Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Standard array only has hurt class diversity

Lets be honest, people want to use their main character for conversations, not delegate the responsibility to a face character. It is notable that charisma classes see much better representation in player choices than anything else. All of the 4 charisma based classes are in the top 5 classes chosen by players, with rogue fractionally beating bard and paladins, sorcerers and warlocks all somewhat more popular than rogue.

If Larian had put more effort into making stats and skills governed by stats other than Charisma interesting alternatives for dialogue options, this might have been mitigated. But by making players feel very underbudgeted stat wise in an RP heavy game, you demonstrably and heavily skew class selection in favour of high charisma classes. I am honestly a little surprised that rogue is relatively popular, but its likely not incidental that it is the most capable non charisma based class for being a face character.

Aside from the mindless fruit machine pleasure of rolling for a character (and unlike the frustration I usually have with rng in games, this is a once and done experience, not a constant frustration throughout the game), allowing us to get over budgeted stat wise would make it vaguely plausible to have a high charisma monk, for example. Given how strong tavern brawler is, monks will basically always want to leave charisma at 8. You want strength, dexterity, wisdom and con, and you can nowhere near max all of these even leaving intelligence and charisma at 8 (I suspect players dont particularly like the idea of playing a dumbass either), so there is no way you are pumping either stat if playing as a monk, which means you really have to accept sucking at dialogue.

Its not a great feeling, and its clearly hampering the popularity of a lot of classes.

Warlock is a garbage class, and it's charisma. The reason people play charisma classes is

A) The two top OP classes are, guess what, sorc and paladin. It's not even close.



B) 2/3 of the top classes are charisma, with Fighter following. It's no miracle that when there are only 3 charisma classes, you assume that it must be due to charisma and not the class strength.

C) The two most plentiful item categories are by a landslide (90%+ of magic items) paladin/fighter favored plate gear and martial weapons, with caster robes behind it. It just so happens that the paladin/sorc/fighter/monk categories absorb 95%+ of magic items in the game. There is a whopping total of two magic items in the game for bard. 3 for druid. 2 for warlock, one of them requires wyll in the party, a single legendary bow for rangers, zero gear for beastmaster rangers (which explains why ranger is largely played gloomstalker/rogue multiclass builds).

When gear is such a large part of player power in this game, the classes with most dedicated gear thrive. Rogue is somewhat better off than druid/ranger, but slightly worse than caster. You get a legendary rapier in act 3 and Orin's weapons, and that's it. Bards don't get any legendary weapons, druids don't get any legendary weapons.

Eh, I dump cha on some characters and do ok.

But warlock is the 3rd most popular class. Bard is the 5th. Again, its all 4 charisma based classes in the top 5. And the 4th most popular class, which is most definitely not a combat powerhouse, happens to have the best dialogue capability of any non charisma based class. And bare in mind, unlike the warlock, the paladin and sorcerer are not represented by the recruitable party members in game, beyond Minthara, which is significantly later game and requires what I expect is a rather unpopular choice (losing the Tiefling related content in acts 2 and 3, Wyll, Karlach and Halsin). This will boost their popularity as player choices relative to warlocks. Wyll himself is likely a staple in many parties, and if so, you arent going to playing warlock yourself.

Also, if not factoring in multiclassing, I would say tavern brawler builds (open hand monks and berserker throwing barbarians specifically) are both significantly more powerful than paladin. The base smite damage averages 9 and is a highly finite resource. Tavern brawler adds +6 to hit and damage with a strength score of 22 which is pretty easy to obtain by early chapter 2, and being 30% more likely to hit is worth a lot more than 3 damage, particularly when the bonus has no limitation and both classes get significantly more attacks than a paladin. A monk can attack literally twice as often with far more mobility and a barbarian 50% more often and at range. Add on to that a +1d4+3 damage bonus per at attack at level 6 for monk and all the bonus damage for throwing from gear for barbarian, plus rage bonus, its not even a close call to be honest. Both will be dramatically stronger than a paladin as damage dealers. Even ranged college of swords bards get a much superior damage boost to smite (double weapon damage +2d6 - 2d10) and its a short rest resource, not using up spell slots.

As for endgame, well A) its endgame, so likely not that basis of most people's class selection and B) there are plenty of endgame builds that do it better. A 7/5 oathbreaker/pact of the blade will add double charisma modifier to damage and gets 3 base attacks per round, which is going to do a lot more damage than a sorlock, with 50% more attacks and more damage per hit. You can throw in devils sight and darkness to be at constant advantage and enemies at disadvantage. A fighter can attack 12 times in a single round. An open hand monk 6/thief 4/fighter 2 can do insane damage in a single round. So can a college of swords bard 10/fighter 2. Or a throwing berserker 5/thief 4/champion 3. And all these options do very competitive damage outside of action surge also. And even ignoring that this isn't a solo game, so solo potential isn't a measure of power, there are enough haste potions in the game to cover that base even if soloing.

So I don't think it has much to do with the specific power of paladins and sorcerers. I think it has more to do with people wanting to have good dialogue characters as their main character. When you give people a highly restricted stat budget, that means classes that do need to sacrifice combat capability for prowess in dialogue checks.

That stat issue is something I also encountered in PF:WotR, where the main stat to pump for one character is intelligence (or wisdom, depending on background, 3.5e is extremely complicated when it comes to building), though.

RP-wise it's even right that a CHA based character is the face of the party, but I also feel a bit like "mostly it's CHA based classes for your main" here.

But I don't think addressing Larian is right, the problem lies much deeper in the D&D rules, which don't currently allow replacing CHA at least with INT or WIS (something that 3.5e allowed to SOME degree between INT and WIS).

Yes, it is in part the ruleset, but if you can role for stats, with patience, you can still get a respectable charisma score on your main regardless of class. If you ever rolled for characters in Solasta, you will be aware that your total stat budget can be dramatically higher than the standard array. Also, when it comes to skill checks, charisma based roles in combat are FAR more common than any other skill check.

Also PF:WotR had the advantage that any party member can take a skill check in most cases, regardless of who is initiating the dialogue. Its certainly way more complicated rules wise (personally, I liked the depth), but I never felt hamstrung by the need to play a high charisma character or have my RP options significantly restricted.

True for PF:WotR, but I dislike stat rolling a lot, honestly, I prefer Tasha.

My experience with PF:WotR was that your party options certainly lack a viable "high knowledge skill" character (Nenio is 20 point buy trash, sorry), so I usually went with the INT / WIS conversion in my playthroughs there.

CHA is also much less important in PF:WotR it seems.

I have played Solasta, and even when you can roll to your heart's content it's not really possible to have high scores in more than three, and most classes have three combat stats (wizards need Int, Con, and Dex for example). There's no room for high charisma. I have rolled a lot. I've even rolled three 18's. But getting four high scores? Never seen that.

The point is I don't really think stat point-buy is the reason for charisma classes being popular. It's simply because there are a lot of charisma checks in the game, and passing them makes for a much more satisfying story (in addition to making some really tough fights a lot easier).

Point buy does have odd consequences. For example, monks live off tavern brawler and also like dex and Wis. So, to do this well, you need to abuse the items of set my stat to x (gloves of dex) then respec to make that stat an 8. Earlier in the game you have to do that for strength then drink potions of strength when it matters. This is all on top of Wis for stunning fist and con so you don't die. Even leaving int and cha at 8, that is a lot of points needed.

I have very rarely seen all 6 scores 13/14 or higher (I cannot recall exactly). But it is definitely possible to get 4 scores 16+ with roles before modifiers and no score below 10, albeit its pretty tedious (you might take 20-30 mins). With point buy using the standard array budget, you get no higher than 15 before modifiers and a far lower overall score. Few classes need more than 3 stats for mechanics, so getting a respectable charisma score is possible, far more so than with point buy at any rate.

Yeah, that's the beauty of stat rolling. With point buy, you're either hamstringing yourself by picking bad stats or reduced to playing a stereotype. (Boorish fighters, noodle-armed wizards, etc.)

I think the Headband of Intellect (INT set to 17) was the wrong call for an early stat boosting item.

The item we actually needed was the Ring of Human influence from BG2, which set Charname's charisma to 18.

On BG3 Explorer mode it could grant Tides of Chaos as a passive.

It'd make holding the party together seem more believable, and if for some reason you don't want that buff, you can sell it for the pocket change, but it should come very early I think. Allowing CHA the boost then PCs can creep up in the other 5 attributes. CHA based classes will find it less appealing cause they'll still want their 20 for spellcasting purposes probably, and just because it feels good to push 20. But for everyone else, allows CHA as a dump stat. This helps to stabilize the merchant economy so you don't have to switch faces. Also we have this narrative conceit of the tadpole, so you could just as easily call it the Ring of Illithid Influence if you wanted to make it somehow more Spelljammer-y than we already are here lol, and just use whatever stat boost makes sense, maybe 16 or 17? But anyhow that's the stat pumping item to drop early on I think.

The Tome of Charisma was also the easiest to acquire in BG1, and so many Classes required a high CHA that you just sorta got used to seeing 17s. 8 is pretty punishing. A lot of story content is gated behind rolls, and some of this feels unnecessary. It was suggested elsewhere the Explorer/Balanced/Tactician game modes might use different point buys to differentiate them. For my part I would want a higher difficulty in tactical combat, but a more forgiving difficulty level for story rolls (mainly because the latter just means reload/save if that's the story path I want to pursue.) They could solve all this with a Ring, or better yet an item that doesn't require an equipment slot. We just keep it in our pocket.

I once did rolls in a pathfinder campaign and was forced to use point buy after I rolled 3 18s and two 16s.

It was disgusting. 18 dex/con/cha 16 wis/int.

Was my very best roll ever and my DM didn't like it so I had to use a point buy.