Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback About Ability Checks

Not sure if this has been posted before but there's a bunch of ability checks that don't make any kind of sense when you compare them to the stat they are associated with:

Religion - Intelligence ( Both Priest and Druid are Wisdom Classes ) Just use your common sense here.

Nature - Intelligence ( Both Ranger and Druid are Wisdom Classes ) A Ranger is obviously well versed in Nature just like a Druid and still common sense would dictate to lean over Wisdom.

Intimidation - Charisma ( A 17 Strenght Gith would make a lot more sense using intimidation ) Brutal, Savage or Strong chars are supposed to be intimidating to the average normie villager.

Deception is debatable since it could be more of an Intelligence Skill but Persuasion is definitely a Charisma skill.

Skills aren't designed to pair with classes.

Intelligence checks are about what you know. Usually this means facts, although there is a certain degree of figuring things out sometimes (usually investigation). Religion checks are about what you know/remember about religion and gods. Nature checks are about what you know/remember about nature (what you know about a specific plant or animal, for example).

Wisdom checks are about noticing and understanding things in the world. Survival checks are about noticing details in the world that you can use, such as following tracks or recognizing good places to camp. Being a wise, but not intelligent cleric might mean that you have a good understanding of what your god's deal is, but you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of facts about them.

Charisma checks are about how you present yourself to the world. You can be very strong, but not present yourself in an intimidating way. Or you can be so weak that you can barely support your own weight, but still be intimidating because you know just what to say and just how to say it. Deception isn't about knowing that what you're saying is a lie - it's about knowing how to present the lie so that other people accept it.

Nope, doesn't make any sense at all even lorewise specially when it comes to Druids and Rangers. There is no use for the int stat in a Druid and Ranger. Only Investigation makes sense for Intelligence Skill with Ranger and Bounty Hunter has it since it's a tracker.

You actually need a certain degree of knowledge ( Intelligence ) for deception since not every npc you encounter would be a halfwit with 2 neurons where you can just make shit up. Take for instance Shadowheart. She would make a lot more sense having more intelligence since manipulation also needs a certain degree of intelligence and she would get that bonus to Religion as well.

Agreed ...
It would be nice if certain skill would use bonus from higher of two related stats ...

But if i look at how relentlesly some ppl around here demand to follow DnD rules, im affraid, this would be first step for civil war on this forum.

This isn't about sticking to D&D rules - it's about having attribute definitions that make sense and are consistent. If you're just going to define wisdom as "it's what druids and rangers and clerics are good at" then what's the point of having it?

The game already represents druids and rangers being more likely to be good at e.g. nature checks by giving them the option to have proficiency in it at character creation. Proficiency at a skill means you've gotten some training in it. A ranger might have studied under an elder to learn about all of the plants in the forest - so they get to add their proficiency bonus to those checks. But having training doesn't mean that the ranger is good at remembering things. There are a lot of people out in the world that are bad at their jobs. If you want to play a ranger that has encyclopedic knowledge of all of the plants, give them a high intelligence score and proficiency in nature checks.

The system doesn't have to be this way, but it is this way for good reasons. "I want to be good at everything related to my job despite not having invested in the stats to back that up" doesn't feel like a good enough reason to change it.

Only the char creator is correct for giving you the chance to be profficient as Ranger or Druid but the bonus for checks shouldn't be tied to intelligence when it comes to Nature no matter what argument you come up with. Only Investigation, Arcana and History should get the bonus from having high Int. Wisdom should add bonus to both Nature and Religion ability checks. If you want to make everything realist just for the sake of realism in a "fantasy game", well.... i don't think what you want is a solid system in a videogame.

Interesting, never thought about this but nature in 4e used to be wisdom. The others were the same though, guessing they split nature with survival.

Anyway, skills are not associated with classes. You can be a dumb priest but still a priest.

Edit* this is copy/paste of the freebe pdf for d&d 5e page 64

Religion. Your Intelligence (Religion) check measures
your ability to recall lore about deities, rites and prayers,
religious hierarchies, holy symbols, and the practices
of secret cults.

Edit2* There is a problem currently though with the help feature as it is not tied to medicine.

Medicine. A Wisdom (Medicine) check lets you try to
stabilize a dying companion or diagnose an illness.

Any character can just go over for a standard action and get another up with one touch.

Edit3*
I'll quote tdoucende on steam from the steam forums for bg3

I copy here a message with relevant content :
Today I play a warrior (or whatever class, I do not really care) ! I can heal like a cleric and cast spells like a wizard with my ninety scrolls. When I am hurt in a fight, I eat my bogies and I feel better. My bogies are very abundant, it is very practical. I can fart also. This is a magic fart. When I fart, I avoid what some D&D people call "AoO". And it is strategic too. I can flee with my fart, and I can gain advantage. It is fun. I like advantage. I do not need spells and complicate things to have it. It is good. You know, I just fart. Or I climb stairs or ladder. If my buddy is down, I touch him, and it is ok. Buddy's back. A dozen times if I want. Touch. Cured. Touch . Cured. Otherwise, I throw a potion on the buddy, et voilà. No more need of what D&D people call "healing word". Oh I do not need what D&D people call a bow and a sword. I can cast grenades, powder barrels (it is better than this old and dusty D&D fireball), boom boom, they are all dead. It is very fun. I don't know why D&D people want 100% of rules. What are D&D people complaining about ?

This is one of the instances where we show how it doesn't have to be 200% pen and paper, the old games weren't for example.


I hope it was sarcasm because it is indeed cringeworthy

It very, very clearly WAS sarcasm

Skills aren't tied to classes. Just because a Cleric casts spells based on Wisdom, doesn't mean that Religion checks should also be wisdom.
By this logic, Arcana should simultaneously be an Intelligence (Wizard) and a Charisma (Warlock) skill.
According to the rules, a nature check "measures your ability to recall lore about terrain, plants and animals, the weather, and natural cycles." Sounds intelligence-based to me: memory and knowledge are definitely intelligence related.

That said, there is an optional 5e Rule Variant: Skills with Different Abilities. This allows you to use any ability score with any skill, assuming of course you can make a valid argument. In this case,
-Intimidation (Cha), for example, would be casually-but-menacingly explaining that "all sorts of bad things could happen to people that don't help us"
-Intimidation (Str) would be cracking your knuckles and generally being visually threatening

-Nature (Int) could be using your knowledge about different plants to identify a new plant and its effects
-Nature (Wis) could be noticing that the forest went silent, and using that perception to intuit a dangerous enemy nearby. Although this would arguably fall better under the Survival skill.

thought it summed up the game pretty well

I disagree with the OP.
Since I often say the game should stick closer to DnD rules, I am happy about every field where they do this.

Each class has several "class skills", that means it is plausible that a member of this class might know something about this topic and they CAN (not must, not get it automatically) become profient with it.
Being profient with a skill means you have trained this or you are very interested in it.
But a dumb (low int) ranger will not be good in remembering facts about nature and a dumb warlock does not know much about magic, even though their class is related to that topic.
I see no reason to change things.
From a role playing perspective its OK when your char is not good in everything, even if it is a class skill of his class.
The wise but not super intelligent cleric in a small village does not know how the holy symbol of a god from a different continent looks when a traveller with this symbol travels through this village.
The surface ranger did not read a book about plants of the underdark, so he does not know them when he suddenly has to travel through there.

Just making Nature and Religion get bonus from having high Wisdom in checks doesn't necessarily mean that your char is gonna be automatically good at everything, there are lot of different skill checks. Dunno how you come up with these conclussions. It just makes more sense for the Druid and Ranger classes or Priest in the case of Religion. We even have a 18 int cheat item very early already. Even if you don't agree because this doesn't stick to 5e you have like a million other things that completely mess up or break the game in crazy ways and don't have anything to do with 5e at all so this small change would be almost unnoticeable at best.

What do you think is happening when you make a Nature check or a Religion check? What is the difference between Nature and Survival? What exactly are you checking and what does it have to do with Wisdom? How would you explain the difference, mechanically, between a Druid that is good at their job and one that is bad at it?

Those who disagree with you in this thread have given some pretty solid reasons for why things are the way they are. All you've done to support your claim is say that it's obvious that it should be that way (it isn't).


Both of these points are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Of course there are other problems with this game - that doesn't in any way support your claim here.

So you think a Ranger and Druid wouldn't know anything at all about Nature because that's what you are saying, same goes for the Priest not passing Religion checks. You people assume every single check it's going to be just about having Insane Knowledge about a specific topic which is dumb as hell. There should be at the very least some flexibility when it comes to these kind of checks.

I agree, it does make sense for the Druid and Ranger classes to get proficiency in Nature, and for the Cleric and Druid classes to get proficiency in Religion.
And you know what, they do get (the option of) proficiency in these skills whereas fighters, for example, don't.

A druid with poor memory/book learning (intelligence) but high perception and intuition (wisdom) should be worse at recalling nature lore than a druid with good memory but relatively worse widsom.
The former druid, however, would be better at survival checks.

I agree with the flexability of using different stats for skills, but that would be a lot more work to code and probably result in an even more clunky UI.

Honestly i think they should just get an innate bonus in these particular checks instead of being optional. Of course a very low int Druid would still get horrible rolls for Arcana, History and Investigation. I wouldn't ever waste points in Intelligence if i'm building a Min-Max Druid/Priest/Ranger though. Even less now that Strenght has become more relevant.

So, you want to min-max without having to suffer the consequences of the min part. Makes sense.

On the contrary my friend.
Its conflict between this two opinions ...

One want it to "make sense" no matter of DnD rule set ...
Other One want it to "follow DnD rule set" no matter the common sense ...

You cant simply satisfy both, so you need to decide.
Therefore, its exactly about either sticking to DnD rules, or not.

//edit:
And ...
I bet you all know this image:

So lets see the main argument here:

Does this make sence?
Sure!
Bcs Religion tied to Intelligence is not either measure of your faith, and also its not matter of your spirituality (read as: how close you are to that particular deity) ...
Religion tied to Intelligence is your ability to recal certain sects, deities, churces etc.

Same as abowe ...
Wisdom based Nature should be able to tell us that Polar bear is not native in the Sword Coast. (See what i did here?)
Intelligence based Nature will tell us what plants are we looking at, what is its uses, etc.

Its still just ability to recall informations.

True, there is some room for debate, since when we enter the Ethel Swamp, we do Nature roll ...
And its fact that Wisdom roll should be teoretically able to tell us that something is off. :-/

This is pure misstake from DnD ...
Strength based character is certainly more intimidating than anyone ... on one hand the indimidation skill is directly tied to charisma, bcs its not your character by himself that is initimidating ... but its your words. :-/
On the other hand, even if completely stupid barbar being able to tell ony "give gold or me smash" prehaps bcs he dont know the language (since i hate low Int. stat being concidered as person who is unable to create full sentence) ... should work too.

And this is pure misstake from autor, on the other hand ...
Sice intelligence is in DnD only measure of amount information your character is able to absorb, keep and recall in real time. It have litteraly nothing to do with Deception.
Personaly i blame the word "intelligence" since i meet with this quite a lot, but person with low int stat is not necesarily stupid ... it can be brilliant as almost any mage, just a little slower in matter of understanging new things, and little more forgetive than others.

Honestly this is the thing I find most annoying about DnD; because I'm a massive pedant. Intelligence is something innate that makes you adaptable and able to infer things from your surroundings, which fits the description of all of the Wisdom skills in the rules. Wisdom is something gained from learning, experience and study, and fits the description of all of the Intelligence skills. It makes zero sense but it's what they call stuff so whatever I guess...