BG3 OP Skill Check Build

[Godspeed]

Race: Elf with the Wood Elf Sub-race.

As of Early Access the Wood Elf Sub-race is the only racial combination with more than 1 proficiency bonus. Perception & Stealth.

Class: Ranger

We will be taking the Ranger class because they have an innate mechanic at level 1 letting them pick a Favoured Enemy AND Natural Explorer trait. This enables the player to pick another 2 proficiency check options.

Favoured Enemy: Sanctified Stalker. This gives you the Religion proficiency bonus. You can optionally pick Mage Breaker to fill the Arcana proficiency, but early in the game, you come across the 'Book of Dead Gods' which requires a 10 Religion DC Check.

Natural Explorer: Urban Tracker. This is the only option that gives us an extra proficiency check. We gain Sleight of Hand proficiency from this choice.

Origin: Noble

We are going to pick the Noble option because it gives us proficiency in both History and Persuasion. We want to pick these up as a Ranger can't naturally gain proficiency in either of these without the background.

You can optionally pick Sage or Entertainer, Sage will cover the missing Arcana checks. This comes down to whether or not you want your player character being the one initiating dialogue or not. Persuasion from the Noble Background covers rangers weak charisma checks, which are more prominent early in the game.

Proficiency Choices.
1. Insight
2. Investigation

We pick up investigation 100% of the time here. It allows the player to discover hidden interactions in the world, treasure hidden under rocks, hidden switches to bypass doors, etc.

Insight is a personal preference since it allows you to better understand what your companions are feeling during scenes with them, without upsetting them, using your Parasites powers.

3. Athletics, Nature, Animal Handling.

I have a preference for Nature here. You can use the SPEAK WITH ANIMALS spell, from a potion you can pick up early in the game AND as a Ranger Spell while levelling. This bypasses the need for Animal Handling in MOST situations. Athletics can help with discovering treasures by moving rocks, but just having an STR based companion does the same thing.

Feat 1: Skilled

This allows us to pick up 3 more proficiency checks, even ones Ranger can't inherently chose during character creation.

1. We are going to pick up whichever we missed here during character creation Religion OR Arcana

2. Medicine. There are dialogue scenes further into the game where this skill check is useful and changes the dynamic of the scene if you pick it up early enough.

3. Deception / Intimidation / Survival / Performance.

Any of these 4 options will offer you additional dialogue options, Performance is especially fun if you pick up PERFORMER as your second feat.

[Godspeed]

Ultimately with this build you gain proficiency in:

Sleight of Hand
Stealth
History
Investigation
Nature
Religion
Insight
Perception
Persuasion
Arcana
Medicine
Performance

Perfomance and Medicine can largely be swapped out at will
and Nature can be swapped out in a limited capacity with any 1 ranger skill of your choice.

[Foolswalkin]

In full release, start with Rogue, MC into Ranger, end up 7 rogue 5 ranger. You'll end up with two more skills, plus double Expertise from Rogue.

[Godspeed]

Originally posted by Foolswalkin:

In full release, start with Rogue, MC into Ranger, end up 7 rogue 5 ranger. You'll end up with two more skills, plus double Expertise from Rogue.

Nice addition, might be worth looking at multi-classing to give your rolls advantage as well since you will have AT-LEAST 12 proficiency skills.

Your companions can always substitute what you're lacking, but having the abilities yourself gives your character more agency and control.

Something like a Wizard to pick up Detect Thoughts and whatever else.

[Foolswalkin]

Also, Gloomstalker 5/Assassin 7 has a jaw-droppingly lethal first turn of combat.

Might travel with Wyll so he can Mask of Many Faces to get race-based diplomacy options, and, eventually, Speak with the Dead, each an unlimited number of times. Kill first, look like someone who didn't kill them, then ask questions later.

[Indure]

Wait, who would create a build focused around skill checks and not take bard?

Most skills, expertise, bardic inspiration, kack of all trades, magic spells to help with checks, and charisma as you main attribute with social checks seeming to be the most common and most important checks.

[Foolswalkin]

Originally posted by Indure:

Wait, who would create a build focused around skill checks and not take bard?

Most skills, expertise, bardic inspiration, kack of all trades, magic spells to help with checks, and charisma as you main attribute with social checks seeming to be the most common and most important checks.

You're a kack of all trades, that's who!
I'm so sorry, I lash out for no reason sometimes.

Look, I definitely intend to play Bardadin first, but a. we're starting with a ranger chassis here and b. warlock is still a viable party Face. You lose the expertise, sure, but you can still cast Friends, have all the social skills and the stat to back it up, and you get unlimited Disguise self to take advantage of whatever look will get you the best options. So, less math and more completely changing the game (e,g. drow to intimidate gobboes).

Dex/Wis, the ranger stats, have a lot of good skills, as well as Best Skill Perception.

[Godspeed]

Originally posted by Indure:

Wait, who would create a build focused around skill checks and not take bard?

Most skills, expertise, bardic inspiration, kack of all trades, magic spells to help with checks, and charisma as you main attribute with social checks seeming to be the most common and most important checks.

While I agree with most of this. Jack of All Trades is basically useless with the ranger integration since you are proficient in nearly every skill check with this build. Your only missing about 6.

One interesting thing here though, is picking up bard "essentially" gives you the performer and acrobatic proficiency skills, not directly but simply being a bard gives you the same dialogue options as having both of them.

[Godspeed]

Originally posted by Foolswalkin:

You're a kack of all trades, that's who!
I'm so sorry, I lash out for no reason sometimes.

Look, I definitely intend to play Bardadin first, but a. we're starting with a ranger chassis here and b. warlock is still a viable party Face. You lose the expertise, sure, but you can still cast Friends, have all the social skills and the stat to back it up, and you get unlimited Disguise self to take advantage of whatever look will get you the best options. So, less math and more completely changing the game (e,g. drow to intimidate gobboes).

Dex/Wis, the ranger stats, have a lot of good skills, as well as Best Skill Perception.

This might just be the best multi-class option actually. Great Old One Warlock gets detect thoughts, uses Charisma as their main stat, gets Mask so you can get all the racial dialogue options.

[Foolswalkin]

Originally posted by Godspeed:

Originally posted by Foolswalkin:

You're a kack of all trades, that's who!
I'm so sorry, I lash out for no reason sometimes.

Look, I definitely intend to play Bardadin first, but a. we're starting with a ranger chassis here and b. warlock is still a viable party Face. You lose the expertise, sure, but you can still cast Friends, have all the social skills and the stat to back it up, and you get unlimited Disguise self to take advantage of whatever look will get you the best options. So, less math and more completely changing the game (e,g. drow to intimidate gobboes).

Dex/Wis, the ranger stats, have a lot of good skills, as well as Best Skill Perception.

This might just be the best multi-class option actually. Great Old One Warlock gets detect thoughts, uses Charisma as their main stat, gets Mask so you can get all the racial dialogue options.

Warlock 2/Lore Bard X is great, but you really want both agonizing and repelling on EB, and if you also want mask you're hanging as a Warlock till 5th level. That is less good.

[Godspeed]

Originally posted by Foolswalkin:

Warlock 2/Lore Bard X is great, but you really want both agonizing and repelling on EB, and if you also want mask you're hanging as a Warlock till 5th level. That is less good.

Warlock also gets Beguiling Influence as an Eldritch Invocation, giving you another 2 potential proficiency skills. You'd be picking it up exclusively to support your "win all the skill checks and dominate dialogue build" not for damage.

4 in Ranger till you get your first feat, 5 in warlock is a good balance to this end.

If Larian lets us multi-class more than once, you could probably pick up 1 level of bard at some point for the additional bard dialogue options and musical instrument playing, to bypass the performer and acrobat proficiency checks. This would give the player proficiency in all but 2-3 skills.

Otherwise I'd just stick to 5 ranger 5 warlock.

[Foolswalkin]

At 3rd level, Bard gets expertise, and also at 3rd level Lore Bard gets three more proficiencies of their choice. You’re unlikely to come out ahead in a skill build by skipping it in favor of Ranger. Gloomstalker assassin has both skills and combat to spare, but it can’t compete if you’re already throwing combat away.

I don’t think you’ll have the stats to truly benefit from putting all skills on one character anyway, but if that’s your concept go ahead on, you can always respec if combat is a problem.