FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2yr ago
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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Notes -
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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