an object or you don't.
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I think if the game (a) removed the "nat 1/20 is an auto-fail/success on skill checks" and possibly gave you the option to "take 10" 3e style on a bog-standard check (or take 20 outside of conversation at the cost of a short rest), that'd go a long way to solving the problem.
That drove me nuts when I played paranoia, since the more you roll, the more 5% chances you have to have something horrible happening to you. It makes you never want to do anything, since even opening an (untrapped) door can be hazardous.
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Note this isn't actually a rule in 5e for skill checks, only for attack rolls automatically hitting/missing. It wasn't a rule in 3.x either. It's just people keep misapplying the attack-roll rule to other rolls and inadvertently houseruling it even though it's a stupid change, sometimes including D&D developers and now apparently including Lorian Studios developers.
In 3rd edition it only applied to attack rolls, but then in the Deities and Demigods supplement they added a special rule for gods:
Yes, if you attain godhood you don't automatically fail saving throws on 1, just like everyone else. Then in 3.5 they actually did add automatic success/failure to saving throws (which I would argue was a negative change) but still didn't have it for skill checks. (3.5 came out a year after Deities and Demigods so they could have been consciously trying to make it backwards compatible, but I'd guess they just forgot it didn't work like that and then in 3.5 rewrote the rules to match the way they played it.)
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Yes, agree.
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