Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Lore Bard Concern

Hi, I was just wondering if for Lore Bard, it was intentional to have the 3 new skills learned at level 3 to be pre-selected / locked, or if it was a bug, seeing as I read somewhere that at some point during early access it was freely selectable? (also, in the core rulebook it allows you to choose whichever 3 you want)

Thank you in advance for your time, and thank you so much for putting out such an incredible game! Most fun I've had in years!

Yeah it's intentional. It's a small nerf but they get an unbelievably huge buff to cutting words later so this is more than compensated.

Nerf? How? It's not like "This thing does 1d10 damage, and now it does 1d6 damage" or "radius of 25 ft decreased to 15 ft". This is just giving you less choice, in a game centered around creative choice. And the bard class especially is about skill versatility (especially the college of lore).

In my case, I was already proficient in Arcana. So certainly, if this was by design, they'd give you expertise instead. Nope. It was just wasted. And I read some people who really wanted to go Lore had some of those proficiencies via either race or background, so they couldn't even fix it via respec (which was 100 gold I'd have rather spent on magical gear, rather than having to undo Arcana via my original character creation selection). They'd just have to eat wasted skill bonuses, which is a huge part of the appeal of Lore bard. It lead to them playing other subclasses.

I also am not playing (roleplaying, if you will) an intimidating character. She is small and cute.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RemtsIOewcEWVFw_9CC4IKvlTzTHBSil/view?usp=sharing
She has expertise in persuasion and proficiency in deception. That's all she needs, socially. Having her waste a proficiency in Intimidation is so disheartening. I'd much rather have her have History or Nature, which matches more with the "Lore" theme.

It's supremely stupid and needs to be changed asap, we all agree. Larian is just dragging their feet with an obvious improvement which also happens to be the rules. Everyone expected this to be fixed by release.

Lol yeah, charlatan & lore bard, wasn't expecting the lock on this.

A nerf is anything that lessens the effectiveness of a character. I do agree with the frustration, my character was a sage so she never got the third proficiency either and it was a real "feels bad" moment. But Lore Bards are still the one of the best class and subclass combinations in the game.

I found this mod, seems to have a fix for it:
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/998

Just got an email from Larian, saying this:

"Thank you for notifying us about this problem.

This a known issue and our team is already investigating it, we aim to fix it in an upcoming update."

That is good to know, maybe it will be addressed in the announced patch.

Today's update addresses it:

"College of Lore bards can now pick which additional skill proficiency they receive. Bards that are already of the College of Lore need to respec to get this choice."

And it works, I just respecced my bard