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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Stew" data-source="post: 6153031" data-attributes="member: 23484">The article is sensible in differentiating between low-level humanoids and more exotic monster races, and I am a bit surprised there is not a bigger gap in player preference between including the former but not the latter.I have no interest in playing a Drow, but I recognize there are players who do, and so I use that as my benchmark.  If Drow are in, then I would want the game to support PC options for orcs, gnolls, lizard folk, kobolds, and the goblinoids (gob, hobgoblin, and bugbear).  That is my personal list; I have played them all (mainly in 3.5), and it has been rewarding not just for myself to have them included. all of these should be mechanically more simple than a Drow. I can live with a game without PC centaurs, but this for me represents the minimum that should be available for PCs, as an option from the start. or each of them, I can easily imagine a rich culture and conceive a variety of individuals I would want in the world.Incorporating them requires negotiating some issues that make them different than the standard core races, though none of these are actual impediments in my view.1. Alignment. Most of these are evil races by default. This is trivial, of course: if members of a good race can choose to be evil (in a game with alignment), then the reverse should obviously be possible.2. Abilities. traditionally, most of these races have been presented as stupid and ugly (low INT and CHA). this is limiting for would-be players, and is simply a design choice. It leads to foolish situations where an Orc or gnoll is less intimidating than an average halfling, and is easily avoided by not building in penalties or irrationally low values in default monster presentation.3. Weakness. For goblins and kobolds especially, the possibility that they just don't measure up to other races is a given that does not need a remedy. As long as they can do something not available to other PC races, the rewards for a suboptimal choice remain, and there will be players who want to explore that kind of inherent disadvantage.4. Power. For other races (lizard folk, bugbear, and gnoll in my list), the sense that they are physically larger than other races is the only problem that needs to be solved. In 3.5, the solution for all of these was a combination of monstrous HD and a +1 LA, and this solution was not balanced across the levels. in my view, the reason was that the designers did not sufficiently acknowledge the penalty that having 2 or 3 monstrous HD introduced when they were the initial levels. Simply removing the LA was part of a solution, but it still meant that most monstrous characters were unable to achieve training in basic skills they needed, because skill points were so front-loaded at first level (a problem I once called the Clever Gnoll on these boards). as it turns out, 5e has bypassed this issue, and so the question remains how to reckon the increased bulk of, say, a bugbear in a first level PC. with the play test materials we have now, we simply are not in a position to articulate a solution to this.Why?A robust solution will require an understanding of multiclassing rules, if any. it mat be sufficient to simply say "most gnoll PCs have the equivalent of two levels of barbarian or ranger" - a general statement establishing a norm that puts PCs on a familiar scale, and from which players may choose to deviate if they want to make a gnoll cleric.  perhaps it is even a requirement: gnolls must take two levels of fighter, ranger, barbarian, or rogue before they can advance in any other class. limiting, but sensible. it may make sense to re-introduce generic levels in humanoid for bulky races, but the richer the.multiclassing options, the more limiting this becomes. (This is a non-obvious correlation, but one I strongly believe to be true.)These four basic issues (only three of which apply to any of the races I am discussing) suggest how little is needed to make more PC humanoid races available without negatively impacting the default game.  I am not saying they should be in the PHB, but as an option at the back of the MM seems a sensible and reasonable place for something that will appeal to many players without upsetting the overall balance of a game.</blockquote>

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