Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Racial ASIs

Okay this has bothered me since launch. Races should NOT have specific ability score increases associated with them. It restricts builds too much. I wanna make a barbarian but that means I pretty much HAVE to be a dwarf to make it viable. I wanna be a wizard but that means I HAVE to be a high elf etc... I want to play any race with any class but racial ASIs just make that so much harder.

Could you maybe do what they did in Tasha's cauldron of everything and allow players to choose what ability scores they boost in character creation?

Didn't we literally just have a thread about this?

Also, you don't. The best Barbarian I've ever seen was a Halfling.

To make it VIABLE for......what? Marvel Powergame through?
Its funny now people play RPGs basically to just have a VIABLE character BUILD by the NUMBERS.

Restrictions are set to because this is D&D. Some races/classes have weakness while others have strength. We build characters around that. You build a cool character you like (most IMPORTANT thing in an RPG...) but hey its racial doesnt fit the class...well thats one of your weakness you have to deal which makes the game interesting imho.

Adding extra racial TRAITS (positive/negatives) would be nice though!

As a GAMER I get it , you want to be like superman good at everything...but that doesnt work in a D^D Baldurs gate RPG world. Diablo does it better.

I've not played a lot of D&D, but I've played and read plenty of other systems, and I think that D&D could absolutely do awaywith racial ability score increases while still letting characters be bad at things. Other games do it without issue.

If anything, the many threads have at least shown that it's something that a bunch of people want, and it's about to become a lot more common with the release of Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse, so including free ASI selection as an option wouldn't be a bad thing, just not something that I'd use.

That argument doesn't work.

Point Buy with fixed ASI's: Characters have to be bad at something.
Point Buy with floating ASI's: Characters have to be bad at something.

With floating, you're just changing what the Individual Specific Unique Snowflake Player Character (ISUSPC) is bad at. Being able to move a +2/+1 around does not suddenly make the character into superman good at everything. Your argument is one against rolling for stats, because suddenly that Half-Orc rolls a 6 and puts it into Strength (+2 with their fixed racial ASI) and rolls an 18 and puts it into INT and you have a Half-Orc Wizard.

Players get sick and tired of having to do the same thing over and over again, using the same limited selection of races which are acceptable for their chosen class. It limits creativity, it does not enhance it.

This is not a carefully scripted story in a novel or on the screen where the plucky hero who has a disadvantage can overome that by being clever and creative through their quick wit. It's a game based around rolls of dice. The factor which determines success is not the quick wit of the player, but the number which turns up on the d20. There is no creatively getting around a numerical disadvantage, not in a videogame which has no DM to bargain with.

Conversely, the "it's all just flavor and races have literally no distinctive feature" has its downsides as well.

I wish most players would stop conflating anything that is remotely "inconvenient" on the short term with something being inherently bad.
"Limiting your options" in this case just points to the fact that an innate difference exists to begin with.

I wouldn't wish for a setting where gnomes and half-orcs have the same average strength, if anything I'd wish for a class system that that would make a non-strength-focused gnome a viable option for a similar role while still taking his differences into account.

Please elaborate ...

If you create Barbarian Human, you end up with 16 Str ... therefore you have +3
If you create Barbarian SHIELD Dwarf, you end up with 17 Str ... therefore you have +3
If you create Barbarian Githyanki, you end up with 17 Str ... therefore you have +3
If you create Barbarian Half-Elf, you end up with 16 Str ... therefore you have +3
If you create Barbarian Zariel Tiefling, you end up with 16 Str ... therefore you have +3

In what universe this means you "have to be a dwarf" ? O_o

And BTW ... the only corect Wizard is of course Gnome. :P

We should be able to roll at release which will allow players to do almost everything.

This is a nonsensical statement. Is poker a game where success is determined by luck only? You still have decisions to make on what actions you perform and you can make informed decisions based on either indirect (PnP) or direct (cRPG) information you have. If you think that the only things that determines the impact of the character on the game is his numerical advantage or lack of it, you are just wrong.

And even if that was the case (which it is not), then is the racial stat disparity the biggest problem?

Consider Halfling Barbarian vs Human Barbarian. Halfling does an obvious 2-handed build, but his racial trait (not stat) forces him to use longsword to handed. Compared to an optimized two-handed human Barbarian at level 4 he would on average deal about 4 damage less per round. That's due to lower weapon die and not being able to use GWM. That's a lot. But what if the human decided to use shield and a longsword? Then it's about equal, despite the +1 stat advantage. And AC difference would exist, but halfing would have better saves thanks to both stats and lucky. Oh, and I didn't use lucky trait in my calculation since I don't have any idea how it behaves with advantage in BG3. But if they both attacked without using Reckless Attack - halfling does 1 more damage.

If your fantasy is being a fighter duelist using weapon in one hand you are at way bigger disadvantage, than someone who wants to specifically use a Tiefling cleric.

Your weapon, class, feat, play-style or spell selection is way more important than 1 stat point. So arguing that you need to be a specific race to be viable is bonkers.

The default should be that races have racial ASIs. This retains differences between races (really, closer to species) in D&D: Orcs are stronger than the average person; halflings are more cunning; elves are more dexterous; etc. Just as it is nonsensical to say that cheetahs aren't more dexterous than elephants, it is nonsensical to say that orcs aren't stronger than gnomes.

That said, I'm in favor of optionally allowing any +2/+1. This was a homebrew rule in many of the tabletop games I played in. With bounded accuracy a difference of +1 is significant, and so using point buy can result in a race-class combination that both doesn't fit the idea of your character and is suboptimal (especially because some stats--if your're not playing a class based on that stat--are truly dump stats in 5e). Additionally, optionally allowing any +2/+1 sets your character apart from your race's dominant traits, which is a perfect opportunity for defining your background and roleplaying that uncommonly high off-stat or that uncommonly-low racial stat.

But in order to be different than your race, in order to have that above roleplaying opportunity, there needs to be a default racial mold that your character doesn't match.

That's obviously false. Being able to move the +2/+1 does not delete every other feature out of the race you chose. I wish most players would stop conflating the "minor value" of a +2/+1 not going in the Only Racially Approved locations as destroying the flavor of the entire world.



We're not talking about a system where gnomes and half-orcs have the same average strength. The world is 99.999% NPC's. Player characters are different from NPC's, that's why they're Player Characters. We're talking about a system where Player Characters can, if the player wishes, be a little different from the rest of their species. If the player does not wish, they can make characters which fall directly in line with the average member of the species.



So why aren't the people complaining about a +2/+1 going in different spots complaining about being a character potentially able to get a +3 or +4 to the wrong spots? Why isn't rolling for stats not a cardinal sin against the purity of the lore? What's the difference?



Luck is overwhelmingly important, yes. Your chances of winning are based on the luck of the hand you get and the luck of the cards on the table and the luck of the cards you draw.


In DOS 2, when trying to persuade someone, you could pick a dialogue option, and that option has hidden value behind the scenes which may be more or less effective. You can make an educated guess about which of the possible options you're presented with is most likely to succeed, and if you're right, you will win based on your fixed persuasion value and the fixed hidden value of the chosen dialogue option.

However, in BG 3, such an option is usually going to be tied to a skill check of some kind, and success will hinge more on whether the die roll is good. The choice can affect the DC of the check, but ultimately, Luck matters more than the choice you made.



If one stat point doesn't matter, then why is it a problem for the stat point to go in a non-approved-location? And as a reminder, we are not talking about what the average member of a race is like. We're talking about a player character, which are special unique snowflakes.

I think making stat adjustments generic does make races more generic, I don't think that's controversial. But again complaining about these things does lose something considering it's supposed to be malleable on our end, unilaterally.
If Halflings have different stat adjustments after a millennia of evolution in the Dark Sun, than the off-brand Hobbits of FR, than we shouldn't really need a book telling us it's ok. Though Halflings with +2 to strength still seems wrong to me.

Why did we need a book telling us how to do this? Maybe it's because someone coming to the table saying their gnome should have a 20 strength at level 1 would be considered a certain type of gaming otherwise (also no negative modifiers thank you), and those people are a big part of the market now.

D&D shouldn't be giving us fish but teaching us how to fish.

+1

I wonder why is Larian keeping this for themselves ...
Would be great to have it allready ... also it would help us to test better some feats, when we would no longer need to worry about stats.

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//Edit:

Also on topic ...
I would like to ask: Why?
I mean why do you want to play lets say "unusual" Class/Race combination? O_o

I would presume its that special characters are appealing ... but then:

Playing against type can be very fun, and satisfying. I don't understand why you would want to make it less so by taking away the inherent challenge of doing it.

Well for me personally, the appeal of playing against type is in roleplay, not mechanics. I want the world to penalize my character for trying to break out of typical racial boxes, not the system.


Ah, but you see, everyone isn't special. YOU are. You and your group of 3-6 allies are. You're going to meet all sorts of other, regular npcs all the time.

I would call this first step on that road ...
As Niara said, WotC are allready working on deleting distinctions between races ... its only matter of time now. :-/

Persoanly i would say this is material for moders ... and im quite sure some moder will make it happen, but officialy i would keep the racial bonuses as they are ... for reasons mentioned in the other topic.

Our characters are special only because we roll an extra die during character creation, we might not even choose to do this. What kind of person wants to roleplay adversity without actually having to deal with it?

I see it exactly the same ...

You want exceptionaly intelligent Dwarf? Roll 18 and asign it to Intelligence.
Sure it would never be "as exceptionaly intelligent" as Gnome who starts with 20 with the same roll ... but for Dwarf standarts he would still be exceptional, and compared to that Gnome a lot tougher.

Include floating stats for everyone and you get what ...
A Dwarf who is litteraly exactly the same as a Gnome, a Half Orc, an Elf, or a Tiefling ... except he looks a little different. :-/

That really dont sound to you frigid people?