Fantasy Races

So what is your favorite fantasy race and why?

which is your least favorite and why?

lastly what is your opinion on none standard races such as pandarians or other beastial races?

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orcs/gnoll cuz I'm edgelord like that

elves though only in a "I don't like playing them" way

Sure

i agree on the elves get bring little to the talbe of appeal and im not sure who to play them either

I like Goblins, and I use them a lot.

I don't really have a real "favorite" yet. The ones I find most visually interesting usually have shit flavortext and I feel too much like a Special Snowflake if I want to play outside of the default setting. That, or they attract the worst sorts of players and I don't want to be associated with them, so I avoid them out of habit. So in fantasy games, I tend to stick to half-elves which are close enough for now.

Off the top of my head, bestial races (kitsune, catfolk, birdfolk; etc) are fun-seeming, dragon-types are fun-seeming (especially if they're of the Japanese visual type where they're humans or elves with token dragon features), tieflings and other monster-genes or elemental-genes types are fun-seeming; etc.

I know I shouldn't let it get to me what other people think of my fun times, but when I get to play fantasy it's generally one-shots with strangers, and I just want to skip as many assumptions as I can and play something "more standard" to avoid people trying to single me out for punishment because they had bad experiences with the last person who played X or for the GM to think that because I'm playing X I'm signalling an interest in Y (where "Y" usually means the bullshit setting stuff I didn't like or gamer tropes like, "They're playing a kitsune, so they must be looking for hot semen injections - even if male - right?")

I suppose I would say I have least interest in playing races that are, by standard, dumb and brutish. I rarely play meatshields and often play very social characters. I find it interesting when people subvert those things (like playing half-elf bards; etc), but I don't especially enjoy playing characters that have to subvert the common expectations and get spit on for trying.

...half-orc bards. Don't drunkpost, friends.

The favorite changes from time to time.

Least favorite is obviously Kender. Too one-dimensional and behaviorally restricted to be interesting past the first one encountered.

I like beastman races. I appreciate them most when they're used to signify that an area is one unexplored by the outer world, deep in the wilds.

I've always been fond of the races that are more quiet observers of the world. Like sentient golems that don't necessarily need anything or really interact with anything, they just watch. I guess that's why I tend to like the fae when they're done right. Less the "teehee, I poke your butt" pixie and more the eyes in the darkness sort. Just watching. That's all they ever do. Watch. Wait.

playing someone who only ever does watch things and wait for other things to watch is boring as hell tho

Oh fuck that.

No, I use them as a DM to scare the shit out of my players.

well what is your favorite playable race?

Favorite Race: Elf, Mostly because I like to go caster though.

Least favorite: Dwarves, but mostly because one player in the group ruined the whole damn race for our play group. (condensed version, dude who primarily ran dwarves was thrown in jail for being a pedo)

Anthropomorphic races? I actually like them, but I hate most players that want them, because they turn out to be furries.

Bonus round: Favorite monstrous humanoids are Hobgoblins.

nice and i can agree on what about the anthropomorpihc races damn furries

I love Satyrs. Their the ultimate race of hedonists. They're also the most likely, in my opinion to be true adventurers; they love to fuck around (literally), they like to kill shit, and more importantly they have fun doing it. Also i dig faes

least favorite has to be warforged. Idk why, but the whole medieval magical robot thing doesnt do it for me.

Personally i like nonstandard races. It adds variety to things, rather than just humans and almost humans. Keeps things interesting. That being said, Pandaren are a shit races cause Pandas are shit animals, and furries are shit

>That being said, Pandaren are a shit races cause Pandas are shit animals, and furries are shit
i think wow/kung fu panda destroyed them a bit by the whole fat, funny chinese thing, also yes furries are shit

They aren't robots but golems, and are merely an extension of the golems in D&D, which are merely an extension of the medieval tale of the Golem of Prague.

Golem people have been a staple of myth and folklore for ages too.
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>favorite race

Dwarves. Tradition, Honor, Glory and Beer.

>least fav

Elves probably. Mostly because of their player base, most elf players I met played only elves and love their snowflakey characters a little too much.
I don't hate elves per se and think they can really offer something but everytime a plyer wants to play one I instantly cringe because I think I know what fuck festival of "hidden" fetishes and thousand year old weirdo idiots is coming.

>beast races

Depends on the tone of the game. I mostly play warhammer fantasy and there they have a very fixed place in the setting, so either all play savage furry raiders or none. Same for skaven btw.
In different settings they can have their place, as long as they aren't a stupid race with a not!-human culture and hairy tits.

I have quite a few buddies who like the knife-ears.

>friends
sounds like you are one of them!

Ancient machines and elemental constructs are my favorite because they always have a mystery behind them. Like, where the fuck did this robot come from? Who knows!

>where the fuck did this robot come from? Who knows!

this, this i like, never thought of it

>Favourite
Tiefling. The whole "not necessarily evil demon-spawn" trope holds a special place in my heart because I love Hellboy.

>Least favourite
Kitsune and similar; furries and weeaboos love that shit, I have played with people like that and they've always been insuferable special snowflakes with "muh kewl,unique background" and that sort of trash.

> Favorite Fantasy Race
Honestly, human. It's boring as sin, but human adaptation in a fantasy setting, particularly evolutionary adaptation, like with some pseudo-human races in low-fantasy (or high sci-fi) settings are more interesting to me than elves or dwarves.

> Least Favorite
Dragonborn. I get it, you own a dragon dildo, I don't want you to bring that mindset to my table, though.

> Opinion of Beast Races
I like them to fill the niche of savages in my own settings, but they're too easily corrupted into furry love interests for the one unashamed furry at my table, so I've stopped using them almost entirely.

> Favorite race: Dwarves
> Doesn't like hairy tits

Boy do I have some bad news for you.

Ow shit,forgot about beastmen.

I like and try to include them in my campaign for variety and different mindsets,usually opposed to those of my players' characters. My own setting includes a beastmen civilization divided in castes according to their own conception of themselves, with the unadapted beastman races occupying the niche of wild tribes and/or evil humanoids of the wilds.

Anyways,as stated in the other post,no furry shit. Fortunately my group shares my vision in this.

>So what is your favorite fantasy race and why?
Honestly, Half-Elves. Being of two peoples, fitting in with neither can add a nice RP aspect to the characters and they usually also get halfway decent abilities too.
>which is your least favorite and why?
Probably the Gnome. Why not just have them be a dwarven subrace that focuses on tinkering. If you want a more "friend of nature/animals" route, have a new proper race or fold that into the Elves.
>lastly what is your opinion on none standard races such as pandarians or other beastial races?
I've played them and they can be fun but I tend not to allow them in my games and I've been more hesitant in playing them in the last few years.

wut

beastmen are pretty fucking sick i aprove

it was a shit joke im sorry

>So what is your favorite fantasy race and why?
I guess the classic four (human-dwarf-elf-halfling), can't really pick one. They have a very clear identity and when you change some things it's easy to notice in game. Familiar tropes that are slightly altered or subverted are a great thing for fantasy. Also they're more relatable than more alien races.

>which is your least favorite and why?
Probably dragonborn, but also anthropomorphic beast races. The former just bring too much assumptions I don't want to see in games, the latter are annoying because of how players see them, both just don't do much for me aesthetically.

>lastly what is your opinion on none standard races such as pandarians or other beastial races?
They're better as NPCs, generally. They're okay for PCs in gonzo / kitchen-sinky campaigns or maybe in campaigns specifically focused on those races. I still want to run an Eberron game in Droaam.

>favorite:
Kobolds, It was literally love at first sight with these guys. I kinda vaguely remembered them in 2ed though we never fought them even once. But I can still remember opening up my 3rd edition manual and being like "Hello what do we have here!?" and wanted to make a kobold for the longest time. It's that fierce loyalty with their small stature and bit of a napoleon complex... plus the kobold in the monster manual looked just slightly dopey :3 Pic related

>least favorite
no idea, i do hate the uniform look of 4e-5e tieflings, though, i liked when you could pick and choose your physical oddities.

I like elementals and half-demons a lot. They are very well defined as tropes yet you can still do so much with them, as opposed to similarly evocative conventional races which have largely calcified into one or two shapes. You can't do much with dwarves.

I am also partial towards furbait, mainly because magical realm is so easy to subvert just by bringing some reality and common sense into the equation. And because it helps me weed out stormfronters and disruptive assburgers from the group.

what kind of half-demons? like oni or like hellboy

Sure.

>favorite
Human with weird culture that can't exist in real world, e.g. humans living in a hanging city on the roof of a massive subterranea, humans that always born as twins and speak a fraction-based language, etc.

>least favorite
Probably any homebrew/OC races that are just classic fantasy race but with real world counterpart culture. This includes Muslim Elves, Inuit Orcs, and the like. At that point why don't just play humans instead?

>non-standard races
I generally avoid anthro races. Bonus point for using non-domesticated animals. (Platypusfolk? Proboscis monkeyfolk? Flying squirrelfolk?) I think it's uncreative, slapping an animal into humanoid skin and calling it a new race. I'd rather play as a straight up non-anthropomorphized animal than a furry beastfolk.

semse like many avoid anthro races because of furries i can see why but damn that makes me wish furries dident exist

It's also really lazy.

cant that be said for most fantasy races then?

Favorite is probably 4e's Points of Light Dragonborn because of their storied and noble past. It makes for great roleplay opportunities and can be hte subject of entire campaigns really easily.

Least favorite is FR Drow. I am tired of the evil race's single good guy thing. Oh look cool, you rose above your race's vile reputation, cool. Why didnt you just play an evil guy, I would have preferred you just play an evil guy?

My thoughts on non-standard races is that I would really like them run by me first since I usually run settings that have particular races, like Dark Sun. However, I also don't like to stifle my players too much, so if its reasonable, like something that doesn't give ridiculous bonuses, then sure. But again, I prefer to have them run by me first.

Only if you limit yourself to "human body + animal head = new original race!" formula. Background building, in this case, is essential, since there are no established universal beastmen archetypes in fantasy apart from cannon fodder for wilderness-themed adventures. Saying that beastmen are a lazy resource is just like saying classical dwarves (small,beer loving and gold grabbing vikings with Scoth accent) is lazy; is the most basic iteration of the concept.

this user puts it better

I can't really pin a favorite. I'm fond of a lot of the whole "human with a touch of something else" stuff in fantasy but really what matters is how well a race is played/portrayed more than the race itself. Similar for least favorite really.

Non-standard races are always a chance to see someone do something fun and unexpected.

Non-standard races are always a chance to see someone do something fun and unexpected.

this so much, also any example of human ++

>Non-standard races are always a chance to see someone do something fun and unexpected.
i forgot the thing

there's a difference in liking to play a race and wanting to fuck it.

At least there should be.

Larger-than-life humans are the best fantasy race because they encompass all other racial "tropes".

After that I like Trolls, because they're versatile and always scary.

Giants next; particularly large ones with magical powers that speak in riddles; because they're mythical as fuck.

After that I like Fae; essentially Fairies and Elves lumped together, but less approachable and more inhuman; the kind that live in magical other-worlds hidden under barrows and in ancient forests, fear the touch of iron and steal away beautiful children and famous heroes.

As for races I don't like; I innately roll my eyes at most "Half-foo" races Tieflings and Dragon-like humanoids are the worst; but at the end of the day everything is in the execution, and nothing is innately bad; just associated with idiots.

> I innately roll my eyes at most "Half-foo" races
i strongly agree on this

>After that I like Trolls, because they're versatile and always scary.


Trolls are sick as fuck and horribly underutilized by my group.

Well, depends on what demons are in the setting.

>"Half-foo" races Tieflings and Dragon-like humanoids are the worst;

I agree with the case of dragonborn, because of what said; is ok if you like a fantasy race for its background (even if it's a shitty one; to each his own), but not if the for you liking said race is having a fetish,because sooner than later it will show up in your playing and make everything weird and uncomfortable for everybody else. Half-things are ok to me as long as they imply a sort of supernatural connection (half-demon, half-celestial, half-god...), 'cause that's a usual and widely extended trope n mythology, but not when they're the result of monster fucking; people who like this are usually neckbeards or yundere kawai nyaaa otaku girls with a dragon dildo under their beds.

I've always been a fan of any form of lizard people.
Only problem is most of them are swamp-dwelling savages, gets kinda boring after a while.
Which is why I love the ancient maya/aztec lizardmen from gw. Alien, yet sophisticated in their own way reptilians that throughout thousands of years have regressed to a more tribal structure thanks to constant warfare and strife, yet still retaining some of the things they were capable of in the height of their power.

Elves, actually.
I give each of mine a special talent and it's really fun.
My last one was an Elven fighter based on Michaelangelo, he was hilarious, especially since we ha a stereotypical bard, so I could treat him like Raphael.

Lol, how much of a tolkien ripoff is that map??

Favorite: Dwarves. Between one campaign I ran that ended up centered around them after the PCs opted to settle there over the human kingdom, and many games of Dwarf fortress, I've gotten kind of attached. They're stable, predictable, and industrialization practices often leave them with a more familiar civilization than the humans of the setting have. It makes them easy to write around and lets you put more focus into individual characters and setpieces.

Least Favorite: Elves. Not even sure why, I just always gravitate away from them. Maybe it's their long-lived nature, the practice of isolation, or the superiority complex. Maybe I'm still sore about that time in Dwarf Fortress my where my retired adventurer was eaten by an elvish administrator with no combat skills.

As far as non-standard races go I don't take issue with them, though you have to keep an eye out for balance issues and they can cause complications when they're unable to equip much of the neat treasure the party finds. I'll always have a soft spot for the mantis-like Thri-Kreen in particular.

You realize it looks more like our world than Tolkien, right?

IM ANGRY

IM ANGRY ABOUT ELVES

And you realize that Arda is supposed to be Earth, right?

So your point is I'm right?

Does anyone have a download for the Fel's Five comic? I've been looking for it but can't find any.

>This includes Muslim Elves, Inuit Orcs, and the like. At that point why don't just play humans instead?
It can make sense, depending on racial traits and ability modifiers. Inuit Orcs, for example, maybe they're a frost resistant subspecies, or even just normal orcs with their Con bonus.