Planeshift Material: (how) do you use it?

[Scathain]

There's been a few Planeshift articles out now, but I rarely see much discussion on the races and class features from them, or see it in guides. I get that not everybody gives a hoot about the Magic franchise, so it can't be assumed like common house rules or UA. However:

1) Do you allow Planeshift material in your games?

2) Which articles? Do you rip it right off, MTG multiverse/planeswalker style, or do you put your own spin on it?

3) What's your favorite feature or race for optimization?

I love the Amonkhet races, especially Minotaur and Naga. Minotaur because it's simply a half orc with horns, and I love half orcs. Conversely, I love Naga because of how DIFFERENT it is from standard races.
Additionaly, I adapted Zendikar's vampires into my undead nation as a sort of vassal race in between the true vamps and their human cattle. Anyone else do cool stuff with the Planeshift material?

[spinningdice]

Not actually used them in games, but I love the creation of separate human subraces (from Innistrad iirc), more as inspiration and a reminder that humans' don't necessarily have to be the same in every setting.

[ZorroGames]

1) No, lack of personal interest and low level characters. Cannot say, based on earlier editions, that I would enjoy it.

2) Not read current material (see number 1)

3) No favorites because of number 2.

Since I just achieved second tier with a character in 5e (double digit (10 through 16 Cleric/5 Mage old school multi-class) figures in OD&D and AD&D/1st) I pretty much have only worried about over/under land/sea settings.

Variant races might be fun to check out later.

[ZorroGames]

Not actually used them in games, but I love the creation of separate human subraces (from Innistrad iirc), more as inspiration and a reminder that humans' don't necessarily have to be the same in every setting.

Good point. Maybe eventually I will check those out.

[90sMusic]

I played the Planeshift Zendikar vampire race once. That was a really fun game...

My character was the only daughter to this powerful vampire lord who ruled over a large piece of the country they were adventuring in. She was a devotion paladin and had a good nature initially, but it turns out her father wasn't the nice guy she always thought and found out he was actually doing some pretty bad stuff behind the scenes so she had to choose between her only family and doing some questionable things or abandoning her family, her home, her inheritance, and possibly even raising arms against her own father, so she chose to stay sided with him. She then became an oathbreaker and started to actually use some of her vampiric abilities like draining people of their blood and creating zombies from their corpses. She got darker as the campaign went on but always had that bit of good nature still under there. She became more of a lawful evil type and had a code of things she absolutely would not do, but anything else was basically fair game.

The way we handled it was her father was a legit vampire, like straight out of the monster manual and she was a half-vampire/dhampir using the "Vampire" race from planeshift zendikar. Used her half-vampi status as reasoning for why she only really inherited the blood thirst and not all the weaknesses or other strengths a vampire has.

[Tanarii]

What I do is forge it into a forked metal rod, then find an appropriate level caster who knows the spell ...

[SharkForce]

i'm cautious about using it. some of it is pretty cool, but some of it is also really unbalanced (for example, i consider the naga to be super broken unless you change their constrict rather substantially). haven't really come across anything that felt like it was so awesome that i just had to use it yet, but that doesn't mean nobody will have.

[Finback]

Honestly, I let all of it in. My players are mostly new to D&D, and I want them to have a lot of fun with it. The first incarnation of the group (we've had a few new members over time, and others drop out), I had a player who loves cats. And wanted a cat person. I found a homebrew khajit, and she was happy with that. She also wanted to be a priestess of Bast, but more animal focus, so we just included Nature into her domain. That player is still going (although since, she has adjusted the race to a tabaxi, which is fine - the khajit was just the best option at the time). Likewise, another player recently got turned into a yuan-ti (c/o Jooge's hairstyling) - he decided he wants to look more like a snake-headed person, than just a scaly guy - it's no biggie, since it's entirely cosmetic. I share the new UAs with them, and if they see something they like, I ask them to talk to me about it - it's rare I would say no - worst case, I might try to balance something I feel is uneven (whether mechanically, or storywise).

Basically, I want them all to feel that D&D is a huge playground - there's a few basic rules, like no shoving and taking your turn on the slide, but there's nothing that says you can't play particular games.

(As a player, I am planning to MC my vengeance paladin to warlock at level 6, and go with the UA Celestial patron - solely so I can have his rage and vengeance manifest as Burning Justice - my DMs (they share) are fine with this, as it works for the character).