Baldur’s Gate 3 Highlights One Of D&D 5e’s Biggest Design Flaws

The 2023 RPG hit took some liberties with the fifth edition system it adapted, but some of its strangest elements come directly from the official rules of the tabletop RPG, highlighting some truly questionable design choices. Many RPG fans have become acclimated to the 5e system for nearly a decade, so the more baffling decisions have become familiar, but presents them in a new context. It is common knowledge that magic items are poorly balanced among the overly broad rarity tiers defined in the, but the presence of stat-replacing items stands out as an archaic throwback.

It is unsurprising that was 2023’s GOTY according to numerous publications, and the chance to experience a popular tabletop RPG system in video game form is consistently entertaining for fans. The game stays largely true to the rules, though magic items are an area where it takes many liberties, removing the Attunement system, and adding many custom items. Players quickly noticed the power of the items that replace one of the six base statistics with a set score. Combined with the ability to respec a character’s build at any time, players can easily respec to “dump” a specific stat to 8, saving ability score points for others.

Though there are stat-replacing items in that are not present in official 5e, like the Gloves of Dexterity that set Dexterity to 18, and the Amulet of Greater Health that sets Constitution to 23, these follow the paradigm set by real items. The most essential items for righters include the 19 Constitution-granting Amulet of Health and one of the various Strength score replacement items for melee builds. Realistically, nearly every character is better off dumping Constitution and Attuning to an Amulet of Health in high-level campaigns where magic items are readily available, save for very niche builds that specifically use Constitution.

Characters that rely on Intelligence, like a wizard or Battle Engineer artificer, will prefer a 20 over the 19 granted by a Headband of