Baldur’s Gate 3 Is Adding Gnomes As a Playable Race

It was revealed at GDC 2022 that the gnome race from Dungeons & Dragons is coming to Baldur’s Gate 3 in a future update. The gnome has been a part of D&D since the first edition of the game and it was a playable option in Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2.

Gnomes are one of the small races in Dungeons & Dragons, and are known to share similarities with the dwarves and halflings. The gnomes reside in hills or in underground halls, away from the troubles that plague the other demihuman races. There are also the Underdark-dwelling deep gnomes, which are also known as the svirfneblin, who are renowned for their incredible resistance to magic. While not as skilled at forging weapons as the dwarves, the gnomes are masters of engineering and creating complex devices. The reason gnome communities are so safe from harm is due to their mastery of D&D‘s illusion school of magic, with many gnomes possessing a natural affinity for deceptive sorcery, even if they are not students of the arcane arts.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is currently in Early Access and it has been gradually adding classes through updates, and now gnomes have been confirmed to be one day playable. The game has yet to add any new races while in Early Access, even though several popular choices are missing from the game. This will change in the future, as Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke let it slip during a talk at GDC 2022 that gnomes are coming to Baldur’s Gate 3 as a playable race sometime in the future (via PC Gamer).

Vincke mentioned the gnome race while discussing the difficulties of creating different body types in the game. Baldur’s Gate 3 has 16 races and subraces in Early Access, ranging from the diminutive halflings to the tall and slender elves. The game is currently missing the dragonborn and half-orc races, with many fans suspecting that this is due to difficulties in adapting their bulky physiques to the game world, which is why the races that are currently in the game are so similar in size.

Baldur’s Gate 3 fans are expecting all of the races and classes from the D&D Player’s Handbook to appear in the full version of the game. This means that the game has yet to add the gnome, dragonborn, half-orc, bard, monk, and paladin, along with many subclasses. Baldur’s Gate 3 likely won’t launch until 2023, so the developers have plenty of time to include these missing elements from D&D into the game, and if the gnome is being worked on, then it’s likely to be next in line.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is in development for Google Stadia and PC.

Source: PC Gamer

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Scott Baird
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Scott has been writing for Screen Rant since 2016 and regularly contributes to The Gamer. He has previously written articles and video scripts for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz.
A graduate of Edge Hill University in the UK, Scott started out as a film student before moving into journalism. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you. Scott specializes in gaming and has loved the medium since the early ‘90s when his first console was a ZX Spectrum that used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.

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