Highlights

  • Custom characters in Baldur's Gate 3 offer the potential for immersive roleplaying and limitless creativity, but they can feel flat if not given compelling personalities and backstories.
  • Custom characters can be any race and subrace, allowing for diverse cultural backgrounds, unique dialogue options, and various in-game advantages.
  • Picking a background for a Custom character provides consistency, rewards, and proficiency bonuses, and can guide players in creating interesting and engaging characters throughout the game.

Baldur's Gate 3 gives players the option of six playable Origins, each with their own unique backstory, motivations, and personalities. This is for players who don't wish to put too much thought into roleplaying, or who want to experience the story from the perspective of one of the other companions. Unlike the Dark Urge, who is customizable but comes with a backstory, a fully Custom character is a blank slate. Affectionately called "Tav" by the Baldur's Gate 3 community, Custom characters are a popular choice for first-time players.

Baldur's Gate 3 Best Clothing
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Baldur's Gate 3: Best Clothing

From Gortash's garbs to Isobel's robes, players can't go wrong with the following clothing items in Baldur's Gate 3.

Creating a Custom Character in Baldur's Gate 3

Roleplay is a Necessity

One of the benefits of playing a Custom character is the potential for roleplaying. Because of the blank slate a Custom character offers, it allows the player to create any kind of character with the imagination as the only limit. This room for roleplaying does come with drawbacks, however, as Custom characters can feel flat and disconnected if the player doesn't create a compelling personality, background, and connections for them within Baldur's Gate 3. Deciding on the character's motivations, personality, and life until the events of Baldur's Gate 3 will do wonders for creating a compelling Custom character.

Pick a Race

While the Origins are limited in their selection of races, Custom characters can be any of the races and subraces on offer in character creation. Picking a race determines the culture of the character, many dialogue options, and how other characters perceive the Custom character. Races in Baldur's Gate 3 also have certain traits, such as movement speed, resistance to certain elements or poisons and diseases, or spells and abilities. Any race makes sense for a Custom character and they all fit seamlessly into the world of Baldur's Gate 3.

Integrating a Character Into the World of Baldur's Gate 3

Pick a Background

Backgrounds in Baldur's Gate 3 serve to inform the character's past and consistency in their actions throughout the story. Acting in character rewards the player with Inspiration Points, which gives the player the chance to reroll failed Ability checks. Backgrounds also have a more practical function and provide Proficiency Bonuses in certain skills, making certain Ability checks easier to pass. Picking a background also gives some guidance for creating an interesting character, especially if the player is stuck during the character creation process.

  • Charlatan (Deception and Sleight of Hand)
  • Soldier (Athletics and Intimidation)
  • Folk Hero (Animal Handling and Survival)
  • Outlander (Athletics and Survival)
  • Acolyte (Insight and Religion)
  • Entertainer (Acrobatics and Performance)
  • Urchin (Sleight of Hand and Stealth)
  • Sage (Arcana and History)
  • Criminal (Deception and Stealth)
  • Noble (History and Persuasion)
  • Guild Artisan (Insight and Persuasion)

Create a Backstory

The Origin characters have the benefit of having their background reiterated throughout Baldur's Gate 3 through dialogue and various characters. Any dialogue referencing a Custom character is solely related to their class and race, while there aren't any characters with links to them. All roleplaying and created backstory for a Custom character will exist solely in the player's head for the duration of Baldur's Gate 3. It's for this reason that it's important that this backstory is thorough and compelling enough to thread through the entirety of the Custom character's adventure in Baldur's Gate 3.

Pick a Class

One of the most important choices to make when building a Custom character in Baldur's Gate 3 is deciding their class. A character's class determines their role in the party, their spells and abilities, and dialogue choices over the course of Baldur's Gate 3. To create a consistent Custom character, their class should align with their backstory. Spellcasters such as Sorcerers and Wizards are typically more challenging to play thanks to the limitations of spell slots, preparing spells before combat, and leveling, while pure combat classes such as Rogue and Fighter are easier to play and level.

Playing a Custom Character in Baldur's Gate 3

Custom Characters Learn More About The Origin Characters

Ironically, playing as a Custom character means watching the Origin characters' stories play out, rather than making their decisions for them. In this way, the player learns more about their personalities and their stories than they would when they control them, even if some extra information, such as additional interactions with Gale's tressym Tara, is only discovered through playing an Origin character.

Dig Deep and Keep Going

Being picked up by the nautiloid and dropped off with a tadpole is just the beginning of an adventure that lasts for dozens of hours. While Baldur's Gate 3 gives the player plenty of reason to keep going, it can be easy to run out of steam by Act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3, which still has content issues. This is especially a problem for Custom characters, who don't have any personal ties to Baldur's Gate in Act 3 through the narrative or other characters. How a Custom character responds to the events of Act 3 and their relationship with other characters could tie back to their Background, Class, Race, and how the player has roleplayed the character until that point.

Consider the Tadpole

The illithid mindflayer tadpole question lies at the heart of much of Baldur's Gate 3's story. Curing it is of vital importance, but the option to absorb more to gain more power appears. This is so well integrated into Baldur's Gate 3 that tadpole powers even have their own skill tree. Considering the person who encourages the party to absorb the tadpoles' power is the enigmatic Dream Visitor, many may not want to do so, but sometimes taking a risk pays off, and some of those tadpole powers are pretty beneficial.

Take Risks

Baldur's Gate 3 has many choices and decisions for the player to make, some of them with clear outcomes. Others are not as clear, and while they may seem to be bad or foolish decisions, they actually result in permanent buffs that are incredibly beneficial. Save often and make reckless decisions because sometimes they could result in some great rewards.