D&D 5E Player Races in Upcoming Volo's Guide to Monsters

[flametitan]

For some reason I was more expecting guidelines than an actual table.

It wouldn't be too hard to write, though it might not be balanced: Medium/small humanoid, highest Ability score is +2, next highest is +1, and if it's a feature like innate spellcasting/breath weapon/hobgoblin's martial advantage, tips on how to scale it. Maybe natural weapons as an unarmed strike replacement (and if so, they only do 1d4 damage)?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm expecting something like the DMG table, but balanced for PC use.

 

[Parmandur]

For some reason I was more expecting guidelines than an actual table.

It wouldn't be too hard to write, though it might not be balanced: Medium/small humanoid, highest Ability score is +2, next highest is +1, and if it's a feature like innate spellcasting/breath weapon/hobgoblin's martial advantage, tips on how to scale it. Maybe natural weapons as an unarmed strike replacement (and if so, they only do 1d4 damage)?

Recall that one of the confirmed new PC races is the Firbolg, so Small/Medium as a restriction is out. I imagine they will have guidelines, but Stan! was very specific as to a table, and the podcast said there would be lots of playable monsters.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm expecting something like the DMG table, but balanced for PC use.

Yeah, exactly; quick rules, straight and simple. Probably going to see more generic critters like Lizardfolk in there.

 

[flametitan]

Recall that one of the confirmed new PC races is the Firbolg, so Small/Medium as a restriction is out. I imagine they will have guidelines, but Stan! was very specific as to a table, and the podcast said there would be lots of playable monsters.

We don't yet know what they're doing with the 5e stats for the firbolg, do we? For all we know, they might drop the idea of them being large and instead do what they did with the goliath; Make them medium but with a feature to be treated as large for carrying.

 

[Demetrios1453]

We don't yet know what they're doing with the 5e stats for the firbolg, do we? For all we know, they might drop the idea of them being large and instead do what they did with the goliath; Make them medium but with a feature to be treated as large for carrying.

I'm not sure if that would be possible to do, as firbolgs in previous editions tended to be 10 feet tall. But then again, we've seen more extreme changes between editions. But another possibility may indeed that they might want to be trying out a large race to see how it goes...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If they large firbolgs, I may do the same to goliaths. Depends on how they treat being large for PCs

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm not sure if that would be possible to do, as firbolgs in previous editions tended to be 10 feet tall. But then again, we've seen more extreme changes between editions. But another possibility may indeed that they might want to be trying out a large race to see how it goes...

5e's size categories seem inspired by the 3e tables, but they seem a lot more flexible in actual implementation. They never actually tell us what dimensions* define the size categories in 5e, so you just have to guess by the sizes of the monsters.

* Telling us how much space they take up in combat is not the same thing at all, since by that metric nothing could be very big.

 

[CapnZapp]

I really have a hard time getting all worked up for player races and especially backgrounds.

It is simply so little crunch, with so little impact. That you could so easily do it yourself.

Compared to classes, subclasses and spells I mean.

Okay so I realize the desire to play something official, but that's about it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I really have a hard time getting all worked up for player races and especially backgrounds.

It is simply so little crunch, with so little impact. That you could so easily do it yourself.

Compared to classes, subclasses and spells I mean.

Okay so I realize the desire to play something official, but that's about it.

on the one hand, as long as you stay in the general framework, a race isn't going to really unbalance anything. On the other hand, a lot of people aren't good at making a race other people want to play, or aren't even confident in building homebrew mechanical options at all.

Hopefully the table in Volos will help with that.