We REALLY, REALLY NEED Variant Humans

Yeah, either that or go back to level limits for non-human player races.

"Now there's no more Oak oppression, for they passed a noble law. And the trees are all kept equal, by hatchet, ax, ... and saw!"

YES! Variant humans PLEASE! Also roll for stats.

+1

+1 for a Geddy Lee lyric quote!

Humans drool; Elves rule.

sorry i'm new to dnd5e. just why human is bad? +1 to all ability score that would be it's wise to make all scores odd to gain advantage on it? checked fextralife human only has base racial speed and no subraces. if humans really do suxs, is there anything larian can do about it seeing it's tied to dnd?

Most classes only care about 2 to 3 ability scores, so it's usually better to get a +2 in your main stat than a +1 in a stat you don't often use. And it's very unlikely that all your ability scores will be odd, so some of the +1's will be going to waste.

Additionally, base humans don't get any cool abilities like darkvision or a vampiric bite or a free spell or a breath weapon or natural armor. Combined with above, they are generally underpowered and give the player less options during gameplay compared to other races. Take the Half-Elf: ASIs are Cha +2 and two other scores +1 (so almost as good, if not better, than base human already), but then they also get Darkvision, Fey Ancestry, and proficiency in 2 skills.

D&D has an optional Variant Human that gets two +1s, proficiency in a skill, and a feat, which is nearly universally regarded as a better option than the base-human. This rule is in the base Player's Handbook, so Larian really should implement it. (Though I might argue that they should only get a single +1 to an ability score because some feats are just so incredibly powerful).

It mostly depends on the looks for me. I usually play humans but here I choose halfelf because at least one of the heads looks nice. I don't like the hairy muscular body for an elf, but there is only one for all, so be it. Human male heads all were ugly last time I checked. The stats for humans indeed are not the best, something should be done about it; but if halfelf had the same, I would nevertheless take it.

You can probably justify being Human for some specific builds if you know you will have, say, 12+ levels; but it is certainly difficult in EA with a level-cap of 4 to see any reason to choose human, which is completely at odds with the original D&D where Human was an obvious choice.

"Good? Good? Ms. La Belle, elves aren't 'good'... they are better. These people can run twice as fast as you can without making a sound. They can see to the farthest horizon on a starless night and they can hear the heart beat of a mouse. They don't sweat. If they fart, you'll never hear about it. They can go into a human town and **** everybody's wives, sons, and daughters for fifteen hours straight, they are going to live forever... and can you imagine what would happen if the brand-new emperor had stood before his people and said, 'Hey, these are the people who are going to be in charge of you.' Do you think the people who had just thrown off one tyrant would have just rolled over and accepted that?

Didn't Neil Peart write all the lyrics?

Yes please...variant humans and vanilla Half Elf. Both of these are easy to code. The mod version allows you to select any Half-Elf portrait, which works nicely. These are both in the standard players handbook.

I thought dice roll was a verbal confirmation already.


P.S. Neil Peart writes the Lyrics and Lee sings them...great album!

P.S. Neil Peart writes the Lyrics and Lee sings them...great album!

Thanks for the clarification. I always just think of Geddy Lee’s vocals, but should give writing credit where it’s due. My first Rush concert was the Moving Pictures Tour in February 1981. Saw them a bunch of times over the years. Amazing that 3 people can put out that quality and complexity of musicianship in a live show.

But the reality is that with Variant Human the "normal" human is death on arrival.
I think the normal human needs a plain +2Stats for a useful Attribut modifier and a solid base for Multiclass in every direction.

A Shield dwarf Tank has +2Con +2Str ++ battlehammerprofiency , axeprofiency and Darkvision
A Human Tank +2Con +2Str but maybe better at Mulitclasses when a 3 Attribut comes into play or you use a Sword which negates the Shield dwarf Profiency bonus. But he has Darkvision...
I think thats balanced in a way.

thank you!. that helps alot. if that's the case i'm in favor of the variant human.

which specific builds that justify the human race at 12+ levels? genuinely would like to know.

Human's are the only race that can get a 16 in str, con, and dex during character creation. This is a minor advantage, at best, but it does allow for an AC 16 barechested barbarian, if that's a thing that you want.

Honestly, so what if the normal human is dead on arrival? It almost certainly is in pnp dnd. Compared to variant human its very niche in what it can do. Like some people said you can do very specific things with it but for every other other build variant human is just better.

And thats oke. For some builds races like elves are bare non the best. Or dwarves. If people want to pick those options they can do that. Almost all of the other PhB race options are in the game and some that arent in the PhB at all! So why not variant human?

Compared to alot of other races humans already get no darkvision, no racial spells, no resistances, no bonus proficienes, no better speed then 30 feet (looking at you wood elves), etc etc. Variant human was one of the only things going for players who wanted to play a human and now theyre robbed of that as well


+1 for variant humans. I would like to see rolling for skills but I feel it would just be us rerolling forever till we get the best build evar! (like in bg1 and bg2 incidentily) and I donno. It might take away from the game a little bit. That said, more options is always better. So +1 for rolling for stats as well!

I like rolling for stats. Sometimes I get the "fever", ya know, and I just gotta roll them bones. The Deck of Many Things is another table I like to run.

D&D was originally conceived to be "humanocentric". The old AD&D Dungeon Master Guide has a pretty well written explanation as to why that is so. To summarize what I got out of it, it is because we players are all human, and we can all identify with our own limitations. The projection of our own experience into the game story is what makes it satisfying. The DMG goes on to talk about monsters as player characters, like Gold Dragons for example, and the long-run pitfalls of doing so.

“After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but is often true.” - Spock

I don't like re-rolling stats. I remember i spent like hours rerolling for a perfect stats in bg2 iirc..

Have you concidered not doing it?

Yeah, you could use Shadowkeeper or whatever and give yourself all 25's if you want. You could also set the difficulty level to easy, and give yourself all the spells and a couple +5 weapons. I might try that sometime, but I'll bet I wouldn't last very long that way ... won't satisfy the "fever", eh?

I am more a fan of being able to increase ability scores as a consequence of playing the game. The old D&D dice rolling scheme really did not give much chance of having a lot of high scores, and you were lucky to get a 16 or higher in anything. But that was OK at low levels because there were opportunities to increase scores as part of the game-play later on. There were Tomes, Wishes, Magic Pools, Artifacts, etc. The rules now allow you increase ability scores automatically at certain experience levels, but that does not make sense and I think it sort of takes away from the game-play reward system a bit. I'd rather have major benefits like ability score increases to be tied to my character's story, rather than some automatic accounting machine running in the background.

Well, thing is.... In pnp dnd having flaws is fun. It opens up your character to fail every once in a while and can make your character more interesting.

In a single player computer based rpg however you have non of that. If your stats are low it can just screw you over and opens up your character to an early grave...

Incidentily bg1 and bg2 had some insane difficulty curves at times. Having anything other low stats just meant you would die faster.

For example: mindflayers in bg2 vs a fighter with low int. Yup. Fun times!

Stats were a bigger deal in BG1 and BG2 because 2nd edition D&D had a non-linear response to stat increases, especially in strength. That meant that you were really were gimping yourself if you didn't re-roll.

Now with clever strategy and careful use of the reload button you could rise above a bad stat distribution, but it was more fun (IMO) to make charname heroic.

5e doesn't have the non-linear stat response, and in fact the cap on stat increases makes it quite possible to make a reasonably powerful character without re-rolling over and over. On the other hand, you don't really break the game with re-rolls (again, due to the stat caps) so its really not a big deal either way.

1. They were amazing live! (Favorite)

2. Page Plant was a pretty awesome show (2nd favorite)

Missed out on The Division Bell tour...I heard that was stellar.

Rush was best under the Mercury label, but they never failed to produce something special.

Too bad they abandoned the half album long theme like Caress of Steel, 2112, and Hemispheres (+ Cygnus X-1

Most overlooked Album: Caress of Steel

Despite all those talks about fun and interesting builds ...
To be quite honest roling stats is in my eyes mainly mean to get more than 15 in ability score right from the start.

O have tryed it on DnD beyond ... and it all depends on how greedy you are.
If single 18 satisfy you it take meerely few atempts of re-rolling.
Obviously the more you want the longer it takes.

But since there certainly WILL be people who will keep rolling until they get best possible results ... why not allow infinite point buy aswell? I mean the outcome will be the same ... so why not save some time?

I find rolling for stats quite stupid, it's randomness where it does not belong to. If you are a trained person, you trained abilities should be high by design, not by a dice roll. Rerolling till the desired stats are there is a break of the system, then I would opt for Ragnarok's proposal to allow you to make higher than x stats in the first hand by buying points. Generally I find the BG3 system quite ok. What I don't like is that some of my visual demands (no torso hair, therefore I have to play woodelf) cannot be aligned with others (halfelf head + halfelf superior point distribution) at the moment, coupled with the fact that the current body is too muscular for my taste. Sigh.

+1 to Variant Human implementation in BG3 pre / on release.

Caress of Steel sort of equates to the early release of BG III. It had lots of great moments and a good concept, but parts of it just did not work out and some ingredients were missing. I've always thought a little bit of soothing Minimoog in a few spots would have elevated Caress of Steel closer to the level of Rush's A Farewell to Kings album.

I think the idea of rolling stats was supposed to emulate the random chance which exists in the real world. Some people are born with a natural aptitude to play a piano (or Minimoog), whereas others are born with perfect eyesight, etc. The issue is really what is appropriate for the player character, as opposed to the general masses. D&D has always been based on the premise that the player character is gifted in some way.

"The premise of the game is that each character is above average - at least in some respects - and has superior potential. Furthermore, it is usually essential to the character's survival to be exceptional (with a rating of 15 or above) in no
fewer than two ability characteristics." - AD&D PHB

Do you roll stats in DnD and then decide what class you are going to play accordingly? Strange, if a game should be at least a kind of fun, but ok in some way, and certainly a kind of roleplay, however not to my taste. Otherwise, if you wish to play as wizard and have to accept a rolled 10 in Intelligence, that's brave indeed. But is it from the "real world"? I'm a weak and lean person and would not try to excel as Fighter or Barbarian in Faerun. But if I trained a long time as Wizard or sold my body and mind as Warlock or Cleric to a higher power and then faced very low stats in my allegedly trained/granted abilities, that would be odd.

The oldest versions of D&D did specify rolling 3d6 in order for STR, INT, WIS, etc., and then you would choose a race and class based on what you got. People did not like that! So then they tried adding a point-swap thing, where a mage could trade 2 points of DEX to pick up one point of INT, and so on. Then the Advanced D&D series came out (the big one), and they offered four methods at the DM's choice:

Method I:
All scores are recorded and arranged in the order the player desires. 4d6
are rolled, and the lowest die (or one of the lower) is discarded.

Method II:
All scores are recorded and arranged as in Method I. 3d6 are rolled 12
times and the highest 6 scores are retained.

Method III:
Scores rolled are according to each ability category, in order, STRENGTH,
INTELLIGENCE, WISDOM, DEXTERITY, CONSTITUTION, CHARISMA. 3d6 are
rolled 6 times for each ability, and the highest score in each category is re-
tained for that category.

Method IV:
3d6 are rolled sufficient times to generate the 6 ability scores, in order, for
12 characters, The player then selects the single set of scores which he or
she finds most desirable and these scores are noted on the character
record sheet

These methods allowed much more flexibility in choosing the player race and profession, and at the same time, getting an 18 in anything was still a special and rare thing. Then as you play through the levels, you encounter magic which can increase your scores, so for example by 15th level it was not that unusual for a character to have an 18 in their prime requisite and maybe some other high scores as well. And the thing is, those points were earned through adventure. Stat increases were prizes, not entitlements.

Just in case that's a genuine question, Geala...

In 5e, the default method recommended for generating your ability scores is to roll 4d6 and add the highest three together (that is, a possible total between 3 and 18, weighted to be higher), six times, and then allocate those 6 scores as you wish. Most people choose their class first, and then allocate their scores in a way that fits the character they want to make.

The 5e handbook also provides a few other optional, alternative methods of generating stats, included the point buy system (which is what we have in BG3 currently), and the standard array, which is a fixed set of six scores (15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8 - totals that add up to the same value as point buy allows).

Outside of that, individual DMs and players utilise other variations of rolling ability scores. Some like 'hard' rules, which are a straight up rolling of 3d6 per score, with no 'drop' die, which naturally tends to average lower scores, just as one example. At the other end, some DMs allow players to roll 4d6 seven times, instead of six, and drop to lowest of those seven scores, pushing the overall ability score average up slightly more - this is good for heroic campaigns where players are particularly cut-above and expected to take on epic challenges.

Rolling is the norm, and is standard at the majority of tables - it's more flexible and allows for more unique ability score spreads - with more extremes of highs and lows - than using point buy. Several folks here on the forum do strongly prefer point buy for their own reasons (bad experiences with extreme power imbalances between players that their DM didn't handle well or allowed to actually become a problem, is usually the type of horror story that is reported), and there are positives and negatives to each method.

I've never heard of a DM who insists that players pick a class first, and then roll down-the-line (as in, rolling each ability in turn without allowing allocation) as well... that would be pretty cruel and silly, and the only times it's really done is for short-form or silly/joke games.

So variant humans, spiritual weapon(frying pan) and infestation cantrip next patch. Larian please

@ Argyle and Niara: thank you for the clarification, I never played DnD, therefore my question. In my opinion, because a video game lacks the communication and wide ranged fantasy possibilities to play a char, to interact with companions (real people) and to deal with problems, the urge to build a "well-versed" character is much higher than in a tabletop game. For this reason I'm thankful that you can buy your points, without being able to overdo the stats.

The possibility to increase abilities during the story sounds very promising. You can indeed do this already in the current BG3, although I would never do it because justice has to be done and danger removed. Maybe there will be better chances to earn one or the other point in the further game.

I have a nice example of a dice rolled Monk for a pnp campaign that im starting soon:
STR15
DEX18
CON17
INT15
WIS18
CHA13
AC of 18 starting out. Variant human with the mobile feat (gotta go fast.jpg)

Quikly following me 2 players made their characters as well and the highest for 1 of them was a 15 and he had a 9 in there

Both characters made using the same rule set. But the power difference between our stats is absolutely massive. In pnp this isent an issue and were friends who arent to bummed out if 1 of the party has better stats then the next guy, But in a video game thats kinda different.

My starting AC18 is the same as full plate, yet im just wearing a shirt its kinda insane! Letting us reroll indefenitly as an option sounds alright but I wonder what it will do the balance of the game...

Nothing.

Once rolled stats will be implemented (and it was promised) nothing stops you to roll as long as you want ... in single player ofc. in multiplayer, maybe people will urge you to "goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo".
Even if there would be some mechanism to allow you only certain amount of rerolls ... quite honestly so what? You spend them, then leave to the menu and start new game again, heading right to the ability scores.

Thats why i say once rolled stats will be implemented (and it was promised), they should aswell implement infinite point buy ... the outcome would be the same, it only saves time to people.

I hope they hear you. I'm currently a bit annoyed that I cannot make a woodelf Barbarian to my liking. I want to play woodelf because of the looks and the hairless torso, but he sucks in stats, compared to human and halfelf. I'm too less DnD race purist to accept the 15 max stats for him.

Or I need a mod which changes doll skins. Is there anything out like this?

I believe this mod could please your heart:
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/162

This chap knows his priorities.

I thought hairy chest was a class feature for barbarians.

We all know (or should know) that a hairless torso is mandatory for unarmored fighting (less air resistance f.e.), as well as for attracting a diversity of people. It's the secret why some barbarians are successful or others not, thrust me, ahm, trust me.

You mention a few times it was promised? Can you provide a link? I dont recall them ever promising that

And it WILL do something for balance, lol. Theres simply no way around that. Max stats you can get with a 2+ bonus to a statline is 17 with point buy. So you would have 1 statline that high. With dice rolling the max is 18 for potentially multiple stats. Specially if players can just endleslly reroll they WILL be more powerfull. That Monk that I listed earlier cant be made with point buy. The highest the stats can go is 15. And when making 5 stats 15 and 1 stat 13 like my previously mentioned monk has he would use up 50 of the 27 points that he has with point buy. Which is obviously impossible xD

Hhigher statblocks have direct influence on combat capability. Higher dex boosts your AC. Strength boosts melee damage, CON raises HP, etc. You get the picture. It also boosts your saves versus debuffs or outright damage. Now that isent to say that its a bad thing to implement. But it will no doubt make the game easier. And I do believe developers like to at least challenge us with encounters, which is harder to do if all our stats are 18....

Yeah, higher stats at character creation will affect balance. But it won't matter all that much. D&D 5e has a concept called bounded accuracy that limits the extent to which you can stack bonuses. Even level 20 character cannot have stats higher than 20 except for very specific situations (level 20 barbarian for instance).

So, having a 20 in your prime stat at level 1 will be helpful, and it will make the first few levels easier, but tough encounters will not be trivialized. Late game balance will be affected by the fact that people can spend their ASI's on feats rather than stats, but they will not be able to push their prime stats any higher in the long run than a player with point buy. This will just make the game a little bit easier. It won't be equivalent to activating god mode or anything of that sort.

The feats will make the characters stronger, but even then bounded accuracy means that they will still miss fairly often, and they will still get hit fairly often.

Just make it so that hosts can toggle off the ability to roll stats for multiplayer (or enforce ONE roll, or something) and let the decisions for the single player game be made by the player.

Surprisingly (no joke here, i didnt think i will search it again ) ... i can!

Here: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=669477#Post669477

I definitely think there should be Variant Humans, or at the very least, the standard humans should get tweaked. Some things have been tweaked from the pen and paper rules, such as changes to Ranger, so tweaking Humans wouldn't be out of line either. Wyll and Gale should also become Variant Humans if they get added.

There are many ways to tweak humans, and many would be fine without giving them a feat.

• Humans get a +2 / +1 ASI which float (they can go anywhere) instead of +1 All. That would obviously look weak if BG3 adds in floating ability scores from Tasha's to everyone, but I don't think they'll do that.
• Humans get two floating +1 ASIs, AND expertise (double proficiency bonus) in a skill proficiency of their choice. That would work with the "Jack of all trades" type without granting them special things like Darkvision.

If certain Feats are too strong, they could add Variant Human and level-gate those Feats so that while they can get selected at level 1, they don't come fully online until level 4. Or alternatively, at level 4 the Variant human gets both an ASI and a Feat. (Possibly they can exchange the ASI for a second Feat, but they won't be able to exchange the Feat for a second ASI.)


***

If Larian, as presumed, won't be allowing floating ability scores in the game, I do want rolling for stats to be in the game, to allow for more variety in character builds. For instance, if I want to make a Wizard from a race which doesn't normally get any bonus to Intelligence, rolling would let me get a 16-18 I could use to allocate into INT.

Inasmuch as the game is based on 5e rules, and variant humans are in the ruleset, I would really like to see variant humans in the game.

It's a computer game and something you need to avoid is large range RNG. It simply doesn't work that one person playing get all tails and another person in the world get all heads, because the RNG range allows it, we need to have a system where every single player in their game get close to a 50% ratio of head and tails. We aren't statistics, RNG systems that is based on ALL of us having 50% head and tails is silly, as I will never get to experience everyone else's rolls.


I really wish they would do something about the cringe worthy 8 stat char's, you can't loot much in the naut with only 8 str (Good punish people for silly builds), but you can still be a genius with 8 int.

And mechanicaly impossible.

Eh ... no you cant.
Unless you want to be some odd kind of "genius" who *almost* never remembers anything ... *almost* never understands anything ... *almost* never figure anything ... and all your "genius" is showed by the fact that you are *able* to make a full sentence. :-/

tried solasta rerolling.. i must say either Tactical Adventures must be really generous or i'm just darn lucky. Here's my current Ranger stats:

15 STR
19 DEX (+2 DEX due to Ancestry)
18 CON
11 INT
18 WIS (+1 DEX due to Ancestry)
11 CHA

i must admit i did take some time to roll though but it's not as bad as baldur's gate 2 IIRC. Hence +1 to Larian adding Rerolls. not sure if the rolls are better due to 4d6 and keeping the 3 best rolls. definitely really good for people who wanted it. also i wanted the free edit too. sometimes i'm creating a new character because of some minor stuff that i made mistake of like character name, gender, appearance, race, etc. so i really like the free edit option (at least for single player).

I don't think there is anything preventing them from putting Variant Humans in the game. Larian has not said either way, but as its in the PHB then its likely to be there. It's probably just not a priority to address this right now.

The biggest problem with re-rolls is multiplayer. I don't care what you do in your single player adventures, feel free to cheat yourself of a challenging experience all you want, just keep that shit out of multiplayer. Nobody wants to spend an hour in character creation while four people re-roll for that *perfect* roll. Ugh. Point buy is honestly the system with the most integrity from a gaming perspective.

Finally, humans are definitely not underpowered. Even without variant humans they get the highest stats overall and make the best barbarians currently.

Yes a human GM can do int checks, but as I said it was talking about a computer GM and none of your examples is something the game can handle.


The voicing of the avatar is a problem too, there is no way most of those lines would be said by an 8 int/wiz person.

A more flexible way to do standard human - and this would only be one small step, but a worthwhile one all the same - would be that rather than giving them one ability point to each stat across the board, give them six ability points to allocate, with the limitation that they cannot put more than two points into any one score; this gives them actual *flexibility*, which is the supposed theme of humans, rather than the generic blandness that is 'one to each', but it remains within the balance bounds of ability point allocation set by other races.

I've said this before and I'll say it again.

8 Intelligence doesn't make you a simpleton unable to form complete sentences. This is a thing that several crpgs decided to do, but it's not a thing in 5e DnD, or in 4e, or in 3e.

Just as a comparison, the lowest threshold for sentient creatures, for being able to speak, is 3 Intelligence. Having 8 Int just means you're a bit of a dumbarse, and plenty of people these days go through the world being dumbarses while being able to speak just fine.

Hmm this would be a big boon to MAD classes like Monk, Barb, & Paladin. Easily have 16 16 14 and non-terrible other stats.

The whole stats system of DnD (and similar games) is a mess because it's totally oversimplified and unrealistic, out of necessity and/or tradition. It's a big fault to use the same stats for combat and dialog for example. There are no reasons why a gifted sorcerer, a cleric, a fighter or barbarian cannot be charismatic, full of wisdom or strong and "intelligent" at the same time. The dialogs do not fit for a dumb person on the other hand, mostly. It's difficult to allocate most of the options to a person of low intelligence and at the same time stay consistent in behavior.

I think there is no way to make this system better without huge effort, so it's best to send your common sense on vacation and just overlook the many faults of the system. From this point of view it would be best to have freedom and variety for stats disposition for as many races as possible, which speaks for the introduction of the variant human.

UNREALISTIC.

One more reason to implement infinite point buy.
And set lowest value on 3. :P

Seriously tho ...
I dont think there is any difference between people waiting for party member to roll "perfect stats" ... and people waiting for last party member to decide if he likes his character more with purple or black eyeshadows.

And i believe we have solution for both ...
Once leader feels like its taking too long ... he can kick that person out. :P

Im not sure i follow ...
How is PC-GM "unable to do int check" ? O_o

RNG generates your roll ... adds your modifier ... and see the result.
Just like human GM do ...

Sometimes i wonder where this trend originate ...
I mean what is the logic behind this? Sure, as 8int/wis person you are not "as smart as" 14int/wis person ... but why should that automaticly mean you are practicaly on edge of mental retardation? O_o