Despite only being partially released thus far in early access, Baldur’s Gate 3 has a lot to explore. There’s over 20 hours of content to play through, six classes, and several playable races to use for the player character: drow, dwarves, elves, githyanki, half-elves, halflings, humans, tieflings, and all associated subraces.
Still, eight races doesn’t cover all playable races from Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition – the ruleset Baldur’s Gate 3 uses – by any means. The official 5e rules include aasimar, gnomes, dragonborn, half-orcs, and more. So here’s the question: will Baldur’s Gate 3 early access get any more races, or will those additions be saved for the full 1.0 release?
In one of its pre-release community updates, Larian Studios did talk about Baldur’s Gate 3‘s character creation, and in particular the playable races it would feature. Unfortunately, nothing in that update promised further additions to the list of races while the game was in early access. “We know many of you are very curious about future races that may be added but with 16 races + subraces to pick from we feel like there’s enough content to get you started,” Larian wrote in its update.
And yes, the existing races and subraces do have a lot of variation for players to toy around with. But the question remains whether Larian will add more, or wait for the game’s full release. The company did promise updates to early access in time, but so far there aren’t really any specifics available as to what those updates will contain.
In previous Baldur’s Gate games, BioWare, the developer, didn’t add any additional races to the games beyond the ones available at launch, nor did Beamdog when it released the games’ enhanced editions. The playable races of Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn are and have always been humans, elves, half-elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings, and half-orcs. But that’s not surprising; the original Baldur’s Gate saga is based on a totally different ruleset (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition, to be exact), so even the races available in BG are actually a stretch; AD&D 2e actually removes half-orcs as a playable race in the core ruleset.
All this to say, the original saga of Baldur’s Gate games don’t necessarily set a precedent here. If they did, it’d be easy to say that there wouldn’t be any more additions to the race list, but this a new era, a new ruleset, and a new developer. While Larian has been faithful to both the original series and D&D 5e in many respects, this particular topic seems to lean in favor of 5e, and not the original series. After all, the original BG games really only offered more “traditional” humanoid choices in terms of playable races. Tieflings weren’t on that list, nor were githyanki.
Larian, by contrast, has made its position on traditional player characters clear: in one community update, it actually chastised players for the sheer number of basic-looking human men that were made using BG3‘s character creator. “Congratulations, you’ve basically made the default Vault Dweller,” Larian wrote in one of its hotfix updates post-launch. “What the hell guys. We gave you demon eyes, horns, and even tails. We are sorely disappointed. Go crazy. We worked hard on this!”
Knowing this, it seems like the possibility of more playable races in Baldur’s Gate 3 early access is as likely as any other addition – which is to say, there’s a decent chance. There are going to be more races for sure, and while Larian might be prioritizing other things for a while, that doesn’t mean such updates won’t happen. In the immediate future, it seems likely that Larian will be releasing other updates: more patches for existing content, and more chunks of the game for players to explore.
Plus, there are only six playable classes in Baldur’s Gate 3 thus far: wizard, cleric, ranger, rogue, warlock, and fighter. Between races and classes, it seems more likely for Larian to address adding classes first, since there are so many more in the 5th edition rules. But, again, that doesn’t eliminate the possibility of adding more races, too.
All in all, Larian adding more playable races doesn’t feel like a first priority. There’s plenty to go off of in the character creator right now, and more to be done in other areas before the playable races get an update. But, having said that, it’s very possible that there will be an addition to BG3 races before the game releases in its full 1.0 version, and those hoping to see such an update shouldn’t discount it unless Larian says otherwise. For now, there’s nothing to do but wait for the next update to Baldur’s Gate 3, and all updates after.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is available in early access for PC, iOS, and Stadia.
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