What Races Do You Allow?

[terrya]

After reading through these boards ive started to see that people seem to treat D and D more like neverwinter or some kind of pc game where these is very little penalty for taking wierd classes such as half-orc or Ogre. If we read some of the orginal D & D universe were lead to be these races are shunned and treated with disdain, for example your likely to get shot walking up to the keep on the borderlands if your an ogre. To cute a long story short my question is what races do you guys allow and do you have penalties involved such as above?

 

[Visigani]

Because of how poorly the rules are written in some D&D games, and the how incredibly frequently the game designers use DMs as a crutch D&D is open to "powergaming" in ways few other games are.


Rarely do you find significant power issues in the race alone, especially when we're talking +1 LA and lower races. They add some nice perks... but rarely (Note: This intentionally excludes Anthropomorphic Races and the stupid crazy broken Batman... flight, +6 wis, and assorted other goodies... with no level adjustment? Yes please.) are they truly game shattering.




However, if we stick to LA +0 races... The core races are all relatively well balanced. In fact I'd argue the half elf is kind of underpowered.

of the other +0 (non anthro) races... about only the Elan really makes me consider saying it's truly borked. The Elan has the rare gift of being a +0 race that has a special ability that scales with level if they choose the right class.

 

[Jhaelen]

To cute a long story short my question is what races do you guys allow and do you have penalties involved such as above?

It entirely depends on the setting I use. In my homebrew setting I didn't allow elves and gnomes as player races because belonging to the 'fey' they are unfathomable, alien beings.

Further, since it was an arctic setting, races common in the region gained a free cold-adaptation feat which more exotic choices didn't get, making them unattractive choices (at least in the low levels).

In our Eberron game, you can play almost every race without a lot of problems. While goblinoids are generally looked down-upon it doesn't raise any eyebrows if they enter a city.

In our forthcoming Dark Sun campaign, there are a lot of racial prejudices that will make almost every non-human race a challenge to play.

One common rule in our games is that races from source books that the DM doesn't own aren't allowed.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'll allow pretty much anything if the player makes a good case for it.

I don't care about balance because I'll look at everything and fix it if it's not balanced. Even so, I think 3e did a good job of making humans desirable to play. Anything much more powerful than a human stands out like a sore thumb and most DMs can catch that.

I don't mind the occasional weird race because I operate from the premise that PCs are exceptional. If half-trolls became the norm it would be a problem, but most PCs still go for the human bonus feat and no LA.

 

[Rhun]

I'll pretty much allow any races, as long as A) it fits the campaign, B) the player can make a good case for it, and C) it isn't broken.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

I've honestly never seen a reason for humanoid monsters like ogres and hobgoblins to be shunned in society. Seriously, when you have things that look like this guy around:
[sblock]

[/sblock]why would you care whether someone looks more or less goblinoid? As Terry Pratchett said about his Discworld books, "Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because--what with trolls and dwarfs and so on--speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green." My worlds work the same way. If you're vaguely humanoid and aren't evil, you're welcome in most metropolitan communities, since whatever weird and wacky abilities you have might come in handy when the real monsters like dragons and aboleths and such come to call.

Granted, there aren't many of such monsters in the cities because (A) most of them are evil and (B) there are some like medusas who you wouldn't want living with you even if they're determined to be good because they can kill people by accident, and of course the smaller communities are much more insular, but overall this philosophy holds.

 

[terrya]

I've honestly never seen a reason for humanoid monsters like ogres and hobgoblins to be shunned in society. Seriously, when you have things that look like this guy around:

[sblock]

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[/sblock]why would you care whether someone looks more or less goblinoid? As Terry Pratchett said about his Discworld books, "Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because--what with trolls and dwarfs and so on--speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green." My worlds work the same way. If you're vaguely humanoid and aren't evil, you're welcome in most metropolitan communities, since whatever weird and wacky abilities you have might come in handy when the real monsters like dragons and aboleths and such come to call.

Granted, there aren't many of such monsters in the cities because (A) most of them are evil and (B) there are some like medusas who you wouldn't want living with you even if they're determined to be good because they can kill people by accident, and of course the smaller communities are much more insular, but overall this philosophy holds.

Because the Average commoner in a medieval borderlands setting would be a racist. They see a half-orc even they think stabby stabby. Let alone an ogre? For lords sake St-Cuthbert is even racist towards dwarves and elves in the Temple of Elemental Evil

 

[Celebrim]

Way back in 1e when I was thinking about having my own game world for the first time, I started thinking about how many elves were proliferating at the time (snow elves, high elves, drow elves, gray elves, wild elves, wood elves, sea elves, etc.) and how many green skinned bad guy races there were and how many random animal men races there were and I decided that I wanted to simplify.

Orcs were chopped. Goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears were explicitly bundled as a single race with a large degree of physical variation. Out went gnomes and halflings. Out also went things like Norkers, Flinds, and so forth were the race existed seemingly primarily to put different HD entries in the table. Instead, I became an earlier adopter of 'monsters can have class levels' (though in my early incarnations, 'monster' was a class).

But over time, I started adding races to the game to suit my taste. The official list of PC races is now:

Faerie, Sidhe
Faerie, Changling
Faerie, Pixie
Goblin
Hobgoblin
Elf
Human
Orine
Drawf
Idreth

Additionally, you can play Forest Dwarf, Wild Elf, or Human Pygmy as a racial variant.

Encounters with humanoids that are not a PC race tend to be very rare in my game. Gnolls, Lizardfolk, and the aquatic races are by far the most common exceptions. PC races are strongly emphasized. By doing this I hope to make the race more meaningful than the list of attribute modifiers it provides.

 

[Tharkon]

A few save ways to reduce the amount of odd races:

Start the campaign at level 1 (most odd races have level adjustments).
Unless your campaign is high risk and your players are dying all the time, they shouldn't have many chances of choosing a new race.

Make odd races less welcome in settlements. Make sure a player knows that whenever his half-ogre character walks in a human town people stare at him, or when in an elven town some of the guard may constantly be watching what they consider a brutal and clumsy stranger. If a player picks a large creature, especially quadrupeds like centaurs. Then make some underground adventures or some in big castles with small corridors. If the race is known to be very magical, the player's character may be faced with constant distrust. If some of your other players are of a normal race, those players may even join the NPCs in this distrust.

For my upcoming campaign I am probably gonna let my players roll for race. Not entirely sure if and how it will work, but I got these races on the table:
Deep Halfling, Dream Dwarf, Forest Gnome, Gray Elf, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, High Elf, Hill Dwarf, Human, Illumian, Killoren, Lightfoot Halfling, Mongrelfolk, Mountain Dwarf, Raptoran, Rock Gnome, Talfellow Halfling, Whisper Gnome, Wild Elf, Wood Elf.
Not every race has equal chances of being rolled, none have level-adjustment.

As for how accepting communities are of odd races, this is all up to the DM, and it makes perfect sense that a DM that is uncomfortable with odd PC races creates communities that are uncomfortable with those same races. Of course the really big cities should still have some of the savage humanoids represented, if only in slums. It is mostly the smaller towns where most people know each other where you can enforce the races.

 

[Dandu]

of the other +0 (non anthro) races... about only the Elan really makes me consider saying it's truly borked. The Elan has the rare gift of being a +0 race that has a special ability that scales with level if they choose the right class.

It's not.