Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What's the appeal of humans?

None of those feats require polearm proficiency, and both of those classes can benefit from their proficiency bonus with polearms without polearm proficiency. Monks can use quaterstaffs, warlocks can pact boon their weapon. The only gain there is that a monk could use a polearm other other than the quaterstaff, which admitedly might be of some value, but I wouldn't get too excited about it.

As I say, could work for monks, not particularly good though. Long way from 'bis' monk, and of no value whatsoever to warlock.

Warlocks don't seem to be able Warlocks in bg 3 don't seem to get proficiency with pact boon, they just roll with their caster stats. So proficiency is good.

Probper martial polearms are much better than the quarterstaff With things like the cleave ability

Rly?

Polearm Master feat:
While you are wielding a glaive, halberd, pike, quarterstaff, or spear, other creatures provoke an opportunity attack from you when they enter the reach you have with that weapon.

Sentinel feat:
When you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, the creature's speed becomes 0 for the rest of the turn.

Scenario:
Goblin attacks your Monk in meele ... it gets within your reach ... polearm master allows you to make Oppourtunity Attack ... you hit ... Goblin B movement is now 0, bcs of Sentinel feat ... your Halbeard have extra reach ... Goblin B cant reach you, therefore cant attack ... you make a 1 step back ...
The process is repeating, until Goblin is dead and you still have full HP, since it never got to you.

Effect:
Your character is litteraly untouchable in 1v1 combat.

Your also giving up 2 ASI bonuses to do that. Which means your primary stat is never going to be 20, unless you use hag hair.

2 Things:
1 - You only need one ASI to get your main stat to 20 ... you get 3 (or more with certain classes) ... so you should be fine.
2 - With some items, you dont really need any.
You may want watch this:

I've given this a lot of thought, and here's what I think Larian should do.

All other races: point buy with floating stat bonuses of +2/+1

Humans: roll dice for stats, no bonuses

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Simple and done.

ETA: (in regards to dragonborn, I think they should get some sort of natural armor bonus, but that's another thread)

One old quote say that Democracy works only in those cases, where neither side is satisfied with the outome.
This concept sounds very democratic.

To give my personal answer why I (almost) always play human:

Role playing reasons. I am not very good at abstracting myself and create a *new* character and than consistently play it.
I maybe could manage with an origin character, but that does not really appeal to me that much.

What I *can* do is to take a part of myself, exaggerate it and mix it with background & class lore.
The further I go away from something I am, the harder it will be to keep the consistency.

I can inflate some dark desires and put them on, for example, a bard who goes around to corrupt people.
But I have trouble imagining him as an elf or even as dexterous - since I have no idea how that would "feel", since it is not just an exaggeration of something I *know*.

I have evil thoughts, I know the strength of honeyed words - but I do not know what it means to become adult with 120 years. Or being able to target and truly hit something (I have a ..defective hand-to-eye-coordination).


Every character I create and actually can develop and play consistently has something of myself inside it.
Unfortunately, that makes me very vulnerable to restarteritis, since a mood swing can make my own characters alien to myself.. =)
(Basically, I am in a dark mood and start evil. Something happens to soothe me or break my out of my dark thoughts and I can no longer connect with the evil character I made.

do we have a clear list of the new race stats/spells/bonuess/etc? In particular, I'm curious to see what the Drow have.

I think they look the best of all the races, aesthetically.

I'm probably biased though.

Actually Gith aren't one dimensional, you probably missed the part where they had a civil war and splintered off into 2 groups, the militaristicand violent Githyanki of the Astral plane and the ascetic and monastic Githzerai of Limbo, there's also a secret 3rd group called the Pirates of Gith that later splintered off from the Githyanki when they didn't follow their fellow Githyanki into the Astral Plane.

I have a few small issues with playing some of the races. It doesn't stop me from playing them, but it does sometimes give me pause.

Tieflings. --there's this dark devilish thing about them. They got their "condition" from the hells. They have horns and tails and glowing eyes. The problem I have with them is that all the refugees are tieflings. This creates two small issues for me.

1. They're all from Elturel. If I'm a tiefling, heck, part of me wants to have some connection to all these other tieflings. I feel like the odd tiefling out here.
2. And they way the tieflings are presented, as non-fighting refugees who are victims of their time... takes away from that dark devilish angle. Instead of using hellish rebuke or thaumaturgy, they're super domestic and all about cat doors and laundry. I feel like a group of tieflings like this, who had been to hell, who have been traveling and fighting to survive, would have grown more ... dangerous seeming by this point. I mean, I think they should be grimy with worn clothing. Injuries and blood soaked bandages, and angry fire burning behind both their eyes and their words.

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Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes.

1. I'm just not a fan of the shorter races, in general. I don't mind them as companions, I suppose, but I don't generally gravitate toward them as my main character.

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Githyanki. --I love them. One of the best, by far. Except...

1. Lae'zel exists. Don't get me wrong, I love Lae'zel. She's absolutely one of my favorite characters. But she represents the githyanki so well that it makes me feel like I don't have much to add, if that makes sense.

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Half-elf. --I like them. I like the way they look. I like what they have to offer. But I do have a couple small issues.

1. I get the feeling that half-elves feel judged, like they don't belong anywhere. Not fully human, not fully elf, so there's this sort of pain associated with their existence. Which is fine, except they also got a plus two to charisma. Leaving me thinking, wouldn't they be more popular around town than less? These are enormously and naturally charismatic individuals, but they're generally sulking and feel alienated? It doesn't click for me.
2. And now that everyone has the same floating stat adjustment, they're just weaker versions of elves, right? "Yes, could I please play an elf, but um, could you drastically reduce my lifespan and take away some of the things I start with?"

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Elf. --I'm okay with them, but I do have a couple of small hangups.

1. The elves feel so cliched to me. Just in general, I mean.
2. I tend to play male characters, and while I really admire all the work Larian did to give them unique mannerisms, they end up coming across as a touch to effeminate for my taste.

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Dragonborn. --they look amazing!

1. The romance scenes feel strange to me. Kissing a dragonborn? I know people say that dragonborns nuzzle with the heads or something, but I'm guessing that's not something the game will factor in, and frankly, I'm not sure I want to go around giving a muzzle nuzzle.

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Half-orc. --I'm not really against them, but if I had to point to an issue with them, it would be...

1. They're somewhat monstrous. Sometimes I just don't want that monstrous look, you know?

I quite never play plain humans if other options are available. I will play a gnome evoker, I just like the concept of a little gnome obsessed with big flashy spells.

Thought he is still a good gnome and he will ensure his friends don't get hurt(evoker ability)

I've got quibbly responses to all your points, but I don't think they'd add to any discussion, except for with tieflings.

I love playing a tiefling in bg3 for exactly the reasons you mention. It gives substantial motivation to wanting to help them.

As for the state of them, hoping and begging and pleading I can make this point without it being taken politically or getting political responses, compare them to refugees from Venezuela, Honduras, etc. traveling often in large part on foot, to the USA, or from Central Asia or the Sahel to Southern Europe. Is the journey as fraught as the tieflings'? I have no idea, but it's certainly no cakewalk, but for those folks, cats and laundry etc are very much the things they want to be worrying about, and I assume do focus on when there's respite during the journey.

I completely agree that I find myself wanting to help the tieflings so much when I'm also a tiefling. (Although I generally want to help them anyway, being a tiefling makes it feel more personal, somehow.)

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And I take your point about refugees needing to do laundry, but I would argue that this is different.

Specifically, they've not just been running. They've had to fight. They've been attacked by gnolls on the road. Monsters have been attacking the grove while they've been defending from the gate. Before all of that, they were literally in hell, and I don't imagine that didn't come without some fighting.

When Zevlor says, "We're no fighters," I find myself thinking, weren't you a hell rider? And haven't plenty of the folks here been in fights before? Why isn't there at least a portion of the tieflings who are now deadly and jaded?

Yes, that comment from Zevlor annoys me every time.

And while they may not have many fighters among them, SOME among the refugees do seem to have combat training. Also, the fact that ALL of the refugees are tieflings feels a bit odd considering that tiefling child can be born to perfectly normal human parents as long as there is an infernal among their ancestry. Surely, such parents would not just their child away, especially as they would be under scrutiny as well.

I find it hard to believe, that any of those first lv characters made it out of hell alive let alone with kids. Not sure of 5 edition works but the vast majority may not even have been considered 1st lv more like a Commoner. No they all would have been Massacred. I know a couple may have been adventurer types but yea, hell aint no place to be.

"Better they had died in hell, than to have come across my party, fiendish blood must be cleansed from this world" - Billy Bob -Paladin of Law and Order

Dwarves are awesomesauce. if you hate dwarves, you are my soul enemy.

Humans are okay. But, dwarves are the bees knees.

I hope the MP trick works as I have every intention of making an all dwarf party that bkills every one of Larian's racist npcs who hate dwarves while otherwise being purely good.

If all of the refugees are from Elturel, then yes... they did indeed escape hell.
"Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus" (basically a prequel campaign to BG 3) has multiple endings and in at least one of those the city of Elturel is returned to Toril after it was dragged into Avernus.

Yea , Yea,

spent many a sleepless night playing.