Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion YOU DON'T NEED HIGH CHARISMA!

Sorry I yelled, but there seems to be so much misinformation and/or uninformed people in the forums that someone needed to say it.

BG3 is built to allow you to play the character you want, warts and all. You don't need a high charisma, nor every charisma based skill to enjoy this game. There are dozens more dialog checks for races, classes, backgrounds, and other skills than there are for the four charisma based ones. Yes, you will see the charisma ones more often in any particular playthrough, but I would very much suggest you use the Charisma choices only if you don't have an interesting race/class/background choice available.

And besides that, Larian built BG3 to purposefully entertain you regardless of success or failure in speech checks. So please, please stop telling people they need a high charisma score.

For Clarity: I'm not saying to discourage people from having a high charisma if they do want to play that type of character, because a chatterbox bard or sorcerer (or barbarian) can be tons of fun.

Yes!

My DUrge run is going to be a well intentioned Shadow Monk / Assassin, trying his best to keep it all together despite a lot of new stress and both a proclivity and natural talent for murder. He will have 8 Cha. I expect hilarity to ensue. Can’t wait!

SO YOU'RE SAYING THAT I CAN BE A GLOOM STALKER AND NOT WORRY ABOUT MISSING OUT ON A BUNCH OF CONTENT FOR MY FIRST PLAYTHROUGH?

Unless you plan to never succeed at a charisma roll, yes you do. The game is absolutely filled with charisma checks. You can argue all you want about the potential merit of outcomes from failing rolls, I do NOT give a flip, I do NOT plan on failing every roll...in face I plan to give myself the best chance at succeeding. Really unhelpful topic. Charisma is *the* singe most helpful stat outside of combat and if you pick your class right is can also be the single most helpful combat stat for you as well.

I think I'll stick with the F5/F9 stat instead

Usefulness of that is VERY limited. You can try to reload all day if you don't have charisma or at least some proficiencies in speech skills, you'll take a very long time to pass something like a 20 check, and if the game has checks of 25(as D&D does), even if rare, those could be outright impossible for you to pass. But the high checks have the strongest potential outcomes...passing those might be necessary to avoiding some strong consequences or talking Lae'zel into consuming a couple extra tadpoles instead of stabbing you and increasing the efficiency of your party.

Swen keeps telling us to just trust the dice and that, no matter whether we pass or fail checks, there'll be an interesting story. And even that failing can sometimes be better than passing. I'm going to take him at his word, and if I fail checks then I'll just find some way of dealing with the consequences.

Of course, I expect I'm probably going to play the game multiple times, so if I fail a check one time then chances are I'll see what happens if I pass another time. So just going with the flow is also my way of helping make my playthroughs feel meaningfully different.

I WANT to trust him, but I also have seen straight up "oh you don't get this roll, well now you just have to fight a crazy hard fight" or "roll 4 times in a row to get SH to share a single thing with you. If you fail a single roll she tells you to eff off."

How that work with romance though? What if I fail a dice roll for my Smoochie....

I shall go Fatality LOL

Tav: *attempt to kiss his kips*

Game: "roll for athletics"

Tav: "oh come on!"

You know, I understand the dice system for combat. But for Dialogues and romance? Nobody roll dice to get a Kiss.

Love is a battlefield. You always roll the dice.

Nah man, I ain’t subbing for Minthara. I need that high charisma.

Lol Nope. I need my Smoochie :P

I mean, just from early access sometimes failing a roll results in a more entertaining development. While I enjoy playing a high CHA sorcerer with lots of social tricks to completely dominate anyone I speak to like I'm frickin' Sauron, it's not like playing someone who fumbles his words and keeps ending up in a hard scrap where things are resolved by the blade rather than the word is any less fun.

As an example. My socially inept druid had to fight the ogres, which turned out to be a very intense battle that I enjoyed a lot and rewarded me with the 17 INT headpiece item. My sneaky sorcerer convinced them to fight for him for free and got a cool ogre-summoning item that he's been abusing by repeatedly tricking them into fighting for him again. Both experiences were fun and felt rewarding.


The only roll to kiss in EA was actually an Insight check, which is Wisdom based.

Personally, I'm fine with some crazy hard fights if I fail to talk my way out of trouble (well, unless I get TPK-ed and then it would be a reload!). And indeed being told to eff off if I keep pestering someone to share something they're not ready to, if I'm not quite charming enough about it! Playing and replaying early access has made me a convert to just going with what happens and that becoming the story of my character, with all its ups and downs, so I do believe Swen that we can feel (relatively) safe in surrendering control to the dice.

Of course, I have yet to prove that will stick once a whole playthrough is at stake, but I hope so. I've found it engages my imagination more, thinking about how the party and my character will feel about and react to failing something they really wanted to succeed on. Something like, for instance, failing to save Arabella, could potentially resonate through the whole game for some characters. I actually think I'd find passing all the checks boring, now.

But of course, there's no right and wrong way to play. But with all the zeal of the converted, I'd just recommend people give rolling with the dice a try to see how it feels once they get past the initial discomfort!

I didn't play the EA, the only thing I saw was the original Trailer lol I'm going in Blind!

Well it depends on the romance really. Take Minthara for example, she attempts to assert a dominating role in the relationship...except she's kind of evil aligned(and probably so are you if you get to that point with her), but it's probably not smart to let that continue unless you plan to get stabbed or sacrificed later...at which point your only way out might end up being to fight your way out or breaking the relationship. It's best to approach that relationship with caution...to assert control you need to pass a roll of 20(!) in persuasion. Stuff like that might end up being necessary to save that relationship. Lae'zel is has much the same attitude and the Githyanki are evil aligned too. I very much suspect that high charisma will be key to keeping members of your party from leaving or attacking you in some instances or pushing them to change their views and be more agreeable...not to mention that you can use charisma skills to avoid some crazy combat encounters as we saw in the PFH along with who knows what else. Also gotta break Minthara out of jail and I'd prefer to do that without causing a ruckus and the entire building coming down on our heads.

I'm going for the Tomato!

This..

Thank you! not sure if you saw my post earlier but I am a BG/D&D noob and had concerns about my party comp

okay fine, I'll try

If you're worried about your party composition you probably need charisma because you will have good aligned and evil aligned origin companions and every word you say will offend someone. Some may try to kill you or leave you and you probably need charisma to stop that from happening and potentially forcing you to alter your party composition. Some romance partners can also try to sacrifice or stab you.

Any idea how much charisma to pass most check???

Technically you dont need a high score in any of the skills, you could play with 8 in each stat if the game lets you not allocate all your points.

Having said that, I get the feeling someone will mod in the cape from the the first two games that sets your CHA to 18.

You can think of every +1 as +5% chance of success. So if you need to roll a 20 and you have bonuses amounting to 0 then your chance of success is 5%. If you are playing a charisma driven class and you have 18 in charisma then that's +3 raising the chance of success to 20%, proficiency at the start of the game is +2, raises to +3 at level 5, and +4 at level 9 so that's another +10-20% right there. Then there are cantrips like guidance that give you +1d4. So really the more the better.

alright, we get it, you're simping for Lae and Minthara, not everyone is trying to get in on that action.

Those were just examples, really. I like Minthara but don't really plan to romance Lae'zel. But even romances aside having high charisma modifiers will probably save you A LOT of trouble just with your party members regardless of who you bring and allows you to exert a lot more influence in A LOT dialogues with NPCs and could even alter the course of the story.

There is a satisfying liberation when you decide you don’t need everything to go right to have the “perfect” play through.

I've played the same scenes with high and low Charisma characters and had fun with both approaches. It really depends on what you want to play.

No matter how much you stack Charisma there's always going to be an appreciable chance of failure. To take chance (almost) entirely off the table you'll want to invest in spells that improve your chances by granting bonuses and things like advantage.

Honestly, the best thing to do is just make sure one of your companions has Guidance. Shadowheart already comes with it. It's an easy +1 to +4 to a check, depending on the roll. Which can be huge. Look for spells like Enhance Ability too. Friends and other Charm effects can come in clutch, but it has a drawback that once it wears off the NPC will get mad, so only use those on NPCs you never intend to meet again. These spells can be on your companions too, you don't need to build around them. They just need to be nearby to cast them on you.

If you have a decent spread of magical bonuses and proficiency in Persuasion you should be fine even with Charisma as low as 10. Just pick and choose where to use your social spells, since you might not have the slots for it on every check.

I agree and well..im playing the game the way I want with the MC and companions I want..at least for the first playthrough. Based on what I've seen and heard, this is a game I will play multiple times for many years.

It was fun because the stakes weren't that high or that serious...yet. But stuff gets VERY real later where the difference between success and failure in a roll can be rather drastic.

I'm pretty sure my Warlock needs a lot of Charisma...

And not only for spells.
Even in the EA were a couple of extremely important roll checks with a difficulty of 20.
I refuse to fail in my attempt to sexually dominate Minthara during her romance !!!

We have no idea how difficult the rolls can be in the second or third act.

BG3 doesn't have a system that quite works like that. Skill checks are always a set difficulty number, generally between 5 and 20. Then you get to roll a die that can be 1-20 and see if you can tie the difficulty number.

Then you get to add different kinds of bonuses to you die result if you need it. Charisma adds 1 point to your roll for every 2 points above base ten. So you can get up to +3 from charisma at the start of the game.

Next you can add in 2 points if you are proficient in the type of skill you are using (persuasion, deception, etc). Some characters can even get expertise on a skill wich lets them get double points so +4 starting off.

Then you can add in some spell and special ability bonuses. There are two basic types:

Things that let you add extra points with dice: like the guidance spell (+1 to 4) and bardic inspiration(+1 to 6).

Things that give you advantage (which lets you roll twice and if either die ties the difficulty you win): Spells like Friends, Thaumaturgy, and Enhance Ability. The general philosphy is that advantage averages out to about +4 on your rolls

Your party can also get Inspiration points from doing things that are important to them, like Gale reading an important book. Using an inspiration point lets you try the whole roll again if you fail.

Plus if you ever roll a 1 you fail automatically and a 20 automatically succedes.

So the math isn't more than just "Is my charisma high enough?"


Note: the math above is based on first through third levels. As you level up, some bonuses get bigger.

We haven't yet seen any rolls that require higher than 20 in the public footage of BG3 so far and don't think any were present in early access but they do exist in D&D and generally speaking if a success requires higher than 20 you still have to meet that value even if you roll a nat 20, so rolling nat 20 and failing a roll is possible in D&D when attempting particularly difficult challenges. I wonder if Larian have implemented this in the game...maybe they didn't but it could be something that comes up later in the game where you might start finding roll difficulties of 25 or even 30 if they want to be like "ok, you can try, good luck with that though".

They have the house rule that nat 1s and 20s work on skill checks, too.

I actually failed an illithid wisdom check 0 one time because I rolled a 1.

Yeah, nat1 is auto-failure no matter what, that's the same as in D&D, not a house rule...generally if a task is deemed to need a roll in the first place a nat1 will fail it. A difficulty of 0 generally means it's super easy but will still require a dice roll if the DM still wants you to have a chance to fail it as it might be a minimal challenge but still a challenge. But I don't know about nat20s...if that is consistent with D&D then in the event that difficulties higher than 20 exist in the game(which we don't know if they do), a nat20 may not succeed...depending on what bonuses you have.

I'd argue that anyone using karmic dice will often find the rolls easier than not.

did they ever clarify the weirdness with those? I read a post that said they were basically always a disadvantage, but Larian said that was a bug and that it should essentially be an advantage?

From what I heard there was a bug in the early days of early access that could cause dice rolls to repeat so you could have like five nat1s in a row and the sorts but that was fixed a long time ago so I don't know why it's still there...but it might not be in the full game. I don't know why they'd put it in the full game unless they want to give the player options for weighted dice that are more likely to higher or more likely to roll lower, etc. as a means of altering difficulty...but they should clarify their purpose if they exist in the final game.

I can't tell if you messing with me on purpose...

RAW 5e nat 1 and 20 are only for combat and death saves. Everything else is just a straight roll with bonuses.

If your DMs played it like that then that's house rules. Nat1 is guarateed failure for everything, no exceptions.

In 5e RAW, nat 20s and 1s only matter for attack rolls. https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#Rolling1or20

Natural 20s and 1s mean nothing for Saving Throws and Ability Checks. There's no specific text about Nat 20s & 1s here https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/using-ability-scores#AbilityChecks

If you want to try to rule lawyer your way out of critical failure depends on the DM but really, no. Nat1 is and always has been a critical failure.

I agree with you. Trust has to be earned and Swen hasn't earned it as far as I'm concerned. There's always an alternate way of doing what you need to do but that's not the same as failure being fun or entertaining in itself. It just means there's a backup plan for screw ups.

so said the human in a flat non joyful non influential tone of neutrality

So I'm playing on the hardest difficulty, if you plan to never use speech skills and fight through everything you will end up needing to long rest after every couple of fights.

You can initiate conversations with party members but I don't thing you get approvals with your main character that way.

Also I mentioned how I didn't like Shadowheart's background, well it looks like that was already planned to change along with all the companion's stats so they all have 17 in their main stat, but at the same time they all have too many odd numbers so I still had to respec them all.

I changed Shadowheart to a wild domain cleric, the spells you get are super nice and wisdom bonus to staff attacks. The only use I ever got out of Trickery domain was buffing stealth on Astarion which is completely minor and niche, charm and disguise self on shadowheart and completely useless.

My poison sorc gets off to a rough start, the twinned ray of sickness and chromatic orbs miss so much, will stick to it and see if it ever improves.

I can confird this. Use Charisma as your class stat, but as a Fighter or whatever, 12 Cha is more than enough to in a lot of rolls.

Just not the most difficult ones. There are plenty other routes.

High elf can grab friends as their cantrip. That and guidance from Shadowheart should be enough to get you through most interactions with charisma as dump stat.

Friends isn't really any good anymore as it turns targets hostile after it ends.

Yeah, I was planning on relying on Enchantment spells for my Wizard playthrough, then I realised I could not modify the memories of others to forget that I used enchantment magic on them. For some bizarre reason people don't like to be mind controlled. I know it's an odd habit, but NPC's are bizarre creatures.

I'm playing tactician mode and I have yet to see anybody turn hostile after using friends on them. Not saying that it will never happen, but so far not once. I've used it plenty.

And, of course, if you are trusting the dice ( as per Swen's comment ), then you should never add bonuses to the roll, and never use inspiration, because both imply you are not trusting the dice.

I do plan to have different playthroughs, with a variety of characters, but my first game will be aiming to get my way as much as possible, with persuasion and concilliation my primary tools. I can't imagine a "dark urge" playthrough being at all similar, and would not choose a charisma character there.

Huh I haven�t noticed because whenever I use friends, I run the fuck away and wait until the next day before going back.

That has been my strategy as well. You can see a red aura surrounding their feet while its on. Just don't talk to them for a while and it seems fine.

So far my 8 Charisma druid has succeeded on something like 80% of his Charisma checks through a combination of Guidance, Enhance Skill, and careful use of Inspiration Points. The times he did fail didn't end in brutal combat or life-and-death situations because I've been selective about where and to what end I use the charisma options to try and get a better outcome. I'm about 30 hours in right now.

Guidance is honestly so good. It automatically compensates for your deficit -1 no matter what and can be the equivalent of a +3 in CHA if you get a max roll.

Yeah if you're selective to try to avoid the tough rolls and with some bonuses you can kind of make do. But there are critical instances in the game where charisma and/or wisdom are absolutely critical. Depending on your choices there ARE forced 25 or 30 DC rolls that you must pass or lose a companion on the spot where the only alternative is giving in to their demands. So low charisma will force to either go down certain paths or lose companions.

Yeah, if you are determined to do a completionist run where you miss nothing ( or, at least, as little as possible ) then you will probably need to be very persuasive and intuitive. Or do a lot of save scumming and selective respeccing, as needed

On the first run, I am trying to keep everyone in tune for as long as possible, but I fully expect to lose some of the party, and I already know which ones I will let go. Trying to keep everyone in the party for the whole game is not necessarily a good thing.

Friends cantrip finally got me in a fight. I used it to talk Brem (in Zhentarim hideout) into letting the artist go for free. Then I spent a minute in conversation with the artist, which meant that I was standing next to Brem when friends faded. Even with friends it was a bit of a lucky roll (DC 20) so I'll probably just pay on reload.

I'm running 12 Cha and it's fine thoughout. Sometimes I 'win', sometimes I don't. BUt that's all good. There is plenty of bonuses to go around. Shadowheart's Guidance worked for the longest time. Shadowheart is no longer with us. So I gave Gale a single level in Bard for the inspiration. That first tadpole thing you get helps, too.

i'm about to spend 100g for respec. serious question. i can't decide to go for CON or CHA. 16 CON better than CHA for Paladin? What spells/abilities that uses Paladin CHA?

Classes that need more than 3 stats are quite tough to build, but you can have 18 / 16 / 16 / 8 / 8 /8 at level 4 if you choose to min max, the issue is deciding which stat you want the 18 in.

Personally I've currently dumped my Con score to 12 on my sorcerer after realizing draconics get extra HP anyway in favour of 18 Cha, 16 Dex, 14 Wis for perception and insight.

Having said that 14 CON is perfectly fine on all classes, 16 is for classes that wear armour that only get a maximum of +2 AC from dex bonus and don't cast spells, but even for EK and Arcane Trickster you can still dump casting stats and just use no save spells and buffs (magic missile, shield, sleep and colour spray are all nice options for them at level 1, then mirror image and blur at level 2).

For a paladin I strongly recommend dumping DEX to 10 and using heavy armour with no DEX bonus. Str, Con and Cha should be the focus stats, I'm not sure if they need Wis for spell DCs, but in that case don't use DC spells, focus paladins for heals and buffs. 18 str / 14-16 con, 16 cha would be my choice, with the con choice determined by if you want any points in wisdom.

Also On Laezel I use 18 str / 14 dex / 16 con / 8 int / 10-12 wis? (cant remember), 8 cha, because the wisdom helps with her racial ability set to Wisdom proficiencies. If I find a decent set of heavy armour thats better than medium with +2 dex bonus, I'll dump her dex later because I don't use ranged weapon on her, I make her a polearm focused build with EK and returning throws on any weapon. When I tried to throw a greatsword it only does 1 damage, for full damage it needs to be a weapon with the thrown tag so spears, and then theres a polearm feat that lets you attack twice per action with spears so I'll take that at a higher level.

Karlack I use for greatsword / greataxe, 18 str, 16 dex, 16 con, 8 in each caster stat, she only gets +2 AC from dex in medium armour, but an extra +1 to hit with heavy crossbows with 16 dex.

Thanks for the insights. The reason i highlighted CON is for Concentration. Many of Paladin's buff are Concentration. I can foresee that i can't runaway from Warcaster. There's also this headband of intellect. I remember initially it was set at 18 INT which many complaints.

So i'm not sure what is it good for now? Gale already starting with 17 INT. So i foresee this headband is only good for Laezel if she going the EK path. One thing i was wondering myself was does the headband of intellect benefits from ASI? If let's say originally my INT is 10 and wearing the headband increased the INT to 17. If it doesn't increase INT by +1 and making it 18 it's just as good as a 16 INT item.

The headband is less important for anything to do with spells - its for buffing INT skills to +3.

Lae'zel as EK or Astarion as AT shouldn't be relying on INT, though you probably do want 14 int / wis / con on Astarion for investigation and perception.

For the spells if you want damage on those subclasses you just use magic missile and witch bolt, and both are rarely needed as your damage comes from weapons. The best use for the spell slots is Shield, Mirror Image and Blur, and optionally the movement buffs like longstrider, but I find those to be a waste of spellslots. If you pop a shield react before taking multiple hits you block insane amounts of damage.

As long as you're willing to live with any consequence, there's no need to have any particular skill or stat.

I did get forced into rolling against a DC21 with a -1 with the consequence of permanent character death at one point and critted though, but I'd imagine a lot of players would have hit the reload button if they failed that one, though I didn't really care that much.

I rolled a nat 20 on a DC 30 test with Lae'zel that would not have succeeded with my bonuses, but it succeeded.

Oh yes I've passed several super high DCs with a roll of a 20 even though the total wasn't enough, rolling a 20 always gives auto success to all skills it seems.

I think I used it for my Shield Dwarf Wizard in EA and it worked for spells. Does that not work anymore?

Since when do you not want CHA for a bard!?

When people say they "need" high charisma, they're still locked in that sort of... Mass Effect Trilogy mode where you "need" to pass the Charm or Intimidate dialogue to get the "good" outcome, because a lot of other games are built in a way where it genuinely feels like you lose things by not taking all those checks and gain things by making them.

Baldur's Gate 3 is far more of a "you just get alternate outcomes that shape your personal story" kind of thiiiiiiiiinng, if you get my meaning. Unless it results in your brains being scooped out like ice cream by an ailing mind flayer or something, failing a skill check really just means a different story beat than if you'd succeeded. The "you need high charisma!!!!" sentiment really is just rooted in that idea that you need the optimal outcomes to get the most out of the game. My advice is to let go of that. Enjoy the story that unfolds from a failure when it happens. You can always play again and experience the story differently.

Also, when it comes to using Charisma to gain some advantage or other, one of the things I'll mention is that you can sometimes gain an alternative advantage by... well... by not engaging in conversation at all! If a situation looks dicey, you can often sneak around it and look for some other clever way to approach something, unless it involves an enemy that no-sells stealth checks when you enter their range of view, like a certain hag. But even that might just make it harder to use stealth effectively, depending on the situation.


Yeah, the game automatically makes natural 1's "Critical Failures" and natural 20's "Critical Successes." This applies to abilities checks and also to combat. Bit annoying sometimes, actually! Wyll keeps Critical Missing his attack rolls in my game... as a dual-wielder. It's kind of impressive. Really captures that feeling of having one player at the table who just has the worst roll luck. >.>;;

We'll address this in pieces as someone who's finishing up as someone who's playing a 10 CHA ranger/rogue with a roommate who's a 5e DND veteran since day 1 and playing a high CHA/Persuasion lore bard. If anyone reads this guy's comment ignore it because it's factually incorrect.

1. Is CHA the most useful out of combat stat? Yes and no. This depends entirely on your gameplay and what you want out of the game. Keep in mind that high CHA isn't necessarily even the best conversational path and is never the only path. A high CHA just gives you a higher chance to succeed a conversational check which creates a different story path. However, if you're interested in playing something like a rogue there's a good chance you aren't even interested in that path and will take a more underhanded or investigative path toward conversations. My friend and I have both had VERY different outcomes in certain situations and interactions the other didn't, and in no cases was it game ruining or bad or any such. There are some sitautions like the end of Act2 where a check is critical but you can easily save scum the 2 or 3 HIGHLY game altering ones that exist in the ENTIRE game. Don't let people tell you you'll have a reduced experience as the result of failed checks because the people high in CHA are going to struggle on things like sleight of hand 30+ checks which exist and lead to some REALLY cool stuff and interactions. Larian put stuff in here for everybody. And even beyond that, I've entirely avoided complete fiascos due to things like my stealth which created nightmares and headaches for him. Different' stats, different playstyle, different experiences.

2. He implies you literally won't succeed any. We can assume he means figuratively but even that's laughable. With permanent guidance you'll pass the vast majority of them, especially with inspiration being abundant giving constant advantage. There will be a few impossible or near impossible ones and you'll definitely miss some, but that's the nature of tabletop and don't let it discourage you. Again, you'll get to do things those high CHA characters won't have access to (like certain rogue and ranger only interactions which CHA heavy classes don't see and boy some of them are good).

tl'dr the OP is wrong in stating this as a community blanket fight. The only part of his comment which is accurate are where he says "I do not plan on failing every [charisma] roll" and "can also be the single most useful combat stat for you as well". These 2 phrases in his diatribe are the only ones you should pay attention to as they capture tabletop RPG's in their entirety: what's best is only what's best in YOUR situation. If you're a ranger/rogue who's playing with sneakiness and cunning in mind, charisma is a terrible stat and his advice will lead you to hate your game and character and result in an INCREDIBLY unfun experience. Do what seems fun to you and if it's not quite what you expected, use the 100 gold reroll to try a different style till you find one which matches. You aren't locked in to your initial mindset ever.

Anyone who says failing can create the most interesting stories is an extremely wise tabletop player. If someone is saying you need to pass every check or succeed every check or not fail every check, odds are they're new to the genre or ignorant and close minded. Anyone who's played tabletop RPG's for a long time can tell you with complete and absolute certainty that their most hilarious adventures, stories, and experiences came from everything going horribly wrong. There's nothing particularly special about making success a near certainty and having everything go according to plan no matter how intricate you make the plan. But having there be a real chance of failure and hitting it and all of a sudden everything's going wrong and you have to salvage what's happening? Now THAT'S where DND and tabletop get truly interesting.

Why would a wizard not already have over 17 int?

Who else needs int for spells?

No, don't tell me EK / AT, they dont need Int for shield / magic missile / blur / mirror image / enlarge

I think it is interesting that they leave a lot of the Charisma classes (Paladin, Bard and Sorcerer) free for us the players to experiment with in the game. These three also fill the roles of Warrior (Paladin), Rogue (Bard with it's many skill proficiencies) and Mage (Sorcerer), the classic trio of of many character classes.

So if you didn't know, I just inadvertently found out that 14 persuasion gives -88% discount at all merchants.

20 CHA, speech skill illithid power, +1 persuasion / deception ring, and 14 in persuasion and deception, 13 intimidation.

The illithid power also doesn't need a skill proficiency point spent in the skills, I didn't put proficiency in deception and it still gets proficiency and expertise from the tadpole power.

I only just discovered this in the thread about gold and vendor prices:



But you can do the same thing on Wyll but it needs tadpoles and illithid expertise astral tadpole power, and so far I've only found exactly 19 tadpoles for all the powers on my MC so stuff under 20 HP insta dies with magic missile / eldritch blast.

At 15 persuasion, that armour costs 1500 gold, at -1 persuasion its 3100 gold.

I will remind people there's a tier 3 illithid power that gives expertise In social skills

Takes ages to get there.

Also requires you to be ugly

Is it really ugly if you get expertise at all social skills? Those black lines must turn people on a lot.

Yeah, no. I'd rather have my bard, thank you very much.

Charisma is not about just how you look, but how you present and the way people react to you. Imagine the fat, dumpy old Dwarven Bard. He is an excellent story teller, talent musician, easy going, loves a good drink or a good bar fight. he walks into a bar and people love him. He might not be pretty but his presence is enough for people to find joy, THAT is a high Charisma.

You don't need a high charisma in bg3, but it sure does help.

From an RP perspective it makes sense that you have one Charismatic person in the group, that is the glue that holds the group together. From a game mechanics perspective your right there is no need.

However from a mechanics point of view you also do not need a Rogue as anyone can pick locks and remove traps. The specialty of some of the classes and characteristics has been nerfed out of a lot of RPGs.

I've not read every post in this thread but having tried the game with a low Charisma character and a high charisma character with a persuasion proficiency the latter is much more fun. Yes you can fight the big bads but it's so much more fun And with the Orin quest -

You can always get one of the spellcasters (Bard, Cleric, Druid and Wizard should get it, maybe more) and cast Enhance Ability: Charisma to get a lot of Charisma checks.

For example my Cha 8 Half-Orc Champion got the Musical Instrument ability rather easily on first try (it also helped that Astarion was changed to Bard and I used up two Bardic Inspirations).

I just did the Orin quest with my broague and ended up using invisibility + lockpicking instead of a charisma skill.

The real question in my opinion is: what are the *worst* ability scores for *everyone * in your party to have dumped?

#1 - Con. Your casters won�t maintain concentration, your martials won�t stay up for long, you�ll spend a ton of resources on healing, which means fights will drag on, and the more they drag on the more your weaknesses will be accentuated.

#2 - Cha. You�ll pay the price for it, literally and figuratively. You�ll have fewer options for how to resolve situations, higher shop prices, and this means you didn�t bring a bard, pally, sorc or Warlock, or at least not a very good one, and those are all very good classes.

#3 - Wis. You�ll literally just miss things as this is the skill set for perception and survival, and Cleric, Druid, Ranger and Monk are all quite good as well.

#4 - Int. Having *someone* who can make those Religion checks etc is handy, Int covers a lot of skills, and you don�t get a do over in most situations in BG3, so again you just have fewer options and less lore you�ll experience.

#5 - Dex. Having high Dex is nice, but based on how Stealth works it�s not strictly necessary, and advantage matters a lot more than a flat bonus. It�s also easy to anticipate situations where Dex is needed. In general you�ll be low in initiative but that�s hardly as damning as a low Con and a well executed ambush can make up for it.

#6 - Str. �Send to Camp� makes carry capacity irrelevant, Fly and similar abilities make jump capabilities irrelevant, and there are *Lots* of other options for damage. If I had to make a party where no one had a high score in one ability, it would definitely be Str.

So yeah, terrible Cha all around wouldn�t be the *worst* thing, but it�s close. More importantly, why would you want to? Surely *someone* can afford to have a decent Cha, even if it�s their secondary or tertiary score.

Err ... I dont think you can rate Ability Scores like that. For different classes, different abilities have different values. Also even for the same class, you can build them differently, or on Clerics it depends if you build for Medium or for Heavy Armor, etc.

Charisma specifically is really only useful for Paladin, Bard, Sorcerer, and Warlock. In fact many Paladins will forgo maximizing their Charisma, since there are so many desireable feats to have, so its down to Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock. Everyone else only "needs" Charisma for the associated skills, and absolutely nothing else.

Shop prices: You can literally optimize one character for that and never use them, unless you want to go shopping. You want a Bard with Charisma 18+, Level 5+, and Persuation Expertise, and lower Difficulty to Explorer before talking to the merchant with said Bard. This gives you best possible prices even at merchant Attitude 0 (default) already. Only Rogue and Bard can get Expertise for Persuade, and only Bard has any reason to maximize their Charisma, so its kind of a nobrainer to pick Bard instead of Rogue for this. Though a Rogue with Charisma 14+, Level 9+ and Persuation Expertise would of course do just as well.

Constitution: This is where I agree, I give everyone at least Con 12. I think for Paladins I have considered Con 10 because I really like giving them high Wisdom, I avoid their concentration spells like the plague anyway, and they still get plenty of hitpoints even at Con 10.

Dexterity vs Strength: when I hand optimize my characters, I either go for Strength 16+ and Dexterity 10 for Heavy Armor users, Dexterity 14 for Medium Armor users, and of course Strenght 8 or 9 and Dexterity high for everyone else, especially Rogues and possibly also Rangers with Dexterity 17+. Either way both have a TON of advantages. Strength is needed for most (non-Finesse) melee weapons, and for thrown weapons, which includes the returning ones, and of course for the Tavern Brawler feat. It also gives jump distance, which means you can move over difficult terrain and can move much larger distances in battle. Dexterity of course gives you initiative, which is migthy important. If you beat the opponents initiative, you may even manage to kill them without them ever getting a move in the first place.

Stealth: Really in the end you want a Rogue level 10+ so you get a minimum skill roll of 10, which is then highly reliable. Other than that, stuff like Invisibility might work.

Etc etc etc one could really look at a lot of aspects. A general scoring makes no sense.

What I mean is, let�s say you have a party where everyone sucks at Dex. A Barb, Sorc, Cleric and Wizard, where none of them prioritize Dex at all. What are you missing? Stealing, some scouting (in areas where you *must* cross LOS), lock picking, that�s about it. You can have a max Dex Rogue chilling in your encampment (or if 4 human players have someone respec to that), do your scouting or stealing or lock picking, swap them back out. No worries.

What about Int or Wis? Well, if it�s a check on a statue or something, you might be able to swap someone in, but a) if they fail that�s that, no retries, and b) a larger portion of those checks are within dialogue, and often you can�t go back. So unless you know ahead of time that you�ll need the check to swap them in, you either miss a lot of them or swap them in before every conversation, which is terrible.

Charisma is like that, but far worse. Yes you can have a charisma specialist hang out in camp and pull them out for vendors, but that won�t help with your limitations in dialogue unless you�re pulling them out for *every conversation *, Cha based dialogue checks are all over the place, and if you�re doing so, it would typically be a lot better and easier if you just had them as a permanent part of your party.

Str on the other hand? If you�ve got a Sorc, Rogue, Cleric, and Dex based Monk, sure your party isn�t optimal, Tavern Brawler is great among other things. But if you did have such a party, and had your strength specialist chilling in camp, when would you pull them out? What situation would require their skills, which couldn�t be handled without them? I�d argue basically never. But while the primary strength of higher strength is more damage, you can get that from anywhere. Other than Con I guess, but Int, Wis, Dex and Cha can all drive your damage and do just fine at it. Plus there�s options aplenty for temporarily boosting your Str if you really needed to, way more than say for Wis or Cha. So if I were to build a full party with a glaring weakness across the board, I�d have that weakness be Strength long before I had it be Cha.

You forgot the other biggie: potions of hill giant strength. A bit of gold fixes your strength problem for a character or two easy. That's what would make strength a very strong candidate from a min/max standpoint.

Int would be the other strong contender. Unless you're playing a wizzy, you're most likely just going from a +1 to a -1 stat bonus at most. And it is quite likely, that at some point in chapter 1, suddenly, somehow, one character suddenly has a +3 bonus instead.

Well, if you have the equipment slot for it, anyway.

I went for it on my Bard for obvious reasons (since he's supposed to be a master at all speech checks), but otherwise I only use it temporarily.

And even on my Bard I lose this slot for other interesting equipment, including