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