Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Rank the Races!

First saying that someone is giving false information about things is not an insult, tho these weak crybaby generation seem to think it is.
Second it is a game where your "incorrect facts" wont be facts cause this races simply dont exist. Or is it ok to say that Githyanki have small noses and they can't function because of that (even tho in nature animals with smaller noses work just fine) and thieflings have weak horns because they are in the MOST strong part of the skull in humans, but other races can port trough time/space do magic/telekinesis/teleportation/telepathy etc

Just learn to read and accept facts even when they are far from your ignorant beliefs

Okay, let's keep it friendly. It's possible to disagree, or even point out where someone has gone wrong, without scoffing!

1) Saying "hahahaha your list is just soo comically wrong that is almost good." is indeed insulting, as is "weak crybaby generation" and referring to folks as "ignorant". Nor is it the same thing whatsoever as saying someone is giving false information.

2) Yes, it is absolutely ok to say *anything* about Githyanki and why one likes them or does not, including but not limited to feeling like they are anatomically incorrect, regardless of whether or not that assertion has sufficient backing. Folks are indeed permitted to express their opinion, and folks doing so is a good thing on a forum for that purpose. Absolutely no one here needs to "learn to read and accept facts", including you and I and everyone else in this thread.

3) I still haven't seen a list or your own contributions.

I don't need to make a list by my own to disagree and crying to it is just funny to me.

Okay, let’s disengage and move on. I’ve already said above that folk should make their points without scoffing at those who disagree, so let’s make that the end of it.

Feel free to use the post report function to let me know if discussion is devolving to insults and I can take appropriate action.

1. Githyanki
--i just find them interesting in general. I like the idea of creches and an astral home as the center of their empire. As with all races, I only like them when they're handled with a certain nuance. Too many folks see them as a "one personality fits all" kind of race, and I don't care for that.
--Their history and their psionics and their astral knowledge ability is fascinating. I don't find it overly powerful in the game, but as a piece of flavor, it captures my imagination.

2. Half-elves
--Just enough human to relate to, and just enough mystical to be interesting.
--I don't care at all for the militia proficiency stuff, though.

3. Drow
--Specifically, the Lloth Sworn, I suppose. I like the idea of this culture of evil and beautiful, nightmarish creatures that live underground in their own civilization. They slink through the shadows with thin, sharp blades, and master magic, conjure evil beings, deal in treachery and intrigue.
--I would prefer if they were more powerful, and if they had natural bonuses to intimidation, perhaps even advantage in most situations.
--The Seldarine drow would be much lower on my list. I think they undermine the whole concept of the drow.

4. Half-orcs
--I generally don't appreciate the way folks are often keen on "twisting" the typical view of the half-orc, trying to make them smart or super civilized or whatever. I think that's a very weak approach.
--I prefer the half-orc as a creature with monstrous inclinations that can be indulged, or perhaps more rarely, fought against.
--A near bestial human with a savage nature.

5. Human
--Shrug. They're human, you know.
--I like humans, in general, for storytelling purposes, but I'm not fond of what they've become in the game. I think the militia proficiency stuff is a terrible idea, not in regards to mechanic, but in regards to flavor.

6. Tiefling
--I would like them more if they weren't always portrayed as so misunderstood and with hearts of gold if only one could look past the horns.
--In my opinion, this would be an excellent race if folks could accept them as having tainted blood with infernal roots that severely impacted them. They have things like Hellish Rebuke. These are true devilish powers, and I'd like to see them basking in that strength and giving common folks something to actually fear. Instead, people tend to trip over themselves to present them as the Brady Bunch.

7. Elves
--Just bland bland bland. No sense of culture, nothing. They feel like they skate by on memories of Tolkien. They don't come across as mysterious or mystical or special in any way. They don't even seem to have a different mindset due to their vast lifespans. Just humans with pointing ears doing their laundry or serving tables or whatever other menial job needs doing in the city. I find the presentation of elves to be exceptionally disappointing.

8. Dragonborn
--What are these things? Their culture just isn't there, at least in the game. Something that looks this distinctly different should be treated as such. Instead, there's this annoying effort to make them blend into the populace at large, as if these massive differences don't matter. It's poor story telling/world building.
--They look great in BG3, for what it's worth. The designers did an amazing job. But I don't know if I want to play something with a maw for a mouth.

9. Halfling
--I don't tend to favor the shorter races.
--But I can see some interest in this race if there's agreement on what the race is like. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that agreement exists. If they're treated as homebodies, like hobbits, then great. But all too often, they're just whatever. Some halfling barbarian roars in from out of nowhere.

10. Gnome
--Meh. It's another race that reminds me of how poor the overall worldbuilding is in Faerun. We have tons of humanocentric city states and kingdoms and nations and this and that, but all these other races kind of get squeezed in.
--I don't have much appreciation for inventors in fantasy settings. And this generally overshadows their illusion specialty heritage, which was never developed enough, in my opinion.
--The deep gnomes are somewhat interesting, I guess.

11. Dwarf
--I appreciate that they at least have some culture behind them, but they're not for me.

I want to throw in my appreciation for the shorter races. My first playthrough in full game is a halfling bard. She is a lightfoot and can sneak nearly everywhere she goes, because of that advantage and really seldom botch a role, because natural 1 is automatically rerolled. This is more of a big deal, than you might think, she got out of s lot of tied situations because of this. And my halfling looks cute.
I also love the racials of gnomes. In my last EA playthrough I played a deep gnome arcane trickster and it was a great experience.
And I mean, come on, dwarves are one of the most iconic races in fantasy.
People tend to dismiss the smaller races too quickly imo. They bring a lot to the table and they are fun.

I actually wish the elves and half-elves were shorter. I’m short myself, so I prefer my characters to look more like Link and Cloud Strife than Kratos or Duke Nukem.

That said, I don’t like that all the short races are so squat and round. If there was a short race that had more of a fae build I’d probably play that, but gnomes, halflings and even dwarfs just don’t do it for me.

As for looks:
Dwarves, Half-Elves, Elves [Drow], Halfings, everyone else and then humans in the far back.
I wish I could make an older Gnome, grizzled and bearded. There's a cool scarred face for Halflings, I want something like that for Gnomes. Anyway.
Also, all tha player voices are really nice and sweet. I just can't make a grizzled Half-Orc with those voices.

As for Mechanics:
Half-Orcs, Wood-Half-Elves, Halflings, everyone else with Dwarves in the far back.
Now, I currently have a 'full movement for shorties' mod enabled, and that puts halflings in the front for me. The slow movement really kills the shorties for fun's sake, especially Dwarves since they didn't get anything like the humans did. But other than that, the halflings are awesome as Fylimar stated above. No 1's on a d20 is way more awesome than you think and getting into those small crevices and so forth makes a sneaky play really fun.

As for dialogue:
Drow, Tiefling, Half Orc and all the normal ones in the back. There's maybe one or two lines for a Dwarf, whereas *everyone* recongizes a Drow. BY the same token, you can pick Moradin as your deity - and it will never come up. Dwarves have really gotten the /short/ end of the stick. There's this bit where, as a n elf you can safely drink a sleep potion? I fully expected my Dwarf to have something similar at a certain bar where you can drink. Nope. None of that. Dwarves have been severely neglected.
They mentioned there's a lot of this for Dragonborn before release, but I haven't played one yet. I suspect Githyanki and Deep Gnomes will have a fair number of things to say, but again, not played them yet.

Mage armor is a tax. The spell slot is better spent on other things, especially on a sorcerer.

Maybe for boots or gloves here and there, but all the best mage stuff is actually robes. A Wiz or Sorc with Shield/Mirror image/Misty step is virtually untouchable. He will survive the round and surviving the round is all that matters.

The short races have effed up proportions.

Limbs too long, shoulders too wide and heads too big. It's why I can't stand half lings and gnomes. Dwarves are affected too, just to a lesser extent. I'll still play dwarves, but not the others.

My favorite races are half elves, tieflings and dragonborn, in no particular order. The half elves look more elven than elves do. Faces should have been more angular and less "human with pointy ears".

It depends on the class for me.

For a Paladin I really like the Zariel Tiefling for two more smites per long rest that don't eat a spell slot. Plus they look cool

For any stealther type I really like dark gnomes. Awesome saves & stealth advantage and 24m darkvision, plus I like their look.

For any mage type I like Githyanki for the armor proficiency and the psionics.

I've got a Duergar strength Ranger with heavy armour level 5 and 7 levels of Tempest cleric. Dual wielding heavy weapons and casting lightning & thunder spells. Multiple resistances, 24m darkvision and looks really cool with the dark skin, scar across the Volo eye and the one sided face tat. Everyone and their cousin is a drow but a Duergar is something new.

Not a fan of the Dragon born, the look just does not do it for me. I'm glad that they got away from racial stat boosts since dragonborn would probably have ended up with strength and charisma which would have made them the obvious choice for many classes which would be bad.

I could see the appeal for a wood elf due to the mobility.

I find that with longstrider on everyone that the short races keep up just fine.

Largely agree with this ranking. Humans are so bad that they actually feel like a major balance issue, you actually feel the weakness as compared to every other race. The change from Early Access where they got +1 all stats is actually worse. The carrying capacity boost is not only pointless but also strangely illogical from an RP standpoint. A human can carry more than a half-orc who both max out their STR? They should just have retained +1 all stats and added the extra feat that variant humans got in the 5th edition tabletop rules. Or if that's too strong, let them have +1 to a single stat of choice plus the extra feat.

Wood elf Paladin is what I rolled. I'd go human if it had the feat...but it doesn't and it badly needs it

Extra feat is hella strong btw. Maybe if they got to pick from a short list of them. Otherwise the correct answer would be ASI.

anything adding extra stats is also strong. What they have now is on par with what other races get. Most other races get weapon/armor proficiencies or something like darkvision or a resistance. Races like Drow and Dueregar used to have level adjustments because they were so strong. Dunno why they scrapped that.

Dragonborn don't even get the resilience that draconic sorcerers get AND THEY'RE LITERALLY COVERED IN SCALES. Not just patches of them. They get a badly scaling breath attack and a resist. that's it. That breath attack does up to 12 damage at level 6. It's awful.

If you like humans, play humans. There's no need to min max.

Yes at least some rebalancing would be in order.

I love they removed the racial stat bonuses, which really only served to make certain races predestined for certain classes.

But they didnt properly rebalance the races afterwards.


I dont really get why Shield Dwarves only get medium armor and thats it. That only helps if you choose a class like Wizard. Compared to the uber 1 hp/level that Gold Dwarves get thats a joke, and a sad one. Gray Dwarf looks fine-ish, superior darkvision, advantage against various spell effects, two great spells on their own - if you like dwarves, that should suffice as motivation.

I also would make racial damage spell abilities scale with level. Like Dragonborns breath weapon, or the special spells of Tieflings.

About humans, their specials are just weird all over the board. Extra carrying capacity ? Thats a dwarven thing. Arms training ? Doesnt fit to the "flexible" race that humans are in D&D; also its quite useless, polearms are only useful if you have high strength, and in D&D5 you only focus on strength if you wear heavy armor. I would give them a skill and a feat and call it a day. If that doesnt convince you that humans are worthwhile, nothing will.

Btw there is already a mod to update Dragonborn to their Fizban implementation (havent tried it out yet)
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1793

I don't mod and refuse to support nexus at this time.

Unfortunate, really.

The problem was not disagreement, it was the lack of common decency.

Also the lack of common sense. If you get told that what you accuse others of saying hasnt been actually said by them, normal people would be open to the idea of getting explained what was actually said.

Instead the poster doubled down on disproving things that havent been said by anyone anyway, proving that interacting with this person is an extremely bad idea.

So I stayed away.,