Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The One D&D project. Thoughts?

That is very funny after your posts thus far.

You can modify the monsters as you see fit, but if we make a half-orc veteran and add their +2 str, that's now a +6 to hit with melee weapons and +6 athletics. Add darkvision, increased crit dmg and intimidation proficiency. Now we're talking about a different creature that should probably have a new CR. Or you can add darkvision and leave its combat statistics the way they are. Or do nothing. Or completely redesign the whole creature.

None of that changes the fact that the monster statblocks aren't player character sheets and follow their own rules. The Veteran can, for example, dual wield a longsword and shortsword without any indication that they have the dual wielder feat a player needs to do that, since they should've had 18 AC when wearing splint if they did. And since they have 2 base attacks per turn (3 with two-weapon fighting, 1 with a crossbow with the loading property), they should be at minimum lvl 5, which means they should have a +3 proficiency bonus. Or lvl 9, since they have 9 hit dice, for a +4 proficiency bonus. Which they don't have. And they don't use their bonus action for twf. These are not rules the players follow. Same goes with commoners. It's just a statblock for someone without any special benefits from their stats.

People are reading way too much lore into game mechanics. This stuff stopped being coherent as anything but 22 years ago, with the introduction of a linear progression and ASIs.