Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks How heavy armour and dexterity works?

I've played Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 and Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. At first I thought this game followed the Neverwinter Nights route where you only need a 12/13 dexterity to wear heavy armour however it turns out that you can still benefit from dexterity AC with a dexterity of 17 with the gith half plate. I manage to level my cleric to level 4 and I tried setting his dexterity to 19 but didn't manage to get any increase in AC afterwards. Sorry I'm just confused how this works.

Sorry I thought the Gith half plate was heavy armour. From what I remember half plate was heavy armour in Neverwinter Nights.

If you look at the tooltip of each armour, the game will tell you if it’s light, medium or heavy and will also tell you the max AC bonus you can get from DEX wearing it, and whether it gives you any disadvantage on stealth.

Moving your cursor over the AC value or item should explain it. But here is the short version:

Light Armor = Full dex modifier
Medium Armor = Up to +2 dex modifier
Heavy Armor = No dex modifier

The dex modifier on armor ONLY determines its contribution to Armor Class. Your Dexterity Saving Throws and attack rolls using Dexterity ALWAYS uses your full dex modifier, even in Medium or Heavy Armor.

Heavy Armor also allows you to ignore how a negative dexterity modifier would penalize your AC in Light and Medium armor. In terms of the game, it allows Heavy Armor wearers to dump dexterity and put those points in a more advantageous position.

Worth mentioning, just in the spirit of extra information related to the topic - some heavy armour will have a strength 'requirement', but all this actually means is that if you don't meet that strength score, your movement speed will be reduced - it doesn't actaully penalise you in any other way, or prevent you from wearing the armour.

Yes, it was.