Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Playing as Monster Races

@SaurianDruid not at all. You missed the point of dnd humans =/= normal humans. Can you cast fly? Please teach me. Can you pick a class? Let me know.

Extra appendages don't count for much more than flavor of preference.

At the end of the day it's still human based. It does not make humans boring.

It's going to go in circles. Just read my posts. At this point I'm repeating myself. No thank you.

Edit: Think about human stories. Would Joel be more interesting with a tail? Would Elle be better with horns? Would Solid Snake be better as a demon prostitute 900 year old loli? Appendages and race bluntly do not make you more interesting inherently. Writing, script, and imagination make better characters. Your preference might increase your attraction to the character, but what does that have to do with the actual character?

...Someone thought Solid Snake (therefore Venom Snake) would be better with a horn...

I wrote before about how nonhuman species (and fantasy/sci-fi) in general open the door to philosophical questioins that are more difficult to ask with all the pre-existing biases we have in a story about humans. This is what stories are about -- exploring the limits of the human experience.

But I did skim over the other reason why nonhuman species can be a good time. SaurianDruid is right. Sometimes it's just aesthetically interesting to imagine having a tail and that's as legitimate as any other reason.

Venom Snake has a horn not because of any mechanism for exploring the human condition. He has a horn because it's kind of cool, and because Kojima wanted to use it as a metaphor for a devil's horn -- an external visual representation of the character's inner transformation. That's all just aesthetics.

Yes, when crafting a nonhuman species, we generally start by using humans as a template before we start creating points of biological divergence. And yes, as humans we are aesthetically biased to prefer human standards of beauty. (And thank god for that. The last thing we need is people fetishising actual animals.)

That doesn't undermine anything else we've discussed about the advantages of nonhumans.

You seem very infatuated with your own preference not the "human experience". You seem to enjoy it so I'm not going to burst that bubble unless you really want me to.

You love to wonder which is fine.

Be warned, however. What you seek is neither infinite nor mysterious. Saurian is wrong, but you are comfortable hiding in the details(how you feel vs what is) rather than answering the larger questions. I'm content with just letting you believe that. You like what you like but I think you know better.

I'm a little disappointed you are more emotional than logical. No worries though. Nothing wrong with that.

You contradicted you self about venom snake btw. Also you completely ignored my point too. *sigh

See you later man. Have a good one.

Cool it off, Aishaddai.

It isn't about making a character "better". It is about making them "different". There are stories that cannot be told if everyone in the story is human. Star Trek would be greatly reduced if you replaced the aliens with just different human civilizations with different cultures. Certainly most Star Trek aliens are basically just that, but you also have beings that can only communicate in metaphors and other species that can't communicate verbally at all. Species that don't experience the same three dimensional existence we do. Beings that, upon first glance, aren't even recognized as sapient at first.

Similarly I really can't have the same roleplay experience playing a human, even a human with magic and mutant powers, as I can playing a Lizardfolk druid who's trying to understand what makes humanity so effective at destroying his people. The idea that he exists outside the human species is core to that story.

Lizardfolk is an interesting one to bring up here because their section in Volos specifically highlights their different mindset.

"Lizardfolk possess an alien and inscrutable mindset, their desires and thoughts driven by a different set of basic principles than those of warm-blooded creatures. Their dismal swamp homes might lie hundreds of miles from the nearest human settlement, but the gap between their way of thinking and that of the smooth-skins is far greater". Volos Pg. 111

I wish the cambions were a playable race. Or some other kind of half-fiend. I like the Demon Lords very much (especially Graz'zt, Demogorgon and Orcus) and I have the feeling that they have been left out a bit for now. I mean, you can play the tiefling of Zariel, Asmodeus or Mephistopheles, but you can't play a character related to any of the Demon Lords who are as powerful as the Archdevils and have recently messed up a lot in the "Rage of Demons". So I get the feeling that it's a bit unfair that you can't play their follower or a direct descendant right now, and I hope Larian will notice that too. And he will do something about it.
I'd like to see the devils in the Nine Hells react to someone so connected to their enemies. I liked Raphael very much and I wonder what he would have to say in such a situation

While most of my favorite fantasy novels are human-centric, when roleplaying I'd argue the paradigm shifts somewhat. Fantasy races facilitate roleplaying, and, more importantly, is an aspect of roleplaying many people enjoy. They want to slip out of their skin and into the skin of something fantastical and alien (while still feeling familiar). We can equivocate about the deeper meanings behind the races, but ultimately, most people play DnD because it's fun. They like to play as tieflings, drow, githyanki because it's fun. And that's absolutely valid.

Not to mention aesthetics are a key part of visual storytelling. Spock's design is meant to evoke rigid rationality/intellectualism, and while you can achieve a similar feeling with a purely human design it's not going to be telegraphed as strongly and limits what you can do visually.

And, as already mentioned, fantasy races function as metaphor. Vampires are an obvious example: they can be sexual predators, addicts (sex, alcohol, drugs, take your pick), parasites, outsiders, foreigners, foreigners that bring illness to other lands, marginalized communities, etc., etc. Of course, fantasy metaphors can be done badly--see Bright as an example--but that's an issue rooted in bad writing, not the concept of fantasy metaphors in totality.

Yeah, that'd be neat.
I'd also like the Tiefling Subspecies to be a bit more varied appearance wise.

Tieflings can be demonically lineaged too. You have to put some strain on your suspenders yourself when you fluff your character, you don't have to abide by the letter of every character generation option. They'll never be able to include entries for every possible way a player might want to write their character.

Still, I guess a "Demonic" subrace Tiefling entry would be nice, even if it's just a generic one.

Wasn’t there some sort of change to tieflings that made them all look like asmodeus? I vaguely recall watching a lore video that talked about that. In a homebrew setting it wouldn’t matter but I imagine larian are going to stick to the official lore given to them by wotc.

Yeah but that was 4e, 5e reneged on it a little bit; and (according to the many back-and-forths I've had with Niara on this very forum over that very thing) a one time thing, only applicable to tieflings that were alive when that happened, and non-asmodeic tieflings could have been born after that.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

Fun fact! WotC did actually make a demonic tiefling subrace unearthed arcana that came out with the Rage of Demons storyline to use in the Out of the Abyss campaign. This was in 2015 and they never published it in an official book or even in a companion publication like they did with Genasi and the Elemental Evil storyline.

But you can find it Here

Maybe one day our wish will come true. If not thanks to Larian, then good will of some modder who will have mercy on us. It is possible that the appearance of the tieflings will not change at all then, but at least it is possible that we will be able to play as a tiefling with demonic origin or a cambion.

Seems like this is more for mods, skin replacements already can do that. You should go to nexus mods and commission what ever you want to see. It varies by person, a few hundred dollars seems about right

Unfortunately, I have only one dollar

If they add a new race outside of the basic PHB list... my leanings go toward Shadar Kai (from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes), as I think they as a race would fit into the lore well them coming from the plane of shadow. Plus I like the idea of a race with +2 Dex, +1 Con, superior night-vision and a teleport rechargeable on long rest as a build option for a more melee/ranged weapon themed class (Shadow Monk, Rogue/Assassin, or Warrior as examples).

That said if they introduced them, they would also likely need to introduce Eladrin. And it's not as if they have not already introduced one race from that tome of foes: Githyanki. So if they added the other playable races from the Tome such as Githzerai, Duergar, Eladrin, Sea Elf, Shadar Kai, and Deep Gnomes, it would not be too much of a stretch. After all they have the models for the Gith, Duergar, and Deep Gnomes already in place. And they would only need to tweak the elves a bit to fit the Eladrin, Sea Elves and Shadar Kai into the mix.

I want GAAAAAAAAAAAAAWBLINS! I want to play a Dour GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWBLIN Paladin.

You want to invoke the Mak'gora-Goblin? Styx jumps out of the shadows: SHUSSSSH, and says: Of Orcs and Man is Better. kills the orc. Urakhi jumps from rock crushing styx skull, he picks him up to eat... in the end everyone is dead. Dont mess with the multi universe, spits on the ground- we see its elon musk