Baldur’s Gate 3: Karmic Dice, explained

Screenshot via Larian Studios

There’s a Baldur’s Gate 3 feature that many players may know nothing about. In Larian Studios’ latest Dungeons & Dragons video game RPG, its most notable feature is the dice rolling. Just like the TTRPG, all characters will be making dice rolls. The dice roll can turn the tide of battle, or completely blindside you if you fail a Perception check. But what about Karmic Dice? If you don’t know what Karmic Dice is in Baldur’s Gate 3, we’ll explain this below.

What is Karmic Dice in Baldur’s Gate 3?

A trending Reddit post by Havelok urges players to turn off Karmic Dice in the game’s settings. I’ll explain more about this feature, but on the surface level, Karmic Dice in Baldur’s Gate 3 will increase the damage you receive by 400%. This is quite confusing at first, but let’s go further into detail on how Karmic Dice works.

REMINDER:Turn off Karmic Dice at launch.Why? +400% Enemy Dmg
by u/Havelok in BaldursGate3

As soon as you boot up Baldur’s Gate 3, this feature is already turned on in your settings. When enabled, your enemies will hit and crit against you more often than normal. This effect, explained by the Reddit poster, increases as your Armor Class (AC) increases. If you’re new to D&D 5e rules, everyone has an AC, and when you roll to attack, you need to beat the AC number to actually hit them.

But why is this feature even a thing? Well, apparently Larian Studios added and enabled it by default to smooth out combat. Karmic Dice is available to both players and enemies, but despite this, enemies will hit you more than you hit them. While the system helps players new to D&D 5e rules, and hinders players who know the system well, it seems to be more of a detriment.

Reading the post may still be confusing if math isn’t your strong suit, like me. Still, the Reddit user Havelok does a great job explaining the numbers and all other details, so I highly recommend you read the entire post.

Overall though, the post urges players to turn off the feature, since it seems to be a massive penalty for the player. If you’re someone who wants to play a tank character with a high AC, you’ll definitely want to turn this off.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on Steam.