D&D General Race Has No Mechanics. What do you play?

[EzekielRaiden]

Race/Ancestry/Kin having a mechanical effect is quite commonplace as a result of D&D's disproportionate influence, both in TTRPGs and video games. However, as I know you know, there are also a fair number of TTRPGs out there where it has little to no mechanical impact: Dungeon World, Fabula Ultima, etc. It really isn't the end of the world as some other people make it out to be.

DW does have a mechanical impact from race though. It's baked into each individual class, but it's still there. Grim World, a lovely supplement (if you ignore the grimdark bits) for DW, specifically has races, each of which gives a move or effect of some kind.

The one for "drakarn" (their dragonborn) is...that you can set stuff on fire in some contexts. ("Flamegut: When you belch, two things catch fire. Choose one. The GM chooses the other.") Well, that and for the fluff of their implied setting, all drakarn know each other--and are sterile, but they don't know why. Hence, their race is dying out (not of age or illness, just injury or the like) unless they can find their broodmother.

 

[Aldarc]

DW does have a mechanical impact from race though. It's baked into each individual class, but it's still there.

Race/Ancestry/Kin having a mechanical effect is quite commonplace as a result of D&D's disproportionate influence, both in TTRPGs and video games. However, as I know you know, there are also a fair number of TTRPGs out there where it has little to no mechanical impact: Dungeon World, Fabula Ultima, etc. It really isn't the end of the world as some other people make it out to be.

Quick note: Emphasis mine. IMHO, Dungeon World falls into the "little...mechanical impact" scale of things.

 

[Reynard]

The mechanical advantage to long life is they get to use their living memories to access historical information where Humans have to go digging through old books and scrolls (which takes much longer) to access the same stuff.

This is not a thing in any edition of D&D I have read and sounds very much like a house rule.

 

[Scott Christian]

So, assuming it is a very open setting in which pretty much any reasonable humanoid species is available, but none of them have any mechanical effects (including size, vision and movement types; everyone, including humans, are basically human mechanically). What species do you pick for your character?

I would pick a trope; the half-orc fighter, the elven ranger, the gnome wizard, the halfling bard, the dwarven cleric, all come to mind. I think the only reason I would do that is to try to keep some consistency of lore

Would race being cosmetic only be a turn off for you?

Yes. Character creation is supposed to be a series of tradeoffs. It starts with the very first choice: Do you want to be strong, dexterous, constitutional, intelligent, wise, or charismatic? You don't get to be all those things. Then, your second choice is: Do you want to play a trope (a race that enhances the core abilities of your class) or be semi-trope (a race that partially enhances your class's core abilities) or anti-trope (a race that doesn't enhance the core abilities)? These three all offer benefits, it's just where you want the benefits to be as a player. Then classes have choices, backgrounds have choices, equipment has choices, etc.

You can't have it all is the entire thread of character creation. How far you want the pendulum to swing is often up to the table. So, to remove race as a choice means you are removing the core aspect of character creation - the tradeoff.

 

[DammitVictor]

Would race being cosmetic only be a turn off for you?

Yeah, it'd be a pretty big turnoff. Most of my favorite races are too alien to make sense on purely human mechanics.

But, ruling them out? If everyone's human anyway, might as well play a human, or pretty much any planetouched or half-human. Gith race traitors, especially if I can swindle one of the players into playing the other subrace. Hobgoblin or bugbear.

 

[DEFCON 1]

- So, what is the right way to distinguish between humans and non-humans without using any mechanical element?


- Having mechanical elements for the races isn't just for the players' benefit, it's for the DM's as well.

In answer to your first part of your post... my opinion would be whatever narrative aspects or connections to the setting a character might have. There are many things in the D&D game that a player can choose to make their character different, but which do not give a mechanic connected to it. As others have said... the location where a character grew up gives no mechanical benefit, but yet a lot of us still choose it anyway. Reason of course being that if/when the adventures the PCs go on ever take them there to that location... there may be quite a bit of narrative benefit for the character-- with the PC recognizing areas, knowing people, having a reputation (even if there aren't specific game mechanics given.) Not to mention that for many editions of D&D, a character's former job (or Background) never gave you any mechanics for what you used to do before becoming an adventurer... but whatever it was a person chose, there might be narrative implications should they come up as well. Species is no different. Even if there were no specific game mechanics for each species... how people in the setting would react to you, what knowledge you might have on hand, and how you would portray yourself in the fiction would indeed still be something of note. That can all occur even without a specific "+2 to X skill" mechanic for instance.

That being said... the only reason I mention this is because I absolutely also agree with your second sentence, and think it's possibly the true crux of the matter-- it would indeed put more necessity and stress onto the Dungeon Master to make these narrative conceits come to life. In order for Species, or Background, or Place You Grew Up to matter (to the player or the setting on the whole)... the DM would be the one needing to find places during the game to illustrate and narrate these things and let the players play them. Which does put a lot more on a DM's plate. So having "species mechanics" does allow the DM to artificially make each species narratively different for the player's benefit... thus allowing the DM to never bother ever having to talk or think about species again if they don't want to (the same way more often that not, most games don't ever really care about the "hometowns" of the characters, and what living in those areas possibly could have granted for mechanics.) Even if the Human character and the Elf character are played exactly the same way by their respective players and anyone who was watching the game would never be able to tell the differences between the species apart.. the fact one of them could say "I only sleep for 4 hours!" is all the players might feel they need to make their character (and species) be different. Which isn't nothing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Quick note: Emphasis mine. IMHO, Dungeon World falls into the "little...mechanical impact" scale of things.

Some are small, others can be quite sizable. Elf Rangers, for example, can fill two roles for Undertake a Perilous Journey, which can be huge in a low-WIS party.

 

[Aldarc]

Some are small, others can be quite sizable. Elf Rangers, for example, can fill two roles for Undertake a Perilous Journey, which can be huge in a low-WIS party.

I am uninterested in quibbling this with you.

 

[Corinnguard]

In answer to your first part of your post... my opinion would be whatever narrative aspects or connections to the setting a character might have. There are many things in the D&D game that a player can choose to make their character different, but which do not give a mechanic connected to it. As others have said... the location where a character grew up gives no mechanical benefit, but yet a lot of us still choose it anyway. Reason of course being that if/when the adventures you go on ever take you there... there will quite be narrative benefits for you (even if there aren't specific mechanics.) Not to mention that for many editions of D&D, a character's former job (or Background) never gave you any mechanics for what you used to do before becoming an adventurer... but whatever it was a person chose, there might be narrative implications should they come up. Species is no different. Even if there were no specific game mechanics for each species... how people in the setting would react to you, and how you would portray yourself in the fiction would indeed still be something of note.

Agreed. A good DM will ask their players to come up with a backstory for their character and then seek to incorporate them as side plots within the main adventure. When I was designing my Bugbear Ranger's backstory, I asked myself questions about who I wanted him to be.

*Where did he hail from in the Forgotten Realms? The Reaching Woods near the town of Berdusk.

• Which towns did he operate out of as a Bounty Hunter? Berdusk, Scornubel and Triel.
• Who raised him as he was growing up? A human Ranger and a half-elf monk
• How does he see himself? Not the typical Bugbear. Thoughtful, well educated, believes in catch-and-release.

And so forth. None of the questions I asked myself offered up a mechanical benefit. Just a narrative one. They helped define who my character was and how I role-played him.

But I still find racial mechanics to be useful. They provide some much-needed crunch.

 

[Vael]

I'd be fine with it. It does mean lineages that I like to play for mechanical reasons (Changelings, Dragonborn, Faerie, for example) wouldn't be played, but that's about it.