D&D 5E Super exotic races?

[nomotog]

How exotic is too exotic for a player race? I have been pondering a setting with just a ludicrous amount of racial diversity where you would have telepathic goldfish doing business with demons and drakes. Just any crazy/fun race idea gets thrown in. The question is would it be possible to have a PC party where each member is radically a different race. Can it be balanced? Can it be fun? How much diversity is too much?

Then as a fun aside, feel free to post your most out there race idea.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

I love to play wacky characters. Over in the Playing the Game forum, I'm playing a franken-modron (a modron that was taken apart and cobbled back together into a humanoid form - using warforged stats) in a Planescape campaign and a latent psionic immature troll in a 3.5 campaign using an old Goodman Games module.

That said, wacky characters tend to work best when they are the oddball in a group of relatively normal characters (or, at least normal for the setting...that Planescape campaign I mentioned is full of weirdness but its Planescape so it works).

 

[jgsugden]

It can be balanced - it just takes more work from the DM. If you're willing to put it in, it is just fine. If you don't work to make sure the balance is maintained, it can be imbalanced and result in a 'stars and scrubs' type game... which might still work for your player group.

However, I encourage you to ask your players if the setting sounds like fun and then to welcome their honest feedback. DMs often have great ideas for games - that are only great for them. You have to make sure the game is fun for you o run and for your players to enjoy. This runs the risk of being a game you enjoy running that players find confusing.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

My one suggestion is that, if your world has doors, then any race which is incapable of opening an unlocked door is probably inappropriate for a PC.

 

[neobolts]

I once wanted to play as a rock. A telepathic, telekinetic rock about the size of a baseball. I did not get to play the rock.

 

[nomotog]

Not sure I can top a telepathic goldfish but after reading the mouseguard comics and RPG I think adding in a tiny mouse race to a world would be fun. Might be a little strange seeing a mouse warrior with 20 strength but it would be hilarious having the giant party (i.e. the normal medium sized party) getting ambushed and captured by mice.

Other ideas:
A sentient gas cloud.
A symbiotic race (like the trill on star trek) or a parasitic race (like the gould on star gate).
Elves with beards who adventure with beardless dwarves (Okay, not really serious option but can you imagine Gimli with no beard and Legolas with a thick, luxurious blonde beard?)
Flip open to a random page in the Monster Manual, whatever it opens to is now a PC race.

I really like that gas cloud idea. They could have the ability to pick up and move other gases, so like they could carry around a poison cloud to kill, or maybe put on a smoke cloud to sneak. You could make a really cool rouge with different specialized clouds.

I thought about that symbiotic race idea too. It's neat. A little tricky though because you would kind of be playing your host creature with a modifier. Not that crazy mechanically. Maybe if they were literally infectious so they could spread out in many bodies. Sounds impossible to balance. So fun.

It can be balanced - it just takes more work from the DM. If you're willing to put it in, it is just fine. If you don't work to make sure the balance is maintained, it can be imbalanced and result in a 'stars and scrubs' type game... which might still work for your player group.

However, I encourage you to ask your players if the setting sounds like fun and then to welcome their honest feedback. DMs often have great ideas for games - that are only great for them. You have to make sure the game is fun for you o run and for your players to enjoy. This runs the risk of being a game you enjoy running that players find confusing.

I know. Some times players can be buzz kills with new ideas. I have had a few ideas shot down my them, but I still like thinking of them.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Planescape, oh yes! And Oathbound, where your "telepathic goldfish" are actually telekinetic jellyfish called ceptu who pursue a colonial-style "improvement" of the landbound races (with all the condescending paternalism that implies).

It's not hard, you just need to make use of a "mechanics-first" perspective (something like 4e was good for this...5e you might want to just go super mechanics-light on the races).

One thing that is easy to do in 5e - mechanically, every race is the "alt human", +1 to to ability scores and a feat. But that might describe anything from telekinetic jellyfish to angels to rogue modrons to talking wolves to whatever else you might think of.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't like to stray far from the medium or smaller humanoid mold. Now that certainly includes monstrous humanoids to a certain degree. I'll allow a "large" monstrous humanoid for technical reasons (like a drider or centaur or low-half-of-a-snake types) but not allow ettins and giants or large half-dragons(medium half-dragons are ok and the template in the 5th MM is pretty tame). I've already converted several races from Ba*tards and Bloodlines that fit this bill for my game and am working on a fitting high-magic highly fantastical setting for them.

 

[Zardnaar]

Any race that is not in the AD&D PHB and is not something basic like an Orc, Goblin or Hobgoblin is exotic in our games. Aasimar, Drow etc are kind of rare, Dragonborn, Warforged, Kender may as well not exist.

 

[SoulsFury]

My campaign setting is based around what each group who has played in it. The characters backgrounds built the setting and everytime a new group is started, the setting is expanded. So if they want to play something off the wall, I generally let them. One character had an elven werescorpion which led to shifters basically being second generation lycans in the setting.