D&D 5E Do you restrict racial choices in your games?

Voadam

Legend

• Jan 28, 2021

• #31

I've done it differently for different campaigns. I usually go more open with lots of options including 3rd party stuff but I have restricted it for my last two campaigns. One was the Carrion Crown gothic horror adventure path where I said classic D&D races and human-ish ones (half humans that look fairly human) to fit the D&D gothic horror aesthetic and mood, I would not have allowed a dragonborn. As it was the party was mostly human with one half-elf and one half orc, which worked great. My current one is Iron Gods adventure path where it is basically Thundarr the barbarian with sci-fi stuff thrown in and plenty of monster tribes, so we have a human barbarian who is a werewolf (human druid), a human barbarian werebear (shifter barbarian), a robot embryonic google (warforged artificer) and a dragon cult lay person (kobold bard) which seems to fit the Thudarr theme.

In the past I have had parties with wildly different races, like the no eyes but blindsight Ilonis, a tiger man hsiao, dog person dover, and other non WotC options.

 

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Arilyn

Hero

• Jan 28, 2021

• #32

I'm very much anything goes. WOTC, 3rd party, homebrew, as long as it's not broken. Very rarely, if I have a specific campaign in mind, I'll restrict races, but it's very rare.

 

Swarmkeeper

Hero

• Jan 28, 2021

• #33

We currently have left it open to player choice: any official WotC published races.
We're running a West Marches-esque Curse of Strahd game and PCs could have been sucked into Barovia from anywhere in the multiverse. Of course, we warn the players that the Barovian people (mostly humans, but also elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes) are easily spooked by the unfamiliar, but so far we've seen two minotaurs, a leonin, a yuan-ti, an aarakocra, a kenku, and two tabaxi. Just because the players can play a race, doesn't mean we need to add them to this particular demi-plane in greater numbers.

If I were to restrict races in a campaign, it would likely be to eliminate monstrous races.

 

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal

• Jan 28, 2021

• #34

I need the combonation of the first and last options.

If a specific setting makes sense with a restricted list of classes and/or races, I do that.

Otherwise I generally allow anything hardcover published by Wizards.

Actually, that's not quite true - elements that are too tightly tied to a setting that I can not do correctly in whatever setting I'm running I may still restrict. For example, the Dragonmarked House subraces I probably wouldn't allow except in Eberron because they are so much more than just the collection of racial features.

Mind you, the last campaign I started in Session 0 the players put forth that Dwarves had been genocided, Drow were a created race to take their pace, and Halflings were also a created race. All of that fit just fine with what I had planned for the setting (which had strong elements but none that intersected any of those) - so it that case the player decided on a racial restriction.

 

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)

• Jan 28, 2021

• #35

I curate the options, though I also invite players to discuss with me if they want to play an option not among those presented and we can try to work something out.

 

aco175

Legend

• Jan 28, 2021

• #36

I seem to be the only one who voted PHB only as of now. I have played in games before that have themes and such like all dwarves or such, but these have all been from PHB. For several years now all the players in my game seem to have the same feelings on player races vs monster races. There have been several threads on that topic, so we do not need to get into that here.

I might be agreeable to let in something from another source. I think that it may need to be more humanish that monsterish though. More asimar or aquatic elf over goblin or orc. I could see a one-ff game with all playing something monsters, but not a campaign.

 

Burnside

Space Jam Confirmed

Supporter

• Jan 28, 2021

• #37

I run a lot of the official 5E adventures, most of which are set in FR. So for those I do not allow Eberron, Ravnica, Theros, or Wildemount races. But most of my players are very casual and unaware of those settings and races anyway (especially the first three). I do allow Volo's and Mordy's races in those, as well as the SCAG variants.

When I run Curse of Strahd, I actually allow any officially published race from any setting - victims are drawn to Barovia from all over the Material Plane.

My original adventures tend to be one-shots and not setting-specific, and I generally will allow any races players want for those.

 

S

Shiroiken

Legend

• Jan 28, 2021

• #38

I always restrict races for my campaigns based not only on the setting, but also the necessity of the story. For example, I'm not going to allow aarokocra in an underdark themed campaign, even if aarokocra exist in the setting. One thing I'll probably never do is allow monstrous races, such as those from VGtM, unless it's ones specific for the setting (i.e. Minotaurs in Dragonlance).

 

cbwjm

Seb-wejem

• Jan 29, 2021

• #39

Current campaign I set an initial restriction of PHB for simplicity and provided a 1 page campaign sheet of how some of those could fit in the campaign starting area.

DM for my other game also restricted things to, I think, nothing from Volo's.

I should also note that if the campaign has a specific theme then I'll restrict races. The new UA races I would keep for a Gothic horror type game rather than standard fantasy. If playing a redwall all animal campaign then all the races will be some sort of animal, which cuts out the entire PHB.

 

FireLance

Legend

• Jan 29, 2021

• #40

I'm the DM who worked with a player to homebrew a surface myconid PC race for Out of the Abyss.