Baldur’s Gate 3: Can you change your race in BG3?

Baldur’s Gate 3 has a nearly endless amount of customization options, and generally tends to be fairly forgiving to players who change their mind in the middle of a playthrough. When the game was released, players were already able to change their class at anytime by speaking to Withers.

While it wasn’t originally a part of the game, patch three introduced the highly requested ability to modify your characters appearance during the game. Players can now do anything from a simple haircut to a total makeover by visiting the Magic Mirror in their camp. There is a limit to even the most powerful mirrors, though.

Can you change your race in Baldur’s Gate 3?

Sadly, even with Magic Mirror, you cannot change your race during a playthrough in Baldur’s Gate 3. The Magic Mirror can only alter what is on the outside, and if you think about it, a race change would absolutely be changing what is on the inside.

Larian Studios has always seemed hellbent on avoiding pointless limitations—they really are just like a cool Dungeon Master. Most likely, it would have been too complicated and lore-breaking if you were able to change races during a playthrough. Imagine you’ve already romanced Shadowheart (even though Karlach and Wyll are far superior), and then you switch races to a Githyanki. All of the characters would either have to acknowledge the sudden change, or pretend it didn’t happen—and neither is at all good for maintaining immersion.

Especially now that patch three has added the ability to change appearances and we still don’t have the option to change races, it is very unlikely that it will ever be added to BG3. Larian has had time to mull over community input and deemed that an appearance-modifying menu was indeed necessary. Given the fact that the only other version of the appearance customization menu already had race as an option, the studio had to go out of their way to create a new menu that doesn’t include that option. That feels like a definitive answer to us.

What character elements can be changed in Baldur’s Gate 3?

The short answer is: pretty much everything other than race, name, and background. You can change your character’s class and ability score distribution by speaking to Withers in your camp at any time. By proxy, doing so also allows you to select new feats.

The character customization menu that is brought up when using the Magic Mirror is slightly different than the one you saw at the beginning of the game in that it doesn’t have the option to change backgrounds, character names, or races. You can, however, alter any cosmetic aspect of your character—hair color, eye color, skin color, facial features, and tattoos are all fair game.