I’m new to both DnD and cRPGs, I’ve read about what the karmic dice does but I wanted to know your opinions as well.
Does it really make it for a “better” experience? Can fights go seriously wrong or extend for a longer time when not using it? What do you all think about it?
EDIT: please read this comment by @burgundymyr@sh.itjust.works, it explains how the dice really works, something I didn’t get at first, thank you burgundymyr!
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TL;DR It does NOT stabilize your rolls. It DOES Stabilize your number of successes/failures (which I think is bad for the system).
There is a lot of confusion in this thread about how this works.
If you understand the mechanics of bg3 and are try to optimize your build you should definitely turn it off. If you don’t care about that and just want to play without understanding all the mechanics I would still turn it off, but it’s fine to leave on probably.
What it does is make rolling a success more likely the more you fail and vice versa. It also applies to enemies. So if you have put all your resources into Armor Class so that enemies miss you more often… well you might be marginally less, but the whole point is that enemies will hit you at a fairly regular frequency and you will hit them back at a similar rate. It means you won’t keep failing and that you won’t succeed at everything.
It punishes you for being really good at something and rewards you for taking more actions rather than being good at the ones you take. It is kind of good for new players that used a scuffed build because it means they won’t fail all their checks even if they made terrible choices, but if you make some basic common sense choices like getting a high armor class or pairing expertise in stealth (Rogue 1 ability) with a high DEX then it can be very frustrating.
Thank you! That explains a lot.
I’m a new player, didn’t know anything about DnD nor cRPGs when I started, but I like to understand what I’m doing when I play a game so I’m doing my best to learn.
I started on the easiest difficulty with the dice on, by the end of act 2 I think I got a hang of how the rules work (still far from fully understand them but I’ll get there eventually), I noticed that no matter what I did in combat to get advantage or trying to avoid damage, my party ended the fight badly wounded, I never died but still.
I started a new playthrough on normal difficulty with the dice off, it’s been a few fights already that I can finish with most of my party unscathed, something that never happened before even if I was on easier difficulty.
This is just anecdotal experience and I’m most probably getting better as a player, but now that you explained it, I can’t stop thinking it’s also the dice normalizing (or not) things for me.
I don’t regret using it because if you start from nothing like me, there’s a hell lot of stuff you have to “digest” to be able to play, it’s pretty overwhelming so the game sort of helping you in avoiding too many failures is a good thing IMO. But now that I’m starting to get a better understanding of how things work, I’ll definitely keep it off.
Karmic Dice will give you better skill checks on the whole, but really isn’t worth it due to it’s effect on attack rolls and AC.
If you are running a build with an AC of 20+, particularly some of the stronger ones, you don’t want to run Karmic dice as it can be a +40% - +85% increase in enemy hit rate. If your build requires a crit in order to be hit this can significantly increase incoming damage as it will effectively turn every other to every third attack into a crit.
I just leave it on and don’t think about it too much. If I saw some hard details on how exactly it works (not guesses) I might have a stronger opinion. I’ve never turned it off and never thought twice about it.
Nah, I don’t want anything fucking with my dice rolls, especially in combat. If I stack AC, I should be an unhittable tank. If they only worked for skill checks, I would probably leave them on to help with unlucky streaks but even those I can just save scum.
What does karmic dice do?
It’s a sort of bad luck protection to avoid making you roll low for too many times in a row, it’s an on/off toggle in game settings. The downside is it also works for enemies.
The actual math behind it is not know however (unfortunately).
This is not accurate. It makes you (and enemies) succeed and fail more often if you/ they have had a streak of the other. It has been tested extensively.
As a result it punishes a high armor class/stats builds and rewards more actions (summons, extra attack, etc).
I highly recommend turning it off if you understand the mechanics of 5e. It’s fine if you don’t understand how things work and just want to play.
Oh, it works against too much “good luck” as well then? Like it normalizes your streaks to avoid too many of either good or bad rolls? I definitely didn’t understand that.
if you understand the mechanics of 5e
I don’t, I knew nothing about DnD when I started but I’m trying my best to learn. Thank you for the clarification!
Yes and no. It doesn’t care about what number you roll, just the result of the roll (success or failure). It will help you if you roll a 5 ten times in a row and you fail all those checks, but if you pass all those checks because of bonuses or because the target number was low, then it will make you more likely to fail. Although, in not actually sure you can get ten successes or failures in a row with karmic dice on.
In DnD your skill checks (except for opposed rolls c which we’ll ignore for now) have a DC which is the number you have to roll to pass, that target number is shown on the screen in bg3. You also get bonuses to the roll (also shown on screen under the die). Attacks and spells with saving throws work the same way. Roll a d20, add bonuses, and see if your number was high enough to pass. Saving throws are slightly different because the defender is rolling, but it’s the same idea, they want to roll higher than the DC of the spell.
So all that to say, karmic dice does NOT smooth the rolls and make it likely to get an even distribution of high and low rolls, it smooths successes and failures so that regardless of how hard a skill check was or how easy it was to hit an enemy, you will be more/less likely to succeed or fail m multiple times in a row.
