D&D General How many Races it too much?

[Puddles]

I see worldbuilding as something the players and DM should do together, so I keep many aspects of my campaign setting fluid and undecided until after session 0. This is because I don’t want to put any restrictions on what my players can choose, so any class or race from any 5e D&D book is open.

For example, if a player wants to be a Loxodon? Awesome. Looks like my world has Loxodons in it this time around - I’ll ask them if they have come up with any background for where their Loxodon comes from. If not I can do it.

I find that while creating the backstories of their characters, lots of players love doing a bit of world building too. Although all newer players, the players in my current campaign came up with the names and cultures of the places they come from.

So before session 0 I leave my world quite rough, mainly shaping the different land masses and their climates and only really going into detail on the starting area. This means I can easily slot anything the players come up with into the world.

After session 0, I finalize the world building so it meshes with their choices. For example, in my current campaign I had wanted them to explore ancient ruins of an Egyptian style culture. One player created a Tiefling with the hermit background that has the ‘discovery’ feature. This led to me making that ancient culture be a Tiefling one so I could tie in their discovery to the story and I ended up dotting loads of Tiefling groups around my map to all be the descendants of that civilisation.

In the same breath, all the stuff they chose to not include in their party doesn’t make the cut into the wider world, there’s no Dragonborn, Halflings, or half-orcs this time around because none of the party are using them so there isn’t any need to include them in the world.

I find this collaborative and emergent world building to be very rewarding, and it means the sky is the limit when it comes to how many different races are offered in supplements.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Much as this is a totally non-representative sample, it's interesting how if we ignore the "17+" category, things are pretty well-centered around 8 races, only slightly smaller than the full PHB--and, notably, more than the usual number of player characters in a game. If we take the D&D Beyond data from three samples we've had, we get the following as (apparently) the "typical" ENWorlder's 5e lineup, plus or minus maybe two options. I've included the top 10 for each data set, with the 9th and 10th in parentheses. Some of this is slight estimation, as the 2017 and 2018 data is presented without separating subraces, while the 2019 data DOES separate them. (Note these are the years they were published, so the data may not be exclusively from those years.)

As of 2017:

Spoiler

Human
Elf
Half-elf
Dwarf
Dragonborn
Tiefling
Genasi
Halfling
(Half-orc)
(Gnome)

As of 2018:

Spoiler

Human
Elf
Half-elf
Tiefling
Dwarf
Dragonborn
Halfling
Aasimar
(Genasi)
(Half-orc)

As of 2019:

Spoiler

Human
Elf
Half-elf
Tiefling
Dragonborn
Dwarf
Half-orc
Halfling
(Gnome)
(Genasi)

Curiously, Dragonborn--despite their apparently controversial status--consistently rank in or just below the top 5. This is also very interesting because, despite some claims to the contrary, it's generally agreed that Dragonborn are in the running for the weakest "standard" playable race, that is, excluding things like the "monstrous" races that have nasty ability penalties or the like. Even more interesting, tiefling is unambiguously favored by people who use D&D Beyond, being #4 in both of the most recent dev analyses.

Human has always been the most commonly-chosen race for D&D, so filtering that out and looking at the remainder, I suspect there are two factors in play here. Firstly, Elf and Half-Elf are extremely strong picks, both for their base features, and for the Elven Accuracy feat (in games where feats are allowed). That Dragonborn (and Tiefling) sometimes edge out Dwarf, despite the mechanical advantages, suggests that they're liked for something more than just power; both seem to have made a real splash with the 5e audience, which strongly implies they're here to stay.

Curiously, Aasimar were popular enough to hit the top 8 for a time, but seem to have fallen by the wayside. Likewise, Genasi started off above even Halflings, but are now only barely making the top 10. Ironically, Genasi aren't even something you have to pay for--the EEPC is free to download--yet that still isn't enough to boost them! It would seem that "exotic-ness" alone isn't enough to buoy a race, or at least that there's some magic je ne sais quoi about Dragonborn and Tiefling that boost them above their "exotic humanoid-like" status.

 

[Weiley31]

It's a big world out there!

 

[DammitVictor]

I would say 9-12 is about right... but that count includes "humanoids" as well.

 

[Remathilis]

At least four as a minimum. Typically, elf/dwarf/human/halfling, but any four races can be the limit. Less than that doesn't feel like there is adequate choices.

Realistically, 7-9 (the classic PHB #s) should be base, but I routinely add several interesting options that the PHB races don't cover. Again, it doesn't have to be the classic PHB ones, but my rule of thumb is if I'm not using the PHB races, I still try to include at least as many options as the PHB normally gives. (1:1 exchange). Mainly though, I prefer to add new options over removing.

Now,if we count monstrous humanoids (orcs, goblins, etc) the number is well over 20+. I tended not to count the monster races, but as D&D blurs the line between monster and race/species, I find it harder to ignore them for purposes of counting races. It's hard to say you have a limit of 5-8 "races" if you're still including 9+ monstrous humanoids in the MM.