OMG... you aren't *HUMAN*!!!

[GameDoc]

LONG POST SO BEAR WITH ME:

So right now there is another thread discussing, in part, the latitude DM's should have on enforcing party composition in terms of class or role.

I am curious how others address the balance of character races (if at all).

The reason it comes up is that having regularly DM'd 3.5, 4E and Castles & Crusades for quite a few years, I can think of only once instance where the party had more than one human.

D&D has a long history of a default human-centric setting. Having to qualify for a non-human race with your stat rolls and having class restrictions and evel limits helped incentivize players to choose humans. Personally, I was glad to see these restrictions go so that players have more options to create their characters. But the result is as descirbed above and my latest group is the best example: Nine characters, and only one is human (and that one is a "Freak" as defined by "Naught or Nice" D&D Outsider artilce from this month).

It seemed to become a moot point when 3.5 and then especially 4e scaled back on the concept of a human dominated camapign world. But now, as the Essentials Line has fleshed this setting out more, we've returned to the "humans as the most numerous race in the world" paradigm. I am just ignoring that fact and am content to let my players choose characters they want to play.

But it did get me thinking about how to balance freedom of choice for players with a bit of narrativist appreciation for continuity within the setting. I guess because I always create my own characters that way. I will ask the DM what the setting is like, how each class and race fit into the word, and then use those as my parameters to create a character born of that setting.

It's still strange to me that a player will show up for his or her first session of a new campaign with a fully generated character, complete with back story, and not thought to ask about the setting. Stranger still when the implied setting in the rulebook is that most people in the world are human, but that's not what most players play.

I'm not looking for a solution or a fix for my own campaign. Just curious about other people's thoughts on the matter.

 

[Dausuul]

Three thoughts on the subject.

First, that's not nearly a long enough post to require a warning. You should see the text walls some folks put up.

Second, in my view, the DM does have a say on what classes and races are in the party. Specifically, the DM decides up front which classes and races are available in the campaign world. The players are free to choose from the menu of options the DM offers, and the DM shouldn't try to dictate who picks what; but the DM chooses what goes on the menu in the first place.

Third, I felt 3E handled this issue very well by making humans mechanically one of the strongest race picks. So nobody was forced to play a human, and nonhumans didn't face any of the old level cap stuff, but you tended to see mostly-human parties anyway, because it was hard to beat the bonus feat, extra skill points, and flexible multiclassing.

4E stepped back from this, which I find sad. Essentials has given humans a significant power-up with Heroic Effort, but I would have preferred to see them get a second floating stat bonus instead. The fact that you can't get +2 to both your primary and your secondary stat is a significant drawback for humans; if they had two floating stat bonuses, humans would once more become the "do-anything" race suitable for almost any build.

 

[Dungeoneer]

I think your post nailed it on the head: once players were incentivized to play humans (or getting a character from other races was more difficult) so more people played humans.

Nowadays there's no cost to picking a non-human, and non-humans get all the goodies. If you want more of your players to pick human, simply reward them for it. Off the top of my head, a diplomacy bonus for being human in a human dominated world seems reasonable. Maybe humans generally get better education, so they could also get a bonus to History or Dungeoneering. In combat some kind of special leader-like encounter power might be in order.

Without finessing actual mechanics you could still build your gameworld so that humans have it easier. Maybe the nicer bars and inns don't accept non-humans. Maybe non-humans can't hold public office. Maybe merchants charge non-human buyers more.

Players don't pick their characters to help the DM out. They pick them based on what seems cool to play. Make humans cool to play and your players will follow.

An example of this is Gamma World, where if you managed to roll up a natural human they get big science and diplomacy bonuses and are just generally better. Of course GW kind of turns the whole common race thing on its head by making very rare humans who look, well, human.

 

[sunrisekid]

I always run a human-centric campaign and I tell the players this.

First, no "monster" races permitted: no drow, no undead, no dragonborn, no tieflings, no half0orcs, etc, otherwise run the risk of being assaulted by *ahem* heroes Dwarfs are held in contempt or suspicion; halflings are ignored; eladrin and elves are often held in awe. (This largely reflects my penchant for dark Tolkin-esque stereotypes and Howard/Lovecraftian ambiance.) I'm tempted to lift these restrictions with the ticket price of a mandatory Evil alignment.

Second, these prejudices come out in roleplaying moments adjusted according to the character's charisma score and RP skills selected. An eladrin with Intimidate will be reacted to differently than a dwarf with Diplomacy. No hard numbers, I just wing it according to the circumstances. Players roleplay as they wish.

Consequences are that, e.g., merchant prices might favour one or another race. Also, size of settlement is an important consideration (e.g., coastal cities tend be more multi-ethnic and thus less affronted by outlandishness than landlocked towns).

By sheer happy coincidence, the Heroes of the Fallen Lands is the perfect player book for my campaign. Most of the NPCs in my Fallcrest are human with some exceptions, contrary to the text.

I do have one player who gripes at these restrictions. He's a heavy reader of fantasy fiction and he feels that my restrictions enforce a game that is too vanilla; he always plays the wackiest characters the game can provide in order to try something that is removed from the typical fantasy tropes (which, IMHO, are rather tightly prescribed in the grand scheme of things but that's neither here nor there, lol).

That said, much to my chagrin, most of my players continue to play non-humans. They simply enjoy the weirdness of the different options or they have a pre-conceived character that they want to play out (eg, my girlfriend loves elven wizards regardless of the game mechanics involved).

my 2 cents

 

[sigfile]

Think of it like ice cream. Baskin-Robbins may stock vanilla (the most singularly popular flavor), but there are 30 more "exotic" flavors there to tempt customers. It's inevitable that people are going to try those other flavors. They've tried vanilla. Next time they're going to try rocky road.

 

[KahnyaGnorc]

Another idea is to simply make some default non-human races into human sub-races. The "Half" races are an easy targets: a savage human (from a barbarian culture) would use the Half-Orc stats, while a more civilized human would use Half-Elf (in your world, offspring of two races are one or the other, but not both). You could also add a Mul for a human from a Spartan/war-like culture, or Goliath becoming towering Nordic humans (likely with giant-blood, like the Jotunbrud feat from 3/3.5 Forgotten Realms).

Another notion is to just let the PCs be odd. Adventurers are a distinct minority of the populace, and those of a minority race within a culture (and thus having a feeling of being outsiders) are more likely to take up adventuring than those of the majority, anyway.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Another notion is to just let the PCs be odd. Adventurers are a distinct minority of the populace, and those of a minority race within a culture (and thus having a feeling of being outsiders) are more likely to take up adventuring than those of the majority, anyway.

This is the approach I would take. Adventurers play by a lot of rules that don't match the rest of the world. Alignment is another example: many parties are composed entirely of characters who are Good or Lawful Good, making them equally unusual in most campaign settings. That's not even taking into account their high levels, powerful magical items, dabbling with arcane magics, hobnobbing with extraplanar creatures, etc.

Let's face it: every D&D character flies his or her freak flag proudly. Embrace it.

 

[Herschel]

I used to want (pre-4E) a mostly human party but then adjusted my racial thinking to match my PC "attribute" thinking: PCs are heroes, special, a cut above (statistically) normal humans. The humans may make up the vast majority of the "normal folk" but the other races have things that make them "special". Their numbers are just small enough that their best bet is to take up adventuring, which is also hard on the population and "culls the herd" if you will, and helps keep their numbers low (aside from the long-lived elves who traditionally have few children and Dwarves who traditionally gave birth to few females).

 

[Ryujin]

The parties I've played in, and the campaigns that I've run, have frequently had not a single human character in them. I generally use humanocentric campaign settings and let the players knowwhat they are in for.

One thing to keep in mind is that people tend to shy away from the unusual or unknown, even in modern cultures. In a world in which races tend toward certain moral codes, there is even support for these attitudes. Barring the phalanx of Drizzt-like Drow, who would ever trust a drow in a business deal?

Keep in mind that in a D&D style world, stereotypes are frequently true. The human majority can be considered justified in basing their actions on them.

 

[Drakhar]

Here's the way I look at it, And this is coming from the one player in my group who has yet to actually play a human character, I'm human every day, when I play D&D I want to play something exciting.