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

[MrMyth]

I just started in a campaign which the DM wanted to focus on humans. So he said, "You can play anything you want. But if you play a human, you get a +2 bonus to two stats of your choice, not just one."

Basically, he decided to just make humans better than other races and encourage everyone to play a human, rather than forbid any other choices. And it worked - everyone has a human. Now, probably due both to the incentive and in order to stay true to the setting background, but it seemed a reasonable approach.

 

[Negflar2099]

I've wrestled with this issue a lot recently. As a player I love having options, especially options that are all balanced with one another, and I tend to play non-human races but as a DM I (rather hypocritically I admit) prefer parties with at least one human (preferably more).

The reason is even though RPGs I can't help but compare the story we're telling at the table to stories I've seen and read in other mediums and the vast majority of stories are mostly about humans (which makes sense). Even Star Wars had mostly human characters. I know RPGs are different but I can't help it. I want the game story to feel like a more traditional story and that means having humans in the party.

Oddly enough though I don't feel this with Gamma World. Maybe because it's so silly or maybe because a lot of the more game elements are a little more "baked into the setting" if you know what I mean, but I'm perfectly okay with a freaky Gamma World party. It's very strange.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

For all my pickiness about a campaign world (I'm nearly always the DM), I don't have many preferences on this issue. I can pretty much rationalize whatever the players want to do, one way or the other. In fact, the players are more likely to impose some restrictions on races, amongst themselves, than I am. They often want a good mix in the group. So they talk about what people are planning to play, and come up with a mix that makes everyone happy. Fortunately, we all get along well. Thus, we've never had a conflict over it.

When they used to do everything independently, we did get some weird groups. I remember one 3E campaign where one of the players that usually is the "steady" sort decided to build a slightly crazy, dwarven ranger, with some "issues". The abilities selected were a little off beat, too. He was planning to be that guy that "sticks out" for a change. He did stick out. He was by far the most "normal" one in that group--out of 11 characters, including two or three humans.

Mechanically, I've always appreciated the way DragonQuest did this. You had to have the right mindset, but for a game with an odd mix of choices and random char gen, it just worked. You got three tries to roll for a non-human race. Each race had a percentage chance, based on its numbers in the (default) setting. So it might be 30% for a dwarf, but only 6% for a shapechanger. If you missed all three rolls, you played human. So you could go after the exotic options if you wanted, but if you really didn't want to play human, you were better off to go after elf, dwarf, etc.

Note that this worked better in DQ than it would in a D&D 3.* or 4E game, because the mechanical racial advantages in DQ were both most severe in effect, but less absolute in scope. That is, elves got a very nice XP advantages playing characters wih the "courtiers" profession, but this advantage wasn't definitive. It was alright to forgo it, and alright for non-elves to be courtiers.

 

[Barastrondo]

I kind of let my players' choices determine just how humanocentric any given slice of a setting tends to be. If they mostly choose humans, then I won't include too many non-human NPCs locally. If half the group is some variant of elf, then there needs to be a local elven population to account for that, and maybe that'll provide some interesting adventure hooks with the two cultures intermingling. I assume that if a player picks a given race, they're interested in exploring what it means to be that race in particular, so it'll be more interesting for them to interact with more of their own kind from time to time than simply to explore them up against humanity.

A surprising number of races are already variants of human, or easily reskinned as such; half-orcs, tieflings, shifters, goliaths (as "giant-blooded"), devas (as "aasimar"), half-elves, shadar-kai (as a shadow variant of tiefling), kalashtar, even changelings, and probably even highly reskinned dragonborn or githzerai... all these races can be unusual children born to a human parent, raised among humans, and identifying with a human culture (if somewhat on the outside). In a way, that reinforces the widespread and versatile nature of humanity even when the "human" stat block isn't being used.

That said, I always talk with players beforehand; they vote on what sort of game they'd like to play, even. If the game they want seems like it would be most fun with humans, I get groups like tonight's, which is three humans and one half-elf. (And accordingly, the nation they're playing in is massaged to be fairly dominantly human.) If we're picking something deliberately bizarre and exotic, I might get more the "one out of 4 PCs is human by the rules, but three out of four refer to themselves as human." And in that case, the city is decidedly more... mixed in nature.

 

[Victim]

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.

I think your experience might be somewhat anomalous. IME, it was extremely unusual for people to play humans in 1e and 2e because of the benefits of multiclassing, no racial benefits for humans, slow XP progression making level limits largely a non issue (especially because of multiclassing). Sure, you can't pick all classes for all races, but the more heavily restricted classes tended to be unlikely. And there's usually some race that would help out.

Human minority PC groups were definitely not unusual in previous editions - 3.x being the major exception where humans had good bonuses and no penalties. If 4e encourages fewer human PCs, it's mostly just a return to form.

 

[Dice4Hire]

WEll, in my experience, humans have always been a weaker choice, but a viable one. In my games, I try to keep humans down to no more than 40% of the whole population to try and keep the plethora of races in the PHBs viable. The PHBs just do not indicate a world that has 90% or more humans.

Sure, the typical human cities in the plains and on the coasts tend to be more human, but elven citadels and dwarven metropolises also exist. There are places for most of the major races to live and corner for the rest. A few races, like Devas, are nearly unknown, so if a player chooses one, be forewarned, but I try to let my players play what they like.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

We've houseruled in our campaign that Humans use a 25-point buy for stats, while the other races all get their book-standard 22. It's not quite the same as allowing a second floating +2, but it helps encourage humans as a race choice without making humans overpowered.

It is particularly nice for rounding out character stats, and allows the specialist array to be less focused or have a better (+3) secondary by 4th and a +1 stat at creation. Or a +1 and no dump stat. Or the higher secondary and no dump. And so on. Not as much of a carrot as two +2s, but I like it so far.

There is also heavy use of refluffing races in our campaign to make for less of a freakshow. Most of the stranger choices have been altered to be more humanlike (dragonborn and goliaths are giant-kin, tieflings are humans with fey bloodlines), and even the other human-like ones have been changed to fit a more "old school" feel (divas are Old Souls). If approached well, we allow almost any race to appear basically human, if the racial powers fit the backstory, theme, and class. I will point out that I am more fond of this approach than my co-DM.

 

[Cyronax]

Human minority PC groups were definitely not unusual in previous editions - 3.x being the major exception where humans had good bonuses and no penalties. If 4e encourages fewer human PCs, it's mostly just a return to form.

I'm not convinced that humans are penalized in pre-Essentials 4e. I saw over half of my players and other gamers I know choose humans for some combination of the following:

1) fits my character concept (best answer).
2) works best for my class choice.
3) good defense bonuses + plus the key bonus to saves.
4) extra at-will is nice.

Essentials makes playing an optimized non-human race + more class options easier. I think Essentials 4e will *possibly* decrease the number of human PCs.

[MENTION=98255]Nemesis Destiny[/MENTION]: How do your players feel about the 25 point-buy for humans? I personally don't think its that big a deal, but does the 3 extra points make everyone typically go for human in your experience?

 

[P1NBACK]

I just started in a campaign which the DM wanted to focus on humans. So he said, "You can play anything you want. But if you play a human, you get a +2 bonus to two stats of your choice, not just one."

Basically, he decided to just make humans better than other races and encourage everyone to play a human, rather than forbid any other choices. And it worked - everyone has a human. Now, probably due both to the incentive and in order to stay true to the setting background, but it seemed a reasonable approach.

Exactly what I did. Had the same effect.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think your experience might be somewhat anomalous. IME, it was extremely unusual for people to play humans in 1e and 2e because of the benefits of multiclassing, no racial benefits for humans, slow XP progression making level limits largely a non issue (especially because of multiclassing). Sure, you can't pick all classes for all races, but the more heavily restricted classes tended to be unlikely. And there's usually some race that would help out.

Human minority PC groups were definitely not unusual in previous editions - 3.x being the major exception where humans had good bonuses and no penalties. If 4e encourages fewer human PCs, it's mostly just a return to form.

Yeah, I can't remember a game in all the years I've DMed where the players were mostly human. OTOH there were always one or two humans. When it comes to the mostly very nearly human races I never felt like it was that big a deal. The basic setting concept of D&D was always that other races were fairly common and reasonably well accepted.

Dwarves, elves, half-elves, halflings, half-orcs, all are at most slightly unusual but not anything that most people have never seen. Not too many parties will tend to be entirely outside of that group of races, or even largely outside it. Races like tiefling, eladrin, deva, goliath, and gnome may elicit some slight comment, but are still going to be understood by most inhabitants as basically ordinary folk. The more 'monstrous' races may earn a stare or two or even have some problem if it contributes to the story, but that's it.

I can see a DM wanting to create a setting with specific flavor that is oriented around playing mostly human adventurers. I would just discuss it with the players and see if that is what they want before developing something like that for them. Seems perfectly reasonable if it adds to the fun.

As someone said earlier in the thread, people play D&D to get out of their own skin a bit and do things and BE things they can't be in real life. It makes sense that non-humans are popular PCs. I don't think that has to be corrected. 3.x did OK with the whole thing, but OTOH it could feel like you were being punished a little bit for wanting to let your imagination loose.