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Discuss!!!
I like to stay with the main core races. I find that adding anything else gets to be a bit much and some players will cry that I am playing favorites if I allow anything out of the ordinary.
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Almost all 0 HD races. Drow Nobles are out. That is the only one that I know for a fact that I would not allow.
Funny, I usually see responses like yours (Shalafi) and yours (Wraithstrike) when I ask people about this. What I rarely see is an established list for the campaign being played. It's always "core only" or "anything goes".
I am pretty flexible as a GM. If you can have a decent reason as to why race X should be in the party I am normally ok with it. You might have trouble in social encounters, but I try not to take it to such an extreme that it stops being fun.
Funny, I usually see responses like yours (Shalafi) and yours (Wraithstrike) when I ask people about this. What I rarely see is an established list for the campaign being played. It's always "core only" or "anything goes".
I'm also pretty anything goes (excluding drow noble and sverineblin), but in order to justify that I make sure every race has a place in my world. There have been a few, though, that I don't include, at least not yet. No strix and no gillmen, and also about half the races in psionics unleashed, although there are plenty of areas where they could possibly fit. I would never let someone play as a race that I felt wasn't true to my world.
I would never let someone play as a race that I felt wasn't true to my world.
+1
All the different versions of Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Gnome, Goblinoid and Orc (my own slightly tweeked version). The reason is that it covers all of the major humanoid races that way.
I do not include the endless variety of potential animal-people. They always seemed kind of cheap to me. Half-races also feel kind of cheap to me. Like "Oh I'm a half elf/dragon/vampire/giant/unicorn princess who has a mysterious past and an epic destiny. I'm sooo frigin special". Though if the player has a good reason/story for it I will consider mixed races such as Half-orcs and Half-elves along with plane touch humanoids such as Aasimar, Tieflings, and the elemental blooded as non-standard races.
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Generally speaking, I will allow anything that has an entry under "X as Player Characters". My reasoning is that we come here for the story, and good stories come from all locations. I require anyone picking any race (even standard ones) to have a reason for being that race and a background to support it. If I still feel they are picking the race for numbers reasons (Drow Noble, I'm looking at you) I inflict some heavy-handed compensation.
Number crunchers and min-maxers don't do well at our table if that's all they are there for.
I played in a group for several years in a low-magic campaign where the only race available was human. We switched between that and a high-magic campaign where the only available race was elf.
Funny, I usually see responses like yours (Shalafi) and yours (Wraithstrike) when I ask people about this. What I rarely see is an established list for the campaign being played. It's always "core only" or "anything goes".
Well, you would need to set specifics for the campaign world for 'something else'. Typically, I'm an 'anything goes' type for basic dungeon crawl campaigns.
However, for my homebrew, Gnomes are not allowed (because, so far as any non-Dwarf is concerned, Gnomes don't exist), and other races are restricted by starting location. For example, for my current group, they started in the Western Kingdoms (think Europe-esque), only Human, Dwarf, and Hobbit, along with a homebrew race, Lupins, with restrictions on using Goblins, Orcs, and Half-orcs. However, in the Jade Empire, races are restricted to Elves, Humans, and Half-elves, along with another homebrew race, Rakasta.
Other races that might be PC races, either don't exist or would not join the average adventuring party due to cultural differences.
Same boat as Wraithstrike.
A better question, IMO, is what races are socially acceptable in the vast majority of your areas?
Because for me, that list is much shorter.
I generally not only don't have racial restrictions, I am more than willing to discuss custom races.
It just has to work from a story perspective. Cyborg vampires in a stone age setting would be pretty hard to justify...
Depends on which continent the game is taking place.
Northern Continent : No humans, no dwarves, no halflings, no gnomes, no elves. No eastern races (monkey folk, rat folk, cat folk, etc). Several custom races (including a different type of cat folk) allowed.
Southern Continent : Anything goes, but races may have a lot of racial hostility toward them (orcs, drow, duerger, gnolls, etc). Eastern folk have to be imported from a different continent (and usually no more than one import per game).
Eastern Continent : Humans, elves, eastern races (rat folk, cat folk, monkey folk, kitsune, etc). Anything else has to be imported from a different continent (and usually no more than one import per game).
Depends on the campaign. In my current Planescape campaign, it's anything goes, even creatures with racial hit dice, if around the same power as the party. In my homebrew, it depends on the area (the rakshasa-ruled North: humans, tieflings, and beastfolk [the rakshasa-descended]; the wild South: goblinoids, orcs, dwarves, sylphs; the Underworld: duergar, kobolds, oreads, ifrits. Gnomes and elves come from another world and are treated with suspicion, and no player's asked about halflings yet...). I usually make humans a minority unless using a preexisting campaign world like Golarion or Eberron.
For me it is basically:
Core Book Races: Automatic yes
'Nonstandard' races mentioned in Core Book (Orc/Tengu/etc): Yes if you have a good reason
'Powerful' races (Drow/Svirfneblin/etc): No go, unless you have a very good story and stay 1 level behind the rest of the group.
Other 0HD races (Planetouched/Dhampir/etc): Only if you have a very good/setting appropriate story
3rd party races: Nope.
My current game I limited everyone to the Core Book at first. I made two exceptions for the players who were not used to my style of GMing. One wanted a drow and the other wanted a bugbear. I generally say no to drow but he assured me he wasn't going to be dual wielding even though he was to be a ranger. I told them both it was on a probationary basis.
The world reacted to them accordingly. The bugbear ended up dying during an adventure. The drow stayed out of the lime-light for safety reasons.
The reason I did this was because I was going to be running Pathfinder for the first time and converting Age of Worms. I had enough to work with without having to add more to my plate.
Now that I have more experience with the system, I will be more open with the next campaign. I am still deciding if I am going to run another AP or if I'm going to run my own campaign. If I do my own campaign, my plans will almost encourage players to try something other than the core races. They will be outcasts trying to build lives on a new continent. Think Australia but with Pathfinder adventures.
We have several different settings in the world we play in. In one setting, called Eian, pretty much only core races are considered playable without a really good reason. We dropped half-orcs and replaced them with the identically statted "lesser firbolg" since the orcs of that region are rather not friendly and half-orc children probably wouldn't survive to adventuring age (great backstory notwithstanding). Also, halflings are called Flen for reasons I still don't understand.
Over in the west, in Avantarra, things get a lot more open. Core is mostly available (no halflings), but orcs, half-orcs, hobgoblins and feline humanoids known as Shivan are added in as common races. In a higher powered game, even some of the lesser giants might be on the table.
In the south, in Valea, aasimar and tieflings are the dominant races, with humans, elves, half-elves and gnomes being the only core races present. However, tengu, grippli, boggards, lizardfolk (lowered to 0 HD), kobolds and goblins all make a strong showing as player races. Oread, sylphs, ifrits and undine have a segment of the population, as well as merfolk (but we've never run an aquatic campaign so no one uses them).
Basically, the list for each region is a list of what races would be considered acceptable in the towns where we would start adventures. The other races are present to varying degrees, but often make up the antagonist nations and would be rare to have a player choose one.
In Eian, for example, you could play a goblin if you wished, but you would do so knowing that you'd have to stay outside of town until your renown could precede you enough to ward off the guards' arrows. If you played a dwarf in Valea, you would probably be shunned as if you were some sort of hideous freak (either as a grotesquely sized gnome, or some sort of stunted human).
As others have said, backstories are key. We had someone play a mephit in one game, and it just worked. So, ultimately nothing is off-limits, but anything outside the lists needs special permission and a very good reason.
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Town reactions to races varies from area to area in my homebrew too, though players are given ample warning if there are almost certain dangerous situations waiting to happen. Most lands where goblins are treated poorly, it's more where they're an "invisible" class of people or outright slaves. In those few where they're outright persecuted, they know to either simply avoid the place or keep their heads down.
But I make sure the world and the people in it react to what the PCs do too. The setting doesn't exist in a vacuum, and if a goblin has been pulling off some crazy heroics people are going to take notice and react differently in any number of ways, for better or worse.
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Thinking back, I can think of exactly one race that I would never allow, simply due to the toxic nature of their dysfunctional roleplaying advice.
I allow or disallow races based on the setting. I'm still building the list, but I know what's on it so far. In this world all humanoids are considered humans, so I renamed the vanilla human to reflect the fact that all the races are human. As a general rule, elves are the dominant race politically, not magni or another race, but there are exceptions. These are the races I plan to offer to players:
Magni (vanilla human)
Elf
Dwarf
Wildkin (catfolk and related creatures)
Divni (A blood drinking race. They are not vampires, though there are a great many similarities, and vampires hold a very large place in their folklore.)
Planetouched (Aasimar, Tieflings, and so on)
Changeling (humans kidnapped by fey who escaped)
Hybrid (what happens when human races interbreed)
Core races, except Dwarf (due to a world history).
Kobolds, the various planetouched races, basically if it's an old +1 or +0 race (3.5) I may let it in with no additions to it. I've always been pretty open to new races.
Avistan: all core races, tengu, fetchling, aasimar, changeling, dhampir, duergar, gilman, goblin, hobgoblin, kobold, merfolk, orc, strix, svirfneblin, and tiefling.
Garundi: all core races, grippli, aasimar, changeling, fetchling, dhampir (Geb), gilman, goblin, merfolk, tiefling, ifrit, oread, sylph, and undine.
Tien: all core races, all Tien races, aasimar, fetchling, dhampir, merfolk, tiefling, tengu, changeling, and hobgoblin.
I'm generally in the anything (reasonable) goes group. No drow nobles or template-laden PCs (unless the player is REALLY convincing that whatever template their using won't be abused), but aside from that, anything's good really.
If I run a solo game I'm fine with the template and drow noble stuff too, so long as it's not too complicated to give me a headache.
And I have got one campaign setting that gets jumped back to once in a while that's (usually) got none of the normal core races. The core races of that world are Catfolk, Gillmen, Goblins, Kobolds, Lizardfolk, and Flumphs (The last two being homebrewed into 0HD races based on their bestiary entries), and those are generally the only six choices available to players. Unless we play in a certain time period of that setting, in which case pretty much anything is an option.
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I prefer players to stick to Humans, Halflings, and Dwarves. I think they are the best races. Elves and orcs make it weird.
I usually end up with an elf or and orc, so I just change my setting around some to allow it. Normally after the first few games, if no one was playing one, no one will want to play on.
Personally, I feel like if you are going to have a PC orc, you might as well have a PC troglodite, goblin, gnoll, or gelatinous cube.
PC Gnolls can be pretty cool. Gelatinous cubes, unfortunately, are non-intelligent (or at least non-humanoid) critters, so that's much more of a stretch.
I don't see how elves make things weird if you're already including dwarves and halflings though.
Personally-- if I were running a game, I'd allow pretty much any race that doesn't imbalance the game (i.e., that I don't look at and think "that needs a level adjustment..."-- I realize PF doesn't use LA's, but if you know what that was in 3.5, you should get the idea-- btw, that means Drow Nobles are out), that there is a clear write-up available for it (less of an absolute, but I wouldn't trust custom races from some of the players I know), and that the player can come up with a good background for the character that explains why a character of that race is around wherever the group is assembling and/or meeting the new character (no special races for munchkins who can't come up with a good story reason to justify the race-- give me a good background/story reason for it, and you can have the race/class you want, so long as it ain't game-breaking).
In my home brew, no halflings, gnomes, or half orcs (no orcs as well).
Human -- Spread across most of the world.
Elves -- Almost as widely spread, holds more sway in political power in some key lands.
Half Elves -- Sort of rare. Often hunted down by elves for ritual sacrifice. Also a catch all for any fey/human breeding.
Dwarves -- Enslaved by elves. Less than 10% of their population is free, and growing less.
Tieflings -- Fairly common. Demons play a big role in my campaign, and half breeds are evrywhere.
Aasimar -- Almost unheard of, but a few have been known. Most end up killed by elves.
Hobgoblins -- Reserved for Evil campaigns. Everyone has to be a hob.
**Custom races**
Giantsbloods -- Also called half giants. At the extreme large edge of medium for size. Mixes well with humans, but is marginally accepted by the elves.
Dhuun -- Northern Ogre. A large sized PC race.
Same boat as Wraithstrike.
A better question, IMO, is what races are socially acceptable in the vast majority of your areas?
Because for me, that list is much shorter.
What is socially acceptable are the core races, and most 0hd monster that don't have a bad reputation. That does not mean orcs, which are not socially acceptable, are attacked on sight, but until you make a name(a good one) for yourself people will not be nice to you. If you go to another region, and your name has not preceded you then expect more of the same backlash as before.
In my homebrew you can play Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, or Hobgoblins. Also, depending on your race you're class list is restricted.
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Core races only and possibly Aasimar and Tieflings.
My homebrew is pretty much human only.I will allow dwarfs and elves but they have the same stat bonuses as humans.This is because in my homebrew elves are extreme isolationists as are dwarves although dwarves will associate with most everyone except elevs.Elves kill all other races on sight.
For my homebrew, I have few actual races, but many houseruled variants of the core. As a big fan of DragonLance, it's reflected in my allowed races.
Dwarves (Hill, Mountain, and Deep)
Elves (True, Wild, Air, Earth, Fire, and Water)
Halflings (Hillfolk, and Fey-Kin)
Gnome (Rock, and Tinker)
Gith (Githyanki, and Githzerai. They have ties to the history of the world before they went to their respective planes.)
Goblinoids as slaves (Goblins [menial labor], and Hobgoblins [manual labor, and shock troops])
Minotaurs (Red, and Brown)
Half-Elf (one for each Elf type, with abilities that reflect heritage)
So, technically I allow 25.
I am willing to allow any 0 HD race except the Drow Noble (it's overpowered and normal Drow work just as well), and I also allow any 0 HD homebrew race that is given over to me for an analysis, since some might be overpowered and sometimes they just don't fit the campaign setting.
As for why, it's because almost all DMs have disallowed my own homebrew races despite the months of work I've put into making their backstories and getting them to fit all the various campaign settings such as Golarion and Eberron. Hell, I even spoke with one of those DMs on this, but he still banned them a bit later without warning. Those who have allowed them haven't regretted it, but that doesn't change the attitude of the other DMs, sadly enough.
Usually, I allow only the core races. Depending on the AP I am running, I also add in a thematically appropriate race or two. For example, Dhampirs in Carrion Crown. I'll allow tieflings in my next AP, Curse of the Crimson Throne (refugees from Cheliax). I'd allow elemental planetouched in Legacy of Fire, etc.
all 0HD (no draw nobles) but the more freaky, the less non-core I want in the group.
No freakshow!
i run homebrew worlds with basically just core rules. in the two types of world i 'typical' build i usually allow either:
a)only races from the CRB, or
b)humans; aasimar and tieflings; and, ifrit, oread, slyph, and undine
my reasoning is that both of these lists seem well balanced to me, and the both create a specific feel to any campaign. now that there are more animal races available i might add a third list at some point that would be just humans and animal races.
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Pretty much any 0HD critter is fine, so long as you can justify it. I am pretty picky on the justification side of things, though, so if I feel like it doesn't suit the tone/theme, I won't allow it. Those with more HD might become available as the adventure progresses. My current group set in Eleder/Mwangi area has a catfolk and a vanara. The catfolk is panther-themed and is from the jungles. And a monkey makes enough sense given the area (although the player really just wanted to play a drunken Sun Wukong character...)
In some campaigns I'll specifically limit the choices due to the flavour or other in-game reason though.
Here are the various continents/regions and what races are allowed there:
Quarvevan (Classic DnD): Core, Goblin, Orc, Ratfolk
Lungguo (Easternl, actually north of Quarvevan): Dragon Empires races, Catfolk
Mosipmenth (Mesopotamian and Arabian): Elemental plane touched, hobbits (not halflings in my world!), humans, elves
Herlongi (Cold, Mountainous, Norse): Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Goliaths (3.5 Races of Stone), Half-Giants (Psionics Unleashed)
Huitzopetlan (Mesoamarican): Humans, Grippli, Elves, Catfolk
Nurpesh (Indian): Vishkanya, Vanara, Dwarves, (all the rest from Psionics Unleashed) Blues, Duergar, Maenads, Ophiduans
And Tieflings and Aasimar are allowed anywhere. The Tieflings have to choose a fitting ancestry because each area has appropriate ancestors.
Noob question, how do I know what is defined as a 0HD race?
If I was running a game set in Golarion (or rather, the Inner Sea region, Tian Xia just isn't my cup of tea), I'd automatically allow the races from the core rulebook. Beyond that, Aasimars and Tieflings are both fine, though Tieflings are likely to receive poor reactions if their fiendish heritage is obvious enough (and if it's not, what's the point in playing a Tiefling?). I also like the elemental planetouched races, mainly because I came to Golarion from the Forgotten Realms, and I loved the Genasi there. Other than that... Dhampir I'd consider, assuming the player had a good background. Depending on the campaign, I might be persuaded to allow a Drow (but certainly not a Drow Noble without some serious drawbacks involved), but again, it'd require a very good background, not to mention a degree of trust between me and the player. And if the Tiefling might have trouble in their social interactions with NPCs, they've got nothing on the drow. ;-) I'd definitely not allow races such as Orcs, Goblins, or other monstrous races in my campaigns though, and eastern races... well, Tian Xia/Fantasy Asia just isn't my cup of tea at all, so I'm about as likely to allow these as I am a Samurai into my games.
Of course, there could be exceptions. I've played in and run all-Drow campaigns in 3.5, and the same with Noble Drow in Pathfinder could be fun I'm sure, as could an all-Goblin adventure. :-)
The group I'm currently in has two Aasimar, a Tengu, a kobold, a half-orc, and two humans. So put us in the "any 0HD race" category, I guess.