Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback (Note for developers) Nature of permanent de/buffs

This originally started as a question, but I guess it's better to change it to a suggestion, since this is a serious matter and I don't know the nature of all the potential permanent de/buffs in the full game.

First, let me shed some light on the background of this issue.

In game is possible to get permanent de/buffs during the game.
Whether the source is the Volo's Eye or the hair of everyone's favorite Aunt.
(I assume that in the full game there will be a few more ways to increase some attributes.)

Question is:
""Are these buffs just a permanent passive effect, or a fixed part of the core stats?""

It is crucial that these de/buffs are not part of the core stats (raw stats that we see, for example, when increasing the level of a character).
It is necessary for them to be permanent passive effects.
Let me explain.

It is possible to create a character that will have (for example) a strength of 17.
At 4th level we choose +2 strength boost and eat aunt's hair for another +1 strength.
This will give us a total of 20 strength. That might sound like a good thing, but it's not necessarily a good thing.
At 8th level we should normally be able to choose another +2 strength attribute boost.
Unfortunately, feats does not allow an increase beyond 20.

So if these de/buffs are a fixed part of the core stats, it's not a good idea to use them until we reach 20 the natural way, as they allow us to go beyond the limits.
But if they are just a permanent passive effect, then we don't have to worry about them somehow harming our character's future growth.

Considering the fact that nobody would probably be too excited about having these special items in their inventory when it's not reasonable to use them for another 50 hours, it's certainly clear that the passive permanent effects are MUCH better choice.

I have never seen a developer post in this forum, and moderators don't have access to anything more than we do. Good luck with getting an answer...

As snowram says, as mods we're just here to support the forums and don't have any special insight into the game, so I can only speculate along with everyone else.

And it's ages since I've tried either Volo's eye or Ethel's hair. If they apply a condition that's visible on the right of the character sheet then I think that might be a decent indication they're treated as a permanent buff/debuff rather than a change to core stats, but I wouldn't consider it as definitive either way. It's possible that the tooltip in the full release might make it clear, or we might just need to experiment. It's also possible that there'll be opportunities to ask Larian questions in the run-up to the release or even at the Panel from Hell, though again I know no more than the rest of you. I wish I did .

Despite that, it's nice of you to reply and so quickly
Thank you.

Since this is a Suggestions & Feedback section, I am correct in assuming that you sometimes forward some things directly to the people from Larian studio?
In that case, could you forward that permanent de/buffs should always take the form of a permanent passive effect and not change core stats?

Or is this just an informative section of the forum that developers can check out themselves from time to time?

With apologies to you, I laughed out loud when I read that. We literally have no way of knowing if they read/care about anything here and we're just pissing up a flag pole, or otherwise.

Certainly some changes have occurred that had been energetically advocated here, but how it gets from our keyboards to their product decisions is anyone's guess. Word on the street is that messages sent to their support team directly are more likely to get attention, but "more likely than possibly zero" still isn't a high probability.

Is it really THAT uncommon here?

On the Owlcat or Beamdog forum, I sometimes discussed with the developers, moderators were in direct contact with them and sometimes forwarded messages to them (since the developers could not be online as often as they would like). I guess each studio offers different levels of service...

Well, I have no visibility of what goes on inside Larian, but the community management team do keep an eye on the forums (I can even spot them when checking to see who is online) and have told us in in the past that they collate and feed back bugs and suggestions. And though they don’t often comment on specific topics, I think we can tell from the changes that have been made that the devs do hear feedback from here and other places fans gather, even if they don’t make every alteration we want to see (or haven’t yet …).

It’s true that if you have a question that needs a direct answer from Larian, rather than simply wanting to give some feedback to help them shape the game, then you’re probably better off contacting the support team. And that if you’ve found a bug you think might be new, it’s also best to contact support so you can attach a save file and the issue can be automatically logged and can be properly tracked.

I can confirm that direct bug reports are thoroughly viewed by the developer. I've sent a lot of those pre-patch 9 and someone from the team always reached out to respond.

Thanks for the explanation, I changed the nature of this topic.
Now everything should be clearer and easier to understand.

the buff does NOT count when working out stats at level up time no

so if your character puts in Volos eye their stats remain as they where when you level up... after level up your stats return to + 1 char and -1 intel [it makes a difference to what spells / feats you can pick if you have even stats at level up]

We can't be sure that other potential buffs in the full game will behave the same way.
I think this post has merit, because if nothing else, one of the developers might at least think to check if all the buffs are set correctly.

But thanks for the info on the eye.
I played early access two years ago and even if I remember how it was then, I have no guarantee that they haven't changed it since then.