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

[jmartkdr2]

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."

As someone fully aware of how not great they are, dragonborn are still my favorite race for two reasons:

1. They look cool.
2. They're the best Proud Warrior Race option in DnD, at least for playing to the tropes thereof.

(In a current game I'm playing a winged tiefling who lost her wings in backstory. No replacement feature - just take them away. That leaves her with only two racial features: darkvision and fire resistance. Still stronger than a dragonborn. Or, put another way, you could give dragonborn flight as a racial feature and they would still not be the storngest official option.)

 

[jmartkdr2]

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?

It might not be much of a change - dragonborn are already good at being sorcerers (as much as fighters) or bards, especially swords bards, but you don't see much of those.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

One of the reasons for not adding new races to the PHB is WotC want to sell supplements. You are not intended to be locked into core rules content, you are meant to spend money and buy additional stuff. Otherwise it's impossible to make a sustained profit.

And yet, we still (as shown in this very thread) get people complaining about how gnomes, the least popular of all "core" races, got shifted to PHB2 in 4e. Even though other highly popular options also did (Sorcerer, Druid, Barbarian, Bard, devas which are essentially aasimar, half-orcs), and you never see folks complain about that, or at least I haven't.

Because the issue isn't whether something can be played. If it were, 4e would never have gotten the hate it did.

Instead, the issue is (and has always been) twofold:

1. Are the options I identify as critical enshrined in the PHB?
2. Are the options I opposed as badwrongfun excluded from the PHB?

Being present in the PHB is, in effect, seen as canonization by WotC. It's validation, even promotion. Anything in the PHB is "real D&D," and anything outside it is demoted to some lower tier, second-class status. Hence why the so-called "exclusion" of gnomes was a problem (even though, in 4e, everything is core, at least if it's official content), and yet also why the 5e inclusion of dragonborn was a problem. The former was seen as shouting from the rooftops, "this thing a small group loves ISN'T D&D!" And the latter was saying that people who find dragonborn annoying or grating are wrong, because it's just as much D&D as elves and dwarves.

The issue is whether "I got mine and made sure others didn't get theirs." It saddens me greatly to see it laid out so clearly, but there really isn't another explanation here for the intense and sustained yet seemingly contradictory responses.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As someone fully aware of how not great they are, dragonborn are still my favorite race for two reasons:

1. They look cool.
2. They're the best Proud Warrior Race option in DnD, at least for playing to the tropes thereof.

Precisely. Dragonborn are the first core race that lets you play a "proud warrior race" type that is NOT ugly, brutish, and/or stupid. They are archetypically the "threateningly composed," dutiful and disciplined type. Coupled with the wonderful lore behind Arkhosia and the like, and you get a great package.

(In a current game I'm playing a winged tiefling who lost her wings in backstory. No replacement feature - just take them away. That leaves her with only two racial features: darkvision and fire resistance. Still stronger than a dragonborn. Or, put another way, you could give dragonborn flight as a racial feature and they would still not be the storngest official option.)

Yep. They are inarguably the worst race mechanically in the PHB, and one of the worst (official) options ever printed for 5e.

And yet they are still incredibly popular. Had they actually been good instead of bad, who knows? It certainly wouldn't have hurt, that's for sure.

 

[MGibster]

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.

I kind of picture Bubba from Forrest Gump going over all the different type of elves there are: "For your High Elves you got your sun elves, moon elves, and star elves. And for your Sylvan elves you got your wild elves and wood elves. You can't forget your lythari, drow, avariel, and of course your aquatic elves. (Aquatic elves farm the best shrimp.)"

 

[Lanefan]

And yet, we still (as shown in this very thread) get people complaining about how gnomes, the least popular of all "core" races, got shifted to PHB2 in 4e. Even though other highly popular options also did (Sorcerer, Druid, Barbarian, Bard, devas which are essentially aasimar, half-orcs), and you never see folks complain about that, or at least I haven't.

Druid is a big loss there; and Half-Orcs maybe. The rest - three classes which despite various redesigns have never quite worked right and a species that really should be a monster - I'm fine with putting in an optional supplement.

Because the issue isn't whether something can be played. If it were, 4e would never have gotten the hate it did.

Instead, the issue is (and has always been) twofold:

1. Are the options I identify as critical enshrined in the PHB?
2. Are the options I opposed as badwrongfun excluded from the PHB?

Being present in the PHB is, in effect, seen as canonization by WotC. It's validation, even promotion. Anything in the PHB is "real D&D," and anything outside it is demoted to some lower tier, second-class status. Hence why the so-called "exclusion" of gnomes was a problem (even though, in 4e, everything is core, at least if it's official content),

Some of that was people feeling they shouldn't have to buy two books to get the up-till-then basic content they were expecting to find in one. I seem to recall much the same issue around the Monster Manual, where some iconic creatures were held back for MMII.

Also, "everything is core" came across as a pretty blatant marketing ploy to get everyone to buy more books. Pushback had to have been expected.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Druid is a big loss there; and Half-Orcs maybe. The rest - three classes which despite various redesigns have never quite worked right and a species that really should be a monster - I'm fine with putting in an optional supplement.

Some of that was people feeling they shouldn't have to buy two books to get the up-till-then basic content they were expecting to find in one. I seem to recall much the same issue around the Monster Manual, where some iconic creatures were held back for MMII.

Also, "everything is core" came across as a pretty blatant marketing ploy to get everyone to buy more books. Pushback had to have been expected.

which is the monster?

 

[CleverNickName]

Precisely. Dragonborn are the first core race that lets you play a "proud warrior race" type that is NOT ugly, brutish, and/or stupid.

Humans and dwarves would like a word.

 

[Lanefan]

which is the monster?

Aasimar/Deva.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Humans and dwarves would like a word.

Humans are unflavored oatmeal.

Dwarves, eh. I have never seen them that way. Their hat is being extremely conservative traditionalists, making them more the cleric race at least in my head. And, if I'm being honest, they are short. I don't want to play short races. I get why others might, but the statistics are real, short options are just not as popular.

So I guess change it to "aren't ugly, stupid, or short." Since "brutish" is kind of synonymous with "ugly" anyway.