Race Restriction House Rule?

[SageMinerve]

The issue of “Race allowance” has a couple of aspects:

1) The composition of your playing group: Is this a group of your close friends or a group that comes together only for your game ? Or something in between ? I find that this question is very important in how I deal with my players.

DMing for my close friends, especially since I roleplay with them since forever, some things become automatic: they know what emphasis I like to put on roleplay. They know that: 1) they'll have to come up with a good story for their PC AND develop a personality frame (major traits, some minor ones); 2) all the players will develop collectively the story of how their group came together (because after 25 years or DMing, I've become allergic to the infamous meeting in a tavern). It's their responsibility to make sure that the group works, not crunch-wise (although it's still important), but character-wise.

From the couple times I've DMed with strangers or acquaintances in a game that wasn't to be a simple dungeon crawl, I realized that I need to be both more diplomat AND clearer on what I expect. That means that I have to put clear boundaries on what I find acceptable or not, and one of the major aspects is the choosing of a race. Why boundaries, you ask ? Because people unfamiliar with each other will find that they're more comfortable knowing exactly what to expect, even if it might seem to limit their freedom. On the specific racial issue, I find that letting people take un-iconic races tends to inhibit their characterization of their PC, because chances are they have no idea whatsoever how a member of that race should act, while everybody is familiar with elves and dwarves (thanks, LotR !)

Again, the objective is giving a maximum of freedom in characterization and roleplaying, even at the expanse of character-building options like race. And since I know full well that it's only the rare individual who'll be able to roleplay outside of 1-dimensional stereotypes, I think that giving your players all the tools to support him in his roleplay is one of the biggest responsibilities for a DM.

2) Your game world: if you're like me, you like to put a lot of work and details in your game world. Limiting the number of races allows you to come up with a cohesive history, one that's easier to make sense of. The more races you allow, the more said races will fall into 1-dimensional stereotypes. Look at Dark Sun for example (not knocking on the setting, I'm preparing a campaign in Athas!): what are the Halflings ? They're cannibals ! And ?... they eat people ! If you take a look at most game worlds, humans are the dominating race, historically speaking. Why ? Because we understand them. The other races almost always fall in one of two categories: they as a race live on the fringes of civilization, rarely becoming involved in the world events, or they are live in a diaspora in the human nations.

Having said that, on the proposed solution by the OP (a Common-Uncommon-Rare classification and limitation), I have to say that I disagree with him. I think it is worse to limit a weird race to one player than to allow more. Why ? Because by allowing only one, you: 1) augment the chances he turns into a loner (somebody else mentioned Wolverine, great example!), thus limiting his roleplaying opportunities; 2) having 2 or more PCs of a same “weird” race gives the players an opportunity to develop a side story involving both of them, thus involving them in a deeper way in the game world; 3) having 2 or more of a same “weird” race should change the outlook from the other PCs and NPCs.

What I would do, in the OP's situation, is restrict the number of different weird races, not the number of PCs playing a weird race.

 

[corwyn77]

I'm inclined to believe that a lot of players make strange race choices because they feel race is secondary and they try to match a race to the class and build they want to play (ability-wise). If you relax the ability bonuses granted by PHB1 or even PHB2 races to be more flexible like the PHB3 races, it might well have an impact. I for one use this:

PHB 1
Dragonborn: +2 Str, +2 Con or Cha
Dwarf: +2 Con, +2 Str or Wis
Eladrin: +2 Dex, +2 Int or Cha
Elf: +2 Dex, +2 Str or Wis
Half-Elf: +2 Cha, +2 Con or Dex
Halfling: +2 Dex, +2 Con or Cha
Human: +2 Str, Dex or Con, +2 Int, Wis or Cha (This might not be balanced)
Tiefling: +2 Int, +2 Con or Cha

PHB 2
Deva: +2 Int, +2 Wis or Cha
Gnome: +2 Cha, +2 Int or Con
Goliath: +2 Str, +2 Con or Wis
Half-Orc: +2 Str, +2 Dex or Wis

On a similar note, the Savage Worlds system has an Edge (feat) that is only available during character creation called 'Atypical' available to any non-human. I've been considering adapting it to 4e to allow any non-human to swap one of his bonus stats to any of the other 4 as a feat (obviously not retrainable), or if that seems too cheap, a background.

 

[nnms]

It's more about how you do it than what you do.

You could DM a game and require everyone be a human. If you explained it well and was diplomatic about it, I bet there wouldn't be an issue. You might get some people not playing because they're not interested and that's fine.

I'm starting a campaign shortly where all races except for human are "uncommon" in that the party can only have one. Furthermore, I'm starting with only Human, Elf, Dwarf and Halfling as the available choices as it will start with the Red Box.

The campaign would utterly fail if the party was a shardmind, a genasi, a warforged, a githzerai and a gnome.

 

[Knightfall]

I've decided on something similar for my brand new 4e world. It's only in the beginning stages, but you are free to take a look on the following thread...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/plots-places/271335-tarras-new-world-new-edition-d-d-4th-edition.html

My basic idea is that you have to roll percentile dice if you want to play a race that isn't common. If you beat the percentage chance then you can play that race.

Uncommon Races (75% chance)
Rare Races (50% chance)
Very Rare Races (25% chance)
Unique Races (10% chance)

 

[Jhaelen]

There would be two restrictions on uncommon races. First there can't be two of the same race in the same party (so only one Dragonborn for instance) and not more than half of the party (rounded down) could be uncommon races (so 2 players in a 5 player party could play uncommon races but the others would have to pick either common or rare). Rare races would be those truly bizarre races (Shardminds, Deva). Only one person in the party can be a member of a rare race.

As a DM I'd never do this, but then I've never had the problem of too many players picking 'outlandish' races. My problem is often the reverse: No one is interested in playing anything but humans!

As a player I wouldn't like this. Either ban the races or allow them without restrictions.

What I'd do is this: If a rare race is indeed rare in a setting, I'd demand a clever backstory from the player. I'd also make sure there are plenty of roleplaying challenges for the rare pcs. People will react differently to a party of drow, gnolls, and tieflings, than to a party of humans and half-elves. Play it up and make it a significant part of your adventure design.

 

[interwyrm]

The optimal situation IMO is to find out what the players want, and then work with them. You want to play a shardmind? Ok, I'll construct my setting to heavily feature shardminds.

You like the gnome race, but want to instead play a small lizardfolk race with camouflage? Done, gnomes out, skinks in.

As the DM you have a lot of power to change fluff to something that better suits your group.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

It would be interesting to map the different player "types" -- as in the Robin Laws definition -- to the different ways of defining a character.

Because I enjoy tactical play, I tend to first pick a class which has a tactical dimension I have not yet explored. Next, I pick a race that allows me to most fully explore that class. So far, that has meant dwarf, human, human, half-orc, halfling and human, plus a couple of single-session characters (elf, human).

My latest character has a new twist -- she actually has a family that is alive, not in captivity, not out to kill her, not estranged and living in the campaign area. To me, that will be more of a role-playing challenge than any outlandish skin color, ectomorphic build, horns, mental ability or mystical heritage could ever be.

And who knows -- maybe one of these days I will play a male character and turn the tables on the guys who always play females... Unique RP challenges do not begin and end with race.

 

[Cormacolinde]

Strangely enough, I've had the inverse problem. My players have been mostly humans, with an Eladrin and a Kalashtar in the mix, but the Kalashtar was raised by humans. We recently got a Goliath to replace a human and he sticks out a lot

Following that, I've used a similar nomenclature to your system of common, uncommon and rare races for my world. I've also given the players some anthropological information about population of the different regions of the world in which we play, so I can tell them about them seeing a lot of dragonborn in certain areas which can appear more alien, but not too much since they come from a region which has a lot of small villages and cities with "alien" populations spread around.

Interestingly enough, they are also fighting an Empire which is mostly humans and eladrins who are slightly xenophobic so this is all extremely interesting

 

[hafrogman]

It would be interesting to map the different player "types" -- as in the Robin Laws definition -- to the different ways of defining a character.

I expect you'd find that the way people design their characters is very much tied to their personalities and play styles. I'm a very visual person, so I like having pictures of my characters. Given that I'm a terrible artist (and can't stand, "I look like this, but different"), this means I find a picture first and design a character to match. This tends towards a lot of humans and closely human (elf, dwarf, half-elf, halfling, etc.) races, as there's just a lot more art like that out there.

I think the original question boils down to a question of who you're playing with. But the system as it is seems pretty loose, not much of a limit. If they want to be a motley crew, you'll end up with exactly the limits. Unless your group is very large this'll be something like three out of five being uncommon or rare. Doesn't seem very restrictive at all.

Friction tends to arise from differences. It's always a little odd if I'm the lone human in a sea of half-dragon quicklings and were-wombats and suchforth. If you have a story you want to tell that involves the players existing within a society, ask them to work with you and pick races to match. If all your players each want to be one of a kind misfits, the last of a dying race, work with them and tell a story about the most unlikely assortment of creatures to ever hold a sword. Switch back and forth between the styles as it suits your group.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I'm a very visual person, so I like having pictures of my characters. Given that I'm a terrible artist (and can't stand, "I look like this, but different"), this means I find a picture first and design a character to match.

That's really interesting -- I wonder how many people do it that way.

My own method is tied to the question "How do I want to spend my time (as a player) during the game?" (And the point is that this changes from one game to the next.)

My two most recent characters are a human warlord and a halfling rogue. The former is designed to explore how a "generous" character can make everyone else better, while the latter is designed to let me try playing a glib "face" character with a side order of sneakiness. Both concepts are new to me. In each case the race just makes sense -- it is both consistent with the archetype and empowering in that it lets me explore the concept with more options.