Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Feat or Ability Score Increase?

Just curious, do y’all take the additional feat or ability score increase? I tend to take the ASI, but feel like I missed out on some role play options…. I tend to be OCD about ability scores. Never played 5e and it seems to be NOT so reliant on these scores. But as a fighter with so much riding on his STR score, taking that feat at lvl 4 vs 18str is hard hard choice.

Some feats are extremely worth it. Many of those feats are not yet implemented.

Sharpshooter for instance is a huge boon for archer damage, especially for classes that lack abilities that add bonus damage die to their attacks such as Bards. I've been baffled that Great Weapon Master made it in, but not Sharpshooter.

I found few of the feats on offer to be of any use. And with limited leveling, I do prefer to bring two of my attributes to a round level, rather then take a feat of questionable value. On occasion I would take a feat which would an +1 to a core stat, with a small bonus.

Overall, after playing BG3 and Solasta, I am not terribly impressed by 5e leveling. It seems that DnD returned to old good times where non spellcasters seem rather plain. At least, reactions in Solasta add some unique functionality to melee classes (from what I understand some of them were homebrew as well, though).

It's a really tough sell for any feat when an ASI gives you +1 attack, damage, skills, and perhaps +1 AC and initiative or +1 memorized spell and +1 DC.

And yeah, feats are much more interesting in building your character in a certain unique way.

This is something 5e got wrong imo. 3e was much more fun with separate ASI and feat picks, and just generally more feat picks. I hope 6e will correct this and separate feats from ASI's again and allow more feat picks. And perhaps that BG3 can house rule some more feat picks in.

Dual wield without the wide-expanse of magical weapon options and a GM to work with you feels wasted. There's usually better things I want to do with a Bonus Action than to make an attack... but it's still useful to some degree, I suppose.

Feats usually. Gives characters more personality and allow them to do fun things they normally cant.

Mechanically, unless you need a feat for something in particular it´s useful to have better stats, which usually meant +1 to some saves, +1 to your spells/attack and +1 to skills and maybe ac or initiative.
But, let´s be honest, that´s not something that stirs your blood the same as wielding two broadswords, casting eldritch blast for non-warlocks or stomp enemies with a mighty attack.

Usually ability score.

It's just too hard to pass up that boost to Might, or Balance, or Endurance when those are prime, or Cunning, or Will or Grace. Hard to beat over the long haul. I like it in the D&D knockoffs where they're forced to use synonyms for the main attributes hehe.

I also liked it in the older 3e renditions where the feats were separated out from the abilities rather than an either or. I guess it just depends how many feats are ultimately on offer, but with only 6 attributes and especially if you're locked into those at char creation, or with just a few 1up mushrooms after you start, that always seems to be where I'm running.

But yeah, it's not as fun for characterization as the feats are. 5e is kind of wonky like that.

I really don't know why Baldur's Gate 3 ignored most of the preferable feats so far. I don't know if it's because we have a boon of magic items, or what.

I've always gone for ASI in each playthrough. Especially since we start with point-buy.

In my head, it felt like each new edition of the game has taken more of what used to be Class in 1e and 2e parsed those out into things that aren't quite class but their own separate things. So in 3e and 3.5 skills and feats are separated out, and race is basically ditched, all chars become multiclass essentially. In 4e this was even more pronounced where class became like a collection of mix and match powers. In 5e they started running back in the other direction again, so we have backgrounds that blurr into class skills, and classes that have these branch paths with a specialization. I don't know really where they run with it in 6e, but there always seems to be this tension between class archetype and wanting the grab bag. I think 3e had a fun build your own thing out of legos kind of vibe for characterization, but the novelty there kind of wares thin over time, just since it was around for so long.

Not to bring too much into it, but just that idea there of feeling pressure to juice an attribute because the class association is so strong. Like Str or Con if playing a brawler, Dex if a thief, Wisdom as a priest or whatever. It's hard to overcome the push of many successive editions still saying that attributes are core to class and having a high prime is key just for the mechanics to work. Like nobody wants to play a fighter who can't really fight, so they have to dangle some pretty compelling feats in front of you to pass on pushing up the prime attributes.

I tried a dual long sword wielding Strength Ranger for fun who picked Dual Wielder at level 4 instead of raising Str from 16 to 18.

And it sucks monkey balls.

Partly because a long sword is only +1 damage over a short sword, but the real killer is the off-hand attack eating up your Bonus Action. The off-hand attack is always competing against the silly bonus Shove or drinking a potion or something. It's just not worth it. Even using more cheese from Larian and dipping your dual weapons in a torch all the time only brings dual short swords closer in damage.

18 Strength with any weapon or shield combination or 18 Dex with dual short swords is just so much better.

All the feats in BG3 are really lackluster and useless compared to a +2 ASI. And it doesn't redeem the design that certain feats like Polearm Master are overpowered (and that particular one laughs really hard at any dual wielding attempts adding extra AoO's and reach in addition to a similar off-hand attack). By design, the feats should be separated from ASI's and more on the weaker side but you should get more of them.

And they should redesign how Dual Wielding works. Mixing basic attacks with bonus actions was a mistake. Rather give more basic attacks with a penalty when you have more weapons.

The main problem with 3.X was that there were some options that were deliberately designed to be better or worse than others with this concept of "System Mastery". So some concepts were put in as deliberate traps. And it got tiring after a while. 4e I'm given to understand was a lot better and more stable after a bit and it continued on a lot after I gave up on it, and it introduced a lot of cool things, but it didn't really have the same flavor as D&D.

There's a clear progression from Non-Weapon Proficiencies to Skills in 3rd Ed, deciding that 3rd ed skill points were a bit much and moving to the way skills work in 4th ed which got carried over to 5th ed.

1st ed had a lot of variant classes in Dragon magazine et al and then became kits in late 2nd ed. 3rd ed had the idea that of building up into Prestige Classes rather than starting with a Kit, an idea that continued a bit into 4th ed which had built in prestige and epic destinies.

5th Ed is sort of mixture of 2nd ed kits and 4th ed prestige classes being built into the class.

Multiclassing/Dual-Classing in 1st and 2nd ed was a bit bleh and weirdly dismissive of folkloric or fictional characters that were often a bit all over the place.

3rd edition multiclassing was an excellent idea but not well implemented and you could mess yourself up badly if you weren't careful

4th ed multiclassing I didn't really like, it felt a bit "well, this was in prior editions"

5th ed multiclassing has the basic structure of 3rd ed multiclassing but makes it a lot harder to accidental handicap yourself due to the things that advance based on character level (cantrips, spell save DC, skills, attack bonuses, etc) rather than class level. However, the subclasses mean you don't really need to multiclass very often, so it's sort of a "if your story goes this way, it's an option, and it won't really hurt you overall". I currently have exactly one multiclass character and that's a bard who read the Book of Exalted Deeds and became a celestial warlock as a result. The story just felt right.

1st and 2nd ed level limits are things am very glad to see go and I'm happy to see Ability Score bonuses being less associated with species though I'd prefer them to have been associated more explicitly with backgrounds and classes rather than just being vaguely "pick a +2 and +1" but you can do that they they've done Tasha's.

I initially loved 3rd ed races, but got a bit less enamored as it became clear how inconsistent they were in capability. 4th ed was interesting and I was happy they decided to make humans something more than just "the do-anything race".

The way 5th ed is going for race packages being physical capabilities and culture/upbringing related stuff being more flexible is neat. I do think some races are designed a bit too close to MM stat blocks (Yuan-ti for example has abilities that are both boring and a bit much for a race package despite being a race that has some lore I really want to play... there's some stuff in yuan-ti that neurodivergent me relates to a lot and defector from decadence is fun.) I like the idea of giving players the option to get a lot of flavor out of myths (demi-gods and half-demons appear a lot in myth and folklore and we have tieflings, genasi, and aasimar for that) but I'd like race stats to be more mild... for really powerful species I look to classes... for example sorcerer is basically "species/mutation as a class". And it would be nice to see a for more things like that for other classes (granted some of the psionic subclasses are good for this too... and I've fluffed a four-element monk as a progressive mutation rather than a product of training.)

Feats....

I would like to see more... 5th I think REALLY underestimated how much personality Feats can give a character and how much the process of leveling up a character can help get into the mind-frame of your character's developing personality and history. I know a lot of the fun of leveling a character is gone for me when it becomes a "adjust numbers" rubber stamp and it's a bit harder for me to visualize a character's story arc as well when a level-up lacks unique personality.

Looks like what I am seeing is the overall feeling about taking a feat or an ASI is what I am experiencing. I guess this is why I am leaning towards wanting a dice roll system like in the original BG series. That way I can get the attributes I want, without cheesing it to much, AND be able to take the feats that makes my characters non cookie cutter.

The best way I can say it the attributes are the outlines and pencil strokes in the art of our characters, but the feats are the color strokes and depth of our characters.

This was brought up on the Ability Score thread and me pointing out that that's how my brother does things.

In my case, I also made Feats into story rewards (which is an option mentioned the DMG, actually) so like you can have a training arc where instead of a magic item you learn how to be a Sharpshooter. I often tied them to Faction rewards/reputation.

My brother also introduced lesser Tomes and Manuals (like the ones that increase your Ability Scores) that teach skill, tool, weapon, and armor proficiencies or Feats.

Depends on what character im playing generally but I LOVE feats. Some also give you a ASI (although generally only 1 point) so if you have an odd numbered AS you can round it up with a feat.

That way you get both a stat increase and a Feat

If BG3 implements a dice roll on stats like Solasta (so keep rolling until you get that Godly roll) I would pick Feats to make my Draconic Sorcerer insane. Some feats are very powerful and if your character has 19 in one stat it would probably be great to pick up a feat, but stat increases are always recommend since you usually have one great stat, two mediocre stats, and the rest low. This can usually be compensated by equipment, but not too much great equipment in the EA except Headband Of Intellect.