Favorite/Hated Race - and Why?

[jonesy]

Elves: I mean, a good player can play an elf, no problem, but I just hate the "We have no flaws" Tolkien style elf that gets played so often.

I get what you mean, but.. how else would you play them?

They live practically forever. They have practically forever to hone their talents. If they didn't, they wouldn't survive that long.

Pretty much the best way I can think of to subvert that is to play a really young elf, and at that point you might as well play a human because it gets the point across better.

 

[Pentius]

Half-Orcs from Broken Homes who want to tell you their brutal backstory

This reminds me of one of my favorite stock characters: The half-orc from a pleasant, loving family.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Elves: I mean, a good player can play an elf, no problem, but I just hate the "We have no flaws" Tolkien style elf that gets played so often.

I get what you mean, but.. how else would you play them?

They live practically forever. They have practically forever to hone their talents. If they didn't, they wouldn't survive that long.

In a game I'm playing in the GM let us create some NPCs and I latched onto this same dynamic. But instead of trying to go counter to it I cranked it up. This NPC had an arrogance tied to the impression he has that elves have no flaws and as such are superior to the other races. And now we have a great elf supremacist to face against!

Kender: They worked in the books. Specifically as characters that were funny because they weren't directly interacting with you. At a game table, a player telling you his character is a Kender might as well just say, "I'd like to troll you all for several hours, once a week. But you can't get mad, because it's roleplaying."

I definitely understand and agree with what you're saying but in my experience at the game table everyone playing kender have played them far to a caricatured extreme and often by instigator players. When I've seen them played it's similar to a player who uses the Thief's class name as justification for stealing everything all of the time or a player who uses being Lawful Good as justification for smiting a neutral character.

I think a player who contributes to the party and the story in a positive way could do to playing a kender justice and at the same time be a solid party member.

 

[BronzeDragon]

It really depends a lot on the game world.

Minotaurs (Krynn) have always been high on my list, Rjurik humans from Birthright are right up there as well. I like the Chardunni Dwarves from the Scarred Lands and all Draconians from DL, specially Sivaks.

As for hated...elves, all the time, everywhere BUT in Birthright. Cerilian Elves are a LOT more interesting than the typical tree-hugging, fungi-licking elves of other worlds...

Gnomes will never dominate anything.

 

[Baron Von Mandrick]

Favorite - I almost always prefer playing humans

Least Favorite - some of the "new" 4E races are fine as NPCs, villains/allies, but I am not a fan of a lot of them as PCs. No one race in particular, though.

No idea on gnome lover domination.

I pretty much agree with this. I like humans as characters because whatever heroics they perform and whatever status they reach, they had basically the same tools as people I know with which to accomplish their feats. Other races are fine but seem like they have racial bonuses (sometimes drawbacks as well) that give them advantages.

On the least favorite I agree that I don't like most monster races as PC's. I guess I will choose Vampire because it seems trendy with the recent popularity of vampire genre literature, TV, and films, though because they are closer to humans I might like them more than something like a minotaur.

 

[Glade Riven]

Well, Pathfinder has far more human cultures than varieties of elf. I think the odd part of the 3E elf was the need to give different stat modifiers to represent cultural differences. If we want to do that then humans would have been a logical place to start.

Yeah, but racism is only allowed towards fantasy creatures - Although "suggested feats" for various ethnicities work well. There are a few OGL settings, though, which add human ethnic stats (Iron Kingdoms is one).

I suppose I'm a little guilty of the elf variant thing with the homebrew-to-be-published thing I'm working on, but I'm using Pathfinder's optional alternative racial trait system - which is nowhere near as abusive.

Back on the Gnome front, I do like the treatment gnomes recieve in Eberron. Sneaky, backstabbing bastards...

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Do you have a favorite fantasty race you prefer to play? Why?

Depends on the system. In 4e, I tend to play whatever gives me +2s to my class' important stats. I guess class is simply more important to me than race.

In 3.x I tend to favor humans because I can't be bothered to remember "+2 to Constitution checks made to win drinking contests against your racial enemy on every third Tuesday" type traits. I know dwarves are tha bomb, power wise, but seriously...who can remember all those little traits?

Is their a particular fantasy race you hate? Why?

Warforged used to raise my hackles, but they've grown on me ever since I added them to my homebrew campaign as a tinker gnome invention.

Are the gnome-lovers going to dominate this thread? Why?

It always seems like the gnome-haters end up dominating these threads, to me.

 

[Dragonbait]

Favorite (3E): Kobold if it works in the setting. if not, then human
Favorite (4E): Human or Dragonborn
Least-favorite: None, although when I design settings I realized that I never use halflings or gnomes.

 

[tuxgeo]

Do you have a favorite fantasty race you prefer to play? Why?

Is their a particular fantasy race you hate? Why?

Are the gnome-lovers going to dominate this thread? Why?

Favorite: Human; for the extra Level 1 At-Will attack power, the extra feat and the extra trained skill at Level 1, among others. When I want to play a wizard, human is the default choice because the resulting versatility is one of the main reasons for me to play a wizard.

Least Favorite: Drow, because they seem to be all about the angst: they're either evil (with a capital "Eve") or else Drizzzzzzzzzt. Their racial backstory is overdramatic enough to overwhelm minor nuances that don't have a huge amount of work and roleplay piled onto them.
(That's if people actually play up the racial backstory in-game. In the Robot Chicken videos, Bluebell the Drow was played in a way that would have led me to forget there was even a Drow at the table if I hadn't kept on reminding myself of the fact.)

Also dislike: Dragonborn and Tieflings' being included in PHB1: those should have been saved for PHB2, at least -- and maybe for PHB3.
Also dislike: Shardminds. They are a stretch. I can see a reason for them: it's a part of including animated machines, vegetables, and minerals as PC races (warforged, wilden, shardminds) for the players who have tried all the other possible combinations, and who are highly interested in trying all of the possible combinations of different mechanics and racial backstories.

Re: Gnomes: No thread-domination so far.
I have never played one; never even contructed one for fun. I haven't seen the point, yet. (It'll probably come to me in the next few years if I play around with it long enough.)

 

[Richards]

Re: Gnomes: No thread-domination so far.
I have never played one; never even constructed one for fun. I haven't seen the point, yet.

The point of a gnome is usually at the very top of his hat.

Johnathan