Whether you’ve played a pen-and-paper role-playing game before, the allure of character creation is obvious: It represents infinite possibilities, the future of your imaginary avatar laid out in front of you like a never-ending tree of untrodden paths. Dice have yet to roll. Chance has yet to rear its ugly head. The Dungeon Master has yet to challenge your perception of the person that leapt from your imagination and onto the table. Yes, characters almost always become more compelling as campaigns progress — but there’s still nothing quite like the promise of the blank character sheet.
As the successor to one of the most beloved role-playing video games of all time, and a massive digital representation of Dungeons & Dragon’s 5th edition rule set, Baldur’s Gate 3 needed to get character creation right. I’ve been playing Larian Studios’ massive RPG for several days, and I’m here to tell you: It did. Oneida, my gnome Druid, is as pensive in his interactions with the denizens of the Sword Coast as he is a terrifying shape-shifter on the battlefield. He’s a strong leader, an attentive listener, and only slightly loses his temper when his Wizard companion misses wide with a Fire Bolt attack that had a fucking 85% chance to hit. He never actually says Fuck you, Gale. But he does think it.
Considering all of the shenanigans I’ve already gotten into in my solo campaign, I decided to poll the rest of Polygon’s Baldur’s Gate 3 players, the better to grasp how they envisioned their characters during the creation process, and how good the game is at challenging those perceptions afterward.
Here are the heroes, villains, babes, miscreants, and useless dwarf Monks Polygon has created so far. —Mike Mahardy
Cestelle is a wood elf
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