D&D General Friday Fun: What Are Your Top 3 Playable Species

[Corinnguard]

There is a Harpy heritage in the Manual of Adventurous Resources: Complete for Level Up.

Not only is there a Harpy heritage for Level Up, but you can reskin this heritage to create new heritages for the Avens in M:TG, Ravenfolk, Strix (Owlfolk or Owlin), Valkyries and Winged Elves.

Winged Elves, for instance, are elves whose line intermingled with air elementals.
Heritage: elf. In lieu of a gift, you get the traits of the harpy base heritage except for the Age, Size, and Claws traits.

 

[Tonguez]

Over 10% is the core 4, plus half-elf, Tiefling, and warforged. That’s a solid PHB.

Yeah its a fairly conservative list with Humans, Elfs and Dwarves absolutely dominating, with a bit of mild flavour via Elf lite (Half-Elf, Tiefling) notably they're visually appealing species with pleasingly human aesthetics.

Warforged gives a bit of mechanical artifice and seem to have edge out the older 'big guys' (dragonborn and significantly Half-Orcs). Good to see the gnomes still hanging in there, topping the low midtier alongside Aasimar and Changeling.

It seems that what people dont want is the more niche end of things, with mechanically weird novelty species dropping way behind in favour of familiar fantasy staples, even the dragonborn are less popular than gnomes and gobbos.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Human (no 1 choice),
Tiefling (I just absolutely love this as a concept),
Orc (Warcraft)

Probably Dwarf as a 4th.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Yeah its a fairly conservative list with Humans, Elfs and Dwarves absolutely dominating, with a bit of mild flavour via Elf lite (Half-Elf, Tiefling) notably they're visually appealing species with pleasingly human aesthetics.

Warforged gives a bit of mechanical artifice and seem to have edge out the older 'big guys' (dragonborn and significantly Half-Orcs). Good to see the gnomes still hanging in there, topping the low midtier alongside Aasimar and Changeling.

It seems that what people dont want is the more niche end of things, with mechanically weird novelty species dropping way behind in favour of familiar fantasy staples, even the dragonborn are less popular than gnomes and gobbos.

Given that dragonborn score very well in broader surveys, I think this says more about ENWorlders than it does about DnD players.

 

[Reynard]

Given that dragonborn score very well in broader surveys, I think this says more about ENWorlders than it does about DnD players.

Do they still give out stats on character species and class choices for Beyond?

 

[Scribe]

Given that dragonborn score very well in broader surveys, I think this says more about ENWorlders than it does about DnD players.

I'd love to see some recent data sets.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Do they still give out stats on character species and class choices for Beyond?

The most recent data seems to be 2023, which had dragonborn in third place.

I would need some real evidence to believe they’ve dropped below fourth.

 

[Kobold Stew]

It seems that what people dont want is the more niche end of things, with mechanically weird novelty species dropping way behind in favour of familiar fantasy staples, even the dragonborn are less popular than gnomes and gobbos.

I'm not sure this follows from the evidence in the poll. The poll is designed to skew conservative ("top 3 playable species"), and within that, only three species cross the 25%-of-those-sampled threshold.

It would be nice to disambiguate those who chose half-elf; was that conceptually separate from elf, or do people choose one or the other (which I suspect happens with orc and half-orc)?

So yes, there are clear leaders, but the long tail shows there is an appetite for less mainstream species. I am surprised at how well Tiefling does in the poll, esp. since (IMO) they were implemented so poorly in 5e (and worse in 2024). But again, are people choosing aasimar and Tiefling, or choosing between them? It may be that "planetouched" (or whatever) would hit 25%.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah its a fairly conservative list with Humans, Elfs and Dwarves absolutely dominating, with a bit of mild flavour via Elf lite (Half-Elf, Tiefling) notably they're visually appealing species with pleasingly human aesthetics.

Warforged gives a bit of mechanical artifice and seem to have edge out the older 'big guys' (dragonborn and significantly Half-Orcs). Good to see the gnomes still hanging in there, topping the low midtier alongside Aasimar and Changeling.

It seems that what people dont want is the more niche end of things, with mechanically weird novelty species dropping way behind in favour of familiar fantasy staples, even the dragonborn are less popular than gnomes and gobbos.

Gobbos have been picking up steam for years imho.

 

[Reynard]

The poll is designed to skew conservative ("top 3 playable species"),

I don't follow.