Races and their Populations?

[BlueWitch]

Is there any Data on the Population of each race in DnD?

Particularly, Giants.
I read Fire Giants are at war with Dwarves, but the average Fire Giant is much stronger, so I assume the Dwarves have larger numbers.

But regardless, I'd like to know this for Humans, Elves, Orcs, and Bugbears too.

[Biggus]

It'll depend by setting, did you have a particular one in mind?

In general, of the core races humans are usually the most numerous. Creatures which are large and/ or carnivorous will tend to be less numerous than small and/ or herbiverous ones. Beyond that, it varies.

[BlueWitch]

It'll depend by setting, did you have a particular one in mind?

In general, of the core races humans are usually the most numerous. Creatures which are large and/ or carnivorous will tend to be less numerous than small and/ or herbiverous ones. Beyond that, it varies.

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I really only wondered because if they were all even, the bigger, stronger races would have taken over.

I don't have any particular setting in mind. I just wondered if any numbers were ever listed in any material. 3.0, 3.5 or Pathfinder. Just for the sake of world building really.

[Biggus]

The only specific thing I can find at the moment is in the 2E product Elminster's Ecologies, which says that plants are most numerous, then herbivores, then omnivores, then carnivores. As for sizes, Wikipedia has estimates of mammal populations which might give you a rough idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_mammals_by_population

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by BlueWitch
I don't have any particular setting in mind. I just wondered if any numbers were ever listed in any material. 3.0, 3.5 or Pathfinder. Just for the sake of world building really.

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting lists the population of major cities and regions, and the percentage of major races within those populations. For instance, Shaar has a listed population of 587,520, which is 60% humans, 15% wemics, 14% gnolls, and 10% centaurs. It would be quite a project, but you could go through and calculate overall populations from the listed values in the FRCS.

Some of the regional Forgotten Realms supplements also list populations, including the books on the Silver Marches, Underdark, Unapproachable East, etc. These aren’t as comprehensive, since they tend to focus on important sites (usually featured in novels) and sample settlements, but they do give total populations and racial percentages for those sites.

I’m not as familiar with Pathfinder sources, but the Distant Shores supplement does follow the same approach. The city of Radripal, for instance, has 22,623 residents, of whom 915 are tieflings and 263 are rakshasas, among others. The Inner Sea World Guide isn’t quite as detailed; it gives total population of key towns and cities, but no racial breakdown. I don't follow Golarion lore, so couldn't really say about other sources.

[Psyren]

So I can't vouch for how accurate this is (like, at all) but someone had the data bug bite them much like you did and performed a series of estimates and wizardry (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/65yewi/golarion_populations_by_race_the_quickening_v21/) to try to answer this question for Golarion. Even if they made some mistakes you might get some value out of this as a starting point.

[Fizban]

From a macro standpoint, there are two factors that matter to begin with: how long it takes to grow an adult, and how much food it takes to get there. As most giants are Large, they need 8x as much food as a Human. Thus, the maximum number of giants is 1/8 of the normal population density- and that's assuming that they can farm enough food to sustain themselves at all, because they need to produce at least 8x as much per giant as a human does per human.

Next we'll stop to consider game statistics: the fact is, whether using the tribal progression (as given in the MM1 entries for groups of elves, dwarves, goblins, etc), or the city progression (in the DMG, which generates a very very few but potentially much higher level NPCs), either way your basic 1 HD LA +0 PC races get wrecked by anything that has 2 or more natural hit dice. Even if the gnolls or lizardfolk or whatever don't get better gear than their default statblocks, 90-95% of the PC race'd people have 1-2 hit points and maybe 12 AC, they just die.

But all of that said, we still know that humans have been killing elephants and tigers and whatnot with basic spears since ever, and the feat can be replicated in dnd just by fighting tactically. Therefore, against dumb beasts those hit dice don't really matter. The question becomes how much tech and how much organization those high HD humanoids/giants/etc are allowed to use. If its anything comparable to human, but with higher base stats, it takes a rung above all the 1HD races. Giants with their dozens or hundreds of hit points, natural armor, manufactured armor, and innate rock throwing, no contest vs even 8 basic humans.

And then we return to reproductive rate, which is where it all goes out the window. Because Halflings consume 1/2 the food a human does, with combat penalties that are easily offset by doubling your numbers, and they live longer to boot. But even more than that, goblins do that, without the speed penalty, with natural stealth bonuses, and they grow up faster, by age 12 I think? 10 in Races of Faerun. So on the macro scale, medium humanoids never should have become dominant- the goblins and to a lesser extent halflings both had them outnumbered and out-reproduced from the beginning.

That is, until you introduce Races of the Dragon, which is just ridiculous. Because over there it says that Kobolds reach adulthood in 6 years, can live up to 1,000, and can literally survive by eating dirt.

So the true answer to the question of how many of X creature there are, is "However many the DM says there are," and you just have to assume mysterious hidden factors and societal conditioning are making that number true, because there's no way realistic population growth landed there. Small humanoids should be ruling anywhere that isn't occupied by higher HD foes that can auto-win, and the whole place would be giants if the giants could farm enough food.

[Mechalich]

I’m not as familiar with Pathfinder sources, but the Distant Shores supplement does follow the same approach. The city of Radripal, for instance, has 22,623 residents, of whom 915 are tieflings and 263 are rakshasas, among others. The Inner Sea World Guide isn’t quite as detailed; it gives total population of key towns and cities, but no racial breakdown. I don't follow Golarion lore, so couldn't really say about other sources.

The Pathfinder sources have a very bad tendency to allow entirely too many high CR monsters to be part of a city's population and then pretend like they aren't overwhelmingly important to that city. Take the Radripal example for instance, Rakshasas are CR 10 monsters, you can't have them represent 1% of the population unless they rule it with a tiger-fur fist! So the numbers are in many cases quite ridiculous.

[Fizban]

Same thing with the FR numbers- the Shaar numbers quoted above have centaurs (4HD Large monstrous humanoids) and wemics (basically lion centaurs) as a combined 25% of the population. Even without magic that's basically 25% of your population being heavy cavalry that requires no training or significant equipment. Yuan-Ti are often slotted into cities, and have mind control SLAs. The only threatening thing about Mind Flayers is that they're fiat described as coming in cities, even though their own book says that supplying those cities with brains is nearly impossible.

[magic9mushroom]

Eberron has good population data, although it's spread across the Eberron Campaign Setting (Khorvaire and Aerenal), Secrets of Xen'drik (Xen'drik, but only the civilised part), Secrets of Sarlona (Sarlona) and Dragons of Eberron (Argonnessen). The overall population works out to be about 35 million, which is really rather low (it's about 60% of the population of the Roman Empire, across the entire world and with higher tech).

There are also the demographic tables in the DMG which mention the typical racial makeup of settlements, although they don't mention the overall amounts of the various races (that's - rightfully IMO - left up to the DM).

[Saint-Just]

Regarding food: Fizban, you propose that Giants require eight times as much food as a common human and then that halflings require half as much. If, for simplicity's sake we assume that every Large humanoid is exactly twice as tall as a human, then it would need four times as much food as a human - necessary caloric intake is (rougly) proportional to the body surface area, not to the mass. Same goes for halflings - they should eat 1\4 as much as a human (and that is in fact how much they eat by RAW - Rations, Trail in SRD have a note saying that they weigh 1/4 as much for Small characters). Of course, if you need to you can always say that a wizard did it, but I'm under impression that you wanted to write about implications of realstic(-ish) biology and economy.

[Psyren]

I don't know how far diets get us. Giants are big and mean enough to prey on things that humans would largely leave alone, like dire beasts, griffons and manticores for example. Who's to say that a magical beast doesn't provide more sustenance than regular livestock does? And things like dinosaurs certainly would.

[Saint-Just]

Magical beasts of course are mean compared to a human warrior\commoner. AFAIK there are at least some official examples of a magical beast meat being treated as a delicacy, and other examples of it being deadly poisonous.

Dinosaurs, on the other hand are not that different from buffalo\rhinoceros\woolly mammoth. People hunted them for a very long time, even when hunters were not so efficient as to drive them into extinction. I see no reason why people in any D&D setting would have trouble with dinosaur hunting. And while a single dinosaur may provide more meat than a single deer, once you dissect them a pound of meat is a pound of meat, and there is zero reasons for dinosaurs to provide more sustenance than more modern animals.

[Psyren]

Dinosaurs, on the other hand are not that different from buffalo\rhinoceros\woolly mammoth. People hunted them for a very long time, even when hunters were not so efficient as to drive them into extinction.

Uh... people hunted dinosaurs? Which people? :smallconfused:

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Psyren
Uh... people hunted dinosaurs? Which people?

Pretty sure “People hunted them” refers to the buffalo and other large mammals. :smallsmile:


Originally Posted by Fizban
Because Halflings consume 1/2 the food a human does, with combat penalties that are easily offset by doubling your numbers, and they live longer to boot.

It’s worth noting that a long lifespan doesn’t necessarily correspond to a greater reproductive output. Once a female passes through menopause it doesn’t matter how many additional years she lives, because her reproductive phase is over. She may well increase the fitness of her offspring and their offspring in other ways, but that’s a secondary effect on population.

As for halflings and food, small mammals generally need to eat more because of their larger surface-area-to-volume ratio. Tolkien’s approach with hobbits actually fits this, given their many extra meals a day, as well as his sly comment that raising young hobbits took a lot of provender.


Originally Posted by Fizban
…the Shaar numbers quoted above have centaurs (4HD Large monstrous humanoids) and wemics (basically lion centaurs) as a combined 25% of the population. Even without magic that's basically 25% of your population being heavy cavalry that requires no training or significant equipment.

I’m not sure if the population numbers have any bearing on military readiness. The Shaar is populated by nomadic tribes, so the various monstrous humanoids are as likely to be fighting among themselves as anything else.

Also not sure that centaurs and wemics automatically qualify as heavy cavalry. Neither of them has automatic armor proficiencies, and I don't think their natural armor compares with a heavily armored war-horse.


Originally Posted by magic9mushroom
Eberron has good population data…. The overall population works out to be about 35 million, which is really rather low (it's about 60% of the population of the Roman Empire, across the entire world and with higher tech).

This is interesting, but not surprising, since Eberron has just experienced a massive war. Are the population effects of the Last War addressed in the campaign setting?

.

[Saint-Just]

As for halflings and food, small mammals generally need to eat more because of their larger surface-area-to-volume ratio. Tolkien’s approach with hobbits actually fits this, given their many extra meals a day, as well as his sly comment that raising young hobbits took a lot of provender.
't think their natural armor compares with a heavily armored war-horse.
.

More relative to their body mass, less overall. Given granularity of D&D I think that "Small adventurers consume 1\4 as much as medium-sized adventurers" is a good approximation.

And while normal people (halflings first and foremost) would definitely be more comfortable with eating proportional (1\8 of the human-sized) meals twice as often, humans at need can eat all their daily calories at one sitting and not end up worse off for it (well, as long as you're eating something more energy-dense than potatoes/leafy vegetables), so halflings could probably survive on two triple-sized meals per day.

[Fizban]

Regarding food: Fizban, you propose that Giants require eight times as much food as a common human and then that halflings require half as much.
I do not propose: that's the rule in Rules Compendium.

If, for simplicity's sake we assume that every Large humanoid is exactly twice as tall as a human, then it would need four times as much food as a human - necessary caloric intake is (rougly) proportional to the body surface area, not to the mass.
I was actually going to ballpark 4x when I couldn't find the quote, until I realized I should check RC.

Same goes for halflings - they should eat 1\4 as much as a human (and that is in fact how much they eat by RAW - Rations, Trail in SRD have a note saying that they weigh 1/4 as much for Small characters).
Apparently RC changed it *shrug*

Of course, if you need to you can always say that a wizard did it, but I'm under impression that you wanted to write about implications of realstic(-ish) biology and economy.
Well if we go with 4x that just means twice as many giants- so it's more likely they can farm 4x as much and thus properly feed themselves, and they'll crush humanoids even more easily. Only counter I can think of after that is maybe being so big makes it too hard to mine iron and coal? But they're already running on fantastic biology so why not just dig bigger tunnels?


I don't know how far diets get us. Giants are big and mean enough to prey on things that humans would largely leave alone, like dire beasts, griffons and manticores for example. Who's to say that a magical beast doesn't provide more sustenance than regular livestock does? And things like dinosaurs certainly would.
Livestock is, if I'm remembering right, orders of magnitude less efficient than using their feed land to grow edible crops. Thus the magical part of magical beast would need to provide orders of magnitude more nourishment in order to compete. And you just flat out can't support city-tier populations hunting wild game. Unless you're using a direct mechanical "this creature has regeneration/reproduces in direct defiance of food intake," it's not enough. And if you do, there's no reason other creatures/races shouldn't be able to exploit it too, unless the beast is also intelligent and tool using or highly magical.


It’s worth noting that a long lifespan doesn’t necessarily correspond to a greater reproductive output. Once a female passes through menopause it doesn’t matter how many additional years she lives, because her reproductive phase is over. She may well increase the fitness of her offspring and their offspring in other ways, but that’s a secondary effect on population.
I would expect (though I haven't checked) that the longer lived races have similarly longer reproductive windows- but even if they don't, longer life with comparable reproduction means more population lingering at once, which stay of fighting age longer.

I’m not sure if the population numbers have any bearing on military readiness. The Shaar is populated by nomadic tribes, so the various monstrous humanoids are as likely to be fighting among themselves as anything else.
Even if they only mobilize the same percentage to fight (and there's no way they wouldn't recruit more aggressively from their more capable member species), that implies that 25% of their forces are still free auto-cav.

That said, The Shaar is presented as a region, and it would be reasonable to assume those heavies are not part of cities, but tribes that will refuse to cooperate. Even so, that's why I've mentioned Yuan-ti as often droppped as percentages of individual cities, a more explicit example.

Also not sure that centaurs and wemics automatically qualify as heavy cavalry. Neither of them has automatic armor proficiencies, and I don't think their natural armor compares with a heavily armored war-horse.
Depends on what statistic you're considering for the heavy cavalry. Centaurs have +3 na, Wemics +4, vs the +4 of a warhorse. Even the heavier cavalry rarely had more than what would be classified as medium armor from what I understand, and there are medium armors cheap enough for starting gold, plus they can use a shield which a normal horse can't (leather+ heavy shield is close enough). Heck, their starting +7 attack can just eat nonproficiency penalties and still come out even. Centaurs get lance charge and IIRC they can use other mounted feats as though they were mounted (don't remember which book), so they don't lose access to Trample, and I would expect Wemics to be allowed the same. And that's before the fact that their standing attack from str 18+ deals as much damage as a normal person's lance charge, and even their weakest archers deal more damage than the most elite humanoid (and even if you can only afford basic large longbows that's still a huge step [but their standard entry does give them composite 4 automatically).

So maybe not quite equivalent to a well equipped cavalryman, but still a huge advantage over not having them (and remember that there's a highly limited number of even 2nd level warriors to draw from).

The level progression of city monsters is unknown- the DM could run it any number of ways, but if applied flatly without regard to race, things get even more interesting. Roll on the percentage breakdown to get the species of each high level NPC and some of them are gonna end up being whatever monster you've added, would would give an advantage even on the smaller elite scale.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Fizban
I would expect (though I haven't checked) that the longer lived races have similarly longer reproductive windows- but even if they don't, longer life with comparable reproduction means more population lingering at once, which stay of fighting age longer.

It depends which race. I don't recall exactly how much older halflings can achieve, but it's not radically longer than humans.

Elves, on the other hand, do live radically longer than humans, and if their reproductive phase is proportional to that of humans, then they should be kicking out many more offspring than humans. Elves are almost always presented as an "elder race" in whose shadow humans developed; so if elves were around long before humans, and able to produce many more offspring, by rights the world should be full of elves.

So, there needs to be something limiting either conception or survivability among elves in order for the standard setting to work as described. This is something I ran up against when I first started playing 3.5, and I had to develop an in-game rationale for why elves wouldn't have long ago outpopulated humans and shorter-lived species. I'd be interested in hearing other takes on this problem, since it's one of those issues hiding in plain sight for standard settings.


Originally Posted by Fizban
And you just flat out can't support city-tier populations hunting wild game.

Not universally true. Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe have upended our previous notions about the relative development of urbanization and agriculture.

It’s true that they’re not functionally identical to a classic medieval city, but they do suggest that given the right conditions—isolation, abundant game and little to no warfare and competition—an urban population can be supported by hunting alone.

.

[magic9mushroom]

Uh... people hunted dinosaurs? Which people? :smallconfused:

Most of them.

Even the big, flightless ones got hunted everywhere that they actually were (i.e. Gondwana).


This is interesting, but not surprising, since Eberron has just experienced a massive war. Are the population effects of the Last War addressed in the campaign setting?

The Last War was horrific, but Khorvaire is about 50% larger in land area than either the Roman or Han Chinese Empires and has about a quarter of their populations (15.6 million compared to ~60 for each of the historical ones). Furthermore, Sarlona hasn't had the Last War and its population is even lower (14.9 million). Xen'drik (not stated) and Argonnessen (223k), sure, I wouldn't expect those places to have RL-comparable populations because of lack of civilisation in the former case and 20% of the population being dragons in the latter. But... yeah, Eberron doesn't have population density even comparable to classical civilisations, let alone mediaeval ones which had 2-3 times that (e.g. Song China, despite being significantly smaller than Han China in area, had 120M).

[Fizban]

It depends which race. I don't recall exactly how much older halflings can achieve, but it's not radically longer than humans.
True.

Elves, on the other hand, do live radically longer than humans, and if their reproductive phase is proportional to that of humans, then they should be kicking out many more offspring than humans. Elves are almost always presented as an "elder race" in whose shadow humans developed; so if elves were around long before humans, and able to produce many more offspring, by rights the world should be full of elves.

So, there needs to be something limiting either conception or survivability among elves in order for the standard setting to work as described. This is something I ran up against when I first started playing 3.5, and I had to develop an in-game rationale for why elves wouldn't have long ago outpopulated humans and shorter-lived species. I'd be interested in hearing other takes on this problem, since it's one of those issues hiding in plain sight for standard settings.
Elves are one of the few acknowledgements of reproductive problems in the books of course. The PHB says they aren't adults until they're over 100, and though I haven't read the older DnD books, I'm pretty sure that with more Tokien inspired Fantasy elves this was the intent. But a species that takes 100 years to grow up is completely screwed and super weird alongside normal humans, and Races of the Wild backpedals on it even in the setting-agnostic canon, making them physically adults at 25 and the 100+ stuff explicitly just societal norms. RoTW also says they usually stop having kids after 200, giving them a conveniently but not too significantly elongated window (edit- no, that's actually way, way more than human female).


Which is all pretty ironic considering how far Races of the Dragon went in the other direction.

Not universally true. Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe have upended our previous notions about the relative development of urbanization and agriculture.

It’s true that they’re not functionally identical to a classic medieval city, but they do suggest that given the right conditions—isolation, abundant game and little to no warfare and competition—an urban population can be supported by hunting alone.
Interesting.

[Jay R]

I read Fire Giants are at war with Dwarves, but the average Fire Giant is much stronger, so I assume the Dwarves have larger numbers.

Dwarves can always raid giants' living places, but giants can't get into dwarven tunnels. And dwarves are better at crafting weapons. And dwarves are far likelier to have character class levels.

Raw strength is no the only factor that matters, and it isn't even likely to be the most important.

[Psyren]

Most of them.

Uh, no, wrong epochs.


Dwarves can always raid giants' living places, but giants can't get into dwarven tunnels. And dwarves are better at crafting weapons. And dwarves are far likelier to have character class levels.

Raw strength is no the only factor that matters, and it isn't even likely to be the most important.

Nor are numbers really, otherwise the goblinoids and kobolds would be the ones running the show.

It's the combination of factors that matters, and humans just happen to have the best combination.

[Saint-Just]

Uh, no, wrong epochs.


Ok, when I initially wrote "people hunted them" I meant buffalo\rhinoceros\woolly mammoth\other large mammals.

But magic9mushroom has a point - people did hunt the dinosaurs and continue to do so to this day. Birds are dinosaurs, y'know.

[Jay R]

Nor are numbers really, otherwise the goblinoids and kobolds would be the ones running the show.

It's the combination of factors that matters, and humans just happen to have the best combination.

Exactly. And I like to believe that the biggest factor of all is a humble one. It's an ordinary, common, simple boring answer, hard to recognize by players who play adventurers: Yes, humans are routinely attacked, crushed, shoved aside. But also, humans farm.

The large number of ruins and artifacts from earlier ages is proof that great empires crumble. Warlords conquer, Kings rule, Patriarchs purge, and raiders raid. And then they are gone.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Humans have the most farmers. They are surrounded by enemies with more power, greater size, and more abilities. They are ravaged by dragon power, trampled by giant stampedes, outlived by elven immortality, overwhelmed by goblin fecundity. And the humans grow food. They suffer raids, and they grow food.

From The Magnificent Seven:

Village Boy 2: We're ashamed to live here. Our fathers are cowards.

O'Reilly: Don't you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery. That's why I never even started anything like that... that's why I never will.

Giants are larger. Goblins have more population growth. Elves have more great wizards, Orcs more great Barbarians. Dwarves create more Fighters, and Halflings more Rogues. But they have never rivaled humans in the greatest class at all - the one that sees the humans through all the centuries.

The old man in The Magnificent Seven said, "Only the farmers have won. They remain forever. They are like the land itself. You helped rid them of Calvera, the way a strong wind helps rid them of locusts. You're like the wind - blowing over the land and... passing on. Vaya con dios."

It's not the adventurer classes that win. It's not the largest or most powerful monsters. It's not cleverness or strength or fast reproduction. The most important class of Humans, the one that ensures they will never be destroyed, is Commoner.

The Samurai Kambei Shimada was the leader of the adventuring party in Seven Samurai. His final line was, "The farmers have won. Not us."[/QUOTE]

[Psyren]

Ok, when I initially wrote "people hunted them" I meant buffalo\rhinoceros\woolly mammoth\other large mammals.

But magic9mushroom has a point - people did hunt the dinosaurs and continue to do so to this day. Birds are dinosaurs, y'know.

Given that we were talking about giant diets, this isn't the most applicable bit of pedantry.


Exactly. And I like to believe that the biggest factor of all is a humble one. It's an ordinary, common, simple boring answer, hard to recognize by players who play adventurers: Yes, humans are routinely attacked, crushed, shoved aside. But also, humans farm.
...
The Samurai Kambei Shimada was the leader of the adventuring party in Seven Samurai. His final line was, "The farmers have won. Not us."

Farming is probably the biggest factor, which then gets combined with others like facility with magic, science and engineering. Even in pseduo-medieval D&D settings, humans figure out things like fertilizer and animal-drawn ploughs.

[magic9mushroom]

Given that we were talking about giant diets, this isn't the most applicable bit of pedantry.

That would be why I mentioned ratites.

And humans could certainly eat Diplodocus if they were around - the spiked pit trap is stone-age tech and works better the bigger the animal (square-cube law). Bows work too.


(As an aside, you don't really get to complain about pedantry when this tangent started with you misinterpreting someone and continued with you falsely "correcting" me.)

[Psyren]

"Complaining?" Nah, just calling it what it was.

[Fizban]

The fundamental difference here is whether you're justifying the default, or looking for a new default based on the mechanics.


Exactly. And I like to believe that the biggest factor of all is a humble one. It's an ordinary, common, simple boring answer, hard to recognize by players who play adventurers: Yes, humans are routinely attacked, crushed, shoved aside. But also, humans farm. . .
Humans have the most farmers. They are surrounded by enemies with more power, greater size, and more abilities. They are ravaged by dragon power, trampled by giant stampedes, outlived by elven immortality, overwhelmed by goblin fecundity. And the humans grow food. They suffer raids, and they grow food. . . .
Giants are larger. Goblins have more population growth. Elves have more great wizards, Orcs more great Barbarians. Dwarves create more Fighters, and Halflings more Rogues. But they have never rivaled humans in the greatest class at all - the one that sees the humans through all the centuries. . .
It's not the adventurer classes that win. It's not the largest or most powerful monsters. It's not cleverness or strength or fast reproduction. The most important class of Humans, the one that ensures they will never be destroyed, is Commoner.

Problem is, that's not a Human thing. That's a 1 HD Humanoid thing, which all of those other races also have. In order for this Human exceptionalism line to be drawn, it requires the assumption that all those other humanoid races don't get City organization. But they do, because the DM can put any race they want in the #1 spot for a given city, and there are plenty of published elven, dwarven, etc cities to set precedent. The only thing stopping goblins or orcs or giants from doing so is fluff or assumed background factors that force a default pro-human status quo. Any race that has a city is made up of 90% Commoners farming the food.

The point is that when you look at the (never seriously considered by the designers) confluence of consumption, reproduction, and game mechanics, Humans are not #1. Not in combat ability, not in efficiency of consumption, not in reproduction, not in habitat acclimation, nothing. You can exalt the Human farmers all you want, but in a world built following those numbers, the Humans are magnificent only in the sense that some of them are surviving at all.


If you want to make a mechanical justification for Humans being #1 in spite of their lack of advantages, you have to do it based on what they actually have, which I have not yet brought up because this was a population question (and by the simple numbers, the amount of Large Giants in an area ought to be 1/4 the number of Humans that would fit there). But what Humans have is an unspecified bonus feat, and unspecified bonus skill points. The reason given for Human supremacy is usually a nebulous nod to their adaptability, but that is in fact all they have.
-The minimum skill points for a Human Commoner is twice that of any other race, and is 50% more for their average members. This allows them to have two fully specialized skills, or one maxed and a few more trained, or up to 8 trained (probably more than the number that require training).
-Two feats means they can have two fully specialized Skill Focus skills, which won't be as high as a Dwarf's stonework or Elf's spotting (unless there's another +2 feat they can take, which there often are), but means if their primary skill is flooded they have a backup.
-And for combat, two feats means they can have Toughness to nearly double their endurance, while also having a combat feat, on their dedicated warriors. Or have Toughness and a Skill Focus for those who do both.
-And once all the environmental splatbooks that make feats to survive in all the environments are included, the new generation can incorporate a habitat advantage.

Now, if someone has a working model on how Adaptability would factor into population, sure that could matter. Extinctions tend to happen when a species is unable to adapt quickly enough to a new problem, but that only helps Humans if the other races are being hammered by outside forces that Humans can adapt to faster.

And none of that matters if you have farm-capable creatures with 4HD, 6HD, 8HD, massive natural armor and strength. Two feats at 1st mean humans can match 1HD humanoids that aren't Orcs in combat, but Toughness doesn't matter against Giants, and with 6HD or more they've got more feats and more skills. The only thing that stops them from dominating is if they can't farm enough to support the same numbers (even if they lack certain in-class skills, you just exterminate via combat). Even primitive weapons and armor are plenty when backed by massive strength, hit points, and siege-tier rock throwing. The Humans must have an initial numbers, fortification, and tech advantage in order to hold ground against giants. If they both start from zero it's just a slaughter.


If you put it together and squint you can maybe make it work. If the giants start out in the mountains with terrible food access limiting their population and must first fight through the dwarves to reach the lowlands. If the goblins start underground and also have to go through the dwarves. (If the dwarves have some preternatural digging powers that lets them actually have stone tunnel fortresses that could never realistically exist because of the exorbitant cost in energy and time). If the elves actually can't reproduce until they're over 100 years old. If the kobolds can survive on dirt but can't reproduce unless they have proper food, and are stuck in a cold climate where their even more borked 1/4 food requirement never activates. If Halflings and Gnomes are basically just smaller Humans and Dwarves and don't form their own cities. If various monsters are constantly preying on everyone, and humans start out with the good farmland, and can then capitalize on the failure of the other races to adapt to deaths of various specialized community members. With all of that you can probably justify the Humans #1 default status quo.

In the sense that they'll eventually control all the easily accessible farmland and coastal areas- anywhere that favors Darkvision they're screwed so no invading Dwarf, Goblin, or Kobold tunnels, and if the Elves are somehow supporting their cities within forests despite lack of farmland, then they'll hold that territory until someone is sufficiently motivated to clearcut or burn them out.