DICE ROLLS

I too have noticed that there does seem to be something odd about the dice rolls in the game, especially later in the lvls. I suspect that the game is cheating its dice rolls to maintain a certain degree of challenge, meaning that pushing your AC too high will actually make you take more damage since the enemy will be forced to crit more to even hit you.

This could be my (very unlucky) experience, but I would love to see an option that "forced" a more een distribution of rolls.

I dont know how their system is set up, but i can count on my ranger rolling 2 ones in a row and the enemy at least 1 20 every encounter..

Now i have played real, literal D & D longer than most folks here have been alive, and I know for a fact that's not how real dice roll.

Which is odd, because I have been D&D since 1980 (along with myriad other games involving dice) - & that is exactly how I have observed that real dice roll.  Getting a perfectly distributed range of results in any small sample is extremely unlikely.  It is likely to even out on the long run, but in the short run you are at the mercy of random chance - & random chance is not typically evenly distributed.

Right, and the fact of having 1s and 20s SO consistent isn't right. I think the programmers have an agenda here.

Good to know I am not the ONLY one experiencing this. 

I have played D&D style games my entire life and NEVER seen the rolls this game hands out ever. 

This same BS would happen on XCom as well miss 4 times in a row with a 90% chance..

Just proves 1 thing computers CAN'T roll RANSOM numbers it is RIGGED.

Well, on a positive note, it has made me develop a new strategy....my players are all carrying bows, run and circle, never confront, and prolong the encounter...without taking damage, until we finally hit something.

Well, I've played the game a couple of days now, and your program for dice rolls seriously sucks.

Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer, so I really can't offer any intelligent advice, but I'm telling you it's slanted for low rolls. Combat drags out, you have to be very smart and take as little damage as possible, because it's a game of seeing who rolls the least amount of misses.

I've played all the way through the game and didn't find anything unusual about the dice rolls for or against the player.  Across an entire game i didn't see a single double 20 on an advantadge/disadvantadge roll, which with the number of paired rolls taken was a bit of a fluke, i would have exspected 1-2 based on the sheer volume of rolls and odds of 1:400.  I saw a single double 1 on an advantaged attack roll, by one of my characters.  Some streaks both for and against me, but nothing exceptional that made me think the dice are cooked.  People in general are really really really bad at evaluating randomness of results.  If you have a specific conjecture about how the dice are bad I might go to the effort of testing it, but testing the dice in every possible way is just too much work without some way to automate logging and parsing the data.

Based on your angry posts, it seems like you feel the dice are weighted to a non uniform distribution against the player.  One could also interpertet your complaint as "the dice are biased against the side in combat that is currently winning to make the combat more challenging".  That is a lot more difficult to test becuase you have to decide how the game thinks a side is winning and if its a hard on/off or escleating soft bias based on current balance/inbalance of forces.  I can test if the dice are continuously biased for or against the player easily enough, either as a whole or only in combat to your preference.  I cant' really test if you think the dice are biased in either direction based on who is subjectively "winning" at the moment.  Its possible that either by design or by error the dice are cooked, but if so it isn't badly enough for me to notice in an entire play though of the game.

make sure you check your settings there a few different options for "loaded" dice and of course the option for 'true random', however, there is no way a computer can be truly random but close enough that you should not really notice.

it seems to behave just like in an in person game with physical dice.  sometimes i have unbelievable good luck and sometimes i can't roll double digits on a d20 all night long

I've played all the way through the game and didn't find anything unusual about the dice rolls for or against the player.  Across an entire game i didn't see a single double 20 on an advantadge/disadvantadge roll, which with the number of paired rolls taken was a bit of a fluke, i would have exspected 1-2 based on the sheer volume of rolls and odds of 1:400.  I saw a single double 1 on an advantaged attack roll, by one of my characters.  Some streaks both for and against me, but nothing exceptional that made me think the dice are cooked.  People in general are really really really bad at evaluating randomness of results.  If you have a specific conjecture about how the dice are bad I might go to the effort of testing it, but testing the dice in every possible way is just too much work without some way to automate logging and parsing the data.

Based on your angry posts, it seems like you feel the dice are weighted to a non uniform distribution against the player.  One could also interpertet your complaint as "the dice are biased against the side in combat that is currently winning to make the combat more challenging".  That is a lot more difficult to test becuase you have to decide how the game thinks a side is winning and if its a hard on/off or escleating soft bias based on current balance/inbalance of forces.  I can test if the dice are continuously biased for or against the player easily enough, either as a whole or only in combat to your preference.  I cant' really test if you think the dice are biased in either direction based on who is subjectively "winning" at the moment.  Its possible that either by design or by error the dice are cooked, but if so it isn't badly enough for me to notice in an entire play though of the game.

make sure you check your settings there a few different options for "loaded" dice and of course the option for 'true random', however, there is no way a computer can be truly random but close enough that you should not really notice.

it seems to behave just like in an in person game with physical dice.  sometimes i have unbelievable good luck and sometimes i can't roll double digits on a d20 all night long

My experience with the dice is that if you push your AC values very high, even with "True Random" as the dice setting, the enemies start to roll higher to compensate. This could be coincidental, but then I must have had the strangest flukes. As in plural. Here's an example of my experience:

I ran a fight with some elementals in the Lava Forest. My party consisted of a Shadowcaster Rogue, a Mountaineer Fighter, a Greenmage and a Cleric (Oblivion, I believe). My Fighter had a very high AC. Plate +1 (AC 19), Shield +2 (23), defense style (24), the Abjuration ring of protection (25), Shield of Faith from the Cleric (27), Haste from the Wizard (29) and the Mountaineer subclass bonus for a total of 31 AC. An absolutely absurd value to have, but that's how it is. The highest To Hit bonus on an enemy in that fight, IIRC, was +9 or +10, meaning they could not land a hit on the Fighter without a critical hit. On top of that, I put Protection from Evil and Good from the Rogue on her since all enemies in the fight were elementals, meaning all attacks had disadvantage.

I had to do the combat twice, because the first time the Fighter was focused fired to death, receiving crit after crit from the enemies, stacking their burning damage DoT. My Fighter was a Hill Dwarf with 18 Constitution, so they had ~90 HP at lvl 8. The second time I tried the fight, I was crit a bit less, but the Fighter still left the fight with less than half HP.

It is entirely possible that this was just a fluke, but it seems somewhat unlikely. Each attack against the Fighter had a 1 in 400 chance to land at all and they were hit ~15-20 times over the course of 2 back to back fights. I did double check and the setting was "True Random" and no random seed preserved.

The late game with the Mountaineer Fighter (at least up until where I played) was less extreme examples of the same trend: Enemies landing hits through high AC values with suspicious frequency. With characters who were not as tanky, however, I did not have the same issue, both in the same party and later parties.

In short? My impression is that if you stack your AC too high for the enemies to deal with, the game compensates for it by cheating the dice. That could be a fluke, but it sure seems to happen a lot if you get too many high AC items and features on a character.

Well, my experience has been to roll double 1s on attack, have next in the party roll all misses.

It doesn't matter in the long run, because I like the game enough to work around it....but it does get my goat.

My experience with the dice is that if you push your AC values very high, even with "True Random" as the dice setting, the enemies start to roll higher to compensate. This could be coincidental, but then I must have had the strangest flukes. As in plural. Here's an example of my experience:

I ran a fight with some elementals in the Lava Forest. My party consisted of a Shadowcaster Rogue, a Mountaineer Fighter, a Greenmage and a Cleric (Oblivion, I believe). My Fighter had a very high AC. Plate +1 (AC 19), Shield +2 (23), defense style (24), the Abjuration ring of protection (25), Shield of Faith from the Cleric (27), Haste from the Wizard (29) and the Mountaineer subclass bonus for a total of 31 AC. An absolutely absurd value to have, but that's how it is. The highest To Hit bonus on an enemy in that fight, IIRC, was +9 or +10, meaning they could not land a hit on the Fighter without a critical hit. On top of that, I put Protection from Evil and Good from the Rogue on her since all enemies in the fight were elementals, meaning all attacks had disadvantage.

I had to do the combat twice, because the first time the Fighter was focused fired to death, receiving crit after crit from the enemies, stacking their burning damage DoT. My Fighter was a Hill Dwarf with 18 Constitution, so they had ~90 HP at lvl 8. The second time I tried the fight, I was crit a bit less, but the Fighter still left the fight with less than half HP.

It is entirely possible that this was just a fluke, but it seems somewhat unlikely. Each attack against the Fighter had a 1 in 400 chance to land at all and they were hit ~15-20 times over the course of 2 back to back fights. I did double check and the setting was "True Random" and no random seed preserved.

The late game with the Mountaineer Fighter (at least up until where I played) was less extreme examples of the same trend: Enemies landing hits through high AC values with suspicious frequency. With characters who were not as tanky, however, I did not have the same issue, both in the same party and later parties.

In short? My impression is that if you stack your AC too high for the enemies to deal with, the game compensates for it by cheating the dice. That could be a fluke, but it sure seems to happen a lot if you get too many high AC items and features on a character.

I don't think I have ever pushed ac quite that high, my fighter tank was usually at 18 or 19 to hit for most enemies and ac items were distributed to make everyone else need 17 or so to hit.  Its possible there's some mechanism that only kicks in when enemies need 20+ to hit.  I know the legendary enemies at endgame needed 19 or 20 to hit for example, and rolls were normal for that fight, with only 1 hit landing for the entire fight.

I allowed and recorded 40 pairs of attacks with disadvantage to test the hypothesis that the game maniqulates rolls to increase hits when rolling 20 is required to hit.  The tank was a level 5 paladin with 26 AC who was attacked by an enemy with +4 to hit while continously taking the dodge action.  The rest of the party hid away from the fight and skipped their turns.  Dice results appeared normal.  No hits were achevied which is likey with 40 tries at 1/400 each.  3 of the 80 rolls were 20's which is within reasonable variance for 80 rolls.I did see four pairs of doubles (double 16's, 6's 1's and 4's), which is more than I expected but not unreasonable for 40 pairs from fair dice.  I reject the hypothesis that all enemies receive special dice rolls when requireing a natural 20 to hit.

Well, first of all I'm not mad about it. I am playing the game and I like it. I do think the rolls do not reflect actually, physically rolling the dice.

But that's just mt opinion.

Actually, I think the perception that I have to be more careful has made me much more strategic in combat.

maybe SOLASTA is the perfect DM? if i had a player with a ridiculous AC [not saying your AC is ridiculous, i'm just making a point] i might fudge the rolls a bit to hit them for dramatic effect but if they start complaining i'll back off the fudging for a little while.

or maybe its just randomness?  though i had an hypothesis that SOLASTA is honest in its attempts for random rolls, however, all of the other well established big gaming industry companies have been secretly fudging their rolls in favor of the player just to make them feel more special?  if you think about it most gamers are of the "everyone gets a trophy generation"