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Jan 15, 2012 -- 6:20PM, tbok1992 wrote:

There's a general consensus that the typical D&D races (Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Gnome and such) are gonna be in straight out of the box for 5e. But what about the odder ones, like Warforged, Shardminds, Dragonborn and Thri-Keen? Which ones do you think should make the cut to be playable from 5e's start? That's the question that this poll is designed to ask, and what it will ultimately reveal to WOTC when it is done.

Some rules: You can only pick four races as your choices, all monsters are fair game; including the ones that normally don't have PC stats like Myconids (Which a friend of mine really wants) or Mind Flayers, and a "New abberant race" is also a viable choice given how common a mention it was on the "What new races do you want in 5e" topic.

Goliath: They're more or less 'normal' compared to other freakish races, so they wouldn't be conspicuous in a low fantasy setting. Also, I love them.

Minotaur: A bit weirder, but with strong roots in fantasy and mythology.

Half Races: Not just Half-elves and half-orcs. And not neccesarily half-humans.

One other of the traditional humanoid races (kobolds, orcs, gnolls or goblins), don't really care which one. Maybe not orcs if there will be half-orcs.

I let out some other races (like centaurs) for space's sake, and others (like dragonborn, warforged, shardminds, wilden...) out of pure distaste.

Feb 29, 2012 -- 6:45AM, Hebitsuikaza wrote:

I would like to see Orcs and Goblinoids (particularly Hobgoblins) legal, playable and completely rationally considered directly from the start.

There is something utterly disturbing in a large number of the standard settings that your typical starting party would typically include the most powerful and menacing races in the world (Eladrin, Dragonborn, Drow, Tieflings, Warforged, etc.) are found in pretty much every party-- in fact, expected to be found in every adventuring party you would ever encounter. There can never be a big bad guy race faction because the biggest, baddest, scariest humanoid creatures in the entire land are... well, your Cleric and your Warlord.
 
How is someone supposed to set up an intimidating villain against a group that contains a demon-spawned warlock, a noble of the Feywild with an endless spring of magical power capable of instantly teleporting across a field, an 8' tall fire-spitting dragon humanoid, and a soulless mechanical monstrousity built for the sole purpose of eviscerating people on a battlefield? That just screams epic level evil champions... not your naive, starting party that may well end their journey in a TPK against a pack of 3' bandits if they aren't careful. So when you do want to create your epic level evil bad guy... how exactly do you top that? Best you can do is exactly the same but slightly higher level.

And then you get all sorts of really niche freakish things that ought to be just plain rare in most settings, but were instead opened up as typical... Bladelings, Githzerai, Deva, Warforged (again), Wilden... and a few other relatively high level monsters that are meant to be somewhat rare like Gnoll and Minotaur.

Alongside all these very odd and theme-destroying races that WotC chose to make common core races, it seemed to me that there was a serious lack of thought that had ever gone towards the very typical humanoid "bad guys" who are just so common and so close to human that they would be a dime a dozen as mercenaries in any frontier town... at least considerably more than Drow or Githzerai or perhaps even Eladrin.

However, the general policy of giving all of ten minutes of design time to any of the typically encountered humanoid bad guys then tossing them into the Monster Manual, slapping them with the label of "non-core" and "non-standard" then never once giving them a second thought while the design team went on to devote huge amounts of time and energy towards detailing the most powerful, rare, and unusual races which would then be labeled "core" created a fundamental thematic problem that when you were running a campaign with a large number of PCs, an overwhelming number of the PCs were of races that would be so alien to the setting that it was a stretch to the absurd that no NPC in any standard adventure was to react to the group of alien and monsterous creatures as though they were anything other than a typical human mercenary.

A Thri-keen, a Minotaur and a Dragonborn walk into a bar and... the bartender says "What can I get for you gents, today?"
It really is a joke if you take the time to picture it in your mind of sketch it on a notebook. And with such a core joke at the center of the setting, nothing in it could be taken terribly seriously or dramatically.

And that is why before the design team goes off to write up stats for and give their stamps of approval to all the monsterous, ultra powerful (conceptually if not one bit on the actual mechanical stat block), one-in-a-million alien invaders from another dimension... seriously, PLEASE finish the standardly encountered humanoids first to the point that they can be stamped as "core" and allowed in all official campaigns.

Because the handling of this aspect in 3, 3.5, and 4 have demonstrated that if this is not done from the start, there will be inclination to go back and redo them-- even when the character building aspect has been put entirely in propertary hands and things can be actively changed and rebalanced at will. And thus, if it isn't done from the start-- it will NEVER be done. And the result is the effective enforcement of a party of circus freaks instead of a party of adventurers.
 

Couldn't have said it better.

I have no problem if there are rules to allow these things...just don't integrate the flavor changers into the core so that people have to do excessive work to return to a baseline. Start at the baseline, and allow expansion from there.