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FFT posted:3/3.5 really established the "everything is a valid character race but it might cost you some Effective Character Level(s)." 4th pullled it down to not costing ECLs. 5th has the most players of any edition and is also post-Eberron. "High Fantasy" isn't the same as it used to be. Going by fivethirtyeight's scrape of D&D beyond data, humans are still the most popular race (at about 35% of characters), followed by elves, then half-elves, then dwarves. Together, humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, and halflings make up . . . looks like about 65% of characters. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-your-dd-character-rare/ Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 17:53
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Going by fivethirtyeight's scrape of D&D beyond data, humans are still the most popular race, followed by elves, then half-elves, then dwarves. D&D Beyond scrapes are largely useless because they skew heavily towards the free options. That's not representative of table play.
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Jul 5, 2021 17:56
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Toshimo posted:D&D Beyond scrapes are largely useless because they skew heavily towards the free options. That's not representative of table play. I thought about that but I suspect there are factors pushing in the other direction also -- e.g., new players playing using the free options, rather than in, say, Adventurer's League which is going to skew more hardcore. I'm also not sure how or if they account for theorycrafted characters who never hit an actual play session. Looking at the list I think most or all of the listed races may be free-to-play yeah, but that still gets a fair bit of diversity (e.g., aarokocra are ftp). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 17:58
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FFT posted:3/3.5 really established the "everything is a valid character race but it might cost you some Effective Character Level(s)." 4th pullled it down to not costing ECLs. 5th has the most players of any edition and is also post-Eberron. "High Fantasy" isn't the same as it used to be. My group played through Curse of Strahd as an entirely non-human party. Just a tabaxi, a loxodon, a tortle, an uplifted owl and a magical talking dog, kicking vampire butt.
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Jul 5, 2021 17:59
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Megazver posted:My group played through Curse of Strahd as an entirely non-human party. Just a tabaxi, a loxodon, a tortle, an uplifted owl and a magical talking dog, kicking vampire butt. HOw did the dog address the "lack of hands / thumbs" issue ? I mean, mouth, but that's just one hand.
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Jul 5, 2021 18:01
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I’m in two games right now, and the PCs are: Goliath, Reborn, Yuan-ti (me) Eladrin, Drow, Tabaxi, Tortle, Warforged (me)
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Jul 5, 2021 18:02
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:HOw did the dog address the "lack of hands / thumbs" issue ? I mean, mouth, but that's just one hand. or the owl, for that matter
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Jul 5, 2021 18:02
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cowboy
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Megazver posted:magical talking dog, sniffing vampire butt.
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Jul 5, 2021 18:04
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:HOw did the dog address the "lack of hands / thumbs" issue ? I mean, mouth, but that's just one hand. Maybe the magic dog had the Mage Hand cantrip.
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Jul 5, 2021 18:07
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The active players in the game I'm running are: Centaur Half-elf Sprite Tiefling Warforged Water Genasi Former players included a Satyr and a Tabaxi I did start the campaign saying "everyone gets a feat at level one, variant human isn't an option".
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Jul 5, 2021 18:08
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Facebook Aunt posted:Maybe the magic dog had the Mage Hand cantrip. There's a "animal adventures" "gullet cove" module I'd like to run sometime where everyone's an awakened animal and that works for the casters but not, like, the fighter maybe the answer is prehensile tails for all --- FWIW my current campaign is Variant Human, Half-elf, halfling, human, and i started as Aarakocra and now I'm Goliath. I'm the only person in the group who ever played a prior edition. I think new players may tend more humanesque.
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Jul 5, 2021 18:08
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Can attest that the non-human races just always seem more fun. My current party comps: Frostmaiden: Tiefling, githyanki, drow (me), goliath My campaign: Dragonborn, shifter, drow, high elf (I originally said PHB-only races because it's a homebrew setting, but the shifter joined later and it fits with the canon, there are varying degrees of hereditary lycanthropy floating around the world) My roommate's game: Half-elf, half-elf (me), human, high elf (previously had a tortle and tabaxi but they both dropped out) Edit: That 538 survey is from 2017, well before custom lineage options or moving racial stat bonuses around was officially codified change my name fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 18:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Going by fivethirtyeight's scrape of D&D beyond data, humans are still the most popular race (at about 35% of characters), followed by elves, then half-elves, then dwarves. Together, humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, and halflings make up . . . looks like about 65% of characters. I'm surprised halflings aren't more popular. Rerolling all your 1s to almost never have crit fails seems pretty powerful.
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Jul 5, 2021 18:12
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Current game: Dwarf, Aarakocra, Wood Elf, Dragonborn, Dark Elf Previous game: Human, Human, Human, Human, Gnome vOv
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Jul 5, 2021 18:16
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:HOw did the dog address the "lack of hands / thumbs" issue ? I mean, mouth, but that's just one hand.  Haggis was basically a magical construct created by a powerful wizard to be his adoptive daughter's nanny/companion. Then she disappeared and he went into the mists with his friends to get her back. Race-wise, he was an Aasimar (on account of what a good boy he was) and every once a while flew around the battlefield on a little propeller made out pure light that appeared out of his back. His magic hat was the group's Bag of Holding. He started out as a third-party Noble class , who basically gives other party members actions and healing on his turn instead of attacking himself, but that class turned out to be a bit too wonky for my taste. So Haggis realized his pacifist ways weren't quite cutting it and that he was being a burden on the team, so he left the party, only soon to be replaced by a mysterious stranger with a secret identity, a Sorcerous vigilante who was willing to get his paws dirty to save children - The Bowtie Mask:  The owl was basically a Humblewood type humanoid-ish owl. More or less this:  Mechanically, she was just a Gnome Wizard. She was looking for her creator/dad, who ended up being the Mad Mage of Mount Baratok. If anyone who likes Curse of Strahd is angrily snapping pencils in half as they're reading this, I am not sorry. I am not sorry at all. Megazver fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 18:24
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I feel like Strahd would take one look at those characters, then duck behind the door and reappear with a big bowl of candy.  A simple solution to any critter that lacks hands is to give them two Mage Hands with a max 5' reach.
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Jul 5, 2021 18:28
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Megazver posted:If anyone who likes Curse of Strahd is angrily snapping pencils in half as they're reading this, I am not sorry. I am not sorry at all.
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Jul 5, 2021 18:53
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I feel like Strahd would take one look at those characters, then duck behind the door and reappear with a big bowl of candy. Far more fun if Strahd found them perpetually infuriating. "I am so glad you chose to join me today... I have been awaiting WILL YOU STOP SCRATCHING BEHIND YOUR EAR WHILE I AM TALKING?!"
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Jul 5, 2021 18:58
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Campaign I'm running is an Elf, Tabaxi, Kenku, Gnome, and Warforged. I purposefully made humans the primary enemy for it. My Strahd campaign was an Aasimar, Dragonborn, Water Genasi, Shifter, and a Kobold. It made for a weird time in Barovia but also having the Barovians readily identify them as Other was kinda cool. And my first campaign had an Aasimar, Gnome, Tiefling, Dragonborn, and a Dwarf. I don't think I've ever played 5e with a human player character.
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Jul 5, 2021 19:10
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Some of the dragonmarked human choices in Eberron are really interesting, that's probably the setting I'd actually want to play a human in (I did play a mark of handling ranger in a one-shot thing and not having dark vision was really annoying though)
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Jul 5, 2021 19:15
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There's only two changes I make when I'm running Eberron, one doing something better for Drow than just "same thing but jungles and scorpions instead of caves and spiders" and the other is "Dragonmarks aren't racially divided for balance, so it won't hurt to just remove the racial requirements. If a Dragonborn gets the mark of healing, that's weird, but weirder poo poo happens."
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Jul 5, 2021 22:54
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Facebook Aunt posted:I'm surprised halflings aren't more popular. Rerolling all your 1s to almost never have crit fails seems pretty powerful. That's assuming you're playing with crit fail houserules for some reason.
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Jul 5, 2021 23:20
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Let's say that you have a 50% chance of succeeding on your roll, whatever it is. That is, 10 of the numbers on a d20 will result in success. Rerolling 1s means that 5% of your failures have a 50% chance of becoming a success instead. Effectively that boosts your success rate from 50% to 52.5% instead. If you have a 75% chance of success, then rerolling 1s changes that to a 78.75% chance, which is better...but it's still not exactly a super significant effect. Similarly, if your success rate is 25%, then with rerolls, it becomes 26.25%. (please don't let me have done the math wrong on this)
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Jul 5, 2021 23:53
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Rerolling 1s only increases success by a tiny percentage, but it decreases crit fails from 5% of rolls (1/20) to 0.25% of rolls (1/400). RAW is that natural 1s automatically miss on attack rolls and fail saving throws, with no additional effect beyond failure (and they can still pass on skill checks, not that they ever will with bounded accuracy)... but tons of bad DMs houserule all natural 1s to be epic failures with extra consequences for would-be heroes.
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Jul 6, 2021 00:46
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Yeah, the practical effect of Halfling luck is generally an increase in success of about 2.5%, which is... fine? It's value goes up or down depending upon how many dice rolls you make. Wizard making your enemies save? Not so hot. Monk making 4 attacks? Probably ok.
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Jul 6, 2021 00:49
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Infinite Karma posted:Rerolling 1s only increases success by a tiny percentage, but it decreases crit fails from 5% of rolls (1/20) to 0.25% of rolls (1/400). RAW is that natural 1s automatically miss on attack rolls and fail saving throws, with no additional effect beyond failure (and they can still pass on skill checks, not that they ever will with bounded accuracy)... but tons of bad DMs houserule all natural 1s to be epic failures with extra consequences for would-be heroes. Nat 1s don't actually autofail saves in 5E either, though they used to in older editions. This is mostly relevant for concentration saves, where a +9 modifier to always succeed on DC 10 is often achievable (mostly when there's a paladin in the party, but still).
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Jul 6, 2021 01:17
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Nat 1 on a death saving throw counts as 2 failures though, doesn't it?
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Jul 6, 2021 01:24
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Nat 1 on a death saving throw counts as 2 failures though, doesn't it? Correct
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Jul 6, 2021 01:38
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Toshimo posted:Yeah, the practical effect of Halfling luck is generally an increase in success of about 2.5%, which is... fine? It's value goes up or down depending upon how many dice rolls you make. Wizard making your enemies save? Not so hot. Monk making 4 attacks? Probably ok. Halfling in my party is a gunslinger, it means his pistol never jams.
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Jul 6, 2021 01:48
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I thought about that but I suspect there are factors pushing in the other direction also -- e.g., new players playing using the free options, rather than in, say, Adventurer's League which is going to skew more hardcore. At least when they published data on class selection and level ranges, they said that they'd only used characters who had been assigned to a campaign and actually been used (I could be misremembering but I think the criteria was something like that they'd rolled dice, lost HP, and taken a long rest). Not sure if their races data uses the same criteria. I'll confess I do think there's merit in the PCs playing as mostly (or even all) humans--it gives a different kind of feel to a game. I kind of like the idea of the fantasy elements of a setting being fantastic rather than mundane, and I've never personally been too enamoured with all the fantastic races as basically humans with some traits exaggerated. Sure, in principle you can play an Elf as having a worldview alien to most humans, but I've never seen that convincingly pulled off in a PC, and most players don't even want to do that anyway. That's not really the aesthetic 5e goes for, of course, so I let my players go hog wild and make whatever, but some day I'd like to do an actual feywild campaign with a humans-only restriction where all the fantasy stuff is proper weird. Might be there's a better system for that though.
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Jul 6, 2021 03:03
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Infinite Karma posted:but tons of bad DMs houserule all natural 1s to be epic failures with extra consequences for would-be heroes. If there isn't something in the PHB/dm guide emphasizing what a dogshit idea this is, there should be. It's up there with putting taxes on free parking in monopoly in the greatest hits of bad house rules My last DM never made the connection that he was seriously screwing our fighter and monk as they gained levels or used resources. I think the math comes out to about a 14% chance of a level 5 monk to get at least one natural 1 on a double attack + flurry of blows. If I ever play with him again I'm definitely rolling a halfling just so I don't have to deal with it
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Jul 6, 2021 03:11
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Yea there are times when the extra danger of 'alright but fair warning a natural 1 here will be extra bad because this is a high risk kinda thing you're doing' is perfectly fun but those times are not literally every time. I agree that most GMs who it genuinely don't understand they're loving over some people way worse than others, by an order of magnitude and change.
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Jul 6, 2021 03:46
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I'd also toss out there that for a new player, it's easy to socket a human, elf, or dwarf basically anywhere into a setting. As they're most common in universe, there's a ton of freely available info on their various kingdoms and cities that makes it really easy to just pick one that matches what kind of character they want to play. Unless you start buying books, the most you get for most of the more exotic races is "they exist and <X> is their homeland". That's a tough ask for someone not already set on playing one, and kinda creates a chicken and egg scenario. Unless you know they're cool and want to play one, you're not gonna buy the book that includes them, and unless you buy the books, you're not as likely to hear why they're cool.
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Jul 6, 2021 04:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Going by fivethirtyeight's scrape of D&D beyond data, humans are still the most popular race (at about 35% of characters), followed by elves, then half-elves, then dwarves. Together, humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, and halflings make up . . . looks like about 65% of characters. That's pretty out of date (2017 and first few months of D&D Beyond). Later data dumps had the dwarves fall behind both dragonborn and tieflings, and Genasi fall to something more reasonable.
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Jul 6, 2021 04:38
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neonchameleon posted:That's pretty out of date (2017 and first few months of D&D Beyond). Later data dumps had the dwarves fall behind both dragonborn and tieflings, and Genasi fall to something more reasonable. I'd also be interested as to the popularity between standard and Variant humans. I can see humans being so popular if the latter's allowed, given how bonus feats are a no-brainer.
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Jul 6, 2021 04:44
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This reminds me of a thing Larian brought up for BG III namely how people were making their characters.  They elaborated later, they were expecting a Frankenstein monster, but it was more of a joke and they are not actually disappointed.
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Jul 6, 2021 05:39
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Megazver posted:
I wish this was my Strahd experience. It sounds rad as gently caress.
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Jul 6, 2021 06:36
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pretty soft girl posted:If there isn't something in the PHB/dm guide emphasizing what a dogshit idea this is, there should be. It's up there with putting taxes on free parking in monopoly in the greatest hits of bad house rules I think "extra consequences for nat 1" is much better as an out-of-combat skill check/save type of thing if it's used as a sort of fail forward mechanic. Standing on a steep hillside and have to roll a dex save to dodge a bat that just flew out of a cave? A nat 1 has you lose your footing and start rolling down the hill. It's super dumb if you have multiple attack rolls in a turn of combat and each one has you like, slip and cut yourself for 1d4.
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Jul 6, 2021 08:24
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One of my DMs has nat 1s on attacks disable further attacks that turn. Don't think he realized up front that this would almost solely affect the monsters he throws at us. The barbarian only attacks recklessly and my dual rapier rogue mastermind has better things to do with its bonus actions. stringless fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Jul 6, 2021 |
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Jul 6, 2021 08:50
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Kenning posted:I think "extra consequences for nat 1" is much better as an out-of-combat skill check/save type of thing if it's used as a sort of fail forward mechanic. Standing on a steep hillside and have to roll a dex save to dodge a bat that just flew out of a cave? A nat 1 has you lose your footing and start rolling down the hill Not really a fan of this either. I've had too many situations where I've stacked a ton of points in say, acrobatics, but regardless of the fact that my character is above and beyond an Olympic level athlete he's still got a 5% chance to gently caress up in a way that someone with that level of training never should when executing the most basic aspects of that skillset I get this is more a hallmark of bad DMs asking for unnecessary checks and/or following nat 1 = crit fail to a T, but there's nothing more discouraging than having your character's specialty spotlighted only to fail in such a way that it totally undermines one of their core competencies I can see it used to good effect if someone is trying to roll on a skill they lack training in or if the challenge rating is phenomenally high but otherwise a basic failure is good enough
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Jul 6, 2021 11:25
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