Baldur's Gate 3 Rules Explained: Part 3: Races

how's it going everyone in this video we're going to discuss how selecting a race for your character affects the gameplay how that's affected by the rules of the game so long story short is it doesn't have that much of an effect okay what's uh most important to selecting well what the most important thing to select in terms of your gameplay is the character class okay that's going to be the most important thing and uh after that it's the ability scores okay so race is less important than the other two that said it makes a difference so we will discuss it okay so we're just going to go through all the races and and talk about all of that uh one thing to keep in mind for all of them is that it can affect conversation options throughout the game so what you could say what direction could you steer a conversation sometimes usually not but sometimes that could depend on your race okay because you're knowledgeable in history surrounding that race and the culture surrounding that race and so you will be able to say certain things that other races wouldn't be able to because you're just knowledgeable about that history and that culture so with that in mind let's go through all the races one by one and we'll start with the elves so down here you're going to see the race features but there are some hidden race features that you won't see down here okay and to see that you want to go to abilities and where it says skill proficiencies you want to click change and what you'll see here there's this little head with a question mark okay these are skills that are granted by race so here for example we see it beside perception so if you pick elf you actually get the perception skill just for picking the elf race all right now what that means to have a skill it means you add your proficiency bonus which starts off as two and can grow all the way up to six as the game progresses it means you add your proficiency bonus to roles for that skill okay perception it's it's a pretty important skill because it affects how much you notice as you're adventuring you will you notice hidden treasure will you notice unusual phenomena will you notice secret doors that sort of thing right so that's what perception is so if you pick race you automatically you pick elf as your race you automatically get that perception skill okay now also you'll see your base racial speed okay in that case it's 9 M for l it's actually 9 M for everybody except for the shorter races which are dwarves halflings and gnomes for dwarves halflings and gnomes it's 7.5 M instead of 9 M for everyone else now what that racial speed means your base speed not just racial right what your base speed is it has an effect during combat okay during combat there's three things you can do during your turn during a character's turn a movement an action and a bonus action this number this speed of a character is how far they can move during their movement phase of their turn now during the action phase one of the actions you can perform is Dash which allows you to move again so you can actually move your speed again during the action phase if you decide that that's the action you're going to go with that turn so your maximum speed your maximum distance you can move per turn is actually twice what your speed is right so if your speed is nine you can actually move 18 m per turn that's the maximum that you can move okay and for the shorter races if your speed is 7.5 M it's called speed even though it's actually a distance right um well then 15 is the maximum that you can move right twice 7.5 so the difference between these two it's it's not actually 1.5 which is the difference between 7.5 and 9 the difference is actually three it's a 3 meter difference for how far you can move so that's something to to take note of okay so the other thing for elves right you have Elven weapons training right to proficiency is long swords uh short swords Long bows and short bows so if you're attacking with that kind of weapon you get to add your proficiency bonus to the D20 20-sided dice attack roll that's what that means and dark vision okay so there's three types of lighting in the game okay there's Bright Light which is just usual there's dim light which means you have disadvantage on perception roles perception is how much you can notice right you roll a 20-sided dice or D20 is the short form for 20-sided dice you roll that to see how much you can notice okay so you get disadvantage on that in dim light disadvantage means you roll two d20s and take the lower roll so statistically on average you're going to roll about three less okay so a 20-sided dice you're rolling about uh 10.5 on average with disadvantage you're going to roll approximately seven it's actually a bit more than three less okay you're going to roll on average seven and you're also more likely to roll lower numbers and higher numbers if you're disadvantaged so it is a significant effect all right um so that's disadvantage on perception in dim light and the Third Kind of lighting is called Darkness okay and in darkness if you're in darkness then you have disadvantage on attack roles these are roles to see if you can hit Target and those attacking you have Advantage okay Advantage is the opposite of disadvantage it means that you're rolling two d20s and you're taking the higher roll okay so on average you're going to roll 14 instead of 10.5 okay and you're more likely to roll higher numbers than lower numbers so again that is significant that said you're not in darkness all the time right it's a specific situ situation so it's not too important to have dark vision but it is a feature that exists what dark vision grants you is things are one level brighter for you than they are for everyone else so if you have dark vision dim light comes off as bright light okay which means that you don't have that disadvantage on perception roles that everyone else would have in dim light darkness comes off as dim light okay which means that if you're in darkness you don't have disadvantage on attack roles and those attacking you don't have Advantage attacking you all right uh instead you just have disadvantage on perception and that's it that's the only penalty so that's what dark vision is now for elves this dark vision is uh has a range of 12 M right so up to 12 M you have you know not as bad of a penalty for Darkness now Fay ancestry this gives you advantage on saving throws that are against being Charmed and magically you cannot be put to sleep okay so when a spell is cast on you some for some spells you get to do a saving throw which means you roll a D20 and if you roll high enough the spell either has no effect or it has a weaker effect so if you have advantage on the saving throw it means you get to roll two of those d20s and take the higher number so again on average that's going to be higher roll and you're more likely to roll higher numbers than lower numbers okay so these particular two spells one of them is Charmed it's a spell that allow that basically makes you feel friendly towards uh a creature so you won't attack it um you you may be more more friendly to it it could have other effects um and sleep is is also a spell that well it puts you to sleep uh now these are very specific situations that these spells would be cast so again Fay ancestry sure you can have it if you want but it doesn't make too much of a difference to the game now you also get to pick a subrace for Elf okay High Elf or wood elf now for wood elf uh you get a even higher speed 1.5 speed bonus right so now again that means that during your movement you can move another 1.5 M during your action if you dash you can move another 1.5 M so in total that's three extra meters that you can move per turn in combat that's pretty significant all right but again it's not necessary right you can move Less in combat some some fights are just standing in the same place the whole time all right now also if you pick wood elf there's another hidden ability here that you'll only see if you'll go into the abilities and that's stealth okay so you automatically get the stealth skill I said ability I meant skill you automatically get the stealth skill if you um if you pick wood elf okay now there's also high elf that's the other subrace that you can pick and then you get a can trip so a can trip is a spell that you can cast infinitely many times okay it's just an ability you can use as many times as you want okay and you get to pick which canant trip you want all right so I'm not going to go into the whole spell system but to understand how any spell works right it's just it's described here right so first to chose minimum and maximum damage okay so from 1 to 10 now below it gives you the detail so how is that 1 to 10 determined well one d10 that means one dice with 10 sides so one 10 side of dice is rolled okay and the type of damage is fire the reason the type of damage matters is because some creatures might be immune to fire which means it's not going to hurt them at all some creatures might be uh resistant to fire which means they only take half damage or they might be vulnerable to fire which means they take twice as much damage you roll a seven they're going to take 14 damage okay and by the way you always round down so let's say someone's resistant to it so they take half damage you roll a seven half of that is 3.5 round down they take three damage all right so you can pick which one you want right like here's right bone chill it's uh 1d8 necrotic damage okay or you know acid or poison spray not acid spray poison spray 1 D12 and that's poison damage right so it's it's whatever you want all right now also you'll notice there's the range right here 18 M that's the range of the spell and the spell casting ability is intelligence okay so when you cast a spell to see whether you actually hit the target or not right you have to do an attack roll and you're going to add your intelligence bonus right so for this character here for example their intelligence bonus is well negative one okay not a very intelligent character so they're actually going to subtract one from the D20 rooll to see if they get to hit someone with that spell right so so that's how you read the Spells now some spells um they they don't do an attack right they they just give you a description of what the spell does right so true strike gain advantage on your next attack rle okay and it it'll explain what it does right so it lasts two turns right uh concentration okay some spells have concentration it means you have to focus on the spell right so you can only cast one of those Spells at a time for the spell to keep working and if you take damage the concentration might be broken you actually have to roll a dice and roll high enough to see if you maintain concentration or not okay so you pick whichever spell you want or can trip you want if you are a high elf okay now let's we're going to we're going to go to T Lings later on let's actually move on to d right now so D is is actually another type of Elf in the lore they have Superior dark vision right so it actually it's 24 M away from you you still have that lessened penalty all right they also have the Fay ancestry right so that's advantage on saving throws against being Charmed and magically you cannot be put to sleep they have drought weapons training so their proficiency is in rers shortswords and hand crossbows okay which are effectively one-handed crossbows uh so that means again they add their proficiency bonus when they try to do attack with those things and then there's the Dr sub races uh now by the way Dr also have that perception skill automatically just for being D okay that's that little hidden ability that they have or hidden skill so for subraces of Dr there is a difference in appearance in the eyes in particular uh there aren't any uh other specific abilities shown here right now appearance matters right it's uh it's what your character is going to look like you're looking at your character the whole time throughout the game right so yeah you want them to to look like something you want to look at right all right so now we're going to go to humans and then half elves all right so for humans same maximum distance 9 M uh civil militia so they have weapons proficiency with Spears spikes halberts and glaves basically two-handed pole arm weapons and they have armor proficiency okay with light armor and shields okay so what that armor proficiency means so sometimes armor might stop you from casting a spell if you're wearing that armor but if you have armor proficiency well then you don't have to worry about that penalty if you're proficient with that armor you can still cast spells while using it uh also if you're not proficient with an armor you have dis Advantage with attack rolls okay while wearing that armor an attack roll is again a D20 to check are you rolling high enough to actually hit your target okay disadvantage means you roll two d20s and take the lower number right if you're not proficient with a piece of armor you're wearing you have disadvantage on attack rolls if you are proficient in this case with light armor and shields then you don't have that disadvantage that's a good thing okay and then now that we talked about elves and humans we can talk about half elves okay so half elves are a pretty popular race I think I read somewhere they're the most popular uh choice in um in balers Gate 3 and I think it's because everyone kind of feels like they want to be human because they are a human playing the game but they also want to be something exotic and and kind of mythical and so half elf it's kind of like a bit of both right so their features are of uh of humans and elves okay so they have the Fay ancestry so that's advantage on saving throws against being Charmed and you can't be put to sleep and they have the dark vision that elves have um they have the Civil militia that humans have all right now also you pick a subrace in other words what type of half elf are you and if you pick wood elf there's that hidden ability inability there's that stealth uh skill that you get right so that's uh that's something you'll find there okay if you're a half wood elf all right um if you're a half high elf then again you get to pick a cant trip just like the High Elves have we talked about that and if you're a drought well then you get to cast Dancing Lights okay so dancing lights is a spell that uh basically illuminat the the area around you okay and uh we mentioned how Dr well they they can cast Dancing Lights as well right so now let's move on to the less human looking ones all right so gaki all right so they have this astral knowledge okay so they can gain proficiency in all skills of a chosen ability and that lasts until a long rest okay which is basically sleeping in uh in the game all right now what does that mean Proficiency in all skills of a chosen ability so if you go to abilities and you go to to change proficiencies here where it shows your skills every skill is affiliated with a certain ability right so you see for example here we look at Athletics it a strength underneath cuz that's a strength skill if you go to acrobatics it says dexterity underneath because that's a dexterity skill okay so Athletics is a strength skill then everything on this list from acrobatics to stealth is dexterity everything from Arcana all the way down to religion is an intelligence skill everything from animal handling to survival is a wisdom skill and from deception to persuasion these are Charisma skills so you pick one ability whether it's Charisma or wisdom or intelligence or dexterity or strength and every skill affiliated with that ability you get Proficiency in that which means when you roll a D20 to see if you succeed at doing something with that skill you get to add your proficiency bonus to that role right so in this case it's plus two so you say you roll a 9 plus two so it counts as a 11 all right so they also get the Mage hand canant trip right so this is like a magic hand that moves around it can move stuff grab stuff that sort of thing right so you can you know reach something that's actually Out Of Reach of your character and their their speed is 9 M and they also have uh armor proficiency with light and medium armor and they have proficiency with short swords long swords and great swords so all the kinds of Swords right so that means again when they roll to attack with those swords they get to add their proficiency bonus to see if they hit and armor proficiency means they can wear that armor and still cast spells and it doesn't uh it doesn't give them disadvantage on attack roles when they're wearing that type of Armor All right uh tlinks okay so again maximum speed is the same 9 M uh dark vision we talked about hellish resistance they have resistance to fire damage which means they only take half of the fire damage dealt to them and for subrace okay so you have three options right I'm uh I don't know if I pronounce the names right so asadas okay you have the produced flame cantrip so a flame in your hand hand sheds light in a 99 M radius and Deals 1 to8 fire damage okay when thrown now here this is important throwing the flame immediately after you conjure it does not cost an action okay so this is important during combat right cuz during your turn you get to perform one action but if you extinguish or throw the flame on a subsequent turn so after the turn that you cast it then it does cost an action right so that's that's something to consider okay mephistophiles teling they get the Mage hand can trip and zerel tling zarel tling uh they have this canant trip which gives them advantage on intimidation and performance checks so depending on what kind of character you want you'll you'll decide what subrace you want there all right and then Orcs or half Orcs actually so for for half Orcs there actually is a hidden skill here which is intimidation right here right you get the intimidation skill if you are an orc okay or half orc that is right so again you add your proficiency bonus to roles trying to intimidate [Music] somebody all right now other than that you get Savage attacks so when you land a critical hit with a me weapon you deal an extra dice of weapons damage okay so that's pretty specific it has to be a melee weapon it has to be a critical hit it's not going to happen too often but if you specialize in attacking with a melee weapon it'll happen often enough it's a nice bonus so there's that right if you if you really want to optimize being a melee weapon fighter maybe you'll consider being a half orc uh Relentless endurance so if you reach zero hit points okay hit points is is how much damage you can you have remaining that you can take before your character Falls unconscious right so typically reaching zero hit points means your character Falls unconscious so if you're a half orc and you reach zero hit points that means you regain one hit point instead of becoming down now this only happens once before a long rest so it's not like you're just going to Forever stay up right you get one hit point you get zero again and you're back up to one no it only happens once between long rests so keep that in mind it doesn't make you invincible all right um and then you have dark vision again we talked about dark vision we talked about speed 9 M or maximum distance 9 * 2 right if you use the dash action okay so movement 9 M and I'm going to solve save a dragon born for last cuz cuz they're a little bit different we'll have to get into some details there so let's talk about the the shorter races the dwarfs the halflings the Gnomes okay so these are the ones that have a speed of 7.5 cuz they have shorter legs so starting with dwarves okay dwarf in combat training you have Proficiency in battle axe hand axe light hammer and Warhammer right so you add your proficiency bonus when trying to hit a target with those weapons Dark Vision we talked about Dwarven resilience Dwarven resilience so you have advantage on saving throws against poison and you have resistance to poison damage okay so poison damage is cut in half right you you only take half damage from Poison attacks advantage on saving throws right so if you have to do roll a saving throw which is for poison it's going to be a constitution saving throw okay okay so if you go to Constitution here see plus four to saving throws in this particular character's case right so if you're doing a saving throw to roll high enough to see if you can avoid or reduce the effects of poison well for a uh dwarf you get Advantage right so you roll two d20s take the higher roll there's also sub races okay there's the gold dwarf and their hit point maximum is bigger right so for every level it goes up by one all right so you can take more damage before you go down okay for a shield dwarf uh you also have Armor training so you're proficient with light and medium armor and for dard probably pronouncing it wrong dwarfs uh you have Superior dark vision right so that last 24 M away from you rather than 12 M and you also o have advantage on saving throws against Illusions and against being Charmed and paralyzed now again these are very specific situations where you're dealing with Illusions or being Charmed or paralyzed so it's not too important but it is there okay now moving on to the halflings all right so this is basically the hobbits of uh of the Dungeons and Dragons World or of the balers Gate 3 world in in fact I'm going to have to make him into a r just that seems like the right thing to do if it's basically a hobbit okay so we talked about the shorter maximum distance okay so halflings are lucky when you roll a one for an attack roll ability check or saving throw so basically anytime you roll a one on a D20 you can reroll that die and then you have to take the new roll but there's no downside to that because anything is better than rolling a one all right also bravery you have advantage on saving throws against being frightened so frightened is ability an ability that can prevent you from approaching a creature if you're frightened of that creature um and well if you have an and and if a creature is trying to frighten you well then you have to roll a saving throw okay to see are you frightened or not okay you have to roll high enough on a D20 to avoid the effect of being frightened so if you have advantage that means you roll two d20s and you take the higher roll okay now [Music] there are two subraces of halfling there's the light foot okay and the light foot halflings they get advantage on stealth checks okay stealth is trying to hide okay from uh from creatures that might see you all right or creatures that might hear you okay so you can go into stealth mode during the game where your character is actively trying to hide and when you do that you have to roll stealth right that's it's uh one of your skills right stealth you have to roll D20 you add your stealth bonus which for this character happens to be plus seven and if you roll higher than the creature that you're hiding from well then you're hidden from that creature that creature can't see you or hear you now depending on the situation you might have to roll higher than the creatur's uh passive perception which is just a fix number in other times the creature might be looking for you in which case the creature actually rolls a dice to see if they roll higher than your stealth check uh but in any case a higher stealth roll means you're more likely to stay hidden okay and so if you have advantage on stealth checks well that means you get to roll two d20s and take the higher number that's very significant if you're using stealth a lot okay and if your class is the Rogue you're using stealth pretty much all the time that's the whole point of being a Rogue is to be stealthy so if you're going to be using stealth a lot that's actually very very significant to have advantage on all stealth checks if you're not using stealth a lot well then it's not that important and then you have the stone heart halfling and so they have advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance to poison damage just like the dwarfs we talked about that earlier so that's the halflings now let's move on to the Gnomes okay so again shorter maximum distance uh you have advantage on intelligence wisdom and Charisma saving throws okay so these intelligence wisdom Charisma so it's like someone's trying to talk you into something someone's trying to confuse you outsmart you cast a spell that makes you act a certain way all of that sort of stuff is covered in intelligence wisdom and Charisma saving throws okay so you're difficult to out and you know for someone to be more cunning than you or to for someone to outsmart you or that sort of thing okay uh there are subraces of gnomes okay there's the rock gnomes okay they have dark vision and they have their proficiency bonus added to sorry add twice your proficiency bonus to history checks okay so not just your proficiency bonus twice your proficiency bonus to history checks so if you go to a ities right and you find history they're automatically gaining that skill right but not only are they gaining that skill which means you get to add your proficiency bonus they add twice their proficiency bonus so that's significant Now history skill a history check in some specific situations in the game you might be given more information about something or you might have more conversation options to click on because you have that history skill okay uh Frost gnome H sorry Forest gnome misread that okay so you have dark vision and you also get to speak with animals spell okay now it's a fun spell to have because now every animal becomes someone you can have a conversation with well if they're intelligent enough and that's fun because you know sometimes they'll say things that you'd expect an animal to think uh and that's cute and fun and all that other times they might give you useful information cuz people who try to hide stuff typically are not trying to hide stuff that stuff from their pets or from their livestock so the animal see stuff that other people wouldn't so that that can be fun and useful as well all right so yeah it's a cool spell to have and then there's the Deep gnomes okay they have Superior dark vision right so that's dark vision up to 24 M and stone camouflage right so they have advantage on stealth checks as well okay so that's another way to get advantage on stealth checks if you're going to be using stealth a lot is to be a deep gnome okay so now all we have left is the dragon born okay so their movement speed is 9 M again it's a distance not a speed that just bugs me but whatever they call it a speed that's fine well like I said it bugs me moving on uh you get to pick a subra and there's a lot of sub rces which are all different colors okay and what that subra determines okay like what color of dragon you are it determines what element you are resistant to and what element you can do a breath attack with okay breath attack like you're blowing that element like blowing fire uh and it's always the same element so for example black dragon the element is acid right so acid breath and and they are resistant to acid damage right which means they take half damage from an acid attack okay Blue Dragon Lightning breath and they're resistant to lightning damage right and and so on right so all of the breath weapons they roll 2 D6 so two six-sided dice okay so on average you're going to roll a seven you're more likely to roll a seven than anything else the closer a result is to seven the more likely you are to roll it yeah technically you can roll anything from 2 to 12 but it's very unlikely that you'll roll a 2 or a 12 you're more likely to roll numbers closer to seven just the one thing to add about the breath weapon is that it does increase its damage as you progress through the game it starts at 2d6 but it can go all the way up to five D6 okay so five six-sided Dice and to know the average for that for every extra dice added on just add another 3.5 okay so for two D6 that averages 7 3 D6 it would be 10.5 4 D6 it would be 14 and so on right 5 D6 it would be 17.5 okay just add on a D6 uh 3.5 for every D6 added on that's how the average changes and also you're more and more likely to roll closer to that average the more dice you are rolling so that's just one more thing to keep in mind about that breath weapon and the other thing to keep in mind is so you'll notice all of these when you hover over the attack it says spew forth a cone of acid right or for um for the green dragon right a cone of poison right for the white dragon a cone of fire okay okay but for the brass Dragon it's not a cone okay it's a column of fire okay so that's that's important to note because these are different things okay the column is going to extend 30 ft in front of your character okay now typically a character the area immediately next to a character is about 5 ft by 5T okay so 30 ft is 5 * 6 right so that's like six car spaces in front of you that's how far this column of fire is going to extend okay whereas the cone right so we go the Gold Dragon that's a cone of fire okay this cone is going to have an angle 60° okay if you imagine the slicing through the cone it's like a triangle it's going to be an equilateral triangle 60° Each corner and each side of that triangle right so it's like you're breathing fire as a in this triangle extending through your mouth right but you're rotating the triangle so it's like a cone and each side of that triangle is going to be 15 ft okay and what that means is how far in front of you it's going to extend is about 13 ft and you can figure that out through Pythagorean theorem right like a draw equilateral triangle draw a line from the corner to the middle of the opposite side so you've now made two equal sized and shaped right angle triangles and through Pagan theorem you figure out that it's going to be about 13 ft in front of you but it spreads to the side right whereas the column that the brass Dragon does that's 330 ft in front of you right so it's farther but it does not spread to the side so that's something to keep in mind now notice it says on a save Target still takes half damage right so when you do this attack the target has to roll a saving throw to see whether they can take only half damage from the attack okay now what they have to roll for this saving throw is eight plus your Constitution score plus your proficiency bonus okay so if you're going to use your breath weapon a lot as a dragon born which is like why else would you be a dragon born if you're not going to use the breath weapon right um then your Constitution also has that added importance right it makes higher Constitution makes it more difficult for people to resist your breath attack weapon um now when they make the saving throw the bonus that the creature adds to the saving throw it's going to be dexterity for everything except poison and cold okay so if you're doing poison breath attack like the uh green dragon or a cold breath attack like the the Silver Dragon then they do a constitution saving throw so they add their constitution bonus okay for everything other than poison and cold they are doing a dexterity saving throw right so they're adding their dexterity bonus so that's that now the the uh both white and silver Dragon actually are doing coal damage but yeah so if it's coal damage that you're doing or poison damage then the creature does a constitution saving throw any other type of damage with the breath weapon they are doing a dexterity saving throw so that's it that's the rule surrounding all the races like I said most important thing is class second most important is abilities race is third place but hey it affects stats it affects gameplay experience so pick whatever one you want I hope you enjoyed that and until next time

Channel: G Labs

Views: 148

Keywords: math, science, mathematics, physics, statistics, games, gaming, dungeons and dragons

Id: zsigMyo1PAY

Length: 38min 56sec (2336 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023