A thread to comment on this article about D&D Next...

RPGPundit

I'll say what I did there.

For me the "Core" or "Common" D&D Races would be the ones that have existed more or less in every edition.  Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling.  However, that definition is really not useful as it all depends on the setting.  Re-Releasing Greyhawk and shoehorning in Dragonborn would be just as ridiculous as redoing Nentir Vale without them.  Each published setting needs to make sense and be consistent unto itself, not some meta-game framework.  

However, when the rubber meets the road, each GM can toss Dragonborn into any setting he likes.  In the end, what's more important to me then sheer number of options is that the game sets up new GM's to realize that for them, it's all optional.  It's their world.  Too many games have forgotten this.  D&DNext needs to remember it.

I think Dragonborn should be in the core over Halflings and 60% of the characters I've ever played were Halflings.

Have a core of human, dwarf, elf, and halfling. However, allow the option to port in any other race that the DM sees fit to as long as it makes sense in the setting. They did this with how monsters were handled in 3.x and Pathfinder, I don't see why it would all of a sudden stop working.

I don't think the common/uncommon/rare thing is a good idea. I would rather see them all listed as optional. That way a GM who wants the elves to have already sailed away can make the world they want. etc.

I would like to see good rules for half ____ races.  In normal breeding or by magical means it would be nice to see what happens when races combine and suggestions on how they are viewed by both parent races. Again as optional.

Quote from: jeff37923;535133Have a core of human, dwarf, elf, and halfling. However, allow the option to port in any other race that the DM sees fit to as long as it makes sense in the setting. They did this with how monsters were handled in 3.x and Pathfinder, I don't see why it would all of a sudden stop working.

This.

Of course the common/uncommon/rare idea could just be so they can sell Character Miniatures or god forbid Character Generation Articles according to the CCG rarity scheme.

Pretty sure Monty would leave over that.  

Here's how I'd break it up:

Standard races (PHB): elf, dwarf, orc, human.
Little races (PHB II): goblins, kobolds, gnomes, halflings.
Exotic races (MM): dragonborn, tieflings, aasimar, and something else (possibly minotaur).

That way there are four main races and eight optional races available to players.  It provides additional content for the other books while allowing you to separate the rules sets for unusual or non-standard races (i.e., you don't have to worry about weapon sizing in the main book because you have only Medium races).

I guess if they want a customizeable ruleset, they should have customizeable races. The ones that should go in are the ones that are most 're-skinnable' or flexible.

If I was doing it I guess it'd be one Planetouched race for both tieflings and aasimar; maybe an 'Elven Blood' feat that humans can take to make them into half-elves. Elves are fairly flexible as is. Dwarves keep as is, they're always popular.

There's also basically a space for "ugly but strong fighting humanoid" which could let you play either a minotaur or a half-orc or a half-ogre or whatever; the problem with this race basically is that its aimed at pleasing people who don't give a rat's what their character is/looks like/roleplays as as long as it hits hard, so the PHB half-orc immediately becomes obsolete as soon as there's a half-ogre race that has a bigger STR bonus and worse body odor. So you basically want to create one race for this that is adjustable to whatever purpose you want in your campaign world - be it half-trolls or PC orcs or whatever.

With dragonborn I'd keep them in core, but give fluff notes that you can deploy them as Draconians or Saurials or whatever in your campaign world, and/or have them exist purely as NPC monsters if you prefer.

Freaky monster races like dragonborn, tieflings, robots, elves, halflings and dwarves belong in the Monster Manual. Stick with humans as the only core option, but give them a nice array of simple background packages like "steppe nomad", "merchant" or "degenerate urbanite". :pundit:

I am happy for WotC to tell me what races/classes are common, uncommon, rare in a particular setting...but not in the core books.

Only the GM decides what's rare or common in their setting.

But I've never been really happy with how D&D has done races. I had hopes for 4e with the racial paragons and racial feats, but like the racial kits of 2e, the concept never fully clicked for me.

Of course, 5e is in trouble because its impossible to please 1e FR fans and 4e FR fans simultaneously because the setting has changed so wildly over time. Even if you tell players "play in any era!" that canard falls apart because few players want to play in the past where the future of the setting is already written.

Yes, I know you could run an "alternate history" version, but that does not placate hard core canon groupies, aka the biggest customer base for setting books.

Me? I like having a complete selection in core, and I have no problems with settings saying 'hell naw' or 'here's a new toy!' to distinquish themselves.

That said, I really don't need twenty flavors of elves, or half a dozen distinct 'midget races' or what have you.  I liked Fantasy-Craft's method of doing races, but it is a might fiddly (and yes, a bit hard to sell supplements on I suppose. Fuck the stupid business model of the supplement treadmill. I see no reason to support it, seeing how it actually seems to hurt the hobby (and thus the business) far more than it helps the business...).

So. An elf, a Dwarf. Something shorter than a Dwarf (gnome, halfing, fucking giant, wingless pixies), and something 'draconic'... plus whatever weird stuff you want on top. I also accept 'Orks' of some flavor as playable races. Half-orcs, goblins, trolls... don't care what you call 'em.

As a note: I personally rarely play anything other than human (or half-human), and I find both dwarf players and 'dragon' players to be annoying twits as a general rule. However, they put butts in the seats and books on the shelves. Dragonborn explicitly 'don't suck' because there are a half a million freaks out there that think having scales is awesome. And they do make for some good artwork, and less 'generic tolkien ripoff'...

I'm very much a in the classic races camp: Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Halflings.

That's it--everything else should be relegated to setting or options books.

Quote from: Spike;535210and I find both dwarf players and 'dragon' players to be annoying twits as a general rule.

Well, I try.

(For the record, I'm a dwarf player and absolutely love hamming them up and bickering with the elves, but we have a creepy lawncrapper in our group who always plays dragons or magical sparkly princesses that turn into dragons.)

Anyway. I would just ditch the concept of pre-created races entirely. Either let everyone choose their stats as required and make race just a write-in choice on the charsheet (Because there are going to be clumsy members of a particularly graceful race, etc; so if you want to emphasise your racial traits, do it yourself, don't expect the game to just give you a free bonus for picking the right race), or give players a number of "racial building blocks" that players or the GM can choose from to create their own damn race... and leave "race" again just a write-in choice.

Advantage of doing it the second way is, it gives the GM more concrete tools they can use to build their own settings. Sure, it's nothing GM's can't do already, but a system saves them having to do all the checking and balancing themselves (As ever, there is no inherent virtue in doing more work than you need to, unless you really want to do it for it's own sake). "In this campaign, you can play races foo, bar, or ijk, and they each have these set of traits; you can't use the racial construct rules."

Advantage of doing it the first way, is that it kills min-maxing. You pick your species because that's what you want to be, but in mechanical terms, you're exactly the same as everyone else.

IRT the linked post: frankly, it just looks like someone whining about D&D4 having more than just the things they want, and grudgingly accepting that other people might like different things, which I guess is okay... if they're really into that sort of thing. I don't like the C/U/R concept, though; certain species and occupations are going to be more or less common across various settings, but a blanket C/U/R categorisation in the corebook isn't giving enough information. It's a subject that needs a block of text to explain what the species / occupation does, how it fits into societies in the game world, what you would use it for, and when you wouldn't want to use it... sorta like the "Play this class / race if..." blurbs in D&D4.

Oh, and definitely explain that the class name probably isn't something that would be used in-universe.

Quote from: Melan;535176Freaky monster races like dragonborn, tieflings, robots, elves, halflings and dwarves belong in the Monster Manual. Stick with humans as the only core option, but give them a nice array of simple background packages like "steppe nomad", "merchant" or "degenerate urbanite". :pundit:

There's a game like this already, its called Shadow, Sword & Spell by Rogue Games.