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

In general, few of the choices made at character creation are permanently impactful. Stats. skills, class can all be respecced at nominal cost. You can freely switch from a Monkbarian to a Bardlock or vice versa. You can take your Oath of the Ancients Paladin and temporarily 'forget' their oaths as you switch them to a Thief or Assassin Rogue, embarking on a crime spree across the land, only to switch them back to the Oath of the Ancients Paladin once you are satiated, with their oaths apparently intact and unbroken. With adequate gold, you can have your character be a 'master of all trades' and have them be the ideal build for any given environment and situation. One of the few things you cannot change and are stuck with after choosing it at character creation is their race.

Given that, Rank the Races! I'll start, but I encourage everyone to not just critique my rankings but more importantly to supply their own. Judge them by whatever criterion you see fit. For myself, I'm grading them on 3 primary criterion: Appearance, Flavor, and Mechanics, all of which in my opinion matter for your primary character and avatar in the campaign. Without further ado, here we go!

1. Drow
(Appearance A, Flavor S, Mechanics A)
Elves, Humans, Half Elves and Drow all have more body types available than any other races. This includes the 'lithe and attractive' and 'swol beefcake' varieties. They also work well with any hairstyle and generally have the most and best customization options for appearance of anyone. Mechanically, Elves don't have the best abilities ever, but they do have a *ton* of them. Darkvision, Sleep Immunity, Charm Resist, a bonus proficiency in the always useful Perception, potentially useful or useless weapon proficiencies, and that's without even adding in what they get from their subraces. Drow get all of that, then trade high elves' cantrip for a cantrip and 2 2nd level spells and also superior Darkvision, with absolutely no downsides whatsoever. They also have the most unique interactions and flavor of any race in the game. They are, in every way, the complete package.

2. Githyanki
(Appearance F, Flavor S, Mechanics A)
It says a lot about how dominant Drow are that you can drop so far, from the best appearance set in the game to the worst, and still be in the #2 spot. Githyanki are central to the story and from a lore perspective have the most reason for being there and interacting in the plot. They also have a nice set of spells, proficiencies of variable usefulness, and most importantly the absurdly useful Astral Knowledge. The ability to gain proficiency in up to 5 skills until a long rest, and swap it as needed, is the equivalent to a feat and a half if not more, and it can literally double a character's skill coverage before even considering its flexibility. Sure they lack Darkvision, but unlike some races without it, they *absolutely* make up for it. The main thing holding them back is how absurdly gangly and ugly they are in my subjective opinion. If you're into that more power to you, of course, and in that case they might even hit the top spot. But for me they're #2.

3. Gnome
(Appearance D, Flavor C, Mechanics S)
Gnomes are in this spot for basically one reason and one reason only - Advantage on *all* saves for Int, Wis, and Cha is just that good. Those saves are the ones which typically 'suck' the most (spells targeting them are typically "save or suck" effects taking you out of the fight or worse), and it's nearly guaranteed a character has one or more of those stats as a dump stat. To then gain advantage on them, which is better than a +5 to those saves mechanically, for not just one save or type of effect but all 3, is crazy powerful. The subraces gain useful things as well, either setting them up to be a great scout (deep gnomes) or unlocking bonus flavor (forest). Their appearance is unlikely to be particularly inspiring for most, and they certainly aren't as central to the plot as some others, but nonetheless you can never go wrong, with any character of any type, by rolling with a Gnome.

4. Elf
(Appearance A, Flavor C, Mechanics B)
I've pretty much said all that needs to be said in the Drow entry. It says something that even after losing a ton of flavor and being substantially worse mechanically "normal" elves are still #4, they're just so favored in terms of appearance options and the raw number of benefits thrown at them. Of the subraces Wood Elves have the most unique and useful benefits.

5. Tiefling
(Appearance B, Flavor A, Mechanics C)
They have some major plot interaction early, and the appearance of Tieflings may not have as much flexibility as Elves do but it's certainly a unique and interesting appearance, which many folks will be pleased with. They just don't have a ton going on mechanically, just a package of spells, darkvision, and fire resist. Certainly not as bad as some, but compared to what Drow or Githyanki get offered it's almost insultingly little.

6. Half Elf
(Appearance A, Flavor C, Mechanics B)
Generally you're trading an Elf's always useful proficiency in Perception for a sometimes useful set of armor and equipment proficiencies. For some builds, the tradeoff is worth it. Thankfully for them they're more elf than human mechanically. It can also be a way to cheat those proficiencies onto a Drow, which *can* be very useful and in which case it's a totally different scenario from a flavor standpoint. Still, for other builds those proficiencies are totally useless, and as such they're generally less flexible and thus overall worse mechanically on balance vs a "full" elf.

7. Half Orc
(Appearance B, Flavor B. Mechanics C)
Like Tieflings, they may not have a ton of variety in appearance, but there are many who will be pleased with the appearance you're given nonetheless. Okay flavor, and mechanics which look awesome at first glance. Triple damage on crits seems incredible, and automatically getting back up when downed is potentially game changing. Of course the latter is purely reactive, and does literally nothing if you're not downed. And the triple damage on crits *can* be good, in certain contexts and builds, specifically crit fishing Rogues or Paladins with lots of bonus dice added in. However since it doesn't impact non-dice damage, and things like Sharpshooter, Tavern Brawler, or Great Weapon Master rule the roost in damage, very often dice are much less than half the damage being dealt, and as such it's exceedingly unlikely to be better than say +10% damage overall in a fight. That's before even considering the high potential for overkill, or the countersynergy with effective target prioritization which would dictate targeting an enemy you *know* you can down without relying on a crit. Overall they're not bad, but not great.

8. Halfling
(Appearance D, Flavor C, Mechanics A)
Like Gnomes, the appearance will certainly be ideal for some folks, in which case they likely slide higher up on this list. But generally they have few customization options and let's just call it a 'niche' appearance, and while their mechanical ability of rerolling 1s is quite good, it's not as good as what Gnomes have going on. This is both because they're one of the few races without Darkvision (along with Githyanki, Dragonborn, and Humans) and more importantly because the usefulness of their ability is tied to rolling in a neutral state or even better yet with disadvantage. If you're rolling with advantage in the first place, you only have a 1/400 chance of getting a 1 in the first place, rendering their ability effectively moot. Still, rolling a 1 is enough of a feels bad, and having an automatic reroll on *everything* whenever that occurs is simply fantastic, preventing them from sliding further down this list.

9. Dwarf
(Appearance C, Flavor B, Mechanics C)
Of all the races, none lose out from their Pen and Paper equivalents more than Dwarves. Appearance wise, their bodies are suitably Dwarven, but the most important element of their appearance customization, the beard, is woefully slim pickings. You can't customize the jewelry or braiding, and if you want a nice, full, dwarven beard you really only have one or two options. Mechanically, they lose their Stonecunning and Tool Proficiencies with absolutely nothing to replace them, though they still get darkvision, poison resist, proficiencies of extremely questionable value, and some goodies from their subclass, none of which though are particularly impressive. They're still not terrible, they're just not what they could be and what many might hope them to be.

10. Dragonborn
(Appearance B, Flavor B, Mechanics D)
Their appearance is up there with Tieflings in terms of being awesome and inspiring for many, and who doesn't want to be partially freaking Dragon, in a game set in Dungeons and Dragons. Unfortunately while Tieflings don't have much going on mechanically, Dragonborn have it far worse. They basically trade the Tiefling spell package for effectively a single spell, and can swap the fire resist for a different one, but only a different choice on character creation not on the fly, and none of the options are better than fire resist anyway. They also lose Darkvision for reasons which make no sense at all to me, given the incredible perception powers (darkvison and even blindsense) of full fledged Dragons. If Half Elves are more Elf than Human, Dragonborn are *far* more Human than Dragon, unfortunately.

11. Human
(Appearance A, Flavor F, Mechanics F)
Last by a mile, humans are the absolute worst. Compared to Half Elves, they trade darkvision, a status immunity and resist, and subrace goodies for a skill proficiency and an almost completely irrelevant bonus to carry capacity. Compared to Drow, they trade being able to pick what their proficiency is (instead of it being Perception, which is again always useful), and having a different set of free proficiencies, and their useless carry capacity bonus, in exchange for losing a spell package, darkvision of any kind to say nothing of superior, a status immunity and advantage vs another status, and basically all of their flavor. I know folks that want to play as humans anyway because they always want to play as humans, but effectively choosing to do so is in my opinion basically like playing on a flavorless challenge mode compared to what you could be doing.

Male elves do not have a single good face option. Half-elves have more “elvish” looking male face options than do elves.

I also think the ranking is somewhat class dependent. Half drow beats drow for sorcerer or wizard due to having light armor and shield proficiencies as well as most of the other drow abilities.

Light armor and shield are overrated. The game has a bunch of "gain +1 AC when not wielding armor or a shield" items in the game, many of them actual wizard/sorc gear. My Gale is sitting at 22AC, can go up to 23 AC with the ring that lets Shadowheart cast Warding Bond on him, and on top he gains universal resistances except psychic with it. Mage armor requires not using armor or shields.

And if you really want to go up in armor, you'll equip the Helldusk armor from Raphael which is a heavy armor that gives proficiency and will make him sit at like 25-26 AC anyways. Not that you need an AC that high even in tactician.

Meanwhile pure drow gives you much more dialogue options than half-drow, which is pretty tangible.

Light armor and shield are overrated. The game has a bunch of "gain +1 AC when not wielding armor or a shield" items in the game, many of them actual wizard/sorc gear. My Gale is sitting at 22AC, can go up to 23 AC with the ring that lets Shadowheart cast Warding Bond on him, and on top he gains universal resistances except psychic with it. Mage armor requires not using armor or shields.

And if you really want to go up in armor, you'll equip the Helldusk armor from Raphael which is a heavy armor that gives proficiency and will make him sit at like 25-26 AC anyways. Not that you need an AC that high even in tactician.

Meanwhile pure drow gives you much more dialogue options than half-drow, which is pretty tangible.

Light armor and shield are overrated. The game has a bunch of "gain +1 AC when not wielding armor or a shield" items in the game, many of them actual wizard/sorc gear. My Gale is sitting at 22AC, can go up to 23 AC with the ring that lets Shadowheart cast Warding Bond on him, and on top he gains universal resistances except psychic with it. Mage armor requires not using armor or shields.

And if you really want to go up in armor, you'll equip the Helldusk armor from Raphael which is a heavy armor that gives proficiency and will make him sit at like 25-26 AC anyways. Not that you need an AC that high even in tactician.

Meanwhile pure drow gives you much more dialogue options than half-drow, which is pretty tangible.

My own personal list is;

• Seldarine Drow - Love their lore, reactions, dialogue, appearance, stats... everything about them! They're also Incredibly useful because my favorite class is the Ranger, so the hand crossbows + 24m vision in the dark is so good. Not to mention they cannot be put to sleep.
• Githyanki - Love their lore, appearance, reactions, dialogue and abilities, especially Astral Knowledge. Love how versatile they can be and roleplaying with them.
• Zariel Tiefling - Love their appearance and abilities, especially Thaumaturgy and various smites. May not be as unique as the first two, but they're so awesome to play as.
• The other races don't hold my interest

The runts - Gnomes and Halflings - are awful. They look like chimps with too long arms and gigantic hands.
My favourites are the classical races - 'Oomie, Pansy, 'Arf-pansy, 'Arf-ork, Stuntie.
I don't care for the new races, the Hornies or the Skinnies.

Love the ranking. Inspired me to make my first playthrough a Drow. Haven't decided on gender/class/culture yet but definitely a Drow.

1 Half-drow
2 Everything else

Even Wotc realized that dragonborn are weak, especially when you remove racial ASI fof nonsensical reasons. Which is why they got updated to

- 1d10 breath weapon + 1d10 at lvl 5, 11, 17
- Breath weapon useable proficency bonus times, refreshes in long rest
- Breath weapon can be used instead of a normal attack when having multiple attacks
- Access to non-elemental breath weapons like radiant or psychic

One of the following at lvl 5
- Crowd Control breath weapon once per long rest(push, knock prone, ect.)
- Elemental immunity instead of resistence for 1 minute once per long rest
- Flight for 1 minute once per long rest + permanent telepathy

Well ... you asked, so please dont be insulted. Some races downright insult my common sense and I dont look kindly upon that.

1. Halfling
2. Gnome
3. Drow
4. Elf
6. Half-Orc
5. Human
7. Half-Elf
8. Dwarf
9. Tiefling
10. Githyanki
11. Dragonborn


Halfling - OP. Just OP. In a very skill focused game they reroll a critical failure. And then Lightfoots get Advantage for Stealth. So everyone else gets a 1:20 chance to have a critical failure on a Hide check, a Stout Halfling (that I dont play) has a 1:400 chance, and a Lightfood Halfling has a 1:160,000 chance. Not to mention they will roll higher on average anyway due to the Advantage. Why would you ever use anybody else for Stealth but a Halfling Rogue ? And it works in all kinds of other places including combat, too. You also reroll critical failures on attack rolls. As long as you can hit the opponent on a roll of 2, you have only a very minor chance to miss.

Gnome - Well on the plus side they get a kickass advantage. Much less universal though than Halfling, since it is only relevant in battle. On the negative side male Gnomes look just abhorrent in BG3.

Drow - They look cool, and they get Rapier as racial weapon, so even a Wizard or Sorcerer can melee just fine (Longsword, which is what regular Elves get, would need Strength instead). Not anywhere near as powerful in the past, but still great looking, and their racials arent bad.

Elf - They look good and their specials aint bad. My Paladin for example is a female High Elf. Just the purest race I can get. I wished I also could get an Unicorn mount to ride.

Half-Orc - Cool special ability, if you want to play tank. Very tempted to use them for a Fighter/Champion for maximum effect. In BG3 they look less ugly that in other games, too. I mean they look ugly, but in a heroic/manly way, as they are supposed to. But many games get that part wrong and make them just look ugly, with no chin etc.

Human - The carry capacity part is cool. Fancy them for a Wildheart Bear Barbarian for maximized carry capacity.

Half-Elf - I liked them in the past but in BG3 they just never come up as my race pick when I design a new character. The whole can use polearms part offers little additional functionality beyond that Shadowheart can use her goddesses weapon of choice.

Dwarf. Well, they always look so ugly. And in BG3 they are big time underpowered. Unless you want to be a mage in medium armor, I guess. Which is all I see people playing them as.

Tiefling horns are literally attached to the most fragile part of the skull. So the functions their horns serve ... is to make the skull, the most important part of the body, more fragile. Real horns would attach near the base and would increase, not decrease, protection of the skull. So yeah I dislike Tieflings with a vengeance for being a stupid concept.

Githyanki literally look like insects. Their nose is simply too small to function properly. Basically the moment they can no longer breathe through the mouth for some reason they would suffer from Asthma. Their racials are very powerful and I hear that the itemization for Gith Fighters is OP.

Dragonborn. So they're a sentient race ... but they cant smile or do anything else with their face. Begone.

Thank you very much for your response and rankings Halycon! It seems we're not too far off from each other, generally things line up within a place or two other than you like Tieflings and Githyanki substantially less than me, and you like Halflings and especially Humans far more than me. Totally fair of course, and I appreciate your thoughts and insights on all of them!

The one thing I will say is you ask why anyone would use anyone else other than a Halfling Rogue for stealth, for my Rogue I went Deep Gnome and don't regret my pick at all. Still have advantage on Stealth 24/7 and I'm ok with a 1 in 400 chance of crit failure, and as a Deep Gnome I get Superior Darkvision instead of no Darkvision, which is handy when scouting ahead. And when embarking on a crime spree I get Cats Grace put on me beforehand for the massive mathematical advantages it provides, so I'm still only looking at a 1 in 400 chance of crit failure where I would miss out on being a Halfling, which I'm ok with. I could also see someone going Wood Elf for max mobility, Drow for Superior Darkvision and the rest of their whole package, or being a Crit Fisher and going Half-Orc for the biggest numbers possible. I don't think any of those would be left regretting their choices. So I don't think it's as cut and dry as Halflings being the only good Rogues by any means.

Obviously people should play what they enjoy, always. I am merely explaining why I'm ignoring four out of the eleven races.

AFAIK Cats Grace does nothing on Lightfoot Halflings or Deep Gnomes for Stealth because they already have Advantage on Stealth anyway and gaining Advantage from multiple sources doesnt do anything new. And a single source of Disadvantage cancels Advantage, while a single source of Advantage cancels Disadvantage, no matter how many effects give you Advantage or Disadvantage, respectively.

Halycon you are absolutely correct of course, multiple sources of advantage do not stack and are negated by a single source of disadvantage, so while under Cats Grace neither Halflings nor Deep Gnomes gain anything from their existing advantage on stealth, though it's useful in general for scouting and while in combat since your cleric is unlikely to be concentrating on Cats Grace 24/7. I was just pointing that out since it's why I also don't care much about the halfling reroll personally while on a crime spree.

Let's say you are trying to pickpocket something with a target of 5:
Non-Halfling, no advantage: 20% failure chance
Halfling, no advantage: 16% failure chance (1/20 or 5% they reroll, 1/5 of the time that's still a failure, 4/5 of the time it's a success)
Non-Halfling, advantage: 4% failure chance
Halfling, advantage: 3.76% failure chance

The advantage both is way more impactful, and makes the difference of being a halfling less impactful. Add in guidance and you're less than a 1% failure rate either way. Again not saying it's not spectacular - random religion rolls or insight rolls or other unpredictable rolls coming up as you're wandering around the wild or engaging in dialogue will always benefit from being a halfling, and the sheer scope of their ability is why I consider them mechanically one of the best in the game, not at all trying to say or imply that they're not phenomenal. But the more forewarning you have of the need for a certain roll, and the more you can prep for that roll, the less of an impact their ability will have, which I think is just something worth noting.

True, but those items do all take up slots that could be used for something else. There’s lots of combinations, so having the option to use light armour or shields is quite significant IMO even if you find unarmoured items at various points in game.

Late game armour is amazing when you get to late game, but no use at all for most of the game.

That's fair, but since most of the game is 90% martial gear, it's not like casters have that many great options in ACT1/2 either, the options were basically use the lightning sparks gear for a +1 on attack rolls and 5-7 extra lightning damage on 5 stacks, or get an extra 3AC from being unarmored. That's a no-brainer for me, AC is really strong and since magic missiles is the best spell in the game and doesn't rely on attack rolls, AC was the obvious choice. In the case I needed cleaving spells, the normal cleave spells are pretty mediocre until you get to lv3+ slot spells, which work off DC saves anyways and by then the lightning charge gear isn't that great compared to having your wizard sit in 21-22 AC instead of 18-19.

I do want to try Wyll's rapier next playthrough, since I was annoyed to find out you can't get it from Mizora unless Wyll is in the party for the Mindflayer colony section, and I've always preferred Gale to Wyll because I find warlocks to be pretty gimped and by far the worst caster of the Sorc/Wiz/Warlock with their spell level capped at lv12 on lv5 spells while the others get lv6 spells, warlock has no access to chain lightning, and are stuck with a pitiful 3 lv5 warlock spell slots. I'll basically have to gimp myself during Mindflayer company to have Wyll in party to obtain that otherwise really nice Rapier.

hahahaha I like how you claim anatomical "errors" but most of them are complete incorrect hahaha
imagine needing a nose to protrude in order to function, or that all horns are made for fighting purposes in nature.
hahahaha your list is just soo comically wrong that is almost good.

Thanks for the insults.

Now reread my posting and point out where I would claim that:

- Noses have to protrude.

- Horns are for combat.

Varacolaci care to actually contribute to the conversation instead of discouraging conversation by insulting those who *are* contributing? If Halycon's list is wrong, what does *Your* list look like, and why? It's easy to criticize while contributing nothing, but infinitely more valuable to actually contribute something even if it's imperfect and especially if it doesn't totally align with the views of others.

There you are clearly implying that a small nose can't function properly - https://i.insider.com/5a06102e35876e1d008b55ad?width=800&format=jpeg&auto=webp poor monkey he has no function nose in your ignorant opinion as most snakes, turtles and a looot of animals that have very small or no protruding (big) nose.




First the forehead is not the weakest part of the skull. in fact all the top part of the skull in humans is the strongest part since it PROTECTS THE BRAIN but secondly, if it is a different race it could have different distribution of thickness and density than humans.
There is almost ZERO animals where the horn in in the base, they are typically in the FRONTAL BONE since it is the thickest.

Again, speaking from ignorance lead you to say just hilarious stuff