What is Karmic Dice in Baldur's Gate 3?

Baldur's Gate 3 draws heavily from the mechanics present in the popular tabletop roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons or D&D. Much like D&D, the title involves a lot of dice rolls to reach a resolution for combat encounters, ability checks, social interactions, and much more. Actions have a certain difficulty class or a DC that you need to beat using your 20-sided die or your D20.

Rolling a higher number than the set DC means your actions will succeed. Meanwhile, rolling lower means that your actions will fail. Sometimes, you might find yourself in either a hot streak or a slump, wherein you roll consecutive successes or failures.

To address this issue, developer Larian Studios has added a setting to Baldur's Gate 3 called Karmic Dice.

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How Karmic Dice works in Baldur's Gate 3

Baldur's Gate 3 determines the success or failure of actions through dice rolls (Image via Larian Studios)

According to the settings in Baldur's Gate 3, Karmic Dice avoids failure or success streaks while keeping the results mostly random. This description is a bit vague, so it is understandable if some players are confused by how this actually works.

Basically, if you have Karmic Dice turned on, you will find that the game will prevent you from getting successful rolls when performing skill checks or attacks on a consecutive basis. The title will also prevent you from failing consecutive rolls.

This affects everything that involves dice rolls in Baldur's Gate 3. It aims to create a more even spread between favorable and non-favorable results. This makes it so that you are unlikely to encounter either success or failure streaks through your dice rolls.

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Is the Karmic Dice setting worth using?

Karmic Dice Discussion by u/avg_bleach_enjoyer in BaldursGate3

Karmic Dice is a completely optional setting in Baldur's Gate 3, so you can play with or without it. Whether you want to do so is completely up to you.

If you want to avoid consecutive failures or successes for a more randomized run through the game, you should absolutely turn it on. The results of rolls become more randomized instead of relying purely on your luck in using the dice.

However, if you prefer to live with whatever results you end up with in each of your rolls, then you should turn it off. This means that the game will not work in the background to stop consecutive failures or successes, so you will be able to experience the highest of highs or the lowest of lows, depending on your rolls.

Take note that Karmic Dice is neither for nor against you, just like a DM in a real D&D game. However, just like in a live session, the dungeon master sometimes alters the results of rolls behind his secretive DM screen to alter the course of certain encounters.