Races You Always/Never Use

[Herobizkit]

Races I've seen in action: Warforged, Thri-Kreen, Goliath, Tengu, Changeling, Dwarf, Eladrin, one of the Longtooths (can't remember which). I think I also played a pre-gen human once.

Races I have no wish to play: Gnome, Human.

Races that I've seen in other (non-4e) games: Pretty much all of 'em. Most recent non-4e game I ran had a Drow, Duergar, Gnoll and Goblin playing against type to be heroes in a dark and broken wasteland.

 

[Taed]

One race that I've wanted to play but haven't (though I could see it being useful for a Lair Assault or somesuch) is a Kobold, though the "official" race's shifty power is much lamer than the "unofficial" one.

Pixies have become popular in our Lair Assault outings, and there's two of them in my regular group of 9 or so.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I usually like playing non-humans, especially halflings and elves. When we first started playing in 2nd Ed. we were okay with turning races from the Monstrous Manual into player races. Back then I played a bugbear, a half-ogre, a tabaxi, a grippli, and a minotaur. My friends played an arcane, a thrikreen, a giff, an urd, a minotaur, and a firbolg. (Those were spread across four parties and included a healthy mix of the traditional races.) I definitely want to play a pixie if our next 4E campaign has them in it.

 

[GreyICE]

Monster manual races are all rare, but that is as it should be. Races that don't see much play:

Shardmind - Yeah, this.
Gnome - For all the whining about lack of gnomes in PHB1... no one seems to play em. Surprise rating: zero.
Deva - Might be a group thing, but these seem unpopular
Wildkin - Plant-based races are a nonstarter for some reason.
Newer races - No one seems to want these. Probably a combination of them being really niche (Satyr? Sure, I totally want to play a horny goat guy) and lousy feat support

 

[Moorcrys]

Races I played/like: humans, gnomes, tieflings, eladrin, half-orcs.

I just never got into halflings or war forged. Other than that, I tend to shy away from races that make me feel like I'm running around in some sort of fantasy carnival... Shardminds, satyrs, pixies.

I like the idea of wilden but that is one instance where the
art concept and execution completely turned me off to the race - they look like rejects from Cats! The Musical, not plant people.

 

[thewok]

At our table, we tend to have a lot of humans and elves of various types. It's also rare to have a campaign go by without a gnome PC or gnome NPCs. Tieflings are also somewhat popular, having been in the majority of our campaigns played since 4E released.

What do we never use? Half-orcs. They rarely even appear as NPCs. A lot of 4E races never make it in, though I try to let one of the rarer ones show up once in a while. We had one guy who played dwarves pretty religiously, but he joined the Navy and got stationed elsewhere. Anyone else playing a dwarf just seems wrong, but they do show up often as NPCs.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I like the idea of wilden but that is one instance where the art concept and execution completely turned me off to the race - they look like rejects from Cats! The Musical, not plant people.

Aw man, I couldn't agree more! I love the concept and I know that I there's nothing stopping me from imagining how they look differently but it's always in the back of my mind and I can't get past it.

 

[Jhaelen]

I like the idea of wilden but that is one instance where the
art concept and execution completely turned me off to the race - they look like rejects from Cats! The Musical, not plant people.

Yup. I would have liked them if they'd looked like the wood woad or like the Sylvans in Dark Age of Camelot.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I play a lot of Changelings and Thri-Kreen, and Half-Elves for some reason. (I think because I like Bardlocks.) As always, I enjoy playing either kind of Gith.