I’d put Persuasion in S+. There are two boss fights I can think of you can flat out win with persuasion, and three more where you can completely eliminate the first stage of the fight and reduce the danger your characters are in. The only skill that might be more useful is Stealth for a sniper build.
@@charsiuwu8084 yup. You can - 1 - Talk Kaga over to your side and make that fight easier 2 - Talk three of Thorms undead kids into killing themselves 3 - Talk Thorm down twice and skip half of each fight 4 - Talk Orin into panicking and turning directly into the slayer to skip half of that fight A bunch more smaller fights, but those are the big ones I remember.
@@OakandIVYurgir pt 1 will also kill his allies and himself with persuasion, or you can help him and he will be an ally later on in return. Yurgir pt 2 can be turned via persuasion as well. Most busted skill for sure
I think Religion for min maxing purposes is actually incredibly critical to scam Shar's Mirror. Scamming Shar should be a time honoured tradition, and is in my household.
This. If I made this tier list, I’d include a B+ “situational” for “there is one or two encounter(s) which this solves, but is otherwise not especially useful”. Would include Religion for Shar’s Mirror, Insight for Yurgir in Act 2, etc.
@@joshsmith8466 Essentially there is a mirror that lets you add +2 to any stat, and yo take a negative 1 to a different stat thatcan be removed with remve curse. Whoever reads the Necromancy of Thay can scam it for free, and Shadowheart if you choose to make her go down the route of being a Dark Justicier, gets advantage on the Religion Checks. Everyone else makes DC25 religion checks flat. When you scam this with respecs or whatever, you NEED to make sure the new character is high int with Religion. I also think the religious elements of the Realms are just the best part of the setting, so what little you get from the few other Religion checks makes me happy.
Insight often rolls automatically when NPCs make hard statements to you - and knowing if they are hiding or lieing to you via insight is the ONLY WAY to know some NPCs aren't being truthful, hiding something, or gatekeep optons entierly. No skill checks can unlock these branches of the conversation trees. Sometimes you can find books, notes, or other sources that tell you, but just as often there are none.
The fact that Insight is usually an automatic roll also increases the importance of having a good baseline bonus on your party face if you want to hit the dialogue options it unlocks. Because with those hidden rolls, you can't use inspiration or choose to add options like Guidance to shore up your chances. I don't know if it significantly impacts your chances of clearing the game, but in terms of story experience I'd definitely bump it up a tier or two, especially for your first playthrough when you're not already equipped with knowledge of what's up.
Roughly each point in persuasion (which would include points in charisma) result in a roughly 10% decrease in price. Expertise is like 40+% discounts. His also increase the value of the things you sell.@waterenchantress7619
@@waterenchantress7619 The game is kind of misleading about it. The Charisma tooltip says that it "Influences traders' prices"... which is _sort of_ true (from a certain point of view), since Persuasion is a Charisma-based skill. But yes, it is your Persuasion modifier that impacts merchant prices. You can verify this very easily if you picked up the Ring of Geniality from Barcus Wroot in Act 2 - the ring gives +1 to Persuasion, and if you equip/unequip it when talking to merchants the prices will change.
Other commenters have stated the value of Persuasion for being able to shut down multiple big fights, and also Insight for often being rolled passively in dialogue, making it vital for the party face, as well as any Avatar-only dialogue, since no other skills can unlock the interactions that insight can. Which is why I stand firm in my belief that Guild Artisan is the best background for a tav/durge who acts as the party face. Unless you can't get other critical skills like Stealth or Perception any other way, Guild Artisan is the background to pick every time imo.
I definitely agree! Guild Artisan also has (anecdotally) the easiest and most frequent inspirations of any background, almost always for doing things you already wanted to do anyways. That and Urchin for simply being the best skill access are my two favorite backgrounds.
For honor mode, perception can and will save you. Stealth and slight of hand for easy access all manner of potions and/or items and gold. Persuation, deception, and intimidation are also good. Nothing else is necessary. Don't shove enemies into the void as you will lose loot. Don't position yourself where you can be shoved and insta gibbed. Just kill them. Items will allow low strength characters to jump as well as spells. If you are playing honor mode then you know when specific skill checks will occur. Respec for those situations...looking at you Mirror of Loss. Edit - performance for an achievement but you can respec out later.
Perception is the only real S+ skill in the game. The problem with stealth as well as persuasion (numerous commentors keep bringing it up as S+) is that, while powerful, they are totally optional. Yes, a stealth build and persuasion skill can completely bypass certain events or fights but ultimately, fighting or doing something else is always a valid option in these scenarios. Perception is the one skill that EVERY build needs. No matter how you approach the game you will need perception. This same issue exists in pnp.
Actually investigation rather frequently works in the field outside of the dialogue like perception -- not in the same places where perception would work, but rather some things are scripted to be perception checks, while other are investigation checks. Example of investigation checks are the wall to break in the foundry in blighted village (that leads to spider area) or which mushroom can you jump on and which are illusions in the Underdark. Not saying it's too useful, just mentioning it's not a dialogue skill.
Honestly think Persuasion is Game Winning. You can bypass a lot of encounters in the game and talk your way out of so many situations. Personally feel it is more important than Stealth.
Intimidation and Performance is better than they look because can always have Advantage with Thaumaturgy. So while they won't be as common, you will have a MUCH better chance of passing them. Also while Persuasion come up more than any other social skill, generally for all the really important dialogue choices the others are usually appearing (ie most of the extra Persuasion options are in throwaway minor dialogues). The other big advantage is in general Role Playing. Picking a specific social skill that fits the personality of your character really helps for role play and immersion.
I disagree on stealth being S+. It’s a skill that’s only useful on a character who relies on stealth attacks. Something like persuasion is S+ to me because it’s useful no matter what class/race you’re playing as. It also gives you access to so many rewards, allies, and fight skips.
Thanks for this very helpful! I was choosing survival before because of the buried chests but I realize from this its not worth it - especially not after the early game. More tier lists (or top ten) would be very welcome! Subclasses, spells, high-value magic equipment etc.
One thing, take persuasion. Even though he somehow put it in the important tier, it is critical to have someone with persuasion proficiency. It will help lower price at merchants, skip boss fights,even many hard bosses.
I think persuasion should go on the S+ tier as well. In addition to everything you listed, you can outright avoid even some very difficult boss encounters (in some cases you get more XP for persuading them than fighting them) or convince certain foes to turn against their side and fight for you. Not to mention it is crucial for certain storyline elements for your companions. Also, it affects merchant prices as well as a side perk.
Protip for anyone wondering abt the risk of tossing enemies into chasms, dont do it on your first save, after that you know which enemies actually have loot or not so you know who you can sacrifice to the void 😂, by your third playthrough youll even start developing speficic strats to each particular encounter until youre a few tens of playthroughs in and you gotta willingly play nice for the ai to keep up with you on honor mode
Survival is sometimes the best choice if you aren’t picking it for a party face, if only as a time saver to avoid having to go into the inventory, find the shovel, and manually dig.
As always, thank you for your insight and persuasion ( you passed both checks ). However, perhaps in another video you might list the feats which compliment the skills listed above. I am aware that this would be a much longer and time consuming video. I merely request it ( did I pass my persuasion check? ). Again, thank you for your hard work.
S+ “Game winning” tier, my immediate thought was Persuasion, followed by “oh, I guess maybe Stealth could go there too”. Persuasion is the skill that alters the game the most. Putting it below S just made me laugh, honestly - yes, you can win without it, but you can also win without sleight of hand or stealth (and I’d say easier, too). It’s at least three tiers above the next best, to my mind, and I’d only go without it on a challenge run.
Oh, I discovered on my honour mode playthrough that persuasion cuts through Ketheric’s human mode - you go straight to fighting Myrkul, which meant my party won that boss fight without any cheese and without ever hitting “end turn” - we went first, and Myrkul was down before we ran out of attacks. Not possible if we’d ALSO had to beat down Ketheric in human form first.
I hardcore disagree with Persuasion only being A. Persuasion, IMO, is in a tier of its own in S++ tier. In Honour Mode, where you can’t save scum to avoid fights or failed pickpockets or anything like that, the best way to avoid dying is just to not fight at all. You can persuade a huge chunk of bosses in the game to just leave you alone or off themselves, normally through persuasion rolls. It’s incredible how little fighting you can do while doing a Bard playthrough. You can persuade your way out of jail, out of fights, into lower merchant prices/higher sell prices, and save yourself a lot of tedious, long boss fights. Not to mention that in a large chunk of conversations, if it offers you a persuasion roll, that is normally the best option you can choose. Not to mention niche things like how you have to persuade each party member to be willing to accept the astral touched tadpole, or getting free items from characters by persuading them to give them to you. Stealth, by comparison, is only super valuable on specific playstyles - but it is invaluable to those playstyles and makes even Honour Mode easy mode.
It's not level 6 trnsmute wizard, it's level 2. My halfling 2 t wizard - 1 rogue - 5 valor bard - 4 life cleric is truly a one person band. Bard up, aid, and alchemy factory. In act 3 I have a whole mercentile sub game going on. Buy components, sell potions, gift stuff to drive buy prices down, sell prices up.
I really enjoyed this video and learned a lot about the importance of skills in Baldur’s Gate 3. You did a great job explaining how each skill works and how to optimize your character builds. I agree that stealth, athletics, and perception are some of the most useful skills in the game, and that animal handling and survival are pretty much useless.
I'm always surprised in Build vids talking about Charisma builds how few people mention the Feat Actor... If you take 17 Cha and on level 4 take Actor you have a free Expertise in Deception and Performance without needing to even take the Proficiency, and you have the 18 Cha you like to get at level 4. Most builds just take 16 Cha and an AI instead I got some very good mileage out of Deception that way XD
I think Chepa did mention Actor in his Bard build. Personally, I think Actor is not that impressive if you are a Charisma-based character. Especially if you are Bard and the MC, you get Jack of All Trade and Favourable Beginning anyway. I would rather have other amazing Feat like Sharpshooter, GWM, and of course Alert.
Persuasion is absolutely top tier. 1/3rd of the bosses in the game can be handled just with persuasiom. Not to mention all the little skirmishes you can avoid and allies you can gain. On top of all that, merchent prices are tied to it.
I think attacking when outside line of sight cannot generate surprise and results in a standard initiative roll after your first attack. So hiding with stealth within line of sight is the best way to start a combat, and keep other characters right close by to take advantage of the surprise
My personal favorite skill to use/max out would be Sleight of Hand. Very obvious S+ tier skill for any party, given how it makes it so that your resources (gold, healing potions, etc) are no longer scarce. Along with persuasion (or deception) to talk your way out of trouble (e.i. in honor mode), and to get better prices. Easily the best skills in the game. And yeah, Stealth *can* be goated af, especially if you're doing a stealth archer style build, but unless you're actually using it for that and such, is otherwise not likely worth it. And early game, especially, perception so as to not get your run ended by traps. X.x
I really love these videos the only thing I would change is maybe adding timestamps for each skill so they are easier to look back at when building future characters. Anyways keep up the good work!!
Persuasion is a S+ for sure , lower prices at vendors , but most important you can talk almost all the bosses of ACT II to death , if that is not S+ tier i dont know what it is ....
@@Cephalopocalypseyeah, I was surprised you didn't have persuasion as the S+ skill since it can outright bypass a lot of hard fights or make them considerably easier. By far the best skill in the game for your face.
The problem is that often you can’t cheese enemies out of combat because enemies auto heal like the elemental in grymforge. Could shoot him so much before he complete healed
Investigation is almost like a last chance to find things when you don't get them thru dialogue or specific items to start a quest that one might have skipped. 3 examples are the kagha quest where you can find the letter in the tree with the investigation skill, and another is the crew hidden in the storage place. On my first run thru the guys that give the password died and so never got it and when i got to the storage the guy asked for the password i gave the wrong answer and blew everything up. Which after i went doen the latch but because my entire party failed the Investigation i never found the hidden entrance. The last example is with Moi hidden base. If you failed on getting into the base thru doni with Investigation. The only way in is either you have a small character or disguiseself. There are situations that you just don't know about specially first time thru and Investigation helps find those things. It's very niche but it has it's functions outside of dialogue.
Depending on your build and difficulty level, some of the fights persuasion skips would be very difficult to win otherwise. You have to spend a lot of resources just to get to part 2 and part 2s tend to be the harder versions so spending your limited resources on part 1 only to have an uphill battle with part 2 isnt great, if not downright impossible if you were particularly unlucky with your dice. In the 2nd Thorm fight in particular skipping the first part downright ensures that your party isnt in a horrible position spread out across the room only to get pulled by phase 2 off ledges into some spicy extra damage or, as has happened to me twice, off a magical ledge into a pit of doom that the game and I deffinitely disagree on being able to fit a humanoid in. And a certain ally that you can get is WAY more usefull ramming herself into part 2 instead of wasting her resources on part 1. I can accept it not being S+ sure, perfectly understandable, but when I built a party for my latest run of BG3, the 3 skills I prioritized above all others were Sleight of Hand, Perception and Persuasion. And I didnt prioritize Stealth because outside of VERY cheese archery strategies, having points in it isnt that important. 9 times out of 10 a character with -1 stealth performs EXACTLY, not almost, not kinda sorta, exactly as well as someone with +13 points in stealth would. And the 1/10 use case more often than not STILL fails because you were in direct lighting so no stealth roll for you. Or because the game decided that succeeding in a stealth check means the same as failing a stealth check because apparently your toe was illuminated or something or your character decided that having their stealth checked is a valid reason to come OUT of stealth (granted, that is more than likely a bug and not intended behaviour, but still). Im not saying stealth is useless, it isnt. Having someone in your party be good at it can give you reliable suprise rounds in a LOT of encounters throughout the game, but it IS an advanced strategy requiring knowledge on how the game works to get those suprise rounds off, instead of using up your rogues first action and everybody else in your party rolling initiative alongside the enemy because you forgot to turn on turn based mode before you shot your stealth sneak attack. It CAN be game breaking, and it can certainly be VERY advantageous to the point I would consider its proper use critical on Tactician, but I would perhaps not include "semi unintended cheese" a factor when ranking skills. In some scenarios persuasion can quite literaly be the difference between you continuing the game and a rage fueled reload 2 hours earlier because your current party comp just isnt going to beat Thorm twice, so I would bump it up to critical. And Stealth should have 2 categories, one for regular play where its somewhere between important and critical and one all in its own "this breaks the game" category alongside "Jump" and "magical burning wooden boxes of teleportation". Also known as mundane run of the mill regular crates you find in every other room in the game.
Strongly disagree with your Charisma skills ranking, the shear amount of encounters where you can avoid combat or make your life easier in some way or another i think instantly puts them into S+/S and A for Deception. They are even more important now with Honor mode.
What I really like about BG3, among other things, is that there are no useless skills. Even Animal Handling is useful because it can give you unique interactions with animals that you can't get by using Speak with Animals. Also Insight is very important for your frontman, some very critical dialogue options just won't appear if you fail a passive Insight check. And Stealth is not really that useful unless you plan on being a stealth archer which imo is not that interesting and completely unnecessary if you don't solo.
Yea he made a small error he’s partially right you need speak with animals + animal friendship to get the full effect of animal handling. This is my favorite part of the game as well you can technically do everything it’s up to ur play style on that run it’s all player choice
Stealth is so weirdly behaving when its a game with AI and not a tabletop with an intelligent DM. For purposes of recon and moving around, fight pre-positioning as long as you avoid vision cones you can be the sneakiest mofo on earth with -1 dex, -1 stealth and heavy armor while at the same time you can have 9001 stealth with advantage and never roll it because 9/10 enemies have darkvision wich Larian implemented as instaspot instead of something like disadvantage/advantage enemy side. BUT when you commit to skyrims normiest gameplay style and/or greater invisibility the high +stealth w advantage turns from worthless dogshit to the most broken thing in the game which lets you clear entire areas without getting into combat. neato
I believe that animal handling can't be avoided with speak with animals on the "sheeps" in the bog to reveal the truth about them. I don't think I can come up with other examples
@@Cephalopocalypse I think it is an investigate check DC 20 when you enter the bog. Moreso, in that case animal handling is not even the first choice, since it serves as a back-up check if you were to fail the main one (the investigate one), so yeah, they really handed it the short stick lol
It can. If you have speak with animal turned on, they try to baa at you very unconvincingly. You may still need to select the right option afterwards I think.
persuasion also affects the buying/selling prices at merchants, so if you’re not using cheesy pickpocketing strategies I would say it deserves a higher tier
Insight must be an A tier. There are many dialogue branch we could see only if bypass insight. And we can't reroll these checks. Also, surviving let us see stones we can move. We can't do it without bypassing this check. So surviving must be C tier.
What you said @ 13:15 "only the character that's actively doing the conversation can roll skill checks for it" is something the BG3 community really needs to talk about more! I noticed that you said "it's one of my least favorite things about the game" which is such a euphemism in light of how absolutely and utterly terrible and disgraceful this one simple mechanic actually is. I get that we love this game so much and avoid saying "bad" things about it, but this is just so incredibly stupid. While I get the counterpoint of saying a party could have invincible skill checks, it honestly kind of defeats the purpose of having a party altogether outside of combat. For a game that has so much outside of combat, this is a lot to consider. Exactly as you said, what's the point of having a 20 INT High Elf Wizard with Arcana proficiency or a horrible looking Barbarian Half-Orc with Intimidation proficiency if the person doing the talking is a smiling gnome bard? This really is enough to take a lot of out the immersion for me personally, especially when playing with friends. It makes it so you need to choose "the face of the party" (one character to do all the talking/cutscenes) and just automatically gives CHA based classes an ungodly favor for the main character if playing solo. It's one of those things you just have to live with, but it's also definitely enough to say that, despite being my favorite #1 game, I wouldn't """objectively""" review it as a 10.
Please tell me why the game at random points chooses any party member instead of your main to take part in important dialogue. This is so frustrating to me.
NO KIDDING. That's so frustrating to me as well. Some dialogues seem to trigger off of proximity, so you have to move your party face in front (especially annoying for bards, who don't *want* to be in front), and some go on whoever took the last turn (Ethyl's surrender is the worst of these, in my experience it's Lae'zel's 8 charisma trying to convince her 100% of the time)
It doesn't - which you reminded me I meant to rant about since it absolutely should, at least for non-magical surfaces. "Trying to run across a sheet of ice" is literally the first example given in the Player's Handbook!
Athletics and acrobatics... Sonce ive given up on having melee characters its a non factor. Why would i risk injury/downed/death? Makes no sense. Spell and bow all the way.
stealth s+ ? ...and yet i had almost no issues with honour mode (only a couple really hard fights and usually because i was slacking on my prep work) and basically never use stealth. I agree it *can* be S+ - but you can certainly never use stealth and beat the game quite handily without it. I don't even run with Astarian since my very first run through. I have someone with decent (but not awesome) sleight of hand for lock picking..and that's it.
Speaking of dialogue options, is there a limit to how many you can have? Does the game only give you 4 or 5 options, or do they let you have all of the options you have? I figure you could run up a lot of options with certain combinations.
As far as I know you can have as many as you qualify for, though there might be an upper limit at like 20 or something. Multiclassed characters get all the unique dialogue for all their classes, so I've had conversations with at least 10-12 options.
Religion beats arcana easily purely based on mirror of loss. I usually give everyone religion if I can purely for that as I don’t like to respec characters just for that. The only important arcana check is really for the treasure in the tower of sorcerers sundries. Could argue it’s used for necromancy of thay, but that’s easy to pass by stacking saving throw buffs
Honestly the main reason why Wizard and overall Int is mad mid in this game is because of how little Intelligence checks the game actually has. And most of the time you will have the 17 int item so you don't even care that much about dumping it.
The mirror of loss is the big one. I cannot think of other big int checks, lol. Being a smartass will not save you in Baldur's Gate, being handsome does. Such a reflection on how real life works.
Yeah - I mention this in the video, but my least favorite design decision is the one-character-per-conversation restriction, which when you think about it even slightly is just nonsense, and really hampers the knowledge skills. Gale's *right there* why can he not just tell me that's a shrine to his girlfriend or whatever. Every other game in the genre lets you do that.
I have to disagree with insight. It offers lots of NEW dialogue options you wouldn't be able to get without. You can always use inspiration to pass persuasion checks, but insight? Either you have it or you lose the dialogue.
Athletics is S tier and persuasion A? I just finished the game on honor mode (all the bosses) and never made any athletics checks while persuasion saved my party on fights like Raphael. There are better ways of repositioning than just pushing and definitely better ways of spending your bonus action. Stealth is also weird as this game is based on vision and in the most important fights - bosses, it’s useless as usually you cannot just hide and attack anyways (Raphael, endgame, Orin, Asur etc.). While in fights where it’s a factor it’s simply easier to have high initiative and nova everything before they even act 🤷♂️ I would also argue that it’s not only about number of checks in regard to int and wis skills as also the nature of them is important. On dialogue checks you can do stuff like use boosts, inspiration or straight up save scum while the ones that happens in the background don’t give you that option. Insight especially gives you a lot of additional dialogue options and although often you’re able to simply use detect thoughts, it’s not always available.
Nature and Survival are used to find buried treasure, so, for me, a loot goblin, they are S-tier Critical. Oh no, I didn't know about the shovel thing. My God, what have I been doing. Persuasion should be S+ Game Winning with all the fights you can talk your way out of.
@@Cephalopocalypse No, it's worse. I was save scumming, respecing full wisdom survival hirelings, and at times rotating my whole camp through my party line up just to get that pile of dirt to pop up.
1. Persuasion - basically a cheat code 2. Insight/Perception - many important checks 4. Survival - masses of free loot 5. Stealth - build critical 6. Athletics - don’t be a pushover Almost everything else is rp flavour imo.
@@Saturday_Jonesfunnily had a similar rationale for picking insight - I hate missing things. Like the Yurgir dialogue and persuading him and his gang to self destruct, which you can’t get to without insight. And until now, seeing Survival (failed) pop up four time would drive me insane!!
I go over this in the video - you can just dig up the treasure anyways! The game tells you when you fail a survival check, and you can just dig in that spot. You never need to actually pass the check.
I completely understand why you did it and I agree with you, but calling a skill "the most important skill in the game" and not putting it in the top tier amuses me
24:05 Sure you can still dig regardless you detected a digging spot or not, but what you failed to mention is that you need to know where to dig, unless you memorized every digging spot in the game then yes survival skill is F tier trash skill. For a first time player I'd say its marginally useful.
Hey pals! Thanks for all the great feedback! Check my recently-released Feats tierlist for some small updates to this one as well.
I’d put Persuasion in S+. There are two boss fights I can think of you can flat out win with persuasion, and three more where you can completely eliminate the first stage of the fight and reduce the danger your characters are in. The only skill that might be more useful is Stealth for a sniper build.
You can talk your way into Thorm just jumping into the pit and directly becoming the Avatar of Myrkul
@@charsiuwu8084 yup. You can -
1 - Talk Kaga over to your side and make that fight easier
2 - Talk three of Thorms undead kids into killing themselves
3 - Talk Thorm down twice and skip half of each fight
4 - Talk Orin into panicking and turning directly into the slayer to skip half of that fight
A bunch more smaller fights, but those are the big ones I remember.
Dont forget your persuasian proficiency and possibly expertise also reduces vendor prices.
@@OakandIVYurgir pt 1 will also kill his allies and himself with persuasion, or you can help him and he will be an ally later on in return. Yurgir pt 2 can be turned via persuasion as well.
Most busted skill for sure
But thats boring, I want to fight :).
Persuasion is my most used skill in the game behind sleight of hand and stealth... should definitely be S+
I think Religion for min maxing purposes is actually incredibly critical to scam Shar's Mirror. Scamming Shar should be a time honoured tradition, and is in my household.
This. If I made this tier list, I’d include a B+ “situational” for “there is one or two encounter(s) which this solves, but is otherwise not especially useful”. Would include Religion for Shar’s Mirror, Insight for Yurgir in Act 2, etc.
Respec each character when you want to cheese the mirror. Easy peasy.
Please enlighten me! The mirror didn’t seem to work when I used it, is there a hidden religion check or something?
@@joshsmith8466you have to pray too and donate state that you are 10 and dont deceive
@@joshsmith8466 Essentially there is a mirror that lets you add +2 to any stat, and yo take a negative 1 to a different stat thatcan be removed with remve curse. Whoever reads the Necromancy of Thay can scam it for free, and Shadowheart if you choose to make her go down the route of being a Dark Justicier, gets advantage on the Religion Checks.
Everyone else makes DC25 religion checks flat. When you scam this with respecs or whatever, you NEED to make sure the new character is high int with Religion.
I also think the religious elements of the Realms are just the best part of the setting, so what little you get from the few other Religion checks makes me happy.
Insight often rolls automatically when NPCs make hard statements to you - and knowing if they are hiding or lieing to you via insight is the ONLY WAY to know some NPCs aren't being truthful, hiding something, or gatekeep optons entierly. No skill checks can unlock these branches of the conversation trees.
Sometimes you can find books, notes, or other sources that tell you, but just as often there are none.
The fact that Insight is usually an automatic roll also increases the importance of having a good baseline bonus on your party face if you want to hit the dialogue options it unlocks. Because with those hidden rolls, you can't use inspiration or choose to add options like Guidance to shore up your chances. I don't know if it significantly impacts your chances of clearing the game, but in terms of story experience I'd definitely bump it up a tier or two, especially for your first playthrough when you're not already equipped with knowledge of what's up.
My first Honor Mode run ended when I was pushed off of a ledge in the Temple of Bhal in Act Three. Athletics matters! :-)
Funny when you do it, lame when you're in the receiving end
Sammme Orin tail swiped my Cleric and Barbarian into the void in one attack.
Persuasion also drives merchant prices making it far and away the best charisma skill
Is not Cha modifier? I will put my expertise in persuasion then
Both factor into the discount@@waterenchantress7619
Roughly each point in persuasion (which would include points in charisma) result in a roughly 10% decrease in price. Expertise is like 40+% discounts. His also increase the value of the things you sell.@waterenchantress7619
You can always substitute slight of hand if things look too pricey.
@@waterenchantress7619 The game is kind of misleading about it. The Charisma tooltip says that it "Influences traders' prices"... which is _sort of_ true (from a certain point of view), since Persuasion is a Charisma-based skill. But yes, it is your Persuasion modifier that impacts merchant prices.
You can verify this very easily if you picked up the Ring of Geniality from Barcus Wroot in Act 2 - the ring gives +1 to Persuasion, and if you equip/unequip it when talking to merchants the prices will change.
Other commenters have stated the value of Persuasion for being able to shut down multiple big fights, and also Insight for often being rolled passively in dialogue, making it vital for the party face, as well as any Avatar-only dialogue, since no other skills can unlock the interactions that insight can.
Which is why I stand firm in my belief that Guild Artisan is the best background for a tav/durge who acts as the party face. Unless you can't get other critical skills like Stealth or Perception any other way, Guild Artisan is the background to pick every time imo.
I definitely agree! Guild Artisan also has (anecdotally) the easiest and most frequent inspirations of any background, almost always for doing things you already wanted to do anyways. That and Urchin for simply being the best skill access are my two favorite backgrounds.
Dark Urge has the "Haunted One" background which is Medicine and Intimidation.
@@MistyKathrineYeah this. Unless I'm a complete fool Durge is locked into "Haunted One" which makes sense flavour wise but it is a restriction.
For honor mode, perception can and will save you. Stealth and slight of hand for easy access all manner of potions and/or items and gold. Persuation, deception, and intimidation are also good.
Nothing else is necessary.
Don't shove enemies into the void as you will lose loot. Don't position yourself where you can be shoved and insta gibbed. Just kill them. Items will allow low strength characters to jump as well as spells.
If you are playing honor mode then you know when specific skill checks will occur. Respec for those situations...looking at you Mirror of Loss.
Edit - performance for an achievement but you can respec out later.
Perception is the only real S+ skill in the game. The problem with stealth as well as persuasion (numerous commentors keep bringing it up as S+) is that, while powerful, they are totally optional. Yes, a stealth build and persuasion skill can completely bypass certain events or fights but ultimately, fighting or doing something else is always a valid option in these scenarios. Perception is the one skill that EVERY build needs. No matter how you approach the game you will need perception. This same issue exists in pnp.
Actually investigation rather frequently works in the field outside of the dialogue like perception -- not in the same places where perception would work, but rather some things are scripted to be perception checks, while other are investigation checks. Example of investigation checks are the wall to break in the foundry in blighted village (that leads to spider area) or which mushroom can you jump on and which are illusions in the Underdark.
Not saying it's too useful, just mentioning it's not a dialogue skill.
Honestly think Persuasion is Game Winning. You can bypass a lot of encounters in the game and talk your way out of so many situations. Personally feel it is more important than Stealth.
You can easily build a skill monkey that has proficiency in all skills, and expertise in like 15 out of 18 skills.
Id value insight at least at B tier because it is very useful in companion relationship dialogues specifically.
Agreed.
Why I love the Guild Artisan background, it gets that and persuasion.
Intimidation and Performance is better than they look because can always have Advantage with Thaumaturgy. So while they won't be as common, you will have a MUCH better chance of passing them. Also while Persuasion come up more than any other social skill, generally for all the really important dialogue choices the others are usually appearing (ie most of the extra Persuasion options are in throwaway minor dialogues).
The other big advantage is in general Role Playing. Picking a specific social skill that fits the personality of your character really helps for role play and immersion.
I disagree on stealth being S+. It’s a skill that’s only useful on a character who relies on stealth attacks. Something like persuasion is S+ to me because it’s useful no matter what class/race you’re playing as. It also gives you access to so many rewards, allies, and fight skips.
These guides are great! I've made several builds by learning from your honourmode build guides too, keep up lad!
Small correction for 19:00 ; Investigation is what gives you advantage on the roll to extract Us, Medicine is the roll you have advantage *on*
Good catch! That makes medicine even slightly better in that instance
Thanks for this very helpful! I was choosing survival before because of the buried chests but I realize from this its not worth it - especially not after the early game.
More tier lists (or top ten) would be very welcome! Subclasses, spells, high-value magic equipment etc.
One thing, take persuasion. Even though he somehow put it in the important tier, it is critical to have someone with persuasion proficiency. It will help lower price at merchants, skip boss fights,even many hard bosses.
I think persuasion should go on the S+ tier as well. In addition to everything you listed, you can outright avoid even some very difficult boss encounters (in some cases you get more XP for persuading them than fighting them) or convince certain foes to turn against their side and fight for you. Not to mention it is crucial for certain storyline elements for your companions. Also, it affects merchant prices as well as a side perk.
Protip for anyone wondering abt the risk of tossing enemies into chasms, dont do it on your first save, after that you know which enemies actually have loot or not so you know who you can sacrifice to the void 😂, by your third playthrough youll even start developing speficic strats to each particular encounter until youre a few tens of playthroughs in and you gotta willingly play nice for the ai to keep up with you on honor mode
Survival is sometimes the best choice if you aren’t picking it for a party face, if only as a time saver to avoid having to go into the inventory, find the shovel, and manually dig.
I’m gonna guess that Sleight of Hand, Perception, and Persuasion are S+
As always, thank you for your insight and persuasion ( you passed both checks ). However, perhaps in another video you might list the feats which compliment the skills listed above. I am aware that this would be a much longer and time consuming video. I merely request it ( did I pass my persuasion check? ). Again, thank you for your hard work.
For the one Acrobatics check in Act 1, it’s better to fail than to pass it. Passing it means you have to fight.
The topic I just was thinking about
S+ “Game winning” tier, my immediate thought was Persuasion, followed by “oh, I guess maybe Stealth could go there too”.
Persuasion is the skill that alters the game the most. Putting it below S just made me laugh, honestly - yes, you can win without it, but you can also win without sleight of hand or stealth (and I’d say easier, too). It’s at least three tiers above the next best, to my mind, and I’d only go without it on a challenge run.
Oh, I discovered on my honour mode playthrough that persuasion cuts through Ketheric’s human mode - you go straight to fighting Myrkul, which meant my party won that boss fight without any cheese and without ever hitting “end turn” - we went first, and Myrkul was down before we ran out of attacks.
Not possible if we’d ALSO had to beat down Ketheric in human form first.
@@Cthulhus_Mum it also skips the entire first half of the Orin fight in act three and she immediately shifts into her slayer form
I hardcore disagree with Persuasion only being A. Persuasion, IMO, is in a tier of its own in S++ tier. In Honour Mode, where you can’t save scum to avoid fights or failed pickpockets or anything like that, the best way to avoid dying is just to not fight at all. You can persuade a huge chunk of bosses in the game to just leave you alone or off themselves, normally through persuasion rolls. It’s incredible how little fighting you can do while doing a Bard playthrough.
You can persuade your way out of jail, out of fights, into lower merchant prices/higher sell prices, and save yourself a lot of tedious, long boss fights. Not to mention that in a large chunk of conversations, if it offers you a persuasion roll, that is normally the best option you can choose.
Not to mention niche things like how you have to persuade each party member to be willing to accept the astral touched tadpole, or getting free items from characters by persuading them to give them to you. Stealth, by comparison, is only super valuable on specific playstyles - but it is invaluable to those playstyles and makes even Honour Mode easy mode.
It's not level 6 trnsmute wizard, it's level 2.
My halfling 2 t wizard - 1 rogue - 5 valor bard - 4 life cleric is truly a one person band. Bard up, aid, and alchemy factory. In act 3 I have a whole mercentile sub game going on. Buy components, sell potions, gift stuff to drive buy prices down, sell prices up.
I really enjoyed this video and learned a lot about the importance of skills in Baldur’s Gate 3. You did a great job explaining how each skill works and how to optimize your character builds. I agree that stealth, athletics, and perception are some of the most useful skills in the game, and that animal handling and survival are pretty much useless.
Persuasion in S+ though :)
I'm always surprised in Build vids talking about Charisma builds how few people mention the Feat Actor... If you take 17 Cha and on level 4 take Actor you have a free Expertise in Deception and Performance without needing to even take the Proficiency, and you have the 18 Cha you like to get at level 4. Most builds just take 16 Cha and an AI instead
I got some very good mileage out of Deception that way XD
I think Chepa did mention Actor in his Bard build. Personally, I think Actor is not that impressive if you are a Charisma-based character. Especially if you are Bard and the MC, you get Jack of All Trade and Favourable Beginning anyway. I would rather have other amazing Feat like Sharpshooter, GWM, and of course Alert.
@@Hyprvate I have only build Bard Dex based with support spells, but Actor's been a great help for my Padlock to be a good talking head
He's actually mentioned it repeated in all his Cha builds lol
Great tier list! I'll definitly watch your tier list videos.
I would argue Insight is B tier. A good amount of the time it goes off the option it gives pretty much ends/skips the encounter right there.
Persuasion is absolutely top tier. 1/3rd of the bosses in the game can be handled just with persuasiom.
Not to mention all the little skirmishes you can avoid and allies you can gain. On top of all that, merchent prices are tied to it.
I think attacking when outside line of sight cannot generate surprise and results in a standard initiative roll after your first attack.
So hiding with stealth within line of sight is the best way to start a combat, and keep other characters right close by to take advantage of the surprise
Absolutely enjoy this type of content.
Nature skill is used for harvesting some alchemy resources
My personal favorite skill to use/max out would be Sleight of Hand. Very obvious S+ tier skill for any party, given how it makes it so that your resources (gold, healing potions, etc) are no longer scarce.
Along with persuasion (or deception) to talk your way out of trouble (e.i. in honor mode), and to get better prices. Easily the best skills in the game.
And yeah, Stealth *can* be goated af, especially if you're doing a stealth archer style build, but unless you're actually using it for that and such, is otherwise not likely worth it.
And early game, especially, perception so as to not get your run ended by traps. X.x
Persuasion also gives you better prices with ships, which is critical with the 3x price multiplier on Honour Mode
I really love these videos the only thing I would change is maybe adding timestamps for each skill so they are easier to look back at when building future characters. Anyways keep up the good work!!
Persuasion is a S+ for sure , lower prices at vendors , but most important you can talk almost all the bosses of ACT II to death , if that is not S+ tier i dont know what it is ....
Hmm jumping is athletics
Proces from vendors are persuasion
Dont forget those effects
Yeah, persuasion I probably need to bump up a tier - just to clarify though, jump distance is based on strength, not athletics
Ohh color me corrected. I was so sure it used athletics. But you’re right. Thanks :-)
@@Cephalopocalypseyeah, I was surprised you didn't have persuasion as the S+ skill since it can outright bypass a lot of hard fights or make them considerably easier. By far the best skill in the game for your face.
The problem is that often you can’t cheese enemies out of combat because enemies auto heal like the elemental in grymforge. Could shoot him so much before he complete healed
I think survival gives you warning of ambushes. The character says something about danger ahead. But it could be Perception as well?
Investigation is almost like a last chance to find things when you don't get them thru dialogue or specific items to start a quest that one might have skipped. 3 examples are the kagha quest where you can find the letter in the tree with the investigation skill, and another is the crew hidden in the storage place. On my first run thru the guys that give the password died and so never got it and when i got to the storage the guy asked for the password i gave the wrong answer and blew everything up. Which after i went doen the latch but because my entire party failed the Investigation i never found the hidden entrance. The last example is with Moi hidden base. If you failed on getting into the base thru doni with Investigation. The only way in is either you have a small character or disguiseself. There are situations that you just don't know about specially first time thru and Investigation helps find those things. It's very niche but it has it's functions outside of dialogue.
Depending on your build and difficulty level, some of the fights persuasion skips would be very difficult to win otherwise. You have to spend a lot of resources just to get to part 2 and part 2s tend to be the harder versions so spending your limited resources on part 1 only to have an uphill battle with part 2 isnt great, if not downright impossible if you were particularly unlucky with your dice.
In the 2nd Thorm fight in particular skipping the first part downright ensures that your party isnt in a horrible position spread out across the room only to get pulled by phase 2 off ledges into some spicy extra damage or, as has happened to me twice, off a magical ledge into a pit of doom that the game and I deffinitely disagree on being able to fit a humanoid in. And a certain ally that you can get is WAY more usefull ramming herself into part 2 instead of wasting her resources on part 1.
I can accept it not being S+ sure, perfectly understandable, but when I built a party for my latest run of BG3, the 3 skills I prioritized above all others were Sleight of Hand, Perception and Persuasion. And I didnt prioritize Stealth because outside of VERY cheese archery strategies, having points in it isnt that important. 9 times out of 10 a character with -1 stealth performs EXACTLY, not almost, not kinda sorta, exactly as well as someone with +13 points in stealth would. And the 1/10 use case more often than not STILL fails because you were in direct lighting so no stealth roll for you. Or because the game decided that succeeding in a stealth check means the same as failing a stealth check because apparently your toe was illuminated or something or your character decided that having their stealth checked is a valid reason to come OUT of stealth (granted, that is more than likely a bug and not intended behaviour, but still).
Im not saying stealth is useless, it isnt. Having someone in your party be good at it can give you reliable suprise rounds in a LOT of encounters throughout the game, but it IS an advanced strategy requiring knowledge on how the game works to get those suprise rounds off, instead of using up your rogues first action and everybody else in your party rolling initiative alongside the enemy because you forgot to turn on turn based mode before you shot your stealth sneak attack. It CAN be game breaking, and it can certainly be VERY advantageous to the point I would consider its proper use critical on Tactician, but I would perhaps not include "semi unintended cheese" a factor when ranking skills.
In some scenarios persuasion can quite literaly be the difference between you continuing the game and a rage fueled reload 2 hours earlier because your current party comp just isnt going to beat Thorm twice, so I would bump it up to critical. And Stealth should have 2 categories, one for regular play where its somewhere between important and critical and one all in its own "this breaks the game" category alongside "Jump" and "magical burning wooden boxes of teleportation". Also known as mundane run of the mill regular crates you find in every other room in the game.
Strongly disagree with your Charisma skills ranking, the shear amount of encounters where you can avoid combat or make your life easier in some way or another i think instantly puts them into S+/S and A for Deception. They are even more important now with Honor mode.
What I really like about BG3, among other things, is that there are no useless skills. Even Animal Handling is useful because it can give you unique interactions with animals that you can't get by using Speak with Animals. Also Insight is very important for your frontman, some very critical dialogue options just won't appear if you fail a passive Insight check. And Stealth is not really that useful unless you plan on being a stealth archer which imo is not that interesting and completely unnecessary if you don't solo.
Yea he made a small error he’s partially right you need speak with animals + animal friendship to get the full effect of animal handling. This is my favorite part of the game as well you can technically do everything it’s up to ur play style on that run it’s all player choice
Btw, re: Medicine, transmutation wizards can double their alchemy at level 2, not 6. Not sure if that’s something from EA
Don’t forget Persuasion helps make vendor prices better
The potion of animal handling doesn't just bypass animal handling the new check is easier.
Where are the time codes?
Ikr
Can you make a tier list for Ilithid powers?
Stealth is so weirdly behaving when its a game with AI and not a tabletop with an intelligent DM. For purposes of recon and moving around, fight pre-positioning as long as you avoid vision cones you can be the sneakiest mofo on earth with -1 dex, -1 stealth and heavy armor while at the same time you can have 9001 stealth with advantage and never roll it because 9/10 enemies have darkvision wich Larian implemented as instaspot instead of something like disadvantage/advantage enemy side. BUT when you commit to skyrims normiest gameplay style and/or greater invisibility the high +stealth w advantage turns from worthless dogshit to the most broken thing in the game which lets you clear entire areas without getting into combat. neato
I believe that animal handling can't be avoided with speak with animals on the "sheeps" in the bog to reveal the truth about them. I don't think I can come up with other examples
Good catch - though *that* can be bypassed with (iirc) Arcana or Perception when you first enter the swamp. Animal Handling just can't win!
@@Cephalopocalypse I think it is an investigate check DC 20 when you enter the bog. Moreso, in that case animal handling is not even the first choice, since it serves as a back-up check if you were to fail the main one (the investigate one), so yeah, they really handed it the short stick lol
It can. If you have speak with animal turned on, they try to baa at you very unconvincingly. You may still need to select the right option afterwards I think.
persuasion also affects the buying/selling prices at merchants, so if you’re not using cheesy pickpocketing strategies I would say it deserves a higher tier
Yes more tier lists please!
Nice video! Have you made a video covering good party compositions for honor mode? I think it would make a great topic.
I imagine it's coming. This seems to be the second in a series educating viewers to stand on their own, instead of following guides.
Coming soon!
@@Saturday_Jones yeah, that's exactly why I asked! I've learned a lot about character building through these videos.
@@Cephalopocalypse Awesome!
didn't mention that persuasion also lowers traders pricelists. i would put it at game winning myself
I think it's easier to just steal instead
Quick question but where do you have tier list on your channel? Is it in its own playlist or bg3 guides or where exactly?
21:04 put this on one of ur hirelings for cheese in early game if you don’t like pickpocketing everyone lol
persuasion should be at least S tier since the only reason you'd ever not take it is for roleplay.
I wonder how many comments have already pointed out that medicine checks are used for double potion brewing at level 2 and not 6
You're the first I think! I noticed the error after recording, but seems like no one else has :P
Insight must be an A tier. There are many dialogue branch we could see only if bypass insight. And we can't reroll these checks.
Also, surviving let us see stones we can move. We can't do it without bypassing this check. So surviving must be C tier.
What you said @ 13:15 "only the character that's actively doing the conversation can roll skill checks for it" is something the BG3 community really needs to talk about more! I noticed that you said "it's one of my least favorite things about the game" which is such a euphemism in light of how absolutely and utterly terrible and disgraceful this one simple mechanic actually is. I get that we love this game so much and avoid saying "bad" things about it, but this is just so incredibly stupid. While I get the counterpoint of saying a party could have invincible skill checks, it honestly kind of defeats the purpose of having a party altogether outside of combat. For a game that has so much outside of combat, this is a lot to consider. Exactly as you said, what's the point of having a 20 INT High Elf Wizard with Arcana proficiency or a horrible looking Barbarian Half-Orc with Intimidation proficiency if the person doing the talking is a smiling gnome bard? This really is enough to take a lot of out the immersion for me personally, especially when playing with friends. It makes it so you need to choose "the face of the party" (one character to do all the talking/cutscenes) and just automatically gives CHA based classes an ungodly favor for the main character if playing solo. It's one of those things you just have to live with, but it's also definitely enough to say that, despite being my favorite #1 game, I wouldn't """objectively""" review it as a 10.
Please tell me why the game at random points chooses any party member instead of your main to take part in important dialogue. This is so frustrating to me.
NO KIDDING. That's so frustrating to me as well.
Some dialogues seem to trigger off of proximity, so you have to move your party face in front (especially annoying for bards, who don't *want* to be in front), and some go on whoever took the last turn (Ethyl's surrender is the worst of these, in my experience it's Lae'zel's 8 charisma trying to convince her 100% of the time)
Great vid. I often find myself going wtf does this even do when i have classes with less priority skill options and im trying to make a decision.
Despite its in-game description, does Acrobatics affect difficult terrain saving throws (i.e. slipping on ice)?
It doesn't - which you reminded me I meant to rant about since it absolutely should, at least for non-magical surfaces. "Trying to run across a sheet of ice" is literally the first example given in the Player's Handbook!
Persuasion is definitely S+ and probably the best skill in the game, maybe tied with athletics as the best
Athletics is useless if you have Acrobatics. You can shove with spells, flourishes, etc.
Persuasion has to be S tier. It lets you win fights on its own and gives you lower prices on everything which is effectively a gold multiplier.
Persuasion is waaay better than Stealth. I never used stealth at all, since I used minor illusion to guide enemy sightlines.
Persuasion is also what you use to buy and sell things at vendors. The higher it is the more you get for your stuff and less for theirs
You should do a breakdown of the immortal armor of agathys ice build. Your input on that type of build would be great
I already have! :D Check out "The Invincible Tank Wizard"
tbh I think many of the later guides made on that build were copied from mine :P
Athletics and acrobatics...
Sonce ive given up on having melee characters its a non factor. Why would i risk injury/downed/death? Makes no sense. Spell and bow all the way.
I need animal handling skill because I keep forgetting I didn't drink the potion to speak with animals yet this long rest. It was last long rest 😂
stealth s+ ? ...and yet i had almost no issues with honour mode (only a couple really hard fights and usually because i was slacking on my prep work) and basically never use stealth. I agree it *can* be S+ - but you can certainly never use stealth and beat the game quite handily without it. I don't even run with Astarian since my very first run through. I have someone with decent (but not awesome) sleight of hand for lock picking..and that's it.
Speaking of dialogue options, is there a limit to how many you can have? Does the game only give you 4 or 5 options, or do they let you have all of the options you have? I figure you could run up a lot of options with certain combinations.
you dont get to make your own dialogue, it depends on alot of stuff though so you get quite alot of options if you fit alot of boxes
As far as I know you can have as many as you qualify for, though there might be an upper limit at like 20 or something. Multiclassed characters get all the unique dialogue for all their classes, so I've had conversations with at least 10-12 options.
I was searching just yesterday for a tierlist like this lol
Religion beats arcana easily purely based on mirror of loss. I usually give everyone religion if I can purely for that as I don’t like to respec characters just for that. The only important arcana check is really for the treasure in the tower of sorcerers sundries. Could argue it’s used for necromancy of thay, but that’s easy to pass by stacking saving throw buffs
Honestly the main reason why Wizard and overall Int is mad mid in this game is because of how little Intelligence checks the game actually has. And most of the time you will have the 17 int item so you don't even care that much about dumping it.
The mirror of loss is the big one. I cannot think of other big int checks, lol.
Being a smartass will not save you in Baldur's Gate, being handsome does. Such a reflection on how real life works.
Yeah - I mention this in the video, but my least favorite design decision is the one-character-per-conversation restriction, which when you think about it even slightly is just nonsense, and really hampers the knowledge skills. Gale's *right there* why can he not just tell me that's a shrine to his girlfriend or whatever. Every other game in the genre lets you do that.
@@Hyprvate the Int saving throws in Gith Creche to fuel the parasite are the only other one.
I have to disagree with insight. It offers lots of NEW dialogue options you wouldn't be able to get without. You can always use inspiration to pass persuasion checks, but insight? Either you have it or you lose the dialogue.
Athletics is S+ because it also makes you jump further
Athletics is S tier and persuasion A? I just finished the game on honor mode (all the bosses) and never made any athletics checks while persuasion saved my party on fights like Raphael.
There are better ways of repositioning than just pushing and definitely better ways of spending your bonus action.
Stealth is also weird as this game is based on vision and in the most important fights - bosses, it’s useless as usually you cannot just hide and attack anyways (Raphael, endgame, Orin, Asur etc.). While in fights where it’s a factor it’s simply easier to have high initiative and nova everything before they even act 🤷♂️
I would also argue that it’s not only about number of checks in regard to int and wis skills as also the nature of them is important. On dialogue checks you can do stuff like use boosts, inspiration or straight up save scum while the ones that happens in the background don’t give you that option. Insight especially gives you a lot of additional dialogue options and although often you’re able to simply use detect thoughts, it’s not always available.
Nature and Survival are used to find buried treasure, so, for me, a loot goblin, they are S-tier Critical. Oh no, I didn't know about the shovel thing. My God, what have I been doing. Persuasion should be S+ Game Winning with all the fights you can talk your way out of.
Yup, the fact that you don't have to pass the survival check is such a brutal revelation. All that loot, lost!
@@Cephalopocalypse No, it's worse. I was save scumming, respecing full wisdom survival hirelings, and at times rotating my whole camp through my party line up just to get that pile of dirt to pop up.
1. Persuasion - basically a cheat code
2. Insight/Perception - many important checks
4. Survival - masses of free loot
5. Stealth - build critical
6. Athletics - don’t be a pushover
Almost everything else is rp flavour imo.
Urf forgot Sleight of Hand. Big one for general gameplay.
Survival, skip it and just blindly dig when you fail a check
Ok scratch Survival, didn’t know you could dig anywhere and that is massive!
@@Saturday_Jones lol yeh, just wrote a comment about that having finished the video 😁
@@Saturday_Jonesfunnily had a similar rationale for picking insight - I hate missing things. Like the Yurgir dialogue and persuading him and his gang to self destruct, which you can’t get to without insight. And until now, seeing Survival (failed) pop up four time would drive me insane!!
Maybe it’s because I’m on custom difficulty but the game always tells me when I fail a survival role so I know to dig in that spot anyway 😂
Yep! That's one of the reasons survival is useless
I was with you until you didn't rank Persuasion S+... it literally wins you several critical encounters without a fight.
I’m curious about the claim that survival is useless- there’s so much buried treasure in this game, and the higher your survival, the more you get!
I go over this in the video - you can just dig up the treasure anyways! The game tells you when you fail a survival check, and you can just dig in that spot. You never need to actually pass the check.
W tierlist
This subject gets 0 attention. Thanks for covering it!
1: dont be durge
2: dont be an animal
oh not that kinda good? ok...
sightstone
I completely understand why you did it and I agree with you, but calling a skill "the most important skill in the game" and not putting it in the top tier amuses me
Haha, very true - though I did mean the most important skill in tabletop, where detecting hiding enemies is much more important :D
@@Cephalopocalypse fair point!!!
Epic
*Uses Alfira as thumbnail, a poorly-built Bard with high int and low charisma*
It’s obviously stealth…😂
I
Stealth is so gay...
Lame comment
24:05 Sure you can still dig regardless you detected a digging spot or not, but what you failed to mention is that you need to know where to dig, unless you memorized every digging spot in the game then yes survival skill is F tier trash skill. For a first time player I'd say its marginally useful.
You don't have to memorize it - you'll see the "survival check failed" popup, then just dig around where that happened!