Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Standard array only has hurt class diversity

I think the Headband of Intellect (INT set to 17) was the wrong call for an early stat boosting item.

The item we actually needed was the Ring of Human influence from BG2, which set Charname's charisma to 18.

On BG3 Explorer mode it could grant Tides of Chaos as a passive.

It'd make holding the party together seem more believable, and if for some reason you don't want that buff, you can sell it for the pocket change, but it should come very early I think. Allowing CHA the boost then PCs can creep up in the other 5 attributes. CHA based classes will find it less appealing cause they'll still want their 20 for spellcasting purposes probably, and just because it feels good to push 20. But for everyone else, allows CHA as a dump stat. This helps to stabilize the merchant economy so you don't have to switch faces. Also we have this narrative conceit of the tadpole, so you could just as easily call it the Ring of Illithid Influence if you wanted to make it somehow more Spelljammer-y than we already are here lol, and just use whatever stat boost makes sense, maybe 16 or 17? But anyhow that's the stat pumping item to drop early on I think.

The Tome of Charisma was also the easiest to acquire in BG1, and so many Classes required a high CHA that you just sorta got used to seeing 17s. 8 is pretty punishing. A lot of story content is gated behind rolls, and some of this feels unnecessary. It was suggested elsewhere the Explorer/Balanced/Tactician game modes might use different point buys to differentiate them. For my part I would want a higher difficulty in tactical combat, but a more forgiving difficulty level for story rolls (mainly because the latter just means reload/save if that's the story path I want to pursue.) They could solve all this with a Ring, or better yet an item that doesn't require an equipment slot. We just keep it in our pocket.