The initial choice of races in Baldur’s Gate 3 is solid—though it’s definitely not the full spread available for most Dungeons & Dragons players. You can’t rock up as a warforged, goblin, kobold, or aarakocra (don’t mention their in-built flight speed to tabletop players, it’s a whole thing)—aside from Dragonborn, it’s all very humanoid.
That’s fair enough, considering the game already has an absurd amount of backstory, class, and race-specific dialogue options and responses. I don’t think Larian wanted to wrestle with a thousand variations on the “Gods be good, that’s a big bull man!” every time you walked into a new encampment.
Especially for certain races, Larian would have to do as Troika Games did with Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines’ Nosferatu—which forced you to scuttle around the sewers and eat rats like some kind of cryptid. I think I just talked myself into wishing Larian had let me do that, but the point remains that it would’ve been a huge burden on development.
If you want more aesthetic variety, though, the absolutely massive 54 races included in DungeonsAndSouls’ Fantastical Multiverse mod have you covered. The pack adds a whole swathe of options from official D&D material, Grim Hollow (a grimdark 5e-compatible setting made by Ghostfire Gaming), the creator’s own homebrew “Malipāla”, and Final Fantasy 14. I was briefly pumped about being able to play a catboy in Baldur’s Gate 3—unfortunately, the mod’s current races are all understandably humanoid (Hyur, Elezen, Roegadyn, and Garlean), so you won’t be able to wield any nyacromancy just yet.
Highlights include cool creatures like kobolds and minotaurs, alongside the angelic aasimar (think tieflings, but holy) and the shapeshifting changelings. Perhaps the most cursed addition is the kender—who are infamous for causing arguments at tables since 1984.
If you aren’t familiar with kenders, picture a halfling, then mix in an inability to feel fear, a strong innate curiosity, and a complete refusal to parse the concept of ownership. Here’s a quote from the Monstrous Compendium: Dragonlance book on what it’s like to spend time in a kender village: “It is not uncommon for a visitor to be relieved of all of his possessions within a few hours. Visitors are pelted by a constant barrage of questions and rambling, pointless stories.”
This means that if you have a player who wants to wander into traps, steal their party member’s loot, and drive their table up the wall, then the kender’s a literal licence from the game books to cause trouble. On the upside if you play solo in Baldur’s Gate 3, you won’t be annoying anybody—and you’ll even have a decent roleplay reason for stealing everything not nailed down.
Ultimately, I’m just pleased that tabletop gaming’s long tradition of homebrew weirdness has translated so completely into the game’s modding community, from genuinely impressive packs like this to dumb backgrounds where you can play a recently un-transformed goat.