I have some complaints about this game tbh.

[folko1]

Don't get me wrong, BG3 is a wonderful game, and it really gives a rather easy entry into the dnd experience for someone who has never played a dnd ttrpg game.

However....

I dislike skill check messages. There's nothing more immersion breaking than walking past something and seeing "x failed". Walking next to a chest and getting "perception failed" like "oh wow, CERTAINLY it's not trapped or a mimic or anything, 100%". I'd rather I didn't know that I failed a skill check because then it actually retains the element of surprise. I'd rather not see "religion failed" when walking past a statue or something, because then you might be surprised in another playthrough and be like "oh wow, I didn't know it was here!" but instead it's like "Welp, good to know there's content here. Too bad it's not meant for me, apparently."

Another thing that annoys me are dialogues. With all due respect, my rolls consistently fail during dialogues at the most critical times. The problem with them is not even the failure, it's that you basically get punished for even making the attempt. You're not given other options to attempt to salvage the situation, you cannot get creative if you say fail to persuade, you cannot try to intimidate instead, or try to use your background in succession, you cannot do that to maybe somehow set up a chain of dialogue options that could perhaps increase or decrease a DC or anything like that.

Warning, this is a spoiler for Act II:
For example at the Shadowfell with Shadowheart, the narrator tells you because of your strong bond you might yet be able to convince your companion to change their mind. While her approval of my character is at 100, and then get slapped with a DC of 30. So much for that "strong bond". But then it gets even better: if you fail the DC 30 roll, you can just say "no shadowheat, please don't do it uwu" without any skill checks or anything, and she throws away the spear and spares Ailyn anyway. I'm sorry, what the ♥♥♥♥? What was the point for even having that ridiculous skill check? Like what's even worse is that apparently the only 2 other ways that Ailyn gets killed by shadowheart is if you just let shadowheart do her thing, or if you fail the 2nd persuasion check which is like DC of 21.

Why have the first persuasion check? Why have it be so damn high? Where does this supposed "bond" even remotely come into play when you can fail the DC 30 check but then just say "pwease don't do it shadowoheart uwu" by saying and she just doesn't? That was maybe the most disappointing dialogue I've experienced in this game so far. The 2nd persuasion check in that dialogue just feels incredibly unnecessary because you can either let shadowheart kill Ailyn, tell her not to kill Ailyn, or MAYBE make her kill Ailyn.

Basically one option is literally "go on, kill her", another option is a persuasion saying "please don't do it!", third option is "spare her, she knows things about you (and has your ip address)" and the fourth option is spare her but quietly.

I suppose that staying quiet will get her to throw the spear away if her approval of you is high, but then how does this "bond" factor in? It makes more sense that because of the bond, you should be trying to convince shadowheart not to follow through with killing Ailyn, but apparently it'll punish you for even making the attempt when you can just be like "no" and she's like "oh okay". It blows my mind that saying "if you spare her you can learn what she knows about you" or just straight up saying nothing is just objectively better and more effective than picking the most logical option for that moment which is attempting to persuade her out of it. You'd think saying "spare her to learn what she knows" or staying silent would yield the opposite effect, but nope. Those two options are literally the best ones for keeping Ailyn alive. Persuading by saying "don't do it, you'll regret it" is somehow not as impactful.

And generally all these little bits of dialogue options thar honestly make no sense to me to even have those. I get that dnd is a game about rolling dice, but there are some points where it's quite frankly absurd that you can manage to, say, fail an intimidation against some random arsehole of a merchant guy whose guards' guts you just spilled all over the ground and he's all like "okay okay you win, what do you want?" And you're like [intimidation] "I want you to help these poor people out" and somehow you can fail that. Like, I'm sorry sir, it seems I haven't made myself quite clear: I just burned, zapped, froze, sliced, poisoned, dominated, frightened and massacred your guards right in front of your very eyes, you bore witness to it all, I am literally covered in their blood, their guts are all over the ground next to you, and after you ordered THEM to attack ME and seeing what happened to THEM, you somehow can still resist being intimidated?!

I like this game man, but the amount of skill checks here is excessive at times, and quite frankly, it feels less balanced and just straight up worse to fail a skill check that your character really shouldn't. Why would a highly learned wizard even be capable of critically failing a seemingly trivial arcane check? Or an experienced fighter not be able to say open a door or smthn even with a lot of strength.

Like imagine a wizard that knows a hundred spells, can summon massive elemental storms, teleport, manipulate the Weave in such ways that Mystra herself would be concerned about, not being able to sense magical energy coming from some enchanted spoon or smthn.

Ugh... Rant over. Had to vent this ♥♥♥♥ out.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

So, Larian should have made passive Perception checks hidden from the player, and added an active search (Investigation) action/button - but they didn't.

This is something I posted about and asked for several years.

Also. they should have added an optional "Take 10" system for dialog checks.

[Echsrick]

its a cheap way to artificial fill more play time into this "game"

[Mr. Huckleberry]

So do I. It took the game that made me into a PC gamer 20 years ago and turned it into vile man-hating propaganda.

[Tenor Sounds]

Thankfully for your first issue, they added a "custom" game mode that lets you turn off passive skill check failures. That way you only know if you succeed on one, otherwise you're none the wiser.

The other stuff I can see your perspective, I think it's a limitation of the script already being super huge and not being able to account for everything, and trying to stick close (sometimes too close) to the tabletop experience.

I do think it makes sense that sometimes, trying to apply your "skill" to a conversation isn't the best choice. Maybe the character wasn't receptive to be persuaded by charm or logic at that moment, so that's why it was so difficult, but appealing directly and sincerely does cut through. Stuff like that.