D&D 5E PC races that a DM has specifically excluded from their campaign and why

[DammitVictor]

This is the main problem with kender players and largely the reason why people think kender are disruptive to the game.

You can't really place 100% of the blame on kender players when that is how the race is canonically depicted and Word of God is that anyone who retaliates against kender in-character and in-universe for this behavior is Objectively Evil. Kender players are obnoxious because the authors' Mary Sue BS enables and encourages them to be.

 

[Norton]

I have to admit, I'm just not seeing the problems you guys are. Flying ahead to scout? What you never have players with familiars? It's been so long that we didn't have a flying drone scout that I forget what it's like. So, I show the maps to the players. It lets them then make informed decisions instead of blundering in blindly into encounter after encounter. Fantastic. I love the fact that the players get so engaged in the game rather than, "Oh, look, we blundered into this dangerous monster yet again, roll for initiative". A flyer lets me info dump on the party and that's a good thing.

And, why are flying creatures so different from any other non-human? It's not like Aarocockra are particularly alien in their outlook or anything like that. They really are just humanoids that can fly. It's not like they're virtually immortal - remembering past lives with perfect clarity - gender fluid faeries. Same with the owl folk character in my current game. I wouldn't actually expect it to be terribly different from any other PC. Different yes, and race should matter, I agree. But, "exotic"? How are they any more exotic than any other PC race?

Now, the Lucidling - the flying dream creature created by an Aboleth? Now THAT'S exotic. And it's played as such.

Familiars are easier to handle because they have a limited range and knocking them out of the sky generally doesn't start initiative nor does it take more than a swipe of a claw. As for happening upon an encounter rather than getting a blueprint, the challenge is built into the experience which I assume is part of the fun. Sure, sometimes they get info and the drop to mix it up, but it would be meta-hell to make that a regular thing.

Also, Aarakocra are very unusual creatures in D&D lore and are very different from other PCs unless you simply choose to ignore that. They're monsters, actually. That they've become a playable race is kind of bizarre to me, and I would think to play one would be a unique experience unless you just want to rewrite them as birdy bros. They don't like to come out of the air, only really doing so to lay eggs. They're covered in feathers which is weird in any community that you're using them as part of a shared lore. They talk funny like Kenkus. The list goes on and on.

They make great NPCs that come and go because they don't really like mingling with humanoids. To select one as your playable race in a campaign that is paying attention to what they really are is certainly a rather bold decision, in my view. Cool, if so, but I have yet to run a game with a player who chose the race for anything other than to fly, look cool, and power game.

 

[Eltab]

For the not-Viking Frozen North campaign I am designing, I currently allow almost any PHB race - not Dwarves or Dragonborn, due to in-world lore reasons - and disallow any "iconic to some other setting" race (ex: warforged). Other races I haven't thought about yet but can be persuaded, either way.

 

[Hussar]

Familiars are easier to handle because they have a limited range and knocking them out of the sky generally doesn't start initiative nor does it take more than a swipe of a claw. As for happening upon an encounter rather than getting a blueprint, the challenge is built into the experience which I assume is part of the fun. Sure, sometimes they get info and the drop to mix it up, but it would be meta-hell to make that a regular thing.

No, it really isn't. And, how are you dropping familiars so often. Never minding the ones that can flat out turn invisible at will, it isn't exactly hard to replace the normal ones. And, if by "limited range", you mean 100 feet, well, I guess that's limited. Note, how do you deal with Chainlocks who get unlimited range and invisible, flying familiars?

Also, Aarakocra are very unusual creatures in D&D lore and are very different from other PCs unless you simply choose to ignore that. They're monsters, actually. That they've become a playable race is kind of bizarre to me, and I would think to play one would be a unique experience unless you just want to rewrite them as birdy bros. They don't like to come out of the air, only really doing so to lay eggs. They're covered in feathers which is weird in any community that you're using them as part of a shared lore. They talk funny like Kenkus. The list goes on and on.

What? No, they don't. They can speak and there's nothing in the lore to suggest otherwise. They're not any more monsters than any other humanoid and have been a playable race since 2e at least. Heck, we HAD aarocockra PC's in 2e. Where does this "they don't like to come out of the air, only to lay eggs" thing come from? That's not part of the description of the race in any edition, and especially not 5e. I think you've internalized some pretty esoteric write ups of the race that isn't part of the game.

They make great NPCs that come and go because they don't really like mingling with humanoids. To select one as your playable race in a campaign that is paying attention to what they really are is certainly a rather bold decision, in my view. Cool, if so, but I have yet to run a game with a player who chose the race for anything other than to fly, look cool, and power game.

Why don't they like mingling with other humanoids? Nothing in the racial description even hints at that. --Ahh, I just read the 2e description.

Now, I see where you're coming from. You are insisting on lore that is not canon and hasn't been part of the game for twenty years or more. Fair enough.

 

[Casimir Liber]

You can't really place 100% of the blame on kender players when that is how the race is canonically depicted and Word of God is that anyone who retaliates against kender in-character and in-universe for this behavior is Objectively Evil. Kender players are obnoxious because the authors' Mary Sue BS enables and encourages them to be.

my problem with kender I guess is the (rather narrow) niche they occupy between gnomes and halflings...in an already crowded small-folk field.....

 

[Catulle]

The Dark Sun setting is a good example.

Came here to post this... no orcs, no goblins, no trolls on account of the genocides that the baddies did.

 

[cbwjm]

You can't really place 100% of the blame on kender players when that is how the race is canonically depicted and Word of God is that anyone who retaliates against kender in-character and in-universe for this behavior is Objectively Evil. Kender players are obnoxious because the authors' Mary Sue BS enables and encourages them to be.

I think different people read kender different ways. I never read them as a race that was constantly causing grief for the party, to me they were more a race that kept that child-like wonder about the world. Meanwhile, others focused on them being constant thieves stealing from the party, something that isn't limited to kender, it really does come down to the player being a total wangrod.

 

[Lackofname]

For my current campaign, I did the following:

At game start, all Fey races (aside from elves) were temporarily locked, so were fey-based warlocks and primal classes (like druid). The reason being that in the setting, the Feywild was effectively sealed nearly a millennia ago, but those elves that were in the prime material before it was closed are available. The Feywild is where nature spirits etc live, so druid magic was shut off. The campaign is all about exploring a new/lost continent, a place where the Feywild is open and fey/nature magic was the major thing. As the PCs explored, those character options opened up and became available, as did the races that lived on the continent.

Once players selected their PC races (Human, Elf, Deva, Shadar-Kai), I then said those races they picked were the only races that lived on the continent they came from. (I also added dwarf and dragonborn to that list, as players already had backup characters ideas). The reason for this is so there wasn't dozens of PC races in the setting (a thing that strains my suspension of disbelief). I gave the players free reign to build the continent they came from, because the whole campaign would take place in the land I built.

A PC race that I changed their fluff was warforged. The continent they are exploring is the ruins of a magitech empire that went to utter ruin and backslid into tribal states. Before things went to hell, there was race that was dying because they couldn't reproduce. The empire created the first warforged by transferring the souls of that race into the mechanical bodies via the Soulforge. Then it began creating new warforged, making whole new souls. Being able to transfer a soul into a new forged body is a big campaign point. Also I said tieflings were't a race that breeds true, you don't find villages of quarter-dragons, you just find places where dragon ancestry runs deep, etc. The only tiefling to pop up though was a pirate warlock slaver working directly for Hell.

Later, a player dropped and a new one came in. He picked a Kalasthar, but flavored it as a human who was possessed by the ghost of a dead prince (hence two souls in one body). That's my preference--I'm far less concerned about the mechanics of a race than I am their story/etc, and so reflavoring or making something special is completely cool.

(And I banned pixies (because I can't take a tiny race seriously).

 

[Lackofname]

Weren't Gnomes extinct in 4E too?

No, they simply weren't in the PHB1. They were added in the PHB2 along with half-orcs. Also they were in the MM1 as enemies.

Or was that a joke?

 

[tetrasodium]

Tabaxi because 30 ft move+30ft dash+30ft feline agility e>end turn>attack while barry allen resets speed force>repeat or continue attacking if target remains up.

5e already tries to remove the tactical grid game from relevance but tabaxi has so much move that theycan just circle opponents while not getting in reach to bypass front line types

 

[DammitVictor]

my problem with kender I guess is the (rather narrow) niche they occupy between gnomes and halflings...in an already crowded small-folk field.....

Not to mention Dragonlance having three different small (or short) "joke" races that were... essentially... really bad jokes.

Kender and Tinkers are obnoxious and self-destructive, but man, Gully Dwarves really aged like fine milk for anyone who cares about ableism.

 

[Hussar]

Tabaxi because 30 ft move+30ft dash+30ft feline agility e>end turn>attack while barry allen resets speed force>repeat or continue attacking if target remains up.

5e already tries to remove the tactical grid game from relevance but tabaxi has so much move that theycan just circle opponents while not getting in reach to bypass front line types

I'll admit, I haven't really paid much attention to Tabaxi, no one's tried to play one, but, isn't that just what rogues do? 30 foot move, bonus action dash, and then either dash or attack? How is this different or am I missing something? I know the scout rogue/monk in my last campaign did something pretty similar to this and it wasn't that big of a deal.

Again, am I missing something here? The stuff you guys find really OP I just don't.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Apropos of other threads (with all the halfling-bashing ), a question for all DMs out there - are there any races that people have excluded from their campaign for any reason - too boring/duplicative/don't fulfil a storyline - or have they radically changed them to fit the campaign.

I created a campaign where the only choice of race was--Human or Halfling.

I did this because I wanted to. I created a world where elves, dwarves, and gnomes were just different versions of the same thing. They were only one to two feet tall, very magical, and very rare. Some people called them elves while others called them dwarves, and halflings referred to them as gnomes (in that part of the world they were no more than 18 inches in height, and they did in fact wear little conical red hats).

I can't say everybody was pleased with the decision, but they came back to the gaming table week after week for over five years. It was countered, in a subsequent campaign run by one of those Players, by a world where the only race available were elves. Touche, Bill, touche.

We had a lot of fun.

 

[Grakarg]

I really want to run a campaign that is just Human only for the players. Plenty of other races for the player to encounter, but they can only be humans.

I think its kind of weird to assume that 5 wildly different and weird races would all go adventuring together and waltz into every human town and expect no one to react.

But sadly, I haven't managed to ban all races from my current campaign and am going the opposite direction, everything is available including unearthed arcana races. Or monsters even.

Current party? A Bearfolk barbarian, a Kenku rogue, an amethyst Dragonborn battlemaster, a Githzerai cleric, and a Halfling necromancer. Oh... and 5 happy players... so that worth something too i guess.

 

[Dire Bare]

As a player, I'm wary of DMs who run fairly standard D&D campaigns but restrict certain races, often for seemingly arbitrary reasons. No dragonborn in my game! Why? Because . . . I don't like'em!

Now, if a DM is using a specific campaign setting, published or home-brew, or is going for a particular genre feel to the game . . . I can dig reasonable restrictions on character options. It's just that most of the DMs I've run into who are adamant about restrictions . . . run very bland settings. World-building by restriction alone is not my cuppa tea.

Ideally, I'm cool with a DM providing a whitelist (a list of appropriate options) for their campaign idea . . . but being open and willing to go off that list if a player asks and has a cool character concept. DMs with strict blacklists (banned options) and no room for divergence . . . eh, I'll find another table, thanks.

Of course, with the variety of character options available today, if you play with no restrictions you can easily end up with a party looking like @Hussar's group! (I kid, your game sounds fun). If an eclectic party of different anthropomorphic animals (a tabaxi, harrengon, tortles, kenku, loxodon, and a dragonborn) wanders into a typical D&D town populated by humans and demihumans, it can be off-genre for the DM. Of course, nothing really wrong with crazy party make-ups, if that's what everyone at the table is into!

What I'd like to try, but haven't yet . . . is a lottery system. Something that would have all options on the table, but result in a more traditional party make-up. Think of the "party" for the OT Star Wars films . . . mostly human, with one exotic alien and two quirky droid NPCs. For classes, players would draw cards randomly for a hat. Each card would have a category, perhaps arcane, divine, warrior, or rogue. Players could choose any class that fits within the category drawn. Next, draw cards on ancestry, with categories like human, demihuman, non-human. As the DM, I could ensure that there will be at least one of each class group for a balanced party, and most of the ancestry cards would be human, maybe two labeled demi-human, and only one labeled non-human. If you draw the non-human card, you can play just about any race from the table's bookshelf (or D&D Beyond). Before character creation, players could trade cards! Depending on what kind of genre the DM is going for, the cards that go into the hat can be varied.

 

[Hussar]

To be honest, @Dire Bare, I've leaned into the whole thing. Half of the Avowed in Candlekeep are now offbeat races and everywhere they've gone they meet stuff that looks like them. My Forgotten Realms is a LOT more diverse than I expected it to be. Why not? If the players want it, and, really, it doesn't hurt anything, roll with it.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'll admit, I haven't really paid much attention to Tabaxi, no one's tried to play one, but, isn't that just what rogues do? 30 foot move, bonus action dash, and then either dash or attack? How is this different or am I missing something? I know the scout rogue/monk in my last campaign did something pretty similar to this and it wasn't that big of a deal.

Again, am I missing something here? The stuff you guys find really OP I just don't.

Not even close to what a rogue csn do. A rogue needs a bonus section they typically want to use for offhand attacks or disengage in order to cunning action dash. You can see just how bad it is though by keeping in mind that cunning action dash works with the tabsxi thing because the tabaxi thing does not actually have any action cost and just happens so part of their move.

They can treat combat like the flash to the point that I literally saw one named Barry Allen at one of my al tables shortly after volvos came out. Enemies far away? No they aren't enemies running away? No they won't and there is no risk of getting stuck. Due to 120 foot or 90ft+cunning action disengage move speed.with each option capable of making an attack that round. Obstacles? Lolno.

 

[Norton]

No, it really isn't. And, how are you dropping familiars so often. Never minding the ones that can flat out turn invisible at will, it isn't exactly hard to replace the normal ones. And, if by "limited range", you mean 100 feet, well, I guess that's limited. Note, how do you deal with Chainlocks who get unlimited range and invisible, flying familiars?



What? No, they don't. They can speak and there's nothing in the lore to suggest otherwise. They're not any more monsters than any other humanoid and have been a playable race since 2e at least. Heck, we HAD aarocockra PC's in 2e. Where does this "they don't like to come out of the air, only to lay eggs" thing come from? That's not part of the description of the race in any edition, and especially not 5e. I think you've internalized some pretty esoteric write ups of the race that isn't part of the game.


Why don't they like mingling with other humanoids? Nothing in the racial description even hints at that. --Ahh, I just read the 2e description.

Now, I see where you're coming from. You are insisting on lore that is not canon and hasn't been part of the game for twenty years or more. Fair enough.

Firstly, Find Familiar is a spell so you spend something to have them and losing them costs you an hour to recast. It's rarely something cast to do recon, because most want to keep their spell powder dry, in particular if they're low on slots. It rarely becomes a problem.

As for your comments regarding Aarokocra, I'll save time and refer to this page and add that they've only just recently been added to 5e as a playable race, at least with DnD Beyond.

 

[Mecheon]

Firstly, Find Familiar is a spell so you spend something to have them and losing them costs you an hour to recast. It's rarely something cast to do recon, because most want to keep their spell powder dry, in particular if they're low on slots. It rarely becomes a problem.

... Recon's a fine thing they should be able to do? There's multiple entire classes devoted to this

I'm also a bit worried on how regularly you're taking out familliers. Do you just have folks sniping every raven out of the sky or something like that? "You send your raven out to scout out the area so you have a bit of an idea what's up" is a regular famillier thing they do

As for your comments regarding Aarokocra, I'll save time and refer to this page and add that they've only just recently been added to 5e as a playable race, at least with DnD Beyond.

They've been in the game since 1E, playable since 2E at least (One of the few races playable in both reg and Dark Sun, albeit more vulture-like), and they've been in 5E since that side part to Princes of the Apocalypse so, like, over 5 years at this point.

 

[Norton]

... Recon's a fine thing they should be able to do? There's multiple entire classes devoted to this

I'm also a bit worried on how regularly you're taking out familliers. Do you just have folks sniping every raven out of the sky or something like that? "You send your raven out to scout out the area so you have a bit of an idea what's up" is a regular famillier thing they do

They've been in the game since 1E, playable since 2E at least (One of the few races playable in both reg and Dark Sun, albeit more vulture-like), and they've been in 5E since that side part to Princes of the Apocalypse so, like, over 5 years at this point.

I never said recon isn't fine, I said it's rarely worth wasting a spell slot for in most cases, especially if you're low. It costs something. That's the point.

And when I say Aarokocra's have not been available to play, I mean as a choosable race in DND Beyond which is what everyone is using these days. More to the point which is clearly getting lost, is that they tend to attract a certain kind of player in my experience who is damage-shy and power-gamey.