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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6665916" data-attributes="member: 1465">The first time I've run a 5e game during the playtest, all the players except one were new to RPGs, so I decided to simplify character creation as much as possible. As part of that, I did the unthinkable: I ran the game without races. Meaning that I didn't tell the players that they could choose a race, and so we didn't include any racial benefit in the character sheet.If you completely skip races, the game works just fine, but clearly the PC have a few things less than normal. This was not an issue in our game, because everyone was like this. But what if you want this super-simple option for some players only (beginners, presumably), while others at the same table are using the regular rules?The solution is already there in Basic D&D, and it's incredibly simple: use the Human race as "any" race. The beginner player can choose to be an Elf or a Dwarf or whatever, but still uses the Human racial benefits (i.e. +1 to all 6 ability scores). Now the PC is balanced with the rest of the party, but has no complexity added by racial features.---This solution however might be a bit too extreme for many, because you literally get zero mechanical traits to make that Elf or Dwarf feel at least a little bit elvish or dwarvish...If that's the case, you can take an additional step and add just one or two racial features, in exchange for some of those +1 to ability scores.So the matter becomes, which features to make the three races distinctive but still very simple, and how many +1s you should ask the player to give up in order to get such features. Here are the features I have selected (in addition to these you also know the racial language, but I purposefully avoided bonus proficiencies):Dwarf: Darkvision and StonecunningElf: Darkvision and either one Cantrip (High Elf) or Mask of the Wild (Wood Elf)Halfling: Lucky and Naturally Stealthy (Lighfoot Halfling)I think these are enough to give a 'feel' to those races, while keeping complexity minimal.---I am not sure how many +1s should these cost. I am thinking something like:"You get three +1s to different ability scores, and the 2 features of the chosen race"But is this too much, too little, or quite right? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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