D&D (2024) The 10 Species in "Your Ideal 2024 PHB"

[Corinnguard]

The guardinals never made sense to me. Spend five minutes at a furry con and you'll know there's nothing neutral good going on there.

How did spending five minutes at a furry con lead you to this particular conclusion?

 

[Voadam]

Likewise, elves and gnomes were the basically the same. It was just a matter of whether they were small-fey or medium-fey.

In 3e I had gnomes and elves as distinctly separate species but both were humanoid subtype fey as well as their race and spoke dialects of sylvan. House ruling them to be more fey was fairly easy.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I will say that this is what Monte Cook did in his Arcana Evolved game, though I believe he also did it much earlier for his Ptolus campaign setting for testing 3e. You will need to consult the Ptolus sage @Whizbang Dustyboots on that. He created a race called the Faen. The Faen had two subtypes - Quickling and Loresong - which correspond approximately to the Halfling and Gnome. There was also no elf race in AU/AE, so the Faen filled that niche too in the setting. Moreover, both the Quickling and Loresong Faen could choose to undergo a magic ritual to become a tiny Spryte.

Although Ptolus is not officially in the same world as Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved, there are a bunch of crossovers/parallel thinking, including the name of the faen race. In Ptolus, officially, the faen are the family tree the elves, gnomes and halflings all descend from, but the ritual changes between them is an AE/AU thing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've never seen anyone say "halflings are my favorite race, but I think they would be better if they were combined with gnomes to make a generic 'small folk' race." If anyone here wants to admit they want their favorite race combined with a bunch of others with similarities, I'd love to hear why.

I love both gnomes and halflings -- I've played one for more than a decade and previously ran an all-halfling campaign -- and have come around to thinking that it's fine to combine them, as Tales of the Valiant sort of does.

I think both ancestries have enough to stand on their own, but it's also clear that they have a lot of similarities, and put under one umbrella, they then become one robust people with lots of elements, including a love of community, a pacifist streak, an affinity for illusion magic and a connection with the natural world, as well as being clever with their hands and mechanical things.

In Ptolus, the general public often gets gnomes and halflings confused and I've leaned into that in my campaign. My head canon -- not really expressed in the game yet -- is that there are a number of "gnomes" the PCs know who are actually halflings and vice-versa.

 

[Chaltab]

There's still an ungodly amount of them. And they are just a balanced as ever. It's just that they're now all on DM's Guild.

Those aren't official. When it comes to official options there are far fewer than the past three editions. That's especially relevant when you're playing with some DMs (or using AL) and restricted to official content.

 

[Scribe]

I've never seen anyone say "halflings are my favorite race, but I think they would be better if they were combined with gnomes to make a generic 'small folk' race." If anyone here wants to admit they want their favorite race combined with a bunch of others with similarities, I'd love to hear why.

I did it in my list.

Human -> Aasimar/Tiefling/Genasi AKA the Planetouched.

There is not a lot of reason why its not possible.

Dragonborn -> Chromatic/Metallic/Gem - Each having the 5 options under that.

If people wanted to get nuts.

Folk > Halflings/Gnomes/Goblins

Its a valid enough approach.

 

[Horwath]

ah i see, so you chose not to follow the rules presented in the OP, in the way almost exactly called out by the OP...

you actually have 28 species options here: 4 species x 7 templates(6+1 untemplated) = 28.

I named 10 species.

I just added opinion what last 6 could be also written outside being base species.

 

[Voadam]

Those aren't official. When it comes to official options there are far fewer than the past three editions. That's especially relevant when you're playing with some DMs (or using AL) and restricted to official content.

5e has not had a lot of official pure player option supplements but they have regularly snuck in a bunch of official player options into different setting and monster books and I think even modules and it has built up quite a bit.

We have official warforged and owl-people and cat people and turtle people and part vampires and centaurs and a lot of monster race options.

 

[Milieu]

1. Human
2. Elf
3. Dwarf
4. Ling
5. Sprite
6. Goblin
7. Myconid
8. Blink dog
9. Half-elf
10. Half-ling

 

[Remathilis]

I love both gnomes and halflings -- I've played one for more than a decade and previously ran an all-halfling campaign -- and have come around to thinking that it's fine to combine them, as Tales of the Valiant sort of does.

I think both ancestries have enough to stand on their own, but it's also clear that they have a lot of similarities, and put under one umbrella, they then become one robust people with lots of elements, including a love of community, a pacifist streak, an affinity for illusion magic and a connection with the natural world, as well as being clever with their hands and mechanical things.

In Ptolus, the general public often gets gnomes and halflings confused and I've leaned into that in my campaign. My head canon -- not really expressed in the game yet -- is that there are a number of "gnomes" the PCs know who are actually halflings and vice-versa.

I think part of the issue is that both races have legendarily been ignored design wise; with Eberron the notable exception. 4e got gnomes perfect (refugees from the feywild) and 3e had the best halfling take (nomadic wanderers and traders) but for whatever reason, people keep putting them back into the tinker gnomes and hobbits roles and they get stuck in that bin (when they're not excluded utterly; both races have been cut more often in official settings than any other except half-orcs).