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

[J-H]

With the continued discussions around the optional (maybe not so optional) rules from Tasha's, and the number of different races available in published materials, I thought this might shed some light on how relevant these discussions even are to actual tabletop play.

If you aren't a DM, vote for whatever your DM usually does.

 

[Stormonu]

I encourage my players to pick campaign-specific races, but if they come to me with an interesting character - regardless of race or class, I'll usually allow it. In the cases it was disallowed, it was generally a power issue (someone's absurdly homebrewed/badly balanced 3rd party concoction) - though I have disallowed a couple because the flavor was too far in left field for the campaign.

 

[ART!]

I've learned to just leave the door wide open to whatever the players want - but then we pretty much always play in default D&Dish settings, where there's lots of races and magical races and artificial races and...

Basically, I want the players to be happy, to get their jollies, to vent their weekly frustrations with an outlandish character, etc.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Not only do I not restrict people to published races, if they want to play something non-published, that's ok too.

Had a player try a monkey-folk character, and another is thinking of being a skeleton. Both are fun, why ban them?

 

[delericho]

Yeah, I restrict them.

The exact set will depend on the campaign - my default is "anything from the PHB" or, if using a published setting "anything from the PHB or the setting book". That said, some settings feel better with more races - for something like Spelljammer I'll open the selection right up.

As regards player selection, my preference is that they either come to the table with a clear notion that they want to play a particular race, or if they don't have a strong preference then to default to human. I'm not keen on watching players spend a long time on that choice or, worse, deciding on which to use purely based on the ability score increases. (That said, that's very much a preference. It's more important to me that the player gets a character they're happy with than my notions about the "right" way to do anything.)

 

[Scribe]

Not just race, but plenty of adjustment (and soon to be much more!) to the character creation process.

 

[delericho]

Oh, yes, one other thing: I really like the Custom Lineage in "Tasha's Cauldron" (one of the very few highlights of that book, IMO), so I'm now really quite happy about players coming up with some unique race.

 

[iserith]

I curate all rules, including race options, for each and every campaign according to the setting and theme.

 

[Bawylie]

I curate all rules, including race options, for each and every campaign according to the setting and theme.

I do the same.

Curation is important for the feel of the thing. Even when the theme is careless wacky fun.

 

[Li Shenron]

If I run a setting-specific or strongly thematic game then yes, the choice of race is restricted, and the choice of class or background might be too. The purpose IS to be restricted.

If I run a vanilla game of D&D, anything goes, but that doesn't necessarily mean mechanically. I might just give anyone default human stats.