What rases do you allow in your game

[Narmoth]

I was wondering what kind of rases you usually allow in your games of all the rases available from the rules for that game.

Personally I use only Humans, Dwarfes and Elves in my AD&D campaign, allthrough there are rules for using maybee 10 other demihuman rases, including, half-orc, gnoll and Aaracocra

[Athenodorus]

No elves.
Human, Halfling, Dwarf, possibly Gnome.

[DeathQuaker]

Anything in PHB or Monster Manual that is no level adjustment or LA +1. I.e., most core races and their subraces, plus some savage humanoids.

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

PHB races for players.
All races for the DMs.

[Thomas]

Humans, pretty much exclusively. RuneQuest races aren't balanced - a dark troll is always mechanically better, in every way, than a human, and a duck is worse in every way. (Besides, Gloranthan nonhumans are too cool and alien to be allowed as PCs or to be portrayed decently by anyone who's not a Glorantha fanatic. They're not just humans with pointy ears or big beards.)

Currently, everyone has to play a Sartarite human from the same extended family of the Red Cow Clan of the Cinsina Tribe.


In D&D, it varies. Usually it's all LA +0 races; in the latest game, it's races with up to +2 LA, subject to DM approval. (No catfolk, no thri-kreen, etc.)

[ExHunterEmerald]

I'm going to allow them all, but I shouldn't have any problems with half-template LA+5 monstrosities. I have the most experience of the bunch (that being more than none), and they won't likely know much beyond the books I lend them.

...and if it becomes a problem, I'll just Tarrasque their asses. :D

I also had an idea for a game where the mythical races are as they are in literature, and that means massive LA for them.

[Talya]

I allow people to use level adjusted races...it screws them later on. Seriously...nothing hurts your effectiveness so much than playing an OMG COOL Drow and being 2 levels below everyone else.

Goliath, Aasimar, Tiefling have a low enough adjustment for their abilities to be useful.

[Ashes]

PHB races. EOD.

Subraces not allowed. We use cultural differences to illustrate different breeds. The Drow of Xen'Drik (playing in Eberron) gets weapon proficiency with the longknife and the boomerang and instead of the bonus to save vs. enchantment they get it vs. poison. But other than that, they are just black elves.


Besides, no one in our group wants to suck up LA or the weirdness of playing screwy characters. Hobgoblins are kinda cool though.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Depends from campaign to campaign. We had a level 8 "anything goes" with a Half-Emerald Dragon Monk, a Half Iron Golem Goliath Barbarian, and a human rogue. We had one game where there were no humans, just gnomes and elves while in d20 modern we enforced humanity. If we're playing in a campaign setting we allow any races standard for that campaign (ie every one in the FrCS but not everything in Monsters of Faerun).

[Golthur]

Depends on the world I'm running in, always.

I usually homebrew my settings, so I usually present a list to my players of permitted races (some core as-is, some core changed, some homebrew). In general, I only allow LA+0 races to players, since I always start at 1st level. I might allow an LA+1 race, but I'd have to get an awesome justification for it.

I have noticed, though, that I usually ditch half-elves and halflings for some reason . I suppose at some point to even it out I'll have to make a world where halflings are the dominant race, and the humans are in chains...

[Matthew]

As Golthur says, depends on the game.

Any Core in D&D 3.x, sometimes others
Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Half Elves and Half Orcs in my Homebrew (A)D&D Campaign

[geez3r]

So long as the player has an awesome RP reason to play an "exotic" race, I'll allow nearly anything under the starting ECL. Exceptions do of course exist. Most of the time I admit LA +1 with hardly batting an eye after hearing the RP reason. LA +2 and higher gets carefully looked over. I keep my players under +4 LA, which usually isn't a problem...usually.

[reorith]

just the core races + the planetouched because they're awesome. i've never had a player want to make a character that was anything else. except for a kobold one time. that character died pretty quickly :(

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I allow everything, and have on ocassion made some new ones up. The game's more fun when you can play what you want to play, and if I think you're unbalanced then I'll find ways to deal with you in the course of the game's challenges.

[Desaril]

It varies with the campaign, but like Golthur, I almost always ditch the same races (gnomes, halflings & half-orcs). I replace half-orcs with either hobgoblins or orcs using the half-orc stats.

However, Like the Viscount, I make exceptions if requested and it furthers the gaming fun. And I will rebalance the game as soon as I see evidence of munchkinism.

[Fax Celestis]

Standard SRD + Faerunian races + Psionic Races + Ameena, Grippli, Kar, Russiti, Ahihele, Haukea, Hekiliao, Kaimana, Leilani, and Noelani.

[Fhaolan]

I allow Humans, Dwarves, Elves and Orcs, as well as halfbreeds like half-elves, and half-orcs. Nobody's asked for half-dwarf or a non-human half-breed yet, so I haven't needed to deal with that question.

I have a homebrew version of Gnomes which hashes up gnomes, halflings, and goblins together. In the campaign I run normally, either gnomes or halflings fit the culteral niche I was trying to fill, but not both so I merged the two together.

I also allow Centaurs, Half-Ogres, Lizardfolk, Kobolds, and 'Beast Men' (Gnolls/Minotaurs/Satyrs/etc), but on a case-by-case basis as these are foreign races from where I normally start campaigns.

For those races with LA, or racial HD, I use a variant of the Savage Species racial level system so people can all start at 1st level when necessary.

[Errata]

I never want to play anything but human, myself. LA really hurts, and I haven't seen many LA +0 races that can compete with a bonus feat, bonus skill points, and favored class any.

[JadedDM]

In general, on my current homebrewed world, the playable races are: Human, Gnome, Half-Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Elf, Gnoll, Kobold, Sprite, Goblin, Hobgoblin and Bugbear.

[adanedhel9]

Generic/Greyhawk game: any PHb or MM race.

My homebrewed world: custom races based loosely on humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, half-elves, and kobolds, with each (except the half-elves) having 4 subraces.

Oh, and cultural stuff is split out from the racial stuff, so a Kilerin (aquatic dwarf) from the Watery Depths is different from a Kilerin from Dawncleft.

[Bryn]

Anything with LA +0 to +1, or higher in a higher levelled game. Since we don't really play at high level, +0 to +1 is the most common.

I don't really restrict based on books, since we don't have that many with really broken races.

[clarkvalentine]

I keep reading the thread title as "raises", not "races"; I've been playing Dogs in the Vineyard all weekend, a game which has a mechanic called Raise - and what is allowed for a Raise and what isn't sometimes is in question, so I've thought about five times today "Cool, a Dogs thread!"

Heh. Anyway.

In my current d20 game, humans only (it's Westeros, non-humans are really freakishly scary). When I play D&D, it's usually Dragonlance, so the stock standard PHB races are pretty much in (minus the half-orc, which DL doesn't have).

[Scorpina]

I pretty much always run FR, so I allow: Humans, Moon Elves, Sun Elves, Wild Elves, Rock Gnomes, Hill Dwarves, Gold Dwarves, Lightfoot Halfling, Strongheart Halflings, Ghostwise Halflings, Half-Elves, Half-Drow, Half-Orcs, Orcs, Lesser Drow, Lesser Duergar, Lesser Svirfneiblen, Lesser Aasimar, Lesser Tieflings, Lesser Water Genasi, Lesser Air Genasi, Lesser Fire Genasi, Lesser Earth Genasi, Deep Imaskari... and I can be talked into allowing other races.

Of course, that list is often significantly shortened for a specific campaign. If it's set in Candlekeep, you won't be playing an Orc. No.

[John_D]

I'm not a huge fan of the approach that has thousands upon thousands of sentient races, especially if done poorly. In one campaign I realised that the DM, between first and fourth level, had introduced us to precisely one of pretty much every humanoid-looking race in the MM. This included a first-level encounter with a party consisting of a tiefling, an aasimar a githyanki and githzerai. Possible, yes, but eyes were rolling.

Even when handled well I find it's very difficult to give each race the right amount of cultural identity. For the campaign I'm currently running, I've cut it back to four player races (maenad, human, halfling and half-orc) and a couple of NPC ones. I'm quite happy with the balance.


Race-heavy DMs, I am not hatin' on your game! I just think that the amount of effort needed to properly model more than a half-dozen races mingling in one world is far beyond me or anyone I game with.

[Bryn]

That's an interesting issue actually. You could instead find out what the PCs (and you) want to play, and incorporate those into the world, dropping everything else. A world is a large place, so there might be room for a few more races to hail from, say, the Far North or something to that effect. Hmm...

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I explain everything on a territorial basis. Elves, for instance, live in forest areas most often, and elven NPC's are seen about 80% of the time around these forests. The only race you can count on seeing everywhere is human.

I do tailor to the PC's a lot. I've included entire cultures just to fit in with a particular PC's race. Like right now, I suggested that there was a kingdom that was ruled by a (severely inbred) half-dragon lineage, and that the party's half-dragon was part of the royal family a long time ago. The kingdom has since been destroyed, but the PC now really looks foreward to going "back" to his homeland and seeing what remains of it. So I did my job right- I made the player excited about the game.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

I usually go on a case-to-case basis on what I allow. My group in general is very flexible about what we allow in games, like half-ogre frenzied berzerkers running around(thank you, Steadfast determination) and it never really creates a problem for us, because with as much power gaming there is in every session, there's an equal amount or more of puzzles, obsticles and roleplay to go with it.
My current group has only 1 or 2 normal races. It consists of a shifter barbarian, a human ebon phoenix mage, a half-succubus bard, a githyanki fighter and a lumi paladin of tyranny. So far the only real annoyance is that the person playing the lumi won't f**king stop casting light on things.
If anything should ever get out of hand then I'll set some limitations on races playable or not playable. But that aside, most of the characters in many other campaigns are just normal things, like changelings, warforged, fire elves and gnomes.

[Wolf53226]

In the world I am currently building, Humans, Dwarves (Although Rare), Elves (Although Rare), Halflings, Gnomes, Orcs, Kobolds, Lizardfolk, Minotaur{ although these last two are getting nerfed a little to get the LA down}, and the half-elves, and half orc. The elves are rare because their nation has had closed it's borders and the dwarves are rare because the continent they mainly lived on feel into the ocean, so the only ones left are ones that didn't live there at the time.

Edit1: Rewording a bit
Edit2: How can I forget the Kobolds?

[Chris_tian]

I actually allow just about anything.

I have three rules
1. It has to work, in some way, with the rest of the group

2. The player has to create a believable backstory

3. If I say no, it means no, I usually have a reason

[pestilenceawaits]

For our group anything goes and LA generally keeps people from playing anything more than a +2. The only other caveat is that they have to fit in with the power level of the party.