Hello all! This suggestion is devoted to bringing Variant Human into BG3 to make Human race more competitive with other races like Half-Elf (sleep immunity, free darkvision, almost the same amount of additional stat points) or Githyanki (free spells, free medium armor proficiency). This was definitely suggested earlier, but my suggestion has one addition - make it a toggleable option in game settings. This way, people who want Variant Human can pick it and people who do not can ignore this option and play "normal" Human instead.

Also, second part of this suggestion is to adjust some stats / starting options of Wyll and Gale. Currently, their stats are not optimized and that may tempt many people to just create mercenaries of same classes with better stat spread, making them lose a big part of their story for efficiency. While nobody is perfect, these two should be at least competitive from efficiency PoV with mercenaries. Also, I suggest to either let the suggested Variant Human toggle affect them both and change their race to Variant Human as well with possibility to keep them as normal Human if you do not pick this option or create a separate toggle for each of human companions.

Suggested changes to stat spread / starting abilities:

Wyll:

If kept as normal Human:
Str = 10
Dex = 16
Con = 14
Int = 10
Wis = 10
Cha = 16

16 Dex is to support his lore of being the Blade of Frontiers and his innate rapier proficiency - he will be able to use it effectively as a melee weapon (Rapier is a Finesse weapon and is based on Dexterity stat). 14 Con provides general survivability and together with 16 Dex and his lore enables option for making him a melee Warlock. 16 Charisma is to supplement his spellcasting.

If switched to Variant Human via optional toggle:
Str = 10
Dex = 14
Con = 14
Int = 10
Wis = 10
Cha = 16

Bonus Variant Human Feat: Elemental Adept - Fire (exists in dnd 5e)

Fire spells you cast ignore resistance. In addition, when you roll damage for a spell you cast that deals Fire damage, you can treat any 1 on a damage die as a 2.

Bonus Variant Human Proficiency: Survival

As Variant Human has less stats than normal, Dexterity is lowered to 14. However, it is also a pro - normal Human Wyll will be more suitable for melee Warlock build (utilizes bonus Dexterity and does not need elemental adept feat too much) and Variant Human Wyll will be more suitable for caster Warlock build. This will keep both options competitive and a matter of preference.

Why Elemental Adept - Fire feat? Because Wyll is a Fiend Warlock and will receive lots of Fire spells to utilize. However, it is also his big weakness - his most powerful spells like Burning Hands, Scorching Rays and Fireball are all Fire based and subject to resistance and with so many Fire resistant creatures even in act 1 (mainly tieflings) this might become an issue. This feat solves the problem.

Why Survival proficiency? Because Wyll is a folk hero and has hunted lots of dangerous creatures (at least according to his own words), so he can definitely be proficient in Survival in addition to his current proficiencies.

Additional suggestion for his both variants - replace Minor Illusion starting cantrip with Poison Spray. This will give him a decent melee cantrip option against enemies resistant to physical damage (like from Blade Ward cantrip) or with very high Armor Class (as Poison Spray is a saving throw cantrip instead).

Gale:

If kept as normal Human:
Str = 9
Dex = 14
Con = 14
Int = 16
Wis = 14
Cha = 12

14 Dex and Con provide him with basic bonuses to AC / Initiative / surivability, useful for a squishy wizard. 16 Int helps his spellcasting. 14 Wisdom provides an option to make him a supportive wizard of Abjuration school with possibility to add Magic Initiate Cleric feat for additional cantrips / spells and use them efficiently (if they remove possibility to learn Cleric spells from scrolls) or just learn and use Cleric spells (if they keep it as is). This also keeps his normal Human variant competitive with Variant - normal Human will be more suitable for supportive school builds and Variant Human will be more suitable for offensive school builds.

If switched to Variant Human via optional toggle:
Str = 8
Dex = 14
Con = 14
Int = 16
Wis = 10
Cha = 12

Bonus Variant Human Feat: Spell Sniper (exists in dnd 5e)

You have learned techniques to enhance your attacks with certain kinds of spells, gaining the following benefits:

- When you cast a spell that requires you to make an attack roll, the spell's range is doubled (might be reduced to 50% bonus like it is with Distant Spell metamagic).
- Your ranged spell attacks ignore half cover and three-quarters cover.
- You learn one cantrip that requires an attack roll. Choose the cantrip from the bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, or wizard spell list. Your spellcasting ability for this cantrip depends on the spell list you chose from: Charisma for bard, sorcerer, and warlock; Wisdom for cleric or druid; or Intelligence for wizard.

Suggested bonus cantrip: Eldritch Blast - it synergizes with his 12 Charisma in this variant and gives him an option to make a ranged cantrip attack with similar power to Fire Bolt against Fire resistant enemies, though with slightly lower accuracy. Warlock lovers should not worry though - this feat by itself does not give neither Hex nor Agonizing Blast invocation, so his Eldritch Blast will still be much weaker than from dedicated Warlock and he will not be able to reach much Eldritch Blast power with just this feat.

Bonus Variant Human Proficiency: Religion

Why Spell Sniper? It is a decent feat for offensive spellcaster like Evoker wizard and it will help with his biggest weakness, which is his squishiness - he will be able to attack with spell attack roll cantrips and spells from bigger distance than his foes, giving him a potential small pocket of safety.

Why Religion proficiency? As Gale has connection to a goddess and knows much of gods (like his goddess relationships with other gods), this seems a suitable proficiency for him.

There is also a poll to vote for some of these options (vote for multiple different options is allowed).

Thank you for reading!

More class customization is always welcome. Just curious though, wasn't the fact humans are the only ones able to get a dual class instead of multi class the "human defining" thing in D&D since ages? Didn't know they introduced human " sub race". Dope.

In 5e they just have several variations of Human race with different bonuses. Did not hear about double class that is not multiclass for them in 5e)
http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/human

Pretty sure this thing was in place only until the end of 2nd edition d&d. Pretty sure it wasn't present after 3/3.5.

Oh nvm, apparently 5th edition scrapped dual classing. So multi class only. Fair enought.

It wasn't even 5e. From what I remember it was completely scrapped at exit 3e.

This hasn't been a thing for while.
I can't even remember exactly when they changed it, but maybe it was already gone past the second edition.

Toggle would be fine ...

But quite honestly ...
I dont like this changes for Wyll, for two reasons:
1) Roleplay ... you are born as Varian human ... and Wyll become Warlock a lot later ... so it dont quite make sense to me, so theese two bonuses should work together.
2) Roleplay (again ) ... since Wyll seem to be denying his class openly, so i certainly plan to play him as some kind of hybryd between Warlock and Fither with Pact of the Blade ... presuming Hexblade will not be aviable for him.

You may also have been thinking of "favoured class", which was a thing in 3/3.5e, and humans had "any" as their favoured class, which significantly reduced multiclassing penalties, and between that and the extra feat at level 1, it made Human the obvious choice when going for certain complex builds. But that was also done away with in 5e, we have no multiclassing penalties, but that's yet another Human trait that emphasised adaptability and flexibility which they don't have anymore.

I think we have a misunderstanding. Second part of my suggestion is to change stats of Wyll and Gale from current to suggested. If you do not pick Variant Human toggle option in the settings, they would have normal Human race and suggested stats for them. If you pick Variant Human settings option, they both change to Variant Human race with suggested stats for them. The downside of such approach is that they get tied to being Normal / Variant Human simultaneously and one cannot be Variant and second Normal, but that can be fixed with creating separate toggles in settings for each of human companions.

A bump to this thread. Both companions could still use a Variant Human option with suggested tweaks.

Just adding variant human would likely make it easier to add custom lineage or free level one feat to mods.
Currently adding feats during character creation is problematic. I made Background Feats mod as one solution until larian makes it possible. Even now I prefer Choose Your Stats (CYS) to add feats at any level.

I definitely have made the suggestion to add Variant Human and make Wyll and Gale Variant Humans instead of the baseline. Due to the way attributes scale, having +2/+1 to specific stats is going to be much more useful than +1/all except for specific builds.


Elemental Adept is I guess an okay feat for Wyll, although Alert would also be nice (but that might be complicated given the known tricky issues with surprise rounds). Survival proficiency is fine.

I don't think changing Gale's WIS score from 14 to 10 is the best idea. Gale should by default be a caster in the backline, so the higher DEX isn't likely to do a whole lot - especially the farther you go when enemies have higher and higher +to hit bonuses, and there are a lot of dangerous spells with wisdom saves. Losing 2 from wisdom saves could be really bad. Spell Sniper is a good feat for Gale, although I would personally suggest Chill Touch instead of Eldritch Blast. Religion proficiency is fine.

The idea behind that was to give both race options purposes - normal Human Wyll having better preset stats for Dex melee Warlock, Variant Human Wyll being more fit for caster Warlock, normal Human Gale being more suited towards defensive / supportive schools specialization and Variant Human Gale being preset for offensive schools like Evoker. For such, I think 14 Dex could be preferable to 14 Wis, since Dex gives not only Armor, but also better Initiative. Though, if Wisdom is crucial, it could be something like 8 Str / 12 Dex / 14 Con / 16 Int / 14 Wis / 10 Charisma.

As for cantrip selection, I picked one that he cannot just learn from scrolls and with conditional advantages over his regular cantrips. Eldritch Blast has comparable damage to Fire Bolt, is rarely resisted and could be the cantrip tool to use against Fire resistant / immune enemies with lowered accuracy because of lower Charisma as a trade-off.

My guess is that Variant Human adds another batch of cognitive load for new users to be facing and isn't something Larian wants to front load when there are already a ton of choices in character creation.

Given Variant Human is PHB I think there’s still a reasonable chance we’ll get it. We might find out at the next Panel From Hell on 7 July. I’m wondering whether, rather than releasing a patch after it as they did for previous panels, they might be publishing a full list of classes/races (including subraces and classes). That’s probably wishful thinking, but it’s what I really, really want to help me plan my first playthrough!

If they add that, I hope Variant Humans get some extra customization options in the form of mutations or other things, like extra eyes.

I really, really hope for the Variant Human

I'm not sure they would do that, since Variant Human is just a Human with changed starting bonus. But could be interesting if they do.

Is it really a sub-race of humans if there are no characteristics that would differentiate them in terms other than stats?

As far as I know, Variant Human is not exactly a subrace and more likely a "toggle" that changes their starting bonus. As such, I suggested it mainly as a toggle in BG3 as well, so that people who want to play +1 to all stats bonus can play without it and people who want Variant Human starting bonuses can play with it.

That was my understanding too. It might from a ruleset perspective function like a subrace and that would probably be the easiest way to implement it technically in game, but as far as I’m aware variant humans aren’t considered in universe to be either mutants or a separate genetic group (or whatever passes for that in the FR!). I’m not sure if there’s actually any in-universe explanation of why some humans might be less jacks of all trades and instead have specialist skills in some areas, though it wouldn’t seem too hard to explain in terms of natural variations within the race. Possibly one of the folks here who know their FR lore can expand on that!

If Minsc would become a companion (likely), he could receive similar treatment and have normal and Variant Human preset stats suitable for different builds that could be switched with a toggle.
For example, as a normal Human he could have stats for a ranged build and as a Variant Human he could have stats for a melee build with a feat that would supplement that.

Variant Human was not announced. I still hope it will be implemented, as it is a starting bonus toggle and not a distinct race / subrace.

There is no lore regarding Variant Humans.
Variant Human isn't a sub-race it is simply an an optional rule in the PHB that gives you a different way to create a Human character.
Although it's used ubiquitously in most D&D sessions it is a variant character creation rule that requires DM permission to use.

The text from the PHB:
"If your campaign uses the optional feat rules from Chapter 5 your Dungeon Master might allow these variant traits, all of which replace the Human's ability score increase trait"

That is what I expected. That means that Larian should not have trouble with adding it as a toggle option, even if it was not announced in the list of races. But we'll see.