D&D General What it means for a race to end up in the PHB, its has huge significance

[EzekielRaiden]

heh, I get that.

But I really hate that ALL dragonborn, aasimars, tieflings, shifters and what not are same no matter what parent race is.

why should not elven tiefling be different from human one or dwarven?

that is one thing that I liked from 3.5e racial templates, pick base race, slap on template on it. Suffer the LA.
Since we do not have LA cost in 5E, and I do not want it, 1st level feat is a good cost for a template with possible 4th level half-feat for additional benefits.

Well, dragonborn aren't a hybrid of dragons and humans. They are their own species. This doesn't have an explanation any more than "any other race can reproduce with humans and produce a blend of traits" does. It's just how things are presented.

And, yes, I personally prefer dragonborn to work this way. I've had a few ideas for diegetically explaining this difference. Some examples:

• Humans and dragons are the only natural species that exist. All other species arose from ritually-crafting ancestral beings from appropriate materials (e.g. dwarves from precious metals and gemstones, elves from leaves and petals, orcs from sturdy ordinary stone, halflings from cooked food, etc.), who could then produce offspring with humans and thus "piggyback" off of the elemental spark that allows humans to reproduce. As a result, all "elves" are actually humans, who simply carry on enough of the mystical heritage of the Progenitor Elves to consistently produce "elf" offspring. However, when an active dragon-spark and an active human-spark are inherited simultaneously by a person (which doesn't always happen), the result is always a dragonborn--and two dragonborn more or less always produce dragonborn offspring. As a result, dragonborn are sometimes shunned by other societies because they're seen as "taking over" or the like.
• Dragonborn actually come from a different universe (or perhaps this universe, but far, far in its distant future), and are thus biologically incompatible with beings of this universe(/distant past). They simply cannot produce offspring with any other race that currently exists, except (possibly) dragons. Not even humans. (I particularly like pairing this idea with the "dragonborn are rare in the world because they all come from a crashed cryosleep colony ship, where they struggle to expand because this world doesn't have the industrial capacity to support the lifestyle they expect.")
• Dragonborn were a divine accident, the result of Io's blood striking the ground and sprouting a new species directly from the earth. Because they were not intentionally created, unlike all other races, their nature is fundamentally different, precluding the possibility of offspring. Exactly why intentional vs accidental creation matters so much would depend on the cosmology of the specific setting, but I imagine in many cases it would tie into some kind of "wheel of fate" or the like, where everything intentionally created by the gods is bound up in some destiny, and things accidentally created don't fit into that structure.

 

[CreamCloud0]

why?

do we really need 15+ races in PHB that differ one from another by:
+/- 60ft of darkvision
one different starting skill
one different cantrip
+/- 5ft of walk speed

heh, I get that.

But I really hate that ALL dragonborn, aasimars, tieflings, shifters and what not are same no matter what parent race is.

why should not elven tiefling be different from human one or dwarven?

that is one thing that I liked from 3.5e racial templates, pick base race, slap on template on it. Suffer the LA.
Since we do not have LA cost in 5E, and I do not want it, 1st level feat is a good cost for a template with possible 4th level half-feat for additional benefits.

while the idea of templates for certain species(tiefling, aasimar, shifter(werecreature lite), dhamphir(vampire lite) and warforged(walks the line, warforged are their own thing but there's nothing stopping them being designed as robot facsimilies of other species, which would be very cool)) appeals and the miniscule differences between a dozen different species is awful design i also hate(see the other post i just made), i think you're encountering resistance by being far too willing to cut off concepts you don't seem to think are meaningful and just turn them into a template rather than improve them, and in the process coming across as either ignorant or dismissive of their themes and what they are and represent, a dragonborn isn't just a 'draconic human', halflings and gnomes aren't just shorter versions of the other species just as much as goliaths aren't just bigger versions of them.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I am very curious to see what happens with the half-elf, if the half-elf isn't in the PHB as that name as opposed to as an elven sub-species (or whatever they are calling it). It's an option with a very long history, was in Tolkien, in all the prior PHBs, is listed as a popular choice on DNDBeyond, and is a popular race in D&D video games like BG3. I am not sure how they change the name with that much force of popularity behind it.

They seem to be outright retconning half elves out of the lore altogether. Established half elf characters are being turned into full elves in newer content.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

while the idea of templates for certain species(tiefling, aasimar, shifter(werecreature lite), dhamphir(vampire lite) and warforged(walks the line, warforged are their own thing but there's nothing stopping them being designed as robot facsimilies of other species, which would be very cool)) appeals and the miniscule differences between a dozen different species is awful design i also hate(see the other post i just made), i think you're encountering resistance by being far too willing to cut off concepts you don't seem to think are meaningful and just turn them into a template rather than improve them, and in the process coming across as either ignorant or dismissive of their themes and what they are and represent, a dragonborn isn't just a 'draconic human', halflings and gnomes aren't just shorter versions of the other species just as much as goliaths aren't just bigger versions of them.

Autognomes are a better example of construct touched.

 

[bedir than]

To the best of my knowledge, goliaths started in 4e. Aasimar, like tieflings, have been around since 2e.

Is this not true?

Sure, but that's more than 25% of the existence of D&D and goliaths were free content for 5e for all but the first six months or so of the edition.

 

[Belen]

Tieflings were popular before they made it into the PHB.

Dragonborn remain rare even though they have been in the PHB for a couple of editions. I have never seen a PC Dragonborn and NPCs are few and far between.

I see lots of orcs and warforged PCs.

I expect we will see a lot of new players asking “where are the gith?”

Every kid I know (ages 8-12) chooses to play Dragonborn as their first character.

 

[Shardstone]

why?

do we really need 15+ races in PHB that differ one from another by:
+/- 60ft of darkvision
one different starting skill
one different cantrip
+/- 5ft of walk speed

Aesthetics, features you are oversimplifying, and fluff all matter a lot when it comes to races. I do not like dwarfs, I don't care about orcs, I love tieflings and yuan-ti and assimar, and of the elves I prefer shadar-kai the most. All of these are a lot more interesting then being forced to be an elf, dwarf, or orc every single game, for every single world.

And this says nothing of my love for changelings, griff, tabaxi, genasi, eladrin, dragonborn, and so on.

God, just four races. I have to be an orc all the time? Please. I even like orcs, but still.

 

[Belen]

Well, first off the thread is rather willfully ignoring the fact that "race" is being discarded as a term for reasons that have been carefully explained by WotC. So there will be no races in the PHB ever again. "Half-races" are even more problematic, and are also gone.

So I'm not going to discuss the inclusion of "races." Since there won't be any.

Species are being intentionally downplayed in terms of their impact on character abilities. They no longer affect ability scores or skills, and are mostly there for aesthetic reasons, narrative reasons, and some biological differences (e.g. darkvision, stone's endurance, etc.). I imagine that we'll see more players choosing non-traditional species+class combinations, since they won't be nearly as incentivized to seek out optimal ones. I particularly expect that we'll see far fewer mountain dwarves.

Hybrid species can be whatever the player wants, but given that they are not being delineated as offering any unique abilities, they will only be chosen by players who have a particular aesthetic or narrative reason. So there'll likely be fewer of them.

The term will continue to be used for a long time since it was in use for 50 years. I understand WOTC's reasoning but I really do not care which term people use.

As for the species being downplayed, I really dislike it. I do not want to see them turned into video game skins. I think that it encouraged players to take a deeper look into some options and assisted in helping them choose a flavor and backstory.

I allow Tasha's in my current game but all the player's continue to use the older versions instead of being able to "pick" your stats for the optimization. Even the guy who is an die hard optimizer continues to use the older versions rather than Tasha's.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Did they explode though? I know players are lay them but I question the notion that their visibility in settings has changed much.

Phandelver has no tieflings or Dragonborn. Saltmarsh had exactly one tiefling. Waterdeep Dragonheist has no tieflings or Dragonborn. Hoard of the Dragon Queen has neither appearing.

So on and so forth.

For all the noise about having them in the phb, they’ve made pretty much zero impact on settings.

They're explicitly meant to be rare. If they're as common as elves and halfings as NPCs, it goes directly against their lore.

 

[Horwath]

Aesthetics, features you are oversimplifying, and fluff all matter a lot when it comes to races. I do not like dwarfs, I don't care about orcs, I love tieflings and yuan-ti and assimar, and of the elves I prefer shadar-kai the most. All of these are a lot more interesting then being forced to be an elf, dwarf, or orc every single game, for every single world.

And this says nothing of my love for changelings, griff, tabaxi, genasi, eladrin, dragonborn, and so on.

God, just four races. I have to be an orc all the time? Please. I even like orcs, but still.

you can have expanded lore for aasimars of any race or who communities of the same.

Tieflings by 5E are human based only with infernal blood.
why not have elven tieflings or variation of 3.5e fey'ri?
If you take elven features and paste tiefling features on it you can have elven tiefling by both lore and mechanics.

warforged/autognome can just be mind transferred to mechanical animated half living construct body.

shifter can be any humanoid bitten by lycan. and depending on base species, have it's unique features.

and outside lore, there is little difference between eladrin, shadar-kai and astral elf. teleport+something else, other completely the same.