@@BeauBordeauxComing from Owlcat games, where there's a tooltip in loading screens saying, "When in doubt, save." I have to disagree. Ironman is for a late playthrough of the final version of a CRPG. Until then, save/ reloading is a simple precaution. Especially in games where companions are not disposable.
I remember a tabletop AD&D game about 40 years ago where a group of badly wounded characters were about to die horribly when the lowest level character, a paladin and new to the group, charged an uninjured ancient red dragon hoping to distract the beast for a round, sacrificing himself so maybe some of his friends could escape. He had initiative, then the dragon, then other party members. The paladin was very low level and needed a natural 20 just to hit the beast. None of his friends could survived even half damage of that dragon's breath weapon. The paladin player rolled a natural 20 for a hit, then another natural 20 to confirm the hit was critical, and then he rolled 00 percentile dice for a critical hit of decapitation (old school critical hit table taken from Dragon Magazine). An entry level paladin killed the dragon with a non-magical 2-handed sword with the perfect swing - odds in achieving that attack was 1 in 40,000. It was discussed for during games for decades to come. That would not have happened with karmic dice.
oooh yeah...on my first adventure, we came across a group of orc raiders. (The Dark Eye - Rule set) the chief had a sword, which could induce fear in everyone who is able to hear him. Which we would be able to know, if we didn't had failed the investigation a few hours before. I was seeking for glory, so I tried an aimed shot (-10) at his throat. First time using a bow, with my Thorwalian warrior (basically a goliath berserkr). Only a crit (d20) could have pulled this of, and I needed another for confirmation. Then full damage for the d6+4, to instantly down him with 20dmg, which led to a slow suffocation on his own blood... So just 1/2400, but without it, we would also be dead. But a damn red dragon!?! 0.o
I love moments like this. There was a similar one in a Star Wars campaign I ran decades ago. The party was engaged in a speeder chase through the forest on a stolen cargo skiff. Searching the cargo, one of the players discovered a heavy repeating blaster with a tripod, so he set it up to fire at the enemy speeder bikes pursing them. The weapon was powerful enough that it should have made short work of the bikes but the PC's aim just didn't seem up to the task and, after a couple rounds, the best he was getting was glancing blows. Annoyed at the seeming incompetence, one of the other PCs (a xenobiologist with no real combat skills to speak of), pulled out his concealed blaster pistol and took two quick shots. The Force must have been with him because in the next instant, two of the speeder bikes were reduced to flaming wreckage. The PC manning the repeating blaster just scowls at the xenobiologist who returns a satisfied smirk.
@@Webhead123 xDD classic... and absolute...these moments r gold in another TDE campaign, an elf constantly missed his shots. The Druid flame-bladed the goblins guts open, in an instant... but it took him 3 rounds to get to that position, up the watchtower. But our woodelf yeeted to the corpse to loot it, while the fight was still ongoing. As he was at the corpse, I let him roll a save for "body control"...he failed, so he was throwing up, right over the loot ^^ (elf=improved sense of smell)
As a D&D tabletop gamer, we fully realize how streaky the dice can be. That’s why we bring BAGS full of them to the table. They can all be replaced, executed or praised at any time. Got to make sure you get them set up and turned to the right side before playing. :)
As another tabletop gamer, don't let me touch your dice if you want them to remain good. My friends have joked that on D20 rolls I'm essentially always rolling a D6 unless I want to fail the role in which case I only role Nat 20s XD. Still personally keep Karmic dice off. It just feels wrong succeeding in checks that look like I should succeed at but aren't guaranteed successes :P
I also used to be really superstitious about my dice, and it was a video from Great Gamemaster on UA-cam that helped changed my views on it quite a bit. He is very much a story GM and in his games the purpose of dice is to be a vehicle for adjudicating chance. His reason for not engaging in superstitions around dice are that it accomplishes absolutely nothing and is therefore a pointless exercise. Because if it _does_ actually accomplish something--meaning that you have a special die that will roll exceptionally well whenever you need it to, then what you actually have is a loaded die and you are cheating. And in his words, he "takes great personal offense at people who cheat in a game where everything is made up."
It actually seems to not be roll streaks though, but rather simply low _success frequency_ in general. It's not just streaks and not just low _rolls_ but specifically _forces successes_ (including by guaranteeing critical hits if that is the only way to beat their AC). In addition, this is unfounded theory, but I think there's a possibility that Karmic Dice might be so-named because it makes opponent success rate the same as your success rate. Regardless if this is true or not, ultimately Karmic Dice functions more like a combat challenge normalizer, increasing likelihood of easy fights being a bit harder and hard fights being a bit easier. At least as long as the difficulty is based on the bonuses enemies have rather than their numbers or use of annoying special abilities
@@MsHojatthere's the issue that, if this is true, it pretty heavily nerfs AC-stacking builds from stuff like Paladins and Fighters. If this means rolls succeed more often, your Armor Class matters less and you'll be hit more frequently than you should. With Karmic dice, tanks will have to care less about avoiding hits and more about boosting their hit points.
@@heyfell4301yeah karmic dice honestly heavily ruins the game. if you care that much about an outcome you can always save scum. i crit failed every ogre persuasion check and so I was forced to kill them all in the goblin village. i literally had no idea that they would drop a crown that auto boosts intelligence to 17, I didn’t even know that was in the game. Karmic dice could never give that experience
It's also more exciting... because if you're about to fail and perma-die on ironman mode... but that 5% chance..... somehow saves your life. You cheer at the screen.
The newer XCom games actually do give you hidden bonuses on all difficulties below Legendary. If you miss multiple times in a row, you get a hidden bonus to your hit chance. If your squad size is reduced below 4, the remaining members get a hidden bonus while enemies get a hidden penalty.
Personally when im using karmic dice, i feel like its more of - "i miss 6 of 8 times on 65-75%, some on advantage, and hit twice with low damage roll while enemy crits me 6 out of 9 times" Having a diviner Sorc in your party really makes you notice the difference in the rolls you do with how much the "potent dice" reaction shows up, and what the enemy rolls... with karmic dice they basically roll 16-20s constantly, while im rolling 1-10s... If karmic dices off makes it so the enemy can also hit low and not just me, im fine with it off lol
@@nativedisciple2452 ok? Who cares? You are basically delaying the whole campaign for a single weapon that is actually only a marginal boost past the first few levels. And only works on specifically two handed fighter classes. So if you don’t want to bring lae zel and you are not a fighter yourself that sword isn’t carrying by anyone. You can replace that sword with the sword of justice as soon as you recruit karlach which can be done as early as level 4. Nothing will be hard enough up to that point to need the slight damage boost it gives you in that short time. It’s certainly a boost mind you. But it’s not worth a refresh or even a save scum if you failed to get it during the fight itself. That’s just fomo convincing you that you need it when you don’t.
I've been playing with it off, and I think it makes the game way more fun (and funny). It's put me into situations that I would never have intentionally put myself in, and its been fun having to fight/talk my way out of it
I turned Karmic Dice off, and of course, the first dialog I get that could start a fight, Nat freaking 20. I'm sitting there, laughing my ass off as this Halfling gets off his box and says there won't be any loot today as he and his group walk away.
1:31 It also doesn't work as well in a locked narrative like a video game. If you're playing a physical D&D game, the DM can and sometimes will take pitty on you rolling three nat 1s back to back, they can change the story however they want to mitigate such in the name of fun. Karmic Dice takes care of that.
In my experience, the Karmic dice tends to backfire more on the player than it helps. Auntie Ethel hits like a truck and she was consistently hitting a high AC tank with it on. With all four of her rays of sicknesses from her and her clone.
@@DrZaius3141 Uhh, Ray of Sickness is an "Attack Roll" spell, that means you roll a D20, add proficiency and compare to the AC of the target, like a normal weapon attack. The CON saving throw is to avoid getting poisoned by the spell if it lands.
I found this aswell. I kept getting horrible rolls, and failing checks on stuff that should be easy pass. Wasn't uncommon for me to constantly roll 1 or 2s and as a result failing stuff that should be easy, almost guaranteed, wins with bonuses for checks that require very low numbers. Then I read about the "Karmic Dice" option, so I turned it off. And my experience has seemed much better, and surprisingly, more balanced and more consistent, since then. It almost feels like however Karmic Dice works, it will actively fight against you to stop the bonuses, that you invested character builds and equipment into, from actually having any effect on your chances.
The best part about the system is that you are extremely unlikely to Nat 1 Nat 1 Nat 1. The worst part of the system is that you are extremely unlikely to Nat 20 Nat 20 Nat 20. This unfortunately hurts the player twice.... enemies will never go on a missing streak against you (and since there are more of them, they benefit more from this than you do) but also you'll never go on a critical streak against them (and since there are fewer of you, the enemies benefit from this more than you do) However, since human beings remember negatives far more often than the positives, karmic dice will help you from giving the game a bad rap just because you had shit luck. So there you have it. Run karmic dice on your first playthrough to prevent 1 1 1 from happening, because it feels stupid and horrible... and you'll remember it forever. But just know that you'll never have that epic heroic "save the day from the brink of failure" 20 20 20 either. So on your second, third, fourth, tenth, multiplayer, playthrough? Turn Karmic dice off. It'll make it more fun, especially in multiplayer... when your dumb friend has a dumb build and rolls 1s all the time and dies. Lol.
I'd say this statement is true, but I just had today 3 nat 1s in a row in my playthrough, and I had the setting on. I was testing it out to see what it does
@@815TypeSirius oh yeah ? .. i guess you never seen both dices roll 1 as my friend did the other day. Karmic dice was turned on because we have extremely bad luck when it comes to dice ( in pencil and paper we play lately, we get so many bad rolls that it isnt even fun anymore.. XD ).
The problem with Karmic Dice's implementation is that it doesn't even out dice rolls, it evens out successes and failures. This means that getting a win streak can make it literally impossible to succeed on a critical dice roll that you care about and want to spend all your inspiration on.
Exactly, it negates actual stats like ac and bonuses. If it would have been only for the base dice roll I would have considered it but in it’s current state it’s not great
This is the actual issue I have with it. If it stopped you from rolling Nat 1s or Nat 20s 3 times in a row, fine. But it actually forces you TO roll a Nat 1, or Nat 20, if it deems you've failed or succeeded too many rolls in a row. Thus in a real sense, it's not minimizing the effect of luck. It's reducing the nature of your builds.
@@IlanYechezkel yeah, I stopped using it when I noticed that. I went really far out of my way to get my sleight of hand to absurd levels, but I could never make a super low DC check too many times in a row. So after that I tried playing for a while with a character with AC 10 and saw that I really didn't get hit any more than before I removed all of her armor, since the game wasn't really accounting for my AC, but just how often I got hit and how often I didn't.
@shawngillogly6873 Sven have said that in the release Karmic dice have effect only on helping with losing streaks and won't actually punish you for having good luck streaks, there has been a lot of misinformation because it used to do both directions in EA
The problem with the music shuffle example is that, that implementation was just not good for it's purpose. Turning shuffle on should make a disordered list of the available songs, not "pick a random song every time"
Theres a reddit post which covers its affects across a sample, and karmic dice really screws over high AC characters like paladins. I noticed it particularly early on, and after I disabled it I wasn't getting chunked every turn with my 21 AC by trash enemies. It favours glass cannon characters who act first and kill fast against small number of enemies, but in prolonged fights against numerous enemies, you will die faster.
this is exactly what i found! I had 24-26 ac all through act 2 pretty much but i was being mulched by everything. whe i got to 30+ AC in act 3, it felt like every enemy was geting crits on me all the time - cause thats all they could do to hit, and it the only time i actually felt tanky - and i was still being regularly smoked. It was only when i got the 23 con amulet the i ever felt safe, which is insane for a 30+ ac. Didnt even know karmic dice existed until i finished my first run
I started playing with a friend who has never played anything DnD related his growing love has made me love it even more. Watching him grow and learn is awesome. Its got me digging out my dice and rounding up a party for some game nights
@@theviewbot Eh, you could argue physical dice are influenced by minute weight differences physically, or by the user's throwing technique, or what have ya. I say it's all close enough to random that it is fun
@@ComplexConfiguration Oh to be clear I don't think it's going to ruin anyone's gaming experience to have it on. But it's overt manipulation of the dice, and it's actually going to make the game harder if you play well. Here's an example. You work hard to maximize the tankiness of one of your characters. You hit the low 20's in native AC. Enemies start missing a bunch... well, karmic dice are now going to manipulate the likelihood for very high rolls to be higher, because of the miss rate. So, you'll get hit more than you naturally should.
Turing off Karmic dice made the game MUCH easier for me. Its intended to eliminate failure streaks, but it felt like it was also preventing success streaks until i turned it off. I noticed that i was able to predict the success or failure of a roll based on what the previous roll had been. Fights were a real struggle and then last night after i learned about it and turned it off i tanked my way through the goblin tribe with my sorcerer after having to reload a bunch because it was just straight kicking my ass.
Btw for another play through, goblins are very easy if you break the wall at the top of the camp and then permanent high ground them with an archer/caster while your melees dash into the archers for threaten
-As far as I've researched, it only prevents low roll streaks, not high ones (back when they were called "weighted dice" I think it affected both high and low), but I do think it affects everyone. So I think that it means attacks are slightly stronger, armor is slightly weaker, spells (that use saving throws) are slightly weaker, and indirectly: ranged offense and initiative/surprise is slightly stronger (since you can potentially take out some targets before they can melee or react).- -The effects should be quite minimal though.- Kind of a late decision to edit, but I decided to cross out this first post so that people focus more on my reply which seems more accurate.
Update: despite at one point saying that it should only affected fail streaks, it seems like it might be reducing success streaks as well. And note my change of wording. It seems as though they did a "stupid"/extreme choice by specifically tweaking the roll values to get the desired _outcome,_ rather than just avoid consecutive very low or very high _dice roll values._ This means that bonuses are a lot less effective because there is a set frequency of _outcomes_ regardless.
@@MsHojat This makes sense as I somehow kept regularly missing 90-95% chance hits in late game. It was automatically turned on for me and I checked settings to turn it off just now
I remember City of Heroes had a similar system they called "streakbreaker", I think. Basically it would keep people from rolling excessively low or high several times in a short time period.
I remember that... Depending on your accuracy enhancement on the power it would force a hit after so many missed. More accuracy reduces the amount of misses the system will allow to happen in a row.
XCOM EU/EW had something similar and players hated it, so they took it out for 2. It feels better to fail a lot, succeed a lot, and have the percentages not lie to you.
My 2nd game I failed the DC 3 wisdom check to open shadow hearts pod and also failed the check to control the helm. Lae'zel had to come. In behind to do both. And this is before you get any inspiration... I haven't tried turning karmic die off yet.
@@BigFootTheRealOne I honestly can't tell if it was some sort of bug or not because the odds were crazy. It was either the UI not showing the correct percentages or turning off the karmic dice feature mid-session messed something up. Haven't had any crazy streaks like that since that one session though. Not like... lottery winningly crazy like that one fight.
Sounds like Karmic Dice is overall greatly to our benefit. A single failure or success is not game breaking, there are many ways to recover from failure or to re-roll dice in this game. But a streak of failures or successes can be game warping and feel "wrong". We don't expect a random Goblin to crit every attack they make, while our Paladin (who is designed to hit in melee) misses every attack. If that happens- the fight is not decided by who/what these entities are or the tactics you used in combat- it's just random dice rolls and you are probably going to reload that fight. With Karmic dice on, your characters stats and the decisions you make will outweigh the rolls of the dice over the course of the play through (because it will average them out). It sounds like things will happen the way you expect them to more often, and you'll have a better experience across a play through.
@@neisan92 pretty sure this is misinformation. If you’re just basing it off that recent thread on the BG3 subreddit- the original poster was completely misinformed and just basing their claims on their subjective experience. Plenty of people in the comments were calling them out. Without real data or confirmation from the devs I would be pretty skeptical of stuff like this.
1:45. Bro... you ain't fooling anybody. That "example" is almost a direct quote of Steve Jobs. You simply heard the same point we all heard during that keynote and then you took it, that's fine. But don't claim it your own
From what I have heard from people who went into the code is you can't ever go above 80% success or 20% fail, which could be good for people who make "bad" builds, but I feel most of the time it will make things worse. Its very easy to stumble into power in this game causing that cap to hurt you imo
I've *felt* like Karmic has been a hindrance the further along in the game I've gotten, especially once I started getting rolls that needed to be above 20
@mrbeard7701 exactly, friends who play the game I have just told them to take the dice off as soon as they are off the ship, having it on gets you a few extra hits on the guy with the fire sword, don't remember his name
There is an error in the video. The patch notes (sorry I don't have the link, but it is on Steam I think April 2021) state that karmic dice only work towards positive bons and not negative ones. The rest is correct as it also applies to enemies. Key clarification.
I like the fact that I sometimes score a victory I didn’t expect and sometimes a roll that destroys my plans. Having to rethink is great. And it makes the replayability absolutely perfect. Even if I know some areas, the dice will give me a different game. Combine that with different characters, the game will be unpredictable and much more fun than hand holding.
I turned it off for me personally, just cause I wanted a classic D&D experience. Had some nice challenges especially in the goblin camp and was quite mind provoking on how I would clear that part of the game. Ultimately made it with a bunch of consumables and man was it rewarding. Haven't had that much fun with turn based games in ages!
I started to play halflings exclusively for their lucky feat in TT. when you roll like me, it becomes a broken mechanic. I had a session where the 4 other players AND DM gave me their dice to roll... I still was able to abuse the lucky feat 😂😊
I agree, my first play through was a halfling and with as much as you roll in bg3 compared to table top (in my experience) its almost too good. I started a second play through now and I'm about to leave the first act and the game feels more "difficult" because of how much times I'm missing the check rolls.
As someone who's had virtually no experience with D&D, i think i'll leave it on for my first playthrough. I don't mind a limited amount of chance in rpg's (something akin to attack accuracy in pokemon and other games), but I don't personally enjoy completely random outcomes. And i'm glad Larian gives the option to choose between the two.
Someone explained it best this way: In a real DnD game, having a bad or unlucky day isn't so destructive because the DM can have a bit of pity and make it fun. But in a videogame it's not very fun because it can feel like you have no control over what's going on in the game.
Thank you! As a dnd player, I rather have them off. Also, between playing a drow and a charisma-based class, having guidance and friends cantrips, etc., the game started to feel too easy, especially in dialog.
I like Positive Karmic dice because the whole point is to avoid frustrating situations of extreme bad luck... but the way I read it, if I happen to have really high AC or really high persuasion stats, I'll be forced to get hit or fail a conversation. The whole point of going for really high persuasion/high AC is to make it so you'd only fail with bad luck, rather than fail because you're "doing too well".
I think some of the issue is that in programming you aren't talking about true randomness you are talking about simulated randomness, and it often has weird patterns within the randomness caused by the mechanism. I've been writing programs and rolling dice for over four decades and the dice definitely produce fewer aberhent patterns than electronic random number simulation. Even with the dice you could definitely argue it's not "true" randomness because there might be minor flaws in the dice etc, but I feel like the bad "feel" of randomness has way more to do with the quirks of simulated randomness than a genuine human issue with "true" randomness
I don't want to seem mean, but I think this is just you being biased. There seems to be pattern in the truest random you could find, because we, human beings, are very bad at understanding randomness and. Also programs nowadays are very well able to generate pseudo random numbers in the most undiffirentiable way to "true" randomness. What is true randomness in the first place?
@@julianp.7988 We humans even mostly believe in luck, when logically it simply doesn't exist, everything happens for a reason, we're smart enough to know this. However we want to feel like we have some control (EG lucky dice), or we are special, or there is some greater power looking out for us, or we are blessed with good/bad fortune. We are more dramatic emotional beings over cold hard logic.
@@julianp.7988 you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but if you understand how random number simulation works they take a seed value and produce an operation on that seed that produces a sufficiently random result. If you use the same seed you get the same set of numbers every time. This is why it is a simulation, and in my experience both programing applications and playing dice heavy games I've noticed a real difference. Of course you'll also get biases from people fudging dice rolls etc, but I'm excluding those sorts of experiences in my observations.
A nuclear engineer once told me that (as far as we know), true randomness can occur in specific cases. I have a hard time wrapping my deterministic mind around that fact. It seems to me there that is no technical or even philosophical barrier that would prevent a program to achieve the level of randomness of a dice roll, but the lack of computational grunt to make it's patterns undecipherable to us.
@@asmodeusazarakYou make a good point, but are not the first to ponder this either. When programming, there are some wrong ways to implement the random command. But if you avoid those noob mistakes, the random number generator function you create is pretty close to being truly random. You can create a virtual 10 sided die and roll it a thousand times pretty easily. You can also store each of those rolls pretty easily. Then you can do various analysis like examine the occurrence of each possible result (like a Pareto Chart) or a do a Fourier analysis. You will find it is very close to random. How close? Several orders of magnitude closer than detectable by even the most highly gifted human that can remember and analyse thousand of data points from memory. How do I know? People have done this, many of them. Hell, it was basically one of the projects in the Khan Academy class on Javascript that I took years ago. But I do believe you have seen a difference, and the difference is rolling a die is LESS random. How? Scientific American had an interesting article on randomness, coin flips, and why buttered bread always seems to land butter side down. They started off with the easy button answer on buttered bread landings. You need a minimum distance to do a full rotation, and that seems to be about the height from counter to floor. The same applies to a coin flip. The higher the coin is flipped and the fstare the rotation, the more rotations it can be expected to perform. This leads to being less dependant on initial conditions and results closer to true randomness. We have learned to mitigate this to a large degree through things we might not have ever thought much about. Things like a die cup that the thrower is not allowed to look into and a reasonable amount of throw applied when the dice are cast. But I would not challenge anyone who said the results are only quasi-random and initial starting conditions are still detectable in aggregate. TL;DR How random is the "Random()" function? Random enough to be used in countless key generators and not leave a stochastic weakness to exploit and far more random than any die roll at any D&D table.
Without Karmic dice, I just got a streak of 4 consecutive nat 20s. Problem was, they were all on DC10 traps, where my sleight of hand modifier without guidance was +10. Felt both cool, and frustrating in equal measure.
In DOTA this is called Pseudo Random (PRNG). Its important for various reasons. Phantom Assassin (one of Dota's most famous / infamous heroes) ultimate ability is a percentage chance to critical hit for massive damage (lets say 25%). Without pseudo rng, you can literally hit someone 20 times and not crit once, or hit someone 5 times and crit 5 times in a row (true random). This can feel BROKEN. Pseudo RNG makes it so that a 25% chance FEELS like a 25% chance which is 1 crit every 4 hits which is what people STATISTICALLY EXPECT instead of the reality of randomness. People dont understand that 25% chance DOES NOT MEAN OR GUARANTEE 1 crit every 4 hits.... it is just an "expected" variable
For my second playthru I actually want a hardcore mod that disable save/load except for crashes and end/start of play session. So when you get that horrible/great roll it really feels!
@@Zamibia I can't imagine telling hardcore ironmen on runescape something like this. You're missing the point of wanting a specific mode or feature like a mod for this.
Basically what it does (as I understand it) is make it less likely to roll really high numbers or really low numbers. For non-karmic dice you have a 1 in 20 chance to roll any number between 1 and 20. With karmic dice you have a greater chance (say 1 in 15) to roll average numbers "5-15" but a smaller chance (say 1 in 25) to roll really bad rolls (1-5) or really good rolls (15-20)
TLDW; It's exactly as it's explained in the options menu. It will keep you from having too many negative rolls back to back eventually giving you better rolls if you've rolled poorly too many times.
It actually does tell you what it does specifically if you mouse over it. It just stops game from spamming you with critical failures, with it you pretty much can only see 2 in a row, even the 2 is rather rare to see twice in row. It also keeps most rolls more middle ground (10 ish), so once you have right buffs/base stats it's kind of hard to fail most checks. For casuals, best to be on, for those that want true random outcomes have it off.
I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that the “true tabletop experience” is without karmic dice. If you are on a loss streak and you have a good DM, they can twist the story a bit so everyone is having a bit more fun. I had a game where I was playing a warlock and I had two turns where I rolled super low on two eldritch blasts. Only 1 of the 6 beams hit. My DM on that turn had my character contacted by his patron and he gained a “boost of power”. My next two turns I had a +5 to hit and damage rolls. In exchange I had to use my last spell slot and take 1 exhaustion to gain boost. Things like this can’t happen in the game so comparing “randomness” isn’t accurate.
So true. I play 6D Star Wars tabletop. We call it the curse of 1's if you get a strand of 1's in your sim. And even rolling 6's can be unlucky because a few of our GMs use wild die as well.
Yeah, same here. If I've gone all out and built a character with a 95% chance to avoid attacks through AC, I don't want to get hit 20% of the time because of the Karmic Dice trying to level the playing field. I don't mind a bad luck streak, but I do mind a rigged luck streak (regardless of who it favors).
You can skip to 5:32 for the answer to the title of the video. Also note that karmic dice doesn't keep you from going on a winning streak, it just stops you from a losing streak.
Given they have altered the rules of critical success and critical failure I think you should have it turned on. In the rules a natural 1 or 20 is only an automatic failure/success on attack rolls, NOT on skill checks or saving throws. I had a triple natural 1 on a DC 10 lockpick check despite having a +4 from Dex, +3 from proficiency, +1d4 from guidance, +1d4 from bless and +1d10 from Warlock Fiend Trait. Should have been impossible to fail, but with their altered rules it was a failure. If they are going to change the rules to your detriment you should turn something on to benefit you.
So currently, I have only ever reloaded when I have fucked up in combat (majorly, like nearly full party wipe) or I when into an area accidently not realizing I might get shit on. All my dice roles I have kept in my playthrough, its pretty fun, and you always have inspiration if you didn't like your first role.
Regarding your example with playlists, afaik this is done by shuffling the order of songs just like you'd shuffle a deck of cards - you draw each card exactly once but in random order. This guarantees you never get duplicates until each song was played once, then you just need to reshuffle. The same logic is used in all modern official Tetris games by the way, for the same reasons.
Feels like, as much as I love the game and have been a fan of Larian over the years, I hate the inconsistency in the depth of descriptions. Details that would be great to know, but you don't have any way of finding out until you either finalize a selection or have used an item. For instance, Warding Bond. When selecting it in the level up menu and when actively using it, it doesn't say that the caster will also take the same amount of damage - it only says it if you hover over the buff icon once it's cast and if you hover over the 'Until Long Rest' stat on the spell itself, the former of which comes off as a 'Little too late for that note, thanks' while the latter feels like a very oddly placed tooltip because you wouldn't think to hover over that part for a detail like that. Another example is the Elixirs. Most of them say that they last until long rest and/or that they replace they effects of other elixirs, but there's also several that literally only provide a stat buff and have no mention of a timer or removal of other elixir buffs. So I saved an Elixir that gives resistance to ALL damage types for a really big battle, like Moonrise, and once I was standing outside a certain set of doors ahead of a specific boss fight, I went ahead and prepped all my buffs. Because all the Elixirs I'd used up to this point lasted until long rest, I wasn't expecting the one I'd been saving to have a 10 turn timer on it, which I didn't notice until it was at 3 turns remaining while applying the rest of my buffs. Thankfully I had a quicksave right before buffing, but it sure as hell would have been awesome to know that this was the one Elixir I'd ever had that had a timer, unlike all the ones I'd used before it. Little things like that, they seriously have to work on. I want all the info on the items I have. If one Elixir is different from the rest, I'd like to know. Popping one only to just then learn that it's one of the only Elixirs that works differently from the rest isn't a fun experience, it's annoying.
Not sure how accurate the testing was however a fairly large scale test was carried out by someone on Reddit. Because Karmic dice also affects the enemies rolls, they claimed there was a nearly 400% increase in damage received throughout a play-through with Karmic Dice turned on.
A couple months ago when I was playing D&D with some buddies I had a terrible streak of rolls. Throughout the entirety of the night, I had 1 roll that was over a 5 (it was a 10). Every other roll that night for attacks, ability checks, and saving throws were all between 1-5. It was truly the worst night of D&D for me. I was using 4 different d20s too!
It depends on the RNG I do, stuff like map or song selections I usually just ban things that have been selected for a few turns. This simple solution works EXTREMELY well for playlists. Always consider the use case. SO if I ban a song for 3 turns it can at MOST play every 4. time. and even if that happened more then twice in a row almost no one is going to notice. Arrange these bans so that a typical session can even in the worst case only cause a few repetitions.
6:32 What you forget at a P&P tabletop session is there is a GM. Tabletop is a game where multiple people have fun together and spin a awesome tale... together. The GM wears that title for a reason, in every P&P game I was part of, the GM was always there to balance things out. Was the party to successful? The GM would spawn in a tougher challenge. Did the party manage to not figure out a crucial information despite talking with half a village? The GM would add more chances to find a paper and as luck wants it the half-literate Half-orc would manage to read it. I am still unsure about Karmic Dice. Does it record rolls for each character separately? Does it just check for success/failure? Imagine the whole party fail their perception checks to find traps or other things but one of them is specialized to pass such checks and he just fails this check because he succeeded not falling prone at the greasy floor a moment ago. Imagine you failing literally every time you attack... but every time you need to do a ability check because enemies keep cast spells at him he passes them. I had that, every of my attacks fail but my characters evaded every enemies attack, for rounds on end.
I thought all karmic dice did was prevent me from rolling several nat 1s or nat 20s in a row. Turns out, it's more nuanced than that. Thanks for the explanation.
I used to play tabletop D&D with a group where people would practice roll with their brand new dice they bought, and they would get upset if they rolled a nat 20 on a practice roll... as if they "used up" that nat 20 so that they would be less likely to roll a nat 20 for a roll that mattered. But that's not how random dice rolls work, but it is how BG3's Karmic dice works.
Honestly after using Karmic dice (which were the default option) for a while. I eventually stopped using them and realized not using them is better lol. The Karmic dice seem to be set up to not make you fail back to back, but I also feel like they are made to not make you win back to back. E.g. I'm pickpocketing the store owner at the grove with lv4 asterion. He has 1+ slight of hand from gloves, 4+ from proficiency, 4 from dex and another 1/4 from guidance. If I steal stuff that needs 1 to 3 dice back to back with karmic dice after the 3 or 4th successful pickpocket you seem almost guaranteed to fail no matter how low the dice nr you need is. The dice throws get progressively less favorable. I was afraid to take anything over 4 things because it would always fail. But without Karmic Dice that's not the case it seems and I can easily pickpocket a dozen smaller things at a go
Karmic dice only go one way, actually. They don't make you fail if you have a streak of successes. They USED TO, but it felt like shit so Larian made them purely positive.
I turned off karmic dice a few days ago and swear it does actually make a pretty big difference - I crushed the Gnoll encounter easily on my first playthrough but wiped three times in a row on my second, which was horribly embarrassing. Likewise, when I squared off against the phase spider matriarch, I smashed her face in with just a couple of rounds.... whereas on my first playthrough she was my first true roadblock. It's not any more or less fair - it just means you really can't take anything for granted, IMO.
What I’m hearing is it’s a little bit like a RNG compressor. Like with audio compression it brings down the loud and brings up the quiet. Karmic dice bring up the low rolls and down the high rolls. Generally speaking I know this isn’t how it’s formulated but it’s essentially what the end result looks like right?
I turned off karmic dice and within 30 minutes had a 1 in 512 coin flip event meaning one character missed for 9 turns in a row and basically did nothing the entire combat followed by a 1 in 4600 which is 3 misses in a row at 94% hit chance. Started thinking perhaps their hit calculations are wrong, but of course that's the nature of pseudo random, these events will happen. I don't personally find having one character do nothing for an entire fight purely due to chance to be particularly interesting so I switched it back on.
There is a second part to the idea that people don't like true randomness. There is also the fact that most programmers suck at actually properly generating and using random numbers.
3:00 "You can random the same number many many times in a row". I almost failed a programming assignment in university because the prof rolled the same number 30 times in a row.
I was running around on my first play through. Just had landed onto the ground and was clicking on everything because i am a hoarder. Was just acting like a dragon with a dragon character. I click on something, no idea what it was but it blew up and lit everyone fire. And they died. So i treated that as canonical lore and restarted game as a druid.
In one session of a few hours with karmic dice on: I tried to pick a lock, DC20. I rolled 7 checks, 2 of which were advantaged. Out of the 9 total dice, 6 of them didn't roll above a 8. Later on, I was fighting a gnoll that had 1 hp left. All 4 of my party members rolled to hit, 2 had advantage, they all missed, then the gnoll multi-attacked one of my characters and dealt half of his health in damage. If I had to sum up that day, I failed 7 out of 10 rolls and it was so much pain lol. I actually turned off karmic dice after that... I haven't noticed much of a difference. I'll do fine for a while then suddenly BAM, polterdice. :C
Aa a DM I can tell you the closest thing to real ttrpg's is having all but the players dice rolls b3 karmic, mostly to prevent bad guy win streaks. It's called fudging, and while I may do it less than once per session, most DM's will do it sometimes.
I have been adamantly claiming that this system should be included in enemy loot drop tables since I was bloody 10, playing FFX and having to farm drops for goddamn hours that aren't even rare. >enemy drops pieces of an armour set all with equal drop chance >2 chest pieces, 3 gauntlets, 2 helmets, 1 nearly broken controller, and 32 pairs of leggings later you are finally done
Karmic dice disincentivises high AC or hit bonus. Because it smooths out successes and failures, a charcter with 21+ AC will take upwards of 3x the expected damage, because many enemies would need natural 20s to hit. Karmic dice ensures they get some successes, and those successes are necessarily criticals. Thus, a character with 18AC takes *less* damage on average than one with 23AC with Karmic dice on. It should be turned off ASAP
At one point in early access, karmic dice was bugged and borfed your rolls more often than not. It left a generally sour taste in players' perception of karmic dice.
I call BS! I dont believe there are any true random per the dice outcomes. Look I should have screen shot the afternoon combat, but in one particular combat.. I rolled 5 number 1s in a row. Crit failed 5 times. This is unfortunate. I should have played a lottery. The odds of consecutive 1's. not feasible. Oh, and to add more injury. It wasnt just this combat. Out of let say fifty rolls. Five were above the number 6. Karm dice or not.. Its not real. I turned it off and yea I get some bad ones at times but have yet to repeat. I was seriously bugging the xcom vibe.
yep, currently trying solo early game and it feels like hell both ways. With karmic dice, I am convinced that there is some sort of seed going on. Basically, if you save, get a bad roll and reload a save, you will be getting the same bad rolls over and over again. Just for testing, after rolling 3 on attack roll, I started reloading the save with it and I got: 2,4,1,1,3,3,7,2,1 in a row. Yeah, not THAT unlikely to happen, but it's the thing I notice everytime I reload with karmic dice. My next roll feels always to be predetermined. On the other hand, with karmic dice off, fate of my early game solo character is completely sealed by the rng. 3 misses = death. And that happens way too often. I want to do solo honor mode later without cheese, but getting through the first act seems waaaay too luck based. In party these things balance themselves out, since you are potentially 4 times as powerful and have 4 times more rolls. It seems for a solo playthrough there is no way to make first act consistent without stealth/barrelmancy/constant overleveling/etc.
so as a side note, having already played way to much BG3, without the karmic dice, im sure that they have a issue with the number generator as on 3 seperate occassions i have rolled multiple 1s in a row, as in....with a barbarian reckless attacks, i rolled 7 1's in 4 attacks...and then a couple of battles later (maybe a total of 30 rolls inbetween, i rolled another 6 1s in a row. with the karmic dice enabled i stopped rolling absolutely insane odds and instead had a far more consistent "random". whilst i cant confirm without ripping the code apart, im convinced that the reason that they added the karmic dice is because of the same bug they had in divine divinity where difficulty affected the dice rolls.
Regardles of your choice, i have noticed one thing, i nat 1 or low roll (like roll a 2 regardless of dc) way more often after act 1. Like even in act 3, i get a dc 10 check, which would implicitly be a 50% pass rate without buffs, and then lose on the next 8 rolls regardless of ability check modifiers by rolling like 8, 9, 4 after the guidance d4. Idk it just feels its way harder to pass checks later regardless of their dc.
Computing and programming does not have "TRUE RANDOMNESS". Nothing RNG in computing is truly random. It's always tied to some non-random element, such as the CPU clock, position of the mouse, etc.
As a lifelong TTRPG gamer with the occasional 4-hour session where literally every one of my rolls fails (minor case of Will Wheaton syndrome), I can't appreciate Karmic Dice enough.
I did some mind numbing testing using a character with a 32 AC in an encounter where nothing can hit me unless they roll a 20. And what happens is their odds of rolling a critical hit is suppose to be 5% but after doing reloads of the same fight and letting it play out by just clicking end turn and recording each enemy's combat rolls. It turns out their odds of critically hitting goes up to 30%. This is even with Karmic dice turned off..
Playing into Act 3 with Karmic dice. Turned off during the Mindflayer ship part, turned it back on later. Basically had constant low 1-6 rolls on all my checks during dialogue (maxed out strength failed all strength rolls against Astarion, failed the mind flayer check, the crypt dialogue check), and bullshit critical misses during the Crypt battle on the surface. Had a miss, then critical miss, then hit, then another critical miss and several more similar misses with 70% hit chance, while the enemy constantly hit my party. Checking the Combat Log and all my misses/failes were in the bellow 10 and most of the time short of success. Then I turned on the karmic dice and the game immediately started to get fair and my tactical decisions were rewarded. It felt more randomized to me too, and honestly that's actually how it should be. Unlike in real life, random is random in coding, there are no multiple variables that affect how a dice rolls when you throw it. So unless a game has a full physics simulation for shaking and throwing dice, I will stick to karmic dice and rather have less streaks than bullshit numbers.
I got 3 nat ones in a row, a 5, 4, then 7... on a required roll of 10... used up all my re-rolls... figured the game didnt want me having the loot and tossed the chest off a cliff... and it broke open. (And this was with karmic on). Karlach has become my parties master locksmith, The Karlachsmithing Barbarian.
I actually have experience with spotify shuffle not being truly random. Everytime I clear my cache, I get new songs. It seems to play the same 100 songs everytime I shuffle play my playlists and then after clearing 18gb+ of cache, it finally feels random again.
In my experience, turning karmic dice off has helped noticeably. No real way to measure this, but misses are less and I unlock and disarm more often. At least with it off, if I have bad luck, I know it's my own bad luck. Love this game though, big time.
I love the randomness of your comment being RIGHT below the comment "I turned off karmic dice and in the very next combat I missed 9 attacks in a row that all had 85% chance to land or higher."
@@amacaddict interesting. So your experiencing the opposite of me. btw, sorry for missing and not adding a reply to you. I think that would've been better.
@@NotThatBob It was someone else's comment. I haven't experienced anything, as I have to wait for the PS5 version. I'm as confused as ever after reading all, and I mean all the comments as to off or on. I have horrible 'luck' so I don't know.
@@amacaddictit's really funny seeing how people are sort of proving why larian has implemented the system of karmic dice. Even if it only affects a small percent of players, true random can really suck sometimes! And the reviews could potentially reflect that!
Man I have Karmic Dice on... I got three Nat 1's in a row on a chest unlock that happened on stream. If this helps people, I definitely haven't seen it lol. 10/10, would recommend using either system.
Ive had horrible rolls with karmic dice on. One time I literally rolled 4 nat 1s in a row while trying to pick a DC 15 lock with a +7 bonus. Ive decided to just turn them off, so I can feel like rng is not on my side instead of trying to actively punish me for good results realier on.
When D&D 4ed came out, I played the introductory sample encounter, (I think it was against a small party of goblins and gnolls?) three different times with different parties and different DMs. Total party wipe all three times. I don't think I rolled double digits on an attack roll once. Just stood there swinging at the wind until everyone was dead. Never played 4ed again.
You also forget to mention that there is no true randomness in modern computer! Since in basics of the computer there are 0 and 1. True or False. There no room for randomness. So all "random" algorithms is try to simulate the randomness instead. And here you have two approaches Pseudo-Random Number Generators (PRNGs) - a computer uses a seed number and an algorithm to generate numbers that seem to be random, but are actually predictable. True Random Number Generators (TRNGs) - measure randomness from physical phenomena using hardware and integrate it into a computer. Computers use unpredictable processes, such as atmospheric noise or radioactive decay. Thus for TRNG you need additional Hardware to be on PC which is impossible for PC gaming... that leaves you with PRNG which is not truly random
I rolled a 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 to fail the same roll 5 times last night (burnt 4 inspiration, just because i was so shocked). Literally counted up the list until the last jumped 2. I try not to save scum if I have to burn an inspiration, but I've never hit that load button faster. Absolutely ridiculous
I turned off the karmic dice for my first play through, I don't savescum but I will save in the middle of a massive fight if things are going well, but not like 'before every roll', just the once, and have completed act 1 so far. My main is a drow sorcerer with alarion, shadowheart and laezel. So far the only fight I went on a serious whiffing streak was Grym, arguably one of the worst fights to have that happen, not one of my sorc spells landed. Also where I discovered that achievements can contain spoilers, because I did not know or figure out beforehand what that achievement reveals having done the fight the hard way apparently (third times the charm).
I can accept true random rolls because I can’t get (as) mad at the universe. When I have karmic dice on though I’m always wondering if this really remarkable bad roll was because of the system or actual chance. At least with the feature off I’ll know that’s not the case. Besides having the game decide that ive had too much good or bad luck is bullshit. I hate critical failure more than anyone, but this is a poor way to go about it. Edit: I’m not a hardcore dnd player and I definitely felt like something was off when it was turned on, again probably my own bias, but having it turned off I know for certain that any misgivings or feelings I have towards the rolls are definitely my own bias.
That's the thing, we can all get avoiding horrible luck streaks, even DMs do some of it themselves by changing the DC behind the scenes or figuring some other, fun, way to get the players to progress, so it makes sense to have a karmic dice in the game as there's no actual DM to help you out. But punishing good luck is odd, specially when good "luck" could just be you clad in heavy armor, shield and everything. The enemy is missing you often because you're armored, so now they'll be forced to hit you because you're avoiding too much. Or maybe you've got really high persuasion on your bard and suddenly the game is going to force you to roll low because you're succeeding too often.
I like Karmic dice. Not for my character’s well being but more for accurate enemy difficulty. In the very limited time I played dnd, there were so many times when a cr3 encounter would wipe the level 5 party, or a big cr10 boss would be completely wrecked by the same party, just due to amazing or terrible dice streaks. That’s fine in tabletop stuff, but in a video game where you need to gather info on how your build is going or what you need to improve in your party, dice streaks from enemies completely obfuscate how difficult the encounter is supposed to be. Now I know I can scroll through a combat log and look at every roll and do the math on exactly how lucky I or the enemy was, but that’s just not fun. Instead, I can just have a feature of the game that basically says “yeah that Minthara lady beat you cause your play sucked or your team sucked” and actually have info to use to progress. I wish there was an enemy only Karmic Dice though.
The reason for this is that a d20 is too swingy and dynamic. Over time, a d20 has proven itself to be one of the worst dies you could use for an RPG. It's not very heroic when your 5th Level Barbarian misses half of the time in every combat encounter.
If you know what you`re doing - disable karmic dice. If your party has a real tank, like 20+ AC OR you have a one-hit-kill-all character, then the system will be in favor of AI. If normally your tank will take 5-10%of damage to his face, then with this option on... it will be like 40%. It will be the same picture for every optimised character.
Fun fact that rng can seem not as random: Birthday paradox, If you have a class of 23 children, there is 50% chance there are 2 in the group with the same birthday.
I don't know if the dice are fixed in the last patch, but if not, then they're broken. When I turn Karmic Dice off, I have rolled on many occasions using advantage rolls (two dice per roll), landing on the same number every time (1 , 1 or 7, 7 or any number) or rolling the same number repeatedly on one die (roll 5 hit reroll and 5 and then reroll and 5 once more). When I turn on Karmic dice, this will not happen. Karmic Dice is fixing a flawed random system. I have found many bugs in this game, but the dice is the one that makes me the most angry.
You don't need karmic dice when you save scum uncontrollably 😎
this is a cry for help i can't stop
As long as you only have a single save I don't see the problem.
It's your birthright as a gamer to save and reload anytime you want.
@@BeauBordeauxComing from Owlcat games, where there's a tooltip in loading screens saying, "When in doubt, save." I have to disagree. Ironman is for a late playthrough of the final version of a CRPG. Until then, save/ reloading is a simple precaution. Especially in games where companions are not disposable.
It's your playthrough. You're allowed to force it to go the way you want. Plus you get so many inspiration re-rolls anyway.
Indeed
I remember a tabletop AD&D game about 40 years ago where a group of badly wounded characters were about to die horribly when the lowest level character, a paladin and new to the group, charged an uninjured ancient red dragon hoping to distract the beast for a round, sacrificing himself so maybe some of his friends could escape. He had initiative, then the dragon, then other party members. The paladin was very low level and needed a natural 20 just to hit the beast. None of his friends could survived even half damage of that dragon's breath weapon. The paladin player rolled a natural 20 for a hit, then another natural 20 to confirm the hit was critical, and then he rolled 00 percentile dice for a critical hit of decapitation (old school critical hit table taken from Dragon Magazine). An entry level paladin killed the dragon with a non-magical 2-handed sword with the perfect swing - odds in achieving that attack was 1 in 40,000. It was discussed for during games for decades to come. That would not have happened with karmic dice.
oooh yeah...on my first adventure, we came across a group of orc raiders. (The Dark Eye - Rule set)
the chief had a sword, which could induce fear in everyone who is able to hear him. Which we would be able to know, if we didn't had failed the investigation a few hours before.
I was seeking for glory, so I tried an aimed shot (-10) at his throat. First time using a bow, with my Thorwalian warrior (basically a goliath berserkr). Only a crit (d20) could have pulled this of, and I needed another for confirmation. Then full damage for the d6+4, to instantly down him with 20dmg, which led to a slow suffocation on his own blood...
So just 1/2400, but without it, we would also be dead.
But a damn red dragon!?! 0.o
Maybe I'm wrong but the point of karmic dice is to mitigate failure streaks no? Has nothing to do with success streaks.
@@SneakyG59
Both streaks, success and failure. Point is, it is not true random.
I love moments like this. There was a similar one in a Star Wars campaign I ran decades ago. The party was engaged in a speeder chase through the forest on a stolen cargo skiff. Searching the cargo, one of the players discovered a heavy repeating blaster with a tripod, so he set it up to fire at the enemy speeder bikes pursing them. The weapon was powerful enough that it should have made short work of the bikes but the PC's aim just didn't seem up to the task and, after a couple rounds, the best he was getting was glancing blows. Annoyed at the seeming incompetence, one of the other PCs (a xenobiologist with no real combat skills to speak of), pulled out his concealed blaster pistol and took two quick shots. The Force must have been with him because in the next instant, two of the speeder bikes were reduced to flaming wreckage. The PC manning the repeating blaster just scowls at the xenobiologist who returns a satisfied smirk.
@@Webhead123 xDD classic...
and absolute...these moments r gold
in another TDE campaign, an elf constantly missed his shots. The Druid flame-bladed the goblins guts open, in an instant... but it took him 3 rounds to get to that position, up the watchtower. But our woodelf yeeted to the corpse to loot it, while the fight was still ongoing. As he was at the corpse, I let him roll a save for "body control"...he failed, so he was throwing up, right over the loot ^^
(elf=improved sense of smell)
As a D&D tabletop gamer, we fully realize how streaky the dice can be. That’s why we bring BAGS full of them to the table. They can all be replaced, executed or praised at any time. Got to make sure you get them set up and turned to the right side before playing. :)
As another tabletop gamer, don't let me touch your dice if you want them to remain good. My friends have joked that on D20 rolls I'm essentially always rolling a D6 unless I want to fail the role in which case I only role Nat 20s XD.
Still personally keep Karmic dice off. It just feels wrong succeeding in checks that look like I should succeed at but aren't guaranteed successes :P
If people care about using certain dice, I'd ask to float test them first, to prevent accidental (or intentional for that matter) cheating.
I can't be the only player who once flushed a misbehaving die down the toilet with the rest watching... right?
@@DutchLabrat certainly not. Any reasonable gamer would dispatch the evil die to a quick watery grave.
I also used to be really superstitious about my dice, and it was a video from Great Gamemaster on UA-cam that helped changed my views on it quite a bit.
He is very much a story GM and in his games the purpose of dice is to be a vehicle for adjudicating chance. His reason for not engaging in superstitions around dice are that it accomplishes absolutely nothing and is therefore a pointless exercise. Because if it _does_ actually accomplish something--meaning that you have a special die that will roll exceptionally well whenever you need it to, then what you actually have is a loaded die and you are cheating. And in his words, he "takes great personal offense at people who cheat in a game where everything is made up."
Karmic dice were changed in a patch. They prevent streaks of bad rolls only, not good streaks.
Oh that's good
It actually seems to not be roll streaks though, but rather simply low _success frequency_ in general. It's not just streaks and not just low _rolls_ but specifically _forces successes_ (including by guaranteeing critical hits if that is the only way to beat their AC).
In addition, this is unfounded theory, but I think there's a possibility that Karmic Dice might be so-named because it makes opponent success rate the same as your success rate. Regardless if this is true or not, ultimately Karmic Dice functions more like a combat challenge normalizer, increasing likelihood of easy fights being a bit harder and hard fights being a bit easier. At least as long as the difficulty is based on the bonuses enemies have rather than their numbers or use of annoying special abilities
@@MsHojatthere's the issue that, if this is true, it pretty heavily nerfs AC-stacking builds from stuff like Paladins and Fighters. If this means rolls succeed more often, your Armor Class matters less and you'll be hit more frequently than you should. With Karmic dice, tanks will have to care less about avoiding hits and more about boosting their hit points.
@@heyfell4301yeah karmic dice honestly heavily ruins the game. if you care that much about an outcome you can always save scum. i crit failed every ogre persuasion check and so I was forced to kill them all in the goblin village. i literally had no idea that they would drop a crown that auto boosts intelligence to 17, I didn’t even know that was in the game. Karmic dice could never give that experience
@@biggiecheese2004not when you miss MULTIPLE 80% HIT CHANCES IN A ROW
After experienced Xcom, missing 95% hit chance twice in a row and hitting 5% hit chance with CRIT is normal :]
It's also more exciting... because if you're about to fail and perma-die on ironman mode... but that 5% chance..... somehow saves your life. You cheer at the screen.
The newer XCom games actually do give you hidden bonuses on all difficulties below Legendary. If you miss multiple times in a row, you get a hidden bonus to your hit chance. If your squad size is reduced below 4, the remaining members get a hidden bonus while enemies get a hidden penalty.
That reminds me of losing 10+ units against 1 in Civ4 mods when I had 90%+ odds of victory...
@@benjamincarlson6994 Than you luckier than I am. I lost both my sniper and medic maxout bc a bomb blow of the roof they were standing on :D
Same on fire emblem series lol
random guy- "Karmic dice is cheating and ruins the game"
same guy- "I failed a roll 15 times and reloaded the game 15 times."
So true lol
I ran out of lock pics, loaded and durned camic dice back on 😅
@@OneTatocats grace never roll a 1 again
Underrated comment 😂
Personally when im using karmic dice, i feel like its more of - "i miss 6 of 8 times on 65-75%, some on advantage, and hit twice with low damage roll while enemy crits me 6 out of 9 times"
Having a diviner Sorc in your party really makes you notice the difference in the rolls you do with how much the "potent dice" reaction shows up, and what the enemy rolls... with karmic dice they basically roll 16-20s constantly, while im rolling 1-10s...
If karmic dices off makes it so the enemy can also hit low and not just me, im fine with it off lol
Have karmic dice off. Failed picking a lock 6 times. 10/10 would recommend.
I rolled two 1's in a row trying to free Shadowheart from the Nautiloid ship... You only need a 2 to succeed. Restarted the game :P
@@charlesajones77you don’t need to free her to get her in the party. So you restarted for basically no reason.
@@SH1NK1R01if you want a chance to kill that demon general dude in the helm for his sword you kinda want her around
@@SH1NK1R01 you do need her to beat Commander Zhalk and obtain the fire 2H sword which carries you all the way to level 6.
@@nativedisciple2452 ok? Who cares? You are basically delaying the whole campaign for a single weapon that is actually only a marginal boost past the first few levels. And only works on specifically two handed fighter classes. So if you don’t want to bring lae zel and you are not a fighter yourself that sword isn’t carrying by anyone. You can replace that sword with the sword of justice as soon as you recruit karlach which can be done as early as level 4. Nothing will be hard enough up to that point to need the slight damage boost it gives you in that short time. It’s certainly a boost mind you. But it’s not worth a refresh or even a save scum if you failed to get it during the fight itself. That’s just fomo convincing you that you need it when you don’t.
I've been playing with it off, and I think it makes the game way more fun (and funny). It's put me into situations that I would never have intentionally put myself in, and its been fun having to fight/talk my way out of it
I turned Karmic Dice off, and of course, the first dialog I get that could start a fight, Nat freaking 20. I'm sitting there, laughing my ass off as this Halfling gets off his box and says there won't be any loot today as he and his group walk away.
You get DnD my friend. You passed the test.
I like your take 😂 Making funny dialogues that I didn’t plan for sounds more engaging 😂❤❤❤
@@aiodensghost8645 bruh that group kicked my ass on my first try and I only told them I was looking around lol
I’ve slaughter so many people 😂
1:31 It also doesn't work as well in a locked narrative like a video game. If you're playing a physical D&D game, the DM can and sometimes will take pitty on you rolling three nat 1s back to back, they can change the story however they want to mitigate such in the name of fun. Karmic Dice takes care of that.
Idk I think it's funnier to roll with the losses and just laugh at how pathetic your group can be
In my experience, the Karmic dice tends to backfire more on the player than it helps. Auntie Ethel hits like a truck and she was consistently hitting a high AC tank with it on. With all four of her rays of sicknesses from her and her clone.
Throw shit at her clones, blunter the better.
Doesn’t effect ai only player
@@splinky159 Did you even watch the video? literally said it affects everyone
@@DrZaius3141 Uhh, Ray of Sickness is an "Attack Roll" spell, that means you roll a D20, add proficiency and compare to the AC of the target, like a normal weapon attack. The CON saving throw is to avoid getting poisoned by the spell if it lands.
I found this aswell. I kept getting horrible rolls, and failing checks on stuff that should be easy pass. Wasn't uncommon for me to constantly roll 1 or 2s and as a result failing stuff that should be easy, almost guaranteed, wins with bonuses for checks that require very low numbers.
Then I read about the "Karmic Dice" option, so I turned it off. And my experience has seemed much better, and surprisingly, more balanced and more consistent, since then.
It almost feels like however Karmic Dice works, it will actively fight against you to stop the bonuses, that you invested character builds and equipment into, from actually having any effect on your chances.
The best part about the system is that you are extremely unlikely to Nat 1 Nat 1 Nat 1. The worst part of the system is that you are extremely unlikely to Nat 20 Nat 20 Nat 20. This unfortunately hurts the player twice.... enemies will never go on a missing streak against you (and since there are more of them, they benefit more from this than you do) but also you'll never go on a critical streak against them (and since there are fewer of you, the enemies benefit from this more than you do)
However, since human beings remember negatives far more often than the positives, karmic dice will help you from giving the game a bad rap just because you had shit luck. So there you have it. Run karmic dice on your first playthrough to prevent 1 1 1 from happening, because it feels stupid and horrible... and you'll remember it forever. But just know that you'll never have that epic heroic "save the day from the brink of failure" 20 20 20 either.
So on your second, third, fourth, tenth, multiplayer, playthrough? Turn Karmic dice off. It'll make it more fun, especially in multiplayer... when your dumb friend has a dumb build and rolls 1s all the time and dies. Lol.
I'd say this statement is true, but I just had today 3 nat 1s in a row in my playthrough, and I had the setting on. I was testing it out to see what it does
Karmic dice off, no save reload, 20+ hours in and i maybe got a 1 and a 2, 80% of the rolls i did, did succeed thanks to buffs, inspirations etc
Advantage basically removes the chance of rolling a 1 so only people who fail to understand the advantage system should have karmic dice on.
@@815TypeSirius oh yeah ? .. i guess you never seen both dices roll 1 as my friend did the other day.
Karmic dice was turned on because we have extremely bad luck when it comes to dice ( in pencil and paper we play lately, we get so many bad rolls that it isnt even fun anymore.. XD ).
The most sensible answer.
The problem with Karmic Dice's implementation is that it doesn't even out dice rolls, it evens out successes and failures. This means that getting a win streak can make it literally impossible to succeed on a critical dice roll that you care about and want to spend all your inspiration on.
Exactly, it negates actual stats like ac and bonuses. If it would have been only for the base dice roll I would have considered it but in it’s current state it’s not great
This is the actual issue I have with it. If it stopped you from rolling Nat 1s or Nat 20s 3 times in a row, fine. But it actually forces you TO roll a Nat 1, or Nat 20, if it deems you've failed or succeeded too many rolls in a row. Thus in a real sense, it's not minimizing the effect of luck. It's reducing the nature of your builds.
@@IlanYechezkel yeah, I stopped using it when I noticed that. I went really far out of my way to get my sleight of hand to absurd levels, but I could never make a super low DC check too many times in a row. So after that I tried playing for a while with a character with AC 10 and saw that I really didn't get hit any more than before I removed all of her armor, since the game wasn't really accounting for my AC, but just how often I got hit and how often I didn't.
@shawngillogly6873 Sven have said that in the release Karmic dice have effect only on helping with losing streaks and won't actually punish you for having good luck streaks, there has been a lot of misinformation because it used to do both directions in EA
Karmic dice prevents failure streaks, not success streaks.
The problem with the music shuffle example is that, that implementation was just not good for it's purpose. Turning shuffle on should make a disordered list of the available songs, not "pick a random song every time"
Theres a reddit post which covers its affects across a sample, and karmic dice really screws over high AC characters like paladins. I noticed it particularly early on, and after I disabled it I wasn't getting chunked every turn with my 21 AC by trash enemies. It favours glass cannon characters who act first and kill fast against small number of enemies, but in prolonged fights against numerous enemies, you will die faster.
this is exactly what i found! I had 24-26 ac all through act 2 pretty much but i was being mulched by everything. whe i got to 30+ AC in act 3, it felt like every enemy was geting crits on me all the time - cause thats all they could do to hit, and it the only time i actually felt tanky - and i was still being regularly smoked. It was only when i got the 23 con amulet the i ever felt safe, which is insane for a 30+ ac. Didnt even know karmic dice existed until i finished my first run
I started playing with a friend who has never played anything DnD related his growing love has made me love it even more. Watching him grow and learn is awesome. Its got me digging out my dice and rounding up a party for some game nights
Let the dice fall where they may, not where they "should", thats what I say.
@@theviewbot Eh, you could argue physical dice are influenced by minute weight differences physically, or by the user's throwing technique, or what have ya. I say it's all close enough to random that it is fun
@@theviewbotnothing is truly random
most modern digital dice rollers are so close to true random that the difference is meaningless.@@theviewbot
Computer rng is not truly random. You need external physical truly random input.. i have karmic dice on. And its fine..
@@ComplexConfiguration Oh to be clear I don't think it's going to ruin anyone's gaming experience to have it on. But it's overt manipulation of the dice, and it's actually going to make the game harder if you play well.
Here's an example. You work hard to maximize the tankiness of one of your characters. You hit the low 20's in native AC. Enemies start missing a bunch... well, karmic dice are now going to manipulate the likelihood for very high rolls to be higher, because of the miss rate. So, you'll get hit more than you naturally should.
Turing off Karmic dice made the game MUCH easier for me. Its intended to eliminate failure streaks, but it felt like it was also preventing success streaks until i turned it off. I noticed that i was able to predict the success or failure of a roll based on what the previous roll had been. Fights were a real struggle and then last night after i learned about it and turned it off i tanked my way through the goblin tribe with my sorcerer after having to reload a bunch because it was just straight kicking my ass.
Btw for another play through, goblins are very easy if you break the wall at the top of the camp and then permanent high ground them with an archer/caster while your melees dash into the archers for threaten
-As far as I've researched, it only prevents low roll streaks, not high ones (back when they were called "weighted dice" I think it affected both high and low), but I do think it affects everyone. So I think that it means attacks are slightly stronger, armor is slightly weaker, spells (that use saving throws) are slightly weaker, and indirectly: ranged offense and initiative/surprise is slightly stronger (since you can potentially take out some targets before they can melee or react).-
-The effects should be quite minimal though.-
Kind of a late decision to edit, but I decided to cross out this first post so that people focus more on my reply which seems more accurate.
Update: despite at one point saying that it should only affected fail streaks, it seems like it might be reducing success streaks as well. And note my change of wording. It seems as though they did a "stupid"/extreme choice by specifically tweaking the roll values to get the desired _outcome,_ rather than just avoid consecutive very low or very high _dice roll values._ This means that bonuses are a lot less effective because there is a set frequency of _outcomes_ regardless.
@@MsHojat This makes sense as I somehow kept regularly missing 90-95% chance hits in late game. It was automatically turned on for me and I checked settings to turn it off just now
I remember City of Heroes had a similar system they called "streakbreaker", I think. Basically it would keep people from rolling excessively low or high several times in a short time period.
I remember that...
Depending on your accuracy enhancement on the power it would force a hit after so many missed.
More accuracy reduces the amount of misses the system will allow to happen in a row.
Pretty sure that is how "randomness" works in most games
XCOM EU/EW had something similar and players hated it, so they took it out for 2. It feels better to fail a lot, succeed a lot, and have the percentages not lie to you.
When I had karmic dice on, I was getting a crazy number of Nat 1's on easy rolls that I could only fail with a Nat 1.
My 2nd game I failed the DC 3 wisdom check to open shadow hearts pod and also failed the check to control the helm. Lae'zel had to come. In behind to do both.
And this is before you get any inspiration...
I haven't tried turning karmic die off yet.
I turned off karmic dice and in the very next combat I missed 9 attacks in a row that all had 85% chance to land or higher.
I turned karmic Dice off after the tutorial and haven't had any problems since
@@BigFootTheRealOne I honestly can't tell if it was some sort of bug or not because the odds were crazy. It was either the UI not showing the correct percentages or turning off the karmic dice feature mid-session messed something up.
Haven't had any crazy streaks like that since that one session though. Not like... lottery winningly crazy like that one fight.
I have it on default and Shadow Heart doesn't land a single blow.
Whole combats done and she just stood there
tl;dr: Should you play with karmic dice?
No.
Sounds like Karmic Dice is overall greatly to our benefit. A single failure or success is not game breaking, there are many ways to recover from failure or to re-roll dice in this game. But a streak of failures or successes can be game warping and feel "wrong".
We don't expect a random Goblin to crit every attack they make, while our Paladin (who is designed to hit in melee) misses every attack. If that happens- the fight is not decided by who/what these entities are or the tactics you used in combat- it's just random dice rolls and you are probably going to reload that fight.
With Karmic dice on, your characters stats and the decisions you make will outweigh the rolls of the dice over the course of the play through (because it will average them out). It sounds like things will happen the way you expect them to more often, and you'll have a better experience across a play through.
Nope, and you're gay
I agree. I have no problem with it. And it can be disabled. So its fine!
You're playing D&D
Well in combat those goblins will be garunteed to hit your high AC paladins more often and the higher your AC the more they will hit.
@@neisan92 pretty sure this is misinformation. If you’re just basing it off that recent thread on the BG3 subreddit- the original poster was completely misinformed and just basing their claims on their subjective experience.
Plenty of people in the comments were calling them out.
Without real data or confirmation from the devs I would be pretty skeptical of stuff like this.
1:45. Bro... you ain't fooling anybody. That "example" is almost a direct quote of Steve Jobs. You simply heard the same point we all heard during that keynote and then you took it, that's fine. But don't claim it your own
From what I have heard from people who went into the code is you can't ever go above 80% success or 20% fail, which could be good for people who make "bad" builds, but I feel most of the time it will make things worse. Its very easy to stumble into power in this game causing that cap to hurt you imo
So far karmic has been fine for me
@ComplexConfiguration good, yea if you enjoy it keep it for sure, not trying to tell people how to play, just bring them more information
I've *felt* like Karmic has been a hindrance the further along in the game I've gotten, especially once I started getting rolls that needed to be above 20
@mrbeard7701 exactly, friends who play the game I have just told them to take the dice off as soon as they are off the ship, having it on gets you a few extra hits on the guy with the fire sword, don't remember his name
I think the karmic dice only prevents failure streaks, not success streaks. The game description confirms as much.
There is an error in the video. The patch notes (sorry I don't have the link, but it is on Steam I think April 2021) state that karmic dice only work towards positive bons and not negative ones. The rest is correct as it also applies to enemies.
Key clarification.
I like the fact that I sometimes score a victory I didn’t expect and sometimes a roll that destroys my plans.
Having to rethink is great.
And it makes the replayability absolutely perfect. Even if I know some areas, the dice will give me a different game. Combine that with different characters, the game will be unpredictable and much more fun than hand holding.
I turned it off for me personally, just cause I wanted a classic D&D experience. Had some nice challenges especially in the goblin camp and was quite mind provoking on how I would clear that part of the game. Ultimately made it with a bunch of consumables and man was it rewarding. Haven't had that much fun with turn based games in ages!
I started to play halflings exclusively for their lucky feat in TT. when you roll like me, it becomes a broken mechanic. I had a session where the 4 other players AND DM gave me their dice to roll... I still was able to abuse the lucky feat 😂😊
Haflings are great in BG 3, you can empty shops as you can avoid that automatic failure.
I agree, my first play through was a halfling and with as much as you roll in bg3 compared to table top (in my experience) its almost too good. I started a second play through now and I'm about to leave the first act and the game feels more "difficult" because of how much times I'm missing the check rolls.
As someone who's had virtually no experience with D&D, i think i'll leave it on for my first playthrough. I don't mind a limited amount of chance in rpg's (something akin to attack accuracy in pokemon and other games), but I don't personally enjoy completely random outcomes. And i'm glad Larian gives the option to choose between the two.
Someone explained it best this way:
In a real DnD game, having a bad or unlucky day isn't so destructive because the DM can have a bit of pity and make it fun. But in a videogame it's not very fun because it can feel like you have no control over what's going on in the game.
Thank you! As a dnd player, I rather have them off. Also, between playing a drow and a charisma-based class, having guidance and friends cantrips, etc., the game started to feel too easy, especially in dialog.
I like Positive Karmic dice because the whole point is to avoid frustrating situations of extreme bad luck... but the way I read it, if I happen to have really high AC or really high persuasion stats, I'll be forced to get hit or fail a conversation.
The whole point of going for really high persuasion/high AC is to make it so you'd only fail with bad luck, rather than fail because you're "doing too well".
I think some of the issue is that in programming you aren't talking about true randomness you are talking about simulated randomness, and it often has weird patterns within the randomness caused by the mechanism.
I've been writing programs and rolling dice for over four decades and the dice definitely produce fewer aberhent patterns than electronic random number simulation. Even with the dice you could definitely argue it's not "true" randomness because there might be minor flaws in the dice etc, but I feel like the bad "feel" of randomness has way more to do with the quirks of simulated randomness than a genuine human issue with "true" randomness
I don't want to seem mean, but I think this is just you being biased. There seems to be pattern in the truest random you could find, because we, human beings, are very bad at understanding randomness and. Also programs nowadays are very well able to generate pseudo random numbers in the most undiffirentiable way to "true" randomness. What is true randomness in the first place?
@@julianp.7988 We humans even mostly believe in luck, when logically it simply doesn't exist, everything happens for a reason, we're smart enough to know this. However we want to feel like we have some control (EG lucky dice), or we are special, or there is some greater power looking out for us, or we are blessed with good/bad fortune. We are more dramatic emotional beings over cold hard logic.
@@julianp.7988 you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but if you understand how random number simulation works they take a seed value and produce an operation on that seed that produces a sufficiently random result. If you use the same seed you get the same set of numbers every time. This is why it is a simulation, and in my experience both programing applications and playing dice heavy games I've noticed a real difference. Of course you'll also get biases from people fudging dice rolls etc, but I'm excluding those sorts of experiences in my observations.
A nuclear engineer once told me that (as far as we know), true randomness can occur in specific cases. I have a hard time wrapping my deterministic mind around that fact. It seems to me there that is no technical or even philosophical barrier that would prevent a program to achieve the level of randomness of a dice roll, but the lack of computational grunt to make it's patterns undecipherable to us.
@@asmodeusazarakYou make a good point, but are not the first to ponder this either. When programming, there are some wrong ways to implement the random command. But if you avoid those noob mistakes, the random number generator function you create is pretty close to being truly random. You can create a virtual 10 sided die and roll it a thousand times pretty easily. You can also store each of those rolls pretty easily. Then you can do various analysis like examine the occurrence of each possible result (like a Pareto Chart) or a do a Fourier analysis. You will find it is very close to random. How close? Several orders of magnitude closer than detectable by even the most highly gifted human that can remember and analyse thousand of data points from memory. How do I know? People have done this, many of them. Hell, it was basically one of the projects in the Khan Academy class on Javascript that I took years ago.
But I do believe you have seen a difference, and the difference is rolling a die is LESS random. How? Scientific American had an interesting article on randomness, coin flips, and why buttered bread always seems to land butter side down. They started off with the easy button answer on buttered bread landings. You need a minimum distance to do a full rotation, and that seems to be about the height from counter to floor. The same applies to a coin flip. The higher the coin is flipped and the fstare the rotation, the more rotations it can be expected to perform. This leads to being less dependant on initial conditions and results closer to true randomness. We have learned to mitigate this to a large degree through things we might not have ever thought much about. Things like a die cup that the thrower is not allowed to look into and a reasonable amount of throw applied when the dice are cast. But I would not challenge anyone who said the results are only quasi-random and initial starting conditions are still detectable in aggregate.
TL;DR How random is the "Random()" function? Random enough to be used in countless key generators and not leave a stochastic weakness to exploit and far more random than any die roll at any D&D table.
Without Karmic dice, I just got a streak of 4 consecutive nat 20s. Problem was, they were all on DC10 traps, where my sleight of hand modifier without guidance was +10. Felt both cool, and frustrating in equal measure.
I leave my fate to the gods. Not the bots.
In DOTA this is called Pseudo Random (PRNG). Its important for various reasons. Phantom Assassin (one of Dota's most famous / infamous heroes) ultimate ability is a percentage chance to critical hit for massive damage (lets say 25%). Without pseudo rng, you can literally hit someone 20 times and not crit once, or hit someone 5 times and crit 5 times in a row (true random). This can feel BROKEN. Pseudo RNG makes it so that a 25% chance FEELS like a 25% chance which is 1 crit every 4 hits which is what people STATISTICALLY EXPECT instead of the reality of randomness. People dont understand that 25% chance DOES NOT MEAN OR GUARANTEE 1 crit every 4 hits.... it is just an "expected" variable
For my second playthru I actually want a hardcore mod that disable save/load except for crashes and end/start of play session. So when you get that horrible/great roll it really feels!
DoS2 had something like that. I expect they’ll add it to BG3 soon.
You already have that mod, its called self control.
@@Zamibiathe mod is buggy sometimes
Hopefully, they'll implement an ironman mode
@@Zamibia I can't imagine telling hardcore ironmen on runescape something like this. You're missing the point of wanting a specific mode or feature like a mod for this.
Basically what it does (as I understand it) is make it less likely to roll really high numbers or really low numbers. For non-karmic dice you have a 1 in 20 chance to roll any number between 1 and 20. With karmic dice you have a greater chance (say 1 in 15) to roll average numbers "5-15" but a smaller chance (say 1 in 25) to roll really bad rolls (1-5) or really good rolls (15-20)
Not really. It attempts to balance out based on your last rolls. Roll really good, guess what a really bad roll is coming next
Thank you very useful info. Looks like a bit of hand holding.
I'm turning it off then.
From what i have seen this kicks in on the 4th roll. Examples from last two days of playing rolls - 2,3,1,20 and 1,1,2,15
TLDW; It's exactly as it's explained in the options menu. It will keep you from having too many negative rolls back to back eventually giving you better rolls if you've rolled poorly too many times.
It actually does tell you what it does specifically if you mouse over it.
It just stops game from spamming you with critical failures, with it you pretty much can only see 2 in a row, even the 2 is rather rare to see twice in row.
It also keeps most rolls more middle ground (10 ish), so once you have right buffs/base stats it's kind of hard to fail most checks.
For casuals, best to be on, for those that want true random outcomes have it off.
First thing I switched off.
I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say that the “true tabletop experience” is without karmic dice. If you are on a loss streak and you have a good DM, they can twist the story a bit so everyone is having a bit more fun.
I had a game where I was playing a warlock and I had two turns where I rolled super low on two eldritch blasts. Only 1 of the 6 beams hit. My DM on that turn had my character contacted by his patron and he gained a “boost of power”. My next two turns I had a +5 to hit and damage rolls. In exchange I had to use my last spell slot and take 1 exhaustion to gain boost.
Things like this can’t happen in the game so comparing “randomness” isn’t accurate.
Karmic dice gets your tanks killed easier. Turning it on or off depends on if you run a lot of high AC characters.
When tested in the beta it reduced ac 14 to statistically ac 11. Apparently they "fixed" it, if you trust larian to have fixed a bug.
So true. I play 6D Star Wars tabletop. We call it the curse of 1's if you get a strand of 1's in your sim. And even rolling 6's can be unlucky because a few of our GMs use wild die as well.
I immediately turned it off, because I don't want to lose just because the game thinks I have been lucky enough already. That's just not right.
Yeah, same here. If I've gone all out and built a character with a 95% chance to avoid attacks through AC, I don't want to get hit 20% of the time because of the Karmic Dice trying to level the playing field. I don't mind a bad luck streak, but I do mind a rigged luck streak (regardless of who it favors).
You can skip to 5:32 for the answer to the title of the video.
Also note that karmic dice doesn't keep you from going on a winning streak, it just stops you from a losing streak.
Given they have altered the rules of critical success and critical failure I think you should have it turned on. In the rules a natural 1 or 20 is only an automatic failure/success on attack rolls, NOT on skill checks or saving throws. I had a triple natural 1 on a DC 10 lockpick check despite having a +4 from Dex, +3 from proficiency, +1d4 from guidance, +1d4 from bless and +1d10 from Warlock Fiend Trait. Should have been impossible to fail, but with their altered rules it was a failure. If they are going to change the rules to your detriment you should turn something on to benefit you.
this is my biggest ick with the game, probably gonna install a mod that changes this
So currently, I have only ever reloaded when I have fucked up in combat (majorly, like nearly full party wipe) or I when into an area accidently not realizing I might get shit on.
All my dice roles I have kept in my playthrough, its pretty fun, and you always have inspiration if you didn't like your first role.
Just turn it off. Live the D&D life
Enjoy life.
Regarding your example with playlists, afaik this is done by shuffling the order of songs just like you'd shuffle a deck of cards - you draw each card exactly once but in random order. This guarantees you never get duplicates until each song was played once, then you just need to reshuffle. The same logic is used in all modern official Tetris games by the way, for the same reasons.
Feels like, as much as I love the game and have been a fan of Larian over the years, I hate the inconsistency in the depth of descriptions. Details that would be great to know, but you don't have any way of finding out until you either finalize a selection or have used an item. For instance, Warding Bond. When selecting it in the level up menu and when actively using it, it doesn't say that the caster will also take the same amount of damage - it only says it if you hover over the buff icon once it's cast and if you hover over the 'Until Long Rest' stat on the spell itself, the former of which comes off as a 'Little too late for that note, thanks' while the latter feels like a very oddly placed tooltip because you wouldn't think to hover over that part for a detail like that. Another example is the Elixirs. Most of them say that they last until long rest and/or that they replace they effects of other elixirs, but there's also several that literally only provide a stat buff and have no mention of a timer or removal of other elixir buffs. So I saved an Elixir that gives resistance to ALL damage types for a really big battle, like Moonrise, and once I was standing outside a certain set of doors ahead of a specific boss fight, I went ahead and prepped all my buffs. Because all the Elixirs I'd used up to this point lasted until long rest, I wasn't expecting the one I'd been saving to have a 10 turn timer on it, which I didn't notice until it was at 3 turns remaining while applying the rest of my buffs. Thankfully I had a quicksave right before buffing, but it sure as hell would have been awesome to know that this was the one Elixir I'd ever had that had a timer, unlike all the ones I'd used before it. Little things like that, they seriously have to work on. I want all the info on the items I have. If one Elixir is different from the rest, I'd like to know. Popping one only to just then learn that it's one of the only Elixirs that works differently from the rest isn't a fun experience, it's annoying.
Not sure how accurate the testing was however a fairly large scale test was carried out by someone on Reddit. Because Karmic dice also affects the enemies rolls, they claimed there was a nearly 400% increase in damage received throughout a play-through with Karmic Dice turned on.
The issue is the devs reported this was due to a bug. So we can’t use that test as a baseline
@@NoobQQMoarBut are we sure they've fixed it?
A couple months ago when I was playing D&D with some buddies I had a terrible streak of rolls. Throughout the entirety of the night, I had 1 roll that was over a 5 (it was a 10). Every other roll that night for attacks, ability checks, and saving throws were all between 1-5. It was truly the worst night of D&D for me. I was using 4 different d20s too!
It depends on the RNG I do, stuff like map or song selections I usually just ban things that have been selected for a few turns.
This simple solution works EXTREMELY well for playlists. Always consider the use case. SO if I ban a song for 3 turns it can at MOST play every 4. time. and even if that happened more then twice in a row almost no one is going to notice. Arrange these bans so that a typical session can even in the worst case only cause a few repetitions.
6:32 What you forget at a P&P tabletop session is there is a GM. Tabletop is a game where multiple people have fun together and spin a awesome tale... together. The GM wears that title for a reason, in every P&P game I was part of, the GM was always there to balance things out. Was the party to successful? The GM would spawn in a tougher challenge. Did the party manage to not figure out a crucial information despite talking with half a village? The GM would add more chances to find a paper and as luck wants it the half-literate Half-orc would manage to read it.
I am still unsure about Karmic Dice. Does it record rolls for each character separately? Does it just check for success/failure? Imagine the whole party fail their perception checks to find traps or other things but one of them is specialized to pass such checks and he just fails this check because he succeeded not falling prone at the greasy floor a moment ago.
Imagine you failing literally every time you attack... but every time you need to do a ability check because enemies keep cast spells at him he passes them. I had that, every of my attacks fail but my characters evaded every enemies attack, for rounds on end.
I thought all karmic dice did was prevent me from rolling several nat 1s or nat 20s in a row. Turns out, it's more nuanced than that. Thanks for the explanation.
I used to play tabletop D&D with a group where people would practice roll with their brand new dice they bought, and they would get upset if they rolled a nat 20 on a practice roll... as if they "used up" that nat 20 so that they would be less likely to roll a nat 20 for a roll that mattered.
But that's not how random dice rolls work, but it is how BG3's Karmic dice works.
Honestly after using Karmic dice (which were the default option) for a while. I eventually stopped using them and realized not using them is better lol. The Karmic dice seem to be set up to not make you fail back to back, but I also feel like they are made to not make you win back to back. E.g. I'm pickpocketing the store owner at the grove with lv4 asterion. He has 1+ slight of hand from gloves, 4+ from proficiency, 4 from dex and another 1/4 from guidance.
If I steal stuff that needs 1 to 3 dice back to back with karmic dice after the 3 or 4th successful pickpocket you seem almost guaranteed to fail no matter how low the dice nr you need is. The dice throws get progressively less favorable. I was afraid to take anything over 4 things because it would always fail. But without Karmic Dice that's not the case it seems and I can easily pickpocket a dozen smaller things at a go
Karmic dice only go one way, actually. They don't make you fail if you have a streak of successes. They USED TO, but it felt like shit so Larian made them purely positive.
I turned off karmic dice a few days ago and swear it does actually make a pretty big difference - I crushed the Gnoll encounter easily on my first playthrough but wiped three times in a row on my second, which was horribly embarrassing. Likewise, when I squared off against the phase spider matriarch, I smashed her face in with just a couple of rounds.... whereas on my first playthrough she was my first true roadblock.
It's not any more or less fair - it just means you really can't take anything for granted, IMO.
What I’m hearing is it’s a little bit like a RNG compressor. Like with audio compression it brings down the loud and brings up the quiet. Karmic dice bring up the low rolls and down the high rolls. Generally speaking I know this isn’t how it’s formulated but it’s essentially what the end result looks like right?
I turned off karmic dice and within 30 minutes had a 1 in 512 coin flip event meaning one character missed for 9 turns in a row and basically did nothing the entire combat followed by a 1 in 4600 which is 3 misses in a row at 94% hit chance. Started thinking perhaps their hit calculations are wrong, but of course that's the nature of pseudo random, these events will happen. I don't personally find having one character do nothing for an entire fight purely due to chance to be particularly interesting so I switched it back on.
There is a second part to the idea that people don't like true randomness.
There is also the fact that most programmers suck at actually properly generating and using random numbers.
3:00 "You can random the same number many many times in a row". I almost failed a programming assignment in university because the prof rolled the same number 30 times in a row.
I was running around on my first play through. Just had landed onto the ground and was clicking on everything because i am a hoarder. Was just acting like a dragon with a dragon character. I click on something, no idea what it was but it blew up and lit everyone fire. And they died. So i treated that as canonical lore and restarted game as a druid.
In one session of a few hours with karmic dice on: I tried to pick a lock, DC20. I rolled 7 checks, 2 of which were advantaged. Out of the 9 total dice, 6 of them didn't roll above a 8. Later on, I was fighting a gnoll that had 1 hp left. All 4 of my party members rolled to hit, 2 had advantage, they all missed, then the gnoll multi-attacked one of my characters and dealt half of his health in damage. If I had to sum up that day, I failed 7 out of 10 rolls and it was so much pain lol. I actually turned off karmic dice after that... I haven't noticed much of a difference. I'll do fine for a while then suddenly BAM, polterdice. :C
Those tabletop evenings, where you just can't roll anything higher than a 10 can really suck.
Aa a DM I can tell you the closest thing to real ttrpg's is having all but the players dice rolls b3 karmic, mostly to prevent bad guy win streaks. It's called fudging, and while I may do it less than once per session, most DM's will do it sometimes.
One of my favorite examples is Tim Cain talking about the random soundtrack playlist for Fallout at GDC
I have been adamantly claiming that this system should be included in enemy loot drop tables since I was bloody 10, playing FFX and having to farm drops for goddamn hours that aren't even rare.
>enemy drops pieces of an armour set all with equal drop chance
>2 chest pieces, 3 gauntlets, 2 helmets, 1 nearly broken controller, and 32 pairs of leggings later you are finally done
Karmic dice disincentivises high AC or hit bonus. Because it smooths out successes and failures, a charcter with 21+ AC will take upwards of 3x the expected damage, because many enemies would need natural 20s to hit. Karmic dice ensures they get some successes, and those successes are necessarily criticals. Thus, a character with 18AC takes *less* damage on average than one with 23AC with Karmic dice on. It should be turned off ASAP
At one point in early access, karmic dice was bugged and borfed your rolls more often than not. It left a generally sour taste in players' perception of karmic dice.
I call BS! I dont believe there are any true random per the dice outcomes. Look I should have screen shot the afternoon combat, but in one particular combat.. I rolled 5 number 1s in a row. Crit failed 5 times. This is unfortunate. I should have played a lottery. The odds of consecutive 1's. not feasible. Oh, and to add more injury. It wasnt just this combat. Out of let say fifty rolls. Five were above the number 6. Karm dice or not.. Its not real. I turned it off and yea I get some bad ones at times but have yet to repeat. I was seriously bugging the xcom vibe.
yep, currently trying solo early game and it feels like hell both ways. With karmic dice, I am convinced that there is some sort of seed going on. Basically, if you save, get a bad roll and reload a save, you will be getting the same bad rolls over and over again. Just for testing, after rolling 3 on attack roll, I started reloading the save with it and I got: 2,4,1,1,3,3,7,2,1 in a row. Yeah, not THAT unlikely to happen, but it's the thing I notice everytime I reload with karmic dice. My next roll feels always to be predetermined. On the other hand, with karmic dice off, fate of my early game solo character is completely sealed by the rng. 3 misses = death. And that happens way too often. I want to do solo honor mode later without cheese, but getting through the first act seems waaaay too luck based. In party these things balance themselves out, since you are potentially 4 times as powerful and have 4 times more rolls. It seems for a solo playthrough there is no way to make first act consistent without stealth/barrelmancy/constant overleveling/etc.
so as a side note, having already played way to much BG3, without the karmic dice, im sure that they have a issue with the number generator as on 3 seperate occassions i have rolled multiple 1s in a row, as in....with a barbarian reckless attacks, i rolled 7 1's in 4 attacks...and then a couple of battles later (maybe a total of 30 rolls inbetween, i rolled another 6 1s in a row. with the karmic dice enabled i stopped rolling absolutely insane odds and instead had a far more consistent "random". whilst i cant confirm without ripping the code apart, im convinced that the reason that they added the karmic dice is because of the same bug they had in divine divinity where difficulty affected the dice rolls.
Regardles of your choice, i have noticed one thing, i nat 1 or low roll (like roll a 2 regardless of dc) way more often after act 1. Like even in act 3, i get a dc 10 check, which would implicitly be a 50% pass rate without buffs, and then lose on the next 8 rolls regardless of ability check modifiers by rolling like 8, 9, 4 after the guidance d4.
Idk it just feels its way harder to pass checks later regardless of their dc.
Computing and programming does not have "TRUE RANDOMNESS". Nothing RNG in computing is truly random. It's always tied to some non-random element, such as the CPU clock, position of the mouse, etc.
As a lifelong TTRPG gamer with the occasional 4-hour session where literally every one of my rolls fails (minor case of Will Wheaton syndrome), I can't appreciate Karmic Dice enough.
I did some mind numbing testing using a character with a 32 AC in an encounter where nothing can hit me unless they roll a 20. And what happens is their odds of rolling a critical hit is suppose to be 5% but after doing reloads of the same fight and letting it play out by just clicking end turn and recording each enemy's combat rolls. It turns out their odds of critically hitting goes up to 30%.
This is even with Karmic dice turned off..
Playing into Act 3 with Karmic dice. Turned off during the Mindflayer ship part, turned it back on later. Basically had constant low 1-6 rolls on all my checks during dialogue (maxed out strength failed all strength rolls against Astarion, failed the mind flayer check, the crypt dialogue check), and bullshit critical misses during the Crypt battle on the surface. Had a miss, then critical miss, then hit, then another critical miss and several more similar misses with 70% hit chance, while the enemy constantly hit my party. Checking the Combat Log and all my misses/failes were in the bellow 10 and most of the time short of success. Then I turned on the karmic dice and the game immediately started to get fair and my tactical decisions were rewarded. It felt more randomized to me too, and honestly that's actually how it should be. Unlike in real life, random is random in coding, there are no multiple variables that affect how a dice rolls when you throw it. So unless a game has a full physics simulation for shaking and throwing dice, I will stick to karmic dice and rather have less streaks than bullshit numbers.
I got 3 nat ones in a row, a 5, 4, then 7... on a required roll of 10... used up all my re-rolls... figured the game didnt want me having the loot and tossed the chest off a cliff... and it broke open. (And this was with karmic on). Karlach has become my parties master locksmith, The Karlachsmithing Barbarian.
I actually have experience with spotify shuffle not being truly random.
Everytime I clear my cache, I get new songs. It seems to play the same 100 songs everytime I shuffle play my playlists and then after clearing 18gb+ of cache, it finally feels random again.
In my experience, turning karmic dice off has helped noticeably. No real way to measure this, but misses are less and I unlock and disarm more often. At least with it off, if I have bad luck, I know it's my own bad luck.
Love this game though, big time.
I love the randomness of your comment being RIGHT below the comment "I turned off karmic dice and in the very next combat I missed 9 attacks in a row that all had 85% chance to land or higher."
@@amacaddict interesting. So your experiencing the opposite of me.
btw, sorry for missing and not adding a reply to you. I think that would've been better.
@@NotThatBob It was someone else's comment. I haven't experienced anything, as I have to wait for the PS5 version. I'm as confused as ever after reading all, and I mean all the comments as to off or on. I have horrible 'luck' so I don't know.
@@amacaddictit's really funny seeing how people are sort of proving why larian has implemented the system of karmic dice. Even if it only affects a small percent of players, true random can really suck sometimes! And the reviews could potentially reflect that!
Man I have Karmic Dice on... I got three Nat 1's in a row on a chest unlock that happened on stream. If this helps people, I definitely haven't seen it lol.
10/10, would recommend using either system.
Ive had horrible rolls with karmic dice on. One time I literally rolled 4 nat 1s in a row while trying to pick a DC 15 lock with a +7 bonus. Ive decided to just turn them off, so I can feel like rng is not on my side instead of trying to actively punish me for good results realier on.
When D&D 4ed came out, I played the introductory sample encounter, (I think it was against a small party of goblins and gnolls?) three different times with different parties and different DMs. Total party wipe all three times. I don't think I rolled double digits on an attack roll once. Just stood there swinging at the wind until everyone was dead. Never played 4ed again.
You also forget to mention that there is no true randomness in modern computer! Since in basics of the computer there are 0 and 1. True or False. There no room for randomness. So all "random" algorithms is try to simulate the randomness instead. And here you have two approaches
Pseudo-Random Number Generators (PRNGs) - a computer uses a seed number and an algorithm to generate numbers that seem to be random, but are actually predictable.
True Random Number Generators (TRNGs) - measure randomness from physical phenomena using hardware and integrate it into a computer. Computers use unpredictable processes, such as atmospheric noise or radioactive decay.
Thus for TRNG you need additional Hardware to be on PC which is impossible for PC gaming... that leaves you with PRNG which is not truly random
I rolled a 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 to fail the same roll 5 times last night (burnt 4 inspiration, just because i was so shocked). Literally counted up the list until the last jumped 2. I try not to save scum if I have to burn an inspiration, but I've never hit that load button faster. Absolutely ridiculous
I turned off the karmic dice for my first play through, I don't savescum but I will save in the middle of a massive fight if things are going well, but not like 'before every roll', just the once, and have completed act 1 so far. My main is a drow sorcerer with alarion, shadowheart and laezel. So far the only fight I went on a serious whiffing streak was Grym, arguably one of the worst fights to have that happen, not one of my sorc spells landed. Also where I discovered that achievements can contain spoilers, because I did not know or figure out beforehand what that achievement reveals having done the fight the hard way apparently (third times the charm).
I can accept true random rolls because I can’t get (as) mad at the universe. When I have karmic dice on though I’m always wondering if this really remarkable bad roll was because of the system or actual chance. At least with the feature off I’ll know that’s not the case. Besides having the game decide that ive had too much good or bad luck is bullshit. I hate critical failure more than anyone, but this is a poor way to go about it.
Edit: I’m not a hardcore dnd player and I definitely felt like something was off when it was turned on, again probably my own bias, but having it turned off I know for certain that any misgivings or feelings I have towards the rolls are definitely my own bias.
That's the thing, we can all get avoiding horrible luck streaks, even DMs do some of it themselves by changing the DC behind the scenes or figuring some other, fun, way to get the players to progress, so it makes sense to have a karmic dice in the game as there's no actual DM to help you out.
But punishing good luck is odd, specially when good "luck" could just be you clad in heavy armor, shield and everything. The enemy is missing you often because you're armored, so now they'll be forced to hit you because you're avoiding too much. Or maybe you've got really high persuasion on your bard and suddenly the game is going to force you to roll low because you're succeeding too often.
i rolled 3 critical fails in a row, i lost my fuckin mind and deleted the character out of rage
I like Karmic dice. Not for my character’s well being but more for accurate enemy difficulty. In the very limited time I played dnd, there were so many times when a cr3 encounter would wipe the level 5 party, or a big cr10 boss would be completely wrecked by the same party, just due to amazing or terrible dice streaks. That’s fine in tabletop stuff, but in a video game where you need to gather info on how your build is going or what you need to improve in your party, dice streaks from enemies completely obfuscate how difficult the encounter is supposed to be. Now I know I can scroll through a combat log and look at every roll and do the math on exactly how lucky I or the enemy was, but that’s just not fun. Instead, I can just have a feature of the game that basically says “yeah that Minthara lady beat you cause your play sucked or your team sucked” and actually have info to use to progress.
I wish there was an enemy only Karmic Dice though.
my karmic dice off expirience.
Charater 1, 70% hit chance... miss
Charater 2, 80% hit chance... miss
Charater 3, Fuck, i gonna use magic missile
The reason for this is that a d20 is too swingy and dynamic. Over time, a d20 has proven itself to be one of the worst dies you could use for an RPG. It's not very heroic when your 5th Level Barbarian misses half of the time in every combat encounter.
I always had this feeling that rolls felt weird but had no idea why. Now it makes so much sense.
If you know what you`re doing - disable karmic dice. If your party has a real tank, like 20+ AC OR you have a one-hit-kill-all character, then the system will be in favor of AI. If normally your tank will take 5-10%of damage to his face, then with this option on... it will be like 40%. It will be the same picture for every optimised character.
Fun fact that rng can seem not as random:
Birthday paradox, If you have a class of 23 children, there is 50% chance there are 2 in the group with the same birthday.
I don't know if the dice are fixed in the last patch, but if not, then they're broken. When I turn Karmic Dice off, I have rolled on many occasions using advantage rolls (two dice per roll), landing on the same number every time (1 , 1 or 7, 7 or any number) or rolling the same number repeatedly on one die (roll 5 hit reroll and 5 and then reroll and 5 once more). When I turn on Karmic dice, this will not happen. Karmic Dice is fixing a flawed random system. I have found many bugs in this game, but the dice is the one that makes me the most angry.