this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 153 points 8 months ago (18 children)

Don't humans have the ability to fuck everything? It's why half elves and half orcs exist, but no non-human hybrids.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)
[–] [email protected] 41 points 8 months ago

Ah, good old Book of Erotic Fantasy. It's so gloriously stupid that everyone should own a copy. That table is by far not the silliest part of the book.

It's only bested by the official sex rulebook for The Dark Eye, which is an April Fools joke that spiraled out of control and has actual rules for intercourse – deliberately bureaucratic and unsexy ones included purely as a "you asked for it" joke at the reader's expense.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, Elder Scrolls has it right: the offspring of two different races will always be the race of the mother, but with some traits of the father.

None of that funny crossbreeding stuff, just keep it simple.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

So basically your mitochondria decides your species?

Personally I like keeping it a little more complicated. It's the same race as the mother, unless the mother is a ditto, in which case it's the same race as the father.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (7 children)

At first I read this as "these species can fuck each other". Then I realized that this is only concerning conception, all these species could fuck each other as they please.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Y or M means you can fuck that species. N means you can fuck that species without protection.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Dragons and Nymphs ~~don't~~ fuck around. Got it.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

dryads reject lizardfolk and only lizardfolk

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

One day I'm going to play an asexual bard, just to subvert expectations.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago

This is the truth they don't want us to know.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You sure? I believe I remember there being a story about a halfling or a gnome drinking an enlarge potion or two to get hot and sweaty with some giantess.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Imagine being the halfling-giant and you're just some normal guy.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

You're gonna have big feet no matter what

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Humans get to slowly raise the temperature of the world over 100 years until it causes a mass extinction event. It's very effective.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 8 months ago

"Parry this, you filthy casual!"

[–] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's called playing the long game, maybe look it up. You may have won the campaign(s), but I won the multi-generational war.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think that win was a pyrrhic victory

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think your mom was a pyrrhic victory.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

Ladies and gentlemen, we got 'em.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Vumans get a feat, which is arguably one of the strongest abilities. Base humans are notoriously weak though.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Base humans are generalists, which by their nature won't have something specific that stands out. +1 to each stat and I think an extra skill is nice if you like not being terrible at anything. Not great at anything is a tradeoff that other races don't have though...

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Don't humans get two extra proficiencies to represent their adaptability and quick learning?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

Boring AND conceited. I always roll my eyes at this trope of "unlike all these different fantasy beings that are good are specific things, we can be good at everything". Seems like imagination falling short, that other beings would not have their own breadth of possibilities, and humans wouldn't have their own unique advantages that are particular just to them.

If I had to pick one thing, it would probably be something teamwork related. Humans are very social beings compared to other animals.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Careful, you'll trigger their human fragility.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago (24 children)

There is legitimately an issue in all fantasy games where designers build a rich diverse setting with many different races that have their own exciting cultures and designs and differences, but if they include "human" about 50% of players choose human. This persists through boardgames, RPGs, videogames and LARP. The exact proportions vary a bit from game to game and from playerbase to playerbase, but it's very common.

Larian revealed some stats a while back for BG3, about 50% of players chose human, elf, or half-elf (the three most "human" looking races". If you choose one of the existing characters to play as, Gale is the most common. It's an encouraging result, there's more diversity in the picks for BG3 than most other games, but it's still very "human" skewed. Halfling, Gnome and Gith were much less commonly picked.


If you've been tabletop gaming for a long time, your instinct is to think things like "but why would anyone play as a human? that's boring!" or "I play these games for escapism and I want to play as something different to myself." or the like, but the reality is that there's a very large cadre of players who want to create characters or avatars that are "like them" - they want to self-insert, or they want to pretend they are their character, and have difficulty squaring that with being a gnome or a goblin or a Dragonborn.

As such, you can get this weird disconnect between your setting writing (where there's a large variety of different, interesting races in the world) and your playerbase (majority human) which skews your design towards a human-centric viewpoint that you don't necessarily want - especially if you put work into the design of cultures of other races, and you want players to explore a variety of ideas and styles.

So what's the solution? - a common design solution is to mechanically incentivise players to choose outside of human, by giving humans disadvantages, or giving other races unique advantages that are desirable. Is this the right approach? your mileage might vary, but it's one of the easiest "patches" to encourage diversity in the playerbase, so it's a common choice.


Does 5e do this? probably not - human is very mechanically powerful, especially at low levels where the variant human feat can make a big difference... but they did make humans more "boring" than the other races, hopefully encouraging more dragonborn and gnomes and half-orcs and so on.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago

and your playerbase (majority human)

The 3 dogs and 2 cats out there playing BG3: "Finally! Some recognition!"

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Humans should get "All healing received is maximized (ie: treat it as if the dice each rolled their maximum value)" to reflect how humans weirdly bounce back from things that should have been fatal.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (5 children)

In my games this would be called the HFY rule because of how pervasive the trope is in that theme.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Most races get more darkvision

Half-lings get more luck

Dragonborn get more breath weapons

Humans get more

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They have the power of discrimination on their side

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Orcs and humans are natural enemies.

Like elves and humans.

Or dwarves and humans.

Or gnomes and humans.

Or halfings and humans.

Or humans and other humans.

Damn humans! They ruined Toril!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You humans sure are a contentious bunch.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

You just made a favored enemy for life!

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago

Humans in OneDnD have an insp point they can toss on shit now which is pretty cool, feels like an embracing of the trope that humans will act as a glue that can bridge cultural differences between other races.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I play mostly d&d 3.5 and pathfinder 1e And I think human is the most powerful race with his free feat level one ^^

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

Humans get to know that they're better than everyone like how batman is better than superman

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Humans get to..(checks literary notes) not be genocided by other humans, until the xeno menace is destroyed.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Variant Humans get to choose their own ability.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Humans max out their primary at level 4, most op racial ever

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