Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General POLL: What races have you played in the full release?

Thanks everyone for sharing your class info in the BG3 birthday stats inspired poll on classes we've played since the full release.

Moving on, what races have you played the full game as (or are playing, or tried to play in honour mode but died horribly)? What have you enjoyed, or not, about playthroughs with different races and do you feel that the race you play makes a big difference to your experience?

Again, you should be able to select multiple races if you've played multiple characters, but where folk have played multiple games with a single race that will be understated as you can select each only once.

What races have you played since the full release? multiple choice
	Human
	Elf
	Drow
	Half-elf
	Half-orc
	Halfling
	Dwarf
	Gnome
	Tiefling
	Githyanki
	Dragonborn
Votes accepted starting: 27/08/24 08:27 PM
View Results

Mostly halflings, but I have my gith mage Liral, a few gnomes and my dwarf lady. And I played a Drow resisting Durge, though I'm not a fan of drows. I do play an elf in HM - he substitues for air genasi, since I made my ttrpg character Vayu for that and didn't want to use race mods, since the last time, a race mod broke my game. So that elf is not an elf, but an air genasi . And I have a tiefling lady.

Savour the moment while the small races are out in front

Classes, gear and feats will play a larger role in terms of game mechanics. But of course aesthetics and immersion with the unique dialogue choices are what really matters.

I've played all races besides Githyanki and Dragonborn.

I just struggled to create one that looked decent and their racial bonuses are nothing particularly interesting to build around (Unlike my Half-Orc Berzerkssassin that combines Savage Attacks + Brutal Critical + Assassinate: Ambush to completely dunk on some poor schmo at the start of a fight, or any type of Diviner Wizard + Halfling to be Lord of the Dice)

Generally, I err towards Human. As I find they have the better faces and fit better with the available voices (Oh, what I'd give to be able to have my Hot Dwarven Goth GF with a thick Irish accent...)

My primary races in order are always;

• Drow
• Tiefling
• Githyanki

One race I TRULY want to play is Dragonborn and I tried so hard to get into them, but I can't stand how humanoid they look and how unfeminine they are. If they looked like this Actually feminine dragonborns and lore-friendly legs I would play them in an instant, but as they are now I just can't stand their design. Especially the human looking legs, just doesn't feel right to me.

Team elf!

In tabletop I've always been the player who chooses classes and races to balance out the party. I find it fun and enjoyable to take that role and figure out the type of character that stands out from the rest and can fill a vacant role.

And because most DnD players will play one of the elf or humanlike races, I've become more used to the short and zoic races. So they were the ones I naturally gravitated towards in Baldur's Gate 3.

Drow or Gnome are my goto races... will force myself to play most others like gith and dragon but i play 3 Gnomes to every one of something else

I'm happy, that the small races, especially halflings and dwarves are pretty well liked here and not far behind the standard player races (all flavours of elf).
They need more love

Only the one halfling so far, and to be honest that's just a recycled idea from a second playthrough of Skyrim that never happened - after playing a big burly Nord man with heavy armour and a big sword I thought "wouldn't it be fun to play as a little, shy-looking woman who can Shout people off mountains?" Never did play that character in Skyrim, but I remembered the idea when I installed BG3.

The first thing I think about playing a halfling in BG3 is that it feels almost overpowered - I don't remember anything where being a halfling was mechanically a disadvantage, but the sheer number of holes you can squeeze through as a small character is incredible. And the house rule version of Naturally Stealthy... I would love it if my GM gave me advantage on all stealth rolls!

The camera angles are fun, too. It helped me to understand the size difference for RP reasons when I'm always looking up at the tall people, but it's also nice to be the only one who can stand eye-to-eye with the gnomes.

Agreed - halflings are pretty powerful in BG3. The Lucky feat they have, is great too: In my halfling playthroughs, I honestly never see a Natural 1 so far with my halfling ladies.

BG3 Halflings are too ugly for me to play them All that effort than went into Dragonborn would had been better spent on the short races, in the following order:
Halfling, Gnome and then Dwarf (in least need of improvment).
GAWBLINS look better than the Hobbits, for fuck's sake!


I played most of the races, for a time at least, apart from Dragonborn (not interested). I only played Tiefling because I once took Karlach as Origin Character - otherwise I'd not touch those mutants.
Some combinations of race and sex are awful - I can play Half Orc, but male only. On the other hand, female Gnomes and Hobbits are slightly less ugly than the males.
Male Elf? With a lantern jaw which an Orc would kill for?!? Pass ...

The lack of racial bonuses in attribute stats does level the playing field between the races, I think.

I had my first natural 1 while trying to DOMINATE THE BRAIN in the endgame. After a string of single-digit rolls, too!

I don't find the halflings ugly, especially the females look pretty good. This is my first halfling lady, totally unmodded.

I already said - lasses are not as bad loocking as the lads.
I don't want to rehash the entire thread - Hobbit and Gnome heads are too big and arms too long.

Playing anything but Halfling always feels kind of wrong in BG3. Their racial is just so uber.


P.s.: I should maybe add that I play a lot of characters of other races, after all always just Halfling would get quite boring.

I am Drow! Tieflings have a pretty face, but I don't like the body. I would have a problem with female halflings because they look too much like children. I think that's why they also get different animations in certain situations.

I hear that often from people who like 'standard' proportions. But the small races don't look anything like children. They are smaller sized adult persons and don't look at all like children. The bodies are adult too.

Sorry, in my perception they look like that and that's why I would have a problem with that.

It's objectively not true though. Being smaller doesn't mean, it's a kid. It's a fanatsy world, you have all sizes - look at Dolly, she doesn't look liek a child either.

But that discussion is not for this thread, so I leave it at that.

My subjective perception will never be objective, so yes, there is nothing to discuss or disrupt the thread. Thanks.

Always been an Elf person. High elf is my preference, but it's always nice to switch it up. Looking at Drow next.

It's nice that we have so good variation on race choices! Something for everyone.

Mostly elves - I'm terrible about elves - but I've tried all the others except half-orc.

Dwarf, Halfing, and Gnome racial abilities look pretty useful, but I can't stand the 7.5m per round movement speed. I usually play wood elf for related reasons.

Access to Longstrider and Disguise Self can mitigate such effects, and, if you start as Bard, you can have those from level one on, and its not even a bad idea to pick these two among the four spells you get at level 1.

Especially if you are very specialized into an action, Halfling very substantially offers an advantage to doing this action, especially once you're so good at a task that you will even succeed on a 2.

P.s.: Actually not sure on Disguise Self.

As if I would ever stoop so low as to using my feet for movement and positioning...

Voted based on my Tavs, but then realized I should have also checked human, because I have played one human character... Gale

I don't think Disguise Self changes your speed, though I could be wrong. D&D rules don't say it does, although they also say you can only change your height by 1 foot.

It would be weird to cast Disguise Self on yourself to change between small & medium height. Imagine every time you start a conversation, the other person is either looking way above your real head, or down at your waist.

All of them!
Well... almost, I still haven't done a Duergar or a Gnome playthrough yet, and I gave up on my Dragonborn one in Act 3 somewhere.
But I've done all the others! Some of them multiple times!

Surprised to see Half-Orc so low in the poll, I guess people see Half-Orcs as I see Dragonborns?

Interesting results! Looks like so far the top 5 are the same as the birthday stats, but that dragonborn haven't been as popular with folk here as the wider community and other races don't trail as far behind the leaders. (Though possibly if the self-confessed repeat elves could have voted more times the difference would have been more stark )

So far, I've completed the game with a tiefling and a halfling, and have ongoing dwarf and high elf honour mode runs, plus a wood elf (whom I'm headcanonning as a shapeshifter) Dark Urge. I'm hoping to try all the races in the end, and do have some rough character concepts for most. Including half-orcs which I'm now tempted to try next as it seems like they need some love!

Disguise Self, for the record, really does nothing for movement speed. But with Longstrider tall races get 12m and short races get 11m, its really not a huge difference anymore.

I only play half-elves, I use one face in particular, it reminds me of the actress Alexis Bledel.

Well, Half-Elves have traditionally been my favorite race in D&D.

But I dont like Half-Elves much in BG3. They dont look like a mix of human and elven here. Instead they look extremely elven, actually they look even more elven than the actual elves, with a very harsh aesthetic and simply too small eyes.

And while I dont know her, well she's easy to google, and Alexis Bledel has really big eyes, and she's gorgeous. She doesnt look harsh at all and to me she doesnt look like BG3 Half-Elves.

I think it was face number one, this half-elf looks a lot like Alexis.

Amen.
One of my issues with the game - I just can't look at those male elf mugs ...

The one race to rule them all... Dwarves!!

Made a new Drow character and found it interesting how different many of the reactions where! It really is worth trying different races for different playthroughs.

Mostly humans, but half elves, dwarves and tieflings as well. Those are the only races that I tend to play in PnP D&D as well in addition to elves depending on the setting (I'm not a huge fan of the Forgotten Realms elves). In general I prefer humans though for almost everything and the rest only if I have a good concept that fits their racial background.

Drow is definitely one of the more fun races to pick, yes.

Thanks to Disguise Self you can experience really any races dialogues on any character with access to said spell, though.

Charisma dominated classes are superior picks anyway for the protagonist, and three of the four get access to Disguise Self.

Oh, interesting. It's cool that the Disguise Self spell works that way. For the sake of immersion it should, but you never know how much work the devs have put into things like that.

As a non-gaming software engineer, it should be fairly simple as long as it's planned properly. Basically, you'd have your Actual Race, set at the start of the game, and your Apparent Race, which is normally the same as your actual race but can be changed by Disguise Self, etc. Anything that changes based on how you present yourself (e.g. appearance, dialogue options) would look at your Apparent Race; anything that doesn't change (not sure if we're certain that anything doesn't change, but I'll say racial stats for an example) uses your Actual Race.

Anyway, that way you get all the changes you'd expect, with very little extra work. They could have any number of different Apparent Races, e.g. if one spell changed your appearance but not the dialogue, or another spell let you talk like a drow while looking like a gnome, or whatever.

It would be an added complexity/check on dialog, but I think you are right in that it's not that hard. Depending on how things are set up ofcourse. Others spaghetti code are always a nightmare to work with.

A dialogue file may be a lot of code, with many answer possibilities depending upon the real and effective race of the player, and depending upon the classes of the player, but structurally and algorithmically its extremely simple, and thus easy to read, understand, and if necessary bugfix, and thus its not spagetti code.

Namely if you are for example a Halfling using Disguise Self into a Drow, you will get both Halfling and Drow answer options, if they are both available.

Likewise if you are for example a multiclass Cleric and Wizard, you will get both Cleric and Wizard answer options.

If both race and class answer options are available, they will both be listed.

Etc.

To be honest, I haven't really given it too much thought how the code would look like at their end so I'm absolutely sure you are correct.

Actually sometimes you do, sometimes you dont.

For example when I ask that old woman in the grove for the gruel as a Halfling masking as Drow, I do NOT get the option to get two Gruel.

That I get without disguise (on said Halfling) or disguised as a Halfling.