Nikko882

Surprisingly, I think I disagree with most of what you've said in this comment.

While I understand that it can be discouraging for a creator to have the species and cultures that they have worked on not really be explored by the majority of players I don't think it is an issue most of the time.

It also seems a bit odd to me to lump elf, half-elf, and presumably also dwarves in with humans, given that they usually make for the hard core of fantasy races. If those aren't considered distinct then I'd wager that maybe the issue isn't that they are less distinct and cool compared to other races but something else. Either that races that are seen as "distinct" actually lean into some sort of "gimmick", or that people simply pick what they think looks good, and they aren't into how Gith look, for example.

While I know there is a large group of people playing Human mainly, I feel like that reflects the fantasy that is being set up by most games that I have engaged with. Humans are the "standard" and other races are exotic, deeply different, and usually rare. At least that's what seems to me like the most common fantasy setting type (and also my preference). That's why I don't mind when the majority plays humans, as that does reflect the story of the game. It seems more odd to me when the party strolls into town and they have a tiefling, drow, aasimar, and lizardfolk. When all those races are stated to be unique, strange, and alien to most people and those players don't really get a chance to shine with their "weirdness" in the party because there is no baseline that they can compare themselves against. After all: when everyone is super, nobody is.

The only time I can recall this creating a ludo-narrative dissonance is in Guild Wars 2, where humanity is supposed to be a dying (alien) race with few members left. By all accounts the people of the land should be a majority of charr (cat-people, basically). But of course, the "human female meta" as it is called (meaning people playing conventionally attractive human, female characters with "the sexy outfit") is greater, and as it turns out most people are playing humans. The result being that what you see when walking around is mostly humans when it "should" be mostly charr. A lot of people just play characters they think "look good".

As for why people are playing humans. I think there is a reason that you haven't touched on. I, for example, will play a human for almost every one of my characters unless I have a good reason not to. This is because I base my characters around a theme or a story and I want the focus on the character to be on that theme or story, and not on their species.

I also don't think designers make humans boring or bad on purpose to discourage players from playing them. They could just not include humans if that is what they wanted (Plenty of good examples of this. Mousegard and Humblewood for RPGs. Deep Rock Galactic, Dwarf Fortress and a ton others for video games). I think most often it comes down to people not knowing what to do with humans. Most fantasy races tend to be "human but x", so when you are making a human you don't really have anything "but", meaning that you usually end up is a situation of "humans, well, we all know what a human is, don't we? I can't see anything special about humans that one of these other races don't embody in a greater capacity.". (Side note: I like how GW2 handled this. The 5 races have fairly good and distinct themes. Charr are militaristic, Asura are obsessed with knowledge, Sylvari are young and still figuring out the world, Norn are shapeshifting and spiritualistic, and Humans are devoted to their gods who brought them to this world.)

I mean, in Norway we have the Pirate Party (that's their official name) and they seem like an alright bunch. It's a political party trying to champion online privacy.

As far as I've gathered Valve "accidentally" created the elf tag instead when the dwarf tag campaign happened. When someone noticed they went "oh, whoopsie, hehe" and added the dwarf tag too. So elf should also be a tag now.

In Norway I've only seen eggs sold in packs of 6, 12, 18, or 24. As far as I can remember, anyway.

"Jake likes onions". Seems like the newer ones are signed with "Thompson" as well.

Sounds similar to the system they use in WFRP 4e. Also a system that is very elegant and far better than the system used in DnD 5e. Similarly to PF2e (as far as I gather with a brief search) items are assigned a value between 1-3 and players usually have a carry value of around 6 to begin. Any item that is worn gets -1 and items in backpacks/containers do not count towards the limit (but they have weight/bulk/encumbrance points themselves).

Meanwhile my fighter has 18 strength and is encumbered by the items he got from character creation... I don't think 5e did a very good job with encumbrance. There is a reason most people ignore it.

Over here in Norway it seems like Fairytale of New York is played on the radio almost every day of December and surprisingly often otherwise.

Command has a range of 60 ft. If it was 5 ft. the approach command would be pretty useless.

Haste already says you can't use the action it grants to cast a spell. If quickened spell had a similar thing ("If you quicken a spell you can't casts another leveled spell on the same turn." or something) it definitely wouldn't be an issue.

Ah, yes, sorry. I mixed up my terminology a bit there, good catch. Every instance of "round" in my comment was supposed to be "turn". I'll edit it. But yes, sneak attack is also once per turn, and not round, which is very odd. It honestly seems like an oversight that just happily caused the balance for the rogue to catch up a bit. Rogue doesn't really have any ways to consistently trigger it, and while it seems like it might be a case of "extra attacks should get the same effects as regular attacks" (if that makes sense to you) then it is extremely odd that the Barbarian's advantage from Reckless Attack doesn't last for the round, only for your own turn. So AoOs don't have the advantage.

Honestly, as far as I've seen most spells aren't an issue. Only sorcerer quickened spell really makes it an issue, but that's mainly an issue with quickened spell rather than anything else.

I also believe Jeremy Crawford or someone has mentioned that balance wasn't the concern when the role was put in place. I'm not able to look for the source right now, but I think Treantmonk had it in a video about this rule.