Is "Karmic Dice" necessarily in the player's favour?

[SotiCoto]

Or can it start spontaneously generating failures if the player succeeds too much?

[Agony_Aunt]

Kind of. The aim is to artificially balance good/bad rolls, so you don't get lots of consecutive good/bad rolls.

Its to stop people complaining about getting 3 1's in a row or similar, even though it can happen with pure randomness, but at the same time it also stops 3 20's in a row.

So i turn it off and say a prayer to RNGesus when i really need a good roll.

On the other hand, the karmic dice in Solasta only work one way. They boost bad rolls when you get too many of them but don't counter for a string of good rolls.

[Ellie]

Karmic dice are supposed to stop streaks in both directions, good and bad. I wouldn't use 'em, to be honest, good ol' probability should take the wheel.

[SotiCoto]

So that explains why I get such an unnatural number of critical fails. Like every 5 rolls or so just come up 1... which is not how a D20 is supposed to work.

[Aria Athena]

My understanding is that karmic dice is not at all in the player's favour and I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea for it to be the default option.

It works for enemies too, so the higher your AC, the higher the boost in accuracy they get. You will start getting crit a lot.

[lailaamell]

No it never helped me only made me fail

[SotiCoto]

I just deactivated it. Hopefully that should stop me constantly failing things that should be easy... well, assuming interface screw or dinge-tier pathing doesn't screw me over first. My character just set off two traps he was trying to disarm because the game decided to path him OVER them to disarm them.

[Eike]

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

Or can it start spontaneously generating failures if the player succeeds too much?

Hi SotiCoto,

This is what a guy named’ Turbulent_ Ad6829”, said on Reddit about Karmic Dice:

“Karmic dice operates on a success/failure system. The more you succeed the more likely you are to fail. The normal D20 rolls will average around 10-11. The thing with karmic dice is it will take your ability bonuses into account to determine an outcome. For example if you need a 7 to succeed and you have a +6 modifier, the only way you can fail is by rolling a 1. If karmic dice is on and you roll 10 times, roughly 50% of those rolls will be a 1 because rolling a 1 is the only possible way you fail. With karmic dice off, you will pass 90-100% of those rolls because rolling a 1 is only a 5% natural chance of occurring.

This is why I turned it off, it means that your bonuses actually mean something and you just have to play to your characters strengths.”

This is the best explanation how Karmic Dice works I've ever see.

So, like Turbulent, I don't use it and keep it off.

I hope this helps.

[SotiCoto]

That is what I was starting to figure was happening. All the things that should be easy, which I should be good at, were failing miserably.

[Popsicles]

Don't bother with them. Game's RNG works perfectly fine. You get so buffed up at hire levels that you rarely fail a role. Even if you do, you'll probably have 3-4 inspiration rolls saved up.

[Rez Elwin]

Karmic dice works for you and against you. It will stop you from failing repeatedly, but it also prevents you from succeeding repeatedly. When you have Bard or Rogue with expertise in skills you should never fail certain rolls, Karmic Dice will make you fail.

I don't like the game messing with the rng of rolling dice, it goes against what D&D is, you can have a hot streak or be unlucky,

[Ellie]

Originally posted by Eike:

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

Or can it start spontaneously generating failures if the player succeeds too much?

Hi SotiCoto,

This is what a guy named’ Turbulent_ Ad6829”, said on Reddit about Karmic Dice:

“Karmic dice operates on a success/failure system. The more you succeed the more likely you are to fail. The normal D20 rolls will average around 10-11. The thing with karmic dice is it will take your ability bonuses into account to determine an outcome. For example if you need a 7 to succeed and you have a +6 modifier, the only way you can fail is by rolling a 1. If karmic dice is on and you roll 10 times, roughly 50% of those rolls will be a 1 because rolling a 1 is the only possible way you fail. With karmic dice off, you will pass 90-100% of those rolls because rolling a 1 is only a 5% natural chance of occurring.

This is why I turned it off, it means that your bonuses actually mean something and you just have to play to your characters strengths.”

This is the best explanation how Karmic Dice works I've ever see.

So, like Turbulent, I don't use it and keep it off.

I hope this helps.

My God I thought they just equalize the actual number values on the dice, not equalize win/lose, that makes zero sense for anything more and less complicated than a difficulty of exactly 10.

[Keno]

Originally posted by SotiCoto:

“Karmic dice operates on a success/failure system. The more you succeed the more likely you are to fail. The normal D20 rolls will average around 10-11. The thing with karmic dice is it will take your ability bonuses into account to determine an outcome. For example if you need a 7 to succeed and you have a +6 modifier, the only way you can fail is by rolling a 1. If karmic dice is on and you roll 10 times, roughly 50% of those rolls will be a 1 because rolling a 1 is the only possible way you fail. With karmic dice off, you will pass 90-100% of those rolls because rolling a 1 is only a 5% natural chance of occurring.

That's weird if Karmic dice try to make success/failure 50:50, then player who min-max will just not level any skill or use any potion which improve difficulty check related and just let system balance it out.

[Tenor Sounds]

I've asked this several times, but nobody is able to give me an answer: are we sure that Karmic dice are doing anything other than literally what it says in the description for the option, that it prevents failure streaks?

Do we have any proof that karmic dice also prevent success streaks? Like, at all?

Edit: I'm willing to believe that it does reduce enemy failure streaks for stuff like attacks, but stopping player success streaks? That doesn't really make sense based on the in-game description and (imo) the spirit of the feature.

[CorwynCorey]

Karmic dice are dice with prejudices... never good.

[Ironwu]

Turn it off, for sure. It may help you get 3 great rolls on weak targets then give you 2 or 3 low rolls on a primary target. It attempts to 'balance' luck factor but will ultimately work against you.

Learn to buff your own rolls with character builds, skill choices, and tactics. :)