Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Anyone else feels like animals are too intelligent?

I expected it to be simple like: ''Me hungry. Me afraid. Cave there.'' But when I talk to animals I feel like I am talking to people because they are highly intelligent, and I am starting to ask questions like: Why has this animal not integrated into society and learned common language? Why is it not wearing a purse with coins and isn't a blacksmith at the camp?

You've got a point there. Some of the animals do dance around the intelligent side of knowledge and being rather aware of what's going on with everybody. But I consider that they have their own interest and wants. A squirrel no matter how clever he is, isn't going to want to integrate with society. He's just gonna want his trees and his nuts. Even if he could do business with people. Whats he going to offer us besides a mouth full of nuts for more nuts? He's not going to have a coin purse. Unless he knows where a person with a partocukar coin purse just got maul in the wild.

I dont think animals can learn common language and I imagine we we are talking to the animal. The rest of your party is like, "there he goes chittering to animals again" like Kronk from Emperors new grove.

I mean look at starwars right? A whole bunch of aliens of all sizes and shapes all living together, I'm sure there would be a way for the squirel to get a job and get gold, it could be good at tasks in which smaller hands are good, like making watches or knitting or something similar. Then the squirel could get a nice little house and all the nuts it would want. Humans also can survive like cavemen did but we want to live in comfort and if you have intelligence why not?

Animals are people too. Its a fantasy world. Why not have semi-sentient animals? My dogs are intelligent. They cant talk human but they feel and convey exactly how they are feeling.

I am not against having intelligent animals, it's just that it leads to multiple logical conclusions:

1) Animals would have to intigrate into some forms of society, like all other intelligent species do.
2) It would not make sense to have any pets, you wouldn't have another intelligent species as a pet, having a pet dog would be like having a pet halfling for example.
3) Most people would have to be vegan, since eating intelligent species can lead to a lot of bad consequances and in general could be considered a form canibalism.

Etc.

As far as I know animals in D&D like IRL are not self-aware and don't possess enough intelligence to be considered people, and as such I think their intelligence in BG3 should be tuned down.

You are essentially hearing their thoughts. Their grammar might sound perfect because of that translation, but they are not having high level thinking going on. They notice things, and they don't know the context of things. They are not actually speaking in common. Everyone around you hears them barking at you or mooing or whatever sound they normally make.

Perhaps, then I feel like the game is not conveying this convincingly. What I mean is I understand that it is me who is speaking the language of animals and they are not talking common but the translation is too sophisticated, too intelligent. Like I said it could be like:

''Bark'' translation: ''Me want food.'' Not ''Oh, I feel like a piece of fine lamb would be nice at this hour.''

Fair point. Pretty sure my dogs dont have any concept of what a fine piece of lamb would be as compared to a piece of average lamb. I dont think my dogs have any concept of a long and fulfilling life either but they understand fear, love, anger and fun. That makes them worth loving for me anyway. Always remember that this is just a game though

I will give you that the bear reading Volo's notes was a bit of a mistake - the bear can't cast understand writing and it wasn't a transformed druid.

I think Scratch strikes a reasonably good balance. Some of the others definitely dance a bit over the 'too clever' side of things.

Animal thoughts wouldn't come across to us as "me want food" or things like that - that's a broken language trope and implies a creature attempting to speak a language they don't know well; it wouldn't fit for animals who are not affected by any spell and aren't trying to speak our language. Their dialogue should be simplistic, but still clear - their minds work well enough for being the creature that they are.

In terms of unexpected consequences... the real one that you'd have to consider is that Speak With Animals functionally broadens the field for the Hakrness test considerably...

- When we use the ability to speak with animals they do not learn to speak, we are able to understand their barking.
- I agree that some animals speak too sophisticated.
- I am not sure which system it was (a DnD edition, Pathfinder or something else) but I read that animals have an int of 1,2 or 3 and a creature with an int of 4 or higher cannot be an animal.

Whatever system that was had a severe error as all PCs and most NPCs are animals. Hell dragons are animals and adults of some species have 22 intelligence as a standard.

I agree with OP, but I also agree that animals shouldn't speak in "mes". There's a few animals that work pretty well, but generally this is one of the most egregiously cartoonish areas of Larian's writing. I'm glad that I can avoid it by just not talking to animals. But it also sucks because I like talking to animals.

Dragons are not animals in D&D as far as I know, they are indeed very intelligent species.

Do you think they are plants? Fungi? Very large bacteria?

I think it's fine. Particularly the dog you meet I thought was done very well, he acts like a dog, but just uses perfect grammar. I think some of them are cartoony for effect, like the squirrels and I don't really mind that.

I am using one of the definitions of the word ''animal'' from Cambridge dictionary which is ''something that lives and moves but is not a human'', only in this case I substitute the word human for ALL intelligent species of Faerun, dragons included.
There is a definition of the word ''animal'' that includes humans too, since humans are technically animals, but if I were to use that definition my point wouldn't make any sense, and typically when we use the word animal we don't mean humans.

Dragons are dragons, not animals. There are also magic beasts or other categories of creatures that can be mistaken with animals.

I think animals are defined as animals from the real world and giant versions of animals from the real world.
Everything with magic abilities is definitely not an animal.

I might mistake Pathfinder rules with DnD right now. There are so many games with so many rule sets, it's confusing.

It's basic biology.

in DND, Giant eagles have 8 Intelligence(understands common but can't speak it), but Griffins have 2 Intelligence. Kind of odd