Well, now that Monsters of the Multiverse is out, I'm curious about people's thoughts on the revised PC races.  Which changes do you like, which do you dislike?

If you want to complain about using the Tasha's variant rules for floating ability score bonuses, or the lore change to some of the races, the exit is that way.  This thread is purely for discussing the mechanical stuff.

I dislike the changes to the Hobgoblins, Goblins, and Genasi. I dislike that Hobgoblins lost their Martial Training for that poorly worded Help trait, Gobbos got hosed with the changes to Fury of the Small, and the Genasi got all the wrong spells. I also dislike how many of the subraces are no longer technically subraces anymore and now have to all have the same stuff reprinted over and over again, like all the elf subraces (Eladrin, Sea Elf, Shadar-Kai, etc.) I haven’t really looked at too much else.

(Not to poke the bear, but aren’t the racial ASIs “mechanical stuff” too?)

Like, this doesn’t need to be reprinted every time, just make them base Elf race traits and do the subraces thing like before, it was much simpler that way.

Creature Type. You are a Humanoid. You are also considered an elf for any prerequisite or effect that requires you to be an elf.

Size. You are Medium.

Speed. Your walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light and in darkness as if it were dim light. You discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.

Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself.

Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

Trance. You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which you retain consciousness.

Whenever you finish this trance, you can change your season, and you can gain two proficiencies that you don’t have, each one with a weapon or a tool of your choice selected from the Player’s Handbook. You mystically acquire these proficiencies by drawing them from shared elven memory, and you retain them until you finish your next long rest.

Quote from IamSposta >>

Like, this doesn’t need to be reprinted every time, just make them base Elf race traits and do the subraces thing like before, it was much simpler that way.

Creature Type. You are a Humanoid. You are also considered an elf for any prerequisite or effect that requires you to be an elf.

Size. You are Medium.

Speed. Your walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light and in darkness as if it were dim light. You discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.

Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself.

Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.

Trance. You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which you retain consciousness.

Whenever you finish this trance, you can change your season, and you can gain two proficiencies that you don’t have, each one with a weapon or a tool of your choice selected from the Player’s Handbook. You mystically acquire these proficiencies by drawing them from shared elven memory, and you retain them until you finish your next long rest.

 Definitely a whole lot of excess stuff there.

I mean, they needed to fill a book and since it was supposed to lack fluff, they had to double down on reiteration.

My plan was to pick this up this week, maybe, in hardcopy, and homebrew additions as I felt they were warranted in my games (sorta summer homebrew skills project, tm Midnightplat).  From the exchange so far the fact that I usually get a cheesesteak when I pick up a new book and I was already planning out that cheesesteak in my head is influencing my decision to pick up the book more than any interest in the book itself.

If you already have Mordy's and Volo's, I'd definitely pass on the physical book and maybe just get the PC races for the character builder.  Wouldn't bother with more than that.

Quote from MidnightPlat >>

I mean, they needed to fill a book and since it was supposed to lack fluff, they had to double down on reiteration.

My plan was to pick this up this week, maybe, in hardcopy, and homebrew additions as I felt they were warranted in my games (sorta summer homebrew skills project, tm Midnightplat).  From the exchange so far the fact that I usually get a cheesesteak when I pick up a new book and I was already planning out that cheesesteak in my head is influencing my decision to pick up the book more than any interest in the book itself.

 
Get the Cheesesteak and skip the book. (Like “leave the gun, take the cannoli.”) I got M3 and you can use content sharing to copy anything you want into private homebrew.

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

If you want to complain about using the Tasha's variant rules for floating ability score bonuses [...] the exit is that way.  This thread is purely for discussing the mechanical stuff.

But... but that's as mechanical as it's possible to be.  I have no idea what's forbidden and what isn't if you're opposed to discussing the ASI portion of the rules while saying you want to discuss the rules.

Separately, I agree with IAmSposta.  The new method of printing every subrace as its own race fills up the book with empty content so WOTC can sell more pages with less information.  It's offensive.

To use their example of elves, this is apparently the new definition of elf, and the player-friendly way to present the rules is to collate the common information into one place - for elves - and then only specify subrace-specific stuff on each entry.  WARNING: it's literally impossible to present an MPMM race without listing its ASIs, please don't get mad.  I'll get it out of the way early.

1. All PC races have this now, so: Ability Scores: Choose +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1.
2. Size: Medium
3. Speed: 30.
4. Type: Humanoid. You are also considered an elf for any prerequisite or effect that requires you to be an elf.
5. Languages.You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for your character.
6. Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light and in darkness as if it were dim light. You discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.
7. Fey Ancestry.  You have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself.
8. Trance:  New upgraded definition (I don't want to put it here for fear the mods will eat my post).
9. Keen Senses: Proficiency in Perception.

Then each specific kind of elf lists its racials.  In fact, if MPMM hadn't wasted so much space reprinting the elf block three times, they could have used the space to explain how to re-do every elf in the game, so we'd already have it as RAW instead of needing to homebrew the painfully obvious:

1. Eladrin:  Seasonal teleport, change season on long rest.
2. Shadar-Kai: Damage resistance, Shadar-Kai teleport.
   • Shadar-Kai had their teleport radically upgraded, probably because the person making them didn't read the Shadar-Kai block closely and incorrectly assumed they were built like Eladrin.  This, like the similarly incompetent handling of Fire Genasi Darkvision, is indicative that when in doubt, we should port over races the lazy way, without worrying about balance too much.
3. Sea: Swim speed = walking speed, Child of the Sea, Friend of the Sea.
4. Wood: +5 walking speed, Mask of the Wild (hopefully re-written to explicitly state the elf can do it while observed).
   • I'll admit it's not obvious how to port over Wood Elf weapon proficiencies, but my guess above of simply overlooking them is honestly pretty reasonable, given that Eladrin and Shadar-Kai acquired extra weapon proficiencies from nowhere in MPMM due to Trance's massive buff.
   • If you wanted to balance it, you'd let Wood Elves swap Perception out for any other skill with their Trance, like the new Githyanki.
5. High: Cantrip that lets you choose Int, Wis, or Cha to cast with, force resistance.
   • This is only most of the new races, like Kobolds; for reasons almost certainly deeply rooted in laziness, there are exceptions - MPMM Aasimar have the casting stat on their cantrip chosen for them.
   • Sea Elves lost their bonus language and 4 elven weapon proficiencies in exchange for a damage resistance, so I assumed the same thing here.  WOTC has repeatedly demonstrated they have no idea how to balance resistance types, so I did my best to guess how they'd assume High Elves should be flavored.
6. Dark: Racial spells (choose mental stat as casting stat, can cast with slots), Superior Darkvision.
7. And so on for Mark of Shadow and Pallid.

I think that they're going to add an "ancestry" part of character creation in 2024. This will come with the stuff that is traditionally associated with certain races weapon/armour training for elves, dwarves and hobgoblins for example, as well as other bonuses. A lot of people have discussed that it makes no sense that if their elf never grew up in a culture that had particular weapons, why they'd get proficiency in those weapons, for example. Splitting the biology and culture aspect for more fine tuning. Background would be seperate from this, and come with a free feat at level one like the dragonlance UA, i bet.

I'm sad that the iron wizard build doesn't work now without *significant* feat investment... Hobgoblins without Light armor proficiency means you need to take two feats, rather than just the one.

All I know is that when my DM said no horny ooze girls in future games I threatened to make an omnisexual gender fluid plasmoid bard for any future one shot...

In all seriousness I think a plasmoid character could be fun for any number of reasons, and would work best as a class that doesn't wear armor like a sorcerer or monk. 

Edit: Oh, wait, that's not MMotM...so I guess "meh." I'm still using the Volo's version of Aasimar for my character I've been playing for a year, not that it changed anything for that substantively aside from the Healing Hands (which I rarely use since I'm already a Life Cleric).

changing Yuan-ti poison immunity to poison resistance and advantage on saves seems a little bit silly to me - the monster version of all Yuan-ti, including Purebloods, have immunity. Additionally, Yuan-ti were not the only race with such immunity, so I never saw it as too much of an outlier, even if it was fairly powerful.

That said, I am rather glad about the nerf to their magical resistance - changing from spells “and other magical effects” just to spells means more risk in dungeons and other areas where there might be latent magical effects, as well as reducing the number of times the DM has to decide if something is or isn’t a “magical effect.”

Overall, happy with the Yuan-ti change from a DM’s perspective, though I’ll allow my current Yuan-ti player to continue with the legacy version—not about to nerf someone mid-game.

I am also rather happy that they have broken the subraces into their own categories.  I know lots of new players who probably would think it would be fun to play as a Sea Elf or a Dark Elf or some other subrace,  but who would not know it is an option simply because they saw “elf”, decided generic elves are boring, and did not bother to look further.  It would be great, however, if the character builder was organised “Elf - Sea Elf”, or “Elf - Dark Elf (Drow)”, so the alphabetical list would keep like-kind races all together. 

I also am quite glad that Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Changelings are all now considered Fey creatures.  They’re all very much Fey in folklore, and the omission of the typing felt rather silly. If only they’d change “longsword” over to “arming sword”, they’ll get most of my (pedantic) pet peeves. 

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

I also am quite glad that Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Changelings are all now considered Fey creatures.  They’re all very much Fey in folklore, and the omission of the typing felt rather silly. If only they’d change “longsword” over to “arming sword”, they’ll get most of my (pedantic) pet peeves. 

Worth noting that this has been false for goblins (and hobgoblins) in, I think, every edition of D&D.  D&D "goblins" have no more relation to the goblins you're referring to than D&D dwarves have a meaningful relation to dwarves from Scandinavian mythologies.  Both are actually based, like huge swathes of modern fantasy, including several other D&D races, on Tolkien.  In fact, in Tolkien's books, goblins and hobgoblins and orcs are all the same creature: goblin means shorter orc while hobgoblin means taller orc.  That's why in so much of modern fantasy orcs and "goblinoids" get lumped in together.

To the best of my knowledge we've never had any sort of D&D lore contradicting the idea that goblinoids are of Fey descent, so there's nothing wrong with the change beyond the ongoing mechanical problem of having non-humanoid PCs attached to spells and abilities designed to assume PCs are humanoid (what happens when a Fey turns itself?), but the design decision is fairly arbitrary.

You note the very reason why the old system is silly in your post.  By splitting goblins and orcs into different categories of creature, they have one race that’s based on something Tolkien made up and another that’s based on… that same exact race, albeit from a children’s story… which is decidedly supposed to be more akin to folklore/fey goblins than the Orcs of LotR.  One need only look at some of Tolkien’s watercolours to understand that he likewise saw “goblins” as more traditional fey creatures in all contexts outside of the LotR.

Fixing folklore errors born of Gygax’s sometimes skeptical and seemingly half-remembered knowledge of fantasy and folklore is a perfectly acceptable set of changes for Wizards to make, even after all this time. Though, it is a bit on the nose to make those changes in a product named after Gygax’s player character.

Quote from Kotath >>

Languages: All these races are 'Common plus one.' So the Elven no-longer-subraces do not automatically know Elvish, etc. I think Deep Gnomes actually lose out on a language because of this too. Might be others in that boat, not sure.

Life spans: All life spans are now about a century unless otherwise specified. It mentions Elves as normally living centuries, but Eladrin, Sea Elves and Shadar-kai all have no such specific mention, so only live normal human life spans, demoted from being true Elves.... 

 Members of some races, such as dwarves and elves, can live for centuries.

You are also considered an elf for any prerequisite or effect that requires you to be an elf.

Looks like Sea Elves are elves to me.

Quote from sfPanzer >>

I'm honestly extremely unsatisfied with the Genasi. Changing their spellcasting from CON to WIS/INT/CHA means it's a nerf for martials (and a buff for casters) and since it's still just spells instead of fun spell-like effects it means you still can't use them as Barbarian when you're raging, they can get counter-spelled etc.

They always counted as spells.  You could never use them during a barbarian rage and they were always subject to counter-spell.

I like that they gave more spells to the Genasi, but giving Water Walk to Water Genasi and Tritons was seriously pointless.  Very obvious they did it to avoid using spells from outside the PHB.

I'm extremely annoyed by goblinoids. Wizards said they were removing lore, but instead they made weird changes.

Excluding lore and adding mechanical effects based off of lore that nothing actually uses are not the same thing.

Other than that? Changelings shouldn't be Fey(In 5e, they've only been mentioned in Eberron, where they are very obviously not Fey), and turning subraces into separate races is just annoying formatting.

I think the idea of Changelings being Fey is to give them a different origin for non-Eberron settings, but it's very random.

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

I think the idea of Changelings being Fey is to give them a different origin for non-Eberron settings, but it's very random.

I'm annoyed that they're changing Eberron changelings to do this when non-Eberron settings don't have changelings. It's unlikely that they will be added to settings, too, because dopplegangers already exist, and now changelings can't be used as dopplegangers because dopplegangers aren't fey.

Nobody needs Fey changelings. They aren't Fey in the world that actually has changelings, and they work much better as humanoids for the best reason I can think of to use them outside of Eberron.