Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback More uses for INT

This is mostly a problem with 5e, Intelligence is, out of all stats, the least useful in combat for anyone but classes that depend on it.

Artificer is sadly missing from the game. Time constraints are perfectly understandable, we can only hope for a DLC here.

A campaign with Mind Flayers is supposed to feature a some important INT saves, but I haven't come across that many. A lot of skills that require an INT save are either missing or super rare, or only show up at a point where you can effectively stun your enemy for enough rounds to kill it before it can attack you.

INT checks in dialogue are missing. When adapting a tabletop game with a lot of freedom to a computer game, it is understandable that the ability to willingly investigate, or to attempt to recall something pertaining to the history of a tribe, or a character's faith, cannot always be present in dialogue, but there is an abundance of Charisma checks. Almost every dialogue comes down to Intimidation, Deception, Persuasion, or paying some gold, or attacking the NPC. There is little room to call for your ability to reason and apply logic to conversation. A lot of Arcana, History, and Religion checks are inconsequential as well. There is just so much more that Charisma can do. It is also slightly more common of a save than Intelligence.

Characters can use magical items and read scrolls with 8 or even 7 INT just fine as well. I find myself dumping Intelligence left and right. Even Arcane Tricksters and Eldritch Knights can either avoid spells that rely on INT, or simply equip that item available early on that sets their INT to a very high value.

I'd like to suggest taking another look at balancing this ability. It is the least favorite by far. Resilient: Intelligence is probably the most useless feat. Can we get some more meaningful Arcana/Religion/History/Nature/Investigation checks? Or maybe some more opportunities to require an INT save? This would make planning out the ability scores a bit less of a no-brainer, and give me a reason to set my Intelligence to anything higher than 8, and maybe grab Arcana and History proficiency as well. It's kind of pathetic to think of a Druid that utterly sucks at Nature rolls, but that seems to be the case more often than not.

Definitely a problem. It's all about Charisma, and on top of that they made it easy to dumb INT for classes which "need" it by giving you an item very early in the game. It's one reason why we have a big imbalance in which classes are taken. It's not like you need a high charisma class to play, but it makes it much more enjoyable. Like you say, Arcana History, Religion show up, but it's mostly for inconsequential additional roles.

If you think Arcana and History are bad, wait till you only get Nature checks up to Myconid colony and then they never matter again. Or animal handling when 3 classes in the game can cast a trivial ritual speak with animals. Or survival, the worst of them, with occasional hidden chests to dig up that don't have much and even then if you fail the roll you can still dig them up.

A LOT of checks besides just persuasion/intimidation/deception/wisdom just stop happening in any meaningful sense after Act 1.

Yeah, being able to just dig up chests by using the shovel when you see the failed roll was a funny discovery. At least this can be easily fixed by hiding failed rolls.

The overall lack of Intelligence checks, especially meaningful ones, is just what we’d call bad DMing if this were a tabletop campaign. I just hope there is still time to fix it without having to record hundreds of new lines of dialogue.