Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Improving humans, because they need it

I've been thinking a lot about the role of humans in this game and I think that getting +1 to all stats is great, but it's not on par with other racial abilities or even cantrips that other races are getting.
I really think that drows and half-drows getting faerie fire at lvl 3 is incredibly powerful, not to mention that drow also receive weapon proficiencies and extra perception (or stealth?).

I think humans should receive either 1 extra skill proficiency and a free weapon proficiency at level 1 that they can freely choose as a way to reflect their versatility and adaptibility. I think this would bring them up to par with the rest of the races out there, who all have something extra besides bonuses to their attributes (and all races do get +2 at least to some of them, allowing them to start with a 17) and a lot of other goodies. Almost all other races get darkvision, meaning only humans and halflings have to deal with that, also many of the races receive some kind of racial cantrip or spell like ability, which is something I don't want humans to get, I think humans shoul definitely go with more "mundane" bonuses.

I also considered the idea of playable variant humans, but I generally dislike that quite a bit because I think that would reflect our real world issues in a non-flattering way, and while I fully approve of diversity and inclusion I think there shouldn't be a cognitive differennce between human variants, and it should be merely a cosmetic issue (please tell me if you disagree and why, I'm really interested).

Do you guys have any other ideas about how to make humanity better?
Any ideas what would make them worse?

As far as I'm familiar with the DnD vocabular (I'm not a DnD/BG player), a "variant human" is a human where you can give +1 to two abilities and take one skill proficiency and one feat. Many would like to have this non-PHB version (?) of the human in BG3. I think you meant with "variant humans" different human "races" (which biologically don't exist nowadays in our world), there is indeed no need for and sense in such differences.

I'm ok with the BG3 humans, being able to get several abilities to 16 is enough for me. My gripe is just with visuals, I don't like to have them with torso hair.

If my memory serrves right, the female ones don't have it.

I think that you're right Brewman, the human racial feature really isn't that interesting. I think the extra proficiencies you suggest would be a good way to reflect their supposed flexibility. Also Variant human isn't really a subrace the way other races have them. Like geala said, it doesn't actually have any sort of in-lore justification, it's just a different rule for giving humans their starting attribute bonus.

Variant human is part of the PHB, so I'd expect we get them as part of the full game.
In my opinion humans are fine. For pretty much every class, they are among the stronger choices.

Instead of randomly adding buffs to humans, we could also ask Larian to not ignore the drawbacks that some of the other races have in DnD. E.g. Drow should have disadvantage when attacking enemies in sunlight. Gnomes and other small races should have disadvantage when attacking with heavy weapons like pike, greatsword or heavy crossbow. Halfelves shouldn't inherit the magic of their elven parent.

See eg https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=843384 for earlier discussion on a similar topic.

I have heard multiple times that variant human is only there as a minmax tool and that it overshadows every other choices by making humans the optimal choice for all classes. Is that true?

Not really, but the selection could be, it depends on the feat selected. Many feats would simply serve as something interesting to flesh out a character and communicate the flexibility and adaptability of humans. However, certain feats lead to a dramatic bonus to effectiveness at first level.

In the end though, the standard human non-variant isn't remotely competitive with the other racial selections.

I never understood why humans are usually considered as a bad race in DnD games. Being able to have 1 ability to 14, 2 to 16 and 3 to 10 is good enough to me and that is the only race that can do it at level 1.

Sure, it's just about numbers... but humans can be balanced and powerfull characters.

Wow, really? Never looked at them, that's marvellous.

People are boringly predictable in their preferences. The human fighter is by far the most popular combo in D&D, and almost everyone wants to be overpowered. The basic human race is not great, but fulfills the archetypical role as an all-rounder well without excelling at anything. The variant human however is likely one of the very best races and propels the human into being excellent or best at anything which kind of breaks the racial mold in my opinion. They really shouldn't be included in vanilla for balance reasons, unless similarly viable alternatives are made available for non-humans (at which point elven subraces like the Eladrin or Shadar-Kai would make the rest redundant from an optimized perspective).

There's already a mod out that incorporates variant humans and many other "optimized alternatives".

Well, to be fair, there is nothing boring about being a fighter

Variant human can be added.
Now a free feat is a common homebrew at many tables so larian may allow that.

Let me turn it around ...
Is there any reason to "not" include Variant Humans?

I mean, its all just matter of numbers, right? They are exactly the same otherwise.

What about Variants for Non-Humans?

In D&D 5th edition, the human race has the "Variant Human" option, which allows them to choose a feat at level 1 in addition to their other racial traits. This is an optional rule that some DMs may choose to use in their game. Without this option, human characters do not get a feat or feature at level 1, but they do get the standard racial bonuses to ability scores and other traits.

The very reason "variant human" became a thing is because other races already had minor variations (several types of elves, dwarves, tieflings, etc) while the 5th edition humans didn't.


Well, that and the fact that default humans sucked for min-maxing anything.

I would be willing to bet that Kou didnt really cared about reason Varian humans exists in PnP ...
As much as s/he was wondering about free feat at character creation for other races.

Wasn't even about the free feat, I wanted to make some kind of Mutant for one of the Races.
Like Visually.

I stand corected.