Bit of background; fairly newer player, and I'm prepping for a large-scale campaign this coming November, with a fairly large group; we've got roughly 5/6 players in total, plus a few NPCs. Looked at the current list of characters that out group will be using, and it seems that just about everyone in the campaign, including the NPCs, are all a different race/species from each other. Relatedly, I've also been looking online at other groups and seeing what everyone else is running, and I noticed that most groups tend to have only a single member of a race for each character as well.
Is it common in DND for everyone in a player group to run a distinct race/species for their characters? Or is it just a weird trend I've noticed?
In my experience that's very common, unless the campaign is set in a setting where there's a very limited set of species available. But that in itself is pretty rare.
I agree it’s very common. Really about the only time you see lots of people playing the same species is if the players worked it out that way during session 0. Like, “let’s do an all halfling campaign.” Even then, there’s almost always a couple outliers.
Honestly unless you're restricting players to what they can pick from, it's a statistical anomaly if they do all pick the same race. There are so many different species to pick from after all. Plus, the features of different species also tend to lean more toward supporting specific classes in a lot of cases. For example, a Fairy or an Owlin being restricted in what armor they wear to use their flight means that if a player is playing a heavy armor leaning class, they're likely not going to play one of those, same if you're playing a melee martial character, the flight feature becomes less useful for those characters. A species like Half Orc is more likely to lean in to something doing a lot of melee attacks, where its relentless endurance and savage attacks features will shine.
Not to say you cant play a Heavy Armor Fairy Paladin or an Orc Wizard and in spite of your features, but its just not the kind of thing most players aim toward.
And groups tend to avoid overlapping classes, or the very least avoid overlapping subclasses, which means you're sorta isolating each player in to a specific group of species that benefit their class. Yeah there's overlap, but they're much less likely to pick the same one as another player because of it.
Though if your group is a bunch of power gamers, seeing a bunch of Variant Humans is also pretty normal.
In my 5e campaigns so far I have had over 50% humans in all groups with a smattering of other races making up the rest. In other DMs games that I know of its pretty much the same. It will be interesting to see if that changes with more games moving to 2024, but variant human in the 2014 rules was just too enticing. Beyond Data also has human as the most common choice I beleive, so that makes everyone playing a diffrent species in most campaigns unlikely?
It partly depends on how many books are in play. If you're running off just the PHB then you're more likely to see some overlap since there's fewer options overall- especially from the 2014 one since the list was a bit smaller and you'd have people working around the fixed ability score bonuses. Once someone brings one of the big player race compendiums to the table- Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Volo's Guide to Monsters, or Monsters of the Multiverse being the biggest ones- the chances are likely to nosedive since there's suddenly a lot of extra choices available.
In my 5e campaigns so far I have had over 50% humans in all groups with a smattering of other races making up the rest. In other DMs games that I know of its pretty much the same. It will be interesting to see if that changes with more games moving to 2024, but variant human in the 2014 rules was just too enticing. Beyond Data also has human as the most common choice I beleive, so that makes everyone playing a diffrent species in most campaigns unlikely?
That's very table dependent. IME only mechanics-focused tables see a lot of variant humans. In all of my campaigns there has only ever been 1 human, and everyone else were different species.
In my group, it's somewhat common for my group to have two of the same species, and one time the ENTIRE party was Dragonborn. Although there haven't been any duplicates since I got MotMM.
It's very group-dependent. Even with access to the other books, PHB species are generally preferred, because most players don't want to do that much reading. In my groups, tieflings are the most likely to be duplicated, and humans and half-elves are also relatively common.
In my 5e campaigns so far I have had over 50% humans in all groups with a smattering of other races making up the rest. In other DMs games that I know of its pretty much the same. It will be interesting to see if that changes with more games moving to 2024, but variant human in the 2014 rules was just too enticing. Beyond Data also has human as the most common choice I beleive, so that makes everyone playing a diffrent species in most campaigns unlikely?
That's very table dependent. IME only mechanics-focused tables see a lot of variant humans. In all of my campaigns there has only ever been 1 human, and everyone else were different species.
Most of my tables are narrative focused. They do enjoy taking feats for narrative reasons (they say). Only two of these players are more mechanics focused which doesnt really matter since I am a very narrative focused DM and they adjust their style accordingly. The only games I have seen that were diffrent were ones where we deliberately said "Lets make a star wars cantina group!" I even told my witchlight table that they could go wild with species in that campaign and they gave me 4 humans, 2 elves and a half elf. When I asked why, they said that they wanted to be more "normal" so the wonders of the feywild they would discover would seem all that more wonderous. Which seems like a narrative choice to me. The new campaign is 2024 and so far I have gotten 5 humans and 2 half elves (using human stats).
Almost universally the parties I have run and played in have a mix of species and class. Like Plaguescarred said, few people like to choose the same class as others in their group. I have never played in a group where everybody was the same species.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Almost universally the parties I have run and played in have a mix of species and class. Like Plaguescarred said, few people like to choose the same class as others in their group. I have never played in a group where everybody was the same species.
Even when one of my tables played Theros that has much more limited species options, half of them used off-book species and just reflavoured them as weird humans, we had a goblin (flavoured as a sickly dwarf human), a half-orc (flavoured as a strong human with PTSD), and a warforged (flavoured as a leonin).
Variety is the spice of life, but very normal for everybody to be different. Of course, the idea of a party of orc bards does have a certain charm to it.
Update: Just started a new campaign yesterday and players went with a monster hunting family of halflings. All diffrent classes, all same species. I love it.
It's pretty common to have a mix of species. Do yourself (and your table) a favor, and make sure you establish interspecies harmony early on. You don't want your players making glib comments about "infernal tieflings" or "thieving halflings" to each other, and you especially don't want NPC's singling out individual players for their species. It's a surefire way to make a player feel isolated and targeted, which you 100% don't want.
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Bit of background; fairly newer player, and I'm prepping for a large-scale campaign this coming November, with a fairly large group; we've got roughly 5/6 players in total, plus a few NPCs. Looked at the current list of characters that out group will be using, and it seems that just about everyone in the campaign, including the NPCs, are all a different race/species from each other. Relatedly, I've also been looking online at other groups and seeing what everyone else is running, and I noticed that most groups tend to have only a single member of a race for each character as well.
Is it common in DND for everyone in a player group to run a distinct race/species for their characters? Or is it just a weird trend I've noticed?
In my experience that's very common, unless the campaign is set in a setting where there's a very limited set of species available. But that in itself is pretty rare.
pronouns: he/she/they
I agree it’s very common. Really about the only time you see lots of people playing the same species is if the players worked it out that way during session 0. Like, “let’s do an all halfling campaign.” Even then, there’s almost always a couple outliers.
Honestly unless you're restricting players to what they can pick from, it's a statistical anomaly if they do all pick the same race. There are so many different species to pick from after all. Plus, the features of different species also tend to lean more toward supporting specific classes in a lot of cases. For example, a Fairy or an Owlin being restricted in what armor they wear to use their flight means that if a player is playing a heavy armor leaning class, they're likely not going to play one of those, same if you're playing a melee martial character, the flight feature becomes less useful for those characters. A species like Half Orc is more likely to lean in to something doing a lot of melee attacks, where its relentless endurance and savage attacks features will shine.
Not to say you cant play a Heavy Armor Fairy Paladin or an Orc Wizard and in spite of your features, but its just not the kind of thing most players aim toward.
And groups tend to avoid overlapping classes, or the very least avoid overlapping subclasses, which means you're sorta isolating each player in to a specific group of species that benefit their class. Yeah there's overlap, but they're much less likely to pick the same one as another player because of it.
Though if your group is a bunch of power gamers, seeing a bunch of Variant Humans is also pretty normal.
In my 5e campaigns so far I have had over 50% humans in all groups with a smattering of other races making up the rest. In other DMs games that I know of its pretty much the same. It will be interesting to see if that changes with more games moving to 2024, but variant human in the 2014 rules was just too enticing. Beyond Data also has human as the most common choice I beleive, so that makes everyone playing a diffrent species in most campaigns unlikely?
It partly depends on how many books are in play. If you're running off just the PHB then you're more likely to see some overlap since there's fewer options overall- especially from the 2014 one since the list was a bit smaller and you'd have people working around the fixed ability score bonuses. Once someone brings one of the big player race compendiums to the table- Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Volo's Guide to Monsters, or Monsters of the Multiverse being the biggest ones- the chances are likely to nosedive since there's suddenly a lot of extra choices available.
That's very table dependent. IME only mechanics-focused tables see a lot of variant humans. In all of my campaigns there has only ever been 1 human, and everyone else were different species.
In my group, it's somewhat common for my group to have two of the same species, and one time the ENTIRE party was Dragonborn. Although there haven't been any duplicates since I got MotMM.
It's very group-dependent. Even with access to the other books, PHB species are generally preferred, because most players don't want to do that much reading. In my groups, tieflings are the most likely to be duplicated, and humans and half-elves are also relatively common.
Most of my tables are narrative focused. They do enjoy taking feats for narrative reasons (they say). Only two of these players are more mechanics focused which doesnt really matter since I am a very narrative focused DM and they adjust their style accordingly. The only games I have seen that were diffrent were ones where we deliberately said "Lets make a star wars cantina group!" I even told my witchlight table that they could go wild with species in that campaign and they gave me 4 humans, 2 elves and a half elf. When I asked why, they said that they wanted to be more "normal" so the wonders of the feywild they would discover would seem all that more wonderous. Which seems like a narrative choice to me. The new campaign is 2024 and so far I have gotten 5 humans and 2 half elves (using human stats).
Parties in my gaming circle tend to avoid same class more than same species.
Almost universally the parties I have run and played in have a mix of species and class. Like Plaguescarred said, few people like to choose the same class as others in their group. I have never played in a group where everybody was the same species.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Even when one of my tables played Theros that has much more limited species options, half of them used off-book species and just reflavoured them as weird humans, we had a goblin (flavoured as a sickly dwarf human), a half-orc (flavoured as a strong human with PTSD), and a warforged (flavoured as a leonin).
Variety is the spice of life, but very normal for everybody to be different. Of course, the idea of a party of orc bards does have a certain charm to it.
Update: Just started a new campaign yesterday and players went with a monster hunting family of halflings. All diffrent classes, all same species. I love it.
It's pretty common to have a mix of species. Do yourself (and your table) a favor, and make sure you establish interspecies harmony early on. You don't want your players making glib comments about "infernal tieflings" or "thieving halflings" to each other, and you especially don't want NPC's singling out individual players for their species. It's a surefire way to make a player feel isolated and targeted, which you 100% don't want.