D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[Remathilis]

Well actually I can. I don't need a reason, I always do though. Sometimes it's as simple as I don't like the race. Might be the mechanics,might be fluff might be whatever.

I said no to Tritons with no explanation. Partly mechanical partly because I had a plan for them.

Interesting. Let's say I have a concept for a character who was born under the sea (a very Ariel from the Little Mermaid type). If you said no to tritons (my first choice), would you accept a sea elf or a water genasi as an alternative?

Sometimes there are multiple paths to the same character concept, and as long as one of the them is open, compromise can be reached.

 

[Zardnaar]

Interesting. Let's say I have a concept for a character who was born under the sea (a very Ariel from the Little Mermaid type). If you said no to tritons (my first choice), would you accept a sea elf or a water genasi as an alternative?

Sometimes there are multiple paths to the same character concept, and as long as one of the them is open, compromise can be reached.

No they were banned for environmental reasons as well.

See Warforged on Athas for example.

 

[Minigiant]

Interesting. Let's say I have a concept for a character who was born under the sea (a very Ariel from the Little Mermaid type). If you said no to tritons (my first choice), would you accept a sea elf or a water genasi as an alternative?

Sometimes there are multiple paths to the same character concept, and as long as one of the them is open, compromise can be reached.

Exactly. D&D editions after a few years have multiple races that go to an angle.

That's why I really don't think the issue is DMs banning a single race. If you can only play a single race, the issue is likely you.

I really 100%think it's DMs banning a whole lot of races and not having any representative of a archetypical culture in their setting.

A DM who's setting bans all the water races and has no sea dwarves/elves/halflings/humans depite it not being against the tone or genre. Now a whole bunch of character ideas are gone.

A player wants to be an advocate for their discriminated people but the DM bans all the races that are discriminated against.

A player wants to play a "fish out of water" foreigner but the DM never designed anyone on the edges of the map so Wacky Foreigner is impossible to play.

The race list has no treehugger, nature lover race.
Or no magical wizardy race.
Or no tribal brute race.
Or no tricksy schemey race.
Or no imperialist empire race.

This is where the rational butting of heads results from.

 

[Remathilis]

No they were banned for environmental reasons.

See Warforged on Athas for example.

Is your game set on the high seas or something?

I've never gotten this attitude to be honest. D&D is full of fairly niche races, subclasses, etc that excel at certain campaigns and are fairly useless elsewhere. In a sailing game, I expect aquatic races, storm sorcerers and barbarians, sea druids, etc. Running a jungle or desert game? Tieflings, genasi and other races with fire resistance are attractive. Running a horror game? Damn right I'm picking monster hunter with favored enemy undead. When else is there going to a chance for those abilities to be this useful? Heck, they should be rewarded to playing to them theme.

 

[Remathilis]

Exactly. D&D editions after a few years have multiple races that go to an angle.

That's why I really don't think the issue is DMs banning a single race. If you can only play a single race, the issue is likely you.

I really 100%think it's DMs banning a whole lot of races and not having any representative of a archetypical culture in their setting.

A DM who's setting bans all the water races and has no sea dwarves/elves/halflings/humans depite it not being against the tone or genre. Now a whole bunch of character ideas are gone.

A player wants to be an advocate for their discriminated people but the DM bans all the races that are discriminated against.

A player wants to play a "fish out of water" foreigner but the DM never designed anyone on the edges of the map so Wacky Foreigner is impossible to play.

The race list has no treehugger, nature lover race.
Or no magical wizardy race.
Or no tribal brute race.
Or no tricksy schemey race.
Or no imperialist empire race.

This is where the rational butting of heads results from.

Exactly. It's never just a single race that bothers me, it's whole concepts that do. No aquatic races or no planetouched races or no underdark races or no monstrous races or no "evil/edgy" races all cut out some interesting character concepts that are a breath of fresh air after years of playing Tolkien Fellowship races.

 

[Don Durito]

Interesting. Let's say I have a concept for a character who was born under the sea (a very Ariel from the Little Mermaid type). If you said no to tritons (my first choice), would you accept a sea elf or a water genasi as an alternative?

Sometimes there are multiple paths to the same character concept, and as long as one of the them is open, compromise can be reached.

Is this a concept for a particular campaign or a general concept that you want to use at some point because it's D&D?

Because this is a curious thing to me. I started with 2E so I tend to think of D&D as a toolkit. After all it doesn't even have a setting! So I was running a desert themed game I may well say no water themed races. But if your concept has nothing in particular to do with the premise of the campaign I also don't see why you couldn't let it wait for a campaign where it would fit better anyway.

When I pitch a campaign idea I really want players to be keen on the premise and work with it. I don't want players who join because they want to play D&D and this'll do.

 

[Zardnaar]

Is your game set on the high seas or something?

I've never gotten this attitude to be honest. D&D is full of fairly niche races, subclasses, etc that excel at certain campaigns and are fairly useless elsewhere. In a sailing game, I expect aquatic races, storm sorcerers and barbarians, sea druids, etc. Running a jungle or desert game? Tieflings, genasi and other races with fire resistance are attractive. Running a horror game? Damn right I'm picking monster hunter with favored enemy undead. When else is there going to a chance for those abilities to be this useful? Heck, they should be rewarded to playing to them theme.

Yes it's a happy pirates theme. I've let races like that in before. Always leads to two things.

1 their environment advantage is useless.

2. It overshadows the other PCs.

 

[Remathilis]

Yes it's a happy pirates theme. I've let races like that in before. Always leads to two things.

1 their environment advantage is useless.

2. It overshadows the other PCs.

I'm running pirates myself. I had all those options open and nobody bit. That said, due to magic and classes, almost all of them could breathe water and swim anyway by 5th level. Let the PCs play with thier toys.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm playing (for now) in a campaign where the DM said "PHB only." I'm not digging the campaign much for reasons that I think have nothing to do with that.

As I said above, I made a choice to allow virtually everything in the PHB, both races and classes, and I'm being a little pickier about things from elsewhere.

I'm pretty open when it comes to races, but I don't like too many exotics in the same party. It works out fine, because my players mostly pick from the core common PHB races. Each campaign I get 3 of them picking Human, Dwarf, Halfing, etc. and 1 who wants to be a Tiefling, Aasimar, Warforged or the like, which works out great. It's pretty rare when more than one wants to be exotic in the same campaign.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm running pirates myself. I had all those options open and nobody bit. That said, due to magic and classes, almost all of them could breathe water and swim anyway by 5th level. Let the PCs play with thier toys.

Level one stuff had some new skill challenges type stuff those races just totally bypass.

No one took a wizard so breathe water isn't reliably available (sorcerer's skipped it).