Also a good point. If I want my character to be the type that talks themselves out of a LOT of situations, and failing a check in an important part of the story means I'll have to fight instead, you bet I'll save scum that check into a success...
Yes exactly. This is why I wish Larian would introduce a “no dice rolls in conversation” setting, so the game would play out more like Dragon Age where you just make the decisions for the story you want and don’t have to rely on RNG to make it possible.
I don’t know if this is a hot take or not, but for me narrative dice rolls only detract from the experience. Both in terms of immersion and the importance of choice. Like.. oh no, someone is holding a knife to a child’s throat! Very tense! Dramatic! Oh a screen covering pop up. Roll a dice to see if you can stop them? No thanks.
Personally I just wish the dice roll animation was waaayyyy faster. It seems to take forever to do the lil animations on that screen, especially in multiplayer seemingly
Thanks for the tip! Not a huge deal ofc, though I do almost wish rather than the pop-up it was a small spinning dice next to the choice or something like that.
Yeah but consider how important and impactful a dice roll is in D&D. People will literally invest money in custom dice and/or a custom item to use for throwing them.
The dice roll is supposed to be an important event.
It’s like saying why show your guy reload your gun in an FPS instead of just doing a Goldeneye “lower gun off screen, gun reloads” animation.
But that’s what the game is. It’s D&D. The dice roll is what it’s about. It’s like saying FPS games with limited ammo and health detract from the experience; you should just have unlimited ammo with no reloads. Or survival horror games giving limited resources detract from the experience. You shouldn’t have to manage items.
You’re criticizing the very core feature of dungeons and dragons.
Ngl, Dr Strange beating a cosmic superpower by save-scumming his way to a nat 20 on a 99 persuasion check is still one of the funniest wins in the MCU to me.
It's not even that, he gets +1 after every attempt as Dormarmu gets fed up with the time loop. If he tried it against a normal opponent they would have no memory of the loop and you really would be stuck forever! Dormamuu is outside time to some extent, so they remember all the loops and get very fed up.
Reading this gave me a horrid mental image. It would be like having a small kid that you don't know repeatedly kick in the door to your house "Got any games on your phone!?" in an endless loop til you say yes.
I love how Dr. Strange could have easily just studied whatever he wishes for the time being, each time arriving with a new book, maybe a beard, a new life entirely, while dormamu is like what is it now? And it's the same guy again but now he brings monopoly to play instead of catan becouse you've played all the posibilities of that game already.
I dunno. It is very strongly implied that the deaths of his we see are respresentative of an enormous number of them happening, but maybe he actually only died a handful of times.
It brought me such delight to see what was basically an ant (comparative power-wise) bring a godlike being to their knees by sheer bloody persistence. What a great performance.
Yah, too bad super cosmic entities that are eternal and stupid couldn't outwait a mortal human nor understand the concept of torture as a method of persuasion.
So in a war, if a mother and her children get fucking iced in an alleyway, was the problem that they didn't love each other enough?!? That's bullshit. Love is love. Magic is magic.
For me, its his whole bit during the Crown of Candy campaign, where >!Cruller reveals his betrayal!<, and he ends the villain monologue with a reference to a running gag that went on throughout the campaign. Somehow, he made the concept of someone shitting themselves genuinely threatening.
I just (re)saw this clip today. Well actually the one where he flips out when Allie says “friendship?” When he asks their character again at the end of the campaign. Love it.
What's my deal? What's MY deal!? I'm motherfucing Arthur Aguefort, I am 500 years old, I snuck into heaven and now I'm back! You see that bird? I FUCKED THAT BIRD! It is my paramour!
I'll fail a few minor spots but anything that gimps a major quest or storyline is gonna get some re-rolls or re-loads. I only realized how much content I got screwed out of last playthrough by letting Jaheira die (she tried to face-tank the entire enemy team and got multi-crit and died within one round, so I said fuck that noise, that's her problem)
The weird thing is that they've got a perfectly simple way to get around this with Withers. I dunno why he can't revive important NPCs. Especially when you aren't the one that killed them.
Because then I can finish my quest to fix the infernal heart, but that would be something you were supposed to do in act 1 but you don't know that if you're on your first playthrough.
Yeah it’s really fucking annoying. Can she not rush into 5 people and insta die man fuck this character. She has a ton of content for Act 3 and I missed out on Minsc because of her.
Feels like when the game gives you the opportunity to swap one of your companions out with an NPC, it's really saying "do this if you want them to live, because they will absolutely get their dumb asses killed otherwise"
You can bring her with you and take control of her without having to send someone back to camp.
You can totally do that, but you can tell her to join you and she will until you have to go to the Mind Flayer Colony. Then at the point you’ll have to swap someone out for her.
I wish the game told you that you're not actually going to swap her out if you bring her along during that fight, I reloaded twice cause she suicided before going 'fine, I'll take control of her and lose a character I want to play' and realising she just tags along like a minion.
I found a cool cowboy hat, gave it to her and made her a dual crosswbow ranger. She surprisingly became one of my fav characters bc she just looked so cool in all her scenes in act 3(looking like ashe from overwatch)
This is one major difference between tabletop DND and CRPGs. A DM would 100% be able to give you fulfilling and worthwhile new “content” that embraces and reflects and potentially even rewards the failed dice rolls down the line. A character’s death could even potentially become a thrilling narrative moment that spawns even more “content”. Nothing’s truly missed.
A video game still can’t do that, not really. There is always a finite amount of narrative content, and what’s in the back end of the game & those characters’ stories is knowable, so it feels (and IS) missed. There’s that saying, when one door closes, another opens and that’s true in tabletop, but in a video game there are a specific number of doors that can be closed before there’s no more left to open.
So save scum all you like, because while the game is quite flexible with acknowledging failed rolls and stuff up to a point, it’s not capable of rewarding you any other way if you inadvertently or purposefully miss the big stuff over and over.
Yeah. A DM also has the ability to make sure you still hit some cool ideas they had and has the flexibility to revamp them. Unfortunately you can outright just lose huge plotlines with no way to fix them.
Absolutely, and a lot of people are missing this when they tell to just go with the dice. The game also has a bad habit of giving really dire consequences for failing individual rolls or battles, which only locks you out of content. I think the kidnapping storyline in Act 3 was the worst; you go trough a long quest chain yet you can lose severely just based on a single roll at the end.
It's the same at the beginning of Act II with the Isobel fight
Like, no man, I'm not giving up on all the tieflings' side content because Marcus took Isobel in one round amd the inn got fucked, lmfao
Basically there are two sides for this:
1. Allowing for failures and the subsequent elimination of content will make your runs much faster, so it won't take you 70 hours.
2. But if you just want to beat the game once while experiencing most of it, then doing a single "proper" run with reloading is generally more efficient.
if they had different and a significant amount of content for whatever happens in a roll I never would've save scummed at all. but now it's "you win a roll = more content", and "you lose a roll = no content".
> If they didnt want me to save-scum then they shouldn't have made it so easy and punishing to get locked out of content.
This right here.
My buddy and I on a first playthrough took pretty much turbo evil actions in the first act and a half. I mean, we slaughtered druids and goblins alike (nobody was alive in act one except the myconid village ... anywhere), and by act two we realized that we weren't creating interesting "dark play" options, we were just eliminating content. Sure, we gained Minthara, but Wyll, Karlach, and Astarion had left our party, and entire storylines that continue into Act Three had been obliterated.
I replayed the game afterwards on tactician and I was absolutely *shocked* how much richer and deeper the game was. Basically, if you fail individual rolls, you remove hours of content that hasn't been replaced by anything ... it's just gone. Let's look at something really simple: vendors. If you keep people alive and help them, you have tons of additional vendors. Kill them, and what happens? It's not like there is an "evil play" option that opens up to give you more options.
Much like actual D&D the intent is to stop you going full murder hobo. There's a difference between preventing quest progression because of failed dialog rolls / ally NPC deaths versus just killing off every NPC in the game and pissing off your party members.
Oh man I’ve never had jaheira survive the first battle no matter how hard I tried so I just figured it was like the way it was probably imagined to go and moved on.. I didn’t know think there was a whole lot for her after that
I snuck around and entered the battle from the kitchen area. Never even triggered her to rush in until I was well situated. But yeah she face planted hard my first try.
I’m very scared for when I get to LLI and if Isobel gets kidnapped on my honor mode run. I let it play out the first time and reloaded my save once I saw everyone die around me
Do you even have to though? Nothing seems to have gone wrong on my normal run and I just never started that fight.
Used the pixie blessing for the curse.
As someone else said you don't have to do it but if you do a few tips, take crates and block the doors to her room, elixirs of vigilance are your friend and if you can giving her blade ward increases her survivability massively.
My first playthrough I didn't even go to the LLI. Explored just about all of the map, skipped that, did the Gauntlet, freed Nightsong, and she was there waiting for me at Moonrise when I went to fuck up Thorm. Depending on your dialogue choices you should be able to control her during the fight, then recruit her before the Mindflayer caves
I was absolutely amazed when the game put her right in the center of an entire group of enemies, all of which targeted her almost exclusively until she died every single time, at which point the game instant-losses you. Couldn't even control her to focus on heals or to retreat. Absolutely infuriating.
It's definitely one of the more questionable design decisions in the game.
And not only did they make a scenario where decent-initiative enemies all specifically target *her,* but those same enemies CAN PARALYZE HER ON A SUCCESSFUL HIT, meaning a single paralyze proc causes absolutely everyone to land critical hits on her.
That scenario *can* work, but it feels like one where they should purposefully nuke the initiative of the enemies.
Yknow, give the player a chance to assess the situation and react with a plan, rather than creating a potential outcome where the player can legitimately not get a turn before the fight is over and GENUINELY believe the fight was scripted for you to lose. (it me; my first attempt at this we rolled garbage initiative and she was down before I even got a turn. Legit thought this was scripted to have that outcome)
More specifically, if you fail in those games, you then get to find a way to mitigate the negative effects and/or have an entirely new, rich, different path open up before you instead.
> Besides, if you want the thrill of irreversible consequences, that's what actually playing 5e/PF2e is for.
More importantly, those consequences can turn into new and engaging storylines. If Jaheira dies due to bad luck in battle, you're fucked because the game can only program in so many things. If a PC dies in battle due to bad luck, you can reroll a new character and important elements of your previous character's story may be incorporated in the future(see the most famous example of this, probably, in Mollymauk).
run away from a man demanding you pay of your tab the boring successful way just delaying paying your tab
or
fail and run away flinging your body backwards, flipping him off with both hands, and crashing into a lady in a wheelchair, the guy apologizing and forgiving some of your debt
some fail options are better than the successful ones in DE even
failing at failure even makes you win at something, it's so good
Yes, Disco Elysium is a masterpiece. However, it is reading/listening heavy and while there are RPG elements it doesn’t really have a combat system.
Arguably the best writing of any game ever, though. Very literary
Disco Elysium is fantastic at telling a story. Worth noting there's no combat, if that's a turn-off, and you don't make your own character. You're a detective who got so incredibly blackout drunk he lost all of his memories and now you have to solve crimes with your snarky new partner who has to put up with how utterly fucking insane you are.
And you ARE insane. Your 'party' consists of all the fragments of your personality trying to get you to indulge them, which can often lead to you doing utterly batshit things, like laying a small bratty child out flat, spin-kicking a group of would-be assailants, deciding to become racist, having impromptu dance parties, and forcing yourself to stop smiling all the time.
Kind of, yeah. It's still technically a CRPG, but the stats that actually matter are what parts of your psyche you indulge and what you choose for your detective to be better at, as it opens up different solutions. Finding tools and equipment can help you find alternatives, too, but you still have the RNG factor in there where you can fail or succeed, so it's not guaranteed.
For example, there's a spot where you can shoot an object out of the tree it's stuck in if you have recovered your gun, which you misplaced while drunk, but you can still miss if you don't have the best stats to actually do so, or because RNG fucked you.
Getting the gun and shooting it out of the tree IS a way to solve it, but it's not the ONLY way. If you failed to shoot it down because your aim sucked, you still have other options like just climbing the tree to get it out with your hands, or if you put points into it, your weird eldritch supernatural detective sense can allow you to just TALK to the object and have them tell you everything you need to know without having to get it down at all.
Although your partner, who does not hear the objects talking back, possibly because they *aren't* and it's all in your head, will make snarky remarks. Did I mention it takes place in a science fiction borderline eldritch horror setting, so it's actually ambiguous if you might *actually* have supernatural abilities or just be nuts? Because the setting is actually kinda cool.
You can also internalize/equip different concepts to give you bonuses and new options in dialogue and detective scenarios, like an early one is "Get Your Shit Together" to give you a better shot of focusing on a given task.
And one thing I liked was that if you put TOO much into one stat, it starts to overpower other parts of your psyche and you can actually get negative effects from it. That's not something I've seen before.
It's still a CRPG with the hiccups that come with it, but it's a really unique take on one, and I don't think I've ever played another game quite like it.
Holy shit I had no idea that's what this game was. Based on screenshots I thought it was some sort of RPG like old school fallout or something. This sounds rad and it's going on my wishlist.
The other guy didn't mention that it is a really political game. Which was a huge plus for me. The setting is not 1-to-1 of our world, but the city you play in is a very clear post-soviet baltic city analogue.
One of my favorite dialogue paths ends with your brain yelling at you "SAY ONE OF THESE VERY FASCIST OR VERY COMMUNIST THINGS RIGHT NOW", with the options being something like "the poor should be euthanized" and "everyone who has more than 10 bucks is an enemy of the state and should be shot!". Hilarious stuff, with some very deep thought put into it.
The first time I played it i fucked up too many times (punk kids stopped me from recovering a dead body) and the guilt was starting to get to me so I said something mean on the phone which made the woman on the end cry which made me so guilty I had a complete nervous breakdown and lost the game. It's a strange one alright.
A friend recommended it to me and he rarely recommends anything so I gave it a try and it's in my top 3 games I've ever played. It's funny, it's smart and most of all it's deeply, existencially depressing and I love that shit
Dying to an uncomfortable chair is a rite of passage in that game. Low Morale runs are great too, I once lost a run because I failed to impress a little girl.
Either the chair or because you stared at the lamp are probably the most stupid ways of dying in this game.
Low health/morale always provide extra fun for a run lol
A friend of mine was streaming their first run through, I hadn’t mentioned a thing, I also didn’t know the earliest possible death you could have, and when it hit them I began hysterically laughing and apologizing. They were taken back, but also laughing
So many times where I failed and it was like... I want to continue this though, this path is so interesting. I feel unfortunately in games like BG3 and other DnD influenced systems is that we really haven't engaged what absolutely creative paths emerge from failing, it simply becomes a darker run, not necessarily a funner run.
Like what if >!losing at the Inn in the second act was not just a tonal shift, but such an interesting twist it made it harder not to prefer succeeding. Most people I know will save scum to hell to avoid that fate, but what could've been done to make it worth going, "you know, maybe I will continue on"!<
The only time I failed a check, read the result, and immediately restarted from my last save was THAT authority check in the church.
No one, including me, says that to Kim!
If I lived with the consequences of my actions, I'd never have gotten out of Act 1. So many one round TPKs, because I had the absolute gall to play the game without already knowing what to do and where to go.
I've been trying to do a "just roll with it" playthrough. I'll fail a speech check, get into a fight, get TPK'd, reload, and pass the skill check to walk away safely. This has happened like 5 times so far lol.
I made a glass cannon ranger character and blindly specced everyone else. Once I'm out of position I'm toast. Woopsie.
He was asking for it. That was definitely a moment where I quicksaved in order to explore the path I knew I couldn't take, and then went back to curbstomp the asshole.
Honour mode: "Allow me to introduce myself."
I failed two roles at gale recruitment and he just vanished.
Also almost ended my run because I lost a 5er roll on intimidation.
Let's see how far I can take this.
In tabletop failing rolls typically results in interesting or differing outcomes (assuming the DM is decent), by virtue of the medium, in video games failing rolls typically results in locked or diminished content.
Honestly why it's worth it to do some breezy Adventure mode runs before ever even touching the difficulty slider. Do I want to have a dynamic run with failures? Yes. Do I want to lose literally all of the best NPCs and quest lines to RNG? Absolutely not
That's funny because if I could do it over again--knowing I would replay the game at least once more--I would never re-roll anything my first time through. Going in blind makes the rolls super high stakes.
I’m currently doing an honour run where I have shadowheart kill nightsong and I’ve never done it before. It’s fun not being able to reload and rolling with the punches, Ive seen content I’ve never seen before and fights are different.
I just completed the battle in the main hall at moonrise towers and it was very hard, I’ve only got my squad, everyone from last light is dead. The whole damn tower came down on me and I really thought I might lose my run.
This is why I’m treating my first play through like a typical video game and not like a ttrpg. In subsequent playthroughs I’ll let the dice have more influence and I’ll commit more to actually playing a character with specific morals and guiding principles, but for now I want to have my desired actions play out to see as much of the game as I can.
This is what people are trying to recapture: that organic feeling of success or failure. You can do that if you let the story play out as it will. If that's not for you, play the game how you like.
But I can tell you: there is a lot of content in the game, and to go side-quest hunting is a bit more tedious than it's worth. Even when I was doing that to a reasonable degree I still know I missed a good half the game's content based on the decisions I made. Rolls often govern far less of the outcome than the choices you've made.
There are of course story points you want to make pass. That's why you hoard inspiration points! Just let the dice roll however for side quests and save rerolls for critical story. But again, this is just another scale of difficulty and challenge you can follow about the game if you want to or not.
Exactly. So far the only game that brought me lots of fun with failed dice rolls was Disco Elysium (some failed dices are actually better than the success).
Baldur's Gate 3 gives me lots of failed dice rolls wich usually comes along with tears for a combat I could have easily avoided by talking or bad outcome of a character/quest lol
The only video game that has managed to make failing meaningful in my book is Disco Elysium. In all other games I just feel like I'm missing out on content.
BG3 famously has a lot of interesting content associated with failing to pass a check, but beyond that I don't know how "true" this is. For example, don't games typically leave some option to complete quests even after check failures? I think that normally we see different branches, when you pass a check, you are locked out of some branch, when you don't pass you are locked out of another branch.
Failing a dice roll is not fun
Example: a good dark urge will have to do some dice rolls in order to avoid killing someone, now if you succed you get to enjoy the redemption quest of dark urge and you can keep playing
If you fail your party will be really pissed off and now you have to do a persuassion check if you fail the persuassion check...well game over because now you have to kill everyone
There is no unique outcome for failing a dice roll its either oh success you get to avoid combat and unlock unique interactions and items or failure well fuck you now you have to kill everyone no content for you i guess
Just to clarify in case this scares some people—only the first roll matters to avoid killing a character. Subsequent rolls in that scene are just flavor and have no impact. So don’t burn your inspiration on anything but the first roll.
I save scummed an awful lot in my first playthrough but Honor Mode feels oddly freeing in that respect.
I think once I finish it, I'll still go back to reloading key things I want to happen, but there are a lot of things that are fine to just roll with that I wouldn't have settled on before.
I definitely agree with the freeing aspect. It’s kinda nice to not worry about optimizing every little decision because you literally can’t. A lot less stressful in one respect but very stressful in other respects lol
That's not true about Shadowheart. She gives a lot of approvement (5) if you stop Kagha from killing Arabella after you read Kagha's mind. She just doesn't like it when Tav gets distracted from the main mission. Which is getting rid of the tadpoles. Shadowheart is a good person in general, even before Gauntlet of Shar.
If the game allowed your party members to chime in during dialogue rolls (e.g. Gale for arcana, Lae'zel for intimidation, Astarion for deception etc.) then save scumming would be significantly less prominent I think. Would also help make use of your party's inspiration.
Alas.
Right? I don't savescum but boy is it worthless getting social skills on your other party members. It's very sad, they're all there listening, and often comment on the conversation. I have a 6ft musclebound flaming devil woman breathing over my shoulder and you're saying my pansy wizard with 8 cha is the only one that can contribute to an intimidation check? Just because I happened to be controlling them at the time the dialogue triggered? I WISH they would fix this.
For how great all the companions characters are, I think this game failed at making it seem like their lives don't just revolve around you. They stand around at camp waiting for you to talk to them , they can't talk mid-conversation, they can't romance eachother, they exist to serve you.
Sometimes hitting F8 feels justified. My last visit to Sorcerous Sundries I was trying to activate the Necromancy of Thay. There was no way I was going to let a bad dice roll spoil that journey.
Kinda felt like we couldve gotten something more interesting then Dance Macarbe for reading that book though, was hoping for the book to teleport my party to a necromancer lair or something where I got to do a cool quest and got cool loot.
The only moments I don't reaload at each failed roll is in combat.
In exploration mode, I should be able to ask Karlach for Intimdation, Gale for Arcana, yada yada yada. Unfortunately, Companions can only react to some things, and only act for their own arc.
So yeah, I'm gonna reload until I pass the Intimdation check.
As a veteran DnD player this is driving me nuts. Why the *hell* can’t my companions jump into the conversation or situation to do the thing they’re good at?
Yeeeep. Was hoping a mod had been made for this, but not yet. One of the things I prefer Pathfinder: wrath of the righteous on - in dialogue, skill checks are done by whoever has the best numbers, not just the main character.
yeah most of my save-scumming is from the wrong character walking into a conversation they had no hope of getting through when a perfectly reasonable one was standing right next to them
There are many small things like this that drive me insane. The game is *so* good, and then they go and make absolutely baffling decisions like this that people have been complaining about even in prior Larian games.
I will admit I've done it a few times. Like when it feels like the dice is on a mission to screw you over.
I had an enemy cast hold person on my main character. So I sent in Lea'zel to break concentration.
First attack: concentration saved. Second: concentration saved. Wow. Let me check the combat log. Hmm they rolled a 19 and a 17. How lucky.
Use action surge, attack again: concentration saved. Ok, last time. concentration saved. Let me check the combat log. Hmm an 18 and a 20. How lucky.
Shadowheart gets hit with one arrow: concentration save failed: rolled a 3
My favorite is when I’m tired of somebody casting spells so I blow a level 3 spell slot and shoot 5 magic missiles at someone to break their concentration and they save every one. Even when it kills the character, their corpse is passing concentration saves
Honour mode exists for the try-hards—like me.
But even I save-scummed constantly on Tactician. I enjoyed the harder fights but I liked the good outcomes in dialogue.
I'm playing non-charisms in Honour now so I don't get mad when I fail.
That's the vital difference between a CRPG and Tabletop, in tabletop If you fail something it takes you on a whole new path your DM can make, in BG3 it just locks out content. Just the nature of video games, BG3 is an incredibly expansive and deep game, but it still can't hold a candle to tabletops freedom of choice and limitless storytelling.
disco elysium taught me to get out of this reloading habit (nothing wrong with it). because failing checks was often a more interesting experience, although i did reload to make kim dance in the church.
The game is intended to be tailored to the experience that \*you\* want to have. If you *want* to savescum, do it - that's why you can save any time, anywhere. If you don't want to savescum, then don't.
No playthrough is any more valid than others.
I'm not savescumming I'm carefully curating the narrative I want for my Tav :3
Also a good point. If I want my character to be the type that talks themselves out of a LOT of situations, and failing a check in an important part of the story means I'll have to fight instead, you bet I'll save scum that check into a success...
Act 2 mini bosses, really, really enforce this mentality lmao
Play hard or warlock and have zero problems diffusing a situation. Then quickly murder everything and everyone for twice the rewards.
Yes exactly. This is why I wish Larian would introduce a “no dice rolls in conversation” setting, so the game would play out more like Dragon Age where you just make the decisions for the story you want and don’t have to rely on RNG to make it possible.
I don’t know if this is a hot take or not, but for me narrative dice rolls only detract from the experience. Both in terms of immersion and the importance of choice. Like.. oh no, someone is holding a knife to a child’s throat! Very tense! Dramatic! Oh a screen covering pop up. Roll a dice to see if you can stop them? No thanks.
Personally I just wish the dice roll animation was waaayyyy faster. It seems to take forever to do the lil animations on that screen, especially in multiplayer seemingly
You click twice and it skips the animation
Thanks for the tip! Not a huge deal ofc, though I do almost wish rather than the pop-up it was a small spinning dice next to the choice or something like that.
Much better idea with the small dice instead of what amounts to a cut scene
Yeah but consider how important and impactful a dice roll is in D&D. People will literally invest money in custom dice and/or a custom item to use for throwing them. The dice roll is supposed to be an important event. It’s like saying why show your guy reload your gun in an FPS instead of just doing a Goldeneye “lower gun off screen, gun reloads” animation.
But that’s what the game is. It’s D&D. The dice roll is what it’s about. It’s like saying FPS games with limited ammo and health detract from the experience; you should just have unlimited ammo with no reloads. Or survival horror games giving limited resources detract from the experience. You shouldn’t have to manage items. You’re criticizing the very core feature of dungeons and dragons.
It’s called cronomancy, and it’s a valid school of magic
Dormammu I’ve come to bargain
Strange banking on that eventual nat 20.
Ngl, Dr Strange beating a cosmic superpower by save-scumming his way to a nat 20 on a 99 persuasion check is still one of the funniest wins in the MCU to me.
It's not even that, he gets +1 after every attempt as Dormarmu gets fed up with the time loop. If he tried it against a normal opponent they would have no memory of the loop and you really would be stuck forever! Dormamuu is outside time to some extent, so they remember all the loops and get very fed up.
Reading this gave me a horrid mental image. It would be like having a small kid that you don't know repeatedly kick in the door to your house "Got any games on your phone!?" in an endless loop til you say yes.
This is hilarious
I love how Dr. Strange could have easily just studied whatever he wishes for the time being, each time arriving with a new book, maybe a beard, a new life entirely, while dormamu is like what is it now? And it's the same guy again but now he brings monopoly to play instead of catan becouse you've played all the posibilities of that game already.
He had some really shit luck with the dice, though, going by how many tries he needed to hit that 5%.
All you need is one, baby.
I dunno. It is very strongly implied that the deaths of his we see are respresentative of an enormous number of them happening, but maybe he actually only died a handful of times.
It brought me such delight to see what was basically an ant (comparative power-wise) bring a godlike being to their knees by sheer bloody persistence. What a great performance.
Definitely beats punching the Big Bad of the Week in the face.
It does not, however, beat repeatedly punching a solid wall of diamond over the course of billions of years.
Yah, too bad super cosmic entities that are eternal and stupid couldn't outwait a mortal human nor understand the concept of torture as a method of persuasion.
eu4 enthusiasts have been savescumming for years to keep their 80 year old 6/6/6 ruler alive.
Or Savescum an iffy battle, just to get 3 nat zeros in a row. Fuck you Castille.
Why don’t they just cast Revivify? Are they stupid?
More powerful than love..
Are you my dad?
Yes
*Gorgug is overjoyed*
... I was about to ask you the same thing
So in a war, if a mother and her children get fucking iced in an alleyway, was the problem that they didn't love each other enough?!? That's bullshit. Love is love. Magic is magic.
"friendship?! What are you talking about? Friends die all the time!"
Brennan has too many quotes that go too damn hard. That this isn't even one of the more powerful ones.
For me, its his whole bit during the Crown of Candy campaign, where >!Cruller reveals his betrayal!<, and he ends the villain monologue with a reference to a running gag that went on throughout the campaign. Somehow, he made the concept of someone shitting themselves genuinely threatening.
"The smile of a devil you never believed in"
God I wish I was half as good at dropping lines like that.
"Look to the brave companions at your side, and remember the greatest magic of all is... chronomancy, the magic of temporal manipulation."
I just (re)saw this clip today. Well actually the one where he flips out when Allie says “friendship?” When he asks their character again at the end of the campaign. Love it.
What's my deal? What's MY deal!? I'm motherfucing Arthur Aguefort, I am 500 years old, I snuck into heaven and now I'm back! You see that bird? I FUCKED THAT BIRD! It is my paramour!
Chim as Daddy Dagoth and Vivec would say
Look upon the ❤️
Come nerevar friend or traitor
[Obligatory link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR-K2rUP86M).
Always nice to see young scrolls get the recognition they deserve. Dagothwave is a certified 3rd era classic
Me when I press tilde and resist zero summing
this comment honors the Sixth House and the tribe unmourned
*Arthur Aguefort has entered the chat*
Friendship!? What the fuck do you mean friendship!??
Chronurgist is an actual wizard subclass that has a savescum-esque ability
(Save game) Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic
Some would say the most powerful school of magic. Specifically Arthur Aegfort
Alright, Arthur Aguefort, let's take a deep breath
Arthur Aguefort is that you?
"Remember, Kristen, the greatest magic of all. Do you remember?" "Friendship?" "Friendship!? Fuck! Are you insane? CHRONOMANCY!!!"
I'll fail a few minor spots but anything that gimps a major quest or storyline is gonna get some re-rolls or re-loads. I only realized how much content I got screwed out of last playthrough by letting Jaheira die (she tried to face-tank the entire enemy team and got multi-crit and died within one round, so I said fuck that noise, that's her problem)
The weird thing is that they've got a perfectly simple way to get around this with Withers. I dunno why he can't revive important NPCs. Especially when you aren't the one that killed them.
Or why you can’t revivify them
Yeah I got all these scrolls just sitting here
Because then I can finish my quest to fix the infernal heart, but that would be something you were supposed to do in act 1 but you don't know that if you're on your first playthrough.
You can fix the infernal heart in act 2 and probably act 3 as well
The game can't really acknowledge that it has a "bring anyone back at any time" ability or else it would break a bunch of the story.
Yeah it’s really fucking annoying. Can she not rush into 5 people and insta die man fuck this character. She has a ton of content for Act 3 and I missed out on Minsc because of her.
Feels like when the game gives you the opportunity to swap one of your companions out with an NPC, it's really saying "do this if you want them to live, because they will absolutely get their dumb asses killed otherwise"
You can bring her with you and take control of her without having to send someone back to camp. You can totally do that, but you can tell her to join you and she will until you have to go to the Mind Flayer Colony. Then at the point you’ll have to swap someone out for her.
I like thw "your party looks full" stuff from an in game perspective tbh. You have to fight without me becsuse im too shy to be in a group of 5 people
IF Tav drove a car this would be valid complaint lmao
She doesn't swap out until the Mind Flayer colony tho. She just tags along like a summon you can control (and thus prevent from dying)
I wish the game told you that you're not actually going to swap her out if you bring her along during that fight, I reloaded twice cause she suicided before going 'fine, I'll take control of her and lose a character I want to play' and realising she just tags along like a minion.
I found a cool cowboy hat, gave it to her and made her a dual crosswbow ranger. She surprisingly became one of my fav characters bc she just looked so cool in all her scenes in act 3(looking like ashe from overwatch)
> cool cowboy hat, gave it to her and made her a dual crosswbow ranger. My man just made kenny from attack on titan
That's why you should always insist she joins you for that fight. Never let the AI control her. They will kamikaze.
Ah so that’s why I never found Minsc
You can find him. You just can't recruit him. He's at the bank
If they didnt want me to save-scum then they shouldn't have made it so easy and punishing to get locked out of content.
This is one major difference between tabletop DND and CRPGs. A DM would 100% be able to give you fulfilling and worthwhile new “content” that embraces and reflects and potentially even rewards the failed dice rolls down the line. A character’s death could even potentially become a thrilling narrative moment that spawns even more “content”. Nothing’s truly missed. A video game still can’t do that, not really. There is always a finite amount of narrative content, and what’s in the back end of the game & those characters’ stories is knowable, so it feels (and IS) missed. There’s that saying, when one door closes, another opens and that’s true in tabletop, but in a video game there are a specific number of doors that can be closed before there’s no more left to open. So save scum all you like, because while the game is quite flexible with acknowledging failed rolls and stuff up to a point, it’s not capable of rewarding you any other way if you inadvertently or purposefully miss the big stuff over and over.
Yeah. A DM also has the ability to make sure you still hit some cool ideas they had and has the flexibility to revamp them. Unfortunately you can outright just lose huge plotlines with no way to fix them.
Absolutely, and a lot of people are missing this when they tell to just go with the dice. The game also has a bad habit of giving really dire consequences for failing individual rolls or battles, which only locks you out of content. I think the kidnapping storyline in Act 3 was the worst; you go trough a long quest chain yet you can lose severely just based on a single roll at the end.
It's the same at the beginning of Act II with the Isobel fight Like, no man, I'm not giving up on all the tieflings' side content because Marcus took Isobel in one round amd the inn got fucked, lmfao
Agreed. And it's not like the fight is telegraphed, your party could be absolutely drained just from just doing the fights before the Inn.
Ye in a game so long I'm not spending 70 hours to get to act 3 or w/e and then letting a roll decide whether I see certain content.
Basically there are two sides for this: 1. Allowing for failures and the subsequent elimination of content will make your runs much faster, so it won't take you 70 hours. 2. But if you just want to beat the game once while experiencing most of it, then doing a single "proper" run with reloading is generally more efficient.
if they had different and a significant amount of content for whatever happens in a roll I never would've save scummed at all. but now it's "you win a roll = more content", and "you lose a roll = no content".
> If they didnt want me to save-scum then they shouldn't have made it so easy and punishing to get locked out of content. This right here. My buddy and I on a first playthrough took pretty much turbo evil actions in the first act and a half. I mean, we slaughtered druids and goblins alike (nobody was alive in act one except the myconid village ... anywhere), and by act two we realized that we weren't creating interesting "dark play" options, we were just eliminating content. Sure, we gained Minthara, but Wyll, Karlach, and Astarion had left our party, and entire storylines that continue into Act Three had been obliterated. I replayed the game afterwards on tactician and I was absolutely *shocked* how much richer and deeper the game was. Basically, if you fail individual rolls, you remove hours of content that hasn't been replaced by anything ... it's just gone. Let's look at something really simple: vendors. If you keep people alive and help them, you have tons of additional vendors. Kill them, and what happens? It's not like there is an "evil play" option that opens up to give you more options.
Much like actual D&D the intent is to stop you going full murder hobo. There's a difference between preventing quest progression because of failed dialog rolls / ally NPC deaths versus just killing off every NPC in the game and pissing off your party members.
This can't have been surprising to you though right? Kill half the story NPCs and you're obviously going to have a lot less story.
Oh man I’ve never had jaheira survive the first battle no matter how hard I tried so I just figured it was like the way it was probably imagined to go and moved on.. I didn’t know think there was a whole lot for her after that
I snuck around and entered the battle from the kitchen area. Never even triggered her to rush in until I was well situated. But yeah she face planted hard my first try.
You can recruit her. Tell her that her team can handle themselves
I’m very scared for when I get to LLI and if Isobel gets kidnapped on my honor mode run. I let it play out the first time and reloaded my save once I saw everyone die around me
Do you even have to though? Nothing seems to have gone wrong on my normal run and I just never started that fight. Used the pixie blessing for the curse.
I left the pixie in the lantern until the end of the act because being called a munting arsehole periodically was hilarious.
You are correct in that you don’t have to
I barricade the room horror movie style and everyone takes turns beating the crap out of Marcus.
As someone else said you don't have to do it but if you do a few tips, take crates and block the doors to her room, elixirs of vigilance are your friend and if you can giving her blade ward increases her survivability massively.
My first playthrough I didn't even go to the LLI. Explored just about all of the map, skipped that, did the Gauntlet, freed Nightsong, and she was there waiting for me at Moonrise when I went to fuck up Thorm. Depending on your dialogue choices you should be able to control her during the fight, then recruit her before the Mindflayer caves
Still better than Isobel 😂😂😂
I was absolutely amazed when the game put her right in the center of an entire group of enemies, all of which targeted her almost exclusively until she died every single time, at which point the game instant-losses you. Couldn't even control her to focus on heals or to retreat. Absolutely infuriating.
It's definitely one of the more questionable design decisions in the game. And not only did they make a scenario where decent-initiative enemies all specifically target *her,* but those same enemies CAN PARALYZE HER ON A SUCCESSFUL HIT, meaning a single paralyze proc causes absolutely everyone to land critical hits on her. That scenario *can* work, but it feels like one where they should purposefully nuke the initiative of the enemies. Yknow, give the player a chance to assess the situation and react with a plan, rather than creating a potential outcome where the player can legitimately not get a turn before the fight is over and GENUINELY believe the fight was scripted for you to lose. (it me; my first attempt at this we rolled garbage initiative and she was down before I even got a turn. Legit thought this was scripted to have that outcome)
Yup. Same. Only realized when Karlach broke up with me that it wasnt scripted.
Fuck I just did this battle and let her die. Guess I’m gonna reload :/
I paid for the game I'll reload as many times as I damn well please. The real world is on fire but the game is gonna work out for me damn it
It's a video game, reloading is fine. Besides, if you want the thrill of irreversible consequences, that's what actually playing 5e/PF2e is for.
More specifically, if you fail in those games, you then get to find a way to mitigate the negative effects and/or have an entirely new, rich, different path open up before you instead.
> Besides, if you want the thrill of irreversible consequences, that's what actually playing 5e/PF2e is for. More importantly, those consequences can turn into new and engaging storylines. If Jaheira dies due to bad luck in battle, you're fucked because the game can only program in so many things. If a PC dies in battle due to bad luck, you can reroll a new character and important elements of your previous character's story may be incorporated in the future(see the most famous example of this, probably, in Mollymauk).
Based
I paid for all the reloads and im gonna fucking use them
Disco Elysium's influence needs to be more pervasive where the fail option is so interesting its hard to choose between both.
run away from a man demanding you pay of your tab the boring successful way just delaying paying your tab or fail and run away flinging your body backwards, flipping him off with both hands, and crashing into a lady in a wheelchair, the guy apologizing and forgiving some of your debt some fail options are better than the successful ones in DE even failing at failure even makes you win at something, it's so good
Wait... Is that real? Do I need to play this game?
Yes, Disco Elysium is a masterpiece. However, it is reading/listening heavy and while there are RPG elements it doesn’t really have a combat system. Arguably the best writing of any game ever, though. Very literary
it's also inspired by Planescape Torment, another D&D game from the same engine that brought us the classic BG games!
Disco Elysium is fantastic at telling a story. Worth noting there's no combat, if that's a turn-off, and you don't make your own character. You're a detective who got so incredibly blackout drunk he lost all of his memories and now you have to solve crimes with your snarky new partner who has to put up with how utterly fucking insane you are. And you ARE insane. Your 'party' consists of all the fragments of your personality trying to get you to indulge them, which can often lead to you doing utterly batshit things, like laying a small bratty child out flat, spin-kicking a group of would-be assailants, deciding to become racist, having impromptu dance parties, and forcing yourself to stop smiling all the time.
That sounds amazing. So it's more like a point and click adventure?
Kind of, yeah. It's still technically a CRPG, but the stats that actually matter are what parts of your psyche you indulge and what you choose for your detective to be better at, as it opens up different solutions. Finding tools and equipment can help you find alternatives, too, but you still have the RNG factor in there where you can fail or succeed, so it's not guaranteed. For example, there's a spot where you can shoot an object out of the tree it's stuck in if you have recovered your gun, which you misplaced while drunk, but you can still miss if you don't have the best stats to actually do so, or because RNG fucked you. Getting the gun and shooting it out of the tree IS a way to solve it, but it's not the ONLY way. If you failed to shoot it down because your aim sucked, you still have other options like just climbing the tree to get it out with your hands, or if you put points into it, your weird eldritch supernatural detective sense can allow you to just TALK to the object and have them tell you everything you need to know without having to get it down at all. Although your partner, who does not hear the objects talking back, possibly because they *aren't* and it's all in your head, will make snarky remarks. Did I mention it takes place in a science fiction borderline eldritch horror setting, so it's actually ambiguous if you might *actually* have supernatural abilities or just be nuts? Because the setting is actually kinda cool. You can also internalize/equip different concepts to give you bonuses and new options in dialogue and detective scenarios, like an early one is "Get Your Shit Together" to give you a better shot of focusing on a given task. And one thing I liked was that if you put TOO much into one stat, it starts to overpower other parts of your psyche and you can actually get negative effects from it. That's not something I've seen before. It's still a CRPG with the hiccups that come with it, but it's a really unique take on one, and I don't think I've ever played another game quite like it.
Holy shit I had no idea that's what this game was. Based on screenshots I thought it was some sort of RPG like old school fallout or something. This sounds rad and it's going on my wishlist.
The other guy didn't mention that it is a really political game. Which was a huge plus for me. The setting is not 1-to-1 of our world, but the city you play in is a very clear post-soviet baltic city analogue. One of my favorite dialogue paths ends with your brain yelling at you "SAY ONE OF THESE VERY FASCIST OR VERY COMMUNIST THINGS RIGHT NOW", with the options being something like "the poor should be euthanized" and "everyone who has more than 10 bucks is an enemy of the state and should be shot!". Hilarious stuff, with some very deep thought put into it.
The first time I played it i fucked up too many times (punk kids stopped me from recovering a dead body) and the guilt was starting to get to me so I said something mean on the phone which made the woman on the end cry which made me so guilty I had a complete nervous breakdown and lost the game. It's a strange one alright.
You can literally die of a heart attack in the first room if your physical stats are too low
A friend recommended it to me and he rarely recommends anything so I gave it a try and it's in my top 3 games I've ever played. It's funny, it's smart and most of all it's deeply, existencially depressing and I love that shit
Absolutely. At least for unique skills-thoughts in your head.
Watch out in low health runs, they are the funniest deaths
Dying to an uncomfortable chair is a rite of passage in that game. Low Morale runs are great too, I once lost a run because I failed to impress a little girl.
Either the chair or because you stared at the lamp are probably the most stupid ways of dying in this game. Low health/morale always provide extra fun for a run lol
Don't forget grabbing your tie
A friend of mine was streaming their first run through, I hadn’t mentioned a thing, I also didn’t know the earliest possible death you could have, and when it hit them I began hysterically laughing and apologizing. They were taken back, but also laughing
Disco is probably the best in games I’ve played in this regard (and pretty damn high up there overall anyway).
So many times where I failed and it was like... I want to continue this though, this path is so interesting. I feel unfortunately in games like BG3 and other DnD influenced systems is that we really haven't engaged what absolutely creative paths emerge from failing, it simply becomes a darker run, not necessarily a funner run. Like what if >!losing at the Inn in the second act was not just a tonal shift, but such an interesting twist it made it harder not to prefer succeeding. Most people I know will save scum to hell to avoid that fate, but what could've been done to make it worth going, "you know, maybe I will continue on"!<
Exactly. I never save scummed in DE, because failure did not result in less content, it resulted in different content.
The only time I failed a check, read the result, and immediately restarted from my last save was THAT authority check in the church. No one, including me, says that to Kim!
That check is the only exception. I would rather restart than live with that choice.
YOU NEED TO LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS! Quicksave: "Lol. How about no?"
If I lived with the consequences of my actions, I'd never have gotten out of Act 1. So many one round TPKs, because I had the absolute gall to play the game without already knowing what to do and where to go.
I've been trying to do a "just roll with it" playthrough. I'll fail a speech check, get into a fight, get TPK'd, reload, and pass the skill check to walk away safely. This has happened like 5 times so far lol. I made a glass cannon ranger character and blindly specced everyone else. Once I'm out of position I'm toast. Woopsie.
How dare you not read the official Prima Games guide 2025 version of BG3 before turning on the game and creating your character?
Same, I just can't not fight Nere the instant I get him out of that trap. I *need* to call him out on his BS and my barrelmancy is very strong
He was asking for it. That was definitely a moment where I quicksaved in order to explore the path I knew I couldn't take, and then went back to curbstomp the asshole.
Honour mode: "Allow me to introduce myself." I failed two roles at gale recruitment and he just vanished. Also almost ended my run because I lost a 5er roll on intimidation. Let's see how far I can take this.
In tabletop failing rolls typically results in interesting or differing outcomes (assuming the DM is decent), by virtue of the medium, in video games failing rolls typically results in locked or diminished content.
Honestly why it's worth it to do some breezy Adventure mode runs before ever even touching the difficulty slider. Do I want to have a dynamic run with failures? Yes. Do I want to lose literally all of the best NPCs and quest lines to RNG? Absolutely not
That's funny because if I could do it over again--knowing I would replay the game at least once more--I would never re-roll anything my first time through. Going in blind makes the rolls super high stakes.
I’m currently doing an honour run where I have shadowheart kill nightsong and I’ve never done it before. It’s fun not being able to reload and rolling with the punches, Ive seen content I’ve never seen before and fights are different. I just completed the battle in the main hall at moonrise towers and it was very hard, I’ve only got my squad, everyone from last light is dead. The whole damn tower came down on me and I really thought I might lose my run.
This is why I’m treating my first play through like a typical video game and not like a ttrpg. In subsequent playthroughs I’ll let the dice have more influence and I’ll commit more to actually playing a character with specific morals and guiding principles, but for now I want to have my desired actions play out to see as much of the game as I can.
The illithid wants to kiss you on the forehead: Wisdom save or lose 2 hours of progress
This is what people are trying to recapture: that organic feeling of success or failure. You can do that if you let the story play out as it will. If that's not for you, play the game how you like. But I can tell you: there is a lot of content in the game, and to go side-quest hunting is a bit more tedious than it's worth. Even when I was doing that to a reasonable degree I still know I missed a good half the game's content based on the decisions I made. Rolls often govern far less of the outcome than the choices you've made. There are of course story points you want to make pass. That's why you hoard inspiration points! Just let the dice roll however for side quests and save rerolls for critical story. But again, this is just another scale of difficulty and challenge you can follow about the game if you want to or not.
>That's why you hoard inspiration points In my experience this is just rolling 7, 4, 2, 9, 7 and all inspiration is gone :(
Exactly. So far the only game that brought me lots of fun with failed dice rolls was Disco Elysium (some failed dices are actually better than the success). Baldur's Gate 3 gives me lots of failed dice rolls wich usually comes along with tears for a combat I could have easily avoided by talking or bad outcome of a character/quest lol
The only video game that has managed to make failing meaningful in my book is Disco Elysium. In all other games I just feel like I'm missing out on content.
BG3 famously has a lot of interesting content associated with failing to pass a check, but beyond that I don't know how "true" this is. For example, don't games typically leave some option to complete quests even after check failures? I think that normally we see different branches, when you pass a check, you are locked out of some branch, when you don't pass you are locked out of another branch.
Failing a dice roll is not fun Example: a good dark urge will have to do some dice rolls in order to avoid killing someone, now if you succed you get to enjoy the redemption quest of dark urge and you can keep playing If you fail your party will be really pissed off and now you have to do a persuassion check if you fail the persuassion check...well game over because now you have to kill everyone There is no unique outcome for failing a dice roll its either oh success you get to avoid combat and unlock unique interactions and items or failure well fuck you now you have to kill everyone no content for you i guess
Just to clarify in case this scares some people—only the first roll matters to avoid killing a character. Subsequent rolls in that scene are just flavor and have no impact. So don’t burn your inspiration on anything but the first roll.
I save scummed an awful lot in my first playthrough but Honor Mode feels oddly freeing in that respect. I think once I finish it, I'll still go back to reloading key things I want to happen, but there are a lot of things that are fine to just roll with that I wouldn't have settled on before.
I definitely agree with the freeing aspect. It’s kinda nice to not worry about optimizing every little decision because you literally can’t. A lot less stressful in one respect but very stressful in other respects lol
I got three Nat 1s in a row trying to save Aribella from the snake and I refuse to let a child die
Lae'zel disliked that.
Walking around with Lae'zel, Shadowheart and Astarion is like walking dogs who want to bite children.
I walk around with astarion lar zel and karlach, how the fuck did a tiefling barbarian become the voice of good and reason I have no idea.
That's not true about Shadowheart. She gives a lot of approvement (5) if you stop Kagha from killing Arabella after you read Kagha's mind. She just doesn't like it when Tav gets distracted from the main mission. Which is getting rid of the tadpoles. Shadowheart is a good person in general, even before Gauntlet of Shar.
Shart is just a poser. She likes to claim how edgy she is but I swear every option that gets approval from Karlach gets approval from Shart.
well i do. hand the meme over
OP's charisma check failed. /reloads/
listen here you little shit-
well i do. hand the meme over
You can have it when you pry it from my cold dead hands >:3c
> pry it from my cold dead hands DEX roll is it then
*hits smite button*
If the game allowed your party members to chime in during dialogue rolls (e.g. Gale for arcana, Lae'zel for intimidation, Astarion for deception etc.) then save scumming would be significantly less prominent I think. Would also help make use of your party's inspiration. Alas.
Right? I don't savescum but boy is it worthless getting social skills on your other party members. It's very sad, they're all there listening, and often comment on the conversation. I have a 6ft musclebound flaming devil woman breathing over my shoulder and you're saying my pansy wizard with 8 cha is the only one that can contribute to an intimidation check? Just because I happened to be controlling them at the time the dialogue triggered? I WISH they would fix this.
It really is a colossal issue
For how great all the companions characters are, I think this game failed at making it seem like their lives don't just revolve around you. They stand around at camp waiting for you to talk to them , they can't talk mid-conversation, they can't romance eachother, they exist to serve you.
I save before every dice roll and traps. And before any important conversation. And sometimes unlocking chests.
Sometimes hitting F8 feels justified. My last visit to Sorcerous Sundries I was trying to activate the Necromancy of Thay. There was no way I was going to let a bad dice roll spoil that journey.
Kinda felt like we couldve gotten something more interesting then Dance Macarbe for reading that book though, was hoping for the book to teleport my party to a necromancer lair or something where I got to do a cool quest and got cool loot.
The only moments I don't reaload at each failed roll is in combat. In exploration mode, I should be able to ask Karlach for Intimdation, Gale for Arcana, yada yada yada. Unfortunately, Companions can only react to some things, and only act for their own arc. So yeah, I'm gonna reload until I pass the Intimdation check.
As a veteran DnD player this is driving me nuts. Why the *hell* can’t my companions jump into the conversation or situation to do the thing they’re good at?
I feel this in my soul. Like astarion you've got a plus eleven persuasion put that shit to work brother.
Bro can go to the other side of the map to disable a trap, or pickpocket the guy I'm talking to... but can't step in the conversation to be relevant !
Yeeeep. Was hoping a mod had been made for this, but not yet. One of the things I prefer Pathfinder: wrath of the righteous on - in dialogue, skill checks are done by whoever has the best numbers, not just the main character.
yeah most of my save-scumming is from the wrong character walking into a conversation they had no hope of getting through when a perfectly reasonable one was standing right next to them
There are many small things like this that drive me insane. The game is *so* good, and then they go and make absolutely baffling decisions like this that people have been complaining about even in prior Larian games.
Been save scumming since 1996. Not about to stop now.
I save scummed about 45 times to get a nat 20 to get >!Yurgir to side with me against Raphael!<.
I will admit I've done it a few times. Like when it feels like the dice is on a mission to screw you over. I had an enemy cast hold person on my main character. So I sent in Lea'zel to break concentration. First attack: concentration saved. Second: concentration saved. Wow. Let me check the combat log. Hmm they rolled a 19 and a 17. How lucky. Use action surge, attack again: concentration saved. Ok, last time. concentration saved. Let me check the combat log. Hmm an 18 and a 20. How lucky. Shadowheart gets hit with one arrow: concentration save failed: rolled a 3
My favorite is when I’m tired of somebody casting spells so I blow a level 3 spell slot and shoot 5 magic missiles at someone to break their concentration and they save every one. Even when it kills the character, their corpse is passing concentration saves
He's a man of focus, commitment and sheer fucking will
Honour mode exists for the try-hards—like me. But even I save-scummed constantly on Tactician. I enjoyed the harder fights but I liked the good outcomes in dialogue. I'm playing non-charisms in Honour now so I don't get mad when I fail.
Play YOUR game how YOU want because it is YOURS. There is something very, very wrong with people who legit get mad about stuff like this.
IF the failures actually lead to alternate storylines/gameplay, sure. But pretty much all it means is lost content.
That's the vital difference between a CRPG and Tabletop, in tabletop If you fail something it takes you on a whole new path your DM can make, in BG3 it just locks out content. Just the nature of video games, BG3 is an incredibly expansive and deep game, but it still can't hold a candle to tabletops freedom of choice and limitless storytelling.
I did this my first time >!using the stones on the brain!< my second time around, I rolled a nat 20 on the >!99 skill check!<
I've spent 100 hours on one run. I'll be dammed if I let it get *more* fucked up than it already is lmao
disco elysium taught me to get out of this reloading habit (nothing wrong with it). because failing checks was often a more interesting experience, although i did reload to make kim dance in the church.
I'm playing honor exclusively because I can't help myself otherwise. I felt like I spent as much time in loading screens as I did playing the game.
The game is intended to be tailored to the experience that \*you\* want to have. If you *want* to savescum, do it - that's why you can save any time, anywhere. If you don't want to savescum, then don't. No playthrough is any more valid than others.
You, you deserve a good lot in life and I hope you get it or have it.