Do you roll with failures or do you load and try for your "expected" outcome?

If we're talking specifically about dice rolls, I generally accept failures. But I absolutely save-scum to get around anything I perceive as "videogame bullshit" such as an unexpected scene triggering a conversation on a character I would NEVER want having that conversation, even if they pass the rolls it feels icky to have someone like Lae'zel playing diplomat.

45

I feel like this is one of the aspects of DnD the game doesn't do a great job of. In the tabletop you sometimes have one character handling the conversation but you can usually switch pretty easily. Like the paladin could be talking to someone and fail to persuade them, then the barbarian steps in to intimidate or something.

19
- It does bother me quite a bit how conversations are so one-on-one. I really appreciate the peanut gallery comments from my companions, but they're too few and far between. I would love if there was some way to make manual checks based on the dialogue but still totally dependent on the player understanding what types of check they might need.
  
  E.g., I'm talking to an NPC as Tav, but the NPC mentions something which I pick up on as sounding religious (and my Tav isn't versed in religion). I should be able to make a religion check as whichever companion I want -- essentially, let the player role play for the whole group the same way an actual group of people would in DnD. The game is already meta-gaming for you in exactly this way, by performing, say, a religion check when my character probably wouldn't have picked up on any religious undertones, and now I'm wondering why my character suddenly knows about some obscure religious proverb or some such.
  
  12
- Yeah, I wish that would have been implemented. Maybe at a later update or a mod?
  
  8
This is the approach I take. I can roll with character deaths and dice rolls that fundamentally alter the trajectory of the game - I just can't tolerate losing my agency to quirks of the engine. I once lost 3 companions because they were standing on a trap during a cutscene - didn't hesitate to reload in that case.

9
Exactly the same here. Did I somehow click something behind the camera, causing my moron to run directly at the giant enemy crab I just managed to carefully avoid? Yeah I'll reload.

Same if it's a dialogue option I (or the NPC I'm talking to) clearly misunderstood. In tabletop or real life it could be cleared up by "no, party member, I only told the bad guy I'd help him as a lie" even if it added a persuasion or deception check. In game, there's just no dialogue option to say "sorry, i didn't mean it that way" in most situations. See also: accidentally romancing the wrong person as many players apparently do

4
- Yea I had an instance of this as well. "I totally agree to do this evil thing in your place, leave it up to me guys go have a drink on me" was a lie. I couldn't make up the disapproval from 2 other party members even when I saved the person afterwards.
  
  1
I agree with this mostly, but I forgot to switch off Lae'zel once and got my favorite line from her an indignant "Are you threatening a Gith Warrior?!"

But yeah, I totally savescum when my characters decide to path through a poisonous cloud when I explicitly told them to jump around it.

1
- I have definitely had some happy accidents, which only makes me wish even more for the ability to see what ANYONE in my party can say instead of just the accidental face.
  
  Karlach is a surprisingly adept negotiator with her "I'LL CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD AND MAKE YOU TONGUE YOUR OWN ASSHOLE" style of persuasion.
  
  2

Surely the main point is rolling with dice rolls.

Doesn't save scumming kind of take the point out of having the rolls?

Feels like it would suck a lot of the fun out the game to me.

26

A lot of games just don't put much thought into players that constantly fail at things and don't really make it enjoyable.

16
- BG3 have something called karma dice to balance it out if you’re unlucky with your rolls. It’s on by default.
  
  I always roll with the rolls, failure is part of the game.
  
  13
Kind of, for me some rolls I'm fine with accepting failure and some I'm not. I have accepted some very serious consequences from failed rolls but sometimes I just don't want to deal with it.

Ultimately I guess everyone plays the game differently.

10

Depends on how devastating the outcome is, and whether I feel it's locking me out of the play style I wanted. It's my first playthrough, I'll prob be more into letting the dice fall where they will on the next go around.

I almost never replay games but with this one there's just so many different paths through, different characters. EG I keep seeing people talk about Karlach as a player character but... let's just say after meeting fairly early on I guess I chose wrongly, because she was not joining my party on account of

spoiler

having no head

13

Oh you missed out, wyll has been permanently in camp since I met Karlach. She’s an anchor of the team in my book as a super tanking barb also doing 40ish damage around with a maul I gave her

4
- I will 100% be saving her next go around. Everyone keeps saying how fun she is to have around.
  
  I completely neglected Astarion, found him initially annoying, plus the cheeky fuck
  
  spoiler
  
  literally tried to drink my blood while I was sleeping
  
  ! Also haven't used Will at all, nor Halsin, nor any of the many other characters that can be recruited. Actually looking forward to replaying with a completely different team.
  
  3

Failure had a massive impact on my story. I wasn't planning on going for an evil run, but I couldn't stop someone from doing something very bad and it changed everything, from characters, to main story, to even gameplay since a character's kit changed. People died, and probably the personality of the character changed, too (I'll find that out next run).

I hated it in the moment, but I'm glad I did it because it's made the run so memorable.

I've still been loading when dumb gameplay happens, like how Tav just walked into a room to cast a spell I thought she had range on, or I forget to bring the rest of the party into combat after I broke a party member off to ambush.

As for who did the thing, it was a late Act 2 spoiler:

It was Shadowheart, in that moment

10

I too ended up with an more evil run than intended due to "failure" or maybe more underestimating the consequences of my (in)action which led to the death of a companion. In almost every other recent game I played I would have reloaded at that point. But it coincidentally aligned with me finding the Ancient Tome so I changed my Conjurer Wizard to a Necromancer and dipped into the evil side. I don't regret it at all. So now I go with whatever happens.

1
:: spoiler As for who did the thing, it was a late Act 2 spoiler: It was Shadowheart, in that moment

I think I know what you're talking about, and I save-scummed to avoid it, because I needed ~~redacted~~ at the time. Was pretty dramatic and surprising!

1

I don't reload combat unless I totally wipe, or want to start the fight over entirely.

I reload most of the other checks because failure is rarely interesting here, there's no fail forward or succeed with cost. It's especially irritating when my character flubs a roll they have like +10 on.

I don't typically reroll stuff that has a very high dc that feels like my character couldn't do. Like if there's a DC 20 check and I have a +1, I'll probably just accept the loss.

I'd rather it was like fo:NV where you either have the skill or you don't.

9

I'm reloading a lot right now as I'm trying to figure out the "video game physics". I've misunderstood a few game mechanics so I've reloaded to try again.

I'll probably also reload to open doors and stuff just to see the content behind there. My game time is limited so I want to see as much as I can on my run through the game.

7

I will roll with failures if they're narratively interesting. Failed to open a door and used my last set of lock picks? Reload.

Failed a roll and pissed off the NPC I was trying to charm? Them's the breaks! 😜

6

My latest toon is a monk with no charisma, so I'm constantly failing skill checks. I could just go the violence way right off and succeed all the time, but often the failures are funny to watch.

1

For dialog & ability checks, I feel like failing is part of character design, and if I've chosen to sacrifice charisma for constitution, then I should play the low CHA path. There's always revivify, but I have scummed over real death. Sometimes, I'd look up the game consequences of success/failure, and it's never game-breaking. For all the 'choices have consequences' talk, you still have to be able to finish the game. That said, years of RPG experience has taught me to always have a max CHA talker and a max DEX lockpicker.

6

It depends. Sometimes I'll save scum a success if I rolled with a failure previously. Just to see the outcome. Usually I just roll with my failures, though.

5

I don't reload dialogue failures, but honestly between Enhance Ability and Guidance I rarely fail, and when I do I usually have 4 Inspiration saved up for rerolls.

I've reloaded during fights to test interactions ("does throwing an unconscious person deal damage to them?") but not to, for example, undo a bad turn that led to an NPC death.

5

How do you actually throw a NPC? Most are too heavy for my barbarian.

3
- I dunno, I just had Karlach right click them and choose "throw" (throwing them at the ground deals one damage, btw). Since they were unconscious I had already looted their equipment, which may have reduced their weight.
  
  2
- Cast enlarge on your character. Size matters a lot. They are a lot easier to through if they are a size smaller than you. It works very well with goblins.
  
  2

If I critically fail a roll that I would have succeeded on otherwise if rolling a 1 wasn't instant fail on a check with my highest bonuses, you best believe I'm using an advantage die to re-roll or reload my save if I am out of those.

If I fail a check for something I am not built to handle, I let it slide. Unless it's a forced dialogue and it chose the worst possible character for the interaction.

5

Glad to hear it's enjoyable to fail in BG3. I haven't played it yet due to lack of free time. But when I played Disco Elysium, there I had so much time wasted on reloading to roll again non-recoverable rolls. In DE they were often just cutting you of from enjoying the moment.

5

Disco Elysium is a game about constant failures. It’s a central theme in the game. Save scumming in that game, it feels like it would lessen the impact of the story.

13
- While I agree, DE does have a couple of moments where it breaks its own design principle of "fail forward". Not so much when it comes to progressing the main story, but that isn't really the point of the game anyway.
  
  The vast majority of rolls in DE are totally fine to fail, however (and failure sometimes results in a superior outcome!).
  
  4
I found most failed rolls in DE made me enjoy the moment more, sometimes even moreso than a success. Especially with non-recoverable red checks. The only times I save scummed were when I kept failing a white check I had a really high chance on, or when I really wanted to see both outcomes on a red check. The only required checks in the game give you hundreds of bonuses if you explore the area around them first.

When it comes to save scumming for a more perfect route, I always like to let my first run in a game play out however it does, because that's my one chance to experience the game at face value, so suffering only makes it better. Then I make my second run a perfectionist run for the catharsis.

4
I think you have your games backwards lol. 99% of checks in BG3 have no interesting failure states. They almost all lead to combat or less content overall. Whereas disco Elysium actually has tons checks that are enjoyable or interesting to fail.

4

I'll leverage the built in options to manipulate failed rolls with skills to improve the odds, but I only load saves if I die and have to,

4

I reload a lot. If failures led to interesting outcomes more often then I'd stick with them, but they usually just lead to combat.

4

I try to roll with the punches, but I will reload when I get tripped up by not understanding DND things, or when I need an NPC to stay alive. Like, in Act 2, I failed utterly at something and was going to just roll with it, until I saw it caused the death of an NPC I needed for Karlach’s personal quest. So I reloaded again and again until I got it right. (Same with the tower defense section you need to finally recruit Halsin.) I’m not good at the kind of tactical planning you need for fights in this game, so it takes me multiple tries to figure it out.

I won’t reload for bad rolls in conversations, though, even if I completely whiff something with a Nat1. That’s the kind of thing that makes the game replayable for me.

4

If by rolling I loose characters I'm invested in and my only options are 3 Charisma rolls on my 10 Charisma character, each with a 15 skillcheck? You bet I'm save scumming the fuck out of that! Otherwise I'll use Inspiration and only save scum if I have both proficiency and a high ability score and the dice decide they don't feel like rolling above 3 today.

4

I tend to only reload when something buggy or unintended happens(misclick) or if it's a really risky/story related thing I feel my character would be good at but got a nat 1.

But this has been one of the few games I've totally rolled with most of my dialogue/skill failures just because they still feel decent narratively. I'll save finding out what the successful/alternate outcomes are for next playthrough!

3

I often save scum when I try out new things. This game is so complex, I often have no idea if an idea I have is even possible, so I set it up and try it out before reloading and playing for real.

3

I only ever save scum pickpocketting. Years of DnD has taught me that fucking rolls up can often lead to more interesting developments. That being said, I also try to maximize success chances with guidance, finding advantage, building characters to be good at their jobs, etc

3

How DnD and PF and most RPGs does pickpocketing, it encourages save-scumming (or discourage use on a table game).

I think it would be better if the standard fail result wasnt "get spotted" but rather just "didnt get the item and made the target suspicious". Then if you tried again and failed against a suspicious target, only then would you get spotted. That way the worst failure will only happen if the player push their luck. And pickpocketing/sleight of hand isnt the only skill that could have use of a more gradual fail state. If they push their luck on a lockpick check, it could jam the lock permanently. If they push their luck on a jump/athletics check, they'll fall.

I'm no game designer, but I imagine that would encourage risky uses of skill checks (and in video games, not be so quick to reload just because of a failed check). It puts the risk management in the hands of the player instead of at the total mercy of a die throw.

2

I'm coming from more FO:NV where I'm used to skill checks, not random chance... So I'm scumming like crazy on my single player save.

On my multiplayer save we're aiming for Chaotic Evil so we're rolling with the punches.

3

In the first town, whatever it's called, some snot nosed kid called the guard on me because I discovered his little secret hideout.

The guard asked me to go to jail or fight. They're literally thieves so I said, uh, no. The guard, 4 NPCs, including the shopkeeper and Wyll a potential companion, all attacked me.

At first I started retreating from the fight but they kept chasing me so I said fuck it. I murdered the lot of them. When it was all over I kept my save.

I was disappointed the kid who created this chaos is Bethesda levels of immortal. I was very willing to wipe out that whole thieves ring.

3

Mostly stupid mistakes and the big decisions, like accidentally starting a fight with an entire faction or a misclick causing something really bad. I try to keep it to a minimum though, because half the fun is being surprised and going with the flow. I do have a general "theme" in mind though, and the dialog sometimes make it hard to follow that.

1

The only time I can think of that I reloaded to get a different outcome was in act 2 where a party member wanted to do something and I failed at convincing them not to do it.

And another time where I used all of my inspiration to pass a check so I reloaded to see if I could do it without using all the inspiration…

But i think I go with it most of the time

3

Mostly stupid mistakes and the big decisions, like accidentally starting a fight with an entire faction or a misclick causing something really bad. I try to keep it to a minimum though, because half the fun is being surprised and going with the flow. But I do have a general "theme" in mind, and the dialog options make following it a bit difficult sometimes.

3

I just roll with the punches. I plan on many playthroughs so I'm not concerned about missing certain outcomes

2

In theory, I only reload when there's been an issue that's somehow mechanical in nature, like when I was first learning how stealth worked, or when a misclick sends characters running into stupid stuff. In theory, I roll with my failures, especially narratively interesting ones.

In practice, I need to work on playing this game less anxiously. I'm reloading more than I would like and part of why this game is so good is (I'm told) how fun and interesting failure is — that's where great depth comes from. I feel like by being too persnickety with outcomes, I'm nerfing my own experience

Worst comes to worst, there's always inspiration, which I'm never short on. I appreciate having the inspiration, it feels like a small endorsement of the instinct within me that makes me want to get the perfect outcome. It's like saying "a little retcon, as a treat", because all good things in moderation.

2

I scum only high risk big decisions. Even then I will try to just roll with what I get. Lots of unintended fights. Some of which are very challenging, but the story feels much better than if it's done "perfectly'.

2

I generally only reload in combats when I think I could have been more efficient, or if I think I made a terrible decision. For dialogue checks I only use the inspiration system.

1

Depends on how invested I am into the outcome. The less invested in the outcome I am, the more I let the dice decide. If I dislike the outcome enough I will reset to an earlier save.

1

I found skill checks to be quite easy later in the games, on some checks i have like +15 bonuses which basically means you can't fail

1

You can always fail on a natural 1 though.

4
5% chance for the game to say "fuck your bonuses" though.

4

I never reload the game unless my party dies and I have to. I don't know how much of the game is being locked being bad dice rolls, but whatever.

1

I reload a lot. If the game had more interesting outcomes for failures then I'd be interested in seeing those, but most of the time failure just ends up in combat.

1

I've savescummed a couple checks... like the point where you meet Lae'zel. If you're a Paladin, you get a special Deception check to make the tieflings leave. Except, if you fail this check, there's no option to rescue Lae'zel without killing the tieflings, which causes you to break your oath.

1

Technically you can knock out the tieflings without killing you, but you'll still break your oath doing that.

1

Reload on combat losses. Should probably learn the respawn rules. That's about it

1

To save myself time, I use a trainer that always gives you a nat 20.

If it's something super important that I know that I'll spend hours save scumming till I get it right, I just pop the option to get a nat 20 on my next roll.

1

what's a trainer?

1
- A tool used to manipulate the game in order to cheat: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trainer_(games)
  
  1
- I highly recommend the one from Cheat Happens. I've been using the service for over a decade at this point with the lifetime membership.
  
  1

Play in a party of 3 and we've just rolled with the consequences for everything so far!

1

It depends on how serious the failure is, if it's just a conversation with some guy about whether or not he should enjoy a healthy breakfast option, I'm going with don't reload. If it is whether or not I can remove us from the skull, I'm going to keep reloading until my little brain Kitty is following me.

1

I mostly roll with my failure and my biggest one in Act one is

divulgâche

when I let Halsin die while fighting the goblins, so Kagha can lead the grove and expulse the tieflings and now I cannot help Karlach with her heart. In an another coop campaign, despite my disagreement, my buddy decided to kill Kagha because of his paladin principles. We are screwed isn't it?

I don't regret it, because it's so fun to see my decisions have such an impact on the story. It makes the campaign replayable.

1

Your spoiler tag doesn't work.

1
- I see. The spoiler tag on lemmy is way more complicated on lemmy and the lemmy sync app showed me wrong.
  
  1