D&D 5E Halflings are the 7th most popular 5e race

[doctorbadwolf]

People like a lot of things. People like Tieflings and Dragonborn and Genasi as well. Which is the point I keep trying to make. Races that don't appear in Tolkien have become quite popular, despite the Tolkien races getting top billing in every single book and supplement. The amount of material about elves in Forgotten Realms is massive. Same as Dwarves. Never minding other settings as well. Which hedges out any development of anything that doesn't appear in Tolkien. And any suggestion of changing that is immediately shouted down.

If Tieflings and Dragonborn had been added in 5e and failed, I'd be arguing that they should be dropped. I feel that the PHB should reflect what people are actually playing, not some fifty year old decision that was made before a lot of the newer ideas even existed.


Heh, it's actually really funny. I don't have to. The players do it for me. Last halfling I saw in a game was about ten years ago at the beginning of 5e. Haven't seen a gnome that I recall. My current Candlekeep campaign which just finished today (2 full years - I'm REALLY happy!) featured a warforged, a dragonborn, a tiefling, an owlfolk and a Lucidling. We're about as far from Tolkien as you can possibly get. Next campaign is a Spelljammer one, so, all the limits are off, but, so far it's a Dragonborn and an Autognome.

It's really not about limiting my game. It's not like the players are asking for any of the Tolkien races. They seem to have no interest. And I certainly don't care if they take any race. Anything is always on the table. THEY are the ones who show zero interest, not me. And it's been that way since the 3e days. Different players, different groups, some I've DM'd, some I haven't.

Sure, it's very obviously confirmation bias going on. I get that. But, like I said, for those I've gamed with over the years, if halfling and gnome disappeared from the PHB, no one would notice. Heck, back in 3e, when I ran Scarred Lands, we were three years in before anyone realized that Scarred Lands didn't have gnomes. No one even noticed.

And everyone in the thread could give a different anecdotal accounting, some polar opposite, some similar, some just weird to both of us.

My group hasn't lacked a gnome or halfling since we started playing 4e. We mostly played star wars before that.

 

[Hussar]

And everyone in the thread could give a different anecdotal accounting, some polar opposite, some similar, some just weird to both of us.

My group hasn't lacked a gnome or halfling since we started playing 4e. We mostly played star wars before that.

Oh yes. Totally agree here.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I think that nicely illustrates my point. Despite Genasi being a more popularly played race, we have about three times more books about halflings. Being in the PHB means that they take up a disproportionate amount of space. Shouldn't a more popularly played race not have more supplementary information about it?

Or, it doesn't illustrate your point and halflings engender more desire to create content than gensai do to roll up a character they may or may not have ever used in D&D beyond.

 

[Parmandur]

I feel that the PHB should reflect what people are actually playing, not some fifty year old decision that was made before a lot of the newer ideas even existed.

So, based on the numbers, that would include Elves, Humans, Dwarves, and Halflings...? I see no conflict in the data between what people are playing and what WotC is making available.

 

[Nadan]

Considering how terrible dragonborn in phb is, and how pigeonholed they are into paladin. They still got great ranks, higher than some more traditional species.
I wondering how would data change once 5e remastered come, when species not bounded by states and dragonborn got buffed.

 

[James Gasik]

Ok, let's look at D&D settings. You'll note that until the introduction of Dragonborn and Tieflings to the PHB, you'll notice the PHB races* exist in almost every setting as a major race. Not all settings, of course (Athas lacks Gnomes, Krynn has pseudo-Halflings), but the majority of them do.

If we switched from "what is common" to "what is popular", that has an impact on these settings. Whether that's massive or barely noticeable in the end isn't really the point; but instead, if I tried to sell people a PHB with, say, Owlin, Centaurs, Vedalken, Shadar-Kai, Firbolgs, and Hobgoblins, I think there would be a lot of outrage about how "this isn't my D&D", lol.

So even if the classic races are kind of boring and staid, it's hard to imagine the game without them as foundational player options- it would require very different and new settings. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing for the game, but it's definitely an issue from a marketing standpoint.

We only have to look at 4e shunting Gnomes out of the PHB, or the current hub-bub about Half-Elves and Half-Orcs to see that.

*I know we're changing this to species, and I don't have any real problem with that, but I've been calling them races for a long time, so it's hard to stop, lol.

 

[Parmandur]

Considering how terrible dragonborn in phb is, and how pigeonholed they are into paladin. They still got great ranks, higher than some more traditional species.
I wondering how would data change once 5e remastered come, when species not bounded by states and dragonborn got buffed.

Crawford has said in the past that there is no particular correlation between stats and abilities and popularity of an option that they can see. People go with the idea that they like, optimization be darned.

 

[James Gasik]

Crawford has said in the past that there is no particular correlation between stats and abilities and popularity of an option that they can see. People go with the idea that they like, optimization be darned.

People think Dragons are cool. It's in the name of the game, after all. "What, I can be a dragonman and breathe fire?! Sweet!". Only people who have played the game for awhile generally stop and say "you know, these guys aren't really all that great."

 

[Nadan]

Crawford has said in the past that there is no particular correlation between stats and abilities and popularity of an option that they can see. People go with the idea that they like, optimization be darned.

If there's no correlation between stat, you won't see dragonborn are the second popular specie for paladin. In gerenal there isn't correlation, but there might have some affect in this particular case.

EDIT: I believe player choose to play dragonborn first, then decide what class to play, you can find that top 3 class for it are paladin, fighter and barbarian. What I want to see is when there is no obvious pigeonholed state, will the distribution be more even?

 

[Parmandur]

If there's no correlation between stat, you won't see dragonborn are the second popular specie for paladin. In gerenal there isn't correlation, but there might have some affect in this particular case.

The example used was that non-variant Human is byfar the most popular option: because people just want to play the race they want, whether it's basic Human or Dragonperson.