A lot of Baldur’s Gate 3 fans have complained about their poor dice rolls in the game’s new Honor mode, sparking theories that the dice are actually rigged against them.
Honor mode was added to Baldur’s Gate 3 as part of the latest patch and its selling point is that it makes things extra difficult. Enemies are stronger, you’re confined to one save file, and if your party is wiped out, you have to start again from the very beginning.
Since it’s based on Dungeons & Dragons, success can often fall down to your dice rolls rather than skill. So, it’s incredibly frustrating to fail because of bad luck. Some players on Reddit have experienced such luck so frequently, though, that they’ve posited the idea that Larian Studios has artificially made Honor mode even harder by loading the dice.
“Swear to the Gods, we’re playing with three sided die because I’ll miss every attack back-to-back and then get a crit out of nowhere. Soooo many critical misses,” Upstairs-Search-1773 claimed on Reddit.
Specktur is certainly convinced there’s something fishy afoot. “The dice is definitely rigged even if it doesn’t say so. I failed to steal an item which needed a roll of three or higher, four times consecutively. I’ve had fights where a participating character contributed nothing because they missed their attacks every single turn,” they said.
MrDrSirLord regaled a story of how their character failed to disarm a trap which, given their various advantages. “Is statistically near impossible to happen… My light foot halfling with a +12 to slight of hand failed to disarm a trap with a DC of 10 three times in a row while wearing the gloves of thievery,” they said. “Even with advantage and a re roll on Nat 1s I failed a check that I could only fail on a Nat 1 three times in a row, meaning I rolled nine Nat 1s in a row.”
The thread is filled with specific instances of frequently awful dice rolls, making Honor mode sound like a nightmare not worth attempting. A few others have defended it, however, such as Shattered_Disk4: “I’ve actually been enjoying it a lot, me and my brother started a playthrough and coming up with strats and combining moves has been so fun.”
Ultimately, whether or not the dice are rigged is but a theory. It’s equally possible that players are just unlucky, and even if it is true, it’s very unlikely Larian will ever admit to it.
