Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General When You Put No Points Into Intelligence

Absolutely loving these facial expressions

Dumping Int should have some consequences.

Some dialogue options that assume at least average intelligence should be replaced with "stupid" lines.

Is that real? Lol

Yup, the eye animations in this particular scene are wonky so the character ends up being cross-eyed for a second. Quite hilarious though

While I agree with the sentiment (that high/low stats should unlock special choices), dumping Int does have the consequence of failing relevant rolls more often, theoretically at least.

To be honest an 8 isn’t really an idiot. In fact many of us are out there lol

Sure ...

And people who dump Str should get reduced movement speed with armor, or with something in their backpack.
People who dump Dex should randomly get roll for triping over their own foot.
People who dump their Con will get their arms broken when attacked.
People who dump theis Wis will also get stupid lines.
And peole who will dump their Cha willget face and body of their avatar deformed.

See how absurd it gets?

Very true, 3 INT already grants access to sapience so 8 isn't too far fetched for most of us.

Yeah my head cannon has always seen the int score as a multiple of 10 to approximately equal to an IQ score. I know WATC doesn’t really do it that way. An eight would be an IQ of 80ish. I have a cousin who’s IQ is in the 80’s. She is rathe dimwitted, but in all aspects she is a normal person that can hold a great conversation with. She is a hard worker and normal in all respects. Granted she could never be a PhD and she was never able to graduate high school (never dropped out, she just couldn’t get the credits she needed). So, yeah in D&D terms she would not be a mage type. She could be any martial character, bard even.

The screenshot looks like someone is passing out. That could have happened to Einstein, too1

The multiple of 10 approximation is pretty close, but the 3d6 roll gets a little more complicated because of the statistics used in setting the IQ scale. The standard IQ test is normalized where the mean score is 100, and the standard deviation σ is usually 15. the Bell curve is shown here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#/media/File:Standard_deviation_diagram.svg

If you do the 3d6 numbers in a percentile probability table it looks like this:

Roll Freq Prob
3 1 0.5%
4 3 1.4%
5 6 2.8%
6 10 4.6%
7 15 6.9%
8 21 9.7%
9 25 11.6%
10 27 12.5%
11 27 12.5%
12 25 11.6%
13 21 9.7%
14 15 6.9%
15 10 4.6%
16 6 2.8%
17 3 1.4%
18 1 0.5%

So you just add up the 3d6 probabilities and then compare that result to the Bell curve in terms of mean + standard deviations.
IQ: Mean 100, std dev 15
IQ 115 score = adds up to about 84% percentile on the wiki Bell curve, which is about a 14 in D&D terms via adding up the 3d6 probabilities.

See, you are smarter than you may have thought!

Tbh, I'd be totally okay with the above. In fact, I think I would love it if our stats had a much greater effect on our characters just in general. Lol

This is actually a thing in 5e. There is a minimum Str score for Heavy Armor.

Let's remove attribute scores entirely then and put points directly into attack, damage and skills, if attribute scores shouldn't define your PC in a role playing game.

Honestly none of what you said sounds all that absurd and in fact sounds pretty interesting and fun. Except the charisma one. Charisma isn't about looks anyway, it's about charm and force of personality. A person with charisma could be pretty decent-looking but be incredibly shy and awkward, or crude and unpleasant to be around. Hell, you could argue that a deformed character can still have a high charisma and they simply leverage their deformities to put people off guard in some way. I'm reminded of a Discworld book where it was revealed that often beggars will extort folk by hanging around them and not leaving until they're paid off. I'd call that success on a persuasion check.

But aside from that, what you suggested wouldn't even be that hard to implement if Larian wanted to. Dex would be the trickiest, and I feel like Con being health and vitality is so straight forward as a concept that it doesn't actually need anything else added onto it. Maybe you get random sicknesses and debuffs? Honestly if all instances of exceptionally high or low stats got acknowledged in-game at some point-not even all the time, but there were two or three moments scattered throughout the game for each stat-I would be genuinely impressed and applaud Larian for it. Now THAT'S what I call replay value.

Yup ... and itelligence is about how well can your character grasp new concepts, remember stuff, and learn things.

Notice what isnt there?
Constructing(?) sentences.

Indeed. Intelligence in D&D isn't quite the same as it is in Fallout, which I suspect is the progenitor of the "low intellect dialogue" idea. I don't think that the lowest Int you can get to in BG3 is the equivalent to the lowest you can reach in Fallout. Though you can certainly still have low Int dialogue options based around being slow on the uptake, not paying attention, forgetting things, etc.

I would never mind options ... the more the merrier.

But changing all dialogue to idiotic ...
Big pass from me. :-/

I bet that it sounds "fun" on paper but when it comes to the game and your 8 Dex dude is tripping like a retard every battle you will come here and bitch in a thread about it. I agree with Ragnarok CzD here. There is already an impact that is defined by saving throws, so a char with low str is easier to get entangled and a character with low Dex is easier to get toppled. Same with ability checks in dialogues.

No matter what form reactivity to the character we made can take, it is something I appreciate a lot. Diversifying available conversation choices based on intelligence (and other stats - why not?) is one way of doing it. While I appreciated (but never attempted) low intelligence reactivity in Fallout2, I was less fond of later more partial attempts - like Fallout: New Vegas. Having only some lines be affected by low inteligence was rather jarring. Perhaps a more subtle apprach would do the trick.

Definitely, one thing I am not terriblily fond in BG3 is that I don't feel like play through to play through offers much variety. There are class specific things, but... I don't know. At this moment it is just alternative, easier check to achieve the same think you are likely to easily achieve anyway using all the available buffs. Building a different chracter doesn't seem to give me new avenues or open new paths, in the way the best of the best do. It is, granted, in line with BG1&2 but with supposilvely systemic and "do what you want" attitude and wonky storytelling, I would expect a bit more unique playthrough with each character. Getting to roll with different stat for the same outcome just isn't that exciting. Maybe it will get better once we level up later on, but for now divergences seem to me to be player driven, not character driven, which is not really what I look for in an RPG.

Probably the only thing in BG3 that really stuck with me was having to roll check to resist rage to kill the goblin by the windmill when playing as Barbarian (I also hope it triggers only when you finish combat while raging). That was a very specific wrinkle tied to the character. I liked that. I want more stuff like that.

Well...rag...to be able to speak, write and read...you kinda need to learn how to do it, remember the words and grasp the concepts of grammatics etc :P

That said, for speach, not a very high intelligence is needed.

And, I get your point. There are illiterates that are still highly intellectual.