[UPDATED] Most D&D Players Prefer Humans - Without Feats!

I've played in games that don't allow multiclassing, but never games that don't allow feats. Go figure.

 

[Hussar]

One thing surprises me. Humans are the most popular race, so most players are using the non-feat human?

Heh, in my eyes, the non-feat human verges on unplayable. The feat human is decent.

But I guess that is Crawfords overall point. Most players dont care about power.

Heh. Different strokes. I'd never even consider playing the feat human. The stat bonuses are just too good. Being able to bump virtually every stat into the positive (save one) is a major selling point AFAIC. A single feat just isn't worth it.

 

[Hussar]

My group certainly fits into the mainstream. Of our 20 ish characters across four campaigns, about 80% of them have been humans. Now, we do use feats, so, that sees a fair bit of use, but, again, ASI's are pretty common as well.

I wonder, as well, if the more widespread use of stat buy or standard array chargen isn't having an impact here too. In the past, you wouldn't need ASI's, because people often were... creative ... in their die rolling for their character. What's the point of an ASI if your prime stat is already 20 at 1st level? But, I think that because we're seeing a lot more point buy with a max of 16 or 17 in the prime stat and probably a 14 or 15 in the secondary, ASI's are a lot more useful.

Feats are cool, but, I think that the reason we're not seeing a lot of hand wringing over trying to "fix" feats like the +5/-10 feats, for example, is that many groups simply aren't having an issue with them.

 

[Kramodlog]

I started playing D&D with 2nd edition and feats didn't exist back then and my friends and I loved that edition. It took us time to even consider looking into 3rd edition. But once we looked into it, feats widen a window that was already there with kits. Kits were made available in the class brown books. Like the very important The Complete Fighter's Hanbook. Kits let you personalize a character with a very specific background and motivations based on a character's class or race. Feats did the same in 3.X, but with more dept and balance... ish.

I can understand why many people will go for the simplicity of "no feats". Most people do not play D&D for years and do not dive deep into the rules. Feats had complexity to a game some want to be casual. But for those who do want complexity, feats have been made available. WotC shouldn't take then away and should continue developping them. Getting rid of feats because an unspecified majority do not use them would antagonize a good part of the D&D fan base. Like some changes that 4th brought did.

 

[Jester David]

Crawford: "We have never witnessed a correlation between (a) power in the game and (b) which races are most popular."
...
"Another piece of D&D data: a majority of D&D characters don't use feats."

Most of the Commentators: "Yeah, most people don't use feats. ASIs are stronger than most and many builds don't rely on them."

Me: Face-palm.

 

[Dausuul]

Y'all do realize that "most D&D players prefer humans without feats" is emphatically not what Crawford said, right? He said humans are played more than any other one race. And he said that a majority of D&D characters don't use feats.

According to the D&D Beyond numbers that came out a couple of months ago, 25% of PCs are human, 16% are elf, 10% are dwarf. That's consistent with what Crawford says here: Humans are way beyond any other single race, and humans, elves, and dwarves together make up a majority (51%) of all PCs.

But 25% human still means 75% non-human. Most D&D players don't even prefer humans, let alone humans-without-feats.

 

[Shasarak]

Well obviously Players prefer making Human characters. That is just what happens when you dont include Warforged as an option.

 

[Shasarak]

One of the best features of 0e-1e-2e is that, with a very few exceptions, there are no feats.

3e introduced feats, which along with almost unrestricted multiclassing brought about the horrible concept of the "character build", where mechanics (crunch) took over from characterization (fluff). 4e changed up the mechanics but it didn't help much.

If you never played 1e/2e then I could see how you may imagine 3e introduced the "character build"

 

[Lanefan]

If you never played 1e/2e then I could see how you may imagine 3e introduced the "character build"

I never played 2e but I've got 35+ years of more-or-less-modified 1e under my belt; along with a whack of 3e. And yes, mechanical build was both way more important and way more emphasized in 3e than in 1e.

 

[epithet]

I have to wonder how those stats would change if he were to magically gain access to the characters from peoples' home games. I would conjecture that even the stats from Fantasy Grounds would change the ratios a bit. I think that there could be a correlation between people who prefer a simple character and people whose characters can be counted by Jeremy.

It would surprise me to learn that most people in "old fashioned" D&D games--the ones played among friends in somebody's living room--don't typically play with feats. For my group, coming from Pathfinder and having played since AD&D, there was never even a discussion about it, I think it never occurred to anyone that feats weren't an essential character building asset.

 

[Arial Black]

Heh. Different strokes. I'd never even consider playing the feat human. The stat bonuses are just too good. Being able to bump virtually every stat into the positive (save one) is a major selling point AFAIC. A single feat just isn't worth it.

I'm of the opposite opinion.

Take a feat (AND an extra skill), where the extra feat is perfect for your PC (because you chose it to be) and may even give you a +1 to your primary, secondary or tertiary stat...

OR

...at the cost of a feat and a skill, add +1 to each of the 3 or 4 stats that you don't care about?

No contest. Variant human wins (almost) every time. In fact, the only time I would consider a non-variant human is if I want a barbarian, and forced to use point-buy, and want three 16s at first level, so my stats are 16/16/16/9/9/9.

But even then I would probably choose a feat that added +1 to one of the three physical stats, because 16/16/16/9/9/9 is objectively worse than 16/16/16/8/8/8 with an extra skill and half feat.

What I find curious is that the two claims (humans are the most common PC race, most play without feats) seem to be contradictory (for 5e, anyway) because humans are the only race that can start with a feat.

Some possible explanations:-

* perhaps most D&D players in the world are new to the game and haven't started to read all the game mechanics or realised the possible combinations, so they (foolishly) play non-variant humans

* some DMs don't like feats, so their players aren't allowed to like use them either

* feats are rarely available because they are once every 4 levels (rarer for most multi-class PCs), and there is evolutionary pressure to make your main stat 20 and most games end at low levels

* JC's data includes many/all editions of D&D, so the editions that never had feats dilute the data

In my current campaign my PC is the only human; the rest are: wood elf, tiefling, dragonborn.

In my last campaign, my PC was an aasimar who looked/disguised himself as a human; the rest were: gnome, shield dwarf, tabaxi, kenku.

A friend at work has heard of D&D for a while, and her son just offered to run her first game. She's going to play a tiefling cleric. As you can tell, optimisation is not a factor. Nor are the rest of the game mechanics to be honest. If newer players don't care much about the mechanics then feats won't matter to them.