Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Wyll and Shadowheart need more Dexterity

Wyll and Shadowheart are two of my newest favorite characters in games, but I’m struck with a bit of disappointment. Some of their base stats of the feel out of character for them or lead to lackluster gameplay. IIRC they each start with the recommended stat spread for a character of their class, but they don’t perfectly fit that mold.

Wyll in particular left me baffled. He struck a deal with a devil to become the “Blade of Frontiers,” but he seems a bit shortchanged in that deal. We see him training others how to fight with a sword, and we hear him talk up his sword fighting skills all through his first appearance, but he doesn’t live up to it right now.
Putting aside the fact that the “Pact of the Blade” is still in development, I think he should at have a +2 in dexterity rather than a +1 (his stat is currently a 13). I’d gladly swap that 13 with his 14 in intelligence or 15 in constitution.


I’m sure there are plenty of players who are fine with him not being a weapons user, but it’d be nice if we got a choice. Barring choice, I’d always lean towards flavor.



Shadowheart’s case is admittedly more a personal preference but I always associate Trickery Clerics with a sneakier sort of build. That takes Dexterity and Dexterity is currently her lowest stat (9) with a modifier of -1. This naturally makes her worse at stealth and sleight of hand, but it also has implications for her combat stats.
She’s not the type of cleric to get heavy armor, so her AC suffers from a lack of dex. It’s exacerbated by the fact that she focuses on strength, which naturally has no ranged options and pulls you closer to enemy fire so you can land melee weapon attacks.

IIRC she’s statistically the dying-est companion, and I suspect her low AC has something to do with that.

I’d much rather play a dagger-wielding, crossbow firing, dexterity based Shadowheart who can come steal thing with me after using blessing-of-the-trickster over what we have currently.

Looking forward too, when BG3 lets you reach level 8, assuming Divine Strike works the way it does in tabletop, Shadowheart is going to need to feel comfortable making weapon attacks, and right now I don’t feel she is.
I’d either swap her strength with dexterity, or I’d rotate her dexterity, strength and charisma.

Admittedly, dexterity seems pretty off-beat for a cleric, and it is, but trickery is easily the domain most suited for it of any we’ve ever seen.

Shadowheart at least needs her missing stat point. You can build her with the exact same stats but a 10 Dex instead of a 9 through point buy. She's intentionally gimped for some reason.

Oh wow, I didn't know that before. Is that true for all companions or is it just her? poor thing.

Wyll: Having 13 Dex kind of incentivizes taking the Moderately Armored feat which is +1 Dex, proficiency in medium armor (max +2 Dex mod) and shield. This will potentially mean +6 more AC than with light armor (and even more with magic shields) - which is a solid use of ASI.

Shadowheart: Complex problem. Low AC due to low Dex. Lacking a good ranged option. Sacred Flame is relatively nerfed by the ease of which other ranged attacks can benefit from advantage rolls. Trickery Cleric on the weak side apart from strong domain spells in mid-late levels. Larian should look into increasing her combat effectiveness. Perhaps by swapping Str and Dex from 14 and 9 to 10 and 14 respectively. This would make her tankier and open up for using more reliable ranged weapon attacks as an alternative to her cantrip. This would benefit her mechanically in the early levels and fit her thematically better than the current attribute allocation.

I see the point for Wyll, but Shadowheart I don't see why she would need DEX for. Equip her with Lae'zel armor and she's a decent tank. I would actually rather specialize her in heavy armor so she can get a full plate when they are in the game. And her spells are more to help rogues than for herself. She definitely doesn't have the stats for a sneaky character. There will probably be some +1 or +2 dex items later in the game. It will be enough for her.

Wyll needs it for his survivability for sure.

So Shar is suppose to have Death or Trickery domains but I am having a hard time seeing a low dexterity Trickery Cleric. I would if she suppose to be Death Domain and that just not in yet? No, Death domain seems a bit dark for Shadowheart. I also have a bit of an issue with the 14 charisma, she a bit abrasive to be a real people person. I guess I'll look for a mod that rebalances her stats.

I also feel like Wyll suppose to be a Pact of the Blade Warlock.

STOP IT! I'm so tired of seeing people advocating ANTI-roleplaying cheese tactics (a githyanki letting you strip her and adding insult to injury by giving her precious armor to her rival) to overcome an obvious mechanical (and thematic) problem with Shadowheart. As for Wyll, there is no problem once he grabs the Moderately Armored feat at level 4.

On the having non githyanki in githyanki armor, should that not make you kill on sight to githyanki? They seem a bit touchy about stuff like that? I think that Laz'ael should become hostile if you try to remove her armor. Heck, I expect if you tried to equip her in better armor, she would refuse to wear it as her armor is core to her identity.

On the having non githyanki in githyanki armor, should that not make you kill on sight to githyanki? They seem a bit touchy about stuff like that? I think that Laz'ael should become hostile if you try to remove her armor. Heck, I expect if you tried to equip her in better armor, she would refuse to wear it as her armor is core to her identity.

I can't understand about shadowheart's dexterity...

The -1 is ridiculous. I don't know how they decide companion's abilities but a cleric stick to medium armor not having at least 10 dext is... unusual... (And sad because she has a malus for no reason)

I'm pretty sure that none of the companion stats are final. Giving SH heavy armor proficieny and a chain mail helps a lot on her survivability, but not a lot on the fact that most of her skills are dex based



How about you stop telling others how they should play the game.

Personally I'd rather take Armor of Shadows eldritch invocation than moderately armored since it scales better and is a warlock exclusive ability.

That aside, his AC is less of an issue than the fact that he's hyped up to be an awesome swordsman despite the worst at it (except for Gale, who seems pretty comfortable where he is.)
Also waiting until level 4 is a lot to slog through if you're looking for more than just an AC boost.

She's still -1 to AC in Laezal's armor. On top of -1 to two of her trained skills (stealth and sleight of hand), -1 dex saves (ray of frost bait), initiative, etc.

She can have the exact same stats and a 10 Dex. Or at least put the racial +1 into Strength rather than wasting it on her dump stat. Shes intentionally poorly built.

Shadowheart is clearly the worst but all companions need some love. Their ability allocation ranges from sub optimal to downright terrible. I'm not satisfied with any of them and i would like the option to customize them rather than play with these bad presets.

At lvl 4 I gave Wyll moderatly armoured and for Shadowheart put 1 point in DEX and the other in WIS. The amount of survivability they gain at that level was pretty insane tbh.

Shadowheart has a really gimped statline though yeah, I agree. There have been plenty of topics about that though so id like to believe that Larian noticed it by now :P

Not too sure, it's kinda like min/maxing...

Can't we just accept that they have poor stats period, and move on?

Surely there will be 'stat editing patch mods' made by community in the future.

This isent min/maxing though. Shadowheart genuinely has to few points in her statline compared to character creation. Her DEX could be 10 and while that wouldnt be gamebreaking in the slightest it at the very least would remove the penalty to AC, initiative. stealth and attacks with DEX based weapons incase you want to go that route.

I just started my 2nd playthrough and my Wizard has a higher AC then she does after I cast mage armor xD

That aside, what is wrong with having NPC"s with builds that make sense? Or at the very least have builds that arent actively working against them. If my players want to gimp themselves for a story reason im generally ok with that as a DM but at the same time id question it if they want to gimp one of their more important statlines...

Their weakness give some feeling of randomness, uniqueness, realism(?).

Beside, is every humanoid of Faerun supposed to have exact stat points btw?

But anyway, if you don't like it you can mod it right?

I did consider going Heavy Armor for Shadow Heart, but she only has 14 Strength, so you can't benefit from the +1 strength you get in the same way Wyll Can with Medium Armor. If Shadow Heart had 15 Strength, then I could see a method to Larian's Madness.

Secondly, Larian seems to think Heavy Armor some how is MORE POWERFUL than Scale Mail +1, because you only get Ring Mail until the VERY END of Early access. This is a super annoying oversight, making every character go the Medium Armor Road anyways.

Ideally for me: Just let me distribute the characters points when I recruit them. That way I can have different builds in different playthroughs.

I mean.... Characters not beein optimal isent the end of the world but for EA and early game Shadowheart is the only cleric unless the PC is one. Id say her only saving grace is that at the very least her spell casting statline is optimized but thats kind of where the list of good points about her build end. I think we have to vieuw this character as their role that they would full in a party. And current thats the one of party healer.

For people who dont know pnp dnd rules they will probably be confused why their healer has a penalty to her AC and would struggle to keep her alive. I know how to handle the low AC and I struggle to have her AC be remotely decent. If you factor in her domain and the sort of 'spy' background idea that she seems to have her low DEX doesent make a great deal of sense. To many of her rolls would be done with a penalty. Skill proficiency only bring it up to a +1 which isent that great for something that you are good at.

If they want to keep standard array id go for:
STR:14
DEX:14
CON:12
INT: 10
WIS:16
CHA:10

Is it boring and are all stats even numbers? Yes. Is it arguably a better stat build for a cleric build around stealth and under handed dealings? Also yes.

Because trickery is the only clerical domain without the option to ramp up to heavy armor and most of her skills are based on DEX as the reference stat?
There's "not min-maxed" and then there's "almost comically gimped" which is what she is currently.