I’m new to both DnD and cRPGs, I’ve read about what the karmic dice does but I wanted to know your opinions as well.
Does it really make it for a “better” experience? Can fights go seriously wrong or extend for a longer time when not using it? What do you all think about it?
EDIT: please read this comment by @burgundymyr@sh.itjust.works, it explains how the dice really works, something I didn’t get at first, thank you burgundymyr!
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Karmic Dice will give you better skill checks on the whole, but really isn’t worth it due to it’s effect on attack rolls and AC.
If you are running a build with an AC of 20+, particularly some of the stronger ones, you don’t want to run Karmic dice as it can be a +40% - +85% increase in enemy hit rate. If your build requires a crit in order to be hit this can significantly increase incoming damage as it will effectively turn every other to every third attack into a crit.
Exactly. It seems like it mostly benefits checks that are closer to 50%, artificially giving more variance to prevent streaks. But if you have Astarion picking a DC 10 lock with +19 modifiers, I really don’t want the game to muck with my 95% chance to succeed. I mean, I do have 55 picks but that’s not the point.
On lower difficulties karmic dice can even out your streaks, which feels good but ultimately isn’t game-breaking.
On higher difficulties they can get you killed because they also work for the enemy, meaning you’ll get hit a lot more, which is a real problem.
Nay, although there have been a couple times losing a stack of lockpicks consecutive lost coin flips where I almost regretted it. :P
Nah, I don’t want anything fucking with my dice rolls, especially in combat. If I stack AC, I should be an unhittable tank. If they only worked for skill checks, I would probably leave them on to help with unlucky streaks but even those I can just save scum.
As a programmer, the idea of replicating the randomness of dice in a game is… tricky. Simply: computers don’t do random, so we must do our best to imitate randomness. So then attempting to ‘curve’ that artificial randomness also makes me feel weird.
I turned it off myself, though, now I can tell myself that my improbable high rolls are ‘earned’… and using 3 inspiration points to only keep rolling 2s and 3s are also ‘earned.’
Although from a purely scientific stand point you are correct and there is no truly random number generator, I would argue that simulating a dice in a video game can be considered random for all intents and purposes.
I left it on. I haven’t seen any datamined information on the system so it’s all just placebo as far as I’m concerned. Like a fake thermometer that people can adjust all they want to make themselves feel better. Maybe it does something, maybe it doesn’t (though it probably does).
But I put 0 stock in how people “feel” about the randomness since they’re not doing real testing and it’s all likely confirmation bias.
I turned it off because it’s not real dnd if there’s dice weight. Rolling a hot streak or cold streak is just part of the dice, the dice giveth and the dice taketh
Playing on easy for my first game. I have left it on and I still fail on some of my rolls. Over all I feel like it’s boosting my rolls to be better. Fights are easy unless a spell or mechanic I don’t know or understand goes off. The dialogue, if I select the option I have the best bonuses in I tend to get by all of them. Really stealth and traps have been my biggest hurdle. The AI keeps walking into them when I move.
I played on easy so far too, I left it on because it’s default and I was too new to even understand what it does. I didn’t find fights particularly difficult either, for stealth, traps and lockpicks I use Astarion, he’s exceptional at it.
Now I started a new playthrough even if I didn’t finish the first one yet, because I wanted to try normal difficulty, so I was wondering if karmic dice is really worth it.
I just leave it on and don’t think about it too much. If I saw some hard details on how exactly it works (not guesses) I might have a stronger opinion. I’ve never turned it off and never thought twice about it.
What does karmic dice do?
It’s a sort of bad luck protection to avoid making you roll low for too many times in a row, it’s an on/off toggle in game settings. The downside is it also works for enemies.
The actual math behind it is not know however (unfortunately).
No for me. Let luck be free of influence.
Besides, I feel lucky.
I just left it on, I don’t really understand it though. I still fail even trivial skill checks repeatedly with anyone other than Astarion so I’m not actually convinced it does anything at all.
I know there is a kind of philosophy in random dice roll design for software where you slightly skew the distribution of subsequent rolls based on previous ones because it feels more random (rather than getting e.g. 1, 2, 1, 2, which could be ‘truly random’ but feels like ass), but I don’t think that’s what karmic dice is doing. I do play really high AC, with Laezel and Shadowheart in full endgame plate plus a buff here or there I think they run 24~27. It is very hard for enemies to hit us and it feels about right. I would be very surprised to learn that karmic dice is benefiting enemies too, because that seems unintended and not in the spirit of how the tooltip is written.
It’s still shitty algorithmic pseudorandomness either way, and I can still have winning or losing streaks with karmic dice on, despite that being its advertised reason to exist.
No way. I want true dice rolls, good or bad.
