D&D General What it means for a race to end up in the PHB, its has huge significance

[Ogre Mage]

I tend to see the inclusion of an ancestry in the PHB as the result of popularity rather than the cause of it. If it is in the PHB it was already resonating with D&D players and/or wider nerd culture.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The dragonborn appeared in 3.5 Races of Dragons, but the half-dragon template was very popular in 3rd Ed.

My theory is goliath are more famous now thanks Critical Role - Legend of Vox Machine and the character Grog Strongjaw.

Goblins are perfect to be antagonists of halflings and gnomes in some family-friendly cartoon show or like this, and here Warcraft could be a great influence. I like the blue goblin because they are the misfists among the misfists, understoond and rejected by everybody, the ugly little duckling among the PC species. Blue goblins were cool even years before Grogu/baby Yoda was so popular.

Aasimars need the right iconic character.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Goliath isn't coming out of the blue. I played a half ogre in 1st edition, and Dark Sun had it's half giants. And giant-ish party members are common in fantasy fiction.

 

[Clint_L]

Goblins and orcs are very popular right now and have tons of media examples in and out of D&D (Warhammer and World of Warcraft in particular). I agree about Grog Strongjaw helping to make goliaths iconic, though variations on the theme have been around for decades.

I think aasimar will be the least adopted. Angel-people seem to have particular cultural connotations that rub a lot of people the wrong way, far more than do demon-people.

Unsurprisingly, if you've read Paradise Lost. Satan is so much cooler.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I believe they're referring to their PC representation. Which, yes, objectively dragonborn have exploded in popularity since the days of mid-3.5e, when they were an obscure racial template (or, rather, a pair thereof, one for Bahamut and the other for Tiamat.)

PC populatity and presence in Novels and setting books. Tieflings appear in novels a lot more after they got the PHB treatment.

While this is true, being PHB doesn't guarantee popularity either. Halflings aren't even in the top 10, for example, as of the last time we got full data, and dwarves were only barely hanging on. Even if you conglomerate subraces together, dwarves are barely hanging on to like 7th place, and all halflings combined barely exceed goliaths, a supplemental option.

D&D 5E (2014) - D&D Beyond Releases 2023 Character Creation Data

D&D Beyond released the 2023 Unrolled with data on the most popular character choices for D&D. The full article includes a wide variety of statistics for the beta test of Maps, charity donations, mobile app usage, and more. However, I’m just going to recap the big numbers. The most common...

www.enworld.org

According to this Halflings are the 7th most popular race and Gnomes the 10th, none of the PHB races are under 10, and only 1 PHB race is in the top 10 (Genasi), although Goliaths, Aakocra, and Aasimar are not far off.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think aasimar will be the least adopted. Angel-people seem to have particular cultural connotations that rub a lot of people the wrong way, far more than do demon-people.

Unsurprisingly, if you've read Paradise Lost. Satan is so much cooler

I agree, aasimar are currently somewhat overpowered, but I have never had someone play one. I suspect WotC have stats which support that, which was why they were messing around with aardvarklings.

Also see, Neil Gaiman for “evil is cooler”.

 

[Horwath]

D&D 5E (2014) - D&D Beyond Releases 2023 Character Creation Data

D&D Beyond released the 2023 Unrolled with data on the most popular character choices for D&D. The full article includes a wide variety of statistics for the beta test of Maps, charity donations, mobile app usage, and more. However, I’m just going to recap the big numbers. The most common...

www.enworld.org

So, the most popular character is Human fighter Bob...

aren't we creative as a community, haha!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Personally, I have not seen 1 dragonborn PC in 10 years of 5E, but I did play draconic creature template(halfling) in 3.5e.

Then you are in very rarefied company. Dragonborn are (at least as of the most recent data) the third most popular non-human option, after elf and half-elf (which vary depending on survey which one is in first place).

Problem IMHO with dragornborn in 5E is that they are too un-human like, you really cannot disguise yourself if you want to blend into humans.

For me, and I think for a lot of people who like them, this is a significant part of the draw. I don't want to be just a human who looks like they've had some tacky scales glued on at semi-random points. I want to look different.

2nd, before Fizbans, their racial trait completely sucked, now they just partially suck, but some very good combos can be made.

Oh, believe me, I hear you. It was incredibly frustrating to have to argue to folks that 5e dragonborn were actually incredibly weak relative to other races. I had people insisting (on both this forum and a previous forum) that 5e dragonborn were perfectly fine and I was just whining (or, alternatively, a "call me a dirty powergamer without calling me a dirty powergamer" situation.)

Yet another one of those "delightful" situations where folks insisted 5e couldn't possibly have problems for years and years, and now act like everyone's always known it was a problem and it doesn't need to be talked about anymore.

I expect we will see a lot of new players asking “where are the gith?”

Oh yeah, I very much expect people to be asking for gith. As stated, Dak'kon breathed new life into his race, and Lae'zel has done the same for hers. I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if Lae'zel clones become the newest version of the same idea behind Drizzt clones. That is, a race where 99% of player characters are defectors away from the evil awfulness of their people and thus brooding loners with a need to prove themselves.

PC populatity and presence in Novels and setting books. Tieflings appear in novels a lot more after they got the PHB treatment.

Dragonborn got an entire series where the adoptive father of the main character is a dragonborn (and also a gay man, which is some nice representation). The author, Erin M. Evans, has put a ton of work into Tymantheran culture, and some of it is really quite interesting.

D&D 5E (2014) - D&D Beyond Releases 2023 Character Creation Data

D&D Beyond released the 2023 Unrolled with data on the most popular character choices for D&D. The full article includes a wide variety of statistics for the beta test of Maps, charity donations, mobile app usage, and more. However, I’m just going to recap the big numbers. The most common...

www.enworld.org

According to this Halflings are the 7th most popular race and Gnomes the 10th, none of the PHB races are under 10, and only 1 PHB race is in the top 10 (Genasi), although Goliaths, Aakocra, and Aasimar are not far off.

Interesting. Somehow I missed this. Good to know we've gotten more recent data. Also, dragonborn continue to ascend; according to this, they're now the second most popular non-human 5e race, behind only elves.

More to the point, this still would seem to indicate that there's not a whole lot of room for stuff to grow even if it does get added to the PHB. Goliaths might rise, what, two places? Three? And if they do, they'll merely displace something that was already PHB in the doing, like gnome, further cementing the idea that being PHB isn't a guarantee of a win.

I agree, aasimar are currently somewhat overpowered, but I have never had someone play one. I suspect WotC have stats which support that, which was why they were messing around with aardvarklings.

According to the above statistics (despite the terrible, AWFUL graph design), aasimar are only slightly behind goliaths in 11th place, at about 85k, meaning they're about 1/8th as common as humans, overall.

Also see, Neil Gaiman for “evil is cooler”.

Ah, but there's a twist to that. Looking evil is cooler. Being evil is not. Being evil is generally pretty uncool, actually. But if you can look evil while secretly being good, you get the best of both worlds and an extra cherry on top: you get to be badass and impressive and do all sorts of showy (but ultimately meaningless) "evil" things, while doing the right thing for the right reason at the right time when it actually matters, and getting the "I am persecuted by those who judge a book by its cover" jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold vibes too. That's why things like Drizzt, Lae'zel, and tieflings are so popular. They get to cross the line thrice: looking evil and presenting "cool" outwardly evil/asocial/destructive behavior, secretly doing the right thing what-you-are-in-the-dark style, getting to indulge some petty revenge against those who wrongly judge them, but ultimately showing their superior moral fiber by not giving in to the revenge and doing something actually problematic.

All the perks, none of the drawbacks. Angels? Angels can only play it straight, being obviously good people who do obviously good things, or subvert it by becoming boringly actual-evil people despite looking like a good person. They can only cross the line once, if they cross it at all, but in a way that is boring and (these days) pretty over-used. "Pretty person is actually a haughty, self-righteous jerk worse than the people they condemn" is a stock supervillain origin these days.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So, the most popular character is Human fighter Bob...

aren't we creative as a community, haha!

Though it's worth noting that as you start stacking these things together, you start getting very minimal slices of the overall pie.

Remember: if you judge by only like 6 (independent) metrics and keep the middle 50% of all people as "average" (an extremely generous definition of "average," I think you'd agree), then only 1.5625% of people are "average." And I guarantee you that 50% of characters aren't named Bob.

In general, the perfectly average person doesn't exist.

Edit: In fact, did some very rough back-of-the-envelope calculations. Fighters make up around 12.5% of all characters. Humans, around 23% of all characters, maybe 25% if I rounded some things up too much. Even if we're generous and assume that a full 20% of all characters are named "Bob," that would mean "human Fighters named Bob" are only around 1/8×1/5×1/4 = 1/160 = 0.625% of all characters. Even if we were to quadruple that figure, assuming that these features (human, Fighter, and being named Bob) all are unusually correlated with one another, that'd still only make them about 2.5% of all characters.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ah, but there's a twist to that. Looking evil is cooler. Being evil is not. Being evil is generally pretty uncool, actually.

Sure, but I can mention an honourable exception. Daeran, from Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. He is an aasimar, he is evil, and he is a cool character (a proto-Astarion in fact).