D&D 5E Balance in Races

[furysmuse]

A conversation recently came up at my table about the imbalance in the races in 5e. My immediate response was, "there has always been imbalance in characters in D&D. Elves are the golden child of the system." They spoke about the imbalance amongst all the races. Why do half-orcs get so many perks, and dragonborn don't even get darkvision from their ancestors? Tieflings get all these cool spells, and hellish resistance, but gnomes only get gnome cunning.
It turned into this counting game as they tried to make direct comparisons between race abilities. Surely there must be more finesse behind these decisions than this character gets three benefits, this character gets two?
Do you feel as though the races are balanced? Do you feel that they should be?
I don't think that I am playing with a bunch of min-maxers, so we have a good mix of races in the group, and people aren't always the "most compatible" race with their class. But, it's an interesting question.

 

[Minigiant]

The races are balanced for the most part.
The balance come from the whole package..

Hard orcs are pushed to weapons and intimidation, dragonborn have to use the breath weapon and resists, mountain dwarves are slow. Every race is favored to certain styles and classes or general enough to not lose much from picking the whole racial package.

 

[Ravenheart87]

Tieflings get all these cool spells, and hellish resistance, but gnomes only get gnome cunning.

Did you miss that gnomes get the stuff from their subraces as well? They are pretty fun. As for hellish resistance and infernal heritage, gnome cunning is far more versatile and superior. It's advantage on all intelligence, wisdom, and charisma saves vs magic! That's pretty huge.

By the way most racial bonuses and features make a race better for some classes, but won't mean anything for others. Gnomes are clearly superior for wizards, but tieflings are better for warlocks.

 

[bganon]

I don't think it's possible to have exact balance without every race being the same, but I think they're mostly pretty close.

Gnome Cunning is huge. It's probably roughly equal to fire resistance and the Tiefling spell abilities put together.

I don't know how the developers balance things, but some abilities can be counted in units of Feats. A spell-like ability is close to one feat, +1 to an ability is half a feat, skill proficiency is 1/3 of a feat, etc. Some things aren't easily comparable, but to go back to the gnome/tiefling example: Gnome Cunning is substantially better than any feat, Infernal Legacy is a bit better than a single feat (Magic Initiate), and Hellish Resistance is worth quite a bit less than a feat. So it roughly seems to balance out.

 

[BigVanVader]

The reason Dragonborn don't get as many little tricks as the Half-Orc, is because the Dragonborn has a built-in breath weapon. So no matter what class he is, no matter how squishy he may be, he can set your eyelids on fire, for a respectable amount of damage.

Compare that to the Half-Orc, who generally has to have a big weapon to do huge amounts of damage.

 

[phantomK9]

I have found the races to be very balanced.
One thing to note is that in the design of the races, it seems to be determined that "thing of your choice" is worth twice that of thing of our choice". So a human getting on feat of your choice is worth two feats equivalent of things chosen for you in other races.

 

[steeldragons]

It's a perspective and definition issue. What is, to your fellow players/debaters "balanced"?

If "balanced" is supposed to be: "Every race should get a resistance, vision or other sense, 3 weapon profs, +2 things they can do." That is the expectation that "balanced" = "the same".

Having all races be "the same" is boring. It leads to boring characters. It leads to cookie-cutter PCs and makes race little more than differently colored "dressing" to differentiate PCs. In this case, no, the races are not "balanced."

And thank the gods for that, says I.

If "balanced" means "a general comparison a power that falls within a given spectrum", then yes, then race are balanced just fine. That requires acknowledging that a group of things within a spectrum can be "balanced" by various factors. That spectrum is not as cut/dry as "+X to Y, a resistance and 3 skills". The spectrum includes, but is not limited to, "How different from a human is this race?", "How specialized is the race and/or [default] culture in this/that area", "How situational vs. constant are various traits?", and "What is the [default] flavor/backstory of this race?"

Does this mean your PCs will encounter creatures that will be OFF that spectrum, in one direction or the other, i.e. very wimpy or extraordinarily "better" in various ways than PC races can be? Yes! That is the game. That, also, is not "unbalanced". There are creatures [races] that are better than you in XYZ ways. That's life...even in the fantasy worlds of D&D...and, again imnsho, as it should.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The only race that feels unbalanced is the "variant" human, which is strictly superior to the basic human in every way that matters.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A conversation recently came up at my table about the imbalance in the races in 5e. My immediate response was, "there has always been imbalance in characters in D&D. Elves are the golden child of the system." They spoke about the imbalance amongst all the races. Why do half-orcs get so many perks, and dragonborn don't even get darkvision from their ancestors? Tieflings get all these cool spells, and hellish resistance, but gnomes only get gnome cunning.
It turned into this counting game as they tried to make direct comparisons between race abilities. Surely there must be more finesse behind these decisions than this character gets three benefits, this character gets two?
Do you feel as though the races are balanced? Do you feel that they should be?
I don't think that I am playing with a bunch of min-maxers, so we have a good mix of races in the group, and people aren't always the "most compatible" race with their class. But, it's an interesting question.

I, personally, agree with you here: I think the designers weighted some things too heavily and other things not heavily enough. Dragonborn being the best example. 2d6 damage is fairly potent...for those levels where you and your allies are one-hit-wonders that can straight-up die to a bugbear's crit. But 4d6 damage at level 11, when Fighters are getting three attacks (3d8+Str/Dex is substantially higher than 4d6, and that's before counting crits), Paladins get improved smiting, etc.? Kinda weak [edit: by comparison], actually. And because of that "it's powerful early!!!" mentality, Dragonborn get practically *nothing* else. It irks me. I freely admit I'm a huge Dragonborn fanboy, but when I see things like Dwarves who can get two +2 stats and multiple proficiencies and saving throw bonuses and free armor proficiencies and darkvision and a fluffy RP ability, I genuinely feel like Dragonborn got shortchanged. Where's the fluffy stuff, the bonuses to history or intimidate or a minor healing benefit? When Dwarves and Elves get so much--and Halflings get Lucky, which is pretty powerful always--it definitely seems like there's some strange logic (or perhaps "logic") going on here. I really, truly don't think "breath weapon + resist" is sufficient, particularly when the best ways to improve it would have nothing to do with combat (the aforementioned history/intimidate stuff).

 

[Kikuras]

For what it's worth, there are intrinsic factors as well. Just about every character I play is racist based upon their own race, with gnomes, dragonborn, and thieflings being hated by all.