D&D 5E (2024) Which races would YOU put into the 50th anniversary Players Handbook?

[Greg K]

In order:

1. Because race essentialism is a false and pernicious ideology IRL that has done much harm to a lot of people, and things which perpetuate it should be altered so they do not do so. Also, because real variability in actual living creatures is more than sufficient to make beings who fit anywhere on the "this is something a mortal being can be" spectrum, thus it is not merely laudable, but truly more realistic to embrace that variability in playable characters.* Playable characters, I would note, that are already going to be weird for their race no matter what, because most people don't have class levels.

Well, first of all, the idea of Races among humans is itself an arbitrary social construct created by Northern Europeans and Western Europeans and used to justify colonialism and slavery. There is only one race among humans and what people mistakingly refer to race is actually ethnicity. The arbitrariness of races among human is evident when one considers that several groups now considered "white" were not always considered "white" and, in the U.S. one group, currently, considered non-white was "briefly" considered "white" on the U.S. Census during the 20th Century.
In the game, all human ethnicities fall under the race: human. Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, Lizardfolk, etc. are not humans

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, first of all, the idea of Races among humans is itself an arbitrary social construct created by Northern Europeans and Western Europeans and used to justify colonialism and slavery. There is only one race among humans and what people mistakingly refer to race is actually ethnicity. The arbitrariness of races among human is evident when one considers that several groups now considered "white" were not always considered "white" and, in the U.S. one group, currently, considered non-white was "briefly" considered "white" on the U.S. Census during the 20th Century.
In the game, all human ethnicities fall under the race: human. Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Halflings, Lizardfolk, etc. are not humans

They aren't, no. But we can use the population dynamics of actual humans to consider what the population dynamics of non-human species would be.

And the fact of the matter is, actual humans are much, MUCH too variable to put into boxes like this. We cover vast swathes. We contain multitudes. We cannot be put into boxes unless we are dead and buried. That is my point: the real, existing, measurable variability within humans is already VASTLY more than +2 to one stat or -1 to one stat or whatever else. ENORMOUSLY more. If natural human variability is already so high, and all mortal races are confined to the finite span of 3-to-20 stats, then whatever central tendency there might be, it will not be strong enough to prevent weird outliers.

When you couple this fact with the necessary truth that adventurers are necessarily weird outliers, you get the unavoidable conclusion that, whatever their species' central tendency and standard deviation might be, adventurers are (almost literally) cut from a different cloth. Whatever the statistics which represent their species as a whole will fail to accurately describe the sub-population of "adventurers," because "adventurers" are by definition meaningfully different from the overall population of their species.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Because most people intrinsically know how to play one?

I feel like the last few years cast that into doubt.

 

[Cadence]

But they aren't necessarily stronger than halflings, are they? A halfling can hit 20 Strength just like a goliath can. And whether you use point-buy stats, or roll-and-assign, or even strict-rolled stats, the gap between a halfling and a goliath will never be more than 4 levels' worth of training (to get the next ASI.) In fact, a fresh-faced level 1 halfling can easily have 5 points higher Strength than a goliath does, a noticeable difference. (I don't know why you would make a goliath with minimum Strength, but it's entirely doable; perhaps wanting to be a more durable Wizard or something.) And even if you compare a goliath with high strength to one without, even with rolled stats so a starting 20 is possible, it will never take more than 3 ASIs to catch up--at which point the halfling and goliath are completely equal purely through training.

And then, from there, natural variability is already a thing that exists. Michael Phelps is physically stronger and hardier than most human beings because his genetics are slightly different (his red blood cells are smaller but more numerous, for example, so his blood is more efficient at carrying in oxygen and nutrients and carrying away waste.) Mozart was an absolute musical genius who got started at age 5. Gauss was likewise a mathematical genius who (at least apocryphally) was proving meaningful results in grade school. Meanwhile, some folks have dyscalculia or dyslexia or dyspraxia or a host of things that impede learning, or have physical weakness outside the bounds of normal, or suffer from a congenitally weak constitution, or absolutely chronic foot-in-mouth disease ( ), etc., etc. Factors that can easily push someone well outside the "norm" for their physiology.

So...we aren't actually ending up with goliaths who are consistently stronger than halflings, not even when training is accounted for. And there are plenty of reasons why an individual person's physiological/neurological situation might be better or worse than is typical for their species. What, then, is actually gained from having players forced to use these statistics?

I can see the argument that NPCs should trend toward these things, because NPCs are generally sampled from the population overall, so there's enough of them for individual quirkiness to be washed out by the masses. I don't see how one can get to requiring that absolutely all PCs strictly adhere to this.

Edit: And your example kinda gives the game away here, doesn't it? You're using something where the difference is not a factor of two or three, but a factor of one hundred. There is no PC race that weighs 100x as much as another. The absolute heaviest goliath (~440 lb) weighs only slightly more than 10x as much as the lightest halfling (37 lb.) In a world of magic. Where anyone with 16 Str can have a decent chance to chokeslam a dragon that is the size of a literal actual bus.

Right. And so there is no reason my 37 lb. Human* with the librarian background shouldn't be as strong as your 300lb. Human with the dock worker background. Both can start with the same 17 and pretty soon both will have the same 20 and be able to carry 300lbs. Same for the Dexterity of my friend's 5' tall 100 lb archer/acrobat and your friend's 6' tall 385 lb orchid grower/gourmand. In a magical world working in the library stacks is a great way to build up muscle and eating a huge variety of good foods and growing flowers** keeps.one quick and agile.

*Now that adult humans can finally be small in game by RAW. All four human sizes here are well within IRL ranges and so are certainly within what can be found in a magical world.

** Nero Wolfe is the famous gourmet/orchid growing example. Odd looking back and seeing that 1/7th of a ton was considered quite large when it was written. Updated it a bit here.

 

[Scribe]

A halfling can hit 20 Strength just like a goliath can.

And thats a problem to me.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Because most people intrinsically know how to play one?

I didn't realize there was a correct way.

 

[nevin]

human,
elves
dwarves
halflings
orcs
aaracrokra
Cat folk
rules for creating Assimar, teifling,planetouched characters but not creating them as races.
merfolk.

 

[Cadence]

And thats a problem to me.

One site says the old V&V carrying capacity formula was:
([S/10]^3+E/10) x body weight/2
where S is Strength and E would be Constitution in D&D.

Something akin to that, using carrying capacity for deciding tests of strength, and making weapon damage and wieldability depend on size would make me not care. I guess that would make Strength into some sort of Fitness? (I'm not sure it's even vaguely worth the effort.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And thats a problem to me.

So...you have a problem with the other rules that already exist in the game...and that's your justification for not changing some other part of it in a way that is more consistent with actual IRL population statistics and which eliminates the traces of legitimately problematic ideologies from D&D?

It sounds to me like you just want ability scores to be something they never were in 5e, and you're pushing back against things that are recognizing what ability scores always were in this system.

 

[reelo]

Human

Other races (Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling) are found in the Class-list. [emoji28]

Seriously though, I'd go with

Human
Dwarf
Elf
Gnome (replacing Halflings)

done.