D&D 5E Player's Handbook Races

I'm okay with the list. I actually really grew to like the dragonborn, although I have the standard complaints about bewbs and so forth. Also, I much prefer the tiefling as a recessive characteristic ("Behold, Prince Archibald the Eighth, future king. Wait, his eyes glow with the fires of Hell? No, don't revolt, I have no idea where that came from.") I don't really care which background story is used for them -- any are interesting. The outrageous horns and borrowed tail are comical. The dragonborn are the only PHB race that warrants anything more than a vestigial tail.

Fortunately, neither race had any abilities related to their appearance, so it's a simple thing to house rule. I did it in 4E, and I'll do it for 5E, if Wizards didn't get it right.
 

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A high Charisma does not necessarily mean you are liked. It might improve the chances that you are liked, but things such as appearance and simply what you are have a much greater impact on how someone else perceives you.

Charisma is force of personality, variant. It doesn't matter if they like you or dislike you if they respect and obey you (hate/love is more complex, of course). That's what Charisma gets you - people's attention, their instinctive respect, not pathetic little "likes".

Traditionally, Tieflings had a bonus to Charisma because of their great force of personality. This makes complete sense when you consider that all the creatures likely to be in the heritage of a Tiefling are beings with very high Charismas, known for their silver tongues. We say "silver-tongued devil" for a reason. They were not particularly likely to be Evil.

Then 3.XE took them a completely different way. They put a CHA penalty, gave them an LA, and CHANGED them so that they were "very strongly likely to be Evil", basically turning them into cheap "nasty devil people", right down to the cheesy art.

4E took them back in the right direction, returning the CHA bonus, removing the "usually Evil" drivel, and the LA. It changed their backstory in a way that simplified them and made them more accessible, but wasn't terribly exciting and could impact campaign-setting-design. The big downside to the 4E changes was that it made them more boring appearance-wise, but that is probably the easiest possible thing to fix, and much better than the godawful combo of CHA penalty, "usually Evil" and LA in 3.XE.

If 5E takes them to the 3.XE CHA penalty nonsense, or makes them "usually Evil", I will flip a table for real. They are not goddamn Drow, nor have they ever been. I do hope that it goes with a backstory that allows more diverse appearances than.

So anyway, please don't make me go through all the differences between 2E and 3.XE Tieflings AGAIN. I already did that in another thread. There is no such thing as "2E/3E" Tieflings. There are 2E Tieflings, 3E Tieflings, and 4E Tieflings.

Am I huge 2E Tiefling fan? Yes! :D

I also did not like 4e dragonborn at all. Petty as well, but maybe it was the artwork. Unless 5th edition makes a substantial change it's a race I won't allow in my campaign. I also have not had players who give a poo about playing one either, so a moot point I guess.

I'm kind of "Meh" on Dragonborn myself. I loathed their "MAGICALELELELE DRAGON PEOPLES!!!!!!"-style stuff from 3E which basically seemed to be Fan-Fiction or even Slash-Fiction bait to me. Their 4E deal was a massive improvement, but they were still pretty boring by "Dragon People" standards.

However, my players liked them, and I've seen a number of Dragonborn PCs (including ones where they are clearly not the "optimized" race or even close, suggesting that the player just loves the concept), so I definitely want them in 5E, because I prefer happy players above other things.

Judging by talk about 4E, it seems like they were broadly popular (much to my surprise - you can still find my chatter about them being "uninspired" and "insipid" on various forums from around 4E's release!), so I'm really unsurprised to see them in the PHB. I notice we've not seen art of a 5E DB yet, so I wonder if they've changed appearance (at least the default). I'd go with a "4E-style" subrace as well as a "Basically a Draconian without the death effect" subrace, myself.
 
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If 5E takes them to the 3.XE CHA penalty nonsense, or makes them "usually Evil", I will flip a table for real. They are not goddamn Drow, nor have they ever been. I do hope that it goes with a backstory that allows more diverse appearances than.

I have no idea why you are even replying to me. There are no ability score penalties in 5e. If you read the person I was actually replying to, a leak says they get a Charisma bonus and in their description it says they are reviled. He says that those two combinations doesn't make any sense. I was explaining that no amount of Charisma bonus would make their race any less reviled.

As for whether they should be usually Evil, I think they should be. It's in their blood to be more evil than not.
 


I'm okay with the list. I actually really grew to like the dragonborn, although I have the standard complaints about bewbs and so forth.

Dragonbewbs are IME something that is complained about by male players finding them ridiculous but actually liked by female players who want their badass dragon to code as female. And they'd be far more irritated by the erasure than they are by the bewbs.

Also, I much prefer the tiefling as a recessive characteristic ("Behold, Prince Archibald the Eighth, future king. Wait, his eyes glow with the fires of Hell? No, don't revolt, I have no idea where that came from.")

Yup, that one's fun :)
 

I'd love to see rules for creating half-races more generally.

Yes, more half races and sub-races too! I for one would love to see....

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The Half-Gnome! :D
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The Metro Gnome!!! ;)
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Dragonbewbs are IME something that is complained about by male players finding them ridiculous but actually liked by female players who want their badass dragon to code as female. And they'd be far more irritated by the erasure than they are by the bewbs.

My experience too. It's the same as "all female dwarfs should have beards or shave lol it's funny", which IME is confined to male players/DMs.
 

I kind of wonder if the average person could even reliably tell different planetouched apart just by looking at them. Especially for aasimar with non-angel celestial ancestors. An aasimar descended from a hound archon and a tiefling descended from a glabrezu... Well, "sinister" can be kind of subjective.
 


I have no idea why you are even replying to me. There are no ability score penalties in 5e. If you read the person I was actually replying to, a leak says they get a Charisma bonus and in their description it says they are reviled. He says that those two combinations doesn't make any sense. I was explaining that no amount of Charisma bonus would make their race any less reviled.

(SEE: 2e)

Also, the Charisma penalty never bothered me much. I see the counterpoint, but I also see that if you're excluded and shunned and smell of brimstone and have a rough childhood because of your cloven hooves that it makes sense that you'd be a little less able to invoke that charm and authority.

Still, I've also got no real problems with a Charisma bonus. That works for me, too.

As for whether they should be usually Evil, I think they should be. It's in their blood to be more evil than not.

Yeah, I didn't have a problem with this in 3e, either. They're tainted by the lower planes and shunned by society, "evil" makes sense because most tieflings would easily fall in with the wrong crowd and seek power over those that exclude them. Evil comes more easily, it's an easy default. Not that it was inherent or automatic (hence "usually"), not that it wasn't something an individual PC could defy ("I will not be what you think I am").

To me, all that fit the narrative.

"My ancestors made a pact with the devil(s)" didn't. Well, okay, it could have been one variation on the old narrative.

I mean, it's a perfectly FINE story, it's just not the story I was looking to explore with tieflings.
 

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