Humans

It comes down to specialization. Other species are specialized for their environments. Dwarves are specialized for underground, halflings for farming, elves for forests and so on. Nobody will ever top them in their own environment, but that often comes at a cost somewhere else.

Humans are a generalist species that specializes in being second best in everything. Second best in strength behind the orcs, second best in breeding behind the goblins, second best in discipline behind the hobgoblins, second best in magic behind the elves, smithing behind the dwarves, farming behind the halflings, technology behind the gnomes.

Second best with no weaknesses other than a short lifespan - and what very good motivation to light a fire under someone's ass and get them to investigate immortality? Above all else an immortal adventuring human in a fantasy realm is a god waiting to happen. It's a matter of when, not if they transcend.

Outside of tabletop games we actually do have some amazing strengths as a species. We're the in the running for best long distance endurance species on the planet with dogs. We're smart as hell, expert communicators and we're grudge-bearing in the same way as honey badgers; actually a rarity in the animal kingdom. If someone screws with us we communicate that with other humans who then go fuck you up. We're natural adventurer factories because we naturally hold a grudge against everything. And in the fantasy realm you've got tons and tons of other races, magical creatures, monsters of every stripe and jerkass gods fucking with you all the time. Humanity would hold a grudge against each and every one of them.

And humanity is second best in everything with no weaknesses. Without leadership humans are prone to infighting and are a bunch of short lived, ignorant, directionless jackasses. With proper leadership humanity can accomplish literally ANYTHING. If anything has a weakness it will be found and exploited.

>Rabbits.
>Not poisonous toads (Cane toads).

The humanity fuck yeah is two threads down the street, but I shed a tear, user. I shed a tear

If you're talking about D&D, it's literally numbers, humans outnumber all the other races combined, and it tilts further if you consider half-elves and half-orcs as human.
They don't have a god to protect them, but they also don't have a god to keep their population under control. They spread like an infestation. Many humans live, many humans die. Their aggregate suffering is thus greater than all other races, a human racial god would be in perpetual agony.

Humans got grit

Writers write humans because the readers are humans. And because they're writing humans the humans tend to win, usually with very, very dubious reasoning behind it that boils down to 'everyone else sucks'.

Because we're still willing to do the things we suck at just to show the world we can.

>Why are humans so great, Veeky Forums?
1. Because the story revolves around them = Plot Armor
2. Because the mecanics of the game are in their favour see giving them more advantages than other races

Others have weaknesses.
>Elves
>Flimsy, hippies

>Dwarves
>Short, drunk

>Halfling
>Even shorter

>Orc
>Dumb

>Not emus

>we're grudge-bearing in the same way as honey badgers; actually a rarity in the animal kingdom.
You forget elephants. Fuckers will sneak into your home in the dead of night, drag you out by the window and trample you till you're paste in the dirt.

They know not mercy or forgiveness.

>the writers
Pretty much this. Humans in multi-race settings are the equivalent of the "nerdy loser" protagonist who miraculously becomes the Chosen One so all the lesser beings will want his jock. In short, it's essentially wish fulfillment but on a larger, less personal scale.

this.
You know about evolution? As long as you can adapt, you're on top of the shit.

That's how it worked for Tolkien at least. Elves and Dwarves were bound to the old world, the old world was fading, men triumph.

>humans
>one of the longest living creatures (insects exist)
>breathes a fucking gas that is one of the most flammable substances in existence
>expels something that can destroy planets, poison countless organisms, and is hard as fuck to get rid off
>constantly fucks eachother over in wars and can easily destroy every single thing where they live with fearsome weapons offand mas destruction
>has invented methods to learn and exploit almost any resource in existence and laws that govern the universe
>is easily the most xenophobic and hateful shit to ever exist, and even knowing this, cant be arsed to fix i
>still can make works of art that can make even other species cry for their beauty
Humans are OP

WE BREATH ROCKET FUEL AND DRINK POISON

>no magic
U wot

>most xenophobic
This, if we can't have sex with something or use it to make money, we kill it.

Humans in Tolkien literally inherited the earth; it had nothing to do with adaptability. The elves had their time and partied so hard hey nearly broke everything, so they stepped aside once they got tired. Dwarves weren't children of Eru and never had a time because fuck dwarves.

For the average HFY faggot fantasy-things are only good to be beat up by a male human fighter. It doesn't occur to them that they might use fantasy-things to help them in these fights.

Only when they can compare human mages to elf mages, that is.

When will spiders stop posting on imageboards to undermine humans? Its so obvious OP, get the fuck back to your web and eat filthy flies

Its true you weeabo

>The elves had their time and partied so hard hey nearly broke everything
We must have been reading different Tolkiens.

This. Show me a setting where humans are presented as non-standard. Bonus points if it actually makes it work.

>Show me a setting where humans are presented as non-standard.
I feel like the problem is that lots of people are instantly going to want to play the opposite of whatever humans are described as. If I say humans are defined by how social they are, and give them like a Mob Rule ability that gives them bonuses against Fear when in groups, people are going to say "but what about antisocial loners?" and complain that the racial stats don't reflect outliers.

Will and determination. Striving to make something of themselves because they live short lives.

More intelligent than orcs, tougher than elves, more agile than dwarves, procreate the fastest after goblins and orcs.

I see no logic in this. The longer you live, the more you want to make something out of yourself, because you have to deal with yourself much longer.

Also there are enough example in everday life of humans with no ambition and drive, it makes this notion laughable.

Because humans are fucking vicious, rabid monsters.

The orcs come back from raiding a human town to find their noncombatants nailed to crosses

>HFY meme post

Humans exist due to a conspiracy among all other races' women, as humans are the only species to have evolved the concept of female sexual pleasure

>he doesn't know about all the elf partying
Look at these guys. They're having the time of their lives.

And here are some elvish frat boys preparing for a typical First Age hazing ritual.
Retrieve the Silmarils form the Dark Lord of Middle-Earth? Man those elves had some really crazy dares.

Human ambition uber alles.

>not liking oc hfy
Get out of my board spiders..! This is for human only

Fraternities used to actually resemble things like this in the real world.

They even managed to drag some poor human sap into their shit. Guy had some mithril balls though, I'll give him that

Humans have the power to write fantasy novels and give themselves plot power

/thread

>Humans
>Short-lived
Relatively at best.
>No particular strengths
How so?
>Not as good as any other races in most regards
How so?
>No magic
Fucking when?

Elves are torches that burn long and illuminate. Dwarves are hot furnaces that are made for a specific purpose.

But humans? Humans can burn as bright as stars, but wink out just as fast.

user most stars burn for hundreds of millions of years

We have been staring at the same stars literally since the first human looked up

Whoa.

>All this misanthropic faggots

HFY is a good thing even if the quality of writing is fucking awful in 80% of cases. Just to trigger you gay niggers. Nothing worse than this pessimistic "muh humans are so fragile and are the bitches of every fantasy race" at my table. You know why? Because not awknowledging human strengths is just as bad as the "we breath rocket fuel" shit.

It's silly how some people just think of every race having a single culture, and that is the reason for their successes and failures. For some reason they even include humans, which we see in the real world have a multitude of differing ideals and motivations. Seems kinda lazy.

That would require settings where they're written with actual strengths

>Nothing worse than this pessimistic "muh humans are so fragile and are the bitches of every fantasy race" at my table.
That's hot, though.

Oh yeah, we are great at endurance and can see pretty colors. Now tell me how this translates into
>MUH AMBITION, MUH WILLPOWER
>which never affects stats
>OUR CANDLES BURN LIKE 100 SUNS
Like I can't hear you masturbating while writing this shit.

I like to make humans the race with the most endurance and vigor.
This is because they are race best adapted to living in plains, compared to elves who live in forests, dwarves in mountains, and so on.
Also elves only live 50% more than humans, no no hundred years old teenagers, fuck that shit.

>He doesn't know about female bonobos

Humans tend to lack fatal flaws other races have or already fighting a decaying ancient empire.
>all the time
Long from that. There is plenty of works where people make fun out of humans and focus lots of plot point of insignificancy and patheticness of humans. Most of times such works even more of a retarded read.

I like stories where no race is inherently superior, and borders aren't defined by race. So you have countries full of many races, and conflicts aren't caused by some race or another wanting to destroy another race (for instance, humans).

>Stars
>Burning

Just cause it produces heat doesn't mean it's actually burning

Humans invented horse archery and subsequently rekt all the inferior races

>only indo-aryans are humans

All races have only one culture, haven't you heard?

>they don't remember old HFY
It didn't use to be memes, user. It didn't use to be taking perfectly normal biological processes and pretending that they were ebin superpowers. It used to just be human dogged bloody-mindedness, unity and the occasional spark of (usually tactical) genius, it used to be the fact that we've had so much experience, not just fighting each other, but fighting total war out of desperation. It used to have some grimdark, too, especially in terms of what we're prepared to do to ourselves (or other people, especially our soldiers) to get an edge. It used to actually be good.

Halo, especially the novels, is basically a microcosm of HFY - originally starting off as ballsy holding the line against impossible odds, but ended up with fanfiction-tier WE CAN REVERSE ENGINEER ANYTHING WE ARE THE CHOSEN ONES REEEEEEEEEE XENO SCUM GET OUT

Mostly because humans are incredibly murderous and spiteful and tend to pass down how best to murder things. Become the strongest by being the best at killing.

>because humans are incredibly murderous and spiteful
Humans are small time

Aren't humans supposed to be pretty strong compared to dwarves, elves and halflings ?

If we think outside of the game stats

It's called chainmail, and it is great. The clothes make the man, and what not.
Yeah, basically.

No.

high reproduction rate and/or high will to cooperate compared to other races. Everytime someone slays a dragon? the one hairless monkey that got lucky after endless waves its species that were burned to cinders or some other gruesome demise but also wittled down the dragon's sanity little by little just by trying again and again

I miss those days of Halo. I read Fall of Reach, which was written around the time Halo CE came out, not when the Reach game came out. Always hated Halo because I think Spartans are gay fucks who don't qualify as humans, but after reading that I realized Halo actually had a super grim fight for survival feel to it. Humans won because the Covies represented the "old word". They had heaped up sins greater than our meager infighting by enslaving other races. Unlike the other races we didn't have the opportunity to join in enslavement. The Covies waged their war unknowingly fighting for the sin of their rulers to hide the falsehood of their religion and when things came to a head, the tables turned. Ironically when humanity is on top people can't make anything original because they don't have the usually trope to fall upon and now the 343 Halo stuff is of much lower caliber than its predecessors. That pisses me off more than the humanity always wins trope. I like that struggle trope, but when we do win nobody knows what to do.

It's not even OC, it's a copy pasta from another HFY thread ages ago. Also
>breathes a fucking gas that is one of the most flammable substances in existence
>expels something that can destroy planets, poison countless organisms, and is hard as fuck to get rid off
Nigger are you ignoring the other animals on Earth or are you that retarded? You might as well say that fish are better than use since they constantly drown in liquids to breath

>You might as well say that fish are better than use since they constantly drown in liquids to breath
FFY when?

>Short-lived
That's the reason.

The only two human factions are nomadic traders who jew it up and underground scientific vikings who are trying to go to space.

The burning mages are also humans.

>Why are humans so great, Veeky Forums?
The same reason Kirito is literally the Jesus of his universe: the author wills it.

You may be a dumb frogposter, but this comparison is great. I will have a use for it.

>comic sans

>Intelligent
>Fast Breeders
>Agile
>Fast
>Nearly every kind of specialist
>Cruel
>Warmongering
>Ambitious

but most importantly

>can interbreed with every other fantasy races
I mean, you say half-elf, because you dont need to specify who was the other one: it's human, guaranteed

>one hairless monkey
I seriously want to punch everyone who is saying this.
REALLY? YOU COMPARE YOURSELF, ONE OF THE MOST ADVANCED CREATIONS WITH A CHIMP?!
I know, Its just there, nothing special intended, but still, it's fucking annoying...

Rodents are lagomorphs
Reeeeeeeeeeeeee

A new font does not triumph etc.

I meant that rabbits are lagomorphs, not rodents
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Pre-agricultural humans get fucking everywhere

Elves are racist against humans because there are elves that were alive at the time that humans were still wandering around shoving mammoths off cliffs

Marauding orcs are unable to surpass humanity's superhumanoid muscular endurance, who are able to flee with impunity

Dwarves have no beef with humans excepting a few of the dumber hominids who tried living in caves (and are subsequently extincted by little people)

By the time anyone cares about these tool using humanoid wolf-packs, they're already fucking everywhere and too numerous to exterminate

With all that in consideration, humanity would get absolutely destroyed if it came to conflict with a race of intelligent beings that had a high degree of internal diversity by specialization, proper leadership and high enough birthrate. Imagine an arthropod race that, instead of the typical worker, soldier, queen etc. specializations, had something like menial worker, artesan, mage, cleric, shocktrooper, officer etc. type of specializations. In addition, each member of the race would have the ability to reproduce and maturity would be reached extremely fast compared to other races.
Combine that with an efficient leadership (or even a hivemind of some sort) and you've got yourself a neat idea for a setting where humans are not the dominant race for once.

But you aren't any more a creation than a chimp, and the chimp is your closest surviving relative.

>Marauding orcs are unable to surpass humanity's superhumanoid muscular endurance
Why not?

Somewhat balanced universe is TES, where humans and elves are decent concurrents, then again that are same race (ehlnofey) so it doesnt count.
If you want to be a monkey its your choice.
I imagine humanity a image of God, highest of all creations in universe, not a """hairless monkey""" like many want yo degrade our glorious kind and taint our birthright

>author makes a fictional sci-fi/fantasy setting
>feels the need to invent a warrior race
>not realizing that humanity is already the warrior race

Every time. We've been at war somewhere on the planet for probably the entirety of recorded human history.

>We've been at war somewhere on the planet for probably the entirety of recorded human history.
I'm fairly sure a lot of animals have that distinction.

>hey this race has the best traits of all races that exist, haha that'll show those humans!
This is you right now.

Is it you my Lord?

Setting im working on has all the races as fairly balanced powerwise, but with pretty distinct strengths and weaknesses. Elves are immortal and have powerful magic, but Humans can commune with the divine and are more durable

Sharks are at war with everthing far longer than humanity, but for some reason nobody makes a shark warrior-race.

>natural instincts=war

>but for some reason nobody makes a shark warrior-race.
Because they hate fun.