I used to always try for the best outcome but with this have it seems like half of the time a failure also leads to an amazing consequence and story.
Like this from act one in the Underdark:
spoiler
I had to find a hidden gnome that could supply me with gunpowder, but she was so much on edge that she lit up the barrel of gunpowder and blew up the whole room, leaving half of my party dead. A suicide gnome bomber. I couldn’t convince her that I was not an enemy. Reloaded just to see if I could successfully do it, but much preferred the first outcome of the dice roll, so had to reload and try 6 times until I failed again. What a game!
If we’re talking specifically about dice rolls, I generally accept failures. But I absolutely save-scum to get around anything I perceive as “videogame bullshit” such as an unexpected scene triggering a conversation on a character I would NEVER want having that conversation, even if they pass the rolls it feels icky to have someone like Lae’zel playing diplomat.
I feel like this is one of the aspects of DnD the game doesn’t do a great job of. In the tabletop you sometimes have one character handling the conversation but you can usually switch pretty easily. Like the paladin could be talking to someone and fail to persuade them, then the barbarian steps in to intimidate or something.
It does bother me quite a bit how conversations are so one-on-one. I really appreciate the peanut gallery comments from my companions, but they’re too few and far between. I would love if there was some way to make manual checks based on the dialogue but still totally dependent on the player understanding what types of check they might need.
E.g., I’m talking to an NPC as Tav, but the NPC mentions something which I pick up on as sounding religious (and my Tav isn’t versed in religion). I should be able to make a religion check as whichever companion I want – essentially, let the player role play for the whole group the same way an actual group of people would in DnD. The game is already meta-gaming for you in exactly this way, by performing, say, a religion check when my character probably wouldn’t have picked up on any religious undertones, and now I’m wondering why my character suddenly knows about some obscure religious proverb or some such.
Yeah, I wish that would have been implemented. Maybe at a later update or a mod?
This is the approach I take. I can roll with character deaths and dice rolls that fundamentally alter the trajectory of the game - I just can’t tolerate losing my agency to quirks of the engine. I once lost 3 companions because they were standing on a trap during a cutscene - didn’t hesitate to reload in that case.
Traps in this game are so frustrating. Why are you walking into the trap I just warned us all about?!
I hated this too and I saw on a YT video that if anybody says anything about a trap you can right click the mouse and the entire party will stop moving instantly. It’s not a great solution but it has helped immensely after I learned about it.
Exactly the same here. Did I somehow click something behind the camera, causing my moron to run directly at the giant enemy crab I just managed to carefully avoid? Yeah I’ll reload.
Same if it’s a dialogue option I (or the NPC I’m talking to) clearly misunderstood. In tabletop or real life it could be cleared up by “no, party member, I only told the bad guy I’d help him as a lie” even if it added a persuasion or deception check. In game, there’s just no dialogue option to say “sorry, i didn’t mean it that way” in most situations. See also: accidentally romancing the wrong person as many players apparently do
Yea I had an instance of this as well. “I totally agree to do this evil thing in your place, leave it up to me guys go have a drink on me” was a lie. I couldn’t make up the disapproval from 2 other party members even when I saved the person afterwards.
At this point I basically assume that if something doesn’t have a deception check attached, friends and foes will both believe it 100%
You know what that’s probably correct. I will look out for that going forward.
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I have definitely had some happy accidents, which only makes me wish even more for the ability to see what ANYONE in my party can say instead of just the accidental face.
Karlach is a surprisingly adept negotiator with her “I’LL CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD AND MAKE YOU TONGUE YOUR OWN ASSHOLE” style of persuasion.
Surely the main point is rolling with dice rolls.
Doesn’t save scumming kind of take the point out of having the rolls?
Feels like it would suck a lot of the fun out the game to me.
A lot of games just don’t put much thought into players that constantly fail at things and don’t really make it enjoyable.
BG3 have something called karma dice to balance it out if you’re unlucky with your rolls. It’s on by default.
I always roll with the rolls, failure is part of the game.
Yes, I’m aware of the option, but I was talking more about a failure being jsut that - a failure with no alternative interesting path or development. Obviously not the thing with BG3.
it’s so bad though! It makes your AC and hit chance not matter in the long run, at that point why even bother?
Fun
Kind of, for me some rolls I’m fine with accepting failure and some I’m not. I have accepted some very serious consequences from failed rolls but sometimes I just don’t want to deal with it.
Ultimately I guess everyone plays the game differently.
Depends on how devastating the outcome is, and whether I feel it’s locking me out of the play style I wanted. It’s my first playthrough, I’ll prob be more into letting the dice fall where they will on the next go around.
I almost never replay games but with this one there’s just so many different paths through, different characters. EG I keep seeing people talk about Karlach as a player character but… let’s just say after meeting fairly early on I guess I chose wrongly, because she was not joining my party on account of
spoiler
having no head
Oh you missed out, wyll has been permanently in camp since I met Karlach. She’s an anchor of the team in my book as a super tanking barb also doing 40ish damage around with a maul I gave her
I will 100% be saving her next go around. Everyone keeps saying how fun she is to have around.
I completely neglected Astarion, found him initially annoying, plus the cheeky fuck
spoiler
literally tried to drink my blood while I was sleeping
! Also haven’t used Will at all, nor Halsin, nor any of the many other characters that can be recruited. Actually looking forward to replaying with a completely different team.
She’s the biggest kid. It’s adorable.
Has some strong performances in scenes later, too.
She’s the biggest kid. It’s adorable.
Never thought it possible that a game choice would make me feel guilty, but here we are haha.
I’m not big on replaying games, but I’m missing out on so much content by murdering everyone, that I’m looking forward to playing again as a good guy. To be clear, there’s no shortage of content for murderhobos. The game is just fabulously dense.
Failure had a massive impact on my story. I wasn’t planning on going for an evil run, but I couldn’t stop someone from doing something very bad and it changed everything, from characters, to main story, to even gameplay since a character’s kit changed. People died, and probably the personality of the character changed, too (I’ll find that out next run).
I hated it in the moment, but I’m glad I did it because it’s made the run so memorable.
I’ve still been loading when dumb gameplay happens, like how Tav just walked into a room to cast a spell I thought she had range on, or I forget to bring the rest of the party into combat after I broke a party member off to ambush.
As for who did the thing, it was a late Act 2 spoiler:
It was Shadowheart, in that moment
I too ended up with an more evil run than intended due to “failure” or maybe more underestimating the consequences of my (in)action which led to the death of a companion. In almost every other recent game I played I would have reloaded at that point. But it coincidentally aligned with me finding the Ancient Tome so I changed my Conjurer Wizard to a Necromancer and dipped into the evil side. I don’t regret it at all. So now I go with whatever happens.
:: spoiler As for who did the thing, it was a late Act 2 spoiler: It was Shadowheart, in that moment
I think I know what you’re talking about, and I save-scummed to avoid it, because I needed
redactedat the time. Was pretty dramatic and surprising!
I don’t reload combat unless I totally wipe, or want to start the fight over entirely.
I reload most of the other checks because failure is rarely interesting here, there’s no fail forward or succeed with cost. It’s especially irritating when my character flubs a roll they have like +10 on.
I don’t typically reroll stuff that has a very high dc that feels like my character couldn’t do. Like if there’s a DC 20 check and I have a +1, I’ll probably just accept the loss.
I’d rather it was like fo:NV where you either have the skill or you don’t.
I reload a lot. If failures led to interesting outcomes more often then I’d stick with them, but they usually just lead to combat.
If by rolling I loose characters I’m invested in and my only options are 3 Charisma rolls on my 10 Charisma character, each with a 15 skillcheck? You bet I’m save scumming the fuck out of that! Otherwise I’ll use Inspiration and only save scum if I have both proficiency and a high ability score and the dice decide they don’t feel like rolling above 3 today.
I’m reloading a lot right now as I’m trying to figure out the “video game physics”. I’ve misunderstood a few game mechanics so I’ve reloaded to try again.
I’ll probably also reload to open doors and stuff just to see the content behind there. My game time is limited so I want to see as much as I can on my run through the game.
For dialog & ability checks, I feel like failing is part of character design, and if I’ve chosen to sacrifice charisma for constitution, then I should play the low CHA path. There’s always revivify, but I have scummed over real death. Sometimes, I’d look up the game consequences of success/failure, and it’s never game-breaking. For all the ‘choices have consequences’ talk, you still have to be able to finish the game. That said, years of RPG experience has taught me to always have a max CHA talker and a max DEX lockpicker.
I will roll with failures if they’re narratively interesting. Failed to open a door and used my last set of lock picks? Reload.
Failed a roll and pissed off the NPC I was trying to charm? Them’s the breaks! 😜
My latest toon is a monk with no charisma, so I’m constantly failing skill checks. I could just go the violence way right off and succeed all the time, but often the failures are funny to watch.
Glad to hear it’s enjoyable to fail in BG3. I haven’t played it yet due to lack of free time. But when I played Disco Elysium, there I had so much time wasted on reloading to roll again non-recoverable rolls. In DE they were often just cutting you of from enjoying the moment.
Disco Elysium is a game about constant failures. It’s a central theme in the game. Save scumming in that game, it feels like it would lessen the impact of the story.
While I agree, DE does have a couple of moments where it breaks its own design principle of “fail forward”. Not so much when it comes to progressing the main story, but that isn’t really the point of the game anyway.
The vast majority of rolls in DE are totally fine to fail, however (and failure sometimes results in a superior outcome!).
DE IS a bit touch and go in the beginning though. Especially if you have a character without a ton of starting Morale. I lost of a good chunk of game time because I wandered into the pawn shop, realized that I had pawned my gun during a bender, and lost the game because my character just gave up on life. I had to avoid that line of discussion completely to make progress.
That’s true, and doubly so if you chose to start with a 1 in Health and/or Morale. Pretty soon you’ll have enough healing items to not care about damage to either, though.
I failed the notorious late-game Shivers check twice. Though I do sometimes wonder if I should have just savescummed it the second time, if I had, I never would have found one of the most memorable parts of the game for me (the phone call).
Yeah, that check is actually a great example of failure being a favorable outcome since that bit of content is great (I’m assuming you refer to a certain radio station).
I completely missed it on my first playthrough since I did every possible bit of side content before progressing the main story, so I had like ten bonuses to that check.
I found most failed rolls in DE made me enjoy the moment more, sometimes even moreso than a success. Especially with non-recoverable red checks. The only times I save scummed were when I kept failing a white check I had a really high chance on, or when I really wanted to see both outcomes on a red check. The only required checks in the game give you hundreds of bonuses if you explore the area around them first.
When it comes to save scumming for a more perfect route, I always like to let my first run in a game play out however it does, because that’s my one chance to experience the game at face value, so suffering only makes it better. Then I make my second run a perfectionist run for the catharsis.
I think you have your games backwards lol. 99% of checks in BG3 have no interesting failure states. They almost all lead to combat or less content overall. Whereas disco Elysium actually has tons checks that are enjoyable or interesting to fail.
It depends. Sometimes I’ll save scum a success if I rolled with a failure previously. Just to see the outcome. Usually I just roll with my failures, though.
I don’t reload dialogue failures, but honestly between Enhance Ability and Guidance I rarely fail, and when I do I usually have 4 Inspiration saved up for rerolls.
I’ve reloaded during fights to test interactions (“does throwing an unconscious person deal damage to them?”) but not to, for example, undo a bad turn that led to an NPC death.
How do you actually throw a NPC? Most are too heavy for my barbarian.
Cast enlarge on your character. Size matters a lot. They are a lot easier to through if they are a size smaller than you. It works very well with goblins.
I dunno, I just had Karlach right click them and choose “throw” (throwing them at the ground deals one damage, btw). Since they were unconscious I had already looted their equipment, which may have reduced their weight.
Thanks, I’ll have to experiment as I’ve never managed to throw anybody so far. Just chests outside of combat and several axes.
I’ve been able to throw most halflings so far.
If I critically fail a roll that I would have succeeded on otherwise if rolling a 1 wasn’t instant fail on a check with my highest bonuses, you best believe I’m using an advantage die to re-roll or reload my save if I am out of those.
If I fail a check for something I am not built to handle, I let it slide. Unless it’s a forced dialogue and it chose the worst possible character for the interaction.
Mostly stupid mistakes and the big decisions, like accidentally starting a fight with an entire faction or a misclick causing something really bad. I try to keep it to a minimum though, because half the fun is being surprised and going with the flow. But I do have a general “theme” in mind, and the dialog options make following it a bit difficult sometimes.
