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

probably might be fun to have Default Tav as "Daisy" just to troll them a bit...

Honestly I'm always bored to hell with the depiction of other races. I don't really see the point of many of them as they are often portrait just as extreme versions of sterotypes of humans. So why play a human? Because oddly enough they are at the core of those fantasy worlds. I don't strictly play humans, but I do often as they often have more varity in their stories than the other races. If the backstory though works better with a different race I might do it, but often - meh. Most races are just tryhards and now we have people even complaining why their attributes are race specific... yeah...


To sum it up - whatever serves the story best and if all things are equal I stick to humans...

In BG3 - If I'm running a human, it would be to introduce a bit of normalcy.

When I first played Early Access I was shocked at all the super-fantastical stuff. Here I was, a level one ranger - getting chased through the planes by Githyanki on Dragons. Battling through Mind Flayers in Hell, with demons running about - only to crash land near a Druid grove that housed a bunch of Tieflings that pitted me against Goblins led by a Drow. I'm joined by a Githyanki zealot, a Vampire that's into animal sex, a Sharran Spy that's probably a Selunite, a Wizard that's dating Mystra and more to follow.

Holy crap!

That's not how my usual level one adventures kick off, let's say.

I'm looking at Wood Elf first for my Tav, but by Helm. What it needs is the Vault Dweller! Where are the regular people? Minsc is bound to be the most normal of the bunch, and that's saying something. You know where his Animal Companion stays when he's captured?

Also, it just fits certain classes; paladin mostly I think. Not that I can't think of a Dwarven Paladin of Clangeddin or somesuch, but you know. The lord of the castle that rides atop his great steed to face the evil dragon. It just fits.

I mostly play humans in any RPG setting, but as this is about D&D:

- Most cultures of the Faerûn I'm interested in are human (Reghedmen, Uthgardt and Northmen of Ruathym/Moonshaes, Ffolk of the Moonshaes)
- Humans are pretty diverse culturally and allow for interesting roleplay

Apart from humans I (very) rarely play half-elves and dwarves (Shield dwarves usually).

And quite frankly, I've rarely seen well-played dwarves, elves or any other non-human races. Most people play them as humans with weird ears or as stocky, grumpy, constantly drunk humans with beards and that doesn't do their cultures remotely justice.

My character tends to be a self-insert of me, and I'm a human. That said, depending on class, I often also choose to play aasimar. Not if draconic sorcerer though as I think multiple blood mixes in a character is a bit over-the-top, too much unique snowflake syndrome. As for mechanics, those are always secondary to coolness for me. So party members also always get race based on my vision for the character, not what is necessarily optimal.

I think it's a pretty heavy load roleplaying another race well, taking into account their outlook, longevity, size, shape, history and so on. So I just play human and engage more with class and background. I don't care much for racial features, they're nice and all, therefore I'm happy to play human.

Back in the day humans had:
1E, no level limits, duel classing, bard
2E, ditto, but bard changed to open class
3E, extra skill and feat
4E, floating +ability score, extra skill and feat
5E, global +ability scores / or floating +ability score, extra skill and feat

BG3, floating +ability score, extra weapon/armour proficiency & carry weight. No idea why that last feature, maybe it's something similar to dwarves as some humans are also as hardy?

The other race options are fun too, but they just aren't as interesting or aesthetically pleasing as the humans. Human characters generate their personality through deed, rather than inheriting it through racial stereotypes. Just makes them a better blank slate to work with.

Short races are short.

Elves live too long, so your backstory if you start at level one is either you're a child or you've wasted hundreds of years not learning any practical skills for survival in the world you find yourself in, neither of which are appealing.

The 'evil' races struggle to fit into a lot of roleplay options, what with the racism and all. Especially in video games where the MC tends to manage favourable relations with all kinds of folk, human just fits better roleplaying that most of the time (although BG3 does a very good job in that regard)

Gith are too one dimensional (and it's the wrong dimension afterall)

Tieflings feel like they're trying too hard to be special. Hellspawn this and that. Same for Dragonborn....

Don't get me wrong though, I like to play non-humans for the right characters. Human is the one that fits the mould most frequently though.

The appeal of the 'old' humans, not including variant obviously, was that they could be good for MAD builds and or certain multiclassing requirements, perhaps not as optimal as some, but decent none the less. The new iteration, they lose 3 points, and gain some pointless proficiencies outside of some niche circumstances, but hey...they can carry more now too!

Didn't Larian tweet how players are making boring Tavs?

Maybe humans sucking is them pushing everyone to make Tieflings and Dragonborn with pink horns or half orcs with pretty makeup.

That was a bit of a wierd one. I mean, if I ask everyone to pick a number from zero to one hundred and then tell you what you chose on average, the number will be around 50. Obviously you end up with Mr Average.

Do we have confirmation that we can't choose to use the +1 all stats version of human? The whole 'Larian want to coerce you into playing the characters they want you to play instead of the ones you want to' narrative is a little absurd for my tastes, but I can see why people would say that after seeing them nerf the already-weakest and yet most popular race in the game into the ground.

They arnt nerfed. They will probably be bis monk and bladelock users. And deppending on loot great at everything else.

What's your reasoning? Don't see anything that benefits either of those. Polearm proficiency might work out for monks, potentially. Hard to imagine it being particularly good though.

Speciesist.

If that's directed at my original question, I will own that 100%. Humans are trash. Maybe not gameplay wise, but I think it might influence my reluctance to play them.

They lost 3 ability points they would have otherwise had. I'm not sure how you define a nerf, but, to me, that is most assuredly a nerf. They trade these three attribute points for polearm proficiency, and an additional ability to lift an extra cinder block. I'm all for defining superpowers, but I'm not sure these two things qualify as a sufficient trade off to losing three ability points.

many people like to play as themselves... okey bigger boobs or longer hair but for a lot of these people human is the go-to option

Gwm

Polearm mastery

Sentinel

I'm pretty sure that the polearm feat, light armor feat and carry weight feat are not confirmed features. I will wait until the full game comes out.

Dont be bad, at least they give you +20 to inventory space in a game you can send literaly your items to the campment with 2 clicks LOL. Irony Mode off: Seriously Larian, give us the rolls for stats and the Human Variant and the people will be happy, stop with all this stuff to make silly changes to classes or you will break the experience of most players just trying to make equal all races. Seriously do you preffer all 1 stat dependant class have exactly the same stats to play?