Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please consider removing racial Ability Score Increases!

On reddit they think it's boring to play as a human, but they also want every race to be mechanically identical?

I wonder if any of them have recognized the contradiction.

It's not a contradiction because other races have a thing called 'lore', which informs character history and behaviour. Plus we're all humans. Humans are boring because we know them, are them, see them every day.

Lore, breathing fire, spellcasting, natural mimicry, natural armor, different kind of visions, stone "feeling", and a shit ton more.

People acts like the only and sole defining feature of a race is a meaningless arbitrary bonus to stats.

Fixed ASI was definitely more impactful for a class choice than those abilities. It pretty much defined if a race was optimal for a class. I can understand why people who were used to archetypes are suddenly thrown off balance by seeing those made irrelevant. An half-orc wizard or a high elf barbarian really sounds out there to me.

What about an half-orc druid or a wood-elf barbarian? They are way closer to their coulture.

Sure, there are some combinations that sounds more "out there" than others, but as you said fixed ASI were really, way too much, impactful. They tell really little about a race while limiting the roleplay in an extensive way.

Honestly? I play 5e since years, and when larian announced the final draft of classes and races I went in the wiki to see what I could play. To my horror I saw there for the first time the fixed ASI. I'm so used to floating ASI that I didn't even thought about BG3 using fixed ASI.

Basically, you have D&D players who cannot imagine making a choice for any reason other than mechanical optimisation. You also have D&D players who cannot imagine making a choice for any reason other than roleplaying. And never the twain shall meet.

Sad to hear this - so we're basically wearing a skin suit for every race draped over some humanoid form and humans get shafted since they have no darkvision or anything mechanically useful offset their...averageness.

I think the opposite @frostyfardragon. I cannot imagine a system that punish you for making a roleplay decision even before starting playing. 16 is the sweet spot of a character who's able to do what he do. Anything less and you are amateurish (for an adventurer average). I don't see why my half orc shaman (druid) should fail more than anyone else at the table, doing the thing he knows to do best, only because someone decided orcs can't be wise.

A good system doesn't have traps, doesn't have gotchyou moments.
It's not about the DM Vs the players, but the DM with the players. D&D already got rid of these things and, hopefully, BG3 has it done too.

Why not have both though? And we already had, with Tasha's optional rules. As I've said earlier, you are actually the one who wants to force restrictions on a considerable amount of players. Your way of playing the game already perfectly works within the system that pleases both types of players AND has an in-built logic that separates the species by their abilities. It is just not logical to have world defining metrics like abilities and say that they should not define the inter-species differencies. You'll take an orc for your character, but it actually won't be an orc, because he'll lack a considerable chunk of the 'orc' part. Maybe I am not understanding something, but apart from some slogans and personal feelings you haven't explained why this is better than what we have now.

If we were playing a game where every attribute was meaningfully valuable to every class in different ways I'd be all for racial ASIs. If a Wizard with high STR could open portals between themselves and their opponents to throw long-ranged punches or enchant their fists with fire and skin with stone to maul people in melee an orc wizard with +2 STR and -1INT wouldn't feel nearly as bad. If a gnome fighter could use their INT to come up with complex battle maneuvers that out-pace their opponents and catch foes off guard with feints and trickery their +2 INT would compensate for a lack of STR.

Sadly, that is not the system we're in. Not have that +1 in your primary stat just makes you universally less useful than someone else with a more optimal race choice. What do they get for being less good at their core mechanics in every way? A minor bonus to skill checks they'll probably never use, more or less.

And not everyone wants to roleplay mediocrity.

And for those that do? You still have the choice to just distribute your attributes in an unoptimized way.

Multiclassing is a thing.

Also, additional artificial self-restrictions on top of the non-restricting rules are disastrous for balance. In the current iteration, whether you are building an optimal or a sub-optimal build, you are all still operating within the universal set of restrictions and the power curve between the player1's unoptimized build and player2's perfectly optimized build would not be very different. When you unlock everything for everyone and abolish the rules, the powercurve will dramatically shift towards the hyper optimized builds. This will ruin both fun and balance for parties where players want different experience and have different priorities in terms of their characters.

Luckily ...
It seems like character creator lists all your proficiencies, no matter if they are duplicate.
Ands it seems to be written in order class > race

So ... in version we have seen in PFH.
All races got fluid +2 and +1 ...
And humans got polearms proficiency (spears, spikes, halbeards, glaives) and light armor proficiency.

Honestly, it doesnt seem like very good deal to me. :-/

(I just learnt there is a quote button next to reply. I'm so happy)

I personally don't understand what you mean by "forcing a restriction". Am I forcing you to play however you please, and if you want to play an orc wizard with +2 strength because you feel like it, you can do it? How's that a restriction.

Tasha is an optional rule at the moment, and the default, as far as I know, for 5.5e. The will probably add a "suggested stats" optional rule in the future, who knows.

My way of playing the game would punish me with characters with 15 in their main stats if I don't pick what someone else decided is the "right" or "true" choice to make, using fixed ASI.

There are a tons of things that don't make sense, like a metal armor giving you AC against a thunder spell, just on top of my head. But a game is a game, it needs to have a good design, good rules, semplifications and abstractions here and there to work. Being fun is the first and last rule, and nothing matters more than this. Otherwise we can play burning wheel to have the "milking cows" and "bakery" skills, or we can play some old ass game that give all kinds of malus to female pc for the sake of being hyper realistic. I don't see you pulling your hairs over the fact that women in faerun don't have the "poisoned" conditions 5 days a month.

I don't see how an orc shaman is less of an orc if it's not strong. He never lifted an axe, he eats berries and plants, but he must be strong. He spent his life studying the nature but he can't be wise.

I don't know about slogans. Fixed ASI punish roleplay, mathematically, and adds nothing to the game. I can't say it more clearly than this.

I get your point, in general, and on some grounds I can agree that floating ASI can unlock new ways of roleplaying in the game. There are some things I disagree with, though. The one is centering the game around the lack of racial bonuses. This is just bad world design, especially if those are kept on the NPCs. Your orc-scholar example is understandable but it is not representative of the racial aspect, more of a background aspect. Let me explain. Imagine two characters, one human and one orc, who were malnourished prisoners for approximately the same time in a single cell. When they'd be brought to the strength test, both being at their weakest point, the orc will still score better. Well this is the representation of the racial difference. If it is not represented via abilities, I suggest we st least come up with a mechanic that underlines those differences.

The other one is about self-restrictions. Self-restricting implies that it is your idea of fun, right? It will only be a viable option if this idea is shared among the whole table. If at least one player is a munchkin, then he'll take the best abilities and will possibly get the most value and spotlight for his character. This is not a very good way to setup a system, if one needs to compromise to have fun and be at disadvantage after. When there is a universal restriction, the system becomes a bit more rigid, yes, but it also becomes more fair.

Multiclassing only goes so far and has its own host of balance problems to consider.

We're all still operating under the same universal ruleset. The rulset is just different. The powercurve is also pretty much the same, the main difference is that now everyone has the choice to be on the SAME power curve rather than some characters being forced to be a step behind the rest of the party for 99% of the game because they chose the wrong kind of character to play.

Also, I find it interesting you'd prefer a world where I don't have a choice to play a Dragonborn Druid with 16 in WIS over a system where you still have a choice to play a Dragonborn with 15 in WIS.

If you want to play an unoptimized character the choice to do so is still there for you, it's just not enforced on me against my will.

Actually, this is not the worst trade-off in the world, even on the roleplaying sense. I can always think of humans as those generic city guards wielding polearms. And gameplay-wise pikes are one of the best two-handed weapons in the game, Larian gave them the best weapon actions for Martial Classes.

There are, what, three entire lines in EA that are specific to your character's race? How is that lore at all meaningful in this context?


Isn't the complaint being made in this thread that people don't want to play certain races because their stat bonuses might not align with an optimal class build? Seems to me like they're the ones overly concerned with game mechanics.

I gues it depends on your class ...

Martial classes as far as i know usualy allready have "Martial Weapons Proficiency" in general ...
Fighter do ... Barbarian do ... Paladin do ... i believe Ranger do ... Rogue dont, but they need Finese to apply Sneak Attack, so nope ... Monk dont, but they cant use two-handed weapons in order to use their features, so the only weapon that is there for them is spear, and they as far as i know allready have that, so also nope ...
And casters dont benefit much from meele weapons in general. :-/
So ... maybe Cleric? Yes, Clerics probably could find that usefull, since their weapon proficiencies are joke.
But besides that ... i dunno.

And then there is Light Armor ...
I mean, this is just my personal feeling, but i find this to be the most useless proficiency in game ... Light Armors dont easily even reach power of Mage Armor spell ... and its quite possible (even probable) that all interesting Caster Artefacts will be clothes, rather than Light Armours, since only Warlock can wear that.

Nope, still dont like it.

Still would thousant times rather have +1 to all 3 Ability Scores i need ... and others that i dont, but they are handy.

Hah, true! Still lets have some gratitude that its not the pitchfork proficiency we are getting

Removing racial ability stat bonuses (or minuses in old systems) is racist, and anti roleplying. Dwarves ate naturally healthier than other races but not as friendly. Elves are agile but not as hardy. Half ircs are strong but dumb. It is racist to erase a race's actually being because people get TRIGGERED by real life silliness. A dwarf, orc, or ekf ate not human. They ate innately different races/species. The variant stats ate game mechanics to illustrate. To disagree us racism. Period.