Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Halsin stat distribution

Popping out of forum exile just to point out:

It's not just Halsin.

It's like Larian don't think mechanical ability scores have anything to do with how a character is portrayed in the game. Or how NPC's compare to PC's, who are supposed to be "exceptional".

The reverse is true when regular Flaming Fist and any humanoid race NPC's or minion level enemies start having 21 Strength and Dexterity, or triple 20's in their stats. Meanwhile the "heroes" are being starved with a modest 27 point buy. The fact that Larian not only show but encourage you to examine everyone's stats makes it more glaring.

At least for me it's really annoying seeing that some random low level guardsman has 21 Strength when my 9th level Half-Orc Barbarian has 18, can never even get to 21, and has to make tough decisions whether to raise Strength or pick a feat in the first place. If you maximize Strength, some random low rank NPC template will still be stronger.

As a result of giving everyone stupidly high stats, enemies also have really high Saving Throws and resist spells and abilities much better than PC's. Perhaps this is the reason? To undermine control spells a bit more?

Back to Halsin's Strength.. I respecced him into 16 Str + Saving Throw from Resilience which is the minimum he should have. But I wish I didn't have to do such things for the designers. They should do an ability score pass for every humanoid NPC and PC in the game and make sure the stats are balanced and make sense for the character.

While I have not checked it looks to me like all companions simply use the default stats for their class instead of having bespoke stats which fit to the characters.

Sadly here too Larian caved to the minmax whiners who ruin every game they touch with their inability to roleplay

Companions do use default stats. Cleric domains were also given different default stats, with Trickery getting the short end of the stick since they couldn't decide if it should be Str or Dex. So Shadowheart has 13 in both.

I can't believe the game has been in development for 6 years and they couldn't find the time to give companions appropriate stats. No one ever questioned that maybe the most beefy character in the game should have more than 10 Strength.

I think it is more about not caring about such level of cohesion. Thank you for mentioning the stuff in your first post - personally I haven’t been paying that much attention. The game is super easy on normal, so I haven’t been terribly concerned about character’s stats. I just found Halsin lack of strength to be hilarious.

This is a side effect of all characters having the same point-buy amount and to a lesser extent the removal of fixed racial attribute scores. Characters like Minsc and Halsin should have really high strength based on how they look (and based on Minsc's stats in previous games) but their classes don't really get much benefit from high STR so unless you give them an increased point-buy amount it would just be gimping them. With how you can respec any character to be any class as well, there's just not alot of reason to use most of the later non-origin companions.

If you do not like how larian has distributed Halsins attribute points then you're free to respec him. Also as primarily a Wildshape druid (Circle of the Moon) he does not need STR as each Wildshape have it's own attributes which overrides the characters attributes while shapeshifted.

That completely misses the point.

They fore you to become an octopus. The only way to be as strong as an hobo in the streets of BG.

Spoiler

Same for Minsc. Before you meet him they tell you how strong he is. In this case Larian was very close to the DnD rules but only when it comes to the PCs. They cheated with the NPC.

This is only the case after you recruit them, while they are still; npcs that you can fight, they have inflated nearly all 18 stats.

People say that the dice are loaded / game is rigged? Thatss due to the inflated stats a lot of the enemies get in combat. Your DCs will never be a match for enemy stats.

Yeah I just googled Minsc stats. Its simply laughable that

Appearance and stats should be wedded, imo. You don't find body builder looking guys who aren't strong. It's a disconnect that breaks immersion and weakens the game.

Unless Halsin is injecting some fake muscle oil faerunian version of synthol. But I don't think that's the case.

Or maybe it’s hitting the nail on the head.

“Floating racial bonuses” + “Full class/stat respec for everyone” means they have very little reasons to care about the individuality of companions.

That degree of “convenient freedom” rarely comes without downsides.

Minsc has 12 Strength?

Do they just completely not understand how stuff works in an RPG? This is baffling.

"Strong" characters have high Strength scores. It's not that difficult.