Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Fextralife Video - Race and Class and ability scores discussed! *Major Spoilers*

Everything up to that point is about how having a tadpole in your head is suuuuper bad.

Look, I get it, there are gamers out there that don't have two braincells to rub together and have zero awareness and for THOSE people they are going to just roll their faces across the keyboard in response to everything, die horribly 500 times and quit the game. All of this on story mode btw.

You will NEVER be able to dumb the game down enough to make it safe for them.

The average gamer will get tadpole = bad and won't mess with it.

Then you get the super gamers, the roleplayers, and the smart lasses and laddies who are going to have a lot of fun with this in various ways.

The changes to humans have to be intentional to get people to not play them. Dark vision alone is better than all of the trash they gave humans and every race with dark vision has multiple other racial advantages.

This is interesting but I still have so many questions about this class and race thing, and about how multiclassing works!

Like others I find it hard to envisage at least some of the companions as other classes, though I'm firmly in the camp that thinks it's no skin off my nose what people decide to do in their own playthroughs. And while I imagine I'll be sticking with the classes given for level 1, I guess I could see, for example, trying out SH as a shadow monk on my umpteenth playthrough.

What I'm interested in is whether this only affects origins as companions or as player characters as well. As I mentioned elsewhere, I don't think you could change class in character creator for origins, but now I'm wondering if I got that wrong. And if it's not possible in CC, is it on respec? I can imagine that Larian might put a restriction on PCs that doesn't apply to characters to prevent players from unknowingly locking themselves out of content for their own character, I suppose. And I definitely wouldn't play an origin character as anything other than their recommended class, so in a sense it makes no odds to me. But I still want to know!

I also want to know exactly what racial feats humans, half-elves and any other subraces basically nerfed by only getting a +2/+1 ability bonus will be getting to compensate. (I know we have speculation about polearms and light armour for humans, but I want to see if that's configurable, and whether the feat is just a proficiency or actually gives us some other benefit too.)

And I definitely want more detail about exactly how multiclassing is going to work differently from 5e, other than the removal of restrictions that I don't really mind about.

I'm looking forward to more vids coming over the next few days!

Its good for bladelocks, clerics and any full caster who wants be be able to do decently in melee.

We also know race will be important for magic items.

All it takes is one really good magic item for that race and people will plan builds around them

What makes you think we even will have the option to remove the tadpole? Its obvious that Larian sees the tadpole as a feature and an integral part of your character. They won't let you remove it. Thats why you have this strange shift in the story in act 1 to normalize the tadpole.

Actually come to think about it, the lead writer's playthrough had Shadowheart solo and he said she was more powerful because she had killed her teammates. I think you absolutely will be able to kill some if not all the origin characters as early as act 1 for their tadpoles. Wild.

The evil route of Mask of the Betrayer had a similar mechanic when the cumulative effect of your desire for power lead to more and more heinous acts until almost all your companions turned on you and you were despised by all

I wouldn't be surprised if there's an ending where you end up an abomination to all, illithid and non alike, either with or without any semblance of who you were before.

I strongly suspect we do not have all the information on human racial bonuses.

I swear to God, if they pull a last minute "lul, don't worry, none of your choices over the last 80 hours matter, you can just undo it all. Spent the whole time using tadpole powers? Didn't touch a single tadpole power? It's all the same! don't worry!" I'll be annoyed.

They literally show you creepy purpple brain matter taking over where the tadpoles are...

We also know we apparently meet "the guardian" in act 2. So either way there's going to be concenquences.

Searching for the means to remove it is a large part of the plot. And it's not just the player character but they are putting these tadpoles in stasis in as many people as they possibly can. I imagine the story has to do with a plot that likely revolves around suddenly having large numbers of people all undergoing ceremorphosis at once as they go about their daily lives in populated areas. Suddenly having hundreds or thousands of mind flayers appear in a city could overwhelm it immediately...it might be the plat to conquer Baldur's Gate or more...even powerful guards and magic users would have a hard time dealing with such a crisis. So we'll probably have to deal with whoever or whatever keeps the tadpoles in stasis but also have a plan for removing them from people because once out of stasis you're on a short timeline before A LOT of mind flayers are born.

In the latest Fextralife video he mentions in the comments, in response to one of the many questions about humans that they got 20 pounds of carry weight (in addition to the pole arm and light armor proficiencies people already saw in the PFH footage). There was no mention, that I could find, of anything any of the other 'nerfed' races got so, presumably considering how bad humans were handled, they get nothing.

Yeah, I get that. I'm just saying they could've continued with the mechanic they have already implemented in EA, having players decide if they want to use their abilities from the tadpole they already had forced upon them, while still introducing this progression system and more abilities. Introducing more tadpoles that we "find" and then proceed to willing put in our heads while at the same time searching for how to remove them just doesn't seem like good storytelling to me.

What makes you think that?

There was only one icon that was unknown on PFH ...
And since in this video we were told that Humans got new Racial Feature ... +20 Carry weight ...

I think we know everything we need.

If IIRC it is the tadpole itself that just incubates in you and becomes the Illithid. If you put many up there, I'm not sure how that would pan out. Would they have to eat each other until only one survived?

Regardless, I am on the same page as you regarding the tadpole issue. Maybe there's an alternate path for destroying them and absorbing their essence somehow.

Why do I get the feeling playing a 'good' character is going to be super generic and not that fun compared to the alternative? When they said they wanted to tempt players to do a more evil playthrough, I was hoping it wouldn't be at the expense of a good playthrough. Completely new mechanics/systems/skill trees solely for 'evil' players seems a bit much imo.

who knows though, maybe it all comes together better than i'm thinking.

You only got tadpole powers in the old system by letting it eat parts of your brain too... Players trying to stay pure wouldent take either option

I think most of that feeling stems from the fact that very few games even allow you to play evil in the first place and of the times you can a lot of those endings just try to make you feel bad that you took that path and like a loser. Oh you didn't take the good path, here, put this dunce cap on, go sit in a corner, and think about what you did...which are really lame. And good endings have been beaten to death...make sacrifices for greater good here, unite cities or countries there, blah blah blah. Most of that stuff has been rehashed a million times over. I hope Larian can do something unique and original with the good endings too but it will be much harder than just having some evil endings don't try to make you feel miserable for having picked them.

Perhaps, but there is a significant difference between leaning in the thing already in your head and allowing multiple creatures to crawl through your eye and take up residence in your brain. The original version was imperfect, but the lack of a perfect solution doesn't mean all solutions are equally good.

Not equally good. This makes far less sense to do but it communicates much more clearly what benefits you get and gives you some options so you can do stuff that fits your build. Though like I said it would make much more sense to just say the tadpole in your brain just communicates with and gets some information the the ones in the dying people and you can choose to allow it to give you some powers. Because just you putting more tadpoles in your head is just a bit ridiculous. I don't mind it too much, some suspension of disbelief is fine.

You're mistaking storytelling with character motivation and choice. I doubt any good character of mine will be tempted but I would certainly like the choice if I decide to explore a character with different motivations. You're using using EA logic, but we have actually seen a spoiler character mentioning that they won't let us become an illithid and again depending how you want to choose to roleplay your character, the choice should be there if the narrative supports the choice too.

Most sensible people would avoid it like the plague, but we all know dumbasses who think they can gain the system surely? Faerun's dumbest criminals maybe? I mean Gale's pretty smart and he thinks he can outwit a devil, which seems like a recipe for disaster, but also seems very in character for Gale