D&D 5E How do you decide which Races to disallow (and/or Classes)?

[Li Shenron]

When playing a vanilla campaign, usually I am fine with including anything, at which point I might only have a concern or two on possible mechanical abuse, typically on material from late books or 3rd-party.

But generally I prefer to play D&D in a setting, published or homebrew, and in that case I believe in the "soup principle" i.e. no matter how much a single ingredient may be delicious by itself, adding it to your recipe doesn't necessarily improve it, and can often make it worst. The best soups have a reasonable number of ingredients, neither too few nor too many. I don't actually have much problems with base classes, but I do have with races, so when playing in a setting I'd rather include a selected few (different between campaigns) and exclude the rest, but if something already exists in the world and there aren't huge RP problems to handle a PC of that race, I can listen to a player's request of playing such character... just don't ask me to rearrange the rest of the world to 'fit' your pet race as a whole.

One of my DMing guidelines is "Let the players play what they really want to play." The DM has control over the entire universe, and the players only control their PC, so the less influence the DM has over player decisions, the better.

Well yes, what I meant with my previous sentence is that if someone comes up and begs to play a Dragonborn at all costs, I may allow it. But I won't suddenly add a "Dragonborn kingdom" to the setting, or make adjustment to allocate a whole Dragonborn race into the world. Your Dragonborn PC is probably going to be one-of-a-kind.

On the other hand, someone begging to play a pet idea has a good chance of not being the kind of player I'd like to have at my table on the long term. I like players who are open to what the settings offer, curious to see what the DM has come up with for the current campaign, and looking forward to play more campaigns with us. Someone begging for a very specific character at all costs and immediately is probably someone who is quite a lot more interested in his own PC instead of the group, the world around, and the adventures awaiting; and also probably doesn't have a vision of playing with us in the future, if he cannot understand that "not in this setting" doesn't mean "never", and next campaign could very much allow it.

 

[Mercule]

I don't really mince words about my process: I think the DM has to be comfortable with the setting before anyone else can have fun. To that end, I disallow anything that rubs me wrong, even if I can put my finger on why.

For my home brew(s), I start with the assumption that everything in the PHB is okay, unless I say otherwise. For example, I find halflings to be bland and flavorless without campaign-specific adaptation (Athas, Eberron, and Krynn all have passably interesting halflings), so I leave them out in favor of gnomes. I also don't care for Wuxia in my pseudo-medieval fantasy, so I traditionally exclude monks. Expansion material is case-by-case with whatever seems to fit into my setting. During the 3.5E run, Warlock and Binder both fit very, very well into the mildly S&S vibe I like, so they we included. Even though I've always used psionics in a big way, I disliked the cleric-like psionic class (forget the name), so it wasn't allowed. There's always exceptions, though. A player in my current group absolutely adores halflings, so I let him talk me into playing one -- the race just happens to be low population and fairly rare. I also like the way the 5E monk is done and immediately saw where each of the three styles would fit perfectly into my setting.

For a published setting (Eberron, Greyhawk) I go by whatever "feels right". I know half-dragons officially exist on Eberron, but my read of various historic events led me to feel that they should be excluded as a PC choice. I also don't allow drow as a standard option. I do allow Dragonborn because I like how 4E added them in Eberron. I think Warlocks work very well in Greyhawk, but they'd be uncommon. Also, the 2E/3E version of tieflings as manifestations of long-hidden fiend blood fits well, too. Dragonborn would be a bit dicier; I'd ignore the question, unless you have a PC who brings it up. Ditto for genasi. In cases like that, if the player makes a good case, I'd say he was an oddity or his race is from a ways off -- but I'd only do so if the player had a compelling backstory; if they don't catch my attention, it doesn't happen.

I'm probably much more lax on classes, because they rarely have anything too bizarre (e.g. Warmage/Beguiler were ultra-specialist Wizards) and can be passed off as a variant class. I named some classes that didn't fit, above, though.

Short form, I have no problem saying, "It just doesn't have a place in this setting." I do try to give the players a fair shot at telling me why it could, though.

 

[bedir than]

In my custom world I paired things back quite a bit. I only have three races to start, kind of nerfed several of the casters, did some custom tweaks to cantrips and added something akin, but different, to Beast Companion for everyone. Most of this was for story reasons, but it was also because, like the OP, I'm returning to DnD after a long break. I needed to see how things work. I wanted to start with something manageable.

Races: Human, Halfling (no subraces, but kind of combined), custom Goliath

That's it. I'll get comfortable and then Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes will all show up. Later in the story other intelligent peoples will arrive. Magic will return much closer to the DnD5 standard (main difference being that I don't believe in at-will cantrips).

Taking a slow look at what and how things are included in the world gives me time to understand the world-space and the new rule set.

 

[iserith]

Hi, guys. I've returned to D&D after something like 20 years away. So glad to have found this forum to help hash things out, too. I've been reading diligently, but I'm wondering how different DM's decide whether or not to allow a certain race and/or class?

My players decide which races and classes aren't going to be in the campaign, after everyone at the table has created a character. Generally, there is no restriction at all, but sometimes they'll say "Well, we've all created humans - how about this is a human-centric world?" and then discuss what that means practically speaking including which races or classes might not be a fit for the world we've made.

 

[neobolts]

I try to accomodate the character concepts my players want to try, particularly if the motivation is concept driven rather than optimization driven. The "say yes" rule applies even during character creation unless there is a sound reason. A "primer" for my new campaign detailed the setting's races. If they want something else, they'd be coming in with that their character is a true oddity. I also encouraged my players to avoid battlemaster fighter as we are doing some theater of the mind combat and I felt their spacial mechanics might be devalued by that style of combat narration.

 

[Jester David]

Like others, I start by building the world and finding a physical and narrative place for each of the major races: where they live, what's their hook in the world, how their culture works, etc. New races and content is added if there is a hole it fills in the world.

 

[SubDude]

In Greyhawk in particular, there are many DM's who feel that dragonborn wouldn't be right.

This is what prompted the question, as it turns out! Thanks for all the feedback.

 

[edhel]

I allow whatever my campaign needs. I think about the roles the fantasy roles would play (usually easily replaceable by humans), and go from there. In my playtest campaigns there were only humans but I would have allowed a human-looking tiefling character. Maybe even humans with fantasy race stats and abilities if their backgrounds were special. I was going for a sword & sorcery feel, not high fantasy.

So far in my 5e campaign there have been mostly humans, half-elves and elves. It's high fantasy and there's a different feel than in a more psychologically realistic s&s campaign.

 

[Quartz]

You could riff on one of the Dungeoncraft articles that every major point in the world should have a secret behind it and say that players can only play a non-human race if they know the secret behind the race.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm generally a "unless there's a specific reason to outlaw something, it's something you can do." I then use the party to build the world and the adventure hooks - if there's a dragonborn, I'll use a lot of dragons, maybe include Akrhosia and Bael Turath, etc. If there's a dwarf, I'll use orcs and giants. If there's a gnome I'll use kobolds. If there's a cleric there's going to be some undead, if there's a ranger, there's suddenly a large forest, and on and on.

But in planning my next sandbox game, I'm thinking of more...additive design, where the characters are initially created with the basic rules and they "unlock" new rules as they complete adventures. Like, maybe the Rangers of the North will need some help, and so the players could go on that adventure and if they're successful, they can now make ranger characters. This'll require more flexible characters and parties than I'm used to in a more narrative design, but it might work OK for a sandbox feel.