Hey guys. I know this will probably be a topic that most of you won't care about but I'm genuinely curious why we didn't get Lizardfolk as a playable race. Not only are they an ancient and very well established species on Toril, they are also very interesting and quite widespread. Also, Larian has a history of playable lizards and so i was quite hopeful that we get to play with these guys in BG3, which would have provided numerous ways to have exciting roleplay.
Not I know what many will instinctively respond to this: just play a Dragonborn. Sadly, that is not an acceptable compromise at all whatsoever. Dragonborn are not lizards and they are not reptilian either, they are dragonkin and they are completely different from lizards. They also do not have the well established lore and alien mindset that lizardfolk have, and they simply miss out on all the flavour of playing as a kind of survivalist primarily concerned with living another day being driven by pragmatism and practical day by day decisions.
I think the greatest obstacle to playable lizardfolk was probably their uncivilized savage nature. Lizardfolk are truly outsiders and they do not partake in the communities of highly intelligent civilized races like humans, elves and dwarves, their culture revolves about survival on a tribal level, and I think that might have been really hard to incorporate as a roleplaying aspect in the game. It would also probably hard to justify what a lizardfolk might have been going in Baldurs Gate when the nautaloid was crashing there.(Maybe the lizardfolk could have been a pit fighter slave taking part in illegal gladitorial fights?)
What's your take on this? Was there never a chance to get these guys in the game? Do you consider the dragonborn a sufficient replacement?
Dragonborn are part of the core rules and in the Player's Handbook. Lizardfolk aren't. It's basically that simple.
Duergar and githyanke are not part of the core rules and yet we still have them. Lizarfolk would have been a lot of work but it would have been really fun.
Dragonborn are part of the core rules and in the Player's Handbook. Lizardfolk aren't. It's basically that simple.
Duergar and githyanke are not part of the core rules and yet we still have them. Lizarfolk would have been a lot of work but it would have been really fun.
Duergar and Githyanki are both part of the plot, so adding those was probably trivial.
Why? Well ... if i had to guess ... wich i have to, since we dont know.
There was something missing ... either money, or time, or inspiration ... who knows. Its quite possible they were never even seriously planned in the first place.
Yes, im aware of that datamined content ... but the problem with datamining is that you never know how did that get there ... its perfectly possible that the person who wrote certain dialogue (notice that most exotic races were datamined in same scene) was simply so dedicated for the work, so s/he just included all existing races off the bat ... knot knowing, or caring, if those dialogues will ever be used.
If i would need to point out one thing that would imho be bigest obstacle in implementation Lizardfolk ... its reactivity. Lizardfolk have completely different mindset from all the other "intelligent" (yes i know this would be an insult for them) races, so while most of them surfice with some special dialogue choice here and there ... Lizardfolk would require such choice in almost every dialogue ... and that would be expensive. :-/
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
Lizardfolk are my favorite race in DnD and I'd love to see them added to BG3. That said, the reason they weren't is fairly simple. Larian only had so many resources to put into the game, and the more they added the longer it'd be until launch when they could finally profit off their hard work.
Datamining actually found race tags for a ton of races, Lizardfolk included. So it seems there were early plans for a huge playable roster, but it all likely got sacked because even Larian needs to release the game eventually or they'll go bankrupt. So they decided to stick to the PHB plus a couple of story relevant additions like Githyanki and Drow.
