What is Proficiency Bonus?

Proficiency Bonus affects a character's success rate during d20 rolls and in Baldur's Gate 3. Learn more about Proficiency Bonus, how it works, as well as how to increase it!

What is Proficiency Bonus?

Contributes to the Success of Dice Rolls

A character with a proficiency in a certain ability or skill will receive an additional bonus value to the result of d20 dice rolls such as ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws that involves those proficiencies.

This increases the chance of the dice roll to be successful as it adds a few more points to the result of the roll — allowing you to reach the required number for the check to succeed!

Additonally, Proficiency is determined by a character's chosen race, class, and background. When creating characters, be sure to carefully decide on your class and race as proficiencies cannot be changed later on.

Character Creation Guide

Affects Effectiveness of Weapons

Each character can also get proficiency bonuses in certain weapons depending on their proficiencies. This is marked by a ”+ and value” in a weapon's description when inspecting it in your inventory.

As an example, being proficient in Strength grants a proficiency bonus to all melee weapons such as longswords and daggers.

List of All Weapons

How to Increase Proficiency Bonus

Increases by One Point at Level 5 and Level 9

The base value of a proficiency bonus is +2 and the amount increases by +1 as you reach levels 5 and 9. Since Baldur's Gate 3 has a level cap of 12, your maximum proficiency bonus at level 12 will be +4.

Baldur's Gate 3 Related Guides

Baldur's Gate 3 Beginner's Guide