Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Musical instruments proficiency revisited

I thought we could now have people play instruments who were not proficient but they'd sound horrible. My characters do nothing but pull the instruments out and put them away.

Also, I still want the option for more than Bard to be proficient at instruments so we can create non-bard musicians. Various backgrounds should come with the proficiency, like Entertainer and Outlander.

And why only 1 proficiency for Bards? Why not 3, like the 5e rules allow? I'd like to create a bard who can play a variety of instruments.

I think the bad playing is supposed to happen when performer fails a performance check, so try it out near other NPCs.

I'm not sure I understand. In BG3, you either can play instruments or not at all. If you can play one instrument, you can play every instruments.
Characters who can play instruments are :
- Bards
- The ones that have passed the skill checks with Alfira
- the ones that have picked the "Performer" feat (unless they removed it?)

The others get the "bad performance" animation/sound.

I, admittedly, have stopped playing Patch 9...has some of that been changed?


That, I agree! Wholheartedly!

Maybe I misunderstood the PFH. I thought they were saying that if you weren't proficient you could still play but would sound horrible.

Either way, what I'm getting at mostly is that in D&D 5e, bards are proficient in more than 1 instrument. They are proficient in 3. Entertainers (Background) are proficient in 1 instrument of your choice, and so is the Outlander (Background). However, in BG3, they made it so that only the Bard gets to be able to play an instrument in the beginning of the game. No one else can. You have to pick 1 instrument, and that's it. This kinda stinks. I mean, if that's what they're going to do, that's fine, I guess. However, I think it's kinda dumb and it makes no sense as to why they don't just allow more people to be proficient with instruments. Regardless of who can play, only Bards can use instruments as magic focuses, so simply allowing someone to play an instrument wouldn't create a huge issue from a technical perspective - at least so I would think.

And I really think it's dumb to gain proficiency because you help Alfira write a song. Years of practice to gain a proficiency cannot be gained in a single session of helping a bard write a song. That's silly to me. Same with gaining the proficiency at Level 4 - which, by the way, why? Why would I waste an ASI/Feat on being able to play an instrument when it has no gameplay value whatsoever?

When you are proficient and fail the performance check you still play alright.

You start with one instrument in your inventory but again, you can play any instruments that you find

It can be used as a distraction (and to gain some coins if well performed) but I understand the sentiment of wanting more.

It's a little weird, but at least player have a chance to gain musical proficiency without a feat or being a bard x)

👍

I wish it is how it would work in real life

I guess allowing the Bard to play anything makes sense. For video game purposes, it's just easier. That works for me. I just wish they provided other options. Like I said, allowing maybe a Background or 2 to have the proficiencies.

But, I suppose the way they're doing it, if it's a matter of all or nothing - you're allowed to play all instruments with proficiency as a Bard, or nothing if not a Bard unless you have the Feat which allows proficiency for all - then yes. That's easier for them to code and it works well enough. After all, musical instruments aren't that important in a game like this.

Still, the Entertainer should, at the very least, be allowed to have musical instrument proficiency as a freebie since it goes along with their background. So, you could be an Entertainer who is proficient with instruments and then a Ranger or a Fighter or something like that, showing that you were once a performer but are now, due to life's choices, something entirely different.

I had my non-proficient PC bust out some lute tunes at the party, and subsequent dialog was pretty funny... "[...] but we could do without the singing..."

Found another one - PC was rocking on a lute, and SH tried to join on flute. She... did not succeed, very amusingly, and now has a "poor performance" condition until next long rest.

I remembered to get a screenshot this time