I like playing Humans because I find it hard to roleplay other races beyond being a joke character. Maybe because to me the rest of the races are all like templates you must follow.
I mean, even in their descriptions, each race gets a culture and things that specialise them, and then Humans are just like: "Humans are very diverse". And that's not such a bad thing, it allows me to play all sorts of character and feel like the character has depth.
And of course you can play anything however you like, but if you ignore the cultural differences and give them a general background that does not relate to their race in any way, then what are races beyond a justification to ignore lighting conditions?
I have played humans in every edition of the game and almost exclusively. There was a stint after fiend folio where I played a lot of drow back in 1e for those sweet sweet special abilities. Humans are the best race mechanically overall since 3e though. That being said its sort of a false power as its more of in a vacuum before making the character thing. For each build there generally is a best option. I will say I think they are still likely the best martial to get your feats out in 5e early. With one d&ds leveled feats that is not as true, but still 2 feats give a lot of versatility so they look fine to me. Yeah various other races may be better for specific builds but overall humans are and will remain fine. Outside specific gimmick race/builds the choice of race has a fairly minor impact overall in your play mechanically assuming you are not doing some totally against type choice.
I am noticing a minor trend here with all the ideas bouncing out.
Not a single one removes anything from anyone to bring balance. They just add more stuff to humans. What ever happened to putting a few negative numbers to the other races?
And my complaint about all the race's being played like humans with extra features. No one goes through the effort of thinking and playing their character like they come from a different society. In most cases they should come from very different societies. They should be making social mistakes and having to deal with others social mistakes toward them.
Oh sorry its too hard to play like that. Then just play a human then. You are already one of those, it should be easy. Sorry about that but I hate people saying "but that is so hard". Sorry but non humans being played like humans is my biggest gripe since I started D&D back in the 1980's.
I find this amusing because most characters I see are humans, followed by (half)elves and dwarves. I rarely see exotic races like Triton, Githyanki, etc. Now why so many (in my experience) choose human I don't know, I don't ask, but I think plenty see them as just fine. *shrug*
I am noticing a minor trend here with all the ideas bouncing out.
Not a single one removes anything from anyone to bring balance. They just add more stuff to humans. What ever happened to putting a few negative numbers to the other races?
And my complaint about all the race's being played like humans with extra features. No one goes through the effort of thinking and playing their character like they come from a different society. In most cases they should come from very different societies. They should be making social mistakes and having to deal with others social mistakes toward them.
Oh sorry its too hard to play like that. Then just play a human then. You are already one of those, it should be easy. Sorry about that but I hate people saying "but that is so hard". Sorry but non humans being played like humans is my biggest gripe since I started D&D back in the 1980's.
Those statements are really coming close to a declaration of the "correct" way to play D&D. How, exactly, are players supposed to roleplay a character who's got some sort of significantly different outlook due to being non-human? Most professional fantasy writers have trouble doing that, demanding someone who's just trying to have fun playing a game once a week (or less) to do that is completely unreasonable.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Those statements are really coming close to a declaration of the "correct" way to play D&D. How, exactly, are players supposed to roleplay a character who's got some sort of significantly different outlook due to being non-human? Most professional fantasy writers have trouble doing that, demanding someone who's just trying to have fun playing a game once a week (or less) to do that is completely unreasonable.
To be fair it's not that hard to add an element or two; an elf player can go for tropey aloof and pretentious, in touch with nature or always harping on about being older than everyone else, the tiefling can remember they have a tail and be self-conscious about being a half-fiend (maybe they try to hide it, maybe they're defensive, maybe they don't care or even actively rub it in people's faces etc.).
The way I like to do it is to try and make sure at least one of the my bonds/flaws/traits is tied to the race/culture the character belongs to as a reminder of how that influences them. All well-rounded characters should have quirks etc. that make them different, so it doesn't need to be an extra burden, just another potential source for them. It's also not like humans in D&D are generic, there is a whole bunch of different places they can be from; are they a far traveller from High Shou, a Feylost wanderer, a trader from Calimshan?
Plus it'd be nice if players did think at least briefly about where their character is supposed to be from; "I'm a tabaxi from tabaxi-land" doesn't exactly paint a rich tapestry for your fellow players and the DM's NPCs to engage with. Hypothetically speaking of course, I totally haven't had a player say literally exactly that or anything… 😂
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Those statements are really coming close to a declaration of the "correct" way to play D&D. How, exactly, are players supposed to roleplay a character who's got some sort of significantly different outlook due to being non-human? Most professional fantasy writers have trouble doing that, demanding someone who's just trying to have fun playing a game once a week (or less) to do that is completely unreasonable.
To be fair it's not that hard to add an element or two; an elf player can go for tropey aloof and pretentious, in touch with nature or always harping on about being older than everyone else, the tiefling can remember they have a tail and be self-conscious about being a half-fiend (maybe they try to hide it, maybe they're defensive, maybe they don't care or even actively rub it in people's faces etc.).
The way I like to do it is to try and make sure at least one of the my bonds/flaws/traits is tied to the race/culture the character belongs to as a reminder of how that influences them. All well-rounded characters should have quirks etc. that make them different, so it doesn't need to be an extra burden, just another potential source for them. It's also not like humans in D&D are generic, there is a whole bunch of different places they can be from; are they a far traveller from High Shou, a Feylost wanderer, a trader from Calimshan?
Well, that's a big part of the issue, though, isn't it? Humans are diverse and can have all sorts of different cultures but elves and orcs are all the same. Based on the previously stated criteria, if I wanted to play Sunflower the dwarven hippie who doesn't have any dwarven cultural traits because they didn't grow up in the stereotypical dwarf mine, apparently that's wrong because they might as well be a human.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Well, that's a big part of the issue, though, isn't it? Humans are diverse and can have all sorts of different cultures but elves and orcs are all the same. Based on the previously stated criteria, if I wanted to play Sunflower the dwarven hippie who doesn't have any dwarven cultural traits because they didn't grow up in the stereotypical dwarf mine, apparently that's wrong because they might as well be a human.
I don't think that necessarily follows; we can already customise things like languages and skills if you don't want dwarf weapon training which is the only "cultural" trait IMO, everything else is innate. You might not live in a mine or revere stonework, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't have natural darkvision or stone cunning anyway. We also got Custom Lineage for exactly this sort of case; it's literally whatever you want it to be narratively, but builds a bit like variant human mechanically. Though I don't recall if we're getting that back in OneD&D, I hope so.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I agree 100% with fewer races getting straight up darkvision, it’s yet another thing that makes humans feel obsolete.
I don't at all mind not having darkvision (and I'm more than happy to play it up in character), but it is more than a little marginalizing to be the only one in the party who has to remember torches. I have to resist the urge to apologize. like a clankin' dex-dump heavy armor user in the group stealth check. are humans a burden or is darkvision just ridiculously prevalent?
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
I agree 100% with fewer races getting straight up darkvision, it’s yet another thing that makes humans feel obsolete.
I don't at all mind not having darkvision (and I'm more than happy to play it up in character), but it is more than a little marginalizing to be the only one in the party who has to remember torches. I have to resist the urge to apologize. like a clankin' dex-dump heavy armor user in the group stealth check. are humans a burden or is darkvision just ridiculously prevalent?
Darkvision is used way too much in PC races.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
They acknowledge that different races have different strengths and that trying to define one as better than others, especially based solely on one's own experiences in a small group, is foolhardy.
I'd add: They don't know how to represent other races in game and don't bother trying.
I agree with Darkvision, but just remember that in darkness you get an effective -5 to passive perception checks unless you bring out a torch, because darkvision isn't as perfect as normal vision.
Darkvision is still somewhat OP though, but if you enforce it as written then your players will use light sources much more. For example the darkvision scout will creep ahead, use a hooded lantern to check for traps, etc.
Remember to enforce this rule with your players, along with other rules people forget. A few of them a subtle but change the balance of the game.
As for the original topic, I am really not a fan of the recent changes to races in general. I get why they did it, but I think it's made all the races mechanically feel a lot blander. A lot of people like to argue that roleplay, flavor, etc stems from the self, but I disagree. It doesn't always. Many players are not confident role-players and like to be guided by the holding hand of mechanics and system flavor.
I... don't play humans, but that's because I like the fantasy of being a tiefling or dragonborn or goliath or fairy or warforged or tabaxi/shifter. I like going wild with my characters, and not taking them because of some mechanical reason. I take them because I love the story of being part fiend/giant/dragon/animal or a full construct or fey.
And, I mean... there was that one survey where human and v.human were, like, over 50% of races taken for a character on D&D beyond. One race, over half of people playing them. And it was the original, non-feat getting human that's generally considered less attractive that topped the charts.
There's zero problem with going human in 5e or 5eR
Which is interesting because in the thread asking what race people prefer to play, the human is only at 10%. People here are obviously not being honest in the poll.
Very difficult to design so much variety in a game without considering some races, genders, and classes as the standard or reference used to compare all other combinations. (See 1E D&D PHB for multiple adjustments between race, gender, and class as an example.)
If the current version of D&D introduced today a new race called "Humans," I wonder what features could make them differentiated and distinctive compared to all the other races (species)?
Which is interesting because in the thread asking what race people prefer to play, the human is only at 10%. People here are obviously not being honest in the poll.
"Only". Human is still the second most popular race behind elf with a fairly large gap between them and the third most played with this survey.
As for why such differing results? I'd imagine this one has a much smaller base to draw from, as very few DnD players use this forum and even fewer would've voted.
Very difficult to design so much variety in a game without considering some races, genders, and classes as the standard or reference used to compare all other combinations. (See 1E D&D PHB for multiple adjustments between race, gender, and class as an example.)
If the current version of D&D introduced today a new race called "Humans," I wonder what features could make them differentiated and distinctive compared to all the other races (species)?
If we're getting all scientific about it, what humans are good at is endurance. We're incredible long-distance runners and don't get tired or overheat as easily as other animals. We're also, obviously, very intelligent by the standards of our own world with our minds being our most powerful tool, though intelligence has been divvied out to a lot of other species in fantasy.
So I'd probably give humans stuff like Advantage on certain CON saves, Exhaustion resistance, and maybe a bonus on HP recovery on short rests. For intelligence I'd give humans an extra knowledge proficiency I think, representing the human mind's ability to soak up information through experience and schooling.
The human body is also exceptionally well adapted to throwing weapons, so you could add proficiency in one weapon with the Thrown property of your choice. I think that'd be kind of neat, but might be a useless feature if you're playing a martial class.
Honestly, the problem isn't humans, the problem is darkvision -- it should really just be low light vision (negates penalties for dim light, no effect in actual darkness) outside of a few monsters (such as undead) that should probably have exotic senses anyway, because the huge benefit of darkvision is the ability to move around without a light source.
I am noticing a minor trend here with all the ideas bouncing out.
Not a single one removes anything from anyone to bring balance. They just add more stuff to humans. What ever happened to putting a few negative numbers to the other races?
And my complaint about all the race's being played like humans with extra features. No one goes through the effort of thinking and playing their character like they come from a different society. In most cases they should come from very different societies. They should be making social mistakes and having to deal with others social mistakes toward them.
Oh sorry its too hard to play like that. Then just play a human then. You are already one of those, it should be easy. Sorry about that but I hate people saying "but that is so hard". Sorry but non humans being played like humans is my biggest gripe since I started D&D back in the 1980's.
Why do you need negative numbers based on race/species? Those are really hard line gamey things that just limit choice. Why would you have cultural problems inherently? Don’t all these player options live on the same planet and share a common language. With common language and living in the same cities there would be no difference between a human, orc, or elf except a few genetic traits.
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I like playing Humans because I find it hard to roleplay other races beyond being a joke character. Maybe because to me the rest of the races are all like templates you must follow.
I mean, even in their descriptions, each race gets a culture and things that specialise them, and then Humans are just like: "Humans are very diverse". And that's not such a bad thing, it allows me to play all sorts of character and feel like the character has depth.
And of course you can play anything however you like, but if you ignore the cultural differences and give them a general background that does not relate to their race in any way, then what are races beyond a justification to ignore lighting conditions?
Varielky
I have played humans in every edition of the game and almost exclusively. There was a stint after fiend folio where I played a lot of drow back in 1e for those sweet sweet special abilities. Humans are the best race mechanically overall since 3e though. That being said its sort of a false power as its more of in a vacuum before making the character thing. For each build there generally is a best option. I will say I think they are still likely the best martial to get your feats out in 5e early. With one d&ds leveled feats that is not as true, but still 2 feats give a lot of versatility so they look fine to me. Yeah various other races may be better for specific builds but overall humans are and will remain fine. Outside specific gimmick race/builds the choice of race has a fairly minor impact overall in your play mechanically assuming you are not doing some totally against type choice.
I am noticing a minor trend here with all the ideas bouncing out.
Not a single one removes anything from anyone to bring balance. They just add more stuff to humans. What ever happened to putting a few negative numbers to the other races?
And my complaint about all the race's being played like humans with extra features. No one goes through the effort of thinking and playing their character like they come from a different society. In most cases they should come from very different societies. They should be making social mistakes and having to deal with others social mistakes toward them.
Oh sorry its too hard to play like that. Then just play a human then. You are already one of those, it should be easy.
Sorry about that but I hate people saying "but that is so hard".
Sorry but non humans being played like humans is my biggest gripe since I started D&D back in the 1980's.
I find this amusing because most characters I see are humans, followed by (half)elves and dwarves. I rarely see exotic races like Triton, Githyanki, etc. Now why so many (in my experience) choose human I don't know, I don't ask, but I think plenty see them as just fine. *shrug*
Those statements are really coming close to a declaration of the "correct" way to play D&D. How, exactly, are players supposed to roleplay a character who's got some sort of significantly different outlook due to being non-human? Most professional fantasy writers have trouble doing that, demanding someone who's just trying to have fun playing a game once a week (or less) to do that is completely unreasonable.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
To be fair it's not that hard to add an element or two; an elf player can go for tropey aloof and pretentious, in touch with nature or always harping on about being older than everyone else, the tiefling can remember they have a tail and be self-conscious about being a half-fiend (maybe they try to hide it, maybe they're defensive, maybe they don't care or even actively rub it in people's faces etc.).
The way I like to do it is to try and make sure at least one of the my bonds/flaws/traits is tied to the race/culture the character belongs to as a reminder of how that influences them. All well-rounded characters should have quirks etc. that make them different, so it doesn't need to be an extra burden, just another potential source for them. It's also not like humans in D&D are generic, there is a whole bunch of different places they can be from; are they a far traveller from High Shou, a Feylost wanderer, a trader from Calimshan?
Plus it'd be nice if players did think at least briefly about where their character is supposed to be from; "I'm a tabaxi from tabaxi-land" doesn't exactly paint a rich tapestry for your fellow players and the DM's NPCs to engage with. Hypothetically speaking of course, I totally haven't had a player say literally exactly that or anything… 😂
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Well, that's a big part of the issue, though, isn't it? Humans are diverse and can have all sorts of different cultures but elves and orcs are all the same. Based on the previously stated criteria, if I wanted to play Sunflower the dwarven hippie who doesn't have any dwarven cultural traits because they didn't grow up in the stereotypical dwarf mine, apparently that's wrong because they might as well be a human.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I don't think that necessarily follows; we can already customise things like languages and skills if you don't want dwarf weapon training which is the only "cultural" trait IMO, everything else is innate. You might not live in a mine or revere stonework, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't have natural darkvision or stone cunning anyway. We also got Custom Lineage for exactly this sort of case; it's literally whatever you want it to be narratively, but builds a bit like variant human mechanically. Though I don't recall if we're getting that back in OneD&D, I hope so.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I agree 100% with fewer races getting straight up darkvision, it’s yet another thing that makes humans feel obsolete.
I don't at all mind not having darkvision (and I'm more than happy to play it up in character), but it is more than a little marginalizing to be the only one in the party who has to remember torches. I have to resist the urge to apologize. like a clankin' dex-dump heavy armor user in the group stealth check. are humans a burden or is darkvision just ridiculously prevalent?
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Darkvision is used way too much in PC races.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I agree with Darkvision, but just remember that in darkness you get an effective -5 to passive perception checks unless you bring out a torch, because darkvision isn't as perfect as normal vision.
Darkvision is still somewhat OP though, but if you enforce it as written then your players will use light sources much more. For example the darkvision scout will creep ahead, use a hooded lantern to check for traps, etc.
Remember to enforce this rule with your players, along with other rules people forget. A few of them a subtle but change the balance of the game.
As for the original topic, I am really not a fan of the recent changes to races in general. I get why they did it, but I think it's made all the races mechanically feel a lot blander. A lot of people like to argue that roleplay, flavor, etc stems from the self, but I disagree. It doesn't always. Many players are not confident role-players and like to be guided by the holding hand of mechanics and system flavor.
I... don't play humans, but that's because I like the fantasy of being a tiefling or dragonborn or goliath or fairy or warforged or tabaxi/shifter. I like going wild with my characters, and not taking them because of some mechanical reason. I take them because I love the story of being part fiend/giant/dragon/animal or a full construct or fey.
And, I mean... there was that one survey where human and v.human were, like, over 50% of races taken for a character on D&D beyond. One race, over half of people playing them. And it was the original, non-feat getting human that's generally considered less attractive that topped the charts.
There's zero problem with going human in 5e or 5eR
Which is interesting because in the thread asking what race people prefer to play, the human is only at 10%. People here are obviously not being honest in the poll.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/157564-favorite-race-and-why
In our playtest group, we currently have one dragonborn, one gnome, one wood elf and 3 humans.
I don't think we've ever had a group that hasn't had at least 1 human in it.
Not everything needs to be perfectly balanced, although I also miss the days when there were negative offsets for some of the powers.
Very difficult to design so much variety in a game without considering some races, genders, and classes as the standard or reference used to compare all other combinations. (See 1E D&D PHB for multiple adjustments between race, gender, and class as an example.)
If the current version of D&D introduced today a new race called "Humans," I wonder what features could make them differentiated and distinctive compared to all the other races (species)?
"Only". Human is still the second most popular race behind elf with a fairly large gap between them and the third most played with this survey.
As for why such differing results? I'd imagine this one has a much smaller base to draw from, as very few DnD players use this forum and even fewer would've voted.
If we're getting all scientific about it, what humans are good at is endurance. We're incredible long-distance runners and don't get tired or overheat as easily as other animals. We're also, obviously, very intelligent by the standards of our own world with our minds being our most powerful tool, though intelligence has been divvied out to a lot of other species in fantasy.
So I'd probably give humans stuff like Advantage on certain CON saves, Exhaustion resistance, and maybe a bonus on HP recovery on short rests. For intelligence I'd give humans an extra knowledge proficiency I think, representing the human mind's ability to soak up information through experience and schooling.
The human body is also exceptionally well adapted to throwing weapons, so you could add proficiency in one weapon with the Thrown property of your choice. I think that'd be kind of neat, but might be a useless feature if you're playing a martial class.
Honestly, the problem isn't humans, the problem is darkvision -- it should really just be low light vision (negates penalties for dim light, no effect in actual darkness) outside of a few monsters (such as undead) that should probably have exotic senses anyway, because the huge benefit of darkvision is the ability to move around without a light source.
Why do you need negative numbers based on race/species? Those are really hard line gamey things that just limit choice.
Why would you have cultural problems inherently? Don’t all these player options live on the same planet and share a common language. With common language and living in the same cities there would be no difference between a human, orc, or elf except a few genetic traits.