D&D 5E PHB Humans are the most mechanically boring race. How do we fix this?

[MattW]

I can see Human characters getting "privilege", social" or "convenience" bonuses when interacting with the rest of the gameworld.

Example: Clothing and equipment is designed for humans. Any other race has to get their stuff specially made (which will cost more money).

Example: Some generic Magickal stuff is more likely to work for humans (or work more effectively). Potions, for instance, are designed for the human magic-alchemical-biochemistry. There may be some nasty side-effects if potions are used by other species.

Example: Racism. Perhaps something like "Non-humans have to leave the City before dark". Or "Non-humans have to pay special taxes". Or "only humans can possess weapons (or use magic) in the City".

Of course you could also use something really simple. Maybe humans are just favoured by the gods and get plus 1 on all saving throws or an extra spell per level

 

[Tinker-TDC]

Just had this conversation with my group a few days ago. We focused on evolutionary traits that separated humans from other animals so there's no way to tell whether a fantasy species would have these. The big human advantages in no particular order are:
Tool Use: Can't make this the prime thing as it is clearly a big thing among the other ancestries and some (dwarves) are particularly known for making the best stuff.
Sweat: Allows humans to walk far longer than other species and literally chase prey to death. A neat thing but hard to design game mechanics around.
Body Proportions: Longer legs and shorter arms allow for throwing with some amount of force. Where other primates can sort of toss things they don't exactly have the potential to aim and throw hard enough to weaponize a thrown object. Now, the problem with this one is fantasy art depicting other ancestries with basically the same arm to leg proportion but it might be a fun little thing to play with.
Intelligence: By far the most important trait (though definitely aided by the other ones). However, in a post-Tasha's system simply giving the ASI to INT seems unmemorable. The main human ability should be somehow based around this and useful in general situations.

Final Results
Human
Asi: Tasha's 3-point system
Endurance Predator: You have advantage on saving throws and ability checks to resist exhaustion.
Versatile: Gain 1 skill proficiency, 1 tool proficiency, and 1 language proficiency.
Intuitive: When you fail an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw you may choose to reroll it. The reroll has neither advantage or disadvantage. Recharge 1/short rest or prof/long rest.

I prefer once per short rest, but it looks like 5e is heading in the direction of proficiency per long rest for class features (though I haven't seen the change go into racial features so maybe 1/short rest is the way to go.)
Originally Intuitive increased the number of inspiration a character could have but everyone plays (or doesn't play) inspiration wildly differently so I wanted to make it clearly separate.
Endurance Predator is the other unique feature but with the number of things in 5e that call for saves or checks against exhaustion it feels more like a ribbon.
I also considered a bonus to ranges of thrown weapons but ultimately it felt a little clunky and got cut.

Shout out to Tier-Zoo on youtube for applying game-logic to explain real-life things.

 

[Horwath]

Human having ability bonuses seem silly as they are the baseline.

So I'm having:

+1 skill,
+1 tool or weapon
common language, +1 any
+2 feats

Now, if you really want to have a +2 or +1/+1, pick specific 2 half-feats.

 

[Eubani]

Have a look at my races redone thread, we had a crack at the Human with no stat ups as per new racial mechanic standards.

 

[Li Shenron]

Humans in the PHB, variant or not, are pretty mechanically boring in D&D 5e.

....

Variant human is much better in comparison to the normal human. They have two floating +1 ability increase (which is pretty common in the PHB, compared to races from later books), they get to gain proficiency in one skill (which REALLY should have been on the base human), and most interestingly of all, they get to gain a feat.

There are numerous problems with a variant human gaining a feat mechanically.

First of all, mechanically a lot of feats are pretty powerful.

Every race is boring when you've seen enough PC of that. +1 to 2 abilities of choice may look boring because it can be anything but +2 to one specific ability is boring because it is always the same for all PC of that race. Stonecunning is cool but millions of Dwarf with Stonecunning less so. That is also one of the reasons (not the only one) why lately the move towards more customizable races.

OTOH a feat at 1st level when others have to wait until 4th is exactly the kind of advantage that makes humans unique, even though its weight tends to fade at higher levels (but so do other racial abilities), but when you start the game at 1st level, it goes a long way in making human an excellent choice.

Indeed feats are technically optional, and they could have thought of a better feat-less option that +1 to all scores. +1 to 2 scores and an extra background is narratively a bit iffy but not a bad idea.

 

[Minigiant]

Humans are mechanically boring because

1. Races overall are less important and weaer in 5e compared to 4e and 3e. In 3e, races could get bonuses above +2.in 4e every race had a racial power. However in 5e, every race is just a minor stat bump, a size, random proficiencies, and darkvision.
2. Human is the baseline and the vanilla. Humans lack official nonsetting flavors nor subraces.
3. Because humans are the baseline, they are also vanilla in mechanics. /humans ae what others are judged from and thus have no extraordinary features. As humans are the ordinary.

 

[Baron Opal II]

As pointed out elsewhere humans are the default. When it was acceptable to couple racial penalties to bonuses this was tolerable. These days, it is preferable to define differences solely with bonuses and capabilities. With this in mind, I determined what humans, dwarves, and halflings represented to me.

Again, as above, humans are pursuit predators. Humans are enduring.
I base my dwarves off of Neanderthals, who likely had larger muscle mass and mechanical advantage in their joint structure compared to humans. Dwarves are strong.
Looking to Denisovians for halfling inspiration, we really don't know much about them. There is a hypothesis that humans gained altitude tolerance from them. After a winding train of thought, I decided that my halflings could tolerate weather exposure and were stereotypically agile since they were small. Halflings are agile.

This lead to Halflings gain +2 Dex, can endure cold, altitude. Cultural default is seaborn nomad.
Dwarves gain +2 Str, can consume anything organic except wood and bone. Cultural default is cthonic city-dweller.
Humans gain +2 Con, +1 Exhaustion level (the one right before half move). Cultural default is temperate city-dweller.

 

[Laurefindel]

My favourite solution is not a popular one; I’d like a « boring » base human and a bunch of regional variations that can be more specific (and potentially more exciting).

 

[Ancalagon]

Basic human is much better with rolled stats, because you may end up with a lot o f odd scores, and +1 across the board could be a big boost.

Don't like rolling because you get uneven power level? The redric Roller, invented on EN world (!) is the solution:

Redrick Roller

 

[Radaceus]

Personally I rarely play a Human, even back in 1E ( /shakes fist at the Paladin!)

But,
As long as Variant ( which now also allows Feats by default) is on the table, and assuming the PC has the option to roll for stats, it makes Humans even more versatile than most other races(looking at you Variant Teiflings); i.e., the PC rolls 11, 11, 13, 13, 15, 17, and the +1 bumps all the stats up a chart. Now should they want to point buy, or take the array, it may be better for the +1 in two stats and take a feat for some aforementioned build.

Don't allow feats, no Variant, the Humans +1 across the board evens out the baseline, that is, the human has by default better overall stats ( no matter which option is used to chargen) and makes them better for MCing.

Don't allow Multi-classing, and the Human just becomes the better all-rounder. In any event they are far from boring, quite contrary, as many of my players have exhibited.