D&D 5E Player Races in Upcoming Volo's Guide to Monsters

[Parmandur]

Have you looked at the DMG table referenced here.



There is nothing unclear about it.



To create an Aaracocra Commoner (or Spy, or Bandit Captain...) you modify that NPC statblock by adding +2 Dex, +2 Wis, you give it Dive Attack, talon attack action, reduce speed to 20 ft but give it Fly 50 ft, and let it speak Auran.



To learn the actual details (for instance, "what is dive attack") you simply go to the Aaracocra monster stat block and read

Dive Attack. If the aarakocra is flying and dives at least 30 feet

straight toward a target and then hits it with a melee weapon

attack, the attack deals an extra 3 (1d6) damage to the target.​

Obviously this involves a fair bit off cross-referencing, but since you only need to do it once (per character you create) it does provide a LOT of player character race options in a very small space indeed.

Yeah, exactly; and for raves that don't have much unusual going on, or need much in the way of culture explanation, it is plenty.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Have you looked at the DMG table referenced here.

There is nothing unclear about it.

To create an Aaracocra Commoner (or Spy, or Bandit Captain...) you modify that NPC statblock by adding +2 Dex, +2 Wis, you give it Dive Attack, talon attack action, reduce speed to 20 ft but give it Fly 50 ft, and let it speak Auran.

To learn the actual details (for instance, "what is dive attack") you simply go to the Aaracocra monster stat block and read

Dive Attack. If the aarakocra is flying and dives at least 30 feet
straight toward a target and then hits it with a melee weapon
attack, the attack deals an extra 3 (1d6) damage to the target.​

Obviously this involves a fair bit off cross-referencing, but since you only need to do it once (per character you create) it does provide a LOT of player character race options in a very small space indeed.

I don't think you even need to do that much to modify commoner/spy/etc. If you look at the APs, they don't modify the stats at all for the NPC's, they just add the racial abilities. An Aaracocra commoner is just a commoner with a flight speed. A tiefling commoner is just a commoner with hellish rebuke. etc.

 

[CapnZapp]

I don't think you even need to do that much to modify commoner/spy/etc. If you look at the APs, they don't modify the stats at all for the NPC's, they just add the racial abilities. An Aaracocra commoner is just a commoner with a flight speed. A tiefling commoner is just a commoner with hellish rebuke. etc.

You are completely correct, but here I'm explaining what the DMG says.

Also remember the context of this discussion is new racial options for player characters.

Things like "Aarakochra get their racial ability bonuses in Dex and Wisdom" might not matter much for a Commoner, but for a PC they do.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

You are completely correct, but here I'm explaining what the DMG says.

Also remember the context of this discussion is new racial options for player characters.

Things like "Aarakochra get their racial ability bonuses in Dex and Wisdom" might not matter much for a Commoner, but for a PC they do.

Sorry. My bad.

 

[GreenTengu]

Yes, it's hard to get excited, I've little use for a bunch of oddball races.

I am with you to an extent. It is just... well... if you burst into a pub in Eberron or Baldur's Gate, you are likely to find among your patrons alongside the Dwarfs, Halflings, Gnomes and Elves, some Orcs, some Hobgoblins, maybe a couple Goblins or Kobolds, maybe a Lizardfolk, possibly even a particularly well-behaved Ogre, etc.

Until the racial options are properly filled out to the extent that one can say "well, pretty much anyone in here is a potential adventurer! Let's see who we can recruit." rather than "well, that race is an NPC and THOSE are monsters, so we can ignore them or just attack them and kill them for XP."

Thing is though, I have a hard time coming up with anything more wonky and ill-suited to be a race than Thri-kreen and Warforged. I guess if one is proposing something that is flat-out stated that only a small handful exist in all the world or if it is something without hands or feet or something... I am not really sure what could be more "odd ball".

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I am with you to an extent. It is just... well... if you burst into a pub in Eberron or Baldur's Gate, you are likely to find among your patrons alongside the Dwarfs, Halflings, Gnomes and Elves, some Orcs, some Hobgoblins, maybe a couple Goblins or Kobolds, maybe a Lizardfolk, possibly even a particularly well-behaved Ogre, etc.

Until the racial options are properly filled out to the extent that one can say "well, pretty much anyone in here is a potential adventurer! Let's see who we can recruit." rather than "well, that race is an NPC and THOSE are monsters, so we can ignore them or just attack them and kill them for XP."

Thing is though, I have a hard time coming up with anything more wonky and ill-suited to be a race than Thri-kreen and Warforged. I guess if one is proposing something that is flat-out stated that only a small handful exist in all the world or if it is something without hands or feet or something... I am not really sure what could be more "odd ball".

Exactly.

Additionally, I have whole worlds that are just easier to port into DnD if I can just grab a PC statblock for ogres, and hand it to the player that wants to play an ogre.

 

[gyor]

Have you looked at the DMG table referenced here.

There is nothing unclear about it.

To create an Aaracocra Commoner (or Spy, or Bandit Captain...) you modify that NPC statblock by adding +2 Dex, +2 Wis, you give it Dive Attack, talon attack action, reduce speed to 20 ft but give it Fly 50 ft, and let it speak Auran.

To learn the actual details (for instance, "what is dive attack") you simply go to the Aaracocra monster stat block and read

Dive Attack. If the aarakocra is flying and dives at least 30 feet
straight toward a target and then hits it with a melee weapon
attack, the attack deals an extra 3 (1d6) damage to the target.​

Obviously this involves a fair bit off cross-referencing, but since you only need to do it once (per character you create) it does provide a LOT of player character race options in a very small space indeed.

Not everybody has the MM, they shouldn't have to buy the MM to be able to use the table, there is enough space in the chapter to guve all the most essential info for every race that has appeared in D&D! It one Chapter out of three in a 224 page book!!!

 

[gyor]

I am with you to an extent. It is just... well... if you burst into a pub in Eberron or Baldur's Gate, you are likely to find among your patrons alongside the Dwarfs, Halflings, Gnomes and Elves, some Orcs, some Hobgoblins, maybe a couple Goblins or Kobolds, maybe a Lizardfolk, possibly even a particularly well-behaved Ogre, etc.

Until the racial options are properly filled out to the extent that one can say "well, pretty much anyone in here is a potential adventurer! Let's see who we can recruit." rather than "well, that race is an NPC and THOSE are monsters, so we can ignore them or just attack them and kill them for XP."

Thing is though, I have a hard time coming up with anything more wonky and ill-suited to be a race than Thri-kreen and Warforged. I guess if one is proposing something that is flat-out stated that only a small handful exist in all the world or if it is something without hands or feet or something... I am not really sure what could be more "odd ball".

Playable Flomph?

 

[Parmandur]

Not everybody has the MM, they shouldn't have to buy the MM to be able to use the table, there is enough space in the chapter to guve all the most essential info for every race that has appeared in D&D! It one Chapter out of three in a 224 page book!!!

Not necessarily in WotC interests, though, to repeat info like that and prevent people buying the Core. I mean, we don't know hoe minimal the table is, but we know there is a table, and have a model of how that might look in a published boom already; who knows?

 

[GreenTengu]

Playable Flomph?

Yes, I suppose that would be an example of something even stranger than a Thrikreen or Warforged, but I don't know that I have seen it.

But, come to think of it, dragons and sentient animals and such-- those also present problems. Basically they are things where PC classes just cannot really be applied well. And not in the 1st-2nd Grognard's sense of "no dwarf can possibly be a cleric or a dwarf above level 7! And a Halfling Wizard is completely unimaginable and absolutely cannot exist! and Orcs are clearly 'monsters' and can only level in the 'orc' class!"

But rather in the sense that the classes are based on the assumptions that a character is going to have two arms with hand-like appendages attached, be capable of speech, have the ability to move and be corporal and you know... generally human like, even if they have different shaped ears, teeth, noses, eyes, feet, skin tone and so on from the most atypical "human" and maybe even have a tail or horns or wings or something too.

And generally I feel that when people want the races expanded, most want access to things that are already established to exist in the worlds and often as fairly commonly encountered peoples. So I am not sure how "oddball" the races most want added to the game are.

Unfortunately, in 4th edition instead of seeing the races expanded to envelop all the usual denizens of the D&D worlds, we saw the designs tossing out their own personal experimental ideas that had never been seen before. I guess they all figured that if they could slip something into the PHB then it would immediately become "icon" and live on in the game as a main PC race forever and ever immortalizing them... Besides Dragonborn though (and I don't know how they managed to sell people on the crappiest interpretation of dragonpeople to ever be thrown together), I don't think it worked.