Is anyone bored with humans in their games? Has anyone gone so far as to remove them as a playable option? I'm not referring to games that are human-free by intent, but instead to those where humans are normally represented (and usually the majority).

Well it's anecdotal yet some players at my table are bored with humans. Coupled with being penalized with absurd level limits for demi-humans pre-3E (which almost no one enforced since I began playing mid to late 1980s.) How about instead of penalizing players for taking demi-humans the designers actually did their jobs and made humans interesting. I could understand for 1E D&D. they could have added more to humans as a race in terms of game rules with 2E instead of a penalty for demi-humans.

Quote from: sureshot;1047340Well it's anecdotal yet some players at my table are bored with humans. Coupled with being penalized with absurd level limits for demi-humans pre-3E (which almost no one enforced since I began playing mid to late 1980s.) How about instead of penalizing players for taking demi-humans the designers actually did their jobs and made humans interesting. I could understand for 1E D&D. they could have added more to humans as a race in terms of game rules with 2E instead of a penalty for demi-humans.

What do you suggest for adding interest to humans? It seems to me that the allure of being Human is that it's a wide open palette, and that any attempt to add flavor will make the race increasingly specific. I do like very generic advantages to being Human, i.e. a +1 bonus a stat, or something.

I agree that level limits are absurd, but there are other limitations that can be imposed on demi-humans that are less absurd. Stat penalties, saving throw penalties, certain disallowed abilities. For example, the dwarvish race in my campaign can't use bows because their shoulder sockets are unsuited to the motion.

I think it's also important to avoid attempts to make races equally playable in all ways, unless you're aiming for a perfectly equal distribution. To wit,  the elvish race in my game gets advantages in spellcasting but fewer hit points, which makes that race a rare choice, and a non-spellcasting member of that race even rarer. In that way I get a world where elves are rare, and almost ubiquitously magical, just as intended. Perfect. Similarly, dwarves and clerics are especially tough in my game, which helps get people to actually take these less romantic options occasionally. In my experience, trying to balance classes or races is anathema to getting the mix I'd like to see.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1047263Of course the DM can always say "there are no XYZ races from the PHB in this campaign" but that is a recipe for whines like "No fair! it's inthe PHB!"
You know the type: whiney bitches who want their own way just because they grace your dining chairs with their arse.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1047316Never had them, so I honestly wouldn't know.  Maybe I did, but they'd be in AL and that allows quite a few race/class combo, so I've not heard anything.

I'm going to agree with Chris on this one (with the same caveat I put in another recent thread that of course those of us who started as kids or teens have indeed seen every bad behavior), these fabled whiney, demanding players seem to pop up in forum discussions a lot more than I've seen them in the wild.

IRL, I think most groups can work fine with a DM saying, "there are no Dragonborn in my game world" or "half-elves and half-orcs are treated like one parent or the other, instead of their PHB stats" or the like.

I do like that the 5e PHB has the original core races (human, elf, dwarf, Halfling) first, and then the other added races afterwards, in a defacto 'additional/optional' section.

Quote from: Zalman;1047343I agree that level limits are absurd, but there are other limitations that can be imposed on demi-humans that are less absurd. Stat penalties, saving throw penalties, certain disallowed abilities. For example, the dwarvish race in my campaign can't use bows because their shoulder sockets are unsuited to the motion.
I think it's also important to avoid attempts to make races equally playable in all ways, unless you're aiming for a perfectly equal distribution. To wit, the elvish race in my game gets advantages in spellcasting but fewer hit points, which makes that race a rare choice, and a non-spellcasting member of that race even rarer.

There were so many things wrong with level limits. From the fact that the level limits limited halflings over dwarves over elves, yet the power curve went the other direction, to the fact that no two people seemed to be able to agree on what the normal levels of play are, to things like BECMI going back and giving the demihumans level advancement (but not quite) after the fact when they decided the levels would go up to 36. I'm sure someone else really loved them, but to me they were a grand failure to their purpose and to playability.

I do like the idea of races not be perfectly equal for all game choices (ex. Halfling polearm fighters), or at least if you are going to do that, make them genuinely equal mechanically and make their differences social. I'm not usually a fan of things like making elves not only hp unsuited for nonspellcasters and have a spellcasting advantage, though, since that means that playing an elf and playing a mage become the same experience all too often (very subtly non-overlapping Venn diagrams, if you will).

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1047406I'm not usually a fan of things like making elves not only hp unsuited for nonspellcasters and have a spellcasting advantage, though, since that means that playing an elf and playing a mage become the same experience all too often (very subtly non-overlapping Venn diagrams, if you will).

Well, so far in the few years we've been playing with these rules no symmetry has developed. That is, human wizards are at least as common as elvish wizards, and the players are keenly aware of the differences between the two. So that hasn't been an issue in this case. It does keep playing an elf synonymous with "better at magic than melee fighting", which again I'm OK with because that fits my world vision. If the elf mechanics were somehow made equally playable for all classes, then I suspect we'd have a lot more elven thieves and fighters (we've had one cleric).

I agree in general about the overlapping Venn fields, which is why I'm very careful to avoid any repetition of advantages between race and class (or anywhere else really).

There's no problem with specific settings having blue-skinned half-elementals or cutesy-poo tieflings or adorable dragonborn or whatever.
The mistake was putting these races in the Main Rules, because this creates a default assumption that these races should be included, that they're the 'standard'. The result is game worlds all ending up looking the same, the same bland corporate brand of Seattle-Fantasy.

Gnomes used to be standard, I used to cut them out of my games day 1.  Now, I'm in AL so I have to allow them, but very few people play them.

Whaaaaat?

You cut gnomes out?

Are you a racist?

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1047668Whaaaaat?

You cut gnomes out?

Are you a racist?

Gnomes were redundant.  They're metal workers and live in burrows.  Like Dwarves and Hobbits.  They had nothing unique to them except illusion magic aptitude and we didn't see the point to it.  So we dropped them like a dirty habit.

I've also ran games that cut out everything except humans, elves and dwarves as playable races.

OMG what a nazi!

Rise up Gnomes! you have nothing to lose but you illusions!

I am going to run a one-off with an all gnome party in 1st edition and the theme will be hunting down tielfings and dragonborn.

Gnomes should be excised in all cases, wherever they are found.

No!

The Kron Hills will be free!

Remember the Lormil purges!

The Hateful Wars: Never again!

Gnomes are terrorists.

Gnomes are Freedom Fighters.

And creepy lawn ornaments.

The only versions of gnomes I'm willing to accept nowadays are the ones based off the classical gnomes-as-elementals. None of this garden gnome bullshit.