Top ten races players want to play

[Wiseman]

I made a sort of customizable race a while back. It's not universal, instead limited to making bad-touched people. So you are still "guy with weird family tree".

Many Planetouched have identifiable heritages. Aasimar are descended from celestials, Tieflings from fiends, Genasi from inner planar creatures and so forth. However, some don't. Due to a convoluted history of interbreeding with various supernatural creatures, their heritage becomes quite muddled. Most don't even bother keeping track of their family trees. This is common in planar metropolises like the City of Glass or Sigil (especially the Lower and Hive wards). In places like these, beings from all over the multiverse gather, often leaving legacies behind.

Planetouched such as these exhibit a broad range of abilities and that baffles categorization. Even siblings born to the same two parents can have a completely different set of abilities and appearances.

Planetouched Traits
+2 to two ability scores of their choice. -2 to another.
Medium or Small size
+3 racial bonus to two skills of their choice
Land Speed of 30 feet if medium sized or 20 feet if small sized.
Outsider (Native)
Spell-Like Abilities: 1 first spell off the cleric, druid or wizard spell-list usable 1/day per level and one Zero level spell from the same lists usable at will.
One ability chosen from the list below:
- +10 feet to move speed
- DR3/-
- Scent 30ft.
- 2 Claw attacks as primary natural weapons (1d6 for medium)
- An additional Zero level spell at will
- Resistance 10 to two energy types
- Strength score is doubled for purposes of carry capacity
- +3 bonus to saves against poison
- +3 bonus to saves against disease
- +3 bonus to saves against mind-affecting
- Some other ability along these lines (work with your gaming group)
Automatic Languages: Common and 1 planar language. Bonus Languages: Any

[Username17]

So anyway, the real moral of the story is that the players who wanted to play the Dwarven Cleric and the Halfling Rogue had a much easier time getting their point across than the guy who wanted to play the Dragonborn Paladin. Not because there is anything unclear or worse about the Dragonborn Paladin concept, but simply because that word is ambiguous due to existing in multiple editions under radically different meanings.

If I were to do a list of D&D races for an edition, I would try to make each of the basic races say something about the character that people would want to have said about their character. As I mentioned earlier, I think Human, Orc, Dwarf, Halfling, and Elf do a pretty good job of that. Additional races to be added would have to clear that kind of bar.

Race	Statement
Human	My character is normal and the class abilities are what makes me special.
Dwarf	My character is small, but surprisingly strong and tougher than most.
Halfling	My character is small and stealthy and frequently underestimated.
Elf	My character is beautiful and noble.
Orc	My character is big and strong.
Vampire and/or Werewolf	My character looks normal, but is filled with dark power.
Drow and/or Tiefling	My character is beautiful and badass, but people hate and/or fear them in town.
Some Furry and/or Lizardfolk	My character is a furry. Strong and bestial and not human looking.

Now there is clearly room for a group of races with strong personal statements. Vampire, Gnoll, and Gnoll would be strong choices. But we also have to remember the Gnome Rule: a race that appeared in a previous edition that resonated with only 5% of the players has at least one fan in 26% of the tables. Cutting PHB races from previous editions is a recipe to piss people right the fuck off even if those races were marginal and rarely got played in the edition they were from. That means that Gnome, Tiefling, and yes even Dragonborn are things you have to find a place for even though those races have backstories that are incredibly confusing and contradictory across editions.

Although I think it's OK to rename Dragonborn back to Draconian, which is a better name.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

Humans tend to have versatility or adaptability as their key characteristic. Or, if you're going full Tolkien/1st edition AD&D, they have actual souls as opposed to spirits.

[Username17]

Humans tend to have versatility or adaptability as their key characteristic. Or, if you're going full Tolkien/1st edition AD&D, they have actual souls as opposed to spirits.

The key is that when you select "Human" as your adjective you are choosing an adjective that doesn't convey any information except that you didn't make any of the selections that would have conveyed information. You could just omit the word "human" from your character description. You could just say "I'm going to play a Decker" or "I'm going to play a Ranger" and the word "Human" would be assumed.

So whatever it is that your game assigns to Humans, it pretty much needs to be that you can double down on being an Assassin or a Wizard or a Street Samurai or whatever the fuck. Whether that's the GURPS method of simply giving you more points to spend on your class abilities or the old Shadowrun method of giving you higher priorities to spend on tertiary class options and thus indirectly give you more points to spend on your class abilities, that's pretty much how it has to work.

A Human Ranger is like saying you're playing a Ranger Ranger. Being Human just makes your concept be more focused on the fact that you are a Ranger.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

Although I think it's OK to rename Dragonborn back to Draconian, which is a better name.

Draconian is a better name, although it might be a job of work to free it from its Dragonlance baggage. You'd need to set up whatever your version was as the default, and then indicate that the 'Dragonlance Draconian' was the setting-specific terrible version. I mean, it is, but you'd still have to convince people.

[Sir Aubergine]

So anyway, the real moral of the story is that the players who wanted to play the Dwarven Cleric and the Halfling Rogue had a much easier time getting their point across than the guy who wanted to play the Dragonborn Paladin. Not because there is anything unclear or worse about the Dragonborn Paladin concept, but simply because that word is ambiguous due to existing in multiple editions under radically different meanings.

If I were to do a list of D&D races for an edition, I would try to make each of the basic races say something about the character that people would want to have said about their character. As I mentioned earlier, I think Human, Orc, Dwarf, Halfling, and Elf do a pretty good job of that. Additional races to be added would have to clear that kind of bar.

Race	Statement
Human	My character is normal and the class abilities are what makes me special.
Dwarf	My character is small, but surprisingly strong and tougher than most.
Halfling	My character is small and stealthy and frequently underestimated.
Elf	My character is beautiful and noble.
Orc	My character is big and strong.
Vampire and/or Werewolf	My character looks normal, but is filled with dark power.
Drow and/or Tiefling	My character is beautiful and badass, but people hate and/or fear them in town.
Some Furry and/or Lizardfolk	My character is a furry. Strong and bestial and not human looking.

Now there is clearly room for a group of races with strong personal statements. Vampire, Gnoll, and Gnoll would be strong choices. But we also have to remember the Gnome Rule: a race that appeared in a previous edition that resonated with only 5% of the players has at least one fan in 26% of the tables. Cutting PHB races from previous editions is a recipe to piss people right the fuck off even if those races were marginal and rarely got played in the edition they were from. That means that Gnome, Tiefling, and yes even Dragonborn are things you have to find a place for even though those races have backstories that are incredibly confusing and contradictory across editions.

Although I think it's OK to rename Dragonborn back to Draconian, which is a better name.

-Username17

Draconian is a superior name; it rolls off the tongue better (especially when you consider the various forms of the two words) and cleaves to conventions related to naming groups of people.

Your chart concisely explains why people want to play as X or Y race. My question is, how does one convince a grognard DM to let you play as any of the races included in the bottom three rows? Or in a general sense, how would a player get their DM (grognard or not) to accept that there are at least some players that aren't enamored with the "Tolkien Three."

[Chamomile]

My question is, how does one convince a grognard DM to let you play as any of the races included in the bottom three rows?

A grognard GM is going to be resistant to anyone who wants to play something not officially sanctioned by Gygax, and Gygax was even pretty passive aggressive towards elves and dwarves and halflings.

Regular GMs reluctant to approve new races might be swayed just by seeing that chart, though. When a player comes up to me with their super special snowflake race, I'm often rolling my eyes before I've even heard the details, because it's very often the case that they don't actually find that race personally appealing, they just want to be special. That, or one of the race's special features combos with an obscure prestige class to create a character several times more powerful than the rest of the party. If you can show me a specific niche you're trying to fill, I'm cool with it.

That said, if a GM is balking at orcs, you've probably just got a problem with someone who's irrationally committed to a certain set of races, and there is no silver bullet argument that will fix that. Warcraft got a feature-length movie and has been the gold standard of MMO success for over a decade now. Anyone who thinks being an orc is a bridge too far is very unlikely to give in on vampires or corgyns.

[Wiseman]

I keep meaning to do a restat of Dragonlance Draconians. There actually a good concept (if you ditch the alignment stuff). Not sure whether I should make a level 1 version of them though.

EDIT: Also, calling them draconians doesn't get people confused with skyrim .

[Blasted]

It seems to me that a resonably obvious compromise is to have "archtypes" or "flavours"
Your primary race, then with added minor change takes a lizardman to a draconian,
or a halfling to a gnome, or elf to drow, etc. More than just the hil dwarf/mountain dwarf of previous editions.
You could probably get by with half a dozen bases with three minor variants each. I strongly suspect that most people are more interested in the aesthetic than most (small) differences.

[PhoneLobster]

Your primary race, then with added minor change takes a lizardman to a draconian, or a halfling to a gnome, or elf to drow, etc. More than just the hil dwarf/mountain dwarf of previous editions.

You could probably get by with half a dozen bases with three minor variants each. I strongly suspect that most people are more interested in the aesthetic than most (small) differences.

Sub variant multiples of some templates to generate some small list of fixed inflexible race stereotypes is basically the same as just having a list of fixed inflexible race stereotypes. And 18 total is... a kinda small number not even than much bigger than 10.

If Hill Dwarves are an inflexible package that does the same thing for every individual character and fucks over sorcerers and rogues or something for no reason and all the other things that inflexible packages of race abilities frequently do wrong then it doesn't matter if you get there via "it was on the list" or "it was on the variant list for the main option from the main list".

It even doesn't especially matter if the list/sub list doesn't call it a hill dwarf at the game rules level but by the time it reaches the table as part of the campaign setting it IS fluffed with "minor asthetic" details into being a Hill Dwarf. It's still just a list with a hill dwarf option saddled with all the same old style inflexible racial stereotype issues.

[Mechalich]

The thing is, in the average fantasy setting species isn't just some random abstraction. In addition to playable options your species choices also dictate the societies and cultures the game world will possess.

Including stereotypical drow, for example, doesn't just mean that players can choose to play black-skinned scimitar wielding pointy-eared Drizzt knock-offs, it means that you've filled the underdark with a matriarchal culture of high gothic spider-worshippers.

Now GMs can, and should, allow players to play characters who come from Continent B or Plane Y (or somewhat more darkly Ghetto M) and have whatever the heck species they want, but the core species available to people who actually live the kingdom or whatever has to be more constrained - otherwise the world degenerates in the same way Eberron did by saying 'everything is here!'

Standard high fantasy Tolkien-foundation worlds (which is most D&D homebrews, the more normalized published settings, and most of the sort of video games that you might try to build a setting around like Dragon Age or Skyrim) have human societies, elf societies, and dwarf societies (and maybe some smallfolk society off to the side somewhere). That seems to be pretty much mandated. Past that you can throw in a couple of extra ones, especially if they're taking up space from other human cultures - like if your steppe nomads are now catfolk - or filling a fantasy-only geographic niche - like having drow in the underdark or merfolk in the ocean.

There's a balancing act to be performed between maximizing player choice and preserving functional worldbuilding.

[PhoneLobster]

Now GMs can, and should, allow players to play characters who come from Continent B or Plane Y (or somewhat more darkly Ghetto M) and have whatever the heck species they want, but the core species available to people who actually live the kingdom or whatever has to be more constrained - otherwise the world degenerates in the same way Eberron did by saying 'everything is here!'

Splitting species and culture options so that some characters can combine them atypically does not prevent you from having most characters in the setting of Species A having Culture B and visa versa.

Permitting individual characters from defying a stereotypical profile does not prevent you from applying a stereotypical profile to whatever majority of characters you might choose to apply it to.

And it would be nice if this was formally and clearly supported by the actual game rules. There are a lot of potential knock on benefits to be had too.

[Username17]

It seems to me that a resonably obvious compromise is to have "archtypes" or "flavours"
Your primary race, then with added minor change takes a lizardman to a draconian,
or a halfling to a gnome, or elf to drow, etc. More than just the hil dwarf/mountain dwarf of previous editions.
You could probably get by with half a dozen bases with three minor variants each. I strongly suspect that most people are more interested in the aesthetic than most (small) differences.

That's two adjectives. That's already too long for normal introductions. People can be Whisper Gnomes or whatever the fuck when they are powergaming or making extreme special snowflake characters. If Dwarf, Halfling and Gnome aren't doing the job of small races, you should add more small races until you got it covered. You could and should add Goblin and or Kobold if you have small character statements you think players will want to make about themselves before you get into palette swap races of short.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

That's two adjectives. That's already too long

Hey look. The ever popular Dark Elves and Half Elves are impossible now. Because adjectives.

What a bold step forward.

[Josh_Kablack]

That's two adjectives. That's already too long

Hey look. The ever popular Dark Elves and Half Elves are impossible now. Because adjectives. forward.

Waitaminit.

"Half" can be an adverb.

[virgil]

That's two adjectives. That's already too long

Hey look. The ever popular Dark Elves and Half Elves are impossible now. Because adjectives. forward.

Waitaminit.

"Half" can be an adverb.

And Dark Elves tend to be called Drow, almost as if the race has been around long enough to generate its own identity.

[PhoneLobster]

an adverb.

That must make it ok then. The same as compound words are apparently OK, since it's apparently fine to say "Dragonborn" you just have to make sure you don't slip up and say "Dragon born" unless it's fine because born might be a simple verb (even though in context it isn't), you know same as you probably can say "Lizardfolk" but if you say "Lizard folk" Frank is going to flip your table and go on a rant about you wasting time with such deeply inefficient language.

[Schleiermacher]

Hey look. The ever popular Dark Elves and Half Elves are impossible now. Because adjectives.

What a bold step forward.

and related garbage

PhoneLobster, how obtuse can you get? Do you actually not understand that Drow and Half-Elves have conceptual identities independent of Elves in a way that the endless varieties of Dwarf, Elf, Gnome and Halfling subraces differentiated only by the descriptor you stick in front do not?

Then try this handy exercise:

Without knowing what system you're playing, what's the difference between a Drow and a garden-variety Elf? Culture, habitat, religion, fashion, favored weapons, the works, right? That's easy.

Now, what's the difference between a Grey Elf and a Sun Elf? A Wild Elf and a Wood Elf? A Mountain Dwarf and a Snow Dwarf? Deep Gnomes and Whisper Gnomes?
Not only do you not know, nobody knows because there is no answer to most of these beyond "game mechanical details" and "they have different art". At best all of these palette swaps are tools provided to inspire DMs to take whichever one or two they like best, do all the real work themselves and then say "Elves in my setting are actually like this." Less charitably they are cruft to pad books and make sales to dumpster divers.

[PhoneLobster]

Without knowing what system you're playing, what's the difference between a Drow and a garden-variety Elf?

Without knowing the system I can tell you for a start that it is rather unlikely they'll be called drow instead of dark elves. Beyond that fuck you no I can't actually tell you what that would mean without knowing the system and by extension the setting, oddly enough D&D knock offs have not been reliably faithful (and frankly should not be that slavishly faithful) in copying details to actually have "dark elf" mean something reliable accross the actual hobby. You are lucky if "Drow" means something reliable at an actual brand name D&D table, and even then it won't mean something to half the table unless they are proper neck beards like us with a familiarity with details of old school stock settings.

[Username17]

So in PL's ongoing descent into total intellectual bankruptcy, he is now defending core rules for miscegenation and claiming that Drow is two words so that he can try to fabricate a gotcha in an internet argument. That is fucking sad.

First of all, Drow is obviously one word. And if you had some different game that didn't use the word Drow it would be because your setting had its own intellectual property word for Dark Elves. Like Dunmer or whatever. Because fucking obviously.

Secondly, at no time should a PHB race be half anything. Your race should be Elf or Orc. If people want to be half human that should be an acceptable backstory. The PHB shouldn't require people to be mulatto to get any particular game mechanics.

-Username17

[Koumei]

And if you had some different game that didn't use the word Drow it would be because your setting had its own intellectual property word for Dark Elves. Like Dunmer or whatever. Because fucking obviously.

I don't think Warham Fantasy uses any term other than Dark Elf, although I also don't think anybody cares very much. (Also obligatory argument as to whether Dark Elves are a simple equivalent of Drow, what with them being pale skinned and dark haired rather than the opposite, but they like a creepy animal and worship a god of murder and they are generally baddies that don't play nice.)

Secondly, at no time should a PHB race be half anything.

That kind of flies in the face of the "Everything that was a previous option should still be an option" statement. I mean, picking between the two I think "Not having stats for half-X" (optionally going as far as "They're different species, you can't be a half-X unless the other half is also X, but you could be a Y adopted and raised by X") is more important than "People have had half-X characters since before the Berlin wall came down, we're not taking that away from them now". But they are both conflicting positions, and to fully take one you need to soften the other.

And that will obviously mean you are super-double-wrong for ever about everything. Like, it's proof.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I don't think Warham Fantasy uses any term other than Dark Elf, although I also don't think anybody cares very much.

At some point they picked up the moniker of Druchii.

[Jason]

I don't think Warham Fantasy uses any term other than Dark Elf

They use "Druchii".

That kind of flies in the face of the "Everything that was a previous option should still be an option" statement.

You could have a general rule for Halfbreeds and not require a Half-Anything race to be there in particular.

[OgreBattle]

Is lizardman and dragonperson conceptually the same space? The former makes me think of big slow witter brutes with tails, the latter is 'everything people want a dragon person to be', though going tailless would be weird.

I like the warhammer saurus as the archtypical lizardman. Though they also have the quick witted/bodied skinks too those are similar enough to kobolds to just roll the concept into kobolds.

Back to dragonpersons/draconians/dragonborn I'd go with "resembles dragons of the setting so they probably have wings and a tail and are smart enough to use arcane magic". Though it's another matter of how you're suppose to balance dragon-man vs regular hu-man as characters a party can include from the start.

-----

On I-can-tell-theyre-evil-by-judging-them-by-their-skin elves is there a strong consensus on how they differ from goodskin elves? Like in D&D they started as "more magical, more hardcore", then RA Salvatore made them "more hardcore with swords too!" and they're just awesome at sword fighting and arcane magic and divine magic and spiders and riding lizards.
In some settings I've seen them depicted as "more arcane but physically weaker", I think the Korean MMO's tend to do that.

[PhoneLobster]

I find it odd "dragonborn" (supposedly) has traction at all, for me, for timing and impact its "Half Dragons" that are the D&D dragonXhuman as they came in earlier and were in a more mainstream book and had cooler abilities conceptually (despite being shit, thanks LA). Who the hell even owned a copy of Races of The Dragon? I can only assume what with 3rd edition being so big, races of the dragon being so obscure and 4E onwards being sorta flops that the same goes for a large number of D&D players.

Even Draconians is some serious fringe traction because, in this day and age who is a dragonlance fan? Call them what you like, Dragonoids, Dragonites, Dragians, Nurganoids, Furblebops whatever it doesn't matter you might as well ass pull compared to the limited name recognition.

But whether you pick up an obscure made up term with next to zero traction or just make up something new. You need to ask yourself whether your crazy new personal one word naming convention requiring these ass pulled new and good as new nouns instead of a few fairly plain english words is always conflicting with THIS rule.

And THAT rule is why you call your fishy Elves "Aquatic Elves" or "Sea Elves" instead of "Alu'Tel'Quessir".