What races are left for D&D to do?

[dave2008]

... make them more distinctive to one another, as well as focus on more broad mechanical viability since some races like Half-orcs are needlessly confined to melee optimization.

I found this funny. In the same sentence you as for races to be more distinct, and the bashed a race that has a distinction.

Beyond that I'd like to see some genuine innovation. The D&D team is simply too timid and conservative in their design to rouse my interest much these days, like with how they bend over backwards to avoid making a player race that's large sized.

I agree with this, but it is really hard to do and achieve the mechanical viability you mentioned earlier and to not make trap races. The want them to be "balanced" so I don't think they will go to wild.

Personally, I redesign all races because I don't care about trap races. My players are not out to find the best combo of race, class, feat, etc. So I don't need to worry about every race being roughly on par. Our current group is: 2 elves, 1 halfling, 1 lizard folk, 1 dragonborn (who can transform into a Large dragon), and one Large Yuan-ti. I have also had a player be giant and another be a unicorn.

.In the same vein, they released a bunch of monster races without bothering to test them at all and just slapped a warning for GMs on there and called it a day,...

That is not true. They clarified that these were tested and considered balanced for general play. The note was about how to play those races, not mechanical viability. Doesn't mean they are well designed races, but your statement is wrong.

 

[Satyrn]

. . . Satyrs? . . .

Satyrs.

 

[bedir than]

Satyrs.

TUMNUS

 

[Satyrn]

TUMNUS

I've never read or consumed anything Narnia-related, so I had absolutely no idea what this was supposed to mean. I thought you were having a stroke.

 

[Jester David]

Thri-Kreen are the big one. The insect race, and the one with four arms.

More fey races, like hamadryad and satyr would be nice. As would a few planar races. Like bladelings.
Other than that, I think we're good.

There's a bunch they haven't updated, but that's true of almost every edition.
We don't need killoren/wilden, shardminds, illumians, maenads, xephs, elans, ogrillion, vryloka, ratfolk, dromite, gloaming, taer, skulk, pterran, grimlock, or darfellan.

 

[77IM]

House Elves

 

[Parmandur]

Thri-Kreen are the big one. The insect race, and the one with four arms.

More fey races, like hamadryad and satyr would be nice. As would a few planar races. Like bladelings.
Other than that, I think we're good.

There's a bunch they haven't updated, but that's true of almost every edition.
We don't need killoren/wilden, shardminds, illumians, maenads, xephs, elans, ogrillion, vryloka, ratfolk, dromite, gloaming, taer, skulk, pterran, grimlock, or darfellan.

Yeah, everything past Elves & Dwarves is diminishing returns...

 

[robus]

Maybe I’m not understanding the issue but how hard is it to a actually make a playable race? James Wyatt’s been churning them out for the planeshift pdfs and gnolls, for example, are in the monster manual. what’s the issue with taking a basic gnoll and making a playable race from it?

This seems like a perfect opportunity for crowd sourcing if there’s so much desire... but I guess it needs to be “official”?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Saurials.

 

[Shiroiken]

In general, I don't think any non-setting specific races are really needed. Any new races should serve a niche, and that's going to get harder and harder as time goes on. Maybe the psychic races once they figure out how they are doing psionics.

As for setting specific things, Mul and Thri-Kreen would be important for Dark Sun, as would Kender for Dragonlance. Warforged will almost certainly be in the Eberon book. I'm not really sure what other races are missing, but I imagine that some other 4E options would fit into Netir Vale.