How Many PC Races?

[Red Wyrmling]

In my FR game the players get to choose from every race available to the setting, including races from other planes or other sources (found in books that I own or that I've been able to read.). Providing they come up with a good enough reason to be where ever the campaign is going on at that time.

I think that my players have acces to well over 200 races. Yet they always manage to keep a balanced party of base races with maximum 1 or 2 freaks.

 

[poilbrun]

GMs, how many races do you allow your players to choose from for character creation? I'd be interested to see how more or less variety affects peoples' games.

In my FR games, I allow anything in the FRCS, and always tell my players that if they can give me a background reason to introduce a race from elsewhere, I would allow it. Result: three humans and an elf in my current campaign

 

[poilbrun]

In my FR game the players get to choose from every race available to the setting, including races from other planes or other sources (found in books that I own or that I've been able to read.). Providing they come up with a good enough reason to be where ever the campaign is going on at that time.

I think that my players have acces to well over 200 races. Yet they always manage to keep a balanced party of base races with maximum 1 or 2 freaks.

Funny, nearly the same answer as mine, but I typed mine before you posted yours!

 

[Piratecat]

I encourage the PHB races, allowing folks to choose another race if they do the research themselves and feel strongly about it. We seem to have a group that's mostly human anyways.

 

[Aeolius]

So long as it can swim and breathe underwater, the rest is negotiable.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

There is no such thing as too many PC races. There is such a thing as too many NPC races.

PCs should be allowed choices, NPCs get the retrictions.

 

[Frostmarrow]

One way to do it would be to just allow whatever the player's pick. No one picked dwarf? -Dwarfs don't exist.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Started with just the PHB races. As the campaign has brought them in as viable allies, I have added kobolds (modified) and orcs (green-skin variant sorta like WarCraft orcs). Will hopefully be adding some of the genasi soon. That'll probably be it for the current campaign.

In a future campaign, I'd like to add some of the Eberron races and some of the races from Monte's AU, but they don't really fit into the current plot.

 

[Gez]

I have a lot of potentially playable races IMC. Most of them are anecdotal at best -- living only in a few regions (or in demiplanes naturally connected to these regions through the spirit land -- the first layer of the ethereal dimensions). But there's a lot: all the usual suspects, minus halfbreeds 'cause I don't like them, plus goblinoids, kobolds, orcs, with several subraces (not all of them playable, though) for each; plus the aforementionned "exotics".

End result? 3 elves and a dwarf. Oh, rolleyes, where art thou?

 

[AFGNCAAP]

Depends on the game.

For my Lankhmar game, I pretty much allow humans only, with 1 or 2 exceptions (depending on party size). It's pretty much all humans with 1 Nehwon Ghoul (see link in .sig for their stats).

For my "standard" D&D game, it's pretty much just the standard 7 of the PHB, with a few other races. No subraces whatsoever (i.e., having jet black skin & white hair as an elf does not = drow: it's just a different-looking sort of elf). Gnomes are pretty much the same statistically, but they have the "Dwarf Blood" racial ability (ala "elf blood" & "orc blood" for half-elves & half-orcs, respectively), and shorter life spans than those listed in the PHB (more like a svirneblin lifespan, actually)--that's because gnomes are essentially half-dwarf/half-halfling, with such a faint bit of feytouched heritage that they're not deemed Fey anymore (a.k.a., why gnomes have magical racial abilities, but halflings & dwarves don't). Orcs are viable, and I'm contemplating allowing Nehwon ghouls as well; I'm considering warforged and changelings from Eberron, a sort of githzerai native to this particular Prime Material, lizardfolk, xvarts, and a few others.