Er...how? Are they your invention?
They're my favorite race bar none. Being happy they're doing well is "self-serving" in the sense that "ooh, my biases have been confirmed!" My apologies for the confusing phrasing.
Sure they belong - they make fine opponents for the PCs to fight, just like Hobgoblins, Orcs and Bugbears.
You'd be surprised how many people won't even give them
that, but point taken I suppose.
Elves being overpowered is nothing new - they were over-the-top in 1e too, even if you were strict about their level limits; and nothing's changed.
Fair enough I guess!
The one that really took me aback was that Halfling (Hobbit) was so low.
Lanefan
Being tall has too much cultural cachet. It hurts literally all races that tend to be (noticeably*) shorter than average human height--dwarves, gnomes, hobbits, kobolds, etc. People feel self-conscious about their height, and are thus more likely to play taller characters. You see a similar effect in the height distribution of characters in MMOs that allow height variation: most players play the tallest characters they're allowed to play, a handful play the shortest they're allowed to play, and the veeeery tiny remainder is spread out in some way or other through the middle. Or how those races which conform to Western standards of beauty best will tend to attract the most attention, e.g. the population of the Horde
ballooned after Blood Elves became an option, because you could finally be pretty as a female Horde character, or svelte as a male Horde character. Nothing to do with design quality or success of implementation, everything to do with player psychology.
It actually takes some fairly significant
divergence in power, favoring races that diverge from Western beliefs about height, weight, facial features, musculature, etc. to get things to shift even to being more-or-less equal in an MMO context. D&D players are remarkably
more adventurous than MMO players are, based on this data set, when it comes to what races they'll play.
*I say "noticeably" because, IIRC, D&D elves are traditionally a little bit shorter than humans. But they're of pretty "normal" height, in that their average height is close to average *female* height for real humans, and tall elves are still taller than the average human. A tall dwarf is still
shorter than the average human--indeed, probably shorter than most
very short humans. That hurts the bottom line.
I think *most* people like a concept first and just go with whatever race/class/background is closest and then address it's shortcomings afterwards while doing what they can in spite of them. I mean, I know some people who play certain combinations purely because they enjoy them mechanically, but I find that if someone loved playing Elven Rangers, Dwarven Clerics or Human Fighters in 5e and played in other editions, they likely played the same characters in those editions too. And when they play other games that are D&D, they're often drawn to those so same archetypes.
This was part of my intended point, just stated rather than hinted at with pseudo-Socratic questions. That is, I'm asserting that these things would absolutely be popular regardless of implementation...because they've
been popular across a
huge range of implementations. I therefore meet with a
very skeptical eye those saying that,
because it is popular, it must have been done well. That doesn't follow. It could be that it was done excellently, or merely adequately, or decently-but-could-be-better, or even a bit poorly but not
so bad that it drives people away (because, as noted, things typically need to be
quite worse-off to overcome many of our inherent attractions to that which is both "relatable" and "meriting social approval," e.g. in a range overlapping with human height but capable of being taller than an average human because height is culturally linked to social worth in the West). We cannot actually separate out these confounding variables to be able to draw such conclusions, but people freely do so all the time.
Also, to the inevitable replies I expect (likely from others): None of the above should be taken as excluding that part of the Fighter playerbase which
does directly value the characteristics of the 5e Fighter class. It's merely noting that, despite the 4e Fighter being
very different in several ways--ways which pro-"simplicity" Fighter fans disliked, but pro-"depth" Fighter fans liked--
both versions consistently rank as the most popular class of their edition in literally every poll I've ever seen, official or not, formal or not. This would seem to pretty clearly indicate that Fighter fans just like Fighters, and will put up with implementations whether or not they conform to their preferences
because they're Fighters--and that using play-frequency statistics (or, well, a loose approximation thereof) gives you little to no information about whether a particular Fighter implementation is succeeding at the mathematically-testable design goals set for it.
I can't say I'm surprised, seeing as people have been clamoring for Dragon-folk as far as I've been playing D&D. There were already a dozen or so prestige classes, feats, templates, and races that allowed you to play some kind of dragon person. The introduction of Dragonborn as they work in 4e got rid of all that in favor of a single generic non- Level Adjusted Half-Dragon-ish race. 4e also had a generic Half-Vampire race in the form of Vryloka, an undead race in the form of Revenants.
No race, in my experience, has received more vitriol and gleeful exclusion than Dragonborn have. I have literally been told, to my face (well, via forum post), that I should be happy that Dragonborn got included
at all because they don't truly belong in D&D. I have heard numerous posters openly brag about how they shut down players who like Dragonborn, how they would never allow such inappropriate races in their home campaigns. I have never seen any other race referenced so often
by official designers, not simply everyday folks, as being weird, out there, or a thing said designer
would exclude if it weren't for their pesky players liking such a ridiculous option, even if it's said with tongue in cheek.
Disliking Dragonborn is practically a fad at this point.
3e Eberron also introduced Warforged as non-LA construct characters, Shifters as non-LA lycantrhope characters, Changelings as non-LA shapeshifter characters. They proved rather popular as well, as I remember players clamoring for ways to introduce them into non-Eberron settings being a rather hot topic.
Can't really comment, tbh. Never played in Eberron and frankly just don't hear that much discussion of Warforged, Shifters, Changelings, or the like. Dragonborn are the hot topic, and it seems like their detractors literally can't stop talking, not just about how much they dislike them, but how
justified they are FOR disliking them.