D&D General Playable races: few or plenty, common or variable, native or outsiders?

[Guest 7034872]

I'm unapologetically old school, so the only playable races I'll allow are those listed in the PHB. I like to keep my monsters monstrous and my heroes heroic.

 

[J.Quondam]

Available PC races is strongly campaign / setting specific; all that sort of thing is established before/at Session Zero.
As for my personal aesthetic preference for fantasy/D&D, my answers would be:

1. fewer races/species
2. variable race (and culture) mechanics
3. native to the setting

.

 

[Laurefindel]

1) Few or plenty?

2) Common or variable?

3) Native or outsiders?

Bonus question (kind of a combination of questions 2 and 3): how do you feel about using different versions of a race from different settings? Examples could be allowing Zendikar elves or Ravnica goblins (assuming you already have native elves or goblins), would you be ok with allowing the mechanical variant (i.e. different stats and abilities) from another setting? If you would allow the mechanic, would you disallow, allow or even require the narrative that the race comes from another world?

Everything is mostly setting-dependent for me, but in general...

1) Select a limited "palette" of available races for the campaign and stick to it. It doesn't need to be the default PHB palette, but keep about the same number. Having a whole lot of races is nice to create multiple and varied palettes, but when everything is on the table, the flavour of each plate is diminished.

2) I'm torn on this one, because that's where you can customize your character when your concept was discouraged by question #1. A limited number individual/familial/cultural/ethnic variations is desired. Too many and you start to lose focus. And for all the gods sake, give mechanical variations for humans. The opposite of "monolithic" shouldn't have to be "bland"...

3) Keep races native, unless the focus of the campaign is on extraplanar voyages or events.

Bonus question) Case-by-case analysis. As a DM, the last thing I want is my player trying to game the system by choosing an obscure variant from a questionable source. As a player, the last thing I want is for the DM to shut down any proposition from other settings (that will probably never be played anyway) or thrid-party material. I'd expect players to match their narrative to that of my campaign's setting rather than source material, and as a player, I would think it fair to be asked to do the same. Note that the source material's narrative could (and probably should) be used if the focus of the campaign is on planar travel.

 

[Tonguez]

1 the races should be curated to fit the setting, and to me the fewer the better
2 I encourage story first with flaws and weaknesses, so stat, feat and background choices come from that not optimisation.
3 as per 1 & 2 if they can justify the story within the setting it might be considered (I do use Fae Realm as an origin for such variants)

 

[jmartkdr2]

I was reading a (non-D&D) RPG, where the "races" were page after page of different kinds of anthropomorphic animals. Too many for my tastes. More appealing would be one generic customizable "beastfolk", and let the player decide. Of course, have two or three readymade examples, but give the players the tools to customize if they want some other variant.

Oh my yes, trying to cover the stats for every possible animal is a fool's errand, if for no other reason than you can't - but even if you could, you'd probably annoy someone with how you treat their favorite animal.

But that's a mechanical thing, not a worldbuilding thing. If WotC decides to add axolotl-folk in their next supplement, I'm already able to handle that.

 

[Minigiant]

Preference: What makes sense.

I prefer races that match the world's theme that offer the players plenty of different options.

But out of the choices: Plenty variable outsiders

 

[Smackpixi]

1) Few or plenty?

I just like to know a head of time what the players are going to pick. There’s only going to be up to four different played races, not hard to fit in regardless of how many options they get to choose from. All the players want to be goblins, and no elves, ok, swap up your setting have the goblins be the “good” forest NPC s and the elves be the “bad” ones.

2) Common or variable?

Whatever the rules allow for for, I get that there’s a choice of which rules to use, but whichever we pick, and I’m not super particular, everyone follows that.

3) Native or outsiders?

What really is “the setting”? I prefer at least half the party be “from here”, nearby the main action area, or one of them if it’s going to change. But the world is big, other planes, and gods, make it much much bigger. There’s no end of elsewheres they can be from, but if they are from elsewhere, they need to understand that they won’t be running into many people they grew up with.

I guess I’m just not that particular because I’m not that attached to the world being built. That might be because I’m not the one who built it, I’m using published campaign settings into which I’m shoehorning modified published adventures…and I have more cool options than we could possibly play, so I’m looking for player buy in to help decide. Even if I was building everything myself, I think I’d still be looking for some player buy-in or direction because then I’d have infinite options. And I’m just not super big on making all the decisions.

 

[Voadam]

Lots of talking about playable character races in the last year or two... what are your preferences regarding the following approaches? (You can specify whether you are answering from a player's or DM's point of view)

Answering as a DM.

As a player I enjoy exploring options and have played out there things like a being of positive energy or a fiendish troll but I am also perfectly fine playing by the book options.

1) Few or plenty?

Do you prefer having a small bunch of races available to PCs, such as the PHB set or a cherry-picked group of favourites? Or do you think a large array available is better? Or do you even think the sky's the limit and would like to have as many as you can find for the edition you're currently playing?

Depends on the campaign.

In my last 5e campaign I was running the Pathfinder gothic horror adventure path set in my homebrew mashup setting which includes a lot of Paizo's Golarion.

I said explicitly at character creation that I was going for a theme of PCs as more human and less alien at base to match up to the thematics of Gothic Horror. That said I had elves and dwarves and orcs deeply integrated in the setting background.

The party bought into the concept and went with mostly humans but also a half-elf and half-orc that tied into the campaign and setting themes well. This worked out well.

In contrast when I ran my 3.5 Freeport game in the same homebrew world I dove deep into the mercantile cross-roads aspect and opened it up to most any resource I had as long as it fit the thematics I preferred then (half races were actually subraces or special situations and not hybrids, stuff with redoing subtypes, etc.)

The more monstrous and universally adversarial the race is in the setting the more I would foresee having a hard time integrating a PC into a campaign. I had a player considering a bugbear PC in my current game and I was just foreseeing it being a problem in a way that I did not for the Kobold PC, based on the ways I saw the two races in the setting. In Eberron with their specific background it would have been a bit different for a bugbear PC.

2) Common or variable?

Do you prefer a more monolithic approach on racial mechanics i.e. all PCs of the same race X or subrace Y must use the same stats, or do you like having mechanical variants for each race and/or subrace (without narrating them as a different group)?

I come from a Moldvay B/X background and I am completely comfortable with no stat adjustments/differences from race. Things like languages and proficiencies seem more like cultural backgrounds than racial ones to me in general.

I am a big fan of reskinning things. In my current 5e campaign I have a player whose mechanical warforged artificer PC is reskinned into a literal high tech robot and I had a human druid PC reskinned into a White Wolf Werewolf the Apocalypse werewolf who was a werewolf wolf who turns into a human. I do not think I would have a problem with someone wanting to use mountain dwarf mechanics for their hill dwarf concept character.

3) Native or outsiders?

Do you want playable races strictly from the fantasy setting you're adventuring in, or do you consent to PCs of a race that normally doesn't belong to it? This is a more nuanced question... you can make a distinction between the case of a race that belongs to the setting but not the world (like are you ok with PC races from the elemental or the outer planes) and the case of a race that belongs to a different setting entirely (like a Forgotten Realms race in Dark Sun) or even a different genre altogether (like a Star Wars or DCU race).

Campaign dependent.

When I ran my Wildwood game set in the Oathbound setting it was explicitly make a native or make a character from most any setting people wanted with compatible mechanics for my game. The setting has an explicit Ravenloft style drag in characters from other settings mechanic that is a big part of the setting.

When I ran Ravenloft I had both natives and PCs from different campaign settings.

Normally I set up campaigns though with players already hooked into it locally in some way so the characters are natives in some way even if their race is exotic. My Wildwood game and the Ravenloft games were specifically different.

Bonus question (kind of a combination of questions 2 and 3): how do you feel about using different versions of a race from different settings? Examples could be allowing Zendikar elves or Ravnica goblins (assuming you already have native elves or goblins), would you be ok with allowing the mechanical variant (i.e. different stats and abilities) from another setting? If you would allow the mechanic, would you disallow, allow or even require the narrative that the race comes from another world?

Usually I would be fine with reskinning the mechanics of different world versions I think are mechanically ok. The campaign and player preferences would generally determine narratives.

 

[CleverNickName]

Few or Plenty?
I vote "Few." I ask the players what races/lineages they wish to play, and add their choices to my list of Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling. All others are removed.

Common or Variable?
Variable. I think that racial variants are one of the strengths of 5E, and I like the customizations in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.

Native or Outsiders?
Native. Like I said above, I start with the Usual Four (Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling), and then I add whatever other races the players are interested in playing. I assume the player-added races are Native unless the player specifically says they are a "stranger in a strange land" Outsider.

Bonus question:
I like it. This is really where the optional rules in Tasha's come in handy.

 

[Lanefan]

1) Few or plenty?

As a DM, few. As a player, few-ish.

2) Common or variable?

Do you prefer a more monolithic approach on racial mechanics i.e. all PCs of the same race X or subrace Y must use the same stats, or do you like having mechanical variants for each race and/or subrace (without narrating them as a different group)?

Not quite sure what you mean on this one.

If you're asking whether species should be mechanically differentiated from each other e.g. built-in stat bonuses and-or penalties, different move rates, etc. then as both DM and player: yes.

If you're asking whether all PCs of the same species must have the same stats as each other then as both player and DM: no.

3) Native or outsiders?

As both DM and player: native only.

Bonus question (kind of a combination of questions 2 and 3): how do you feel about using different versions of a race from different settings? Examples could be allowing Zendikar elves or Ravnica goblins (assuming you already have native elves or goblins), would you be ok with allowing the mechanical variant (i.e. different stats and abilities) from another setting? If you would allow the mechanic, would you disallow, allow or even require the narrative that the race comes from another world?

If a version of a species from another setting appealed that much I'd rename it, kitbash to suit, and make it native to my own setting.