Baldur's Gate III (2)

[Keltest]

Right, but here's the thing, if you have high Int it doesn't look like a risky option, because you have placed investment in the thing it tells you it is going to require. It says "this is a difficult test of that stat you have a good score in, you can try it because of that investment you made".

It's only a bad decision because of information you didn't have when you made it, to whit that there's a Wis test as well that also requires a second stat to be very high.

If both pieces of information were present in advance, then you would be able to raise this argument.

But they aren't. You can't find out it was a bad decision until after you've made it, and it's a bad decision not because of the fiction, but because the mechanics make it difficult to succeed for reasons not available before you started trying.

No, if you have high int, it looks like an option at all. Low int characters dont look at it and think "this is a thing i can feasibly try." There is nothing, at all, that says that passing the check guarantees you do it safely, just that you can do it. "Success with consequences" is considered a staple of interesting D&D for a good reason.