That's not a good assumption at all, and I don't believe evidence supports it.
Folks sometimes like different even if it isn't more powerful.
D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?
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That's not a good assumption at all, and I don't believe evidence supports it.
Folks sometimes like different even if it isn't more powerful.
BookTenTiger
He / Him
I think this is a Session 0 issue. I'm running a game inspired by Curse of Strahd. The players rolled up a Tortle, goliath, Tiefling, and Aasimar.
Rather than have all these characters be strangers in a strange land, I changed the land. Villages of tortles were the first conquered by my vampire BBEG. The seaside pirate town is full of Tieflings. There's a monastery of Aasimars hiding out in the mountains. The Goliath is still an outsider, because that fits the character concept.
Recently the Tortle character died and the player rolled up a gnome. Now we've established that the vampire BBEG kidnaps gnome experts to work in her castle as alchemists, mages and tinkerers.
Weird races are only weird if they don't fit into the campaign world!
DND_Reborn
The High Aldwin
Frankly, that is 99% of my campaign worlds.
Undrave
Legend
A LOT of D&D settings are kitchen sink
At the end of the day, WotC has copyrights on Tieflings, Dragonborns, Tortle, Loxodon, Tabaxi, Aasimar, etc, and not on Dwarves, Elves and Gnomes, so for them it's makes more business sense to push the races they own than the races everybody can use in their setting books.
Kitchen sink is the new normal
Drazen
Demon Prince
The nature of exotic species has always been attractive.
Mostly because we wish to be something other than human, we want to be more then we already are.
Humans are one of the most versatile and adaptive species that comes in a wide variety of choices but beings like cat-people, drow, demons, elves and whatnot are more exiting and interesting. They bring more than just a typical human who have little to no fluff. Other then being most common
As for the relevancy of humans, i guess it's up to the DM. He can decide whether or not to have a more human party involved.
embee
Lawyer by day. Rules lawyer by night.
Reptilian people, cat people, people with demonic heritage, and avians have all been fantasy and sci-fi staples for decades. And expanding the roster of playable races is an equally hallowed RPG staple. Both are driven by player dissatisfaction with limited options.
Heck, elves and dwarves had racial level caps as written but so many groups house-ruled the caps away that TSR took the hint.
I rarely consider any of the uncommon races from the PHB, nor any of the myriad other books released over the years. When I've been tempted to consider these, it was usually because I had a very specific character concept in mind.
My impression is that a lot of players, even if they won't admit it, pick those races first and foremost for powergaming reasons. They look for a race that will grant them some edge along with their class. Same reason variant human is so popular: as soon as you get rid of the free feat, you see humans become the least chosen race.
In the end, it often matters very little. Darkvision is quickly handwaived in a group where everyone except one halfling or one dragonborn player has it. Rarely do DMs go through the trouble of developing a world that specificaly reacts to those races (even drows are not provoking much reactions from most NPC nowadays - or tiefling, to take a less loaded example because of the real-world parallel that can too easily be made with the drow), and very few adventures are centered around the specifics of those player's races / communities. Most players using one of these races are exiled or "unique", and as such, there is little need for the game to explore what it's like to be a Tortle in this fantasy-land, for example.
Because your class is purely "chosen" (except for sorcerer, that can be an inborn power) and learned (from a character perspective), there is a lot of emphasis on having your class define what you can do, and what kind of adventuring enterprise you would take part in. But your race, by definition, is not something the character chose (even if the player did choose it), and is much more part of what you are, as in your whole upbringing should be greatly shaped by your race (and, to some extent, by your background). Most people (DM or players) cannot invest the amount of energy needed to fully realize a character with such an upbringing; it's easier to just focus on your class and where you want to take your character as a member of that class (rather than as a member of a given race). The race just becomes a small list of mechanical benefits to add to the package (if there's one good thing out of the added flexibility with race abilities coming out of Tasha's, it's that it allows the players to fully assume the irrelevance of race by just letting them pick any "suit" they want to wear, get the mechanical benefits they prefer that align with their chosen class, and let go of all the cultural and societal baggage that should come from a race if they don't care for it).
If people had vested interest in specific races, you would be seeing a lot more campaigns based on a party of all non-humans (like an all dragonborn party that could explore all the interplay between various colors, the role of the clan in dragonborn culture, etc.). These are really the exception; the much more common adventuring framework is the motley / circus crew of random weirdo races (who luckily always happen to have one melee fighter, one party face, one arcane caster, one healer) all meeting in a tavern and forming a group to loot the surrounding monster lairs.
Maybe if I had more exposure to examples of players really playing up their race as part of their character development, I wouldn't be so cynical.
I must say a number of the replies in this thread have me thinking I may just not have been exposed to a sufficient variety of groups or players...
My impression is that a lot of players, even if they won't admit it, pick those races first and foremost for powergaming reasons. They look for a race that will grant them some edge along with their class. Same reason variant human is so popular: as soon as you get rid of the free feat, you see humans become the least chosen race.
In the end, it often matters very little. Darkvision is quickly handwaived in a group where everyone except one halfling or one dragonborn player has it. Rarely do DMs go through the trouble of developing a world that specificaly reacts to those races (even drows are not provoking much reactions from most NPC nowadays - or tiefling, to take a less loaded example because of the real-world parallel that can too easily be made with the drow), and very few adventures are centered around the specifics of those player's races / communities. Most players using one of these races are exiled or "unique", and as such, there is little need for the game to explore what it's like to be a Tortle in this fantasy-land, for example.
Because your class is purely "chosen" (except for sorcerer, that can be an inborn power) and learned (from a character perspective), there is a lot of emphasis on having your class define what you can do, and what kind of adventuring enterprise you would take part in. But your race, by definition, is not something the character chose (even if the player did choose it), and is much more part of what you are, as in your whole upbringing should be greatly shaped by your race (and, to some extent, by your background). Most people (DM or players) cannot invest the amount of energy needed to fully realize a character with such an upbringing; it's easier to just focus on your class and where you want to take your character as a member of that class (rather than as a member of a given race). The race just becomes a small list of mechanical benefits to add to the package (if there's one good thing out of the added flexibility with race abilities coming out of Tasha's, it's that it allows the players to fully assume the irrelevance of race by just letting them pick any "suit" they want to wear, get the mechanical benefits they prefer that align with their chosen class, and let go of all the cultural and societal baggage that should come from a race if they don't care for it).
If people had vested interest in specific races, you would be seeing a lot more campaigns based on a party of all non-humans (like an all dragonborn party that could explore all the interplay between various colors, the role of the clan in dragonborn culture, etc.). These are really the exception; the much more common adventuring framework is the motley / circus crew of random weirdo races (who luckily always happen to have one melee fighter, one party face, one arcane caster, one healer) all meeting in a tavern and forming a group to loot the surrounding monster lairs.
Maybe if I had more exposure to examples of players really playing up their race as part of their character development, I wouldn't be so cynical.
I must say a number of the replies in this thread have me thinking I may just not have been exposed to a sufficient variety of groups or players...
Shardstone
Hero
What's up with everyone just saying that people like exotic races for powergaming reasons?
My favorite race is Yuan-Ti. Yes, I know its OP because of spell resistance. But if it didn't have that, it'd STILL be my favorite race, because Yuan-Ti are COOL.
What's overpowered about Loxodon?
What's overpowered about Shadar-Kai?
Aren't the two strongest races Variant Human and Half-Elf?
EDIT: Btw, I run 4 D&D campaigns, and I think there is 1 human amongst all 4. Consider in the future not using your limited experience to paint an entire set of diverse opinions into a pretty irrational category.
Same reason they want to play monster races, I guess? And people have been wanting playable monsters for as long as D&D has existed.
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