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

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