Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Companion Stats Changed - Astarion / Shadowheart thoughts?

Hi all, I've noticed with patch 3, some of the companion stats have changed.

- Astarion now has less strength, more intellect etc
Prior - Str 12, Dex 17, Con 13, Int 9, Wis 14, Chr 10
Patch 3 - Str 8, Dex 17, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 13, Chr 10

- Shadowheart has had her strength reduced to 10, and her dexterity pumped up.
Prior - Str 14, Dex 9, Con 13, Int 10, Wis 16, Chr 14
Patch 3 - Str 10, Dex 15, Con 13, Int 8, Wis 16, Chr 14

How do folk feel on the changes?

To be honest, I'm not a fan of Shadowheart's change of stats - the reduced strength has really just put her more firmly toward 'caster only' status. I didn't mind the -1 on dex rolls / A/C, as once she ran out of spell slots, she could still swing a mace well enough.

Astarion, however, the int makes the Arcane Trickster subclass more viable.

Her charisma is way too high especially given her characterization and should be put in the tank and swapped out for strength. Clerics need strength and she definitely doesn't need charisma and frankly she has none anyway.

Astarion has worse distribución now. 3 Stats with an odd number is suboptimal. Worse, reduced jumps and way too high wisdom for his characterization. But low charisma. I hope they allow for players to change stats, because this is awful.

Stats in D&D mean to resemble a character as close as possible, and it's good to see that they're willing to experiment and shuffle a few numbers around. I hope that they don't sacrifice too much gameplay balance to achieve that. Personally, wouldn't have listened to the forum crowd here that demanded more dexterity on shadowheart, because clerics never relied on DEX for their armor class, they get that through their actual armor, that usually limits the AC you gain from dex to 1 or 0.
Later on, all that dex will be well for naught, maybe you're lucky and you find a magical breastplate that has no dex restriction on it, but until then, you're missing out on stats. And even worse, they (Larian studios) traded away her high strength for that, which IS something that clerics could use, they may not be epic kill-death warriors, but they can dish out a good whack every once in a while. Not shadowheart though, will be very hard to hit anything with no strength bonuses, and whatever hits come through, will be far less potent than before.

At least wisdom remains in a good place. It's the most important stat for a cleric, and as long as she hovers around 16 wisdom and some decent consitution, she'll remain serviceable, though I do hope they get her strength up, 12 or 14 will be sufficent to fulfill the occassional melee support.

I'm surprised how much Dex they gave Shadow heart. I'm on the side that thinks companions shouldn't have optimal stats but now she's a better archer than a cleric.

They only needed to give her 10 Dex, enough so she didn't have minus AC and kept her other stats the same with reduced int.

I think astarion stats are ok, it's not optimal but I think it matches his character.

I would have preferred 14 Dex and either 10 Int or 12 Str for Shadowheart, but I can see why they refrain from ideal builds. Definitely an improvement both for Shadowheart and Astarion though.



The only way this makes sense to me is if you think BG3 is using 3e DnD.

Trickery Clerics are limited to medium armor and consequently this is a good change both for early gameplay and throughout the adventuring career. She would have had to use a feat to use heavy armors w/o penalty and this would *NOT* fit well with her being a stealthy Trickery Cleric who contrary to your claim are best served with higher Dex - esp. if they are supposed to be "melee support"/tank. +3 AC is HUGE in 5e. Strength is usually regarded more of a dump stat for this domain. Shadowheart can use a finesse weapon which will allow her to use her high Dex for hit/dmg, using a dagger instead of a mace will average -1 dmg per round - hardly "far less potent"! The only concern is losing +2 attack roll on touch spells like Inflict Wounds (this is alleviated by the ease of getting advantage however). As far as I know, 5e DnD there are no special armor properties that removes Dex restrictions (ie. Mithral armor simply removes Stealth disadvantage from armors in 5e).

This change was highly requested for several reasons; narrative dissonance, physical dissonance, and low combat efficiency/survivability. Statistics show Shadowheart had the dubious honor of being the only companion more likely to die than the main player character. This change doesn't "sacrifice" balance, it establishes it as Shadowheart was notoriously weak unless exploiting the lax rest mechanics.

Posted on a similar thread.

If you use a dagger you lose 1 avg damage per hit vs a mace, your highest one handed STR weapon. Plus now you can use a ranged weapon until you can increase your Spellcast DC for sacred flame. Soon you shouldn't want to use weapons anyway.

You can't just look at the first 4 levels. This is a huge buff for SH.

Shadowheart now has the highest AC in the party because of this change. That was probably to address the sad fact that she was dying the most. Now she can probably tank a bit with mirror image on.

I disagree, I preferred it when he had bad intelligence instead of strength, because lets be honest, hes undeniably a fop and a bit of a dumb bitch at times. If they did it so you could class him into arcane trickster, he's still not going to be a good one even with the INT boost, both his spell dc and caster bonuses are in the toilet, just not quite as much as they were.

And before anyone tries to argue "but he speaks too well to have below 10 INT!" That's really not how it works. 9-11 INT is the average range for people, and I really wouldn't expect a player to start going "hurr durr" with their character unless they something like 6 INT or below.

You can totally class Astarion into the trickster with that band of intellect, assuming your mage aims for higher than 18 and doesn't need it. That makes the reduced strength a downgrade.

+1

Its a huge buff. She's now got a viable option to benefit from height advantage (previously sacred flame really didn't cut it), and is still a decent melee combatant. The bonuses to initiative and AC is also great.


Another thing to recognize is if Larian implements multi-classing by the books, the stat change affects Shadowheart's multi-class options.

Choices available to both versions: Fighter, Druid, Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock

Choices exclusive to Previous Stats: Barbarian, Paladin,

Choices exclusive to Current Stats: Thief, Ranger, Monk

I personally think that given her Trickery Domain and love of animals, Thief and Ranger (not Monk though) fits Shadowheart's character better than Barbarian or Paladin.


Simiarly, Astarion loses the ability to multiclass into a Barbarian (haha), and gains the ability to multiclass into a Wizard. This I think fits his character far better too.

All spell attack rolls use caster stat, even if they're melee attacks. Inflict Wounds uses her Wisdom.

Barbarian/rogue is awesome in 5e.

With the higher STR he could have also classed into Fighter, and Dex Fighter/Rogues are rock solid characters.

Yeah, it seems like a really cool combo. I think he was mostly just laughing at the idea of astarion as a barbarian lol.



Fighter multiclass is available to STR 13 or DEX 13, so fortunately you can still fulfill your fantasy of turning into a slashing whirlwind of death.

I haven't played enough rogue to say whether his stat changes were good or not though.

But having lower strenght means less lifting capacity. It almost seems that they want to force Laezel as the only character with strenght. Also, Astarion has too high wisdom for the way he us written. The new distribution makes him way worse than before.

All things considered, while Shadow heart's new stats might have a pass, Astarion's are way worse. And I'm afraid to see what they have done to others. I hope we are allowed to change them and that we get buffing spells to make up for their awful builds.

At this point dipping a single level of monk for SH seems like an excellent idea for the AC bonuses from wisdom, and since her dexterity is pretty good too you might just consider keeping her a monk fulltime. I think it's also a nice fit for her personaltiy, she is obviously very devoted and focused.

Now Astarion, I have problems with. He looks faaaaar too buff to have a STR of only 8. I'm sorry but you can't tell me that Astarion can have that body and an 8 STR, especially after first meeting me he basically managed to pull a knife on my throat after dragging me to the ground. It just doesn't work.

Also, Astarion having a 10 CHR is ridicolous, he is all about trying to string you along and he is quite convincing. Drop his INT back to 9, and give him Charisma instead. Alternatively increase his Wisdom further to represent that he has common sense and foresight. Given that he is a predator, the assassin specialization is way more authentic to his character then Arcane Trickster anyway, so INT is really wasted on him.

I like SH's change, but for Astarion I recommend:

STR 10-12
DEX 16
CON 12
INT 9-10
WIS 14
CHA 12-14
Astarion just can't conceivably have less then 12 Charisma, it simply doesn't fit his character. Likewise, dropping his WIS is not going to work, because he is far too practical for it to be just average. Reduce his INT, and CON, boost his CHA, and see if you can bring his STR up to 10, because again, with that body, he can't have an 8.

Why are they fiddling around with the stats like they don't know what they mean?

Astarion clearly has a higher charisma but lower wisdom. 8 Strength seems low too. Vampire spawns are physically strong. But this one is as weak as it gets.

Shadowheart is not dumb as a boot. Her dexterity increase went way over the top this time. She also doesn't seem *that* charismatic or leader-like, 10 or 12 Cha would be enough.

I don't care about min / maxing. I just want their stats to reflect their personalities and actual ability.

All they did is change the default stats for classes/subclasses. The companions still have default stats. These stats aren't actually meant to be reflective of Astarion and/or Shadowheart as characters. Hopefully they will give the companions bespoke stat lines eventually.

Why the wait though. The companions are already there. Assigning stats takes a few minutes.