Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Racial Inbalance cause by rules change

Fair point. There are some benefits, sure. I myself like wacky shit like warlocks with glaives and such. Yet whether it's a legit rework will be decided by pure vs multiclassing builds on release. If there are defining features granted by reaching the 12th level in a class, then sure. If there are none, then 1 level in multiclassing gives the exact same benefit as a race, which is kinda meh.

I wonder ...
How would you define inballance if not like this.

It's unbalanced. It was unbalanced before, and it is unbalanced now. The difference is that before the unbalance were about the basic checks you had to do with your main stat, and now the unbalance regards which proficiencies you have.

Searching for balance in an RPG is utopic, you will always have tiers. What you can aim for is to make the game fun and remove traps. It all fall on what you like and the kind of stories you want to tell.

As Sansang said, I'm not saying it isn't currently unbalanced. I'm saying it has always been unbalanced. It's just in the old system humans (Variant Human, at least) and half-elves were at the top of the power hierarchy and now humans are at the bottom and half-elves are somewhere just below elves but still pretty solid. Upper mid-tier maybe.

At least there used to be some explanations in the lore about those unbalances.

Now we still have inbalances and they are also conflicting with the lore. Shield and light armor wearing Human Wizards (they should update the artwork of Gale with light armor and shield haha) and Medium armor wearing Dwarves were never a thing you would very rarely see in FR media.

100% agree.

+1 I agree.

I always assumed they didn't add variant human because it was just too strong compared to the other races (I'm glad they didn't add it for that reason). It seemed like they wanted things to be balanced because of that choice. All we're saying is that they can do a better job of balancing with this new system than what they have shown currently.

Absolutely agree!

What do human fighters get for compensation for their nerf?

Additional proficiency? Useless to a class that already gets them.

Carry weight? Not that useful to a class that already focuses on strength.

Humans are penalized for picking martial classes, which is the exact thing that they "were" trying to fix so that other races like gnomes are no longer punished for picking a fighter type class.

They might as well just change the other races to whatever they want to balance it.

I agree but just to be fair:

The 5e min-maxers believe that polearm master is the strongest class in the game - given that the game has many references to the hells I'm guessing the devs are going to put in a really strong trident in the late game and that trident will be a glaive in the code. There are some wacky things druids can do with a glaive and the shillelagh spell.

But, you are right: humans, half-elves and dwarves retain all their debuffs but have had their advantages taken away. And the setting is worse off because of it. Instead of some elves bonded with arcane magic while others elves are wise in the ways of nature we get "elves are just elves", which is to say that elves are just pointy-eared humans.

It's a bad move

Quick RP fix : Just don't use the general +2 +1...? Dump them into your lowest attributes.

Armor Proficency Medium is a very powerful feature for a caster no question. But Armor and weapon proficencys do nothing for fighters barbarians rangers and paladins as they already have these proficencys. Previously Shield Dwarves traded off stat bonuses for the armor profiency which balanced them as casters and melee you got great proficencys for a caster but great stats for melee but you lost out stats as a caster.

In my opinion Shield Dwarves, Humans and Half Elves were better balanced against the other races keeping there stats the way they were. I would not even give the choice for shield dwarves and half elves as they were balanced the way they were against the changes for tashas give something to get something. The armor proficencys make them strong casters but having better stats for melee str class builds.

On the other Side of the spectrum humans vs varient humans comes into question +6 all stats is strong if you want to multiclass and ok for classes that want 3 different stats higher or 4 but not as good as some other racial features so its ok it made them kind of middle of the road for a lot of classes.

Varient Human I think just sits on par while the feat is strong and creates versitile options for human to make the strength the versitility. But varient human was just versitile tashas makes the other races as good if not better than varient humans depending how you want to build. +5 ft movement dark vision resistance and proficencys and a +1 stat vs a skill and a feat of your choice. (Comparing wood elf to human as an example here).

This is what I assume too. Human will always be the most played race just because most players empathize the strongest with someone that looks like them. They don't need to also be the optimal choice for every build thanks to getting a free feat.

That said the current iteration of human is really no good, if they are indeed getting the traits we think they are.

You can see what they get from the character screen 1 skill 4 weapon proficencys and light armor. Most of that is heavily useless for a large number of classes.

Light armor not really great when you can be gith or shield dwarf and its strictly better. Skill has low value. Pole Arms proficency has really low value to the classes that might take advantage of it since the melee classes that would use it and get a benefit already have the weapon skills to not need it. Paladin / Monk / Fighter / Ranger / Barbarian - dont have the skill or really there is almost no value in having a proficency in them as a weapon. Wizard / Sorcerer are generally not in melee. Clerics may take advantage of it. Druid is going to be shape shifted or casting. This Leaves Warlock and Bard. The bard does not get weapon skills that benefit from using a pole arm so its more a flavor choice. Warlock may use it but again I dont see them being a heavy melee build especially with a lack of armor proficencys unless you want to give up your ASI's.

Yes a monk can use the proficency but they only get the dex to damage on MONK weapons. So zero use. Even if they changed that your giving up ASI's you need on a monk to take advantage of it.

Monks Paladins and Bards frequently want there ASI bonus.

Variant Human was a bit of a crutch for min-maxers, but it wasn't overly powerful, it just let you frontload a bit more than other races. No reason not to have this available IMO.

Half-elves on other other hand got HALF of what elves had for the trade off of an extra attribute point and a couple skills. Larian already took the skills away and forced the SCAG alternate rules on them. This update just bonked them on the head and drove them underground. They don't even get either skill proficiency from their half races, and skills were one of their stand out traits before.

Larian, "Let's give Half-elves the worst parts of their parents and THEN take away their bonuses and throw them out the window."

I just can't with this nerf.