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

Apparently humans are the majority chosen species, and I'd like to understand why, because I genuinely don't (and never have) seen the appeal. I've never played a human in any game ever where I had the option not to.

I already am a human (I've been told), so playing as one when I have other options just seems boring.

So to fans of humans, what am I not seeing?

Variant human is one of the strongest races in the game (Feat at level 1). And feats are fun.

You know how people say we need more black women or whatever in media, because people identify with people who are like them easier?

I am not a half orc (or so I've been told)

This is the reason they have added so many face shapes, skin colors, a vitiligo slider etc.
You want your PC to be more like you, so that they can be the window into the strange world you are entering. Some anker point you understand and are comfortable with, when you venture out into the unknown.

Everyone is weird and alien, but you have to understand your character and their motives. And that is easier if they are like you.

This is a very common trope in fiction. Normal human enters magical world.

Fry in Futurama.
Harry Potter living with Muggels.
Even Penny in the big bang theory...

The "Dorothy" trope, so to say.

That too, but VH is sadly not in the game

I actually like playing as humans. Humans are complex, interesting animals, in my experience.

But my go to race is actually human hybrids.

So my top 3 races are:

Half-elf
Half-orc
Human

In that order.

*looks around at the beach*... "We're not in Baldur's Gate anymore."

but that's just Variant Human, since Regular Humans suck, they don't get that extra feat at level 1, plus they don't have dark vision like a bunch of noobs.

also according to the lore Humans aren't a native species of Toril aka the D&D world that Baldur's Gate is set in, the ones in D&D and BG3 are descended from the Humans of Earth.

Tieflings are also Human hybrids

Succubus/Incubus + Human = Alu-fiend/Cambion

Alu-fiend/Cambion + Human = Tieflings

or you could go the 4e version and have Fake Tieflings that are the result of a demonic pact...

😳

You sure about that? I’m not saying you are wrong, but I’ve just never heard that about humans being outsiders in the setting. I checked the FR wiki and it says humans are native to Toril, but I don’t know enough to verify that. The citation is Races of Faerun (2003).

Yeeeeah, never played a tiefling in table top. Not really my thing.

Humans natural talents aren’t well suited to this game lol. The ability to hybridize pretty much any species, inventitive, and the mercantile drive (be it war for profit, commerce for profit, profit for profit). We are expansive, war like, and multiply like rats . We are civilized Orcs.

My opinion is that Humans should get advantage on speech checks and bartering vs non humans. This would imo be a good compromise because we excel at BS…

Edit:

I call it “Human proficiency trait: The Gift of Gab”

Some people want to create essentially a copy themselves within the game and they're going to choose human.

When trying to rp, it's hard to imagine yourself as a totally diffrent species.

Take Simon from the dnd movie.

Hes a half elf meaning he had the time to be a bumbling idiot for a decade. But as a human if you are a bumbling idiot for a decade you are just a bumbling idiot.

I wonder how many of the originals would actually fit for adventuring...

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Earth#

"On Toril, in the year −4366 DR, the mages of a nation on the continent of Faerûn known as the Imaskar Empire sought to replenish their population after a devastating plague. To this end they opened two great gates to another world, widely believed to have been Earth and kidnapped numerous humans from different eras of that world's history to serve as their slaves. Those of Mulhorand hailed from a desert land given life by the seasonal flooding of a great river and those of Unther from another desert land. After transporting them back to Abeir-Toril, the Imaskari closed the gates forever. With them, these people brought their own societies, mature culture, and later, the gods of the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons. And over time, through Intermarriage between the desert people and the Imaskari, a new ethnic group would come to form known as the Mulan."

Cool. I learned something new today.

I play humans because they are very relatable.
BG3 made it so that humans are kinda inferior to all the other races even though they are the "dominant" species on the planet.
BUt BG3 really does not feel like that at all.
So playing a human is great for two reasons: It's a really relatable and fun way to roleplay and it's a challange. You don't roll a human because you want the best stat for your class. I roll a human for the challange of encountaring superior enemies and crushing them beneath my boots, even though my starting stat for my class was probably just 15.
Now, I must emphasize that everything is up to your preference, if you just wanna roll characters with the perfect stat allocation go ahead. But I PERSONALLY like to play flawed or even broken characters growing into a force to be reckoned with.

But that's just my way of playing.

How else will anyone create default Tav that provokes Larian’s disapproval???

The lore link does not prove humans arent from the Realms. The link discusses a powerful mageocracy of humans who went to Earth and grabbed a bunch of human slaves. But, the Imaskar Empire were human mages who were in the Realms already. And, only describes a small handful of human groups. Not all the others. The article even refers to 'Earth humans' to differeniate them from 'Realms Humans'.

That said, dnd and fr lore has changed and is malleable so who knows. But, that link doesn't prove anything on its own.

That storyplot was just a way for old dn to epxlain the existence of certain non Realms specific gods to be in the campaign world.

Variant human is the only reason to play as humans, but since there is no variant human in the game, humans are not worth playing.