Current Events > Elden Ring. Does starting character matter?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Decided to go for the bake guy at level 1. Does it make any difference to overal stats at all or am I just starting a few levels behind?

Bake guy is obviously the best if you want a cooking build

no, outside of maybe allowing you to use weapons/spells by meeting the minimum requirements.

you'll have a lot of freedom to level up and find a build you like as the game goes on.

Starting characters in Souls games don't matter

It's just starting stats and equipment. You can gain stats in any way you want. I stuck with dex/int as a prisoner, but a streamer I watched started as the same class and ended up going faith/arcane.

The only thing I might recommend is that you not go prisoner because they start with six faith instead of seven like the other classes. There are a couple of useful utility faith spells that require twelve faith and you can hit that with a +5 faith talisman in those situations.

Stat allocations and levels differ among the classes, but these differences only matter inasmuch (a) you want to use a particular type of weapon that has a higher minimum stat requirement earlier or (b) you're wanting to min-max. Otherwise, just pick which starts with a weapon/spells you like.

It only matters for people min maxing their stats for minute gains in PvP.

For example, if your build does not require the Arcane stat whatsoever then you choose Vagabond because their starting score of 7 means the least levels are 'wasted' on that stat

If you're trying to min-max for PVP duels, then it matters since there's usually a level cap that the community agrees upon, and if you go over the level cap it will be harder to find duels. And because of the level cap you probably don't want your points going ro waste on stats that you don't need.

If you don't care about that, then no, the starting class doesn't really matter aside from giving you a jump start into a certain build (like Sorcerors already having a great starting INT stat for INT builds or Prophet for Faith builds and so on).

It matters to me

Yes, depending on if you intend to pvp or not. Which is capped at lv150 if I recall?

So your starting class could be the differance between a optimal build or a unoptimal one that may force you to equip certain gear to meet specific build requirements.

Otherwise though it can become annoying mid game when you unlock respec, and are barely shy of points for something because a handful are locked into a stat you don't use.