The Karmic Dice feature in Baldur’s Gate 3 may be confusing at first, but we’ll explain everything you need to know about it on this page. In particular, we’ll explain why you might want to turn it on or off in the settings depending on what you value most in your gameplay experience. There are some unintended consequences of this setting which can skew the balance of stats and gear, so we’ll briefly discuss why it might be best to have Karmic Dice turned off for this reason.
Karmic Dice in Baldur’s Gate 3 will put an end to your lucky streaks, but also your unlucky ones.
What Is the Karmic Dice Setting in Baldur’s Gate 3?¶
The Karmic Dice setting in Baldur’s Gate 3 is a feature which exists to manipulate the success or failure of rolls. More specifically, it aims to aid the player in avoiding an uncanny streak of failure in their rolls. For example, if you consistently score low rolls in dialogue checks or combat scenarios, the Karmic Dice feature will essentially cheese a success roll in for you. The purpose of this is to break up any unfortunate streak of failures so that you’re not completely devastated by successive negative outcomes. However, there’s a bit more to it than that.
The main issue with the Karmic Dice feature is that it works both ways. This means that if you have a lucky streak of high-scoring, successful rolls, the Karmic Dice feature will intervene and essentially guarantee that you will fail once or twice to break up the line of good luck. Not so great in this situation, eh?
At the same time, you should keep in mind that the Karmic Dice feature is also functional for your enemies. This means that if a group of enemies are having a terrible streak of failures, they will be guaranteed to succeed before long. It also means that their own strokes of luck are destined to end, as are yours.
Should You Turn Karmic Dice On or Off in BG3?¶
The main issue with the Karmic Dice feature is that it doesn’t only provide a way for you and your enemies to break out of streaks of success or failure, it can also fudge your builds in negative ways. For example, if you have a tank-based class which has high AC (Armor Class), you want that character to be up front, taking more hits so that it causes enemies to miss. This is most likely to happen consistently since the odds are in your favor when you have high AC, but with the Karmic Dice feature turned on, your tank is guaranteed to be hit a certain number of times if they consistently succeed in their AC checks.
You might want to consider Karmic Dice to ensure that if you fail consistently, you’ll be guaranteed to succeed after a while. There may be some merit to this if you don’t ever want to save scum. For the uninitiated, this means saving your game just before any potentially important dialogue or combat encounter, allowing you to return to it if things go poorly for you. If you’re happy enough to do this consistently, Karmic Dice becomes less enticing, and just seems like a way for the game to cheese certain stats or armor if you or your enemies are having too much of a good (or bad) time.
(1 of 2) Navigate to the regular options settings from the main menu in game.
Navigate to the regular options settings from the main menu in game. (left), Look for the Karmic Dice setting under User Options, and untick the box if you want it turned off. (right)
Ultimately, the setting as described in the menu indicates that “Karmic dice avoid failure or success streaks, while keeping the results mostly random.”, so you might expect to have a similar experience regardless. However, so long as you’re willing to save scum the most important encounters, there’s no real advantage to using it other than spoiling the fun (or misery) of both you and your enemies.
How to Turn Karmic Dice On or Off in BG3¶
The Karmic Dice feature will be enabled by default for your first playthrough. The setting can be found in the main gameplay settings, under “User Options”, as shown in the screenshot above. If you want to turn it off, all you need to do is untick the box. You’ll now be back to the default experience where real RNG (Random Number Generation) is king, and there won’t be any disruptions to your good (or bad!) luck, and the same goes for your enemies. Instead, you can rely on the trusty mechanics of your gear and stats to see that justice is done in accordance with good old probability.
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What is (are?) “RNG” in the above paragraph? Rock ‘N Growl? Random Naked Girls? I always feel stupid when I come across a UA (Unfamiliar Acronym). Am I the only gamer who doesn’t know RNG? Isn’t that the sound that phones use to make? No, that was RING. I feel even more dumb when I waste time fruitlessly scanning the article for the acronym definition. Thanks, though, for defining AC (armor class) earlier in the piece. I already knew that one, though.
Hi Friala, Thanks a lot for your comment and clarification!
Hello Buck,
Thanks for your comment. We apologise for any confusion. Here is a link that should hopefully clear up any confusion on the meaning: https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/random_number_generator. Perhaps Wikipedia's entry might be more interesting? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation. The term has become more common over the years in gaming, notably in DnD.
However, we have edited the page to make it clearer what it means. Thanks for your input!
I found a definition of RNG on Board Game Geek: "...Apparently it's become very trendy to say "RNG" in some semantically and syntactically overgeneralized way as a noun (sometimes as a mass noun with no article), or verb, or adjective, meaning almost anything at all somehow related to randomness..."