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In Betrayal at Baldur's Gate:

  • The number of dice in a Haunt Roll is equal to the number of omens revealed.
  • The Haunt is triggered by a Haunt Roll being 6 or higher (thus, successive omens are more likely to trigger the Haunt).
  • The dice sides are 0,0,1,1,2,2.
  • There are only 13 omens, so only 13 Haunt Rolls can happen throughout the game.

This means it's theoretically possible to go through all 13 omens without ever triggering the Haunt. This is different from Betrayal at a House on a Hill, where slight differences guarantee the Haunt.

My question is, what happens in that case? You've revealed all 13 omens, and rolled 5 of under each time, is there a rule for that eventuality?

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  • You could play with the house rule, that the 13th omen always triggers the Haunt.
    – RoToRa
    Commented Feb 20, 2023 at 15:42

1 Answer 1

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There is no official answer that I have found, but I asked the same question on BGG about Betrayal Legacy, which has the same rule for starting the haunt, without ever getting an answer.

However, this is in all likelihood only a theoretical question, and not a practical one, because the odds of it coming up are pretty tiny. On the 13th role, you have just about a 0.45% chance of not getting 6 or higher. And that's after having failed the other roles. The total probability:

Chance of not starting haunt on role #:

  • #1: 1
  • #2: 1
  • #3: .96
  • #4: .81
  • #5: .60
  • #6: .40
  • #7: .25
  • #8: .14
  • #9: .08
  • #10: .0397
  • #11: .0198
  • #12: .0096
  • #13: .0045

The odds of all of these events happening in a real game?

0.00000000174149%, or 1 out of every 57,422,154,217 games.

Now if you're limiting yourself to only using 8 dice, since the rules aren't clear about what to do if you don't start the haunt after drawing your 8th omen, then the odds are a better, but still unlikely.

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  • Are the odds the chance of it happening on that roll or the total chance of it happening by that roll?
    – Joe W
    Commented Feb 20, 2023 at 16:26
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    @JoeW The individual odds listed are for that specific roll, not cumulative, so the final result is just the 13 numbers multiplied together (chances of the 13 separate independent events all happening).
    – GendoIkari
    Commented Feb 20, 2023 at 17:54
  • Thanks for that clarification and adding that information to the answer. While it is pretty much impossible to happen would be nice if they could update the rules for it.
    – Joe W
    Commented Feb 20, 2023 at 18:05
  • It is mostly only theoretical, though I did hear about it happening at Phoenix Fan Fusion. I like the house rule of #13 always triggers the haunt, I just think it's an odd oversight in the rules.
    – SarcasticSully
    Commented Feb 20, 2023 at 20:19
  • @SarcasticSully The original Betrayal worked a bit different and you would always roll 6 dice, and trigger the haunt if you rolled less than the number of omens revealed so far. This meant that you were guaranteed to trigger it on the 13th omen no matter what. I assume they changed it because the old way made it possible (though very unlikely) to trigger the haunt on the very first omen.
    – GendoIkari
    Commented Feb 20, 2023 at 20:43

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