Play Baldur's Gate 3 as a hobgoblin, minotaur, or mind flayer

Baldur's Gate 3 mindflayer mod
(Image credit: Larian)

A couple weeks ago the Baldur's Gate 3 community got scolded by Larian because according to its data, the most popular character creation choices amounted to a boring-ass generic human male.

Well, now you can point the accusatory finger right back at them, because maybe the issue was they didn't give you enough character choices after all. Elves, halfings, tieflings? Been there, done that.

It's a fantasy game, after all. Why can't you play as a goblin, or a hobgoblin, or a minotaur, or even a mind flayer? Now you can, thanks to modder ShinyHobo, who has been busy making BG3's monsters into playable races.

Over on Nexus Mods you can help yourself to the new playable races that are quickly popping up:

There's a tiny bit of work involved in getting these mods installed. In addition to downloading a .pak file and copying it into your mods folder, you'll need to update your profile's modsettings.lsx file with some text. Make sure you read the instructions on each mod's page, and I'd also suggest backing up your saves. Another mod, called Ignore Message, is recommended as well, to avoid error messages that appear due to the mods being installed.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.