Should you play with Karmic Dice in Baldur's Gate 3?

Nicholas James Published 04/08/2023

Larian Studio’s freshly released game Baldur’s Gate 3 has Karmic Dice as a way of balancing out the randomness of a D20 RPG system, should you play with this setting on or off?

Baldur’s Gate 3 is based on 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. 5e is played with a D20, a 20-sided dice that you roll and add varying numbers to in order to determine if certain actions are successes or failures. This system is meant to balance out what could be tremendously bad or tremendously good luck for the players or the enemies. It’s essentially a mercy rule. Whether or not you should play with it is up to personal choice, but we’ll break it down further.

Does Karmic dice really boost enemy damage by 400%?

A Reddit post went viral recently in the Baldur’s Gate 3 community, claiming that Karmic Dice was actually an enormous damage spike for enemies. At the time, it was boosting their damage by up to 400%. This was correct at the time and would have meant that the game became wildly harder for no reason. Luckily, this was a glitch as confirmed by a Larian developer on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit. This has been patched, so the question becomes more of a personal taste one.

Part of a D20 system is the highs and lows of truly random rolls. But that’s not what every player is looking for in a CRPG. If you’re a D&D diehard, not playing with Karmic dice and being liberal with your saves is probably the way to go. If you’re a newcomer to the system, we recommend keeping it on. This should lead to enjoying what is probably a much closer experience to other CRPGs. Either way, the game should be a great time for any fantasy fan jumping in. With the bugs fixed, there’s no right or wrong answer here.

Nicholas James

About Nicholas James

Nicholas James is a gaming writer with a passion for all things geekdom, as well as live theater. Nicholas is best known for covering League of Legends and other top MOBA titles, but his expertise covers numerous games across multiple genres. When not watching the LCS or playing the latest new release, Nicholas can be found doing some tabletop gaming and painting his favorite miniatures. Nicholas has also published with Hotspawn, TheGamer, Dexerto, Esports.gg and other industry outlets.

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