Least Favorite (Core) D&D Race

[Mercurius]

Halflings. Even gnomes have flavour. Halflings are faceless little mini-me monsters. In my campaign I gave them 4E-style gnome eyes and webbed fingers/toes and fiddled with their bonuses, which gave them a little more of a theme, but I'm still not keen.

Sometimes I wish for the good old days when halflings were hobbits, then I remember even less people wanted to play them back then, and slap myself.

Dragonborn, whilst mocked, were a hit with my group at least. One player is playing one, and another is obsessed with the fact that they can breath fire.

Hmmm...you're making me re-think my choice of gnomes. I think you are right--gnomes actually have more flavor than halflings, which are de-hobbitified little people, and I never really liked hobbits to begin with: too "cutesy English country folk" (when I first read LotR I always wanted to know what Aragorn and Legolas were up to, not Merry and Pippin, not to mention Dodo and Ham).

Dragonborn have grown on me...a bit. I think one of the biggest turn-offs, as with tieflings, has been the 4E art. I mean, I enjoy Wayne Reynolds but I just don't dig the Dragonborn "mushy dinosaur face" on the PHB. It mars an otherwise excellent cover.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Dragonborn have grown on me...a bit. I think one of the biggest turn-offs, as with tieflings, has been the 4E art. I mean, I enjoy Wayne Reynolds but I just don't dig the Dragonborn "mushy dinosaur face" on the PHB. It mars an otherwise excellent cover.

Yeah, it's a problem. That is just a terrible picture of a Dragonborn, to the point where the players were unsure what it was in my group, and decided it must be a Dragonborn solely because they're the "new" race and share some features with it.

O'Connor's interior art of Dbs is pretty variable too. Sometimes they look amazing, fearsome and dynamic (the picture for Fighter, for example), and other times, they look stubby and ludicrous, and like they'd have trouble moving. I really think he and other artists need to draw them with ankles, not boot-feet.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

My vote was a knee-jerk against Drow. If I'd thought about it, it would have been Tiefling. Followed by Halfling. (If Kender had been available, they would have gotten my vote instead. My hat of Kender know no limit!)

 

[Oni]

It was a toss up for me between Half-elf and Dwarf. Not that I think either one of them is really bad or anything, I just don't have much interest in them. I voted Half-elf though, it edged out Dwarf just slightly because they've never really had any mechanical appeal to me in addition to the fluff.

 

[Set]

I picked half-elf, but it was a three-faced coin toss between them, half-orcs and halflings. I'm not fond of the dragonborn (prefer kobolds with draconic traits) or tieflings, either, but since I play 3.5, it's hardly an issue for my games.

That being said, just because I care not at all for those races, doesn't mean I'd want them evicted from the game. If one of my players wants to play one, more power to them.

 

[Cryptos]

I think half-orcs are an artifact of compromise between wanting to play monstrous races and maintaining the heroic fantasy D&D flavor, made somewhat obsolete by increasing ECL options in 3.x and then even more obsolete by the PC race construction in 4e. I don't think they have as much of a place anymore, as if they ever really did. They got my vote.

My second choice would have been half-elf.

Really, though, all the races have some deplorable aspects to them. Halflings are a direct Tolkien rip-off, and really, what race, even small as they are would accept being called 'halfling'? Tiefling is a cutesy name for a race that started out as people wanting to play a conflicted anti-hero badass, another race that takes the place of having to come up with an original backstory. Dwarves have become somewhat boring and predictable. Regardless of the D&D setting, there are almost always dwarves, and they are almost always the typical dwarves. Dragonborn, again, what kind of name is that? Would humans go around calling saying "Huzzah! We are the Monkeyborn!"? What's with the dreadlocks? And the "we're humanoid mammals, but we lay eggs and look like reptiles"?

One problem is that races in fantasy gaming seem to come from a very short list of sources: anthropomorphics, or furries; Tolkien (elves, dwarves, etc); monsters; or the 'badass' race from 'somewhere else' (plane or world) that look suspiciously like humans, but 'cooler' (Giths, etc.) Another problem is that new settings tend to kitchen sink racial options, offering everything that came before, plus their own, making the worlds seem crowded. I wish that someone would have the balls to cut some of the standards out of it every now and then.

 

[Trickstergod]

Dragonborn, dragonborn, goodness gracious, the dragonborn.

Elves, dwarves, all that? Relatively generic fantasy characters - which is a good thing. I prefer D&D with a relatively lowkey, generic starting point. Better to build up from there.

Then there are the dragonborn. Nothing subtle about them - obvious, over the top fantasy...ugh.

New tieflings are another irritant. The big horn and tail sporting things. A human of questionable lineage, with something slightly...otherworldly...about him? A good, solid trope of fiction, fantasy or otherwise. The demon child has a place in D&D.

But not these things. Ugh. I immensely preferred when tieflings weren't, to the last, a bunch of blatantly demonic looking creatures. They should have been kept as variably demonic looking folk - some might look slightly "off," whereas others would be obviously demonic. How is going from a decent amount of variety to one generic form an improvement? It isn't.

But, yeah. Dragonborn first and foremost. Take'em out. There's a reason that saurians weren't a core race in previous editions and I say the same should apply here. There's likely no game I'll run, ever, where these things are in anyway mainstream or possibly even allowed in game. Ugh. They should've gone in the Monster Manual or possibly the Player's Handbook II next year.

 

[hazel monday]

Dragon born are easily the stupidest thing I've ever seen in D&D ( with 1E psionics being a close second).
It's like they come straight out of a Disney movie.

 

[Mercule]

I would have voted drow, but they've never been a core race, so shouldn't be on the list. Plus, in 1E, they were actually interesting.

Dragonborn gets the vote from me.

 

[Ander00]

If this is about PC races, I agree that drow shouldn't even be on the list. Other than that, the new tiefling is pretty bad and I have no desire to see half-orcs again.


cheers