What 3E Core Races have you used and LIKED?

[thundershot]

With all the talk about 4E races getting cut, I'm curious what races you've used and liked from the core rules.

Myself, if I'm ever a player (or using a party NPC), I actually prefer humans and elves. It's hard to take halflings & gnomes seriously, and I've just never played a dwarf or half-elf before. My wife has a mad on for half-elves for some reason. I tried telling her that they suck, but she likes the idea that there's no ability penalties. I told her to use a human then, but she likes the little extra elven abilities. Ah well... hopefully 4E will make my wife's inevitable 4E half-elf cool.



Chris

 

[Wik]

When I play, it's usually (in order) Human, Half-Elf, Dwarf, or halfling. And that seems to generally be the preference of our gaming group. I think I've seen all of one half-orc, and even fewer elves and gnomes in our group.

 

[Drowbane]

dwarf, halfling, and human.
3e elves are pretty meh.

And I'd rather play "another damn human" before considering one of the other three.

Just say Gno.

 

[Agamon]

Never made a gnome, half-elf or half-orc, but I'm usually the DM, so I haven't made a whole lot of PCs.

 

[Greg K]

I play humans. In my campaign all the phb races were used except half orc which doesn't exist in my campaign world.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

never used a gnome or a half orc

 

[Branduil]

I certainly hope 4E does something to encourage more people to play non-human races. I think many players already have an inclination to play humans because of the role-playing flexibility and freedom, and the stats advantage only exacerbates that.

 

[Sound of Azure]

In order of preference: human, halfling, dwarf, gnome, elf. Never played a half-elf or half-orc in 3e. Aasimar and tieflings are more appealing than those two in my mind.

 

[Greg K]

I certainly hope 4E does something to encourage more people to play non-human races. I think many players already have an inclination to play humans because of the role-playing flexibility and freedom, and the stats advantage only exacerbates that.

I want more people to play humans.

 

[Nyeshet]

I've never really seen the point of half races.

I can accept Half-Orcs only because I replace all Orcs with Half-Orcs, such that "Orc" has been redefined. That leaves Half-Elf, which I typically leave out.

How can a Half Elf truly be the diplomatic bridge that the developers at WotC seem to want it to be?

Elves live for centuries. To them the Half-Elf is almost pitiable. It live for not quite two centuries, it has inferior senses, and so forth. I see elves as pitying the half-elf, not looking to the half elf as a bridge for understanding and interacting with humans.

Humans, on the other hand, I see envying the half-elf for its long life span, yet distrusting the half elf for its alien elven heritage - in appearance, perhaps even in culture if it were raised by elves. While I can see some humans trying to take advantage of half-elves to get an in on elven trade, more often I see humans looking upon half-elves with suspicion and envy. Again, I do not see half-elves having a diplomatic role.

Then again, with half-orcs having replaced orcs IMCWs, this means that half-elves are by far the rarest of the core races - equivalent in rareness to planar beings such as tieflings, aasimars, and genasi. As such, I tend to think that they should be dropped as a race. That 4th Edition is not only not dropping them but is adding Tiefling as a core race - and supposedly dropping one or two of the current core races, just seems very odd to my view of things. :\