Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Does Anyone Know How Stats Will Work?

Since, for release Larian is apparently removing stat bonuses from races, and just putting them into classes, does anyone know how that will work?

Take a CHA based class for example... currently if I make a Half Elf Bard, I get 17 CHA... if I choose a different race, I might only get 15 or 16.

So, with the change, I pick any race, select Bard, how much CHA will I have? 17, so sort of buffing other races, or 15 or 16, thus nerfing Half Elf Bards/Sorcs/Warlocks?

Hopefully someone knows this answer... though probably not until release.

Thank you.

Take care.

You will have a +2 and a +1 and you will place both on whatever stats (ABILITY) you'll prefer.
That's how it works.

P.S. And like in the current point buy system the "soft cap" for stats at character creation, bonus excluded, will remain of 15 points.

Thank you, I was wondering if that might be the case.

As far as I understood it, you will get an "advised spread" for attributes when picking a class.
Then, in the attribute tab you can either keep it, or modify it to get different attributes.

Since they do not seem to change the point buy system itself, I completely expect to be able to hit 17 in an attribute of my choosing.


Though 17 makes only sense if you are planning for a feat that gives you +1 on an attribute - or if you have another uneven attribute.
And as far as I have heard, Actor and Resilience are the only once that could give you +1 charisma.
Since they all already have charisma saving throws, that leaves actor, which needs you to be proficient in deception and/or performance to be actually useful.

During EA there were two methods for obtaining a +1 to charisma through items that could be obtained, and one method to do it for all other stats. This makes starting with 17 in a stat a reasonable choice even if none of your other stats are odd and you have no interest in +1 feats.

Every class race combo can get a 17 in main stat now. Meaning 1 asi increass and half feat/story asi and you hit 20.

Human wizards are finally as mechanically valid as gnomes. About time as lore wise gnomes arnt even close to humans in wizardry might

A dragonborn sorcerer can take a 17 in cha so you can finally play the dragon² ideal and not feel worse than a half elf.

We dont know how strong all of these are, but some weapons and equipment have bonuses if a specific race uses them.

I believe at uncommon it was a 1d4 dice but the higher you go the better these bonuses will probably get. Even if its just 3 d 4 on a a mid to late game weapon that's going to be atleast 12 d 4 total one round with a fighter using action surge.

I've heard, though that is far from any kind of confirmation and I have no way of knowing who knows what, that the +2/+1 is really a +1/+1/+1 but you can put 2 of the "+1s" in a single attribute. Assuming that's the case, you can achieve almost all the same bonuses as you could in EA because odd values don't give you any more bonus than a next-lower even score. Specifically, a +2 can get you at most a +3 to an attribute bonus (with a 17), the same as a +1 (with a 16). If that's the case, your Half-Elf Bard will have the same bonus in EA as in launch at least until 4th Level.

That said, by far the most number of people talking about it are not mentioning the +1/+1/+1 so it could easily be wrong.

It seems like it would have been easier to just bump the point buy to 32 or something (and make a 16 or 17 cost 3 points).

Plus, Resilient: Charisma. Ugh, what a waste of a Feat even if the character isn't proficient in CHA saves.

They're taking away the restrictions of the races to have SET stats. Not stats altogether. It's what Tasha's Cauldron of Everything does. It lets you choose where to place the +2/+1 on any race.

It frees up narrative freedom if you want to play a sickly Dwarf who has spent their life reading books, and so on.

People with bad CHA saves get possessed by ghosts.

But the Actor feat gives +1 CHA plus expertise in Performance and Deception.

I am actually considering an Actor build, since it sounds interesting. But since I am currently gravitating towards an evil feybound warlock, I am unsure if I should really go Entertainer to get Performance, or if I should get Criminal and just miss out on the Performance expertise.

Well, maybe Humans *do* get an extra skill, that would solve that issue..

One thing i havent seen anything on is if the natural racial limits and upper bounds are still in play. What i mean by that is for example high elves cannot go lower than 9 int or higher than 15 con.

Because the limits are driven by the racial ability bonuses (eg the base lower limit for INT with point buy is 8, so for a high-elf with +1 INT the lower limit is 9), I don't see why things like that would apply when the ability scores are moveable to other attributes. Rather, if I changed my high elf to have +1 to STR and +2 for CHA for any reason, I'd expect their minimum STR to be 9 and CHA to be 10 on point buy. That's speculation of course, but reflects my (admittedly novice) understanding of how ability bonuses in D&D work more generally.

That makes sense from a lower limit perspective, it was still interesting to see upper limits in place even though there are no negative modifiers.

We will see when we get the game if i can make my 17 dex, 16 con, and 15 char elven rogue, or if it will have to be 17 dex 15 con and 16 char.

If folks ask why odd numbers there will be interesting options with feats like actor and with a feat rich build like a rogue. Also why i hope i can roll the former more than the latter, durable isn't enticing enough vs actor.