D&D General What Races/Species do you think are missing from Dungeons and Dragons?

[Quickleaf]

Familiars.

 

[Jaiken]

Familiars.

Interesting idea. How would you do familiars in Dungeons and Dragons if they were playable?

 

[jmartkdr2]

I agree about dog-people. Heck, they're one of the oldest fantasy races - the ancient Romans talked about them! You could throw in wolf-people and jackal- and coyote-people as variants/subraces/refluffs.

I'm also surprised that I haven't seen a UA for kemonomimi (lit. "animal ears") aka anime furries. Especially kitsune*, who have a lot of interesting lore, but it would be really easy to extend to all sorts of other types like cats, dogs, tanuki, bears, etc. (I can imagine them struggling to get something past 70% approval, but the lack of trying seems odd to me.)

* or better yet gumiho, although if you have both that's even more interesting lore

Also plant people seems like a major fantasy trope that they haven't addressed in a while (they had them in 4e).

 

[Yaarel]

It's not at will, but that's how the Small Fairy works in 5e.

There is no balance reason to avoid at-will. Tiny has perks, situationally, and is modest. And switching Size back-and-forth would be fun.

Plus, this is what Shakespeare fairy do. The fairies are normal human size (most are children but some are young adults). Then they go hide inside an acorn.

 

[Yaarel]

5e Shifter can be dog people.

Maybe the 2024 Aasimar can sometimes be, if from Guardinal extraction.

 

[Minigiant]

Spiderman

 

[Hriston]

Do you want the pixies and sprites to be tiny races/species?

Yes, I’m thinking 24” to 30” tall on average. In 5E they’d be tiny just like the monsters.

 

[Dustin Cooper]

This probably won't be a popular option, but I'd like more options that aren't human shaped. Creatures like the displacer beast, owlbear, and blink dog are iconic, and while you'd have to do some rebalancing and maybe figure out rules for a character that doesn't have hands, I'd appreciate the opportunity for weirder options like that.

 

[Clint_L]

Can we stop using the term “races” to describe different species? There’s a reason this game finally moved on from it (other TTRPGs have done so for awhile).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Genasi are the only popular species missing from the 2024 Players Handbook.

I am still waiting to see a truly Large player species.

Unfortunately, any game that includes melee attack ranges is going to be leery of creating an actually Large player race. Going from "I can strike 8 squares, or 24 with reach" to "I can strike 12 squares, or 32 with reach" is a HUGE buff for melee and completely useless (or even detrimental) for anyone that drops unfriendly AoEs, including other people in your party. That kind of wildly build-specific power, where it's phenomenal in one specific way and weak/terrible for anything else, does not play nicely with most ideas of game balance.

I'm not saying it can't be done. Just that "increase your melee target area by 50% and turn 10' wide hallways into hard chokepoints and 20' wide ones into soft chokepoints" is really, really powerful. That would generally mean the whole rest of the race probably needs to be ribbons and penalties, and would very likely be stuck typecast for melee bruisers (Fighters, Paladins, maybe Monks for grapple shenanigans, almost never casters).

There's a reason 4e gave us a Tiny race, but did not give us a Large race. Large matters that much.