Baldur's Gate 3 EXPLAINED: Abilities, Skills, & Proficiency - BG3 Build Guide

hello and welcome to this quick guide on abilities skills and proficiency for Baldur's Gate 3. this video will help you understand these fundamental game mechanics so that you can not only create the perfect custom character but also optimize your character and companions to their maximum power throughout your entire playthrough alright let's dive in the most important thing to understand about these types of games is everything that happens is based on dice rolls primarily on a 20-sided die known as a D20 these roles are happening constantly throughout the game to determine the outcome of different situations and are either presented to you as an actual dice roll on the screen or is happening automatically under the hood which you can usually check in your combat lock all of these roles fall under one of six categories and these categories are your abilities you can think of these as your primary attributes and these may be very familiar to you from other RPGs these basically represent the different aspects of The Human Experience every single role that your character makes during the game whether it's in combat or to influence a conversation will be modified by one of these six abilities if you go to the ability section of the character creation screen and mouse over these abilities you can see exactly what they are influencing each class in the game which is basically the foundation of how you want to play essentially your archetype has a different primary ability this will be represented by a star on the character creation screen and basically shows you which attribute will have the most impact on your attack spells and abilities it will almost always be worth prioritizing this attribute first above all of their attributes for that class something else important to know is that you actually need two points in each ability to make a jump up or down and so you'll basically want to think of these in segments of two with 10 being right in the middle and having a modifier of zero anything above 10 will start to add to your role and anything below 10 will start to subtract from your role you can see if I drop to eight or nine strength my modifier becomes negative one and I actually need to jump up to 12 strength for my modifier to become plus one and then up to 14 for it to become plus two and so on now an easier way to think about this is to just consider the even numbers hitting an even number will give you an increase while an odd number is simply a stepping stone if you drop below an even number you will get a decrease so what this really means is that if you have an attribute at an odd number that point is basically wasted unless you plan on increasing that ability up to the next even number at some point throughout the game now the main way to do this is through what are known as feeds which most classes get access to three different times at level 4 8 and 12. there are also some rare magical items available throughout the game that can increase certain ability scores also consider that there are some really cool game changing Feats that may be worth taking over these ability increases but that is something you can worry about as you start to progress through the game if you're really trying to min max it may be worth looking up a list of these Feats once you understand all the information in this video so that you can plan ahead now that we understand abilities it's important to understand that there are basically two different situations during the game in which they are applied and those are in combat and out of combat let's talk about Combat First in combat strength is going to increase your Effectiveness with all melee weapons meaning your attack rolls and damage rolls will increase with these weapons based off of your strength modifier strength also determines how far you can jump how much you can carry and how well you can push things similar to strength dexterity increases your Effectiveness with all ranged weapons meaning your attack and damage rolls with these types of weapons will be increased based off of your dexterity modifier there are also several hybrid melee weapons in the game classified as finesse meaning they will scale off of your strength or dexterity modifier whichever is higher and currently these are daggers rapiers scimitars and short swords dexterity also affects your initiative which is essentially the order in which you take your turn in combat as well as your armor class which we will discuss in a minute Constitution is mainly influencing your max HP which are your hit points and represent how much life you have if your hit points fall to zero you will be knocked unconscious it will also determine how many hit points you gain each time you level up the final three abilities which are intelligence wisdom and Charisma can basically be thought of as spell casting ability modifiers your specific class will determine which one of these is influencing your attack and damage rolls with spells and again is represented by a star in the character creation screen intelligence affects spell casting for wizards wisdom affects spell casting for clerics Druids and Rangers and Charisma affects spell casting for bards paladins Sorcerers and warlocks now in addition to these offensive bonuses these modifiers will also be used for defensive roles during combat for a normal attack made with a weapon or spell the attack roll made against you will have to meet or exceed your armor class or AC in order to hit likewise when you are making an attack roll against a Target your dice roll combined with your bonuses must meet or exceed the enemy's AC in order you to hit dexterity combined with the type of armor you are wearing will usually determine your total AC and this can sometimes be boosted further by additional spells or effects now there are also some spells and abilities that instead of the attacker making a role against the defender's Armor class to hit the interaction is resolved by what is called a saving throw this essentially means that instead of the attacker having to make a roll that exceeds the defender's Armor class the defender is the one who actually has to make the roll and save against the effects of the attacker's spell or ability this role will be made against what is called the difficulty class or DC of whoever is using the ability or casting the spell if you meet or exceed the DC you will save against the effect every character has a set spell DC that is again usually influenced by their primary attribute these types of spells and abilities should display an ability save denoted here at the bottom right of the tooltip if you don't see this on a tooltip that means the ability whether it's a spell or weapon attack will be resolved by a normal attack roll against Armor class the ability modifier used for your saving throw will depend on the type of ability you are trying to avoid for example if someone is trying to push you this will be a strength save if you're trying to dodge a fireball explosion this will be a deck save if you're trying to not get poisoned it'll be a con safe and so forth intelligence wisdom and Charisma saves are usually made against spells of that type in order to resist the effect so that's basically how your abilities are utilized in combat to determine the outcome of those situations now let's take a look at how they are used out of combat every out of combat situation will again fall under one of these six abilities but these are further divided into what are known as skills you can think of skills as further divisions of these six abilities that are used to resolve out of combat situations if you click on the skills tab under your abilities in this character creation screen you can see all the different skills that are available in the game every interaction outside of combat will fall under one of these skills if you Mouse over each skill you can see which ability modifier is influencing that skill when it gets rolled anytime an interaction happens out of combat that needs to be resolved a D20 will be rolled in the modifier for that particular skill will be added this brings us back to the DC or difficulty class used to resolve specific types of abilities in combat out of combat the difficulty class represents how hard a situation is to overcome something very simple and easy May 5 whereas something extremely difficult or near impossible may have a DC of 20 or more in order to succeed in these interactions a dice roll will be made with a D20 and the skill modifier related to whatever is happening in that situation will be added so for example if you're picking a lock this will be sleight of hand if you're swimming off River this will be Athletics if you're investigating an ancient Tome this may be history or Kana or religion depending on what exactly you're trying to determine and what is actually contained within the book now that we understand how our abilities are affecting different situations in and out of combat it's a perfect opportunity to introduce proficiency proficiency basically represents you being trained or good at something proficiency applies to both skills out of combat which we were just discussing and also to weapons and armor in combat proficiency with the skill such as Arcana means your character is trained with a background in understanding the magic of the weave and so they will get to add their proficiency modifier to all the other modifiers affecting their role when encountering an arcana-based situation this same idea applies to all the other types of skills proficiency with a weapon type basically means your character has training with that type of weapon and thus is better at using it in combat and so it will add your proficiency bonus on top of any other bonuses you are getting to your attack roll you'll notice that most weapons in the game have special abilities attached to that specific weapon that can only be utilized if you're proficient with that weapon type these are usually usable once per short rest finally proficiency with armor basically means your character will be able to use that type of armor while doing everything else they normally can the armor you are wearing primarily affects your AC or Armor class which is used to resolve the attack rolls against you like we discussed previously if you're not proficient with the type of armor and you try to wear it that will usually put your attacks at disadvantage and disable your ability to cast spells imagine a flimsy wizard who is untrained in heavy armor wearing a full suit of plate and not being able to raise their arms to make a simple spell gesture so in summary they think of your proficiency as your character's training for that type of skill weapon or armor you'll want to try to line up your proficiencies with the things you are wanting to do most often in the game which will enable you to add that proficiency bonus to all of those roles increasing your chances of success finally you should think of your character's background as essentially specializing in two of the skills we just discussed it will give you Proficiency in the two skills related to that background which will allow you to add your proficiency bonus to the roles for those situations throughout the game Beyond just giving you these proficiency bonuses your background is also what enables you to earn inspiration throughout the game when you take an important action in the game that aligns with the lore of your background your character may become inspired along with a small XP bonus this will give you an inspiration die that you can save to re-roll your D20 in a future situation for example if you're like me and you like to read all the tomes lying around and investigate different magical artifacts and architecture the sage background will reward you with inspiration when you make a significant Discovery so even more than your skills you'll really want to try to align your background with the things you know you like to do most in RPGs this will give you automatic proficiency with those two skills and the ability to earn inspiration when using those skills throughout the game and then you can click the skills button under are the abilities in the character creation menu to select two more skills based on your class that you can gain Proficiency in and this will give you four skills total that you'll be able to add your proficiency bonus to during out of combat interactions alright that's it for this video I know all this can seem a bit confusing at first but hopefully this guide has helped you understand what is really going on with these core mechanics so you can get started playing and then really begin dominating the game with your own unique playstyle my name is Vic and I really enjoy making builds and guides for RPGs and I plan to do much more with Baldur's Gate 3 so if you found a valuable consider sticking around thanks for watching take care and I'll catch you in the next one peace

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Id: 3KXO0o2ImWU

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 15 2023