D&D 5E Ban Variant-Human! Impact?

[FrogReaver]

Variant Human Impact

1. Combat feats are generally strong in combination with high stat and multiple combat feats. Variant human greatly speeds up that process. A variant human fighter for example can have all his offensive elements by level 8. A variant human Paladin gets there at level 12. However, if variant human is banned then the fighter takes till level 12 and the paladin till level 16. Those are the levels that most groups won't reach in practice.

2. Other combat feats are used to increase concentration saves. Caster's tend to love these so long as they get them without impacting their stat increases. Without variant human that would generally put casters around level 12 before we would see these kinds of concentration boosting combat feats.

3. Defensive feats like Heavy Armor master aren't nearly as good if you get it near tier 2 as opposed to the start of tier 1.

4. Feats like healer and inspiring leader also are not nearly as good if you must wait till level 4 and give up a primary ASI to obtain them.

In short - I think most practical feat issues are because Variant Human exists!

 

[Salthorae]

Very little impact other than the number of humans in a game would probably drop significantly.

I think standard is pretty “meh”, so I usually give them two skill proficiencies like half-elves get. Makes sense to me, otherwise why do half-elves get two? They should inherit something from their human side.

 

[pkt77242]

According to point 1, you want to make it so that the player can’t have all of his offensive elements until a level that you believe they won’t reach in practice? Am I missing something?

Also without the variant human, humans are kind of blah. The feat helps offset not having dark vision.

 

[pkt77242]

I don’t think that I have ever seen a standard human in play. I agree that the number of humans in play will plummet.

Very little impact other than the number of humans in a game would probably drop significantly.

I think standard is pretty “meh”, so I usually give them two skill proficiencies like half-elves get. Makes sense to me, otherwise why do half-elves get two? They should inherit something from their human side.

 

[FrogReaver]

According to point 1, you want to make it so that the player can’t have all of his offensive elements until a level that you believe they won’t reach in practice? Am I missing something?

Also without the variant human, humans are kind of blah. The feat helps offset not having dark vision.

Not having dark vision is a minor inconvenience. A free feat is huge.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Better yet, don't opt into feats.

 

[FrogReaver]

Better yet, don't opt into feats.

That's my point - I think feats may just be fine without variant humans

 

[FrogReaver]

I don’t think that I have ever seen a standard human in play. I agree that the number of humans in play will plummet.

Then they didn't want to play humans anyways - they just wanted to play a race that gave a free feat.

 

[FrogReaver]

Very little impact other than the number of humans in a game would probably drop significantly.

I think standard is pretty “meh”, so I usually give them two skill proficiencies like half-elves get. Makes sense to me, otherwise why do half-elves get two? They should inherit something from their human side.

I agree standard human could use a little more in most games. They can still turn out spectacularly good when rolling for stats though. Not so much with standard array or point buy IMO.

 

[DND_Reborn]

We haven't had any issue with Human Variants in our games, but if you find it is too much then grant something else as a variant instead. IMO the +1 to all stats is very meh. Or simply remove them, they are a variant rule after all.

FYI, in our games everyone starts level 1 with a feat, the human variant gets two. Granted the way we use multiclassing and other rules, our game is high-powered at lower levels, but this is intentional so new players can get the feel for more powerful features without having to wait until higher levels we might not actually even play to...