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

[Horwath]

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

this is great. Now if it can only have option for variable point buy pool...

 

[Ancalagon]

this is great. Now if it can only have option for variable point buy pool...

You mean have a way to "tweak" the roller so it rolls say, a 30 point character? Unfortunately, I don't control that page nor have the technical skills to accomplish such a goal...

 

[Horwath]

You mean have a way to "tweak" the roller so it rolls say, a 30 point character? Unfortunately, I don't control that page nor have the technical skills to accomplish such a goal...

yup. exactly.

 

[see]

Humans are boring in the exact same sense that the Champion subclass of Fighter is boring. Which is to say, there's nothing that needs to be fixed; it's supposed to be the simple choice.

As pointed out elsewhere humans are the default. When it was acceptable to couple racial penalties to bonuses this was tolerable.

Just because it's all now phrased as bonuses doesn't change the fact that compared to the human baseline, most other races are "+1 to one ability score, -1 to four ability scores".

Now, the specific construction of the standard array reduces the impact of that. But in random-rolling it can have more of an impact, and in point buy you can create heavy-on-odds arrays like [15, 13, 13, 13, 11, 8], [15, 15, 11, 11, 11, 8], or [15, 15, 13, 11, 9, 8].

 

[GMMichael]

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

I'm pretty sure that Warforged is the only mechanical PC race.

This leads me to the conclusion that for a 6E, something should be done on the mechanical end to make humans more interesting to play.

Odds are that Human is the only Ancestry in 6e, given the current homogenization trend. I'm actually happy with the boring 5e human; it's the most true to 5e's design philosophy.

 

[Scott Christian]

Humans are described in the game as being the most flexible of all the races. They are also the baseline for other races to compare themselves to. Therefore, and I know this opinion might be unpopular, but they should be bland.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I think having bland elements in a game just... sucks.

There are games where humans aren't bland and don't suck for a variety of reasons, and in those games sometimes humans are the most flexible, sometimes they are not. But they have reasons to be interesting.

Certainly, the mechanics of how humans work in 5e are really uninspiring. Any inspiration has to come entirely form the player and GM, which can be contrasted pretty heavily against well, any other ancestory in 5e.

This might simply be a consequence of how you don't make any further choices about your heritage after character creation, however.

 

[commandercrud]

Vanilla is a valid flavor. It's only bland if you're not into it.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Well, to extend that analogy... you are right, vanilla is a great flavour.

Unfortunately, in 5e, to me humans taste like absolute shite.

So it... doesn't really help.

 

[Vince_Snetterton]

Are Humans the most mechanically boring? Probably.
But so what?
Do one of two things:
1. Don't play Humans at all.
2. Don't let players play ANY species but Human, and bye bye Human Variant. Every single char starts with 27 point buy, and chars develop organically, over the levels.