Make Sure You Disable This Option Before You Start Playing Baldur's Gate 3

Source: Larian Studios.

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After recent panel from hell, gamers wait in anticipation for the release of Baldur's Gate III, coming soon on PC. In addition to widespread excitement, players are also sharing tips, including a recommendation to look into the game's settings and disable one potentially frustrating default option.

At issue is the so-called Karmic Dice, which was added in early 2021, then still called Loaded Dice, or "balanced dice." The system was intended to allow for balancing the randomness typical of tabletop role-playing games, which were the main inspiration for Baldur's Gate III (and classic RPGs in general).

1. In the beginning, the karmic dice simply leveled the player's dice rolls. If we rolled out low numbers too often, the game increased our chances of good rolls, and vice versa.
2. However, the developers quickly changed this after complaints from players: now the karmic dice always provide better rolls.

At first glance, this seems like a helpful feature that only the most ardent devotees of randomness could complain about. There is only one small problem: the karmic dice also works for enemies, and big time.

For the past two weeks, Reddit user Havelok (u/Havelok) has been reminding of this "small" issue, quoting a post by another Internet user - akdavidxy (/akdavidxy). This is because the latter conducted a small experiment with this feature. He was motivated by a "one-man" adventure in BG 3, that is, an attempt to complete the game with a single character with an emphasis on defensive play.

1. The Internet user admits that his research sample was modest (about 150 rolls each). Nevertheless, it was enough to clearly see the negative impact of Karmic Dice on battle results. Even with Armor Class at a relatively high level for the beginning of the game (23), enemies hit his character in 30-40% of rolls.
2. What's more, this translated into a three times higher chance of enemies hitting critically: 15% instead of 5%. In doing so, akdavidxy noted that the effect increases with the value of Armor Class. In other words, the higher our Armor Class, the more the game favors enemies.

It goes without explaining how difficult this makes it to play a "tank" when enemies hit our character too often and on top of that deal double critical damage. Havelok and akdavidxy, by the way, are not the only players who have experienced the curse of karmic dice.

Therefore it is better to disable the karmic dice before we start the game. Let's also hope that Larian Studios will rebalance this option before the game comes out of early access.

Baldur's Gate III will be released on August 3 on PC and September 6 on PlayStation 5.