A Baldur’s Gate 3 screenshot has sent many number-crunchers into overdrive as one player spots the potential for more deeply customizable attributes in the RPG game. As Baldur’s Gate 3 draws ever closer, one recent snap of the Dungeons & Dragons game’s character creation screen reveals deeper options for how you’ll be able to build your Baldur’s Gate 3 races, and it looks like we might be getting the popular Tasha’s ruleset.
By default, your character’s ability scores in Baldur’s Gate 3 are determined somewhat by their race. Each race comes with specific bonuses – Gold Dwarf characters, for example, get two bonus Constitution and one additional Wisdom, while Drow characters get two Dexterity points and one in Charisma. They’re a nice way to both add some lore-driven flavor and help shape where your character excels.
Analyzing a screenshot of a Tiefling Rogue shared to the PlayStation blog, a player on the Baldur’s Gate 3 Reddit remarks that the character’s ability score balance isn’t using its default bonuses. Instead, they note, it appears they’re using one of the most popular ruleset alternatives.
Called Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, or TCE for short, this basically allows you to sweep up those stat point bonuses and plonk them wherever you like. So instead of having your Zariel Tiefling’s usual bonuses of two Charisma and one Strength, you could put those two points into Dexterity and one into Intelligence – in fact, that appears to be exactly what has been done in the screenshot below.
As thread creator ‘LuCasteles’ notes, it’s not possible for a Zariel Tiefling’s Dexterity stat to reach any higher than 15 naturally, or for their Strength stat to fall below 9. However, the character shown has 17 Dexterity and 8 Strength – suggesting both that the two-point bonus from Charisma has been moved over to Dexterity, and that the standard bonus Strength point is now allocated to Intelligence.
Of course, the TCE ruleset isn’t the only option here – it’s possible that Baldur’s Gate 3 simply lets you roll for stats, and in fact that’s something that many players in the thread suggest they’d like to see. However, this tends to give much more dramatic results – LuCasteles shows with a stat calculator that the spread in the screenshot perfectly matches the standard 27-point ‘buy limit,’ suggesting that this is unlikely to be a case of random rolls.
Personally, I’d be very happy to see Tasha’s implemented – it gives you that little bit more flexibility to your character creation without going too overboard in terms of completely shaking things up. It’s also pretty much accepted as a standard in modern D&D fifth edition, which has embraced the TCE stat rule in its rulebooks due to the increased freedom it offers players.
It does mean some min-maxers might feel a little pressured into picking Half-Elf – with two points to one skill (Charisma by default) and one in each of two others, they’re almost universally stronger using TCE than any other class – but ultimately Baldur’s Gate 3 is a role-playing game, and that trumps having absolutely optimal stats for me.
If you’re already writing up your character sheet, we’ve got all the Baldur’s Gate 3 classes so you can plan out your build ahead of the Baldur’s Gate 3 release date. It’s not far off now, so stay tuned – we’ll be bringing you all the latest information on this year’s richest RPG as it comes.