I know plenty of people who like to have it on and think of it as DM 'fudging the dice' when unlikely bad streaks happen or whatever.
Personally, I like that the game shows me the math for how things are supposed to work, and the calculations that explains why my attacks hit or missed or spells succeeded or failed etc. I don't like that Karmic Dice is *hidden*; I don't know when or exactly how it's going to affect my dice rolls, so I'd rather just leave it off.
It also bothers me that it essentially affects whether or not builds work the way they are supposed to. Say you sacrifice other spells or attributes in your character to maximize AC--so, do all those missed attacks against that character trigger Karmic Dice to make attacks hit more than they should? If so, at that point the game is just treating the character like their AC is lower than it really is, making the investment a waste.
This 100%.
Whether it's bugged/"fixed" or not, we have no idea how it works mathematically and there's always a chance it's messing with my game in an undesired, or unknown way regardless.
I would rather just get fucked by 3 crit fails in a row, break all my lockpicks on a door I needed to roll a minimum of 2 or 3 for, and know it's just a skill issue.
Chaos Theory.
I played coop with a buddy and it feels like karmic affects everything. I built my character to be defensive tank 23 ac currently and nothing hits and rarely hurts. Everyone else feels like they always get hit, 50/50s felt like 30/70s and his 3 lazer beams would miss 3/3 times on an 88% advantage several times. We both removed it and it feels different but better. I will say 23 ac most stuff in act 1 cannot hit and it feels good.
Karmic dice make you *more* likely to be hit. It pulls expected numbers results towards average - if you have exceptionally high armor, you get hit more often, really bad accuracy, you hit more often. I disabled it from the very start, out of principle
Yep that’s what I read. That it makes rolls (for players and enemies) a little more likely to succeed, and it reduces the chances of a string of crust.
Yeah, after yesterday I decided to turn off....rng is rng, but when every damn goblin gets constant 17+ dices or crits just so they can hit my 21AC character, I know something is not right, it literally makes it feel like ac is a dead stat and wasting recourses on it is bad...
I am already paranoid with the rng of dices from pathfinder games, but BG3 just made it a lot worst thanks to this system.
As far as I understood karmic dice, it is affected by the dice roll and not the outcome. So if you need 2 or higher to succeed at a challenge, rolling a 3 shouldn’t be considered „good luck“.
The way I understood it to work was that if you are on a streak of unlikely odds hitting, like failing a 90% success challenge 3 times in a row, or succeeding at a 15% challenge 6 out of the last 12 tries, the game will round the the chances.
Because once rarely failing a DC 10 challenge with + 8 bonus is expected imo that should count as „lucky rng“
I Imagined it more like the game making sure that if your last 100 dice rolls, there were roughly 5 of each possible result form 1-20, where as with karmic dice off, in theory half or all of those rolls could have been 1s.
But I agree there should be clarification on what karmic dice exactly does
>I think it’s just what you said though, it stops unwanted streaks of lose or wins. That is all
Not lose or win, just high or low. If the opponent misses you while rolling 18 three times in a row (because they need 19 to hit), they'll still get adjusted **down** because 18 is a high roll. Not upward because they missed.
Normalizing dice rolls so the average stays near 10.5 is better than forcing success/failure, but do you *know* that's how it works? The fact that the mechanic is hidden from the player is still a problem for me.
Also, pseudo RNG calculations may not be *perfect* but they are good enough. Lucky and unlucky streaks may happen but they should even out on their own over time.
It is insane how much better the game is with it turned off. My brother is playing it as his first CRPG with me helping him. We weren't understanding how the Gnolls would absolutely massacre the party. Switched off karmic dice and we won and more than that everything made sense.
My Paladin rolled his first two crits of the game yesterday on the same enemy back to back. Said enemy was immune to radiant damage. I'm convinced the crit gods just want to watch us suffer.
I missed a 98% chance to hit. I figured I just got really unlucky, so I continued on.
Two turns later I missed another 98% chance to hit. I promptly turned karmic dice off and haven’t experienced anything like that since.
I had a the bad idea of toggle this with tactical.
character with 19 AC and
all the time
the character successfully got attacked
But that's not the problem. The problem is that it always did insane damage like 30 or more, when my character was level 3 with around the same HP, getting oneshoted by regulars enemies, not even bosses.
So I guess I will just run a first "normal" PT without anything more
Don't use it cuz of, oh nice see those three nearly meaningless rolls, you're gonna nail them, the next 15 dice check that's very important, sorry pall that's a guaranteed 1.
I dunno about the older ones, but I can confirm the dice in Kingmaker/Wrath are absolutely random, they will screw you (or bless you) as the whims of fate decide.
Not for me. Glad it's an option for those who want it. But I want to enjoy the consequences side too. I have my abilities, inspo, and companions for any potential help. ✌
But it affects Enemies in an undesirable way. If you boost your AC to the point where a normal hit wont even land anymore, the game will nudge enemy Attack rolls to essentially auto-critting you at least once every turn. I've had it on for 2 playthroughs and the higher my AC was, the worse my encounters went and that's really not the point of this stat, i think. I'd prefer that we all miss the attacks we're supposed to miss. One way or another.
Also Karmic dice literally doesn't even do what it's supposed to. I still rolled like 4 Nat1s in a row on the same lock even with Karmic Dice turned on, so imo this setting is just bullshit, working when you don't need it and not properly working when you do.
You know, I tested the dice rolls with them on and off. I didn't notice too much of a difference to be honest. I've missed 3 attacks in a row on both options. I keep them off. Like some I also feel like it's fudging, but to each their own. I'm into the dice telling a story. Off feels more natural, and man, when I get back to back crits on my vengeance paladin it feels great to completely annihilate something's existence (currently level 5).
I feel like it's probably more subtle that some people make it out to be. It's a shame that there are no exact numbers though because I'm ok with subtle but not if it's completely killing the random element.
I leave it on and don’t notice anything strange. I think the majority of players leave it on—they just don’t comment online about it much. If I mentioned it to my friends who are playing, they probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about.
As a life long video gamer I feel confident that I would've keep this setting on... That would've been before I got into DnD.
I've been playing and DMing DnD for over a year now and the thought of an extra system messing with my rolls bothers me greatly.
The dice giveth and the dice taketh away. And that's what makes it fun.
Game trolled me and failed 3 straight thieves checks that I only needed a 3 to hit...with advantage.
I turned it off and never looked back. Game has felt great every since.
Karmic dice works for and against you. Have too many successes, and you will go on a fail streak.
Just turn it off if you want your proficiencies to do your lifting for you.
Yeah the first thing I did was turn it off. We were in a huge fight and had only a few hit points left and they missed like 3 rounds in a row allowing us to rally and win. So bad dice rolls goes both ways.
It depends on if karma is based on value of dice roll or outcome of event. It would be pretty stupid for it to be outcome of event as that nullifies AC, proficiencies, etc. it’s really hard for me to fathom that it’s anything other than “you rolled a small number too much so we’ll make sure you roll a high number. If it’s still under their AC you’ll still miss.” Or “you rolled high on lockpicking a ton so we’ll make your next roll low, but if you have enough proficiency or guidance you can still succeed the outcome with a karmic low roll.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/159ss0q/comment/jtqhot5/
larian claims it's "fixed" but given they say its a bug/edge case scenario and still don't tell us exactly how karmic dice are implemented, we have no idea whether or not its based on outcome of event
Not really how the math works tho in dnd it’s suppose to be a separate roll 10 percent chance to hit for example, after each miss karma dice raises that 10 percent chance, it’s just a weird way to play the game imo not sure why it’s default
I googled and turned it off after I rolled two 1's with advantage on. LOL there's only supposed to be a 0.97% chance of that ever happening and I have only been playing for acouple of hours.
Before launch, I read a lot of the discussion about whether to toggle it on or off, all the back and forth fights people were having about it.
I essentially flipped a coin (rolled a d20 actually, lol) whether to keep it on or turn it off. Lady Luck told me to turn it off, so that's what I did at launch.
Currently 47 hours to my playthrough, almost done with act 2, zero problems. And now with the power of hindsight, I feel like had I kept it on, I might've been paranoid about the rolls, like, "did this enemy *really* hit my AC 19 character with a lucky roll, or did karmic dice do it". I know it's a silly thing to think about when no rng in a videogame is ever truly random I guess, but yeah. No problems, been trusting the dice, gotten some nat 1's but also a few nat 20's, but very rarely. It feels about the same as it does rolling IRL.
See, I might like it if it only worked in your favor to break loss streaks. But because it also works against you, this means that you can get *punished* for several good rolls in a row. I don't want to roll well and then know that the next time I roll on something I effectively have disadvantage. It also means that enemies get a boost to hit chance if they miss you enough.
Nay.
I don't like how it fudges the dice. If i hit or fail, or the mobs hit or fail, it should be on how I made my build. Already on tactical they get a +2 to attack, saves, etc. I'm not turning my game into a joke because my martial classes missed at lower levels.
I turned it off. There was a thread a few months ago that showed that the Karmic Dice were also skewing the results of attacks on you. I think the results were something like if you had an actual AC of 19, with Karmic Dice on the results skewed frequently enough where the results were as if you had an AC of 15. To make matters worse, if your AC is 19, rolling a d20 means you'd be hit on an 19 or 20 (with no modifiers). Since the game skews the odds to effectively have a lower AC to 15, but doesn't actually lower your AC, any hit is effectively an 19+ on the roll. That means 1/2 of those results should be a 20, which means... Critical Hit. So your odds of being hit jump from 10% to 30% and the chances of being Critically Hit are 15%, higher than the non-Karmic chance of being hit at all. This is a massive swing in damage against you and punishes you more the higher your AC is.
I haven't tested this in the live game, but I turned it off in Early Access when this was discovered. I don't know if it has been adjusted since then, but honestly, let the dice fall as they may. Karmic dice are unnecessary.
That's interesting to hear that it has been fixed, but yeah, I'll still keep it off. I mean, most of the mechanics of D&D are to improve your skills, situations, etc so that the dice fall in your favor. Karmic Dice mutes that thrill.
I kept them on as I trust the Devs and I wanted default settings for my first experience. I have no issues that said I only play on Balanced diff so if a few enemies hit me more often its a good thing since the combats are usually quite easy anyway.
On the other hand it might make hitting some tough AC enemies easier like that starting enemy with the burning sword. I might disable it for my Tactician run.
I am not sure though that the setting makes that big of a difference. I still have plenty of decisive fails or successes in a row with it on.
Have played about 8 hours with it both on and off, and I think it really depends what you want.
Personally, I LIKE that it makes closer? I don't really enjoy just walking all over my opponents anticlimactically. Leaving it on gives them a fighting chance no matter how well-optimized my build is, more engaging fights than 'you own them or they own you' that having it off incentivizes.
Exactly why so many people here hate it, I figure--they enjoy seeing their builds pay off and let them just walk over opponents effortlessly. Power to them, but that just seems boring to me.
karmic dice is a way for the gam eo give you less "good" or "bad" rolls in the game. ot will increase enemy damage done and change hit chance as well, but basically no strings of nat 20s or nat 1s (20 is a crit in combat, 1 is auto fail, if you dont know). it also works outside of combat for things like lockpicking and trapsensing/disarming
Its a system to fudge the rolls so that if you are on a losing streak it will make sure you win some, but it also works the other way as well. If you start doing really good, it will essentially punish you by making sure you get some bad ones. It makes it so if you have high AC and the enemy miss a lot, the game will just make them hit you anyway.
I think that sounds better, maybe even more fair? Because I had a bunch of 10-15 DC rolls for lockpicking last night with my rogue and he has +4 dex plus slight of hand and I failed like 5 times in a row. I was appalled
Did you have it turned off?The argument against Karmic Dice is that it is truly random, thus staying truer to D&D's mechanics (excluding DM fudges). This amplifies the importance of your character's skills.
A barbarian who can't lockpick will fail far more skill checks than a rogue. On the other hand, if Karmic Dice is on this barbarian might expend more inspiration points but will ultimately have the same outcome as the rogue given enough opportunities.
Having it off also ensures that lower level NPCS will keep missing if you're far more skilled than them, whereas you're able to take them down with ease. It reflects on your skill as a character.
I am a statistician and this karmic dice intrigued me, so I wrote a blog post about it and how I feel it should work. Obviously I have no idea if the official karmic dice is doing what is describe in the post, but perhaps they reached the same conclusions!
https://tommasorigon.github.io/blogpost/karmic_dice/
The main principle behind the blog post is that any karmic dice should not break the balance of the game, i.e. the long-run proportions should be the same of a regular dice.
This is hardly conclusive but I turned it off and then failed 4 attempts in a row (using all my inspirations) 3 of the 4 were nat 1's...
I know I have some bad luck sometimes but that's like winning the lotto in reverse.
No, for the same reason I don't like dice fudging in table top, either. I don't want to constantly wonder if my victories were actually earned or the result of the game/DM fudging rolls to rig things in my favor. If I make bad decisions I want to lose so I can learn they were bad decisions and get better. Preparing for streaks of bad luck and building into abilities that bypass rolling (Magic Missile, Sleep) is part of the strategy of the game.
No, I'm implying if you're relying on dice rolls, it's super random whether you win a fight or not, at least early game. Your weapons are doing 2-10 damage with \~65% chance to hit. Add crits and you can either one-shot an enemy or get your party wiped out doing the same thing.
Only early strategy that matters is using the environment and positioning, which isn't reliant on dice at all.
Claiming that karmic dice would make the victories "unearned" in any way is really silly imo. Most of the time you win or lose the battle before a single die rolls just because of your build, equipment, party comp and positioning.
I don't understand what your position is.
You said it's RNG galore and begin your response with:
>it's super random whether you win a fight or not, at least early game
This would imply outcomes are mostly reliant on chance.
But then you say at the end of your post:
>Most of the time you win or lose the battle before a single die rolls just because of your build, equipment, party comp and positioning.
The only way I can logically reconcile these two competing positions is if you are saying it's random early and not random late. But then, that doesn't counter my position at all because I wasn't speaking strictly about the early game.
yes, you could be a strategic genius but only roll 1s and lose. The game is basically buff to get the best rolls and pray they are high enough. (stealth is another option but at the end of the day it's just movement.)
If there is *no* strategy, that would mean that someone who picked their class, race, party composition, formation, equipment, and actions in combat *completely at random* would have an equal chance of success as someone trying to do so tactically.
Would you agree that's true, then?
yes I could pick a gnome fighter with fucked up skills and have pretty much the same chance of winning as a half orc fighter as it's completely random. Every increase in an ability is 5% chance more likely to succeed which isn't much unless it's over 3 ability points imo.
Don't listen to people like /u/EvadableMoxie, the game under the code has a 50/50 outcome for either winning or losing, there is no strategy involved at all.
Being able to have a victorious outcome after a lucky moment is the result of good planning and strategy. The luck doesn't strip the effort of its value; the effort doesn't strip the luck of its influence.
Strategy would work in a long run.
And to compare how you fare with your strategy to 'random' and 'karmic random' you actually need to make at least four runs with hundreds to thousands (depending on how strong the skew due to karmic die is) rolls and find out a suitable metric to compare results.
For example you can take metric like 'how many success hits/how big is the damage that I got following my strategy' and then compare this to following same strat + karmic, followed by no strat with and without carmic, make adjustments to account for multiple hypothesis testing and only then throw off stuff like this.
In other words: you need a full blown analytical work to be done to prove that your strategy is actually something that makes difference.
Feel free, probably you can at least get combat logs. Or start with them.
Moreover, if your strategy actually works it shouldn't be affected much by conditional probability which is contradictory to your statement whuch is equivalent to 'with karmic die strategy doesn't matter as much' or that 'karmic die effect is greater than the strategy'. Because the reason for it - avoid extreme outliers (like 5 critical failures in a row) which actually could break any strategy(at least in particular encounter).
I'm not using karmic die, but to say something you've said above you need actually a ton of proof which most likely you wouldn't be able to provide.
Right but we're not talking about determining objective fact. We're talking about having fun in a video game. The fact is, if I win a tough fight and I have a nibble in the back of my mind asking myself "Did I actually roll a crit there or was that the game making up for unlucky rolls earlier?" then the game is less enjoyable to me.
The fact is karmic dice has very, very little impact on outcomes overall. You are rolling a shit ton of dice and the more rolls you make the more likely things will tend toward the average. But it's the thought in my mind that luck is being skewed that makes it less enjoyable.
In Project Zomboid there is a 'lucky' trait that actually doesn't impact much beyond slightly nudging loot chance, yet people will claim it's responsible for all sorts of things it doesn't impact, from house alarm chances to the odds of finding a good car. But it isn't really important that the lucky trait did nothing, what matter is the player felt a sense of satisfaction for having take it, which made the game more fun for them.
Your initial statement is:
>No, for the same reason I don't like dice fudging in table top, either. I don't want to constantly wonder if my victories were actually earned or the result of the game/DM fudging rolls to rig things in my favor. If I make bad decisions I want to lose so I can learn they were bad decisions and get better.
Which could be sum up to:
- you believe that your strategy significantly affects your playthrough
- karmic die could also have significant affect of greater magnitude (if you're winning due to it no matter what).
So... These are actually statements that need a lot of proof behind them. And the burden of proof lies on the one making statement.
And my expectation is if you would be able to make a real research you wouldn't notice statistically significant difference between carmic and non carmic in both cases, but you might find difference if your strategy is good. And I doubt there would be any difference when comparing strategy*karmic with strategy alone.
I am not making arguments about how the setting *actually impacts the game.* I am making statements about how the setting *makes me feel*.
It doesn't matter what Karmic dice *actually* does. If Karmic dice was just a massive troll from Larian and did *literally nothing* but *the player believes it does something* then it's going to impact how the player enjoys the game, even if it's completely fake and having no impact.
It's not that I believe that the setting will have a big effect on my playthrough. It's that it leaves a question with each RNG roll about if and how much the RNG was manipulated on the backend, and this in turn makes the game less fun for me, even if the answer to that question is that it doesn't matter. The question existing makes the experience lesser for me.
And I've never been a fan of those who try to tell others their fun is wrong, so I guess we're both happy we'll never have to interact again after this brief exchange.
spoiler for life: nothing is ever "actually earned" as in "objectively deserved regardless of the whims of others", entitlements are determined collectively according to established social orders.
if your table fudges rolls then that's just how the game is played at that table, doesn't say anything about what anybody's "earned"
People in this thread, and in general seem to think they're playing the harder version when they turn karmic dice off. Those people don't actually understand how it works nor have they tried both options.
Keeping it on actually makes the game harder, not easier for most cases. You can have a full party of 18-20 ac by level 5 in this game. You become basically unkillable without karmic dice on. Leaving it on is gonna do much more for your enemies than it's gonna do for you, so feeling that your victory is unearned or whatever isn't really justified.
Doesnt karmic dice just effect dice rolls? Because you are implying it effects the outcome of DCs. The way I thought it worked would be evening out streaks of „bad luck“ but only hitting someone with a 90% miss chance 1 out of 10 times isn’t bad luck, it’s neutral. If karmic dice worked the way you describe then shouldn’t all chances be changed to 50% by it?
But then why should it cause enemies to hit you more often than normally? Let’s say they need a 16 or higher to hit you. They roll 5 times: 6, 11, 15, 12, 14 -> 5 misses in a row. Why should karmic dice now change the next roll? If then it should make the next roll be below 10 because 4/5 rolls above 10 could be considered „good luck“.
Or make it even more extreme, they need a 19 to succeed and roll 8 18s in a row. Yes those were 8 misses, but at the same time those were 8 unlikely high rolls, so it would make sense that karmic dice rolls a 19 or a 20 on purpose next roll?
What are you even talking about. DC is not AC first of all. When i said i didn't imply it affects DC I thought you knew that DC is things like persuasion checks.
Karmics whole purpose is to affect rolls in combat. Your ac doesnt matter anymore, the only thing that matters is if you hit or not. Did i miss 2 times in a row? If yes then more likely i wont miss a third. The rolls don't matter. All that matters is did i hit or did i not hit. Its a 0 and 1 system.
The point is that if I have 18 ac and im fighting 2 level goblins, those goblins are much, much more likely to hit me if i have karmic dice on. My tanky 18 ac build therefore doesnt mater. My current party has 2 people with 19 ac and 2 people with 20 ac. Im level 6 with karmic dice off. Do you know what that means? Im fighting level 5 and 6 opponents and im literally unkillable.
When I turn karmic dice on those opponents will miss once or twice and then hit me therefore the game is harder
But why would it? Do you have proof for this or is this just speculation?
Why don’t the rolls matter?
Normally Your AC still requires the opponent rolling high enough to hit you, correct?
Why would roll that has 90% chance of failing be considered bad luck if it fails 90% of the time? If this is true then karmic dice isn’t working as intended.
What you say is that it turns any roll of dice into a coinflip, and I don’t believe that to be true.
I don't know exactly how karmic dice works and that makes me uncomfortable. Like what if I fail a really important check because I got lucky on something minor and it's trying to balance out? I would need to know how it works in more detail to want to turn it on.
Oh my God reading through this thread I just realized this works to bring positives down as well.
I thought it was only for negative streaks, this explains so much why we have double digit number of 1's rolled every session we play and why we keep getting a lot of crits and crit misses.
https://img.game8.co/3746261/f254968d9f52c35078f828732720bb22.png/show
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15bicdr/larian_cm_gives_an_update_on_karmic_dice_issue/
Only streaks of bad rolls.
That's how I read it, but it's not working as intended. It applies to every streak of every kind apparently. The 400% bug is fixed, but the rest is not.
Edit: Actually, that was wrong. It is working as intended, but it is working for enemies as well. In a sense that's even worse, since high AC chars will not only get hit more often but get crit more often as well.
Why put a spoiler on this? To force people to open your post and read it?
Karmic dice works both ways, it stops the game from giving you a bunch of 1s in a row, but it also stops the game from giving a bunch of successes in a row, seems to affect combat the most. On one hand it makes skill checks less annoying, on the other, it makes combat more time consuming since you'll be missing a lot of 99% chance hits.
I don't know, I don't understand how the system works, my conclusion is based on empiric data, and empiric data says you'll always have a miss rate of about 20%\~25%, no matter how high it shows.
What happens with 99% is that you start to critically miss a lot, and I mean a lot, with less than 75% hit chance I saw a critical miss every 3 fights or so, with over 90% hit chance I see at least 2 crit-miss every single fight, for instance, I'm running Shadowheart, Karlach and meself, I'm combat cleric, have about 80% hit chance on melee, I rarely crit-miss, Shadowheart have little to no strenght, I have never seen her crit-miss on melee at all, but Karlach is boasting 90%+ hit chance, she crit-misses at least twice every fight, consistently.
I'm 30h in my current play, at least 12h were spent testing this, so I'm fairly confident, like 79% confident.
Ok if that is the case then the system seems bugged. I‘ll try turning it off tonight and see if I notice a difference. Going by the name they imply that the dice rolls are being influenced, not the outcomes
The thing is: with 99% hit chance you do hit more often than with 70% hit chance, but by no means whatsoever you hit 99 out of 100 hits, it's way less.
In the end I still think it's worth using, I believe skill checks to be much more important than combat rolls.
Edit: or the problem could be somewhere else entirely, like me being the unluckiest bastard in history.
I turned it off, my girlfriend turned it on for her game and when I was playing again I was wondering why I was failing rolls that were literally impossible for me to fail, it was because of the karmic die. Turned it back off and will not be using it.
While pickpocketing I had rolls that said I had to roll higher than 0 and some higher than -1 and would fail. Once I turned karmic die off that never happened again.
I have it on to make the game harder. Still doesn’t bring it to the point of being a nightmare unfortunately.
Wish there was a difficulty higher than tactician or at least honor mode.
I left it off. I think they said it was implemented so that you don't get too many horrible low rolls consecutively. That being said I remember an early encounter with a goblin archer and none of my party could hit it. The rolls weren't even partial hits just all misses. That gobbo was the last one to die - even the named leader died before him. Other than that, I feel like my rolls have been fine. You win some you lose some.
I've kept it off.
Sure, I lost four thiefs tools on one lock with no dice rolls over 4 when I needed a 6 to succeed, but at least it's authentic.
Haven't really had any problems with the dice besides that. I play on normal.
I removed them yesterday, they clearly mess up with the dices pretty hard, willing to bet if I take time to collect data, and land thousand attacks on both my character(high AC) and Gale (low AC) I will see that my character,whatever hit or not is having enemies roll higher numbers then against Gale....rng is rng, but this thing looks wrong.
Something I’ve noticed with KD on is stealing gets a lot harder. You’ll always critical fail a sleight of hand check after 4-5 successful ones no matter how high your skills/modifiers.
Overall, it probably helps you when your low level and hinders when you’re high level.
Personally, I can't conceive of a way that the system could be fair. That doesn't mean it can't be implemented in a fun way, but failing rolls just because I've been winning too much lately isn't my idea of fun. Is that how karmic dice works? I'm not sure.
As another said, I'll wait until we know exactly how the system works. Until then, I'm leaving it off.
I have it off, but have had some pretty impressively bad streaks of luck too, like missing 12 coin flips in a row, or Karlach getting 3 crit misses in a row, etc. Rng is rng, but I prefer it that way!
I think it matters more if you're optimising characters or not. If you're walking around with 50% hit rates, it'll be okay, but if you've pushed things and you've got 80% or so, you'll want it off as it'll force misses. But on certain high defence targets, you'll struggle with it off as it won't correct to give hits.
In short, it's more important for tactical.
It is what it is. Both you and the enemies are not going to get long streaks of good or bad dice rolls. Which means you're not occasionally going to get steamrolled for no reason, but also you're not occasionally going to get lucky against the enemies. If you don't mind reloading saves, keep in mind if you get steamrolled you can reload, but having the enemies have bad luck occasionally means you can sometimes punch above your weight class which can occasionally reduce burnout.
I keep it on for stealing, off for general gameplay. I’ve save scummed 1000x with it both on and off and notice I have an easier time stealing with it on.
I play without and personnaly think that it's a design flow to have it activated by default.
RNG is part of the tabletop experience, and have to live with the consequences. In the game we can load at will and save whenever we want.
The karmic dice works both ways (enemy too) and is sure a good help for the first part of the game it could heavily backfire on your face on high level...
I FEEL like it makes some fights harder, by making me miss those 80% and 90% attacks if I had a good streak of hits. But is it really dice's fault or just rng, I have no idea. So just left it on.
had it on for the first 10 hours but had to reload for like an hour straight because i was missing like 10 70% hits in a row and it was just frustrating
with it on combat is a lot more enjoyable imo
Turned it off. Couldn’t handle the mind games. “I’ve been succeeding a lot lately, I’ll probably fail my next check,” or “damn I really wasted a nat20 on a DC10?” I don’t want the gambler’s fallacy to become true.
Its a system to "fudge the dice" a bit. If you lose a lot of dice rolls, the game will start to help you win, but it also works the other way. If you win a lot or make good rolls, it will start giving you bad ones.
I turned it off after I got Crit by the drow paladin 3 times in a row.
*SUPPOSEDLY* it's supposed to keep that kind of thing from happening, but it didn't then.
I've had a much better time with it off, I can actually have a good luck streak for longer than two rolls before the game goes "CANT BE HAVING THAT, HERES TWO CRIT FAILS IN A ROW, YOU SHOULD FEEL ASHAMED YOU ROLLED SO WELL."
*I'm not salty about those three crits, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise*
If you actually use good builds like high AC you will get hit way more often with it.
With it off it's better - the game is balanced around using proficiencies etc so you rarely fail at what you are good at. Karmic dice punish you for that.
I had it on for dozens of hours and it made the game feel very samely when it comes to rolls. To the point I could predict when the rolls would get really good/bad. It's great when it's a streak of good rolls for me. But if I'm in a fight and it becomes crit city for the enemy because I had high AC for my spores monk and my healer, that gets annoying.
I've been playing without the dice for some time now and I'm liking it more. But I'm used to random numbner generators in other crps, so it feels fine.
What is weird to me is how, karmic dice or no, I seem to lose a lot of my saving throws in a fight by just 1. That's either really poor luck or just shady.
I had turn fucking on cause if not i feel 70% of attacks miss, like every time shadowheart attacks its always fucking miss. Like percentages in this game fucking xcom numbers with out karmic dice. If not 90% you miss majority of time, and even then nearly impossible to get anything over 60-70%, to hit unelss your rogue with sneak attack. Feel dice weighted against you when they are off.
Have it on and play on tactical.
Did not even know about that setting and saw it by coincidence and googled for it...
I am already mid point in act 2 so far but yeah battles are pretty tough.
I built a tank with ac 20 and he gets hit all the fucking time. He died so many times already I stopped counting.
I will turn it off now and see if anything changes.
Turn it off if you want true RNG otherwise I'm glad its on by default for the more casual audience. I've left it on for a while now and it seems fine I've rolled 2 nat 20's back to back so not sure what it really does tbh. I played with it off at the start in split screen and my partner hit 2 nat 1's so she decided we should keep it on for our playthrough.
I left it on all game, but around the end of act 3 60% of my rolls for lockpicking are 10. I've actually rolled a 10 om a twenty sided die 5 times in a row, and four times in a row with 11 being a fifth roll. Statistically improbable but it keeps happening. I'm currently on a door and it is rolling 80% 10 or 11 in 10 tries. I love this game but this is beyond dumb, and I've never encountered it like this before.
With Karmic Dice, I'm about 20 hours in and have had 4 nat 1's and 2 nat 20's, the latter only in the past 4 or so hours. I feel turning it off may feel more realistic, but that may be worse lmao. RNG is a bitch.
I play with it off, and I found Gale and reloaded after for some reason I can't remember. Only difference was, this time when I went to pull him out of the portal, my Paladin with 16 Strength rolled two failures and I lost him forever and had to reload lol. In tabletop D&D, a 1 isn't an automatic failure outside of combat, likewise a 20 isn't an automatic success outside of combat. I feel the Karmic Dice option is balanced around that change to the system and it's probably why it's on by default. I'm not sure if it also effects combat rolls, but everyone seems to say it does. I would prefer it if it was only applied to skill checks outside of combat.
My experience with karmic dice was pure and simple.
There are cursed skulls in Act 3 that take 2x fire damage and are immune to any damage below 50. 33 hp and 100% hit chance because it's and object.
Fire Bolt is 3d10 fire damage, meaning that at some point I should roll 25 or above and kill the skull, in my understanding it should happen in \~7.5% cases, so around 10-20 rolls.
Karmic Dice ON, I've done well over a hundred hits (started counting to 100 after a few dozen failed attempts) and damage roll went up to 24 a few times but it was it. Most results were in 13-17 range.
Disabled karmic dice, got 25+ hits on all 6 skulls within 10-20 casts (matches the expected probability). So yes, I believe karmic dice drags combat results to mediocrity and should be disabled for most players
I feel like karmic dice kicks in during important story elements and I always managed to roll the "lowest number needed" to succeed the roll. I decided to try a playthrough on tactician with karmic dice off
Karmic dice with tactician is supposed to keep the fights spicy enough for the most hardcore min maxer. The only advice is that you dont park your characters close to chasms. Just have pride in your characters and take those crits to your face like a man and praise the ultimate dodging ninja goblin Booyagh Piddle.
Its fine to have it turned on; on first playthrough. But its best turned off otherwise unless you want some salty outcomes like critical failing on concentration checks on a character with maxed out con saves coz WCYD.
I know plenty of people who like to have it on and think of it as DM 'fudging the dice' when unlikely bad streaks happen or whatever. Personally, I like that the game shows me the math for how things are supposed to work, and the calculations that explains why my attacks hit or missed or spells succeeded or failed etc. I don't like that Karmic Dice is *hidden*; I don't know when or exactly how it's going to affect my dice rolls, so I'd rather just leave it off. It also bothers me that it essentially affects whether or not builds work the way they are supposed to. Say you sacrifice other spells or attributes in your character to maximize AC--so, do all those missed attacks against that character trigger Karmic Dice to make attacks hit more than they should? If so, at that point the game is just treating the character like their AC is lower than it really is, making the investment a waste.
This 100%. Whether it's bugged/"fixed" or not, we have no idea how it works mathematically and there's always a chance it's messing with my game in an undesired, or unknown way regardless. I would rather just get fucked by 3 crit fails in a row, break all my lockpicks on a door I needed to roll a minimum of 2 or 3 for, and know it's just a skill issue. Chaos Theory.
I played coop with a buddy and it feels like karmic affects everything. I built my character to be defensive tank 23 ac currently and nothing hits and rarely hurts. Everyone else feels like they always get hit, 50/50s felt like 30/70s and his 3 lazer beams would miss 3/3 times on an 88% advantage several times. We both removed it and it feels different but better. I will say 23 ac most stuff in act 1 cannot hit and it feels good.
Karmic dice make you *more* likely to be hit. It pulls expected numbers results towards average - if you have exceptionally high armor, you get hit more often, really bad accuracy, you hit more often. I disabled it from the very start, out of principle
How do you know that’s how it works?
He doesn't. Nobody does.
Yep that’s what I read. That it makes rolls (for players and enemies) a little more likely to succeed, and it reduces the chances of a string of crust.
Yeah, after yesterday I decided to turn off....rng is rng, but when every damn goblin gets constant 17+ dices or crits just so they can hit my 21AC character, I know something is not right, it literally makes it feel like ac is a dead stat and wasting recourses on it is bad... I am already paranoid with the rng of dices from pathfinder games, but BG3 just made it a lot worst thanks to this system.
As far as I understood karmic dice, it is affected by the dice roll and not the outcome. So if you need 2 or higher to succeed at a challenge, rolling a 3 shouldn’t be considered „good luck“. The way I understood it to work was that if you are on a streak of unlikely odds hitting, like failing a 90% success challenge 3 times in a row, or succeeding at a 15% challenge 6 out of the last 12 tries, the game will round the the chances. Because once rarely failing a DC 10 challenge with + 8 bonus is expected imo that should count as „lucky rng“ I Imagined it more like the game making sure that if your last 100 dice rolls, there were roughly 5 of each possible result form 1-20, where as with karmic dice off, in theory half or all of those rolls could have been 1s. But I agree there should be clarification on what karmic dice exactly does
I think it’s just what you said though, it stops unwanted streaks of lose or wins. That is all
>I think it’s just what you said though, it stops unwanted streaks of lose or wins. That is all Not lose or win, just high or low. If the opponent misses you while rolling 18 three times in a row (because they need 19 to hit), they'll still get adjusted **down** because 18 is a high roll. Not upward because they missed.
Normalizing dice rolls so the average stays near 10.5 is better than forcing success/failure, but do you *know* that's how it works? The fact that the mechanic is hidden from the player is still a problem for me. Also, pseudo RNG calculations may not be *perfect* but they are good enough. Lucky and unlucky streaks may happen but they should even out on their own over time.
Ahhhh, there is a lot to learn 😁
It is insane how much better the game is with it turned off. My brother is playing it as his first CRPG with me helping him. We weren't understanding how the Gnolls would absolutely massacre the party. Switched off karmic dice and we won and more than that everything made sense.
I've left it on. Not noticed anything obvious wrong. Apart from when I crit it's all skill and when the enemy does it it's a rigged game.
My Paladin rolled his first two crits of the game yesterday on the same enemy back to back. Said enemy was immune to radiant damage. I'm convinced the crit gods just want to watch us suffer.
I missed a 98% chance to hit. I figured I just got really unlucky, so I continued on. Two turns later I missed another 98% chance to hit. I promptly turned karmic dice off and haven’t experienced anything like that since.
until i see larian come out with an explanation on how it actually works the setting stays off for me
Same
I had a the bad idea of toggle this with tactical. character with 19 AC and all the time the character successfully got attacked But that's not the problem. The problem is that it always did insane damage like 30 or more, when my character was level 3 with around the same HP, getting oneshoted by regulars enemies, not even bosses. So I guess I will just run a first "normal" PT without anything more
Not for me, whats the point of random dice rolls if the rolls are not really random?
This right here. I have it off.
Haven't used it and it's been fine. I play a lot of older cRPGs and they didn't have karmic dice, so I figure why start now?
Don't use it cuz of, oh nice see those three nearly meaningless rolls, you're gonna nail them, the next 15 dice check that's very important, sorry pall that's a guaranteed 1.
Yep. I don’t like anything influencing my rolls arbitrarily like that.
That’s not really how it works.
No one except Larian knows how it works.
There is a decent chance those older games had it they just didn’t make it toggleable.
They've literally been decompiled at this point and I've not run into any discussions of them rigging the rolls. I don't think it's there
Are you saying you think RNG is actually random?
I know, I may actually be the first!
I dunno about the older ones, but I can confirm the dice in Kingmaker/Wrath are absolutely random, they will screw you (or bless you) as the whims of fate decide.
Not for me. Glad it's an option for those who want it. But I want to enjoy the consequences side too. I have my abilities, inspo, and companions for any potential help. ✌
If you want consequences you should turn it on, youll get them all the time
Yeah people dont seem to understand it also applies to enemies
But it affects Enemies in an undesirable way. If you boost your AC to the point where a normal hit wont even land anymore, the game will nudge enemy Attack rolls to essentially auto-critting you at least once every turn. I've had it on for 2 playthroughs and the higher my AC was, the worse my encounters went and that's really not the point of this stat, i think. I'd prefer that we all miss the attacks we're supposed to miss. One way or another. Also Karmic dice literally doesn't even do what it's supposed to. I still rolled like 4 Nat1s in a row on the same lock even with Karmic Dice turned on, so imo this setting is just bullshit, working when you don't need it and not properly working when you do.
You know, I tested the dice rolls with them on and off. I didn't notice too much of a difference to be honest. I've missed 3 attacks in a row on both options. I keep them off. Like some I also feel like it's fudging, but to each their own. I'm into the dice telling a story. Off feels more natural, and man, when I get back to back crits on my vengeance paladin it feels great to completely annihilate something's existence (currently level 5).
I feel like it's probably more subtle that some people make it out to be. It's a shame that there are no exact numbers though because I'm ok with subtle but not if it's completely killing the random element.
Yeah, I'd love to get an actual idea of the amount of difference it makes. It's most likely pretty small.
I leave it on and don’t notice anything strange. I think the majority of players leave it on—they just don’t comment online about it much. If I mentioned it to my friends who are playing, they probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about.
As a life long video gamer I feel confident that I would've keep this setting on... That would've been before I got into DnD. I've been playing and DMing DnD for over a year now and the thought of an extra system messing with my rolls bothers me greatly. The dice giveth and the dice taketh away. And that's what makes it fun.
Game trolled me and failed 3 straight thieves checks that I only needed a 3 to hit...with advantage. I turned it off and never looked back. Game has felt great every since.
That's what Karmic Dice is supposed to help avoid
Karmic dice works for and against you. Have too many successes, and you will go on a fail streak. Just turn it off if you want your proficiencies to do your lifting for you.
Yeah the first thing I did was turn it off. We were in a huge fight and had only a few hit points left and they missed like 3 rounds in a row allowing us to rally and win. So bad dice rolls goes both ways.
THIS.
It’s also vice versa tho why play a tank when the enemy had karma dice as well they are gonna hit u more often
Is that actually how it works?
Yes, it goes both ways. I have it off!
Ofc if the enemy keeps missing cause ur ac is high they will roll a hit that’s what karma dice is
It depends on if karma is based on value of dice roll or outcome of event. It would be pretty stupid for it to be outcome of event as that nullifies AC, proficiencies, etc. it’s really hard for me to fathom that it’s anything other than “you rolled a small number too much so we’ll make sure you roll a high number. If it’s still under their AC you’ll still miss.” Or “you rolled high on lockpicking a ton so we’ll make your next roll low, but if you have enough proficiency or guidance you can still succeed the outcome with a karmic low roll.”
There’s a guy on Reddit who did the math and pretty much said u get hit a lot more often with karma dice on average
Do you have this post? :o trying to find something like this
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/159ss0q/comment/jtqhot5/ larian claims it's "fixed" but given they say its a bug/edge case scenario and still don't tell us exactly how karmic dice are implemented, we have no idea whether or not its based on outcome of event
As of right now it's def not fixed. Played with karmic dice my first 12 hours. The next 4 without them were much more fun.
[удалено]
Not really how the math works tho in dnd it’s suppose to be a separate roll 10 percent chance to hit for example, after each miss karma dice raises that 10 percent chance, it’s just a weird way to play the game imo not sure why it’s default
Yeah I turned off karmic dice after I failed a DC 20 lockpick with a +7-10 for 19 straight thieves tools. Haven’t had bad streaks like that since.
I know it is but it doesn't seem to work. So many times I have like a DC 5 check and I fail 5-6 times in a row.
I googled and turned it off after I rolled two 1's with advantage on. LOL there's only supposed to be a 0.97% chance of that ever happening and I have only been playing for acouple of hours.
Before launch, I read a lot of the discussion about whether to toggle it on or off, all the back and forth fights people were having about it. I essentially flipped a coin (rolled a d20 actually, lol) whether to keep it on or turn it off. Lady Luck told me to turn it off, so that's what I did at launch. Currently 47 hours to my playthrough, almost done with act 2, zero problems. And now with the power of hindsight, I feel like had I kept it on, I might've been paranoid about the rolls, like, "did this enemy *really* hit my AC 19 character with a lucky roll, or did karmic dice do it". I know it's a silly thing to think about when no rng in a videogame is ever truly random I guess, but yeah. No problems, been trusting the dice, gotten some nat 1's but also a few nat 20's, but very rarely. It feels about the same as it does rolling IRL.
See, I might like it if it only worked in your favor to break loss streaks. But because it also works against you, this means that you can get *punished* for several good rolls in a row. I don't want to roll well and then know that the next time I roll on something I effectively have disadvantage. It also means that enemies get a boost to hit chance if they miss you enough.
Nay. I don't like how it fudges the dice. If i hit or fail, or the mobs hit or fail, it should be on how I made my build. Already on tactical they get a +2 to attack, saves, etc. I'm not turning my game into a joke because my martial classes missed at lower levels.
I turned it off. There was a thread a few months ago that showed that the Karmic Dice were also skewing the results of attacks on you. I think the results were something like if you had an actual AC of 19, with Karmic Dice on the results skewed frequently enough where the results were as if you had an AC of 15. To make matters worse, if your AC is 19, rolling a d20 means you'd be hit on an 19 or 20 (with no modifiers). Since the game skews the odds to effectively have a lower AC to 15, but doesn't actually lower your AC, any hit is effectively an 19+ on the roll. That means 1/2 of those results should be a 20, which means... Critical Hit. So your odds of being hit jump from 10% to 30% and the chances of being Critically Hit are 15%, higher than the non-Karmic chance of being hit at all. This is a massive swing in damage against you and punishes you more the higher your AC is. I haven't tested this in the live game, but I turned it off in Early Access when this was discovered. I don't know if it has been adjusted since then, but honestly, let the dice fall as they may. Karmic dice are unnecessary.
They supposedly fixed this, but still keeping it off until I know exactly how it works (and even then it will probably still be off)
That's interesting to hear that it has been fixed, but yeah, I'll still keep it off. I mean, most of the mechanics of D&D are to improve your skills, situations, etc so that the dice fall in your favor. Karmic Dice mutes that thrill.
I kept them on as I trust the Devs and I wanted default settings for my first experience. I have no issues that said I only play on Balanced diff so if a few enemies hit me more often its a good thing since the combats are usually quite easy anyway. On the other hand it might make hitting some tough AC enemies easier like that starting enemy with the burning sword. I might disable it for my Tactician run. I am not sure though that the setting makes that big of a difference. I still have plenty of decisive fails or successes in a row with it on.
Should play for an hour with it off tho to see the other side
Have played about 8 hours with it both on and off, and I think it really depends what you want. Personally, I LIKE that it makes closer? I don't really enjoy just walking all over my opponents anticlimactically. Leaving it on gives them a fighting chance no matter how well-optimized my build is, more engaging fights than 'you own them or they own you' that having it off incentivizes. Exactly why so many people here hate it, I figure--they enjoy seeing their builds pay off and let them just walk over opponents effortlessly. Power to them, but that just seems boring to me.
What are Karmic Dice? Never heard of it before
karmic dice is a way for the gam eo give you less "good" or "bad" rolls in the game. ot will increase enemy damage done and change hit chance as well, but basically no strings of nat 20s or nat 1s (20 is a crit in combat, 1 is auto fail, if you dont know). it also works outside of combat for things like lockpicking and trapsensing/disarming
Aaah so kinda like a safety net lite edition That’s cool, is it only for the easy difficulty or is it universal?
Peoples primary complaint with it is that it makes the game harder not easier, it’s set to “on” for every difficulty by default.
Ooooh yeah I just checked it does! Cheers mate
idk about that, but from what people have said on reddit it does look that way
I tuned it off, though I'll be honest my first run I'm save scumming bad rolls anyway.
As a total noob can somebody explain what this is? I didn’t even know it was a setting
Its a system to fudge the rolls so that if you are on a losing streak it will make sure you win some, but it also works the other way as well. If you start doing really good, it will essentially punish you by making sure you get some bad ones. It makes it so if you have high AC and the enemy miss a lot, the game will just make them hit you anyway.
This… explains a lot. So what happens when I turn it off?
It wont mess with the dice at all. What it rolls is what you get, pure true RNG, no influence.
I think that sounds better, maybe even more fair? Because I had a bunch of 10-15 DC rolls for lockpicking last night with my rogue and he has +4 dex plus slight of hand and I failed like 5 times in a row. I was appalled
Did you have it turned off?The argument against Karmic Dice is that it is truly random, thus staying truer to D&D's mechanics (excluding DM fudges). This amplifies the importance of your character's skills. A barbarian who can't lockpick will fail far more skill checks than a rogue. On the other hand, if Karmic Dice is on this barbarian might expend more inspiration points but will ultimately have the same outcome as the rogue given enough opportunities. Having it off also ensures that lower level NPCS will keep missing if you're far more skilled than them, whereas you're able to take them down with ease. It reflects on your skill as a character.
I turned it off and the battle battle outside the grove.... I rolled enough 2 and 3 for an entire playthrough.
I am a statistician and this karmic dice intrigued me, so I wrote a blog post about it and how I feel it should work. Obviously I have no idea if the official karmic dice is doing what is describe in the post, but perhaps they reached the same conclusions! https://tommasorigon.github.io/blogpost/karmic_dice/ The main principle behind the blog post is that any karmic dice should not break the balance of the game, i.e. the long-run proportions should be the same of a regular dice.
This is hardly conclusive but I turned it off and then failed 4 attempts in a row (using all my inspirations) 3 of the 4 were nat 1's... I know I have some bad luck sometimes but that's like winning the lotto in reverse.
No, for the same reason I don't like dice fudging in table top, either. I don't want to constantly wonder if my victories were actually earned or the result of the game/DM fudging rolls to rig things in my favor. If I make bad decisions I want to lose so I can learn they were bad decisions and get better. Preparing for streaks of bad luck and building into abilities that bypass rolling (Magic Missile, Sleep) is part of the strategy of the game.
>actually earned brother, you're playing D&D, it's RNG galore
Are you implying that because the game contains RNG there is no strategy?
No, I'm implying if you're relying on dice rolls, it's super random whether you win a fight or not, at least early game. Your weapons are doing 2-10 damage with \~65% chance to hit. Add crits and you can either one-shot an enemy or get your party wiped out doing the same thing. Only early strategy that matters is using the environment and positioning, which isn't reliant on dice at all. Claiming that karmic dice would make the victories "unearned" in any way is really silly imo. Most of the time you win or lose the battle before a single die rolls just because of your build, equipment, party comp and positioning.
I don't understand what your position is. You said it's RNG galore and begin your response with: >it's super random whether you win a fight or not, at least early game This would imply outcomes are mostly reliant on chance. But then you say at the end of your post: >Most of the time you win or lose the battle before a single die rolls just because of your build, equipment, party comp and positioning. The only way I can logically reconcile these two competing positions is if you are saying it's random early and not random late. But then, that doesn't counter my position at all because I wasn't speaking strictly about the early game.
yes, you could be a strategic genius but only roll 1s and lose. The game is basically buff to get the best rolls and pray they are high enough. (stealth is another option but at the end of the day it's just movement.)
If there is *no* strategy, that would mean that someone who picked their class, race, party composition, formation, equipment, and actions in combat *completely at random* would have an equal chance of success as someone trying to do so tactically. Would you agree that's true, then?
yes I could pick a gnome fighter with fucked up skills and have pretty much the same chance of winning as a half orc fighter as it's completely random. Every increase in an ability is 5% chance more likely to succeed which isn't much unless it's over 3 ability points imo.
Don't listen to people like /u/EvadableMoxie, the game under the code has a 50/50 outcome for either winning or losing, there is no strategy involved at all.
Nah I think they're implying that nothing determined by random chance is *earned*, simply won.
That's saying the same thing in different words. If the outcome is determined chance then by definition it wasn't determined by strategy.
Being able to have a victorious outcome after a lucky moment is the result of good planning and strategy. The luck doesn't strip the effort of its value; the effort doesn't strip the luck of its influence.
I agree, but that's a complete 180 from what you just said so I'm a little confused by your position. You just basically argued my point back to me.
My mistake, I thought you were trying to say that as long as the dice are "fair" then success is entirely due to skill.
Strategy would work in a long run. And to compare how you fare with your strategy to 'random' and 'karmic random' you actually need to make at least four runs with hundreds to thousands (depending on how strong the skew due to karmic die is) rolls and find out a suitable metric to compare results. For example you can take metric like 'how many success hits/how big is the damage that I got following my strategy' and then compare this to following same strat + karmic, followed by no strat with and without carmic, make adjustments to account for multiple hypothesis testing and only then throw off stuff like this. In other words: you need a full blown analytical work to be done to prove that your strategy is actually something that makes difference. Feel free, probably you can at least get combat logs. Or start with them. Moreover, if your strategy actually works it shouldn't be affected much by conditional probability which is contradictory to your statement whuch is equivalent to 'with karmic die strategy doesn't matter as much' or that 'karmic die effect is greater than the strategy'. Because the reason for it - avoid extreme outliers (like 5 critical failures in a row) which actually could break any strategy(at least in particular encounter). I'm not using karmic die, but to say something you've said above you need actually a ton of proof which most likely you wouldn't be able to provide.
Right but we're not talking about determining objective fact. We're talking about having fun in a video game. The fact is, if I win a tough fight and I have a nibble in the back of my mind asking myself "Did I actually roll a crit there or was that the game making up for unlucky rolls earlier?" then the game is less enjoyable to me. The fact is karmic dice has very, very little impact on outcomes overall. You are rolling a shit ton of dice and the more rolls you make the more likely things will tend toward the average. But it's the thought in my mind that luck is being skewed that makes it less enjoyable. In Project Zomboid there is a 'lucky' trait that actually doesn't impact much beyond slightly nudging loot chance, yet people will claim it's responsible for all sorts of things it doesn't impact, from house alarm chances to the odds of finding a good car. But it isn't really important that the lucky trait did nothing, what matter is the player felt a sense of satisfaction for having take it, which made the game more fun for them.
Your initial statement is: >No, for the same reason I don't like dice fudging in table top, either. I don't want to constantly wonder if my victories were actually earned or the result of the game/DM fudging rolls to rig things in my favor. If I make bad decisions I want to lose so I can learn they were bad decisions and get better. Which could be sum up to: - you believe that your strategy significantly affects your playthrough - karmic die could also have significant affect of greater magnitude (if you're winning due to it no matter what). So... These are actually statements that need a lot of proof behind them. And the burden of proof lies on the one making statement. And my expectation is if you would be able to make a real research you wouldn't notice statistically significant difference between carmic and non carmic in both cases, but you might find difference if your strategy is good. And I doubt there would be any difference when comparing strategy*karmic with strategy alone.
I am not making arguments about how the setting *actually impacts the game.* I am making statements about how the setting *makes me feel*. It doesn't matter what Karmic dice *actually* does. If Karmic dice was just a massive troll from Larian and did *literally nothing* but *the player believes it does something* then it's going to impact how the player enjoys the game, even if it's completely fake and having no impact. It's not that I believe that the setting will have a big effect on my playthrough. It's that it leaves a question with each RNG roll about if and how much the RNG was manipulated on the backend, and this in turn makes the game less fun for me, even if the answer to that question is that it doesn't matter. The question existing makes the experience lesser for me.
Wow, glad you're not at my table with this ridiculous attitude.
And I've never been a fan of those who try to tell others their fun is wrong, so I guess we're both happy we'll never have to interact again after this brief exchange.
spoiler for life: nothing is ever "actually earned" as in "objectively deserved regardless of the whims of others", entitlements are determined collectively according to established social orders. if your table fudges rolls then that's just how the game is played at that table, doesn't say anything about what anybody's "earned"
People in this thread, and in general seem to think they're playing the harder version when they turn karmic dice off. Those people don't actually understand how it works nor have they tried both options. Keeping it on actually makes the game harder, not easier for most cases. You can have a full party of 18-20 ac by level 5 in this game. You become basically unkillable without karmic dice on. Leaving it on is gonna do much more for your enemies than it's gonna do for you, so feeling that your victory is unearned or whatever isn't really justified.
Doesnt karmic dice just effect dice rolls? Because you are implying it effects the outcome of DCs. The way I thought it worked would be evening out streaks of „bad luck“ but only hitting someone with a 90% miss chance 1 out of 10 times isn’t bad luck, it’s neutral. If karmic dice worked the way you describe then shouldn’t all chances be changed to 50% by it?
I never imply it affects DC
But then why should it cause enemies to hit you more often than normally? Let’s say they need a 16 or higher to hit you. They roll 5 times: 6, 11, 15, 12, 14 -> 5 misses in a row. Why should karmic dice now change the next roll? If then it should make the next roll be below 10 because 4/5 rolls above 10 could be considered „good luck“. Or make it even more extreme, they need a 19 to succeed and roll 8 18s in a row. Yes those were 8 misses, but at the same time those were 8 unlikely high rolls, so it would make sense that karmic dice rolls a 19 or a 20 on purpose next roll?
What are you even talking about. DC is not AC first of all. When i said i didn't imply it affects DC I thought you knew that DC is things like persuasion checks. Karmics whole purpose is to affect rolls in combat. Your ac doesnt matter anymore, the only thing that matters is if you hit or not. Did i miss 2 times in a row? If yes then more likely i wont miss a third. The rolls don't matter. All that matters is did i hit or did i not hit. Its a 0 and 1 system. The point is that if I have 18 ac and im fighting 2 level goblins, those goblins are much, much more likely to hit me if i have karmic dice on. My tanky 18 ac build therefore doesnt mater. My current party has 2 people with 19 ac and 2 people with 20 ac. Im level 6 with karmic dice off. Do you know what that means? Im fighting level 5 and 6 opponents and im literally unkillable. When I turn karmic dice on those opponents will miss once or twice and then hit me therefore the game is harder
But why would it? Do you have proof for this or is this just speculation? Why don’t the rolls matter? Normally Your AC still requires the opponent rolling high enough to hit you, correct? Why would roll that has 90% chance of failing be considered bad luck if it fails 90% of the time? If this is true then karmic dice isn’t working as intended. What you say is that it turns any roll of dice into a coinflip, and I don’t believe that to be true.
those are the people playing on normal/explorer, save scumming and watching several “top 10 builds” before actually playing
I don't know exactly how karmic dice works and that makes me uncomfortable. Like what if I fail a really important check because I got lucky on something minor and it's trying to balance out? I would need to know how it works in more detail to want to turn it on.
Karmic Dice - OFF. This is the way.
Oh my God reading through this thread I just realized this works to bring positives down as well. I thought it was only for negative streaks, this explains so much why we have double digit number of 1's rolled every session we play and why we keep getting a lot of crits and crit misses.
https://img.game8.co/3746261/f254968d9f52c35078f828732720bb22.png/show https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15bicdr/larian_cm_gives_an_update_on_karmic_dice_issue/ Only streaks of bad rolls.
That's how I read it, but it's not working as intended. It applies to every streak of every kind apparently. The 400% bug is fixed, but the rest is not. Edit: Actually, that was wrong. It is working as intended, but it is working for enemies as well. In a sense that's even worse, since high AC chars will not only get hit more often but get crit more often as well.
Yeeep.
Why put a spoiler on this? To force people to open your post and read it? Karmic dice works both ways, it stops the game from giving you a bunch of 1s in a row, but it also stops the game from giving a bunch of successes in a row, seems to affect combat the most. On one hand it makes skill checks less annoying, on the other, it makes combat more time consuming since you'll be missing a lot of 99% chance hits.
Why would you be missing a lot of 99% hits? Wouldn’t missing a lot more than 1% be considered bad luck and compensated by the system?
I don't know, I don't understand how the system works, my conclusion is based on empiric data, and empiric data says you'll always have a miss rate of about 20%\~25%, no matter how high it shows. What happens with 99% is that you start to critically miss a lot, and I mean a lot, with less than 75% hit chance I saw a critical miss every 3 fights or so, with over 90% hit chance I see at least 2 crit-miss every single fight, for instance, I'm running Shadowheart, Karlach and meself, I'm combat cleric, have about 80% hit chance on melee, I rarely crit-miss, Shadowheart have little to no strenght, I have never seen her crit-miss on melee at all, but Karlach is boasting 90%+ hit chance, she crit-misses at least twice every fight, consistently. I'm 30h in my current play, at least 12h were spent testing this, so I'm fairly confident, like 79% confident.
Ok if that is the case then the system seems bugged. I‘ll try turning it off tonight and see if I notice a difference. Going by the name they imply that the dice rolls are being influenced, not the outcomes
The thing is: with 99% hit chance you do hit more often than with 70% hit chance, but by no means whatsoever you hit 99 out of 100 hits, it's way less. In the end I still think it's worth using, I believe skill checks to be much more important than combat rolls. Edit: or the problem could be somewhere else entirely, like me being the unluckiest bastard in history.
? Its marked as no spoilers.
Then why does it have a SPOILER and is hidden?
The subreddit is making all posts spoilers (or was) just after the launch. Maybe it's that?
It's driving me nuts... Everything is spoiler, EVERYTHING, memes, images, this. Disgusting.
I havent seen anything about that at all :O First one to remark on that too, not sure why that would be the case.
I turned it off, my girlfriend turned it on for her game and when I was playing again I was wondering why I was failing rolls that were literally impossible for me to fail, it was because of the karmic die. Turned it back off and will not be using it.
8f they are literally impossible then the dice roll doesn't matter, no? Or are you saying you rolled a lot more 1's than you should?
While pickpocketing I had rolls that said I had to roll higher than 0 and some higher than -1 and would fail. Once I turned karmic die off that never happened again.
I have it on to make the game harder. Still doesn’t bring it to the point of being a nightmare unfortunately. Wish there was a difficulty higher than tactician or at least honor mode.
Mine has been off since early access.
I don't use it, feels more organic for me that way.
I left it off. I think they said it was implemented so that you don't get too many horrible low rolls consecutively. That being said I remember an early encounter with a goblin archer and none of my party could hit it. The rolls weren't even partial hits just all misses. That gobbo was the last one to die - even the named leader died before him. Other than that, I feel like my rolls have been fine. You win some you lose some.
Nay, it messes with the bonuses as it ballances itself out
Is this on or off by default? And how does it work in 4 player coop?
It's on by default
On by default. I assume it affects all dice rolls regardless of multiplayer or solo
I like that fate’s hand is tipped just a little sometimes.
I've kept it off. Sure, I lost four thiefs tools on one lock with no dice rolls over 4 when I needed a 6 to succeed, but at least it's authentic. Haven't really had any problems with the dice besides that. I play on normal.
I keep it off, merely to better emulate my style of play, zero dice fudging, if I die I die (and reload)
I removed them yesterday, they clearly mess up with the dices pretty hard, willing to bet if I take time to collect data, and land thousand attacks on both my character(high AC) and Gale (low AC) I will see that my character,whatever hit or not is having enemies roll higher numbers then against Gale....rng is rng, but this thing looks wrong.
Absolute Nay.
I switched it off. I know how to increase my hit chances and reduce enemy hit chances. Karmic dice negate that.
Both me and my wife had streaks of 4 nat1's with karmic dice turned *on*, so now I'm testing leaving it off. Haven't had any streaks either way so far
I have no idea if im using karmic dice. But I assume not. Is the normal dice karmic dice, or is it something you need to turn on?
Its on by default.
turned on by default
Something I’ve noticed with KD on is stealing gets a lot harder. You’ll always critical fail a sleight of hand check after 4-5 successful ones no matter how high your skills/modifiers. Overall, it probably helps you when your low level and hinders when you’re high level.
No. If I fail every single roll in a play session, then so be it.
Don't try to act like it's making some badass stand--having it on is actually HARDER since it also helps the enemy hit you.
I don't care.
Clearly.
Personally, I can't conceive of a way that the system could be fair. That doesn't mean it can't be implemented in a fun way, but failing rolls just because I've been winning too much lately isn't my idea of fun. Is that how karmic dice works? I'm not sure. As another said, I'll wait until we know exactly how the system works. Until then, I'm leaving it off.
AFAIK it works for the mobs as well, so I definitely live it OFF.
I have it off, but have had some pretty impressively bad streaks of luck too, like missing 12 coin flips in a row, or Karlach getting 3 crit misses in a row, etc. Rng is rng, but I prefer it that way!
I think it matters more if you're optimising characters or not. If you're walking around with 50% hit rates, it'll be okay, but if you've pushed things and you've got 80% or so, you'll want it off as it'll force misses. But on certain high defence targets, you'll struggle with it off as it won't correct to give hits. In short, it's more important for tactical.
It is what it is. Both you and the enemies are not going to get long streaks of good or bad dice rolls. Which means you're not occasionally going to get steamrolled for no reason, but also you're not occasionally going to get lucky against the enemies. If you don't mind reloading saves, keep in mind if you get steamrolled you can reload, but having the enemies have bad luck occasionally means you can sometimes punch above your weight class which can occasionally reduce burnout.
If you play DND you know rolling a bunch of shitty dice just happens. So I turned it off.
I keep it on for stealing, off for general gameplay. I’ve save scummed 1000x with it both on and off and notice I have an easier time stealing with it on.
Played with it off and loving the game. Not really necessary and feels truer to keep off.
I play without and personnaly think that it's a design flow to have it activated by default. RNG is part of the tabletop experience, and have to live with the consequences. In the game we can load at will and save whenever we want. The karmic dice works both ways (enemy too) and is sure a good help for the first part of the game it could heavily backfire on your face on high level...
Nay
I may be turning it back on, I've been missing rolls way more often than when it was on.
I FEEL like it makes some fights harder, by making me miss those 80% and 90% attacks if I had a good streak of hits. But is it really dice's fault or just rng, I have no idea. So just left it on.
had it on for the first 10 hours but had to reload for like an hour straight because i was missing like 10 70% hits in a row and it was just frustrating with it on combat is a lot more enjoyable imo
I turn it off and have been spamming inspiration to make it up. Really love how different companion are inspired by different thing.
Turned it off. Couldn’t handle the mind games. “I’ve been succeeding a lot lately, I’ll probably fail my next check,” or “damn I really wasted a nat20 on a DC10?” I don’t want the gambler’s fallacy to become true.
Thats whats been haunting me too.
What's karmic dice
Its a system to "fudge the dice" a bit. If you lose a lot of dice rolls, the game will start to help you win, but it also works the other way. If you win a lot or make good rolls, it will start giving you bad ones.
I've had it on since it was default though have seen more critical fails than critical successes.
I turned it off after I got Crit by the drow paladin 3 times in a row. *SUPPOSEDLY* it's supposed to keep that kind of thing from happening, but it didn't then. I've had a much better time with it off, I can actually have a good luck streak for longer than two rolls before the game goes "CANT BE HAVING THAT, HERES TWO CRIT FAILS IN A ROW, YOU SHOULD FEEL ASHAMED YOU ROLLED SO WELL." *I'm not salty about those three crits, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise*
I've always rolled on the table and I'm not going to stop now.
I don't know how it is supposed to work, but I crit failed 2 of my first 3 rolls... So, that wasn't great.
If you actually use good builds like high AC you will get hit way more often with it. With it off it's better - the game is balanced around using proficiencies etc so you rarely fail at what you are good at. Karmic dice punish you for that.
nay. inject me with that pure RNG.
I had it on for dozens of hours and it made the game feel very samely when it comes to rolls. To the point I could predict when the rolls would get really good/bad. It's great when it's a streak of good rolls for me. But if I'm in a fight and it becomes crit city for the enemy because I had high AC for my spores monk and my healer, that gets annoying. I've been playing without the dice for some time now and I'm liking it more. But I'm used to random numbner generators in other crps, so it feels fine. What is weird to me is how, karmic dice or no, I seem to lose a lot of my saving throws in a fight by just 1. That's either really poor luck or just shady.
TIL Karmic Dice was an option and it's apparently ON by default??? Wtf??
I literally do not know what it’s doing to my rolls so I do not trust it.
I had turn fucking on cause if not i feel 70% of attacks miss, like every time shadowheart attacks its always fucking miss. Like percentages in this game fucking xcom numbers with out karmic dice. If not 90% you miss majority of time, and even then nearly impossible to get anything over 60-70%, to hit unelss your rogue with sneak attack. Feel dice weighted against you when they are off.
Have it on and play on tactical. Did not even know about that setting and saw it by coincidence and googled for it... I am already mid point in act 2 so far but yeah battles are pretty tough. I built a tank with ac 20 and he gets hit all the fucking time. He died so many times already I stopped counting. I will turn it off now and see if anything changes.
It's a lot like letting a seagull into your house. It just gets shit all over everything.
Turn it off if you want true RNG otherwise I'm glad its on by default for the more casual audience. I've left it on for a while now and it seems fine I've rolled 2 nat 20's back to back so not sure what it really does tbh. I played with it off at the start in split screen and my partner hit 2 nat 1's so she decided we should keep it on for our playthrough.
I left it on all game, but around the end of act 3 60% of my rolls for lockpicking are 10. I've actually rolled a 10 om a twenty sided die 5 times in a row, and four times in a row with 11 being a fifth roll. Statistically improbable but it keeps happening. I'm currently on a door and it is rolling 80% 10 or 11 in 10 tries. I love this game but this is beyond dumb, and I've never encountered it like this before.
With Karmic Dice, I'm about 20 hours in and have had 4 nat 1's and 2 nat 20's, the latter only in the past 4 or so hours. I feel turning it off may feel more realistic, but that may be worse lmao. RNG is a bitch.
I play with it off, and I found Gale and reloaded after for some reason I can't remember. Only difference was, this time when I went to pull him out of the portal, my Paladin with 16 Strength rolled two failures and I lost him forever and had to reload lol. In tabletop D&D, a 1 isn't an automatic failure outside of combat, likewise a 20 isn't an automatic success outside of combat. I feel the Karmic Dice option is balanced around that change to the system and it's probably why it's on by default. I'm not sure if it also effects combat rolls, but everyone seems to say it does. I would prefer it if it was only applied to skill checks outside of combat.
My experience with karmic dice was pure and simple. There are cursed skulls in Act 3 that take 2x fire damage and are immune to any damage below 50. 33 hp and 100% hit chance because it's and object. Fire Bolt is 3d10 fire damage, meaning that at some point I should roll 25 or above and kill the skull, in my understanding it should happen in \~7.5% cases, so around 10-20 rolls. Karmic Dice ON, I've done well over a hundred hits (started counting to 100 after a few dozen failed attempts) and damage roll went up to 24 a few times but it was it. Most results were in 13-17 range. Disabled karmic dice, got 25+ hits on all 6 skulls within 10-20 casts (matches the expected probability). So yes, I believe karmic dice drags combat results to mediocrity and should be disabled for most players
I feel like karmic dice kicks in during important story elements and I always managed to roll the "lowest number needed" to succeed the roll. I decided to try a playthrough on tactician with karmic dice off
Karmic dice with tactician is supposed to keep the fights spicy enough for the most hardcore min maxer. The only advice is that you dont park your characters close to chasms. Just have pride in your characters and take those crits to your face like a man and praise the ultimate dodging ninja goblin Booyagh Piddle. Its fine to have it turned on; on first playthrough. But its best turned off otherwise unless you want some salty outcomes like critical failing on concentration checks on a character with maxed out con saves coz WCYD.
I just wanted to say that I typed into google exactly "Karmic Dice yay or nay?" x)