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

Doesnt change that Half-* = bad is the current stance of WotC they are now enforcing.
The portrayal of drow (Lolthsworn) in BG3 is also rather new and was only created by WotC while BG3 was already under development.

To be fair, the portrayal of races has changed alongside the DnD audience. WotC is just surfing the wave here.

No they didn’t. There are no dedicated half-orcs because there are no dedicated half-races at all. Instead, there is a systematic approach where you can build a character that can have any heritage you want. If you want to be half orc half halfling, have at it.

Wasn't the 'systemic approach' just 'play an elf, but describe your character as a half elf'. That's not a system, that's dressing up the lack of support as a feature.

That's like saying 'well, you can't play an Azer, but you can play a shield dwarf and describe him as an Azer' and saying playable Azer are a supported feature of the game.

It's hypocritical of WoTC too, because they have no problem keeping Tieflings around (and this is with their DnD Next Tieflings being explicitly of human ancestry-non-human tieflings are almost erased by wotc), and the introduction of a new hybrid race, the Aardlings. But Tieflings were highly popular, so that's different, I guess.

I'm glad at least Larian is keeping the distinction for half orcs and half elves in the game. It's important for roleplaying purposes.

I agree that it’s not good. Very poorly implemented. I hope they fix it before full release.

But to say they got rid of half-orcs because they are politically incorrect is incorrect.

Also, you are wrong about tieflings and ardlings. They are never described in the play test rules as necessarily being a hybrid, mixed species person. In the setting, tiefling and ardling are just full racial options the same way elf and dwarf are.

Correct me if I'm wrong, folks, but the changes we're discussing to the approach for mixed race characters are part of the proposals for the next gen One D&D so aren't relevant for BG3, which is based on 5e, anyway. I guess it's not impossible that Larian would implement some homebrew features that reflect the direction of travel of D&D (I'm not sure whether their changes to the ranger class, for example, might have been based on discussions about WotC's plans for it?), but given we have half-elves in EA there's already good evidence they're not going to try with the changes to the way mixed heritage is handled.

Not that, as Warlocke has said, there won''t be half-orcs even if One D&D does get released in line with the proposals, as those proposals will allow for more variations not fewer (arguably at the expense of clarity and distinctiveness, but that's an argument for a different thread, such as this one!).

And the way half elves and half orcs were?

Yes, they are mechanically a unique race option. That's part of the point I was making. They are, in the lore of D&D though, hybrids between the lower plane and elves, humans, orcs etc. Very similar to Half Orcs and Half Elves in being descended from two or more species. Point being that they got to retain their mechanical uniqueness while Half Elves and Half Orcs were stripped of it. Tiefling players don't get 'just play a human and describe your character as having horns and a tail'

Lets keep in mind that Dwelfs and dwarf-humans were a part of forgotten Realms lore for quite a long time, but as far as I remember, the way to play them was literally 'you play a dwarf, but you are taller'. Same as this 'new' option from WoTC.

@The Red Queen

I could have sworn I remember mr Vincke talking about how DnDNext was influencing development in one of the PFHs....

But yeah, we see a half-orc in one of the trailers, and IIRC in the datamines he's described as such, so half-orcs are undoubtedly in.

Isn't that thread like a year old? I'm a bit hesitant to poke dead threads.

Now to try and get this thread back on track, I'm curious what people expect from the introduction of half-orcs. I do think they'll be officially announced before the game launch, and the PFH sounds like the best place to do that (and dragonborn and monks), so what sort of features do you think would go hand in hand with that?

Fair point, and as long as we're discussing One D&D in the context of its potential impact on what BG3 classes/races might be announced then it makes a lot of sense to keep the discussion here. If we venture deeper into a discussion of One D&D though, elsewhere would probably be better. Though I guess I could always split it out if we do start branching too badly!

Just as an aside, I'm generally pretty relaxed about necro-ing threads and think it's often useful to have the context of the previous discussion right there, as long as we are effectively starting a new conversation on the same topic and are clear about why we are resurrecting the thread and what we now want to discuss, and don't start picking an argument with something someone said ages ago or expect anyone to either remember or reread months' old posts. I also think it's best not to resurrect an old thread if something has changed that has made significant parts of the discussion obsolete (such as changes in more recent versions). But I do understand and appreciate your hesitancy, and agree starting a new thread can be the better choice. I'm happy for folk to use their best judgement, and we can always split or merge threads if necessary.

I do hope that half orc make into the game and I share the concern that allowing a half species of anything (which has always existed if DMs allowed it) makes all species into humans with cosmetic differences.

What would be really great is if half orcs got a custom backgrounds - raised by humans or raised by orcs.

And yes, it's pretty clear that the game is already influenced by 6e - note the lack of alignment in the game. This was also the case in Solasta where 'alignment' was a set of personality traits and the Solasta devs made it clear that they wanted to make a Forgotten Realms game so they always checking to see if WotC was okay with their interpretation of the SRD

I’m not talking mechanically. I’m taking lore. In the One DND play test material, ardlings and tieflings are not described as mixed races. They are presented as their own races. Not necessarily descended from of mix of two different species.

While the description of the races doesn’t preclude this, it seems that the way WotC is heading is that most tieflings are the offspring of two tiefling parents and ardlings are the offspring of two ardling parents.

That is different from somebody who has one human parent and one elf parent or is a mixed dwarf-gnome hybrid.

In the OD&D playtest material I've most recently read, tieflings are described as "born in the Lower Planes or having one or more fiendish ancestors who originated there." This effect can come from an ancestor (making it partially racial), but because it doesn't need to come from your parents directly, it's not equivalent to the other "half-X" races. Imo, it seems to be saying tieflings aren't their own "race" but more similar to a corruption to your base race. I.e., if you are part tiefling and part human, you're considered a full tiefling - there's no such thing as a "half-tiefling."

I don't agree that WotC is intending for tieflings to mostly be descended directly from tiefling parents. They specifically mention "fiendish ancestors," not "parents." Additionally, there's the "born in the Lower Planes" aspect -> two humans with 100% human ancestors can (will always?) produce a tiefling child if the child is born in the Lower Planes.

I see what you are saying. It’s a possibility.

Though by the rules, half tiefling is an option.

If you look at BG3, where there are tiefling parents who have tiefling children and they all live in a tiefling community, I do suspect this is what One D&D is going to look like.

I can tell you this: I recently spent a whole bunch of hours playing (and for the most part enjoying) Age of Wonders 4. That game made the decision to turn pretty much any race in a cosmetic skin and everything about your faction is instead defined by a bunch of tags and secondary options.

Well, while some people praised the choice for "giving them freedom to be what they want to be" for a very sizable chunk of the user base it became one of the most controversial features of the game. The recurring complaint is that races in the game have no Identity and everything after a couple of maps blends into a certain... sameness.

I wouldn't be shocked if D&D would turn out to be directed toward a similar fate and people would start regretting asking for that degree of freedom in the long run.

Wouldn't be shocked either - it's fun to break the rules, it's fun understand them well enough to find exploits and loopholes but "just do whatever" isn't all that fun. You want rules to break.

What change are you talking about?

That that are fungus and cannot have babies with other races.



Oh, shit, I got my universes mixed up! That's what happened in Warhammer in the mid 1990s!