Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is the new racial attribute system optional?

Wasnt it her hair? As a side note we should be able to kill Ethel and eat her corpse for that buff Swen!

They should unlock appearance too. I want a normal human with a dragonborn's tail, a tiefling's horns, and a halfling's beauteous face.

And her hair, how could I forget the experience of chewing down that fetid clump of stringy wet scalp.

Wonder what other bile Swen will have us force down to get those sweet sweet 20's?

All I'm saying is Astarion should get stat buffs for eating various magical creatures

Maybe not fully on topic, but at times I wished to play a Sarevokuesque/Darth Vaderesque arcane caster in Heavy Armour.
So that I had a choice to zap the foe with Arcane Lightning, or maybe chop them up with a FSHOOM-FSHOOM blade, or cast FIST! and smash their face in ...

I don't understand why people get so worked up about this.

What the old system did was make it more expensive in terms of attribute buying points to be a non-typical member of your race. But this not an MMO, where the overall perception of a race would change if 10000 players chose to be non-typical if the system was changed into the new one, because everyone wants to be non-typical in some way and if everyone is, no one is in the end. This is a game for one player or for a small group. So what does it matter if you are untypical? The game world still features mostly typical members of your race, otherwise you wouldn't be non-typical.

My own planned character concept will be made a bit less powerful by the change, by denying me one attribute level that was important to me because my character concept depends on having a high value in a non-primary attribute for roleplaying reasons, while giving me nothing I value in return, but...so what, rules change. I would prefer a character creation system where you could buy attribute points, proficiencies and skills from the same pool but I'll play by the rules I'm given as long as long as the characters I want to play aren't disadvantaged so much that they become unfeasible.

There are some class/race combinations that make no sense to me, more for cultural reasons than for not wanting to be an outlier in the stat distribution, but even there...if you want to play such a character, they still won't appear in my game. So what...

Player agency is the key.
It should be optional.

And if not then let's see what mods can do.

Player agency, as a rule, does not mean you get to play by a custom-tailored ruleset.

Do you really think it is too much to ask for the option to play with the racial ASI we had throughout 3 years of early access?

Sorry, but we already have to mod the game to high heaven just to play it mostly like 5E. Can we not even have this?

I personally don't care because I just want to play the game, but I get the problem that others are expressing.

Why not, for example, let humans have the lucky trait or gnome's cunning? Why not? It's just for the player to be atypical, and surely a human can be lucky, right?

Why not let a dwarf have a free cantrip? It's an atypical dwarf, after all, who happens to be closely connected to the weave, but isn't a sorcerer or wizard or nothing.

In other words, just to let the player play what the player wants, why not take all the racial special qualities and put them in a generic list that the player can choose from, regardless of race?

This kind of stuff just isn't fun for a lot of people, and it feels fake and forced in an effort to appease folks who abhor working within a framework that acknowledges real difference, real diversity.

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The problem, in my opinion, is that the "fantasy" aspect of the genre is no longer about magic and blades, but rather it's a fantasy of expectations.

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Again, all of that said, I don't really care. I just want to play the game.

That exactly ...

Look, we get that you dont care ... we do.

If that is all you come to tell us, then thank you for your opinion and that will be all i presume?

You get that "lost" one ability point from auntie Ethel's hair so nothing is really lost.

I actually don't care at all if a game adheres to a specific version of a well-known ruleset. I only care that it works under the rules the developers eventually choose to implement. And Early Access is usually made possible in the mutual understanding that rules can change at any time. Consider: with no Early Access you might not have known the old rule ever existed.

So yes, I do, in fact, think it is not reasonable to expect the developers to implement two different rules for the same thing. Using mods for the purpose of adjusting the rules according to your preference is, meanwhile, perfectly legitimate.

I am saying I consider this a minor thing and don't understand why people make so much of it. I haven't actually heard anything beyond the affirmation that it is actually a really big thing. I get *that* it is for you. I just don't understand why.

I'm not sure you fully understand this fact, but the guy you quoted is totally allowed to express an opinion you disagree with. And he has every right to expect not to have someone passive aggressively attempt to shut him up ("and that will be all I presume?"). Don't deny this is what you tried to do here, it's as plain as day.

Don't over-exaggerate your status as an obsessive poster. It doesn't give you the right to dictate or even discourage someone else's opinion. If you don't like it or think it doesn't add much just bite your tongue and move on. From his previous posts I found him to be a thoughtful poster who avoids rancour and attempts some logical thought behind his posts. His opinion is as equally valid on this, or any other, as yours or mine.

Posts like yours are why this forum is regarded by a lot of people as unfriendly or even sometimes hostile.

When someone makes a "i'm concerned about 'y'" thread and a poster says "not an issue for me" and "stop getting worked up about it" I think it's fair to call them out on it, especially when it's clear they're not trying to understand the other side of the argument.

Okay folks, time to turn the heat down here, I think.

Everyone is entitled to express their own preferences, but not to question the right of others to express theirs. I'm not sure that's actually what's going on here, but it's worth being a bit careful when you're talking about what others think. And as saying "I don't understand why people x" is a statement and so doesn't invite a response it can come across as a criticism, so if you're genuinely curious and want to understand what others think and why, it is better to politely ask, while being ready to just agree to disagree. And if you're not genuinely curious, it's probably best to avoid talking about others and just stick to expressing your own views.

I really wish the new system was optional (heck its a controversial optional system from Tashas, so it shouldnt be anymore than that in BG 3 at best, if you ask me), as it is, it seems they have exchanged the system from PHB (the only proper sytem imo), for the highly controversial one from Tashas..

Really hope Larian come to their senses on this one. I love Larian, and I love BG3, been waiting for 4 years bursting with anticipation, but this implementation of Tashas system, and scrapping the original one from the PHB, is a big big mistake.

As I said, the Tasha system should be optional at best, nothing more.

Racial ability bonuses are a large part of what sets the D&D races apart. If you want to min max then choose a race that fits, or make an optional system, dont destroy the original one.
And thats half the fun to choose a d&D race with a class if you want to min max, or if your like me and want to play the unorthodox mashup most of the time. I do that half the time with D&D tabletop, its even more fun to do the non optimized choice sometimes.

Your also nerfing Dwarves and Humans and half elves (I believe, never played the latter, the two former loads of times though). Heck half the mechanical deal to choose humans is for the +1 to all, at the cost of Darkvision and other cool traits. Ive often played humans in tabletop, with this change Ill never play it in BG 3. nor will I play any race that I cant mirror the ability score modifiers of the PHB. Its partially ocd on my part, but I really want to play those races as well down the line.
I really dislike it when developers (looking at you wotc first and foremost) make changes to a great existing systems, in order to hold the hands of new players hand in general.

At least make Racial ability score bonuses (the original system you had from PHB) an option, as it is youve soured quite a few D&D players opinion.

PS: As a sidenote please add deity choice for Paladins, they NEED and SHOULD have one, its a freaking nobrainer. Not having one, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. All you need do is add same system for cleric and copy it to Paladin, with possibly none as an option judging by a minority on all the Paladin/deity threads Ive seen here. That would please everybody on that subject.

Why? The old ruleset already exists and has been implemented for 3 years. This isn't asking them to make an entirely new ruleset that doesn't even exist, it's just asking for a toggle to use what we've had for 3 years. I don't comprehend wanting to force people to change to a new system they don't like when it would take almost zero effort to add an option to use the old system.

A moment....does this mean that humans lose 3 attribute points? If so, I take my statement back. That's definitely not minor.

@ToLazy4Name
The thing is, it isn't "almost no effort". Make a toggle and you must consider all interactions between this rule and all other rules twice. It's hard to keep the effects of complexit in check in a game like this in the first place.