Right now I think my main complaint is that there's no group jump. Sick and tired of herding pcs that can easily jump over a gap but you have to constantly clear the path for them, or the damn spider that can leap over a house getting stuck on some stairs.
For movement convenience:
-Characters should never stand around out of combat in a hazard, they should seek the closest exit
-Characters should jump over hazards if you tell them to walk to the other side of a hazard
-Characters should jump over ledges if you tell them to walk to the other side of a ledge
I keep picking up this game, thinking this time it'll be the one where everything clicks and I'll just cruise right through Act One!
...and it never does. The combat in this game is so, so bad. It's just terribly unfun. Every combat is a steamroll, either for you or against you, and there's no in-between. And I can't figure out how to make fights go better.
I really disagree! I'm having a blast with the combat so I'm wondering where it's going wrong for folks. Can you describe what you're not fisnding good or interesting about it? Maybe walk through how you're handling a round of combat?
A typical fight:
Specifically, the first fight with a handful of goblins inside the Shattered Sanctum
Enemy goes first. Everyone targets the mage, and he drops.
My ranger's up. Tag somebody with Hunter's Mark, shoot 'em with a longbow. Average 8 damage, not enough to drop the target.
More enemies go. Fire an AoE, hit 75% of the party, inflict a status (in this case, acid).
Laz is up. Move out of the acid, Menacing Attack on the closest enemy. 91% chance to hit, but I miss anyway. (of note: there is no "91%" on a d20. It should be in increments of 5; 90%, or 95%. 91% never makes sense.)
Archers shoot a fire arrow at my party, lighting the ranger on fire.
My ranger's up again. Shoot my quarry, it dies. Jump out of the fire.
Enemies are up again, kill the mage. This is effectively game over, but let's see it through to the end anyway.
They target my ranger next, knock her down.
Cleric's next, and Shadowheart goes down.
At this point it's just Laz, and she's at half health. Note that the enemies attacked in order of lowest AC to highest and never missed. Laz swings, hits, does 6 damage. Enemy resists Frighten.
Enemies kill Shadowheart.
Laz kills an enemy.
My ranger is killed.
Laz chases around the archers until she's killed.
Game over.
Every combat is like this. Try a combat: if every attack the enemy does hits and I miss 60%+, I lose. Quit the game, come back later, try again. If the RNG's in my favor, an the enemy misses more than I do, I win. Most of the time I effectively only have 3 characters in my party, because the mage is dropped almost immediately.
Other examples of this:
The 2 ettercaps / 2 phase spider combat Pixie mentioned. If you pass the skill check and don't alert the ettercaps, they swarm you while the phase spider picks you off from above. The ettercaps keep you locked down and give Infected while the phase spiders kill you. Game over. But if you fail the skill check and alert the ettercaps, you can pick them off one at a time and then dash in to attack the spiders. Much more reasonable, but ass-backwards.
Deeper in phase spider cave, spoilers:
There's a giant phase spider that does 25+ damage per spit attack, and it's an AOE, which effectively wipe out your entire back line if they're anywhere near the mage. I haven't been able to figure out how you're supposed to win that fight, but I also sort of think you're not supposed to because you can sneak by them easily enough.
In the swamps later on:
If you fight / chase the hag, beyond the skindoor you fight four mind-controlled adventurers. They go first, drop AoEs on your party, and pepper you with ranged attacks from above while their melee locks you down at a chokepoint. I haven't been able to figure out how you're supposed to win that fight.
Also regarding that BBEG:
The interaction with hag is fucking awesome, everything about it is great... except maybe an outcome which I think is temporary, but I can't beat the fucking combat beyond the skindoor so I have no fucking idea.
Everything about this game is great except for the combat, and it's so frustrating.
And God forbid you ungroup your party in order to get themselves in advantageous positions before you start a fight (assuming you get to choose the terms of engagement). Whether you choose to enter turn-based mode or not, the game chooses when initiative is entered, so only one of your party members can ever have the element of surprise. The others just have to charge into the fight as though they had no idea it was happening. (And if they roll higher on initiative than whoever fired first? Well then tough shit; guess they’re out a round.)
For a game that is clearly trying to make its combat very tactical, it often feels like it considers a player trying to engineer combat advantages to be cheating. Unless, of course, you’re slathering something all over the floor.
The 2 ettercaps / 2 phase spider combat Pixie mentioned. If you pass the skill check and don't alert the ettercaps, they swarm you while the phase spider picks you off from above. The ettercaps keep you locked down and give Infected while the phase spiders kill you. Game over. But if you fail the skill check and alert the ettercaps, you can pick them off one at a time and then dash in to attack the spiders. Much more reasonable, but ass-backwards.
I didn't pass any skill check. I got charged by the two ettercaps while the phase spiders attacked from the webs. Still took them all out without casualties. It was a long, resource-using fight, but I don't think that I did anything special. My party is my cleric PC, Lae'zel, Astarion, and Gale. I make liberal use of Guiding Bolt as a cleric (and try to keep Shield of Faith up but I seem to lose concentration if someone so much as sneezes), and Gale put one of the phase spiders to sleep, which takes it out of action for a while. And Magic Missile is really good at these levels for it's 100% reliable damage output. Astarion's mobility helps make sure he's always getting sneak attacks on the ettercaps. I have Lae'zel using a great sword, and just doing what she does best and hitting things. Healing potions can be used as bonus actions, so that helps keep everyone going. The longest part was chasing down the last phase spider that kept zipping all over the place.
The 2 ettercaps / 2 phase spider combat Pixie mentioned. If you pass the skill check and don't alert the ettercaps, they swarm you while the phase spider picks you off from above. The ettercaps keep you locked down and give Infected while the phase spiders kill you. Game over. But if you fail the skill check and alert the ettercaps, you can pick them off one at a time and then dash in to attack the spiders. Much more reasonable, but ass-backwards.
I didn't pass any skill check. I got charged by the two ettercaps while the phase spiders attacked from the webs. Still took them all out without casualties. It was a long, resource-using fight, but I don't think that I did anything special. My party is my cleric PC, Lae'zel, Astarion, and Gale. I make liberal use of Guiding Bolt as a cleric (and try to keep Shield of Faith up but I seem to lose concentration if someone so much as sneezes), and Gale put one of the phase spiders to sleep, which takes it out of action for a while. And Magic Missile is really good at these levels for it's 100% reliable damage output. Astarion's mobility helps make sure he's always getting sneak attacks on the ettercaps. I have Lae'zel using a great sword, and just doing what she does best and hitting things. Healing potions can be used as bonus actions, so that helps keep everyone going. The longest part was chasing down the last phase spider that kept zipping all over the place.
I’m not sure if concentration checks are working like they should. I don’t think I’ve had a single character pass one.
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Anyone playing EA can you answer a quick question for me.
Are HP rolls for leveling up save scum-able?
I hope they are because my planned character is a little bit MAD in stats and being able to keep a lower CON and just save scum a few levels for good rolls to counterbalance that would go a log way.
The 2 ettercaps / 2 phase spider combat Pixie mentioned. If you pass the skill check and don't alert the ettercaps, they swarm you while the phase spider picks you off from above. The ettercaps keep you locked down and give Infected while the phase spiders kill you. Game over. But if you fail the skill check and alert the ettercaps, you can pick them off one at a time and then dash in to attack the spiders. Much more reasonable, but ass-backwards.
I didn't pass any skill check. I got charged by the two ettercaps while the phase spiders attacked from the webs. Still took them all out without casualties. It was a long, resource-using fight, but I don't think that I did anything special. My party is my cleric PC, Lae'zel, Astarion, and Gale. I make liberal use of Guiding Bolt as a cleric (and try to keep Shield of Faith up but I seem to lose concentration if someone so much as sneezes), and Gale put one of the phase spiders to sleep, which takes it out of action for a while. And Magic Missile is really good at these levels for it's 100% reliable damage output. Astarion's mobility helps make sure he's always getting sneak attacks on the ettercaps. I have Lae'zel using a great sword, and just doing what she does best and hitting things. Healing potions can be used as bonus actions, so that helps keep everyone going. The longest part was chasing down the last phase spider that kept zipping all over the place.
I’m not sure if concentration checks are working like they should. I don’t think I’ve had a single character pass one.
You're probably right. I can't actually recall passing any.
yeah, it might not be too annoying at higher levels, but early on the ground effects from cantrips are annoying as hell
like against those skeletons early on, poor Gale had low level skeletons throwing out 3 fire and acid cantrips at him. They missed every shot, and then he died anyway from all the fuckin' splashing.
I didn't really mind it that much with DoS because that game was built around ground effects, but there's not much counterplay in the early game for this stuff. Especially since enemies looove attacking just-recovered targets.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Anyone playing EA can you answer a quick question for me.
Are HP rolls for leveling up save scum-able?
I hope they are because my planned character is a little bit MAD in stats and being able to keep a lower CON and just save scum a few levels for good rolls to counterbalance that would go a log way.
I will say that I'm pretty sure they borrowed the RNG straight from XCOM... >.>
Fun fact: XCOM RNG lies to the player. When it says 85% chance, it's actually closer to 95% chance. Players see 80% chance and get really upset when they miss because people remember failures more than they remember successes. It's one of those weird things about human brains.
I keep picking up this game, thinking this time it'll be the one where everything clicks and I'll just cruise right through Act One!
...and it never does. The combat in this game is so, so bad. It's just terribly unfun. Every combat is a steamroll, either for you or against you, and there's no in-between. And I can't figure out how to make fights go better.
I really disagree! I'm having a blast with the combat so I'm wondering where it's going wrong for folks. Can you describe what you're not fisnding good or interesting about it? Maybe walk through how you're handling a round of combat?
A typical fight:
Specifically, the first fight with a handful of goblins inside the Shattered Sanctum
Enemy goes first. Everyone targets the mage, and he drops.
My ranger's up. Tag somebody with Hunter's Mark, shoot 'em with a longbow. Average 8 damage, not enough to drop the target.
More enemies go. Fire an AoE, hit 75% of the party, inflict a status (in this case, acid).
Laz is up. Move out of the acid, Menacing Attack on the closest enemy. 91% chance to hit, but I miss anyway. (of note: there is no "91%" on a d20. It should be in increments of 5; 90%, or 95%. 91% never makes sense.)
Archers shoot a fire arrow at my party, lighting the ranger on fire.
My ranger's up again. Shoot my quarry, it dies. Jump out of the fire.
Enemies are up again, kill the mage. This is effectively game over, but let's see it through to the end anyway.
They target my ranger next, knock her down.
Cleric's next, and Shadowheart goes down.
At this point it's just Laz, and she's at half health. Note that the enemies attacked in order of lowest AC to highest and never missed. Laz swings, hits, does 6 damage. Enemy resists Frighten.
Enemies kill Shadowheart.
Laz kills an enemy.
My ranger is killed.
Laz chases around the archers until she's killed.
Game over.
Every combat is like this. Try a combat: if every attack the enemy does hits and I miss 60%+, I lose. Quit the game, come back later, try again. If the RNG's in my favor, an the enemy misses more than I do, I win. Most of the time I effectively only have 3 characters in my party, because the mage is dropped almost immediately.
Other examples of this:
The 2 ettercaps / 2 phase spider combat Pixie mentioned. If you pass the skill check and don't alert the ettercaps, they swarm you while the phase spider picks you off from above. The ettercaps keep you locked down and give Infected while the phase spiders kill you. Game over. But if you fail the skill check and alert the ettercaps, you can pick them off one at a time and then dash in to attack the spiders. Much more reasonable, but ass-backwards.
Deeper in phase spider cave, spoilers:
There's a giant phase spider that does 25+ damage per spit attack, and it's an AOE, which effectively wipe out your entire back line if they're anywhere near the mage. I haven't been able to figure out how you're supposed to win that fight, but I also sort of think you're not supposed to because you can sneak by them easily enough.
In the swamps later on:
If you fight / chase the hag, beyond the skindoor you fight four mind-controlled adventurers. They go first, drop AoEs on your party, and pepper you with ranged attacks from above while their melee locks you down at a chokepoint. I haven't been able to figure out how you're supposed to win that fight.
Also regarding that BBEG:
The interaction with hag is fucking awesome, everything about it is great... except maybe an outcome which I think is temporary, but I can't beat the fucking combat beyond the skindoor so I have no fucking idea.
Everything about this game is great except for the combat, and it's so frustrating.
The issue you're running into in the goblin encounter is that enemies that are on high ground have advantage to hit you and you have disadvantage to hit them, this means that a fight that is dead even turns into a 25% chance to hit for one side and a 75% chance to hit for the other side
It's a massive design flaw on Larian's part that forces you to build explicitly to counter it, instead of being having a party that is not optimized for that exact situation and using consumables/cooldowns to power through anyway (you know, how D&D 5e is designed)
The 91% thing was because for whatever reason she had advantage, which can lead to fractions
I didn't have any trouble with the goblins but I had 2 people who could do fog cloud or darkness and since creatures LITERALLY CANNOT ATTACK if they are blinded, it just shuts them down - going back to my first point, this isn't fun design, you shouldn't have to walk around with darkness and fog cloud because enemies might have elevation (alt: everyone has mage hand and the mage hands shove enemies down). Height is not supposed to confer that much of a benefit in 5e - you already are denying enemies cover and giving yourself easy cover - a system that would be trivial for larian to implement by calculating what percentage of an enemy's body your character can see
The swamp encounter is bugged like a motherfucker, but is intended to be max level with the best gear you can find in the overworld - and I also wouldn't recommend the goblin sanctum unless your party is level 4 either
yeah, it might not be too annoying at higher levels, but early on the ground effects from cantrips are annoying as hell
like against those skeletons early on, poor Gale had low level skeletons throwing out 3 fire and acid cantrips at him. They missed every shot, and then he died anyway from all the fuckin' splashing.
I didn't really mind it that much with DoS because that game was built around ground effects, but there's not much counterplay in the early game for this stuff. Especially since enemies looove attacking just-recovered targets.
yeah this makes it extra dumb because at level 10 nobody is going to give a shit about standing in fire, 1d4 damage a round? I have 95 hitpoints who cares
Oof. Been messing around with spells and things, cheesing like DoS2 for funsies.
Hiding is the best fight control ability there is. Fog Cloud helps a lot with letting you hide if you get caught in bad spots, saves me VERY often and hide is just straight broken as a bonus action when used this way. The enemy can't target you with any of their abilities, basically invulnerability for anyone who can hang out in it, and you can walk in and out to attack and then hide again. They really need to remove it and tune down the encounters imo.
Candidate for most broken ability is invisibility + fast travel camp trick. Messed something up fast traveling and this let me avoid redoing a lot of work, just walk my rogue past everyone. Invisibility lasts FOREVER which is...too strong? Huhm. Then bring entire party over, no problem. Also need to remove the ability to loot while invisible, probably. You can't interact with objects but you can open loot boxes, use keys, open doors, lockpick...
oh my god you can fast travel and keep invisibility
I've been trying to break the game with cheat engine, I have learned that if you give a character infinite strength that you can just right click on a gnoll, select throw, and yeet it off the battlefield
I really, really hope at release this kind of shit happens to party members during dragon fights, because its the kind of shit I do to my players in the tabletop (very first time they fought a dragon and it just started picking people up and tossing them at other party members from 150 feet up they were flabbergasted because they were so used to creatures just doing the attacks on their statblock and forgetting that creatures can grapple and throw improvised weapons too!)
I'm somewhat baffled by attack rolls.
The elevation advantage is insane for stuff like eldritch blast, as is tracking how clear a shot you have, though to a lesser degree.
How many groups actually track stuff like that, and are they in the tabletop rules?
It's weird going from less than 50% hit change to 80% or 90% just by taking couple steps to the left and going up couple meters.
I'm somewhat baffled by attack rolls.
The elevation advantage is insane for stuff like eldritch blast, as is tracking how clear a shot you have, though to a lesser degree.
How many groups actually track stuff like that, and are they in the tabletop rules?
It's weird going from less than 50% hit change to 80% or 90% just by taking couple steps to the left and going up couple meters.
There is no advantage from height or disadvantage from lack of it in the tabletop, height gives you a pretty significant tactical advantage just from the fact that enemies have a very hard time seeking cover, and that you tend to have half-cover (which is +2 armor class) from whatever you are standing on obscuring the view of the enemies below you - USUALLY in the tabletop DMs ignore figuring out if an elevated enemy even has cover because it's a nightmare, but it would be trivial in Baldur's Gate 3 for the game to determine that
It's really weird because if they had directly ported Divinity Original Sin 2's height advantage, no one would find it particularly offensive - all that did was give you more range.
I'm somewhat baffled by attack rolls.
The elevation advantage is insane for stuff like eldritch blast, as is tracking how clear a shot you have, though to a lesser degree.
How many groups actually track stuff like that, and are they in the tabletop rules?
It's weird going from less than 50% hit change to 80% or 90% just by taking couple steps to the left and going up couple meters.
There's no elevation advantage in core 5e. It's +1 in 3.5e. If the enemies are really getting Advantage (meaning 2d20, keep highest) from attack a few few up, I guess I'm going to have to start every fight with Fog Cloud like Tumin. But that seems incredibly boring.
Anyone playing EA can you answer a quick question for me.
Are HP rolls for leveling up save scum-able?
I hope they are because my planned character is a little bit MAD in stats and being able to keep a lower CON and just save scum a few levels for good rolls to counterbalance that would go a log way.
Thanks in advance!
There's no HP roll. It takes the average.
Ohhh. So a d10 Hit die means that class gets 5 HP every level?
Anyone playing EA can you answer a quick question for me.
Are HP rolls for leveling up save scum-able?
I hope they are because my planned character is a little bit MAD in stats and being able to keep a lower CON and just save scum a few levels for good rolls to counterbalance that would go a log way.
Thanks in advance!
There's no HP roll. It takes the average.
Ohhh. So a d10 Hit die means that class gets 5 HP every level?
Hmm ok. Gonna need to do better planning then.
Thanks!
6 actually. The average on a d10 is 5.5 and it rounds up.
Can someone explain to a known moron like myself why it's 5.5 and not 5?
0
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
The average of a series of consecutive numbers is: [X(first item) + X(last item)]/2
So for a d10, (1+10)/2 = 5.5.
Alternatively, adding up all the numbers in that series manually (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) gives you 55, which divided by the number of the items in the series (10 numbers) gives you 5.5.
I keep picking up this game, thinking this time it'll be the one where everything clicks and I'll just cruise right through Act One!
...and it never does. The combat in this game is so, so bad. It's just terribly unfun. Every combat is a steamroll, either for you or against you, and there's no in-between. And I can't figure out how to make fights go better.
I really disagree! I'm having a blast with the combat so I'm wondering where it's going wrong for folks. Can you describe what you're not fisnding good or interesting about it? Maybe walk through how you're handling a round of combat?
A typical fight:
Specifically, the first fight with a handful of goblins inside the Shattered Sanctum
Enemy goes first. Everyone targets the mage, and he drops.
My ranger's up. Tag somebody with Hunter's Mark, shoot 'em with a longbow. Average 8 damage, not enough to drop the target.
More enemies go. Fire an AoE, hit 75% of the party, inflict a status (in this case, acid).
Laz is up. Move out of the acid, Menacing Attack on the closest enemy. 91% chance to hit, but I miss anyway. (of note: there is no "91%" on a d20. It should be in increments of 5; 90%, or 95%. 91% never makes sense.)
Archers shoot a fire arrow at my party, lighting the ranger on fire.
My ranger's up again. Shoot my quarry, it dies. Jump out of the fire.
Enemies are up again, kill the mage. This is effectively game over, but let's see it through to the end anyway.
They target my ranger next, knock her down.
Cleric's next, and Shadowheart goes down.
At this point it's just Laz, and she's at half health. Note that the enemies attacked in order of lowest AC to highest and never missed. Laz swings, hits, does 6 damage. Enemy resists Frighten.
Enemies kill Shadowheart.
Laz kills an enemy.
My ranger is killed.
Laz chases around the archers until she's killed.
Game over.
Every combat is like this. Try a combat: if every attack the enemy does hits and I miss 60%+, I lose. Quit the game, come back later, try again. If the RNG's in my favor, an the enemy misses more than I do, I win. Most of the time I effectively only have 3 characters in my party, because the mage is dropped almost immediately.
Other examples of this:
The 2 ettercaps / 2 phase spider combat Pixie mentioned. If you pass the skill check and don't alert the ettercaps, they swarm you while the phase spider picks you off from above. The ettercaps keep you locked down and give Infected while the phase spiders kill you. Game over. But if you fail the skill check and alert the ettercaps, you can pick them off one at a time and then dash in to attack the spiders. Much more reasonable, but ass-backwards.
Deeper in phase spider cave, spoilers:
There's a giant phase spider that does 25+ damage per spit attack, and it's an AOE, which effectively wipe out your entire back line if they're anywhere near the mage. I haven't been able to figure out how you're supposed to win that fight, but I also sort of think you're not supposed to because you can sneak by them easily enough.
In the swamps later on:
If you fight / chase the hag, beyond the skindoor you fight four mind-controlled adventurers. They go first, drop AoEs on your party, and pepper you with ranged attacks from above while their melee locks you down at a chokepoint. I haven't been able to figure out how you're supposed to win that fight.
Also regarding that BBEG:
The interaction with hag is fucking awesome, everything about it is great... except maybe an outcome which I think is temporary, but I can't beat the fucking combat beyond the skindoor so I have no fucking idea.
Everything about this game is great except for the combat, and it's so frustrating.
For the swamps spoiler
that fight was hard for me but very doable once I started sneaking in. The only real problem was the one with the shield doing that psychic blast with the dot. But also I was level three.
I snuck astarion in, snuck attack that person and took them down pretty much immediately. Then I sneak everyone else in and have them take a shot one by one, which let me start at a big advantage since you can get an attack off with every member of your party before they're actually in combat if you sneak around properly.
Jumping to get onto level ground with enemies is a huge deal but kind of annoying, I do think the height mechanics can use some tuning.
If your party members are down, why aren't you using the help action to pick them back up instead of attacking more? The cleric can obviously do this the best with healing spells, but helping someone up who then chugs a health potion is quite useful.
I think the level 4 cap also makes life...annoying. 5e has a huge power spike at level 5, you get extra attack, you get fireball, you get fly. All the absolute bomb spells and abilities.
Holy fuck I just killed about 200 goblins in the sanctuary by sniping them from, like, a half step up (and occasionally the rafters, but it's a long ass fall if you get pushed). Advantage for shooting from above is just totally broken.
So my PC crashed during installation. Then after reboot finished installing with no problems. Then when I run it (in Steam), the Run button switches to Cancel for a hot second before switching back to Run. No game, no launcher. I tried doing the Steam verify file integrity, said everything is fine. Tried launching from executable in folder, nothing happens. Did uninstall (which ran suspiciously quick), then reinstall (expecting it to be like oh yeah installing), waited for the game to fully download again (guess not), install this time with no crash, and... still the same behavior.
The tech help is no help, just says to verify files (already did) or fix whatever is wrong with my computer (yet this is the only game doing this).
I didn't even want to play per say, just mess around with character creator!
Delete the install folder and try installing/verifying again. If you uninstall it might not actually remove the files and may find them again when it attempts to re-acquire.
im interested in this game cos of the visuals but hearing its similar to divinity has put me off. I hated both those games combat, and the fiddlyness of moving characters in and out of the group.
I just hated how with divinity it always feels like instead of having ways to excel at combat, or fight your way out of a tough situation, you basically have to enter combat perfectly every time the exact right way, or you lose, and if you dont 100% focus on exploding barrels and shit like that you get wiped
If it has got you down there is a demo for Solasta(turn based 5e from half of the guy who did edit: endless legend) and it will be in early access soon.
I am planning on picking it up and will let you know how it is when I do
I will say that I'm pretty sure they borrowed the RNG straight from XCOM... >.>
Fun fact: XCOM RNG lies to the player. When it says 85% chance, it's actually closer to 95% chance. Players see 80% chance and get really upset when they miss because people remember failures more than they remember successes. It's one of those weird things about human brains.
Every videogame has to deal with the fact that humans are just really terrible at odds and statistics and all that.
Like, I know that it's entirely possible to miss ten 80% chance shots in a row. But it feels like absolute bullshit.
I will say that I'm pretty sure they borrowed the RNG straight from XCOM... >.>
Fun fact: XCOM RNG lies to the player. When it says 85% chance, it's actually closer to 95% chance. Players see 80% chance and get really upset when they miss because people remember failures more than they remember successes. It's one of those weird things about human brains.
Every videogame has to deal with the fact that humans are just really terrible at odds and statistics and all that.
Like, I know that it's entirely possible to miss ten 80% chance shots in a row. But it feels like absolute bullshit.
I think BG3 might be lying in the other direction right now. I've missed 90%+ attacks only to look at the combat log and see I needed an 8 to hit.
I will say that I'm pretty sure they borrowed the RNG straight from XCOM... >.>
Fun fact: XCOM RNG lies to the player. When it says 85% chance, it's actually closer to 95% chance. Players see 80% chance and get really upset when they miss because people remember failures more than they remember successes. It's one of those weird things about human brains.
Every videogame has to deal with the fact that humans are just really terrible at odds and statistics and all that.
Like, I know that it's entirely possible to miss ten 80% chance shots in a row. But it feels like absolute bullshit.
I think BG3 might be lying in the other direction right now. I've missed 90%+ attacks only to look at the combat log and see I needed an 8 to hit.
It's too early on a Monday morning for me to math, but if you needed an 8 but you had advantage, the actual odds it would display are probably pretty close to 90% (probably about 88% off the top of my head but I wouldn't bet a donut on my mental math), so that might account for what you're seeing?
Posts
For movement convenience:
-Characters should never stand around out of combat in a hazard, they should seek the closest exit
-Characters should jump over hazards if you tell them to walk to the other side of a hazard
-Characters should jump over ledges if you tell them to walk to the other side of a ledge
Every combat is like this. Try a combat: if every attack the enemy does hits and I miss 60%+, I lose. Quit the game, come back later, try again. If the RNG's in my favor, an the enemy misses more than I do, I win. Most of the time I effectively only have 3 characters in my party, because the mage is dropped almost immediately.
Other examples of this:
Deeper in phase spider cave, spoilers:
In the swamps later on:
Also regarding that BBEG:
Everything about this game is great except for the combat, and it's so frustrating.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
For a game that is clearly trying to make its combat very tactical, it often feels like it considers a player trying to engineer combat advantages to be cheating. Unless, of course, you’re slathering something all over the floor.
I didn't pass any skill check. I got charged by the two ettercaps while the phase spiders attacked from the webs. Still took them all out without casualties. It was a long, resource-using fight, but I don't think that I did anything special. My party is my cleric PC, Lae'zel, Astarion, and Gale. I make liberal use of Guiding Bolt as a cleric (and try to keep Shield of Faith up but I seem to lose concentration if someone so much as sneezes), and Gale put one of the phase spiders to sleep, which takes it out of action for a while. And Magic Missile is really good at these levels for it's 100% reliable damage output. Astarion's mobility helps make sure he's always getting sneak attacks on the ettercaps. I have Lae'zel using a great sword, and just doing what she does best and hitting things. Healing potions can be used as bonus actions, so that helps keep everyone going. The longest part was chasing down the last phase spider that kept zipping all over the place.
I’m not sure if concentration checks are working like they should. I don’t think I’ve had a single character pass one.
Are HP rolls for leveling up save scum-able?
I hope they are because my planned character is a little bit MAD in stats and being able to keep a lower CON and just save scum a few levels for good rolls to counterbalance that would go a log way.
Thanks in advance!
You're probably right. I can't actually recall passing any.
like against those skeletons early on, poor Gale had low level skeletons throwing out 3 fire and acid cantrips at him. They missed every shot, and then he died anyway from all the fuckin' splashing.
I didn't really mind it that much with DoS because that game was built around ground effects, but there's not much counterplay in the early game for this stuff. Especially since enemies looove attacking just-recovered targets.
There's no HP roll. It takes the average.
Oh man at the Harpy fight Lae'zel rolled a 6, 6, 7, and a 6 successively and I almost tore my hair out.
Steam: CavilatRest
Fun fact: XCOM RNG lies to the player. When it says 85% chance, it's actually closer to 95% chance. Players see 80% chance and get really upset when they miss because people remember failures more than they remember successes. It's one of those weird things about human brains.
The issue you're running into in the goblin encounter is that enemies that are on high ground have advantage to hit you and you have disadvantage to hit them, this means that a fight that is dead even turns into a 25% chance to hit for one side and a 75% chance to hit for the other side
It's a massive design flaw on Larian's part that forces you to build explicitly to counter it, instead of being having a party that is not optimized for that exact situation and using consumables/cooldowns to power through anyway (you know, how D&D 5e is designed)
The 91% thing was because for whatever reason she had advantage, which can lead to fractions
I didn't have any trouble with the goblins but I had 2 people who could do fog cloud or darkness and since creatures LITERALLY CANNOT ATTACK if they are blinded, it just shuts them down - going back to my first point, this isn't fun design, you shouldn't have to walk around with darkness and fog cloud because enemies might have elevation (alt: everyone has mage hand and the mage hands shove enemies down). Height is not supposed to confer that much of a benefit in 5e - you already are denying enemies cover and giving yourself easy cover - a system that would be trivial for larian to implement by calculating what percentage of an enemy's body your character can see
The swamp encounter is bugged like a motherfucker, but is intended to be max level with the best gear you can find in the overworld - and I also wouldn't recommend the goblin sanctum unless your party is level 4 either
yeah this makes it extra dumb because at level 10 nobody is going to give a shit about standing in fire, 1d4 damage a round? I have 95 hitpoints who cares
Hiding is the best fight control ability there is. Fog Cloud helps a lot with letting you hide if you get caught in bad spots, saves me VERY often and hide is just straight broken as a bonus action when used this way. The enemy can't target you with any of their abilities, basically invulnerability for anyone who can hang out in it, and you can walk in and out to attack and then hide again. They really need to remove it and tune down the encounters imo.
Candidate for most broken ability is invisibility + fast travel camp trick. Messed something up fast traveling and this let me avoid redoing a lot of work, just walk my rogue past everyone. Invisibility lasts FOREVER which is...too strong? Huhm. Then bring entire party over, no problem. Also need to remove the ability to loot while invisible, probably. You can't interact with objects but you can open loot boxes, use keys, open doors, lockpick...
oh my god you can fast travel and keep invisibility
I really, really hope at release this kind of shit happens to party members during dragon fights, because its the kind of shit I do to my players in the tabletop (very first time they fought a dragon and it just started picking people up and tossing them at other party members from 150 feet up they were flabbergasted because they were so used to creatures just doing the attacks on their statblock and forgetting that creatures can grapple and throw improvised weapons too!)
The elevation advantage is insane for stuff like eldritch blast, as is tracking how clear a shot you have, though to a lesser degree.
How many groups actually track stuff like that, and are they in the tabletop rules?
It's weird going from less than 50% hit change to 80% or 90% just by taking couple steps to the left and going up couple meters.
There is no advantage from height or disadvantage from lack of it in the tabletop, height gives you a pretty significant tactical advantage just from the fact that enemies have a very hard time seeking cover, and that you tend to have half-cover (which is +2 armor class) from whatever you are standing on obscuring the view of the enemies below you - USUALLY in the tabletop DMs ignore figuring out if an elevated enemy even has cover because it's a nightmare, but it would be trivial in Baldur's Gate 3 for the game to determine that
It's really weird because if they had directly ported Divinity Original Sin 2's height advantage, no one would find it particularly offensive - all that did was give you more range.
There's no elevation advantage in core 5e. It's +1 in 3.5e. If the enemies are really getting Advantage (meaning 2d20, keep highest) from attack a few few up, I guess I'm going to have to start every fight with Fog Cloud like Tumin. But that seems incredibly boring.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Ohhh. So a d10 Hit die means that class gets 5 HP every level?
Hmm ok. Gonna need to do better planning then.
Thanks!
6 actually. The average on a d10 is 5.5 and it rounds up.
So for a d10, (1+10)/2 = 5.5.
Alternatively, adding up all the numbers in that series manually (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) gives you 55, which divided by the number of the items in the series (10 numbers) gives you 5.5.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
For the swamps spoiler
Jumping to get onto level ground with enemies is a huge deal but kind of annoying, I do think the height mechanics can use some tuning.
If your party members are down, why aren't you using the help action to pick them back up instead of attacking more? The cleric can obviously do this the best with healing spells, but helping someone up who then chugs a health potion is quite useful.
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
The tech help is no help, just says to verify files (already did) or fix whatever is wrong with my computer (yet this is the only game doing this).
I didn't even want to play per say, just mess around with character creator!
I just hated how with divinity it always feels like instead of having ways to excel at combat, or fight your way out of a tough situation, you basically have to enter combat perfectly every time the exact right way, or you lose, and if you dont 100% focus on exploding barrels and shit like that you get wiped
Guess tomorrow I will uninstall, delete the whole folder, then redownload a 3rd time.
I am planning on picking it up and will let you know how it is when I do
Every videogame has to deal with the fact that humans are just really terrible at odds and statistics and all that.
Like, I know that it's entirely possible to miss ten 80% chance shots in a row. But it feels like absolute bullshit.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
It's too early on a Monday morning for me to math, but if you needed an 8 but you had advantage, the actual odds it would display are probably pretty close to 90% (probably about 88% off the top of my head but I wouldn't bet a donut on my mental math), so that might account for what you're seeing?
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/07/12/dnd-5e-advantage-disadvantage-probability/
Charts!
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live