Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please Add A Transmog Feature

Please add a Transmog system, a feature that enables players to visually customize their character's equipment with appearances of another so they can look the way the player envisioned them and roleplay them properly.

For as long as transmog in some shape or form does not exist in Baldur's Gate 3 the vast majority of equipment pieces are completely useless for numerous reasons, but more importantly it creates a terrible dilemma because the player has to either gimp their character's gameplay stats or their character's visual identity which massively plays into the person's roleplay.

Builds shouldn't dictate how a character must look because nobody wants to look like a regular guard while playing a Druid or look like a Paladin while playing a Barbarian or look like a Rogue while playing a Cleric. And what if a player wants something more specific to roleplay as like a rabid Orc Barbarian or a Wood Elf Huntress that is one with nature or a Drow Matriarch from Menzoberranzan. How a character looks is a massive part of roleplay and immersion;

• A vast majority of armors have completely useless stats but aesthetically look phenomenal
• Or they have pretty great stats but are ugly as hell and completely go against the envisioned character roleplay
• Or they're absolutely perfect in every way, but eventually become weak in future acts

A great example of this is the recently added Orin's armor. How is the player even supposed to wear this armor, both from a gameplay and visual-roleplay perspective;

• It's a gorgeous piece of iconic armor worn by the captivating Orin, but its stats are terribly niche for a Disguise build that contradicts the whole point of roleplay by forcing the player into default race disguises
• And even if it was the best armor in the game ever obtained, aesthetically it clashes against every single piece of equipment out there
• And even if something did aesthetically match it, that piece of equipment 100% would not play into the class/build

No, there is only one way to wear Orin's armor and that is in its purest natural form exactly as she wore it. Which means without a cape, gloves and boots.. but as long as transmog does not exist the only way to achieve this is to sacrifice 3 equipment pieces and massively gimp the character's build by doing so.

You had the foresight to add a toggle for camp clothes, helmets and instruments (should have been all slots, especially capes), this feature is completely possible to implement so please;

• Add a proper transmog system and end this dilemma so players can visually customize & roleplay their characters the way they envision them with full creative freedom
• And as a bonus to make the feature more interesting and Honour mode more rewarding; you could make it so any piece of equipment obtained during Honour Mode unlocks that equipment's visual appearance account-wide, thus allowing the player to collect them during Honour Mode so they can transmog their equipment slots in any newly started playthrough on any difficulty from the very beginning. Similarly to how the Golden Dice are unlocked account-wide, it would add an account-wide progression with a bit of replay value to hunt them all down

As an avid admirer who loves mixing & matching different equipment pieces to aesthetically enrich and define the characters I roleplay as in any games that have transmog (Cyberpunk, Nioh franchise, Assassin's Creed franchise, Diablo franchise, World Of Warcraft, Terraria etc...) it pains me when builds dictate and define how characters must look, instead of free creativity defining and enriching the envisioned character roleplay.

Transmog in today's day and age for years now has become a commonly implemented, highly requested and needed feature for roleplaying in many games of different genres and Baldur's Gate really should have it too. An RPG of this scope with so many aesthetically pleasing pieces of equipment that are begging to be worn simply must have it.

The image below is how I personally wish my evil Dark Urge would look like in the game's final act, but unfortunately she is instead forced to look like Jaheira's regular-ass Harper from ACT 2 because that's how the build dictates I have to look;



All the characters in the game look the part as an expression of their backgrounds to put their stories across, so allow the players to look the part too as an expression of their own roleplay and creativity, not their builds.

That would be good, I know it from other games too.

I wish this forum allowed upvotes Transmog should be a core aspect of any game, imo. Our characters should look like who they are, not just whatever piece of armour has the best stats for their build.

I've always mixed feelings about "transmog" or equivalent, because on one side I hate looking like a clown who dresses up throwing on himself whatever has the better stats for his build (to the point that at time I actively gimp myself not wearing stuff powerful, but that I don't like aesthetically)...
On the other side, though, I kinda despise that "what you see is what you get" goes out of the window the very moment you start changing the aspect of every single piece of equipment in a game AT WILL.

On a side note, please let us hide cloaks in the same way we can hide helmets.
No one ever manages to NOT look like a complete wanker wearing one.

I'd prefer a robust, in-game enchantment system that would allow us to alter our items. That way we could take the pieces we like the appearance of and modify them as needed.

It also has the added benefit of letting some of our equipment grow with us and stay with us throughout our journey. Signature items, if you will. Sort of like Drizzt has two well known scimitars, you know? He doesn't change weapons every other chapter. I'm all for finding new stuff, but I don't want a revolving door of equipment.

While I don't care what people do in their single player games, in multiplayer changing your look should have certain boundaries. I don't want anyone in my MP party to wear a Full Plate Mail, but look like they have a chainmail bikini, Orin's flesh suit or some topless camp pants on.

Generally I think a better approach would be to just have a lot of armors with different designs available. And then a dye system on top. So the player can choose between a sleek stealthy leather armor, or an army style studded leather. Likely their stats would already reflect your class and playstyle well. Or a dwarven style angular plate armor, or some organic elven style with leaf shaped decorations or whataever. But I don't like complete transmog freedom that just makes a mess out of the original designs that make sense and have context. I'd prefer an RPG where Githyanki would attack you for wearing their armor, assuming you stole it or killed some Gith.

I trust the devs more than players in their ability to make the game look good while maintaining a required level of mechanical feedback, such as what wearing Heavy Armor implies for Stealth abilities. Heavy needs to always look heavy. I don't want the confusion of looking naked while mechanically wearing heavy armor.

I think WoW had a reasonable answer to the semi-restricted transmogs, which was to restrict them via armor type. Like, Light Armor could be swapped with any Light Armor you've unlocked, but you couldn't swap Light Armor with Heavy Armor.

Though, personally, I'd love complete freedom in single-player, and perhaps give a multi-player host the option to set "Unlimited Transmogs" vs "Limited Transmogs" vs "No Transmogs," to control the level of fidelity to what's seen on the character model. I adored some of the non-armor (and yet non-camp clothes) items but could never wear them, and even within my armor type, I sometimes liked the look of pieces that just didn't have the stats that were right for me.

No one would force you to use this system, but for others it would immensly increase the immersion while not sacrificing builds and stats. Besides there are already armours which seem inconsistent like shars half plate armour which gives bonus to sneaking.

Yes, please! There is already a mod for this but it's a little unreliable, it can change the stats and some visual effects are hard-coded to stay (e.g. fire on weapons). I hope Larian will add this in the future, maybe with a more fleshed-out system too as crafting is very underutilized.

Yes please. It’s very, very badly needed.

+1!

+1

Yes please!

I think transmog should be available for all regular equipment, meaning that it should be possible to make enchanted equipment look like anything you've already found, slot for slot. This is easy to handwave as some form of dissembling magic. Transmog for enchanted equipment I think should be more expensive and more involved than transmog for unenchanted stuff, to preserve the sense of visual progression, so it's not just totally front loaded.

Also, right now it's a bit odd that we have a "camp appearance" option, and yet all the hats and capes and nice boots etc that would seem to fit that look are for some reason made part of our armored appearance instead.

We should be able to hide everything, each slot, individually, for both looks, including the weapons slots on the back or in our hands. I've had the game glitch out occassionally such that characters keep their arms and shields at the ready the whole time in exploration, and that looks so much cleaner to me than stuff on the back.

Equally important to me would be Portraits that are keying off dyed equipment. We should be able to level with the camp clothing or transmog appearance too. Currently the player has to change gear before levelling if they want it to affect the portrait display. This is a weird use of the respec feature to me.

I find myself frequently just trying to find gear that won't spoil my portrait visualization with a weird safety color. Examples might be stuff like all draconic Sorcerers getting those teal green robes. If I'm a red dragon I probably want red robes ya know, but even if I dye them, they're still going to show that same green in the portrait.

I think they've undervalued how important all this stuff is for the replay. I would choose the visual over the stat boost pretty much every time, but even if you go that route the unenchanted equipment rarely does you much better in terms of flexibility for dying and such. A purple chain shirt looks just like a purple chain shirt +1, so there's no benefit to keeping the regular arms and armor. This is different than say BG1/BG2 where you couldn't combine the best AC boosting cloaks or rings with enchanted armor, but only regular armor. I think they should have done something similar here.

ps. I've been waiting since 2020 for them to include some more heads here and for an option to choose our starting equipment so we can define our initial look that way. I really thought these would be more forthcoming, surely before the full Release dropped, but it just hasn't materialized. So now we're just waiting for them to get all definitive about it I guess. Probably another year waiting in the wings. There are of course plenty of unique faces/voices/looks but these are reserved exclusively for the Origin Companions and key NPCs, which contributes to the sense that the custom character is just getting the leftovers.

If we want to see unique faces, portraits, voices, idles, and emotive gestures for our own creations, we're kinda left holding the bag there. I mean what if I want to look like Nine Fingers ya know lol. I haven't downloaded a Mod for this game in months, and I think some of the visualization mods will not be able to deliver in the same way that having this stuff built-in would. This is because mods for this sort of stuff typically won't take progression into account. So maybe you get a giant basket of everything, or all the dyes at once in infinite combinations at no cost, that sort of thing, but then that's what I mean about the pitfalls of front loading it. A mod doesn't really need to hold the whole game in view, and probably wouldn't, when the goal there is just to showcase all the various possibilities or new models.

But I want the progression to feel more curated than that. Not straight jacketed into just the one sort of look based on class archetype like the vanilla thing, but also not swinging the pendulum completely in the other directions to compensate either. I want a nice middle ground, and a black dye too, before the curtain falls! But I want to work for it a little bit ya know, if that makes sense hehe.

I'm not a fan of tying it to honour mode.

There is just no way on earth I'd ever play it unmodded at the moment. I've come back to BG3 after months to finally attempt it -- lo and behold, the game is still broken!

I've never had a run which did not encounter a completely game breaking bug at some point. Had I only had one save file, I would have had to delete all of them. Every single character. Forcing people to complete the game under these settings to unlock a much needed feature is gaming purgatory.

If you've ever climbed up a ladder, net or vine in this game, and the object started vibrating, your character started vibrating, the whole thing exploded, teleported you to the top and gave you damage (??), completely ruining the opportunity for more characters to climb up, you may know how I feel about BG3.

Yeah I don't see a reason to tie it to a difficulty scale, since this is a core RP feature. I mean I do enjoy the idea of the game rewarding us with little things that go beyond just an achievement on steam, just not for characterization of this sort. If I can see it in the game that feels different to me, which is why I think it works nicely for dice skins on honour. Doing random stuff with difficulty scales should just give us a ton of different Dice colors there, but for equipment and visualizing the Player Character in avatar this is basically stuff I'd want in Explorer mode too. It's good for all players I think.

The difference between character Creation and in-game progression for the visualization shouldn't be quite so pronounced. The mirror is a good start. Hair and Wardrobe should be a thing that the player can spend a full session on if they choose to go wild there, or double back like a couple hours later to just a whole weekend on that alone. Because there is no custom/import portrait here the avatar has to do more heavy lifting to create a similar sense of having a unique character. The same goes for voices, where we get a spectacular Jaheira voice with great barks but you can't use em for the Tadpoled Adventurer. Stuff like that. I think most of our armored appearances we're able to preview in Act 1. With a couple notable exceptions we see all the armor and robe designs pretty early on, and the only thing that changes with each is how the dyes apply to the various components on it. It would be different if there were like 4 designs for each chainshirt, but for each type we get one visual basically and it's just the colors that progress.

Then without transmog you often get an issue where you're trying to combine metallic looking armor with accent pieces that look like fur or studded leather, or you'll get a mismatch like chunky heavy armor in the forearms like Popeye with something all lithe in the torso, or vice versa. Or maybe where something looks weird just cause it clips. In all those cases I want to hide the offending article of clothing or replace it with something more generic probably. I want my color choices to carry through into the Portrait and the character sheet.

Right now I don't feel like we have much of a character sheet. I mean the way we have to pull up our inventory, or the whole party view to see our avatar. The fact that it's the same avatar we see if just switching out our equipment. I think that view should be something that includes idles and emotes, a color field or background. Ways to carry the color choices through into the Char sheet visual. I think having a 3rd in-game view would also be nice, so basically a Standard appearance that over-rides the Equipped visualization, in exactly the same way that the camp clothing appearance can override it. They gave us an item that allows us to disguise self in the camp chest, this would just be an extension of that, but for our duds and getups rather than our heads/phenotype.

Top priority right now would be to Replace Appearance/Hide for capes, gloves, boots etc. Then a toggle to show/hide weapons outside of combat or in dialogue, the same way helmets work currently. The clipping is atrocious with some stuff right now. Like ears still going through hats, capes twisting into the chest, weapons just looking extra jank at the back. It feels like light trolling sometimes, but then I'm sure they want to clean all that up if they can right. Meantime just an option to hide what isn't working and replace it with something that does in the interim.

ps. here this is crude, but just that idea suggested above where maybe it could key off the basic armor type. So in the first appearance set you could have say standard Jaheira exactly what she's wearing when we first meet her, or you could key into another regular cloth look for that. For a medium armor you could transmog to another medium armor keeping the major components or colors. Then for Hide you could have that replace with the standard appearance or just key off the main torso piece. So basically Hide/Look 1/Look 2 for any of the equipment slots. Having to actually equip the loadouts might also be cool, for the regular equipment since that would be another use for that stuff on the characters. For each character to do the quick switch with anything in their inventory and have it set that way for the look. Loadout 1/2, however many. Then the same for the camp stuff, but just add all the slots to those so we can wear the cool boots and hats and capes for it hehe.

To elaborate on the Honour Mode unlocking transmog appearances account-wide;

Larian would most likely only consider implementing the transmog feature as a per-playthrough feature; meaning the player would only get to transmog what they collected in that current playthrough.

And one thing I massively dislike about RPGs is when the most captivating-looking equipment the player wants to roleplay with is all locked away behind ACT 3's late game, at which point the player only gets a few hours to enjoy them before the game is over. So to enjoy the [Elegant Robe], [Wavemother's Robe] or [Mutilated Carapace] which are all late ACT 3 items, the player only gets to do so for a few hours before the game is over.

This is why the Honour Mode suggestion was made so that Larian at least considers an account-wide appearance system, similarly to the Golden Dice being account-wide;

• The transmog would naturally be available from the very beginning on any difficulty as a per-playthrough feature. Meaning they're able to transmog only the equipment they collect as they play through the game.
• But if the player for example wants the appearance of [Wavemother's Robe] from the very beginning of a playthrough, they'd have to obtain it in Honour Mode first to unlock it account-wide for all playthroughs.

NOTE: I only made this suggestion incase Larian or other players wanted/needed some meaning behind an account-wide transmog. Personally it doesn't matter to me how it's implemented, I just want account-wide transmog so I can roleplay my characters throughout the entire journey, not just the final 5 hours!

I don't mind the idea of transmogs, but I'd like for it to be implemented in a way that makes sense in game (unlike some games where you do it on the fly via a menu and at any time). Maybe an enchanter you pay to cast a glamour on your equipment?

I check Larian’s social media at least once a day to see if Patch#6 has been announced and if it’s with this feature.

For me it’s the one glaring negative in an otherwise stellar game.

Same, it's the only feature missing for me to have ultimate fun in BG3

Well... I disagree. Role-play and build ideally should be one and the same. While, I of course, theoretically dont mind an optional transmog, ideally I would want the look of my character to represent systemic roleplaying choices I made (including build). So it's less that I have an issue with transmog but if, there is discrepency between system build choices and the game represents the character visually, as you suggested in:
than that is IMO a bigger issue, than lack of transmog.

And BG3 is forgiving enough, that you can wear whatever you like, for your character to wear and stilldo just fine.