Baldur’s Gate 3 players discover how tough game is without vital stat
Larian StudiosBaldur’s Gate 3 players learned that neglecting a crucial stat in your character’s Ability Score can make the game nearly impossible to play.
In a CRPG like Baldur’s Gate 3, your abilities should be your top priority when creating your character. The game has six abilities to consider — Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
Strength determines your melee attacks, Dexterity governs your evasion, and Constitution is for HP. Meanwhile, Intelligence is vital for Wizards, Wisdom is essential to Clerics, and Charisma is needed for Warlocks and Paladins.
You can make different builds depending on which of these abilities is your main stat. However, some players have found out that despite what build you use, one of these abilities can’t be ignored. It can significantly affect your playthrough by changing the outcomes of several quests as well as your companions‘ fates.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is much tougher without crucial ability
The ability that we’re talking about is Charisma, which decides your powers of speechcraft in Baldur’s Gate 3. As a dialogue-heavy game, it should be obvious that your main character needs to do a lot of talking.
You can talk your way out of combat, convince enemies to reconsider being violent, and even prevent companions from doing anything rash. As such, much of the narrative in Baldur’s Gate 3 depends on how well-versed your character is.
A Reddit user named MikeArrow shared their experience with Charisma on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit. They said that they “had to re-load 10 times just to pass a DC 10 Persuasion check to keep Shadowheart from killing Lae’zel during a long rest.” This is a point in the game where many players have had trouble before, but if you’re a Charisma-based class like a Paladin or a Warlock, it’s a piece of cake.
The Redditor called out this inconsistency, saying that they’re “not going to lose a whole party member just because I decided to play a Rogue and not a Bard, Paladin or Sorcerer.” Many users shared similarly frustrating experiences they’ve had as classes that are not good at Persuasion.
One user jokingly remarked about being a Berserker Barbarian as a workaround, where “you just roar at people and it’s fine.” However, it does work most of the time. Another explained how they “got tired of being bad at skills, so I made a Githyanki Knowledge Cleric, Urchin background.” Now they’re “proficient in everything except Athletics, Acrobatics and Investigation” at just level 2.
The OP also commented about how there should’ve been something like a “Hat of Charisma” to raise your Charisma to 18. Baldur’s Gate 3 has similar items for many other stats like Strength and Intellect. Another replied that Baldur’s Gate 2 had a similar Charisma-based item which you could get right after the tutorial.
Many agreed that this could’ve been remedied by just switching your characters and using their rolls instead. However, the game has several moments where it forces you to use your main character for these encounters. A Redditor commented that “you can have Astarion pick every lock, but you can’t make Wyll handle all your Persuasion rolls.”
This means that you can only play as a few specific classes if you want the best possible outcomes in Baldur’s Gate 3. But there are other moments where you can absolutely break the game, making it ridiculously easy. For instance, some players have found an ingenious method to kill any NPC that approaches their character, while speedrunners had been using Gale to finish the game impossibly fast.
