Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Speculation on what Races and Classes might be announced at Panel From Hell

They weren't used sparingly.

Try the Forgotten Realms wiki. The current year of BG III is 1492. Spellplague was 1385.

If you read my posts, you'll see that I don't particularly think too highly of the wide proliferation of the various animal races either. Most of those have been some combination of very rare and/or unplayable monsters. Yes. Githyanki and Minotaurs do stick out in a crowd too.

Also I noticed you are including mtg races, which aren't even part of Forgotten Realms or its wider multiverse, soooo.....I feel like this list here isn't entirely well put together here.

Funny you mentioned this ...
As i read about Orcs (mentioned abowe) ... would you concidered their integration to be anyhow better?

I mean ... something happened, portals opened, and *poof* here they are.
I dont see much difference from Dragonborn to be honest. [/quote]

Uh yes, absolutely. For one, orcs were in the settign from the beginning, so their introduction wasn't tied to a catostrophic event that completely rewrote the setting. They also had a lot more writing and worldbuilding put into them compared to the reptiles.

I honestly have no idea what you are trying to imply here.

But to put it nice and short, I don't like them because:

1) They stick out like a sore thumb just about anywhere in the realms.
2) They are overused instead of being used sparingly.
3) Their worldbuilding/lore is poor. Again, discount draconians.
4) Their introduction was poor. The Spellplague etc.
5) They would be a better fit for another setting.
6) The 3e Dragonborn were more interesting.

This might be derailing the thread at this point though the way this exchange is expanding, so perhaps we might take it to PMs if you want to continue to discuss this?

Edited on moderator ... eh suggestion i gues?
Calling it a request dont feel right.
My point stands, but i hope my intention is clearer now.

//Edit:
Nope, i think il pass ... both in here and in PM ...

I requested elaboration, you repeated the same sentence ... and then repeated it again, and once more.
I dunno what makes you feel like out of sudden i would know what you mean ... like what inside will repeating provide, that option to read again original post didnt ... i dare to presume you think that your point is perfectly clear, well if it would, i woulndt request elaboration.

But no matter.
Im going to wrap this conversation in my head as "i just dont like them and sont want to talk about it".

Erm, that wasn't what I meant to happen when I sent you a PM suggesting you consider whether your previous version of that post was likely to escalate tensions. I think you've made it worse! Or perhaps I did by PMing you, though I was trying to help.

I'm only posting this publicly as I feel the need to distance myself from any implied moderator endorsement of the above. I'd personally advocate for just laughing and making it clearer what specifically the request for elaboration was about, though of course if I were writing all the posts on this forum it would get monotonous and weird pretty quickly. But it would be very, very polite!

Uh yes, absolutely. For one, orcs were in the settign from the beginning, so their introduction wasn't tied to a catostrophic event that completely rewrote the setting. They also had a lot more writing and worldbuilding put into them compared to the reptiles.

I honestly have no idea what you are trying to imply here.

But to put it nice and short, I don't like them because:

1) They stick out like a sore thumb just about anywhere in the realms.
2) They are overused instead of being used sparingly.
3) Their worldbuilding/lore is poor. Again, discount draconians.
4) Their introduction was poor. The Spellplague etc.
5) They would be a better fit for another setting.
6) The 3e Dragonborn were more interesting.

This might be derailing the thread at this point though the way this exchange is expanding, so perhaps we might take it to PMs if you want to continue to discuss this?[/quote]

1. Dragonborn don't stick out in Dragonborn cities, or even more cosmopilitian cities.
2. An abolutely massive amount of Dragonborn ended up in Faerun from a world were Dragonborn are common, both from Tymanther and refugees & merchants from the Abeir continient.
3. In FR their lore was designed by Ed Greenwood and Erin M. Evans and is extremely deep and detailed, expertly woven into the setting. Erin M. Evans is also responsibly for weaving the pre and post 4e Tiefling loe together for FR.
4. The Spellplague was a mess and a bad idea, but they managed to make some lemon aid out of that lemon.
5. They fit perfectly into the current realms.
6. No, they had no culture of their own back in 3e, 5e changed that.

I'm just going to suggest that folk snip out parts of quotes that they're not responding to directly, so we don't end up with even longer posts than we've got now!

Baldur's Gate literally has a dedicated ward for exotic races and cultures, Sow's Foot.

Don't forget none of the game takes place in a back water region of Faerun, its set so far in Baldur's Gate which got an influx of immigrates of all kinds during the Spellplague and gets trade from across Faerun and beyond, or along the river that is a major trade route.

And just exploring the races that we know had a race tag at least at some point & Goliaths.

And compared to humans, elves, halflings, and dwarves, Dragonborn are rare, but not so rare that folks don't see them now and again. In the setting as a whole Dragomborn aren't rare at all, because they are common on Abeir and places transplanted from Abeir to Faerun.

Other rare races will vary more on how common they are, Tabaxi in large numbers are immigrating to Faerun for various reasons. Tritons have a host of cities in both Oceans and Seas, Genasi not only have a large population in Calishan, but great numbers ended up on Faerun from Abeir (and others came from the elemental planes directly, or desend from Genies), Drow have gotten better PR rescently and have the largest population on Toril, except maybe Sea Elves, Lizardfolk were rare outside of swamps, but many got driven out and neede somewhere to go, not sure how common Kenku are, Aacrokra have their own cities in places like Chult, Tortles are super rare outside of Chult, but are too adorable to fear, Firbolgs are rare, but not not so rare as to freak people out, Goliaths will need a massive FR lore update in 2024, Aasimar & Tieflings are common in the old empires region.

The two odd races that would be rare even among rare races are the Githyanki, who while having a nearby creche are not that normally socialable with out races, and have super small numbers on Toril under normal circumstances, they only come to Toril normally to raid and reproduce, but given Dragon riding Gith have been saving folks from Mindflayer Nautiliods, folks may find they like the Githyanki alot more.

And the other race would be Warforged, which comes from Eberron, a world most on Toril have never heard of, but folks have seen or heard of enough magical contructs that as long as they don't act threatening, they won't be a big deal.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate/Sow%27s_Foot#:~:text=Sow's%20Foot%20was%20a%20district,the%20subject%20of%20great%20debate.

Sow's foot is a distict filled with exotic races and cultures were they can have them be more common, instead of just odd balls here and there.

To a lesser extent I could see some of that in Twin Songs as well. Genasi being in Little Calimshan as well. Tritons might be under the water in the River if we can go underwater. Tymora's temple might have an Aasimar or two as clerics or Paladins.

This isn't the "classic" realms, its very much post Greybox with the Time of Troubles, Thayvan experiments, Spellplague chaos, Sundering chaos, Tuigan invasion, Shadovar War, Mulan-Imaskari, Maztica's return, Lantan's return, Spelljammer, Planescape, and a host of other events having shaken up the Forgotten Realms, making it much more epic high/wide fantasy setting.

Quoting myself for more clarification. Did some more digging. Maztica and Chult "Tabaxi" are Humans. Human tribes wearing cat skins, worshipping some Jaguar god. A lot of lore about them with civil war in Mezro, involving Ubtao etc.The Tabaxi bipedal cats - are indeed not in Forgotten Realms.


Why not? Everything Canon I consider "classic". Whatever you described is very much Canon lore. Spelljammer crashing into my party would be OK for me and will not break my immersion - but if I meet Khajii.. erm Tabaxi in Baldur's Gate - yeah, it will be out of place. "May your road lead you to warm sands."

You saved me having to do some digging. I have a recollection of cat people in some older D&D comics, but I seemed to recall they were cat shifters rather than always cats as I think (but don't know) that Tabaxi are. I think the ones I'm trying to remember might have had a bipedal cat form, though I'm not at all sure. In case anyone has better recollection than me, I think there was a series which had an avatar of Selune managing a pub in ... Waterdeep???? ... which had a disguised young cat prince hiding out at the bar, and then some sequel comics following the adventures of the previously lapsed paladin from that series which had him and his new party meet a tribe of cat people. Embarrassingly I'm not trying to recall these from when they released or anything, I think I read them just a year or so ago on Kindle Unlimited but can't find them now!

Well, from what I'm seeing, I'm not feeling like you are really interested in representing my position faithfully at this point, so it's probably for the best we leave it at that. *shrug*


Going to try a different format to save space in the reply below

I am going to go into extremely optimistic territory.

Surprise patch 10 with Monk and all of the character creation options we're going to see in the full game, with a completely finalized act 1, and progress carrying over to the full game when that launches.

By the time that the PFH happens, it'll be about less than a month and a half from full launch. I would hope a fully finalized act 1 and all the classes and character creation options are ready by then. Larian will also really want to convince people to buy into the EA now by releasing the full act 1 with progress that carries over to the rest of the game, rather than losing a big chunk of the crowd waiting for the full launch to the Starfield hype.

It would be a dream come true if we could experiment with this to assemble our (custom) party before launch!

Not a chance to EA progress transferring to launch the way their patches and versions works. They didn't even fix all the bugs from Patch 9, so definitely won't be a Patch 10 this close to launch. Each version breaks more and more stuff.

I'll be optimistic enough to say they might confirm a few non-PHB subclasses/spells and show some Monk footage.

I'm not going to rain on that kind of optimism even if I find it hard to share it .

I guess what that possible patch 10 sounds like is an early release of the planned 72h early access (which was advertised as being the full, final act 1 with saves carrying over) so from a technical point of view it sounds feasible. And getting players hooked well in advance might indeed help with competition with other games like Starfield that would otherwise be releasing around the same time.

Though start of July sounds a bit too soon for that, as it feels as though it's enough time to start, get through act 1 and then look around for something else to play instead while waiting for the full release (for most people, of course I'd probably just play and replay with different characters). But I'm now going to carry a secret hope that we might get a bit more than the promised 72h early look at the full act 1. That would be so good!

Yeah, I do agree that dropping the full act one in early July is too soon. It's long enough for players to potentially get bored waiting for the rest of the game. The current 72 hour plan is a good call since unless you straight up do nothing but play the game nonstop without eating or sleeping, 72 hours is long enough to maybe finish act one and then have like, a day's break before the full release. Maybe they could extend the full act one early access to a full week if they have the game ready by then, to counter Starfield as you said. But aside from that, I support your optimism! Showing al the character creation stuff would be awesome and would certainly invite me to return at least. Doubly so if they tweaked the proportions on halflings to make them less... off.

There were multiple cloaked figures in latest trailer... possibly hiding new race.

That said, if they introduced regular, ordinary race, that would be really boring, really quick. I want something that jumps in my Baldur's city, I want something that will be fun and unusual. I understand lore perspective, but unusual race in ordinary environment is part of interesting story and interesting storytelling. Probability doesn't really matter because no good story is made by using probability and making story probable.

Also, Larian said 72h of early access... they can't change that. I never seen someone change that in digital age, most often since that is tied to promotion, actual money both on digital and on physical front, sometimes publishers, consoles releases (it's really a thing of juggling dates and hours)
They released DOS2 enhanced edition couple hours earlier and encountered problems, but they seemed untroubled by that. So, maybe they change they minds, but I think they won't for 1.0.

I thought there was some official statement that this PFH will not include any new patch. O_o

There's no way they don't reveal half orcs, dragonborn, and monks in the next panel from hell with so little time before release right? Gotta build up the hype right before release is my thinking why they haven't revealed them yet.

Correct