What is the most optimal number of playable races that a setting should have?

I'm angry that elves couldn't get full body tattoos in that game, and that qunari couldn't get uniform skin tone. You always looked blotchy as shit and slate wasn't even a color option.

>qunari in DA:O
>ugly white haired brown people
>qunari in DA2
>cool grey-skinned, half-ogre looking dudes with horns and white hair
>qunari in DA:I
>ugly ass brown people (with the occasional grey-skinned dude) with horns

wew

Here's a question I've been thinking about -
What kind of an interesting feature should Humans have?

Essentially I really dislike the idea of humans being a default race so I've been thinking of ways to make them more interesting instead of just usual "middle of the road", "jack of all trades" neutral race

>Optimal; best or most favourable
You can't call something most optimal* since it's redundant.

* unless you are Ted Theodore Logan

Mine are really religious. Every other race had a shared origin story, and humans were just sort of there to give players a more normal option. They collectively had an existential crisis, with some becoming overly devout followers of the other races gods and others made up 12 of their own gods (one per phb 5e class), and believed in them hard enough to make them exist.
For the ones worshiping the gods of other races, they began to see the worshipers of the twelve as sinners and heretics, and left to live with the individual races, gradually evolving into elf or dwarf-like subspecies of humans, taking on aspects of those gods.

The shitty thing is I began to like this concept more than some of the original races, but in the end no one wanted to play humans when they could play lizardmen and merchant trolls

In real life, the traits that humans have over other species are their intelligence. In a fantasy game, other races would probably also have that. Making generic middle of the road humans is the norm. If you wanted to be different, you'd be fighting an uphill battle. I think making humans the smartest race is a good start.

Humans are high Int high Con. As far as other races are concerned our Int should be about baseline just to make the other races capable of civilization, trade, and communication. High Con humans can make a bit more sense since humans are typically endurance animals that heal outrageous wounds, the problem comes in how "toughness" is defined as a part of Con as a stat.

My opinion?
>Dwarves = Str
>Elves = Dex
>Humans = Con
>Varies from person to person= Int/Cha/Wis

>What kind of an interesting feature should Humans have?
Tribalism. Humans have a very hard time uniting. They divide themselves along many different lines. Their language, their religion, their culture, their dress, their appearance, etc. No two humans are alike and this makes them as bad as it does great. It's for this reason, however, that humans are one of the most numerous and powerful races in the world. If only they could unite, they'd be unstoppable.

Hilariously enough, humans are so wrapped up in their own egos that they don't realize just how similar to orcs they are. This is why elves and dwarves did not differentiate between orc and primitive man and killed both on sight. It took thousands of years of civilization for humans to earn the trust of the Elder Races. Now they're eclipsing those Elder Races... or are they?

Humanity is constantly teetering on the brink of devouring itself. Even though there are orcs on the border, trolls in the hills, and a dragon sleeping in the mountains, humans are still primarily concerned with ensuring the neighboring group of humans stays on their side of the lake.

The cruelty and barbarism of orcs is well-known throughout the world, but then you find yourself in a smoldering husk of a village. Corpses hanging from trees by their entrails, a river dammed with the bodies of the dead, each body a grotesque, unrecognizable piece of charred meat. You find a survivor, a trembling old man covered in ash and dust. "What manner of beast did this," you ask the old man. "This be the work of men," he says solemnly.

Just look at how many different human cultures exist. You have all of history to draw from, pick an aspect of some human culture and emphasize it. Could be anything from their distrust of those that look different, to our modern world's acceptance and tolerance. Warmongers or peaceful, civilized or savage, expansionist or isolationist. Our own experience shows that we have the potential for any and all of the above.
My advise would be to allow your humans to play off of their fellow beings. For example, if dwarves in your setting are closed off isolationists holed up in their mountain holds, maybe the humans could be merchants and traders who want to open up the mountainhomes for business. Either through diplomacy or Commodore Perry style. Or if your Orcs/whatever are violent invaders you can have the humans react in whatever way you like, from religion crazed crusaders determined to take back the holy land, to local rebels and guerillas, to collaborators and social climbers, who adapt Orcish tatoos and culture to further their own goals. And of course in each of these cases there will be those who are good or evil, selfless or in it for personal glory. I think people usually make humans the everyman middle of the road because they start by using human civilization as the base and modify elements of it to make the other races, but you could do the opposite. If you allready know you want !not Persian silk road elves, how would a typical human react to that? What way would living between these people, and their other neighbours have effected the growth of their culture. In what ways do they identify woth their meighbours? In what ways do they define themselves as opposed to them?

Here's how I do it. When you join my campaign you roll a d10. You start out being able to choose from human. If you get 5+ you can choose elf dwarf and halfling. If you get 7+ you can choose half-elf, half orc, orc, goblin, or gnome. If you get a 10+ you can play tiefling, dragonborn, or one of those other races. Although usually, I just restrict it to elf, dwarf, human, half-orc, half-elf, gnome. Which are the core races D&D is supposed to have before 4e (which wasn't a real D&D edition) and 5e (which repeated 4e's bullshit with races). Pathfinder is fucking crap with this "all races get a +2 overall and humans get an extra +2 to any stat even though they already get a bonus feat which makes them strong as fuck" and the other shit they added in where race had an overall positive effect. Probably more of the same identity politics shit that contaminated Paizo.

Depends on the setting.
Fantasy? 5-6.
Space opera? Plenty.
Steampunk/cyberpunk? 1-2
Urban fantasy? 1-4
Hard SF? 1-2

What if humans are the worst at magic but the best at technology and somewhat resistant to magic damage?

Hero-based civilization. Humans rally around a single, powerful individual more often than not. Even in societies without a blatant hegemony and there is no one head honcho, there is a first among equals who is the spiritual heart of that civilizations. Accordingly, humans who adventure also tend to be the stock that kings are made of.

>Humans have high Con

Why do people keep repeating this garbage meme? Wolves are equally capable of 'endurance hunting', the only advantage humans have is intelligence.

What if you did a classless style thing, but with races
Like, a generic base that you add features/stats/abilities to

Well, guess we better ditch any racial bonus for physical stats, since I'm pretty sure there's no intelligent race stronger than an elephant or faster than a cheetah.

X playable

2*X NPC only

Just give them a lot more Fate/Hero/Moxie/Luck Points than the other races. Humans win when they have no right to.

Theres a reason wolves were the first animal domesticated, user

High charisma jerks who bang anything.

The only choice for good humans.

Human body is quite well rounded by earth animal standards. Speed and agility. The intelligence just multiplied itself out of the resulting boredom from how good our bodies are.

Why don't you suck a dick and quit trying to reinvent the wheel? I like humans because I don't have to justify making virtually any character.

Another thing you could do is just flip the perspective. For example, say that the party is starting in a recently human occupied elven city. Now the humans back in the capital may be artistic and cultured people who are accepting of immigrants of all other races. But who would be in this city? What is the opinion of humanity in an elvish city that just recently lost a war with the humans and are now their subjects? Consider that the humans they would have most recently interacted with are adventurers, mercs, theives, pillagers, and those who would follow such men in hopes of making a profit. The war itself could have been perfectly justified but the opinion of an artisan elf living in the human capital and that of a recently defeated soldier will be very different. Now throw in some 'good' humans who are just trying to make their way in a strange land or impose some order on their unruly compatriots.
I just recently finished a campaign where the party was all various animal people races. The different animal people each had their own city with a large degree of immigration and interaction between eachother, but their only interactions with dwarves was as brutal metal encased mad men who have no empathy and no off switch, can't speak our language and would never lower themselves to attempt it, fight to the death everytime and never surrender. We had literally never seen one outside of its armour. Humans on the other hand began equally mysteriously and turned out to be not human at all, but a cloud cuckoo land genetic expirement by, esentially, a alien 40k nerd who attempted to recreate space marines on our backwater planet. These "smooth skins" soon rebelled against their creator and, angered by the fact that their history of glorious conquest was all a lie, set out to conquer everything in sight and write their own history. Basically each one of them was their own brand of crazy, working together only in pursuit of individual glory.

I like the idea of humans excelling at whatever they focus at, but being victims of strong egos and compassionate behavior.

This is my least favorite answer. I really dislike the idea of one race being objectively better or worse at certain classes, to the point that race selection is just another part of optimizing. "Elves are the Wizard race, Half-Orcs are the Barbarian race, Dwarves are the Cleric race" etc. strikes me as lame and makes the individual races seem less realistic. I'd rather races not have stat mods at all, or handle them in a more flexible fashion (+2 to A or B, -2 to C or D) and instead focus on the things that really distinguish the experience of any given race- "we're stronger but less dextrous" is way less interesting than "we're blind, but can see through vibrations in the ground a limited distance like toph".

>earth isn't the most amazing setting you can imagine
Fag

>>earth is the most amazing setting you can imagine
That's what optimist would say.
Pessimist would be worried he might be right.

Humans:
>Can survive and heal broken bones without dying
>Can go into shock without dying
>Drink poison recreationally without dying
>have hyperactive scar tissue that heals gnarly wounds faster than other animals
>Can survive in a wider temperature band than a very large majority of animals

And you're refuting the claim humans are CON builds with literally the ONE animal on this fucking planet that can kinda keep up with us, which is the reason it was one of our only natural predators ever.
Name one other animal that doesn't have a fucking MASSIVE weak point in it's biological endurance. Horses can't lay down without risking knot-gut, alligators have no stamina, and elephants never heal properly because of their size. Just because wolves are high con too doesn't knock humans down at all. Humans are still high Con. In a fantasy world human intelligence wouldn't count for shit. Our intelligence only matters in reality.

>TL;DR you're a fag that can't into logic

I like those ideas, especially the later one, since it ties to the fluff races usually get while not limiting de distinctive aspects to the fluff. I have trouble coming up with some myself due to still being in a very "+1 to A and -1 to B" mentality.
Humans still end up being templates of sorts, so I need to work on that one.

I don't care about numbers. I just want more variety. We're starting to get lizard races as a standard, and that's good. Now let's keep branching out. Bug people. Robots. Skeletons.

Listen I know you just got out of highschool, and are still thinking about how amazing the whole world is and how you're so enlightened and 'special' for 'noticing' the great cultural depth and creativity of human existence and all that.

But once you get a bit older, and have played fantasy games and settings before, you start to want something different. I've had more then enough of my fill of the edgy little grimderp all humans mud shitfest "like game of thrones xd" and I enjoy more mythological and fantastical settings now. Trying to act like you're some kind of special savant for looking at Earth mythology and complexity isn't a sign of maturity and intelligence. You're just a smug hack.

I don't really care what your response to this post is, by the way, because I've seen your garbage opinion regurgitated constantly. I don't care how smugly you assert it, it doesn't change the truth. People enjoy fantasy for a reason, and I don't need cunts like you telling me I need to appreciate the depth and diversity of the real world. I like Wizards and dragons. Fuck off.

cunt waffle

As many races as you want. This is fantasy. People should be whatever they want to be.

However there should only be 4 base classes at absolute maximum: Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Cleric.

>However there should only be 4 base classes at absolute maximum: Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Cleric.
What makes you say this?

endurance, humans have crazy good stamina compared to most animals, now admittedly a part of that is due to our bipedalism which most fantasy races share, but a fair chunk of it is just us

I always liked the idea of humans being seafaring. Dwarves in the highlands wouldn't be as keen on the ocean, and an elves don't seem like the sort to need to travel in a hurry. Meanwhile, humans seem like the best fit to build port and trade cities to get to places quickly. Plus, humans as fishers helps distinguish them from more agriculturally inclined halflings.

Maybe like 6ish

>Rogues are Fighters that aren't formally trained and adapt to think their ways around problems
>Clerics are Wizards that aren't formally trained and receive power through dedication to a deity

2 base classes: Martial and Caster. All other classes are defined by two questions:
>where does your power come from?
>how do you use it?

I need some help to figure out a 5th playable race for my setting, would appreciate help

So far I have
>Humons, can use magic, either to manipulate elements or boost their physical abilities

>Giant Bois, twice as tall as humans, unbreakable bones and thick legs. Surprisingly agile and smart but slow at learning.

>Cave Bois, twice as small as humans, see in the dark, but can't see in direct bright light. Big ears, great hearing. Tough skin, hard to cut.

>Animophs, born featureless they attain featureless of animals that they interact with. Attained features stay forever, only works on vertebrates

I'm focusing on practical things that a race can do rather than any stat changes.

This answer is genius, it has my full support.

Giant bois
Shouldn't double the brain size mean double the INT?

too few and it's bland and uninteresting, too many and it gets in the way and feels dumb

I use the standard:
human, orc, elf, dwarf, gnome, hobbit, kobold, goblin, saurian
even if I've never fully implemented them or used them very well

so about a dozen, not counting monster "races" like ents and minotaurs and shit

Practical like fliers? Aquatic? Tech makers?

They have a great potential for knowledge and have good memory but just very slow on the uptake when learning new skills and academic fields. On average it takes them twice as much time to learn something than other races. Thankfully they live the longest.

Lack of natural dangers didn't favor quick thinking so they naturally inclined to really taking their time.

The ways their race changes the way they interact with the world.
So things like size, vision, hearing, mobility.
And Animorphs cover both aquatics and fliers.

One for each of the 63 genders - and you are obligated to add new races to your setting as gender scientists discover new genders.

>in any diplomacy they're always trying to gain for ourselves and the concessions are only there to coerce an agreement
>they lie to ourselves, their families, and complete strangers, sometimes without even realising it because it's such a habit
>they win arguments, gain allies, move up ranks and get out of trouble better than other races
Humans are diplomats, bards, merchants, con-men, thieves, and manipulators.

1.
Dwarves.

>Boi Bois, two bois for the price of one! Each Boi Boi has one mind shared between two bodies. Slightly smaller than a man, they make up for their childlike stature with teamwork. A nuclear family of Boi bois is a mob. The bodies can function independently of one another, but reaction time slows as the bodies grow more distant. Same room is optimal, across the city, one of the bodies will be functionally comatose.

This is not how brains work. The complexity and interconnectedness of the brain, including the degree of folding, is more indicative of intelligence than sheer volume. See: Sperm Whales have a 17lb brain and aren't too bright, while some species of bird are tool-using.

That isn't to say that volume doesn't help and that at some point it becomes necessary for more compute power, but double size doesn't necessarily equate to double INT.

>NPC only
Why?

>Ladybois, like normal people, but with fleshy protrusions embedded in their chest and smaller extremities. They can create smaller versions of other races after fermenting a sample of their genetic essence. Known for their politicking.

Well if the animorphs can't be invertebrate, then you can have another race that is
Like slime bois or some shit

16

you capture any element within a setting that can exist without being redundant

Because people try to use their class mechanics to define their characters when mechanics aren't character traits.

So rogues aren't fighters, and clerics aren't wizards.

Why are you even using a class system if you're only going to have to classes?

Constitution or Endurance
We were persistence hunters after all

Humans/Elves/Dwarves/Halflings/Gnomes. And humans should strongly be encouraged to be the party majority.

Anything is autistic magical realm wank fodder. Looking at you dragonfags.

Any race and only one base class : Adventurer that can make his own abilities and spells, choose any feats and proficiencies on a point buy basis.

>This is fantasy. People should be whatever they want to be.

That way they can be "fighters", "rangers", "paladins", "gunslingers", "wizards", "gunclerics", "mageknights", "assrogues", "cyborgpirates".

What about half-elves and half-orcs?

Does it matter when your players go all human every time?

Every race as long as that is not OP like a Titan or dragon.

Adaptability. Human civilization has been one of variety, individualism one moment and collectivism the next, kingdoms in one land and republics in the other, atheistic dictatorships and religious theocracies, we learn and adapt to new technologies at an alarming rate.

In gameplay terms they basically get higher xp and attribute gains than other races.

>when your setting(s) have +30 races and none of them are human

Doesn't matter as long as the system is race by class

In my system I made all the other races strongly connected to two forms of the magic. Out of 15.
Humans got Cosmic, which can only be learned after advancing in one or more of the others.
They learn faster, taking less XP for skill training and bonuses, can begin with extra base XP for having more backstory elements, and are the only rave capable of learning 4 martial paths no strings attached as opposed to 3 at most for other races (the races which are mutated humans get a 4th within certain limitations).

I sought to make humanity typified by learning, by martial prowess, and by sheer variety of form. Much better than dead in the middle imo.

A setting I was working on a while back had the humans as this. Humanity got absorbed by a more militarily advanced empire made up of pseudo-Elites, but because the pseudo-Elites require pound for pound more food and other shit than any other species in the empire, any colonial venture is primarily made up of humans because of their greater natural tolerance for a wide variety of environments and their omnivorous diet. "Races" in this setting are actually just different Earth cultures. The players are newly enlisted auxiliaries helping to pacify some new conquest.

Is that by the same guy who wrote this?

...You have to be 18 to post on this site.

I'd rather roll with one race and develop their different cultures instead. That's how you get the same familiar baseline, but also believable reasons why conflicts could arise instead of just "they don't look like us".

What a load of garbage. I don't want to be a lich to outclass my teammates, I just want to be a cool magic skeleton because it's fun.

I love it.

If humans have to be in a setting I like to give them a niche. One of my favourites is the Elder Scrolls franchise, where humans and elves are genetically close enough to interbreed.

Remember, too many sapient races leaves not enough page space to write each one a culture. Even if you have some space, species != culture. Race doesn't equal culture IRL, after all, even if there's strong correlation it's not universal.

HUMAN
TALL STRONG
TALL FAST
SHORT STRONG
SHORT FAST
WIERD

Six. Human, Orc, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Gnome. Sub your variations thereof like dragonborn or tieflings if you want.

some people are just deadset on playing their elves and dwarves no matter what setting. I've legit had players quit because setting wasn't going to have elves, for example.

55

they don't look like us has been and continues to be a reason of conflict...

1. The more races you have dilutes the impact that the said race brings. It devolves to a boring piece of code that detects "race" of a player and inserts it randomly in a sentence.

If you only allow one race available to the party, say an orc, then you'll be able to make a much more significant impact that the said race brings to a campaign.

If you insert too many races then they suffer from the "diversifiction" syndrome making race or their orientation essentially meaningless.

My personal standard. This is why race-classes exist.

If your Dragon class reaches level 7 then they can start taking levels in Cleric. Until then they need to develop basic functionality in the same way that a human or demihuman in d&d can't skip "learning to walk" or "basic tool use" in order to pick up Wish a few levels early.

I like my race-classes monstrous, like doppelgangers or mimics, or completely alien like Fae/Eladrin. I love the idea of playing as a werewolf or a revenant or a lich in a system that isn't specifically 100% about playing as that species.

Is that with subraces?

Two, white "people" and humans.

I prefer the numbers to be kept as low as possible, and I'd really prefer it if the differences were primarily based on cultures rather than stat differences. You can accomplish a whole lot without having to do anything other than humans as long as you're willing to put in the work and create a couple of ethnic groups and some cultures to go with them. It's not as simply as saying "here's the elves, they're arrogant humans that are good at magic, and these are the dwarves, they're short humans who are good at axe-stuff" but the result is way more fun and interesting.

Ay he goot the rought ideeea laddie!

Haha, it's a fun setting because it's the opposite of real life! It's like bizarro world :^)

But you can only play white "people" if it is an EVIL campaign, right?

Human-demihuman halfbreeds are fine.

>Saya
>Fairy

Sure, friend. Sure. Why not.

One per each group of unrelated player characters. Potentially one to be an evil outsider if you're running that kind of campaign.

This question shouldn't be simple anyway. Like, I have elves, dwarves, humans, gnolls, dwarves, lizards, dragons, goblins, kobolds, and rats. But the rats are kind of the same thing, and it's questionable if kobolds really count as people, and they, the rats and the lizards, were all sort of made that way by the dragons. And then there's sub-races, so there's three kinds of elves stratified by magic, two kinds of dwarves, one of which is gnomes, three kinds of goblins without a clear line between them, a bunch of humans without clear lines aside from religious ones, two kinds of gnolls who tend to kill each other. And all that kind of detail. But mostly it's irrelevant, because they all live on different continents, so in practice there's just the races that happen to be handy and that's what comes up.

My humans have a few things.
They have a charisma bonus, they're monotheistic, and they're fractious as fuck, they have a bunch of different nations and tribes where dwarves and elves have only a few, and other races can't even really get one proper nation going.
They also tend to have more access to divine magic.

In cold weather they are, in hot water they aren't.

Also,
>there's one other species in the world that does this as well
This doesn't mean we're not unusually good at it.