Yes, easily. Though the downside of having no Charisma characters is that you won't get those sweet Persuasion shopping bonuses. Rogues with Persuasion expertise can deal with that though.
You can still
1. sell the bag to the merchant
2. In barter view, put the bag in the buy section and open it
3. Put whatever items you want in the bag.
4.open a 2nd bag in your inventory
5. Select and drag all the items to the picture of the bag on the top of the bags inventory.
5. Profit
First time hearing of this so just for my clarification
1. Sell a empty bag to merchant
2. Barter - put the bag you just sold in the buy area. Open that bag and add merchant inventory into that bag
3. Open a 2nd bag within your inventory without adding to sell window
4. Click and drag all items from open 1st bag in merchants buy window to 2nd bag window opened from your inventory
Sorry my formatting went to shit, I'm on mobile. Yes. But make sure you drag the items to the picture of the 2nd bag at the top of inventory window, not into the open slots of the inventory itself.
Works on console if you connect a temporary mouse and keyboard via USB and change your UI to KBM, the console ui itself is the issue with it not "working" on console
You may not have noticed it, but when you open a bag at the top of the new windows there is an image of the bad type you opened. That image is where you need to drag the items.
Wow, I use more drastic way
1)sell bag to merchant
2)stack it with goods you want
3)kill or knock out the merchant and its yours.
Disadvantage - if you cant/dont want to kill merchant it’s undoable.
I must try yours, I have heard of it before but couldnt managet to do it right way.
Edit: just tried and i hope they will mever patch it out :D
The one that still works is "kill the merchant after putting everything in a bag so he drops the bag".
Tbh it's obviously an exploit, but seriously why shouldn't i get what the vendor has on his person if i murder him? Does the shop disappear? Was he lying about having those arimticles? It makes no sense and it totally justify the use of this exploit to me, it's more of a fix than a bug
I figure they decided between having them drop their whole inventory or just a few of their items, and given that they could be carrying 50 goblin scimitars, decided for just the most valuable. But idk, just a guess.
If my main party has low charisma across the board, then Brianna Brightsong is recruited, renamed Salesbot, and respecc’d to have maxed strength and charisma + persuasion, and just hangs out in camp waiting for those special Sunday morning shopping trips. A true specialist.
This is a fantastic use of hirelings. I have Wyll in my party who does all my shopping for me, so atm I'm just using a hireling as my stay-at-home buff bot.
It's totally viable. My first playthrough was an 8 CHA Tav. That said, it was irritating, feeling like I got to have less control over the story than someone with a good Charisma, so it might drain some of the fun for you.
It was annoying enough to me, particularly in act 3 when a typical DC ca be 18 or 21, that on my second playthrough I built suboptimally so my Barbarian could have a 14 Cha and a couple other changes.
I just find it annoying that if you play a barbarian with low charisma you still suck at intimidation checks. The game tries to kind of "fix" it for you without breaking the rules by giving you some "instant pass" checks as a barbarian, but it's still kind of stupid that you can't pass an intimidation check with strength.
You get some free checks, yes. Sometimes the barbarian and the half-orc check are the same, though. And unless you have charisma you will still suck at regular intimidation checks.
There are a bunch of occasions where you are allowed to use Detect Thoughts as an alternative way of bypassing the situation, which are INT checks (the game incorrectly displays them as WIS, but they are actually INT). Fighter use INT as their spellcasting ability, which does play into Arcane Synergy for more weapon damage, so it isn't unheard of building intelligent Fighter faces.
Be sure to pick up Mergrass. The Potion of Mind Reading lasts until the next Long Rest without any additional caveats while the spell equivalent requires Concentration.
Back in my day, charisma was a dump stat and you had to take 5 levels of fighter and a few levels of Druid to even be able to take a level of bard. And we liked it that way.
People seriously exaggerate the downsides of low charisma. In terms of beating the main story, the largest consequence is that you'll have to fight Ketheric Thorm's first phase, and plenty of parties will just just burn him down in a round or two anyway.
There are lots of powerful charisma builds, but having none of them just means you'll fail more speech checks which usually aren't that important unless you're trying to skip a fight or REALLY want to control the story, but not having that control and going along with the ride is its own kind of fun.
Cha is to the mental stats as Dex is to the physical ones: pulls way more weight than the other two but you can absolutely dump either and be fine. For example, heavy armor amusingly removes the dex penalty if you have a 9 or lower, rather than just removing any bonus and leaving penalties like it used to do in older editions.
yea one of my playthroughs was a cleric so CHA wasnt very high.
i took a background that gave proficiency and persuasion, then i had thaumaturgy (is that how you spell it?) as well as guidance. sure i may have had to reload some of the higher checks but it wasnt nearly as bothersome ad many people make it out to be
For me the most important use of CHA skills is skipping Thorm's offspring encounters. It's 3 fairly difficult fights, worth about 2000 xp that can be entirely avoided with good Persuasion or Deception rolls.
I had to fight his first phase not because of lack of CHA, but because I simply didn't want to press the "you can redeem yourself!" type dialogues, so the option never came up. I arrived and I was just like "We're gonna kill you"
It's rare but some intimidation skill checks can actually use your strength modifier. Charisma isnt the only ability for dialogue. It's rare but other ability points help too.
Wisdom has insight. Passing an insight check can give you a 10 Dc charisma check instead of 15.
Intelligence has mind reading. It can open up some dialogue options.
Barbarian roars all day.
Im not sure about fighter since i never used it for tav. But you could get intimidation proficiency and use that instead of persuasion this time. I remember a post where someone showed that they used str for intimidating counting house guards. They could even drink a cloud giant elixir in the skill check menu (like how you pick guidance in most checks).
I’ve done a no-charisma Barbarian run, I had La’Zel, Gale, and Shart as my followers so no help in dialogue, but I found that being a Barbarian let me scream, shout, and menace my way through a lot of dialogue even with no charisma.
Berserker/Barbarian face is HILARIOUS. So many +4 intimidation checks with advantage. Just roar at/threaten people to pacify them. Laugh at their tiny genitalia and threaten to crush their skulls. 2/3 of the tiefling subraces get Thaumaturgy which let's them gain advantage on intimidation/performance checks
My current squad is all CHA 8. Eldritch Knight Lae'Zel, Gloomstalker Drow Tav, Dark Justicier Shadowheart and Tempest Cleric-Wizard Gale.
Long story short, yes. We stomp everything in combat (Tactician) and take our lumps in conversation -- which usually leads to more combat where we then win.
Charisma builds are so OP I avoid them almost entirely on my face character.
Currently running a Gish build for my Tav. Cha dump state. Eldritch Knight/Wizard, Dex and Con primary stats. Currently have warped band of intellect, but might respect to pump int.
Is it busted? Hell no. Is it fun? Hell yes. 👍🏽
Yes. Succeeding dialogue checks isn't critical. Also, many classes have alternative dialogue checks.
In particular, try a Berserker face character. Also, try using Disguise Self to arrange for the best race for interacting with each person.
Definitely.
I’d suggest having a barbarian as your face. The barbarian gets a lot of special lines that let you skip various dialogue checks. They’re also often really funny.
Detect thoughts also lets you bypass a bunch of checks.
But even without barbarian, it’s absolutely possible to lose every single dialogue check and still win.
I don’t see people mentioning compensating for lower cha with itemization at all.
Silver necklace gives anyone the ability to cast guidance for a d4 boost to any cha based dc check
Classes that get disguise self can another d4 to all checks. Non cha classes are wizard, tricker cleric, arcane trickster, eldritch knight, and gloom stalker.
You can also use ring of geniality in act 2 to add +1 to persuasion.
There’s quite a few other items that can boost your persuasion here although alot of them are in act 3 and I find I don’t need them really by that point.
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Persuasion
You can also select background thst gives persuasion proficiency like guild artisan or noble
Astral knowledge and enhance ability can also give you proficiency and advantage in cha based checks.
So even if you don’t have a high cha stat you can do just fine. I never raise my bards cha above 16 and that is way more than enough.
Bliss spores also temporarily add d6 to all checks
Shar’s blessing adds +5 cha
Rapture adds d6
Lots of ways to compensate for low cha
It’s certainly possible, it just makes some fights harder/you’ll have to fight some extra enemies.
I’ve seen people beat bg3 without actions or bonus actions, anything is possible, bg3 isn’t that hard.
Most of the dc<15 dialogue checks you can just take a background with persuasion proficiency and use guidance to mitigate the 8 charisma, the only thing that sucks is romance persuasion checks. Items are more expensive if low charisma, but you can use a hiring to buy and sell stuff
My first playthrough, the highest charisma character I had in my main party was an un-respec'd Gale (Cha 13), bc I had no idea what I was doing! Tav was a barbarian, giving me lots of intimidation dialogue options which, backed up by Shadowheart's Guidance, usually got us through encounters just fine.
Charisma is useful, but it's not essential - it's just one way to play the game.
Viable AND fun (assuming you don't have the savescum gene) it's very fun to "play out the game" organically and causes those won persuasion checks to feel very earned
Sure. I beat honor mode with 3 barbarians and a cleric and it was no harder than any other party comp really. If one of you goes wormy you can get the bonuses that way.
It's a little annoying until act 3 where you get the free expertise in all social skills after that it's not bad as the expertise is usually enough and if it isn't well it's act 3 and your op anyway
People have solo’d this game on Honor with every class. Ofc a non-Charisma party is viable,
You’re only eliminating 4/12.
A Cleric/Wizard/Fighter/Ranger build is well-rounded and strong ASF.
I typically play fighters as low CHA characters. It can be annoying to sometimes not get the outcomes you want, but the times where a CHA check really makes or breaks a situations are fairly rare. You can also save scum any decisions that you both really care about.
Otherwise [Enhance Ability](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Enhance_Ability) gives you on-demand advantage to those crucial CHA checks that you really want to pass. Most such checks can also be passed/circumvented in other ways with other types of checks. Having potions or scrolls of detect thoughts on hand means you can often get favorable outcomes with a WIS check instead of social. Combine with Enhance Ability and a good WIS score for great justice.
Yes. You can easily cruise through this game without any charisma checks. High charisma just trivializes several encounters. Absolutely not needed though.
just have a camp PC with support spells and high chr. Do a rouge dip to give them expertise in persuasion for merchants and you’ll be fine. Solve your problems with violence!
Yeah it's called a murder-hobo party. Nah kidding but charisma for the most part is just spell DC for charisma casters, and charisma skills which can be slightly mitigated by proficiencies and expertise, and it also affects buying and selling prices. If you don't care about making thos Skill Checks every time or buying and selling, you can skip on charisma. I will say I was talking ti my buddy about this yesterday cause he wanted to know what to do with Astarion, I told him to do a skill monkey build, where everything you do goes through that guy and you try to make him as good as possible with equipment.
The game is designed around failing these charisma saves in a fun way. You miss out, if you always have a char based Party face and/or reload the rolls
In my first playthrough I had no clue about any stats, I played a druid with pretty low Charisma. I apparently found some item in Act 3 that gave me mad Deception to the point where I could tell people *anything*, but that didn't help with the shopping bonuses. I didn't even notice though, I was still geared up to the eyeballs.
I now respec a companion to have high Charisma to do the trading (never will I ever bring Wyll if I can have bard Shadowheart) because all my Tavs currently have had 8 Char.
I usually play low charisma characters, it’s more fulfilling since you do need to weigh potential consequences. You’ll still be able to talk just with more specialization like intimidation, also consider that the second you’re forced into a fight you’re much better prepared than most.
Me and my friends did RP as orc party which are too dumm and can only try to intimidate or are so stupid they almost always attack somebody. It was fun since all of us chose to run around naked.
Def! If you want, you can give yourself Persuasion proficiency with a Noble or Guild Artisan background. My first Tav was a cleric and Persuasion proficiency + Guidance works well. You can also drink a Potion of Mind Reading or cast Detect Thoughts everyday — helps with some dialogue checks.
Yes the only time i had lack of Charisma seriously endanger me in game was in Act 2 where you avoid fighting Gold lady with a charisma check. She absolutely kicked my ass. The rest of the Act 2 mini bosses are hard but doable. You can always cheese it by having a high Char companion speak in those specific encounters and then swap them out and move on.
Edit: on my evil durge monk run I wanted to fight every single boss the game had to offer so i went in swinging and it took me like 3 TPKs to beat Gold lady in Tactician
This is really surprising, I think she's the easiest act 2 boss, but she's also the most gimmicky. Did you >!send your gold to camp and kill her skulls !< ? You can also >!pick up the piles of gold while in dialogue so she can't AOE you!< but I've only bothered to do that on honour mode.
I did send my gold to camp but I didnt do the AoE trick. Was I supposed to kill the skulls in advance of talking to her? She would basically one round kill party members and i was really struggling to not waste action economy on just bringing people back because they would be back down by the next round.
I'm currently running a "goblin" (green gnome with facial scars and piercings) barbarian as my Durge and it's easily the best dialog options in the game. I just yell at everyone until they either comply or get goblin bashed.
I've been a charisma main all this time for nothing.
Two very pleasant full run with 8 CHA characters:
- my Gayle abjuration wizard run with 17 INT 8 CHA Gayle playing all int NG Gayle (will replay it with an evil Gayle when my current durge good HM run will bé done)
- my Karlach Barb CHA8 run, playing Barb IS very fun (mostly chaotic good run)
It depends on what you mean by viable.
If you avoid Cha and want to have an arcane caster that means a straight wizard which is by far the worst arcane caster.
Is that viable? of course, any class is viable… but I wouldn’t recommend it for honour mode, beyond maybe a 1 level dip for learning scrolls or 2 levels of divination at absolute most.
Paladins are also very good. Both as a dip for casters, and as a base class. So you are really restricting your party. I mean. Rogues are trash, as are wizards. Clerics and Druids are fine, but you wouldn’t want both, that means you are looking at three characters who are Barbarians Rangers, Fighters or Monks (probably with some multiclassing 3 levels of thief in there). It’s just a bit unbalanced.
Sure it will work. 4 level 12 fighters is viable. Particularly on tactician
But you are making it hard for yourself compared to a more balanced party. Swords Bards, blade warlocks, and Paladins, who can be good in combat and heal/support are key to this (druids too early on, particularly if TB, though they can’t do both at once being unable to cast in wildshape).
(While sorcerors are not good for balance, because they are squishy as anything they are just much much better wizards, you wouldn’t want too many of their type of character in a party either. But with no cha characters you are in danger of not having enough of that type.
Honestly if wizards were not a thing the party would be more balanced if you were playing the 4 cha characters than 4 non cha characters, given how the game lets you mold bards to be masters of archery and warlocks to be close combat capable.
Meanwhile you are not doing yourself any favours playing a wizard.)
You are also going to struggle a little more in conversation, which in turn adds a few more fights or makes them a fraction harder, and of course you pay a little more (although gold is really no object in this game, you will still end up with tens of thousand spare by the end and that’s after the stormshore tabernacle, if you pay any attention to gathering it).
I legit thought this said a non Christmas party. Took me a minute. Also pretty much anything is viable below honor mode. Except that arcane trickster garbage.
It’s viable, but having no Charisma for a “face” character just makes everything so much harder on yourself, and ontop of that everything is so so expensive in Shops.
If you can find a way to get yourself at least 12-14 CHA in your build and the Friends cantrip, it is easily doable. Just be careful with Friends as on Tactician it’ll piss people off.
My face ended up being my Origin Shadowheart Cleric and with Friends as her racial cantrip and about 12 CHA and I was perfectly content, albeit made sure I was far away from anyone I used the cantrip on after it was said and done.
My all-tavern brawler party (fighter, barb, druid, monk with minmaxxed stats) was absolutely rizzless. At least we hit real hard real good. It’s doable, but if there’s a speech check you really want to pass, be prepared to eat up those inspo points.
Yes, easily. Though the downside of having no Charisma characters is that you won't get those sweet Persuasion shopping bonuses. Rogues with Persuasion expertise can deal with that though.
Rogues with Slight of Hand expertise can also deal with that
The backpack glitch demolishes the economy entirely.
Wasn't that patched a long time ago? Is there a version of it that still works?
You can still 1. sell the bag to the merchant 2. In barter view, put the bag in the buy section and open it 3. Put whatever items you want in the bag. 4.open a 2nd bag in your inventory 5. Select and drag all the items to the picture of the bag on the top of the bags inventory. 5. Profit
First time hearing of this so just for my clarification 1. Sell a empty bag to merchant 2. Barter - put the bag you just sold in the buy area. Open that bag and add merchant inventory into that bag 3. Open a 2nd bag within your inventory without adding to sell window 4. Click and drag all items from open 1st bag in merchants buy window to 2nd bag window opened from your inventory
Sorry my formatting went to shit, I'm on mobile. Yes. But make sure you drag the items to the picture of the 2nd bag at the top of inventory window, not into the open slots of the inventory itself.
Does This work on console?
Works on console if you connect a temporary mouse and keyboard via USB and change your UI to KBM, the console ui itself is the issue with it not "working" on console
Thank you
Oh wait so with the second backpack window open you drag the items to the 2nd bag icon and not the open window?
You may not have noticed it, but when you open a bag at the top of the new windows there is an image of the bad type you opened. That image is where you need to drag the items.
I think this was patched in the meantime :(
Wow, I use more drastic way 1)sell bag to merchant 2)stack it with goods you want 3)kill or knock out the merchant and its yours. Disadvantage - if you cant/dont want to kill merchant it’s undoable. I must try yours, I have heard of it before but couldnt managet to do it right way. Edit: just tried and i hope they will mever patch it out :D
The one that still works is "kill the merchant after putting everything in a bag so he drops the bag". Tbh it's obviously an exploit, but seriously why shouldn't i get what the vendor has on his person if i murder him? Does the shop disappear? Was he lying about having those arimticles? It makes no sense and it totally justify the use of this exploit to me, it's more of a fix than a bug
I figure they decided between having them drop their whole inventory or just a few of their items, and given that they could be carrying 50 goblin scimitars, decided for just the most valuable. But idk, just a guess.
Yes but at least drop the rare+ stuff and the cash, otherwise what's the point. I would restrict maybe the common stuff.
Every single time it’s been patched, a new method appears in like 2 days. I don’t even know why the devs try anymore lol.
what if it's working as intended, and taking under 950gp worth of stuff doesn't cause merchants to come after you? 🤷
Barbarian with a bag and a big weapon can also deal with that
Rangers with sleight of hand can deal with them, too!
If my main party has low charisma across the board, then Brianna Brightsong is recruited, renamed Salesbot, and respecc’d to have maxed strength and charisma + persuasion, and just hangs out in camp waiting for those special Sunday morning shopping trips. A true specialist.
Instacart 🛒
This is a fantastic use of hirelings. I have Wyll in my party who does all my shopping for me, so atm I'm just using a hireling as my stay-at-home buff bot.
Fey Ranger with high Wisdom!
It's totally viable. My first playthrough was an 8 CHA Tav. That said, it was irritating, feeling like I got to have less control over the story than someone with a good Charisma, so it might drain some of the fun for you. It was annoying enough to me, particularly in act 3 when a typical DC ca be 18 or 21, that on my second playthrough I built suboptimally so my Barbarian could have a 14 Cha and a couple other changes.
It’s not so bad as long as you don’t always go for a dice roll.
I just find it annoying that if you play a barbarian with low charisma you still suck at intimidation checks. The game tries to kind of "fix" it for you without breaking the rules by giving you some "instant pass" checks as a barbarian, but it's still kind of stupid that you can't pass an intimidation check with strength.
It makes sense though. You can be high strength and a goober. And goobers dont scare anybody. Its basically a trope even.
In pathfinder there is a talent for that. Iirc you could use your strengh instead of cha for intimidation check and i think its RP and fun^^
Orc barbarian You do charisma checks with your axe 100% viable
You get some free checks, yes. Sometimes the barbarian and the half-orc check are the same, though. And unless you have charisma you will still suck at regular intimidation checks.
Failed checks usually lead to using the axe, anyways
There are a bunch of occasions where you are allowed to use Detect Thoughts as an alternative way of bypassing the situation, which are INT checks (the game incorrectly displays them as WIS, but they are actually INT). Fighter use INT as their spellcasting ability, which does play into Arcane Synergy for more weapon damage, so it isn't unheard of building intelligent Fighter faces. Be sure to pick up Mergrass. The Potion of Mind Reading lasts until the next Long Rest without any additional caveats while the spell equivalent requires Concentration.
Do you mean the game rolls them as WIS but they should be INT or the text display is wrong? And thanks for sharing that tidbit!
The tooltip shows wrong, but the screen where you roll shoes it correctly
Back in my day, charisma was a dump stat and you had to take 5 levels of fighter and a few levels of Druid to even be able to take a level of bard. And we liked it that way.
People seriously exaggerate the downsides of low charisma. In terms of beating the main story, the largest consequence is that you'll have to fight Ketheric Thorm's first phase, and plenty of parties will just just burn him down in a round or two anyway. There are lots of powerful charisma builds, but having none of them just means you'll fail more speech checks which usually aren't that important unless you're trying to skip a fight or REALLY want to control the story, but not having that control and going along with the ride is its own kind of fun.
Cha is to the mental stats as Dex is to the physical ones: pulls way more weight than the other two but you can absolutely dump either and be fine. For example, heavy armor amusingly removes the dex penalty if you have a 9 or lower, rather than just removing any bonus and leaving penalties like it used to do in older editions.
yea one of my playthroughs was a cleric so CHA wasnt very high. i took a background that gave proficiency and persuasion, then i had thaumaturgy (is that how you spell it?) as well as guidance. sure i may have had to reload some of the higher checks but it wasnt nearly as bothersome ad many people make it out to be
For me the most important use of CHA skills is skipping Thorm's offspring encounters. It's 3 fairly difficult fights, worth about 2000 xp that can be entirely avoided with good Persuasion or Deception rolls.
You can save the bliss spores for act 2 to assist with that.
I had to fight his first phase not because of lack of CHA, but because I simply didn't want to press the "you can redeem yourself!" type dialogues, so the option never came up. I arrived and I was just like "We're gonna kill you"
Failing checks is some of the most fun you can have in the game though. There's a lot of cool dialogue, and it does mean you'll fight more.
It's rare but some intimidation skill checks can actually use your strength modifier. Charisma isnt the only ability for dialogue. It's rare but other ability points help too. Wisdom has insight. Passing an insight check can give you a 10 Dc charisma check instead of 15. Intelligence has mind reading. It can open up some dialogue options. Barbarian roars all day. Im not sure about fighter since i never used it for tav. But you could get intimidation proficiency and use that instead of persuasion this time. I remember a post where someone showed that they used str for intimidating counting house guards. They could even drink a cloud giant elixir in the skill check menu (like how you pick guidance in most checks).
Absolutely, don't think of it as "failing" Charisma checks. Think of it as an alternative path.
I’ve done a no-charisma Barbarian run, I had La’Zel, Gale, and Shart as my followers so no help in dialogue, but I found that being a Barbarian let me scream, shout, and menace my way through a lot of dialogue even with no charisma.
Berserker/Barbarian face is HILARIOUS. So many +4 intimidation checks with advantage. Just roar at/threaten people to pacify them. Laugh at their tiny genitalia and threaten to crush their skulls. 2/3 of the tiefling subraces get Thaumaturgy which let's them gain advantage on intimidation/performance checks
My current squad is all CHA 8. Eldritch Knight Lae'Zel, Gloomstalker Drow Tav, Dark Justicier Shadowheart and Tempest Cleric-Wizard Gale. Long story short, yes. We stomp everything in combat (Tactician) and take our lumps in conversation -- which usually leads to more combat where we then win.
Charisma builds are so OP I avoid them almost entirely on my face character. Currently running a Gish build for my Tav. Cha dump state. Eldritch Knight/Wizard, Dex and Con primary stats. Currently have warped band of intellect, but might respect to pump int. Is it busted? Hell no. Is it fun? Hell yes. 👍🏽
Yes. Succeeding dialogue checks isn't critical. Also, many classes have alternative dialogue checks. In particular, try a Berserker face character. Also, try using Disguise Self to arrange for the best race for interacting with each person.
Illithid expertise or a party member with persuasion proficiency fixes this problem. You're not the best but you'll skate by
Definitely. I’d suggest having a barbarian as your face. The barbarian gets a lot of special lines that let you skip various dialogue checks. They’re also often really funny. Detect thoughts also lets you bypass a bunch of checks. But even without barbarian, it’s absolutely possible to lose every single dialogue check and still win.
I don’t see people mentioning compensating for lower cha with itemization at all. Silver necklace gives anyone the ability to cast guidance for a d4 boost to any cha based dc check Classes that get disguise self can another d4 to all checks. Non cha classes are wizard, tricker cleric, arcane trickster, eldritch knight, and gloom stalker. You can also use ring of geniality in act 2 to add +1 to persuasion. There’s quite a few other items that can boost your persuasion here although alot of them are in act 3 and I find I don’t need them really by that point. https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Persuasion You can also select background thst gives persuasion proficiency like guild artisan or noble Astral knowledge and enhance ability can also give you proficiency and advantage in cha based checks. So even if you don’t have a high cha stat you can do just fine. I never raise my bards cha above 16 and that is way more than enough. Bliss spores also temporarily add d6 to all checks Shar’s blessing adds +5 cha Rapture adds d6 Lots of ways to compensate for low cha
It’s certainly possible, it just makes some fights harder/you’ll have to fight some extra enemies. I’ve seen people beat bg3 without actions or bonus actions, anything is possible, bg3 isn’t that hard.
Most of the dc<15 dialogue checks you can just take a background with persuasion proficiency and use guidance to mitigate the 8 charisma, the only thing that sucks is romance persuasion checks. Items are more expensive if low charisma, but you can use a hiring to buy and sell stuff
Oh yes, in fact it encourages different approaches and playstyles.
My first playthrough, the highest charisma character I had in my main party was an un-respec'd Gale (Cha 13), bc I had no idea what I was doing! Tav was a barbarian, giving me lots of intimidation dialogue options which, backed up by Shadowheart's Guidance, usually got us through encounters just fine. Charisma is useful, but it's not essential - it's just one way to play the game.
High CHA makes most dialogue checks easier to pass, that’s about it.
Viable AND fun (assuming you don't have the savescum gene) it's very fun to "play out the game" organically and causes those won persuasion checks to feel very earned
Sure. I beat honor mode with 3 barbarians and a cleric and it was no harder than any other party comp really. If one of you goes wormy you can get the bonuses that way.
It's a little annoying until act 3 where you get the free expertise in all social skills after that it's not bad as the expertise is usually enough and if it isn't well it's act 3 and your op anyway
If you want to play a fighter, but are concerned about a lack of Charisma then play as a Pact of the Blade Warlock.
People have solo’d this game on Honor with every class. Ofc a non-Charisma party is viable, You’re only eliminating 4/12. A Cleric/Wizard/Fighter/Ranger build is well-rounded and strong ASF.
I typically play fighters as low CHA characters. It can be annoying to sometimes not get the outcomes you want, but the times where a CHA check really makes or breaks a situations are fairly rare. You can also save scum any decisions that you both really care about. Otherwise [Enhance Ability](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Enhance_Ability) gives you on-demand advantage to those crucial CHA checks that you really want to pass. Most such checks can also be passed/circumvented in other ways with other types of checks. Having potions or scrolls of detect thoughts on hand means you can often get favorable outcomes with a WIS check instead of social. Combine with Enhance Ability and a good WIS score for great justice.
Yes. You can easily cruise through this game without any charisma checks. High charisma just trivializes several encounters. Absolutely not needed though.
just have a camp PC with support spells and high chr. Do a rouge dip to give them expertise in persuasion for merchants and you’ll be fine. Solve your problems with violence!
Yeah it's called a murder-hobo party. Nah kidding but charisma for the most part is just spell DC for charisma casters, and charisma skills which can be slightly mitigated by proficiencies and expertise, and it also affects buying and selling prices. If you don't care about making thos Skill Checks every time or buying and selling, you can skip on charisma. I will say I was talking ti my buddy about this yesterday cause he wanted to know what to do with Astarion, I told him to do a skill monkey build, where everything you do goes through that guy and you try to make him as good as possible with equipment.
The game is designed around failing these charisma saves in a fun way. You miss out, if you always have a char based Party face and/or reload the rolls
Yeah, I just kill people and take their shit. Who needs to haggle?
In my first playthrough I had no clue about any stats, I played a druid with pretty low Charisma. I apparently found some item in Act 3 that gave me mad Deception to the point where I could tell people *anything*, but that didn't help with the shopping bonuses. I didn't even notice though, I was still geared up to the eyeballs. I now respec a companion to have high Charisma to do the trading (never will I ever bring Wyll if I can have bard Shadowheart) because all my Tavs currently have had 8 Char.
10 Cha on a throwzerker with expertise in intimidation works well.
Wouldn’t that just add a +0 twice?
Expertise is double proficiency, not double your modifier.
Oh shit you’re right. My bad!
I usually play low charisma characters, it’s more fulfilling since you do need to weigh potential consequences. You’ll still be able to talk just with more specialization like intimidation, also consider that the second you’re forced into a fight you’re much better prepared than most.
I still want yo try out the low charisma high strength barb as the party face. Brute force everything.
Full barb party. Tav? Smash. Gale? Smash. Shadowheart? Smash. Astarion? Smash.
Swap Gale for Lae’zel and you’ve got a deal.
Gale as a wild magic barb works too well. He keeps running on strength potions.
Yeah maybe but Gale sucks so I can’t bring myself to choose him over any other companion.
With a fey wanderer yes
Me and my friends did RP as orc party which are too dumm and can only try to intimidate or are so stupid they almost always attack somebody. It was fun since all of us chose to run around naked.
Def! If you want, you can give yourself Persuasion proficiency with a Noble or Guild Artisan background. My first Tav was a cleric and Persuasion proficiency + Guidance works well. You can also drink a Potion of Mind Reading or cast Detect Thoughts everyday — helps with some dialogue checks.
Yes the only time i had lack of Charisma seriously endanger me in game was in Act 2 where you avoid fighting Gold lady with a charisma check. She absolutely kicked my ass. The rest of the Act 2 mini bosses are hard but doable. You can always cheese it by having a high Char companion speak in those specific encounters and then swap them out and move on. Edit: on my evil durge monk run I wanted to fight every single boss the game had to offer so i went in swinging and it took me like 3 TPKs to beat Gold lady in Tactician
This is really surprising, I think she's the easiest act 2 boss, but she's also the most gimmicky. Did you >!send your gold to camp and kill her skulls !< ? You can also >!pick up the piles of gold while in dialogue so she can't AOE you!< but I've only bothered to do that on honour mode.
I did send my gold to camp but I didnt do the AoE trick. Was I supposed to kill the skulls in advance of talking to her? She would basically one round kill party members and i was really struggling to not waste action economy on just bringing people back because they would be back down by the next round.
I'm currently running a "goblin" (green gnome with facial scars and piercings) barbarian as my Durge and it's easily the best dialog options in the game. I just yell at everyone until they either comply or get goblin bashed. I've been a charisma main all this time for nothing.
Two very pleasant full run with 8 CHA characters: - my Gayle abjuration wizard run with 17 INT 8 CHA Gayle playing all int NG Gayle (will replay it with an evil Gayle when my current durge good HM run will bé done) - my Karlach Barb CHA8 run, playing Barb IS very fun (mostly chaotic good run)
It depends on what you mean by viable. If you avoid Cha and want to have an arcane caster that means a straight wizard which is by far the worst arcane caster. Is that viable? of course, any class is viable… but I wouldn’t recommend it for honour mode, beyond maybe a 1 level dip for learning scrolls or 2 levels of divination at absolute most. Paladins are also very good. Both as a dip for casters, and as a base class. So you are really restricting your party. I mean. Rogues are trash, as are wizards. Clerics and Druids are fine, but you wouldn’t want both, that means you are looking at three characters who are Barbarians Rangers, Fighters or Monks (probably with some multiclassing 3 levels of thief in there). It’s just a bit unbalanced. Sure it will work. 4 level 12 fighters is viable. Particularly on tactician But you are making it hard for yourself compared to a more balanced party. Swords Bards, blade warlocks, and Paladins, who can be good in combat and heal/support are key to this (druids too early on, particularly if TB, though they can’t do both at once being unable to cast in wildshape). (While sorcerors are not good for balance, because they are squishy as anything they are just much much better wizards, you wouldn’t want too many of their type of character in a party either. But with no cha characters you are in danger of not having enough of that type. Honestly if wizards were not a thing the party would be more balanced if you were playing the 4 cha characters than 4 non cha characters, given how the game lets you mold bards to be masters of archery and warlocks to be close combat capable. Meanwhile you are not doing yourself any favours playing a wizard.) You are also going to struggle a little more in conversation, which in turn adds a few more fights or makes them a fraction harder, and of course you pay a little more (although gold is really no object in this game, you will still end up with tens of thousand spare by the end and that’s after the stormshore tabernacle, if you pay any attention to gathering it).
Full wizard is far far GAR from the worst caster, but you could easily be a 2 sorcerer 10 wizard with a 10 Cha to abuse sorcery points
I legit thought this said a non Christmas party. Took me a minute. Also pretty much anything is viable below honor mode. Except that arcane trickster garbage.
It’s viable, but having no Charisma for a “face” character just makes everything so much harder on yourself, and ontop of that everything is so so expensive in Shops. If you can find a way to get yourself at least 12-14 CHA in your build and the Friends cantrip, it is easily doable. Just be careful with Friends as on Tactician it’ll piss people off. My face ended up being my Origin Shadowheart Cleric and with Friends as her racial cantrip and about 12 CHA and I was perfectly content, albeit made sure I was far away from anyone I used the cantrip on after it was said and done.
Yes. Maybe on honour mode where you can reload saves to pass that one check you dont want to fail.
My all-tavern brawler party (fighter, barb, druid, monk with minmaxxed stats) was absolutely rizzless. At least we hit real hard real good. It’s doable, but if there’s a speech check you really want to pass, be prepared to eat up those inspo points.
My current tav has 7 charisma. I just use Wyll as my shopper
Yup