All Baldur’s Gate 3 skills and what they do

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a big game with a lot of skills. When making your character, you’ll want to know what every skill does because skills govern your chances of performing a specific task. Here is what every skill in Baldur’s Gate 3 does.

Note: If you’re still deciding which class and subclass to pick in Baldur’s Gate 3, then you should check out the full list of all Baldur’s Gate 3 classes and subclasses.

What do all the skill proficiencies do in Baldur’s Gate 3?

Aside from giving shape to your character’s personality, skills in Baldur’s Gate 3 are used to pass specific checks. Everything in Baldur’s Gate 3 must pass a d20 roll to be successful, and your skills can give you an extra boost if you are proficient.

For example, if you are sneaking and enter into an enemy’s line of sight, the game automatically does a d20 roll and adds (or subtracts) your ability modifier plus your skill proficiency. Your ability modifier is determined by one of the six core abilities: strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. More on that in another guide. If you have a proficiency in stealth, then you’re more likely to pass those stealth checks.

While skill proficiencies help you pass difficult skill checks, you also need them to wield specific armor and weapons. In general, skill proficiencies give you plus one or two to skill checks, which is always a good thing.

• Strength
  • Athletics – Physical actions like climbing, jumping, shoving, picking things up, or swimming.
• Dexterity
  • Acrobatics – Physical actions like balancing, staying on your feet, and dodging traps and enemy grapples.
  • Sleight of Hand – Helps when pickpocketing or getting out of traps.
  • Stealth – Your ability to sneak.
• Constitution
  • NA
• Intelligence
  • Arcana – Knowledge of magic and its applications. Used when interacting with enchanted items and powerful spells.
  • History – Knowledge of Faerûn’s past. Helps you recognize notable names and unusual items.
  • Investigation – Helps your deduction and ability to extract information from the world and people.
  • Nature – Knowledge about all flora and fauna. Help you recognize plants and animals.
  • Religion – Knowledge about deities, domains, clergy, and religious practices. Helps in any skill checks pertaining to religions.
• Wisdom
  • Animal Handling – Helps when dealing with animals. Also helps you control your mount when they get startled.
  • Insight – Helps you read people and situations and determine what is true and what is a lie.
  • Medicine – Helps when healing wounds and diagnosing illnesses.
  • Perception – Helps you detect hidden details in the environment.
  • Survival – Knowledge of tracking, foraging, hunting, and being familiar with natural hazards.
• Charisma
  • Deception – Helps you manipulate the truth.
  • Intimidation – Helps you successfully threaten people.
  • Performance – Helps you act, play instruments, and entertain audiences.
  • Persuasion – Helps you convince others to do something they don’t want to.

I often find all the skills in Baldur’s Gate 3 to be confusing. Especially the skills that sound like they overlap like Athletics and Acrobatics, Investigation, Insight, and Perception, Animal Handling and Nature, and Deception and Persuasion.

Note: If you ever want to start over in Baldur’s Gate 3, you can by respeccing your character.

To break it down even further, Athletics helps you with jumping, throwing, climbing, things like that and Acrobatics helps you stay on your feet when crossing a tight rope or walking on ice. Investigation is a manual check you can use in conversations and observations, Perception is an automatic check that happens as you explore the open world, and Insight is used in manual checks and it allows you to see the truth in what people tell you.

Animal Handling deals directly with how you treat animals and Nature deals with plants and animals. Deception helps you get away with lying and Persuasion helps you trick people into doing something they would rather not do.

What are the best skill proficiencies in Baldur’s Gate 3?

• Persuasion
• Perception
• Athletics
• Stealth
• Investigation

While you should create the exact character you want by selecting the skills that match their personality instead of picking the “meta” skills, there are a few skills in Baldur’s Gate 3 that are much more useful than others.

Persuasion is the best skill to have when communicating with people because it allows you more options to get what you want. Perception is a must because it helps you find secrets in the world. Athletics is great, especially for bigger races and tankier classes, because you can jump further, throw further, and swim further. Stealth is more geared for Rogues, but all classes benefit from it because it allows you to do stealthy missions and get the jump on your enemies. Investigation is the final skill I recommend because it gives you more information when observing everything in the world, and knowledge is power.

The skills that are more situational and not as powerful as the others are Religion, History, and Performance. While these skills can be helpful, they are much more niche and are used much less often. Now that you know what all the skills do and which ones you want to focus on, you might want to learn what all the Feats are and how to get them.