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