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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GameDoc" data-source="post: 5410068" data-attributes="member: 53915">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.</blockquote>

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