• Tabaxi 5e

Dungeons And Dragons Races Dungeons And Dragons Classes Dungeons And Dragons Homebrew D D Races Dnd Stats Dragon C Dnd Classes Dnd 5e Homebrew Dnd Monsters Post with 5237 votes and 215856 views. Tagged with art, gaming, fantasy, pathfinder, dungeons and dragons; Shared by dewneot. Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) Fifth Edition (5e) Races. A comprehensive list of all official character races for Fifth Edition.

My picks are the following:

Aasimar - Paladins or Clerics, with some potential shenanigans as Moon Druids

Firbolg - Druids and Rangers

Goliath - Fighters and Barbarians

Kenku - Kind of stuck here, as their special traits limit RP potential for most classes. I'm going to go with Rogue or Ranger.

Lizardfolk - In all honesty I see them as the most versatile race, doing decent at any class. I see Fighters/Rangers as the best, though.

Tabaxi - Rogues or Rangers, no question.

Triton - Paladins or Fighters.

Bugbear/Orc - Fighter/Barbarian. Bugbear Sneakiness could make a fun Rogue.

Hobgoblin - Fighter or Wizard, Potentially Arcane Trickster Rogue.

Goblin - Ranger or Rogue. If Ranger, Beastmaster Conclave to get a pet wolf/rat.

How to make a mod for skyrim ps4 2. Kobold - Bard, to complete it's life's purpose of being a walking distraction.

Yuan-Ti - Paladin or Sorcerer.

Any other opinions?

Part 1: Animated Armor, Goblin, Harpy, Incubus/Succubus, and Lizardman.

Part 2: Bugbear, Centaur, Modron, Skeleton, and Thri-Kreen.

Part 3: Cyclops, Gargoyle, Kenku, Revenant, and Satyr.

Part 4: Azer, Flumph, Gith, Gnoll, and Ogrillon.

Part 5: Barbed Devils, Galeb Duhrs, Kuo-Toas, Myconids, and Tigerfolk

Contents:

• Introduction

• Background

• Aasimar

• Firbolg

• Goliath

• Kenku

• Lizardfolk

• Tabaxi

• Triton

• Bugbear

• Goblin

• Hobgoblin

• Kobold

• Orc

• Yuan-Ti Pureblood

• Review

• Final Thoughts

Volo’s Guide to Monsters came out and it’s the first time we’ve had such a huge official player race supplement to D&D 5th Edition! Lots of people are buzzing about the book as a whole and I picked up my own copy from a local game store. Friend of mine got the awesome velvety silver cover and I got the standard cover because I wanted my library to have a consistent design to it but I digress. The exclusive cover floods your brain with endorphins when you touch it.

Anyway there are thirteen new races in Volo’s Guide to Monsters, six of which are “monstrous”.

If you’ve got a copy of the book, feel free to follow along. If not, get a copy. The book is amazing.

Now. Because I spent so much time looking over DanDWiki races and analysing them for balance and flavour and design and whatnot, I was hoping that Volo’s Guide would provide me with good examples to draw from. That’s … not 100% the case. A lot of these races … well, if I saw them on DanDWiki, I wouldn’t so readily allow them at my table.

I use the Musicus Scale to give myself an indication of what to expect in terms of balance. A musicus score that hovers around 5-6 is the sweet spot, and lower is much preferred to higher. Keep in mind that a decent Musicus Score doesn’t necessarily mean a race is balanced, and a high or low score doesn’t necessarily mean a race is over-or-underpowered (although it’s a damn good indication).

It’s important to use your own judgement to supplement the use of the Musicus score, which is why I go into a hell of a lot more depth than just the score.

Let’s begin.

Half-angels.

• Base: 4.5

• Protector: 2

• Scourge: 2

• Fallen: 2

6.5

• The vengeance paladin’s level 20 nova ability is pretty awesome, and here’s a race that allows you to do a miniature version of that once a day, which is pretty sweet.

• The subraces are well balanced with one another. None of them are significantly more powerful than the others. This is a good case study for doing subraces: each of them have a single ability which are thematically related to one another and also highlight the subrace’s uniqueness.

• I think they did a great job of getting over the hump of the Aasimar being a 'boring' race compared to the Tieflings. I think the changes they made from the DMG go a long way towards avoiding being just 'good' tieflings.

• I like that you can't do your nova right off the bat. You'd have to be an already accomplished adventurer by that point. At level 1 these abilities solve encounters, but at level 3 they just help out a lot.

• A lot of people would say 'whoa flight! whoa!' but honestly they get it for 1 minute, it's not very fast, and it fits the angelic stuff. I think the fly speed is great and well implemented.

• I think they're too powerful. I think that's more of an issue than you'd think. People shouldn't ever pick a race because of how powerful they think they'll be. They should pick a race because they want to play that kind of character. It's strong enough that it will attract power-gamers purely on the merits of how strong it is compared to the PHB races. Volo's should have set an example for homebrewers: you don't have to give a race tonnes and tonnes of really awesome abilities for it to be attractive to new players. Instead, the very first race is just a little bit more powerful than it should be.

• I think there are too many subraces. I don't think the Scourge and Protector subraces both needed to be included in order to establish the race, and I don't really like the fact that there's a 'bad' Aasimar any more than I'd be impressed by a subrace for tieflings that suddenly makes them 'good'. Your goodness/badness should be defined by your actions, not your racial traits. But that's an argument for another time.

• The Light cantrip is a little bit encroached upon by Darkvision.

I think it's a cool race, but I think it needs to be reigned in a little. It takes too many liberties and goes a little too far.

Aasimars (and all the races in Volo's) are legal in Adventurer's League games. I'm gonna let you in on a secret: I don't give a shit about Adventurer's League.

Would I personally allow Aasimar at my table?

Honestly? No. Not as it is.

I know that sounds harsh but I feel I have an obligation not to sugar coat things or give allowances just because it's an official release. In fact, I'd say I have an obligation to be a little bit harsher because it's an official release.

First: I'd reduce the number of subraces. The Scourge subrace has the coolest Nova, in my opinion, with radiant energy exploding out of every orifice. I might keep the Protector, but the Fallen definitely needs to go. Now, I might say that you can become a Fallen if you piss off your angelic guide or perform evil acts, but by that point you'd lose control over the character, who would become an NPC villain, and you'd have to roll a new one. So yeah, Fallen is gone.

Second: Lose the necrotic resistance. I think having both radiant and necrotic is a bit much. I'd also remove Darkvision so they can actually use the Light cantrip as it's intended to be used. Aasimar shouldn't be able to see in the dark -- they block out the darkness entirely.

Done.

Next.

Fairy-themed half-giants.

6

Some might say the magic is powerful enough to bump it to a 6.5 or a 7. I don’t think so, personally. Not that the score actually matters, but it’s worth mentioning.

• Flavour is excellent.

• The picture is adorable.

• I like that we've got a +2 Wisdom race.

• The Powerful Build ability was a good compromise for Goliaths and it's a good compromise here.

• I don't think the magic is too powerful, and their whole 'thing' is how much they rely on magic.

• I like that they have an option to get out of melee range. Though necessary, Attacks of Opportunity have always been a little bit awkward, and as a result having more ways to avoid them and still keep fighting is good.

• Disguise Self helps a lot in passing off these massive fey giants in normal society. For such a strange, lumbering, awkward race, this is a welcome addition.

• I think Detect Magic every short rest is a bit too much. I know as a DM that I don't have my players encounter something that is a) magical and b) hidden often enough to justify replenishing Detect Magic every short rest. Is this a big enough gripe? Probably not, actually.

• The Speak with Beasts and Plants or whatever it's called makes the forest gnome's Speak with Small Beasts ability redundant. It's better in every way because I'm pretty sure the gnomes are one-way too. Lemme check .. it's actually pretty ambiguous for gnomes.

• I think they should speak Common and Sylvan, not Common/Elvish/Giant. This of course makes them literally unplayable.

My minor gripes are not significant enough to sour me to these adorable bastards.

Maybe some cosmetic changes like changing the languages to better suit a feywild-focused campaign, if applicable, and maybe reducing their first ability to just plants if there are forest gnomes in the party so they don't get into spats with each other.

But yeah I really like them and they'd be a lot of fun. Thumbs up. Firbolgs all the way.

Mountain-themed half-giants.

Goliaths have already been a staple of 5th Edition since the early days thanks to being part of the free Elemental Evil Player's Companion, and popularised by that “I’d like to rage” guy on Critical Role. They've been reprinted here with no changes whatsoever, but we'll go over them anyway.

5

• I don't know if it's just me but I see a lot of Goliath players. The fact that Goliaths are a little bit underpowered compared to some of the PHB races is a testament to their excellent flavour and ability to spark the imagination. This is always a good sign.

• Stone's Endurance doesn't fall into the easy trap of being way overpowered it could have been.

• Powerful Build and Mountain Born get across the intention of the race by mixing flavour with mechanics.

• Stone's Endurance gets less useful at higher levels.

• I think Mountain Born should have actually described the mechanics of 'naturally adapted' rather than referring to the DMG and dusting off its hands for a job well done.

The Goliath has consistently shown itself to be a fun race. Despite having the same ASIs as a half-orc, it feels significantly different to play.

At most I'd scale Stone's Endurance to be more relevant at higher levels. But this is a good race overall.

Flightless raven people who speak through mimicry.

5, with +/-0.5 depending on how you interpret the Mimicry trait and the associated restriction on speaking.

• The flavour and backstory of this race is unbelievably good, and quite tragic. I'd go so far as to say that with a write-up this good it almost doesn't matter what their traits are, because I'd love to have one in my campaign.

• Two side notes the designersmake are very, very important: first, the Kenku tend to stick to one party member and imitate (read: plagiarise) them. It could be annoying, but more likely it'll strengthen inter-party bonds, mostly thanks to the second important roleplaying note: it encourages players not to be an annoying little prick when playing Kenku. Players should describe their intent, not mindlessly parrot everything they hear, or else it'll be impossible to communicate and everyone will hate you.

• The traits are really simple and easy. No need to get complex. They got the intent of the race across in as few abilities as possible: Kenku are hopeless plagiarists (Expert Forgery), they're skilled criminals (Kenku Training), and they can only repeat things they've heard (Mimicry). Done! Amazing.

• You know you'll get that one fucking player that didn't read the roleplaying note and plays a Kenku like a moron.

Love it.

I'd let a player play a Kenku. I'd probably limit it to just one player though (and definitely a player that I trust) so we don't go god damn bonkers with the mimicry.

I reviewed another Kenku race in my DanDWiki reviews. It's problem was its baffling use of subraces, which this one thankfully avoids. Even not taking into account the subraces, I definitely like the Volo's version better. You can decide for yourselves which one you prefer but I think the choice is pretty damn clear.

Part 3, featuring Kenkus: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/54q4un/reviewing_dandwiki_races_part_3_monster_manual/

Remember that dude Spider-Man fought what looked like a scaly motherfucker? Yeah that's the one.

8.5, give or take. I valued some abilities like Hungry Jaws pretty highly because it not only allows two attacks starting at level 1 but you also get temp HP (which is really good) and it replenishes on short rests so you can rely on it consistently throughout the day.

The point is that it’s really powerful.

• Like the Kenku, the strength of this race is its flavour. I read the whole thing and was amused by every word in every paragraph. It's a delight to read, and I love the pragmatic personality of the race.

• The quirk chart is breathtaking. That was the only saving grace of the overpowered Shadow Sorcerer from one of the Unearthed Arcana documents and I'm glad they're making use of similar quirk charts here. Even if you don't use it, it still serves as good inspiration.

• The Cunning Artisan trait is excellently written and looks like it could be a lot of fun.

• Too many abilities.

• Sigh.

• I'm really disappointed. This lizardfolk fell into the same trap as all the amateur homebrew nonsense on DanDWiki, which is way too many god damn abilities that would be fine individually but as a whole keeping mounting and mounting and mounting and some of which -- most tragically of all -- are totally unnecessary to get across the 'feel' of the race. I'm really not a fan of races that basically over-rule your class abilities and are viable adventurers at level 0. It even directly states they get the equivalent of swords and chainmail naturally.

• And that's somehow not the worst part. The worst part is that two whole god damn pages of beautiful flavour text was written explaining the pragmatic, stoic, rational personality of the race and yet one of their abilities suggests them flying into a 'vicious feeding frenzy'. Now you could say that this is actually a coldly calculated move on the part of the Lizardman when he activates the ability, but it's written to suggest a wild aggressive rage that can only be fulfilled by blood, and it's totally the wrong idea for the race. I'm so miffed.

No, I don't like the race. I'd be happy to have Lizardmen NPCs in my games because I love the whole flavour behind them, but I'm pretty frustrated by the direction they took with the mechanics.

I reviewed a homebrew lizardman race earlier and it had pretty much the same problems: way too many abilities that mount up way too high compared to PHB races.

If a player is interested in being a scaly dude, I'd suggest Dragonborn. If they want a pragmatic race that doesn't feel emotions as strongly as humans, I'd suggest Elf. If they want to play a Lizardman and won't make any compromises, I'd impose the following changes:

1. Remove Hungry Jaws.

2. You only get 1 skill from Hunter's Lore, not two. I think that encourages them to roleplay a specialisation in their lizard clan much better. Lizardmen cull those who provide no utility, so roleplaying a lizardman with one particular skill they’re better at than others helps support that aspect of their culture.

3. Scaly Skin doesn't apply when you wear armor.

It's still pretty powerful, unfortunately, and there's little we can do about that without breaking the race in half. I think a total re-evaluation of the race would be necessary to make it viable for player characters and not just NPCs.

At my table, lizardmen would be delegated solely as NPCs.

Ah, frig, the furries. THE FURRIES.

6.5. I valued Feline Agility as +1. Some may see it as more potent. I understand that.

• One thing I didn't really get into with the lizardfolk race is that their natural weapon trait was pretty well written considering everything else. I think that applies here: Cat's Claws should be the gold standard for how to write a natural weapon trait. It put into words my own ideal version of the trait. I'm relatively certain it interacts well with the Monk's Martial Arts. Though, as a race overall, for a monk .. well we'll get into that.

• I also like the climbing speed from Cat's Claws. I think a climbing speed is a trait that is rarer than it should be. It makes things fun and opens up extra options in the battlefield without being as preposterously OP as a fly speed.

• Darkvision is totally appropriate for this race.

• Ah, frig, the furries.

• Seriously this is the furriest biznasty I ever furried. Those 'quirk' charts. Jesus. Mary Lord above god help me please.

• Feline Agility, as we've seen from all the five dozen 'lol how fast can a Tabaxi run' posts on our very own /r/dnd, opens up a whole host of even more ridiculous biznasty that'll be a pain in the ass to DM for.

• Look, you know what, if the race was underpowered I'd be fine with the whole furry thing because at least they'd have to take a power dip, but as it stands the Tabaxi is frighteningly powerful and gets a couple really, really good abilities. Feline Agility alone is good enough to be an endgame-level class feature, or hell, even an Epic Boon (abilities you get if you keep levelling past 20). Actually, fuck, isn't one of the Epic Boons a 30-foot movement speed increase? This is better than an epic boon.

• Well, look, in practice, I'm sure it's mostly fine. You use it for hit and run tactics. And like I said for the Firbolg, extra options to get away from melee range are good. I just think this is .. a really ass backwards way to do it.

• The Tabaxi as a whole synergises with monk way too well to be unintentional. A Tabaxi monk outshines pretty much any other class/race combo on the market, up to and including half-orc barbarian which, I mean, like, holy mackerel, you gotta try really god damn hard to do that.

Totally independent of the furry appeal I'd still veto this race.

You know what would work better than double movement speed every second turn? Look no further than the wood elf.

35 foot movement speed.

Look at that. Now they're fast.

Alternatively, if you want to emphasise hit and run, may I suggest something like +10 move speed when you take the Disengage action? I actually think something like that would be excellent, as the problem with Disengage is that your enemy can just walk back right up to you on its turn and hit you again anyway, and there should be some ability to avoid that. There you go. That one's on me. No need to genuflect.

Anyway if you do that, and maybe just give them a choice of the two skills rather than both, then you've got a race that's more reasonable. It's not impossible to tweak this race to suit your table.

And, I mean, I pick on furries because they're an easy target because of those weird-ass fursuits, but I don't actually have anything against furries. As weird fetishes go they're harmless and, as far as I know, a fairly accepting community. If being a Tabaxi is your thing then go ahead. The actual issue is that being a Tabaxi puts you miles above other races in terms of munchkin potential.

I strongly recommend swapping out Feline Agility for +5 ft movement or +10 ft movement on disengage.

Think the 'Noble' background but, like, a fish.

6 or 6.5 depending on how powerful you believe the spellcasting to be.

• All the abilities contribute towards 'water dwelling magic users'.

• I like the fact that they get a new spell. Wall of Water looks like a lot of fun.

• It's not bonkers crazytown like the Tabaxi.

• Mermaids are almost always one of the first homebrew races to pop up and I think this race does it pretty well.

• I haven't been praising the restraint of the Volo races in the way they don't provide sixteen hundred thousand pointless subraces. I criticised the Aasimar for its liberal application of subraces but I've this far neglected to give the other races credit for having a singular vision and sticking to it rather than splitting it up into bits for no reason.

• Emissary of the Seas doesn't overlap so much with Speak with Small Beasts like the Firbolg ability does, which is good.

• I like that there's finally an official race which has a +1/+1/+1 instead of a +2/+1. It's a good example I can bring up now.

• The designers were obviously like 'let's give them water-themed spells off the drow's darkness-themed template' and then realised 'oh shit there aren't any water spells'. So .. I guess they're also .. air .. for some reason? And even then they couldn't get enough spells so they had to create a new one and .. just .. come on, guys. I think they should have found another way to do this rather than have two non-water spells and then suddenly at level 5 you're a water master. It's weird and I dislike it.

• 'You ignore any of the drawbacks caused by a deep underwater environment' is too vague. Do you ignore the incredible pressure? Visibility? Cold damage? But they only get resistance to cold damage so is it an immunity if it's as a result of diving really deep? I guess so? And they can see as well at the depths of the ocean as they can on a sunny day on a flat plane? I guess?

• The vast majority of their abilities are useless on land.

It's a fine race. It's alright. Just a couple sticking points with the magic and the wording of one ability (which is probably a niche thing anyway).

I'd be fine with a triton character at my table.

If I were playing it, I might ask the DM to experiment with the spellcasting. Instead of cramming in air magic for no prior-explained reason, I'd be willing to take a small dip in power level and do the following ..

Control Water. A child of the sea, you can call upon the forces of elemental water. You can cast the Shape Water cantrip with this trait. Starting at 3rd level, you can cast Create or Destroy Water with it, and starting at 5th level you can also cast Chromatic Orb with it as a 2nd-level spell (which manifests as a quivering ball of freezing water that deals only cold damage). You require no material components for these spells. Once you cast a spell of 1st level or higher with this trait, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest.

There we go. It's not as powerful, but at least it's water-themed. If you want that wall of water spell, go sorcerer or wizard and it'll somehow be in the list of spells you can choose, because I am a benevolent god.

Neither bears nor bugs. Ugly hairy stealthy brutish massive goblins.

7. I gave Long Limbs +1.5 because holy shit.

• I like the +2 Str and +1 Dex. You never see that combo.

• I instinctively dislike monstrous races which means they gotta work to impress me. And I was willing to be impressed! But no. Anyway the point is that if you play a monstrous race, you shouldn't be rewarded with an absurdly overpowered character.

• Long Limbed is the stupidest god damn -- bugbears don't even have that trait! Where the fuck did this come from? 5 feet extra reach on every weapon? The hell.

• +2d6 damage on the first turn is a bit of a pain in the ass. Now every combat we're getting into the discussion of surprise rounds which .. blerg. Plus you pair that with an assassin rogue and he one-shots the strongest monster every single combat. Paired with long limbs, a bugbear rogue has a combat flowchart that makes it impossible to catch him because now he can attack, disengage (effectively, being out of melee range) and hide all in the same turn and -- god damn that's a huge pain in the ass.

• The bugbear in the MM has completely different traits. What does a bugbear get? Darkvision, extra damage on melee attacks, extra damage on surprise attacks, and proficiency in stealth and survival. No long limbs (again, what the fuck?) and no powerful build. What's up with that?

No way.

I already would instinctively disallow monstrous races. A player comes up to me and says 'let me change your mind' and shows me the bugbear, I'd first tell him to just roll a half-orc, and if he insists anyway, I'd politely ask him to leave.

I want the monstrous races to be slightly less powerful than the regular races. If players are going to be picking these races, it better be because they like the flavour and not because they are seduced by its unreasonably potent munchkinnery powers.

I've tried to work out something with the bugbear, but I gotta be honest, I can't get it to work. Its abilities do not translate well to racial traits. It's a fun monster but it's a really, really bad race.

Gobbos.

4.5, with Small size considered to be a big enough disadvantage to warrant -0.5. Some might say there are some benefits to being Small that make up for the disadvantages, in which case the score would be 5.

• Ain't nobody claiming our friend the gobbo is overpowered. It's weak. But that's alright. Better for newly introduced races to tend towards weak than strong to avoid power creep.

• It sticks fairly close to the MM goblin with one notable exception, which I'll go over in a tick.

• Dex and Con is another rare combination of ASIs which I like.

• Fury of the Small isn't a standard goblin trait, but it's also not weirdly overpowered like Long Limbs. It's a decent trait that makes up for the goblin's small size, scales with level, and offers a nice bonus rather than taking a bigger role than class abilities like the god damn bugbear or tabaxi.

• You might think constant disengaging and hiding would be another huge pain in the ass, but I actually like it when players are more mobile and more reliant on cover because it means the battlefield is more dynamic and we can play around with the environment a lot more.

• Goblins only care for themselves. It might attract a player who only cares for him or herself. That's a bad player.

• Nimble Escape could end up really annoying after all. Same stuff turn after turn after turn. Haven't played it yet or seen it in action. We'll see.

A goblin character is not only reasonably underpowered, which is good, it also ties into adventures like Lost Mines of Phandelver or Storm King's Thunder, where the players fight goblins pretty early on and may even recruit an ally that way.

I like them.

I'm always tempted to muck around with abilities and such (hmm, maybe make the bonus damage a little punchier?) but I think it's best to leave the gobbo as is.

Be sure, however, to review the expectations of the campaign with the player. Everyone oughtta be on the same party wavelength and it kinda skirts the line of selfishness in terms of personality. Best beware of that.

Hobbo gobbos.

Fascist roman legion monsters.

Apparently not related to goblins.

5

• I think it's a good mix of abilities that represents the hobgoblin's focus on infantry warfare.

• Constitution and Intelligence is, again, a really unique mix of ability scores.

• I know why they replaced Martial Advantage with Saving Face, because the former is way too powerful for a player race, but I think this ability is really fiddly. Adding a weird modifier is bad enough but it's also extremely situational. I think advantage would have been better .. despite them evidently having a reason to not use it. Otherwise why would they have introduced such a nitpickly ability?

• The int and con boost makes them excellent wizards and Eldritch Knights. Unfortunately, hobgoblins are not known to be wizards or Eldritch Knights. It's not really something associated with their race. They use their intelligence to form strategies in battle. Which gives me an idea to solve two issues at once! In any case ..

Hobgoblins aren't a bad race, they're just awkward and boring. And they don't achieve what the designers set out to do. They encourage styles of play that are totally unrelated to the lore of the hobgoblins.

Two major issues of this race: firstly, Saving Face is too fiddly and weird. Secondly, the ASIs don't encourage playing the race as it’s intended. We can solve both in one fell swoop.

Tabaxi 5e

Remove Saving Face and replace it with the following:

Military Genius. Hobgoblins are master tacticians. If you miss an attack roll with a weapon, you can choose to draw upon your knowledge of warfare, gaining a bonus to your roll equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1). Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you complete a short or long rest.

Now, if you're a martial class, you benefit from the Int bonus you get from being a hobgoblin. Done.

I love the subtitle in their lore section in the book: “Little Dragons”.

5, give or take. This one is a bit complicated so I'll go over my reasoning in more detail than I normally do, because it's worth discussing.

ASIs: +2 for the Dex bonus. Nothing for the Strength reduction. If you play a kobold, you'll build the character to account for the lack of Strength and it won't make you worse at your chosen class unless you're deliberately making things hard on yourself. Strength is kinda shit in 5e if we're being honest.

Small: -0.5.

Darkvision: +0.5

Grovel, Cower, and Beg: +1. Clutch ability with a quick recharge.

Pack Tactics: Advantage on most attacks is a +2, on par with the gnome's advantage on every saving throw versus magic. I'd be hesitant to give out more than a +2 to an ability, but this is almost certainly the strongest racial trait officially released thus far in 5e's history.

Sunlight Sensitivity: If the DMG says it doesn't affect a monster's CR, I'm not going to reduce a creature's score because of it either. +0.

The reason I outlined all of this is to demonstrate that the score is entirely up to my own judgement due to the unique nature of the race. Others may strongly object to the scores I assigned. If so, that's totally alright. That's what I want. It's a discussion worth having.

• Pack Tactics, un-nerfed, is a bold choice and I respect that.

• Hell, all their choices are bold. They just unzipped, flopped out these traits, and told us to start sucking cause all of this shit is Adventurer’s League Legal, baby!

• The kobold assists the whole team, not just themselves.

• Negative strength isn't that bad at all for the very first negative ASI we've ever had.

• The first race to have a negative ASI in 5th Edition history and it had to be the damn kobolds. What happened to the assertion that 5th edition races were limited by opportunity cost, not by detriments? Why have we been abandoned in this time of need?

• Sunlight Sensitivity was a shitty trait for the drow and it's a shitty trait for the kobolds.

• They've given the kobold the most powerful single racial trait in the game -- pack tactics -- and in return they've attempted to balance that with a tonne of detriments. This is the kind of shit you see in homebrew races all the time and it's a real bad way to design a race: indicates that you couldn't be bothered designing a balanced racial trait on its own merits.

• Grovel, Cower, and Beg rubs me the wrong way. I don't like the fact that a major ability for the race is built around pathetically begging for mercy. It's not very respectable. Not very proud. Why couldn't they have just called it 'Distraction' and let the players work out how their poor kobold pulls it off? Why are they dictating personality?

Nah.

I'm personally going to be running a campaign where every player is a kobold. I think the abilities could be fun if everyone has them. The problem is, they're way too lopsided to actually contribute to a robust, balanced party. So what do we do?

• Change Grovel, Cower and Beg to 'Distraction'.

• Put a limitation on Pack Tactics. Maybe it uses your bonus action? Maybe it has a limit on number of uses per day? Anyway. We'll figure it out eventually.

• Work out something with sunlight sensitivity. There must be another way to get this across. Maybe .. sun-bothered: disadvantage on perception checks in sunlight.

• Work out something with -2 strength. There must be another way to get this across. Maybe .. weak build: you count as one size smaller for the purposes of carrying, lifting, pushing, dragging, grappling, and shoving? I guess? Or just 'disadvantage on strength ability checks'?

Anyway the point is we gotta do something about the lopsidedness.

'Man-flesh.'

5.5

Again, I counted the negative ASI as +0.

• Again you gotta admire the balls of just shoving in Aggressive with no changes whatsoever and no attempt to balance it for player characters on even a token level.

• The traits seem fairly reasonable overall and, surprisingly, despite the specialisation, orcs aren't as much of a way-OP choice for fighters/barbarians as I thought they would be.

• Their abilities are pretty much all you need to get across the intention of the race. They're beefy dudes (ASIs, Powerful Build), they're not too smart (-2 INT), they're intimidating (Menacing), and they're really good at getting into melee range (Aggressive) and are totally incapable of getting out when things go sour, which is hilarious.

• Negative intelligence is totally a non-issue. Like the kobolds, you’ll pick a class that doesn’t need to benefit from Intelligence and it will have no serious mechanical detriment … unless, again, you’re deliberately making things hard on yourself.

• They're not as good as half-orcs. That seems weird. Does that seem weird?

• Seriously with the half-orc thing: it is really unsettling that their human half is the half that gives them Savage Attacks and Relentless Endurance.

I don't like the fact that they're chaotic evil, but an orc in the party wouldn't imbalance things.

You wouldn't need to change much to make an orc work mechanically, but the thing is, it's so much better to just go with half-orc that it baffles me why anyone would pick straight orc unless they were trying to either nerf themselves or disrupt the party with an evil character.

SNEK

8-8.5 depending on how OP you think their abilities are.

Christ.

• I love Poison Spray and Snake Friendship. Those are awesome. Suggestion could get hectic but it's a fiddly spell so it shouldn't be too difficult to walk it back if you’re the DM. Innate Spellcasting is a powerful trait, but I don't mind powerful traits by principle alone, especially considering it defines the race and offers a perfect amount of flavour.

• +2 Cha and +1 Int is an interesting combination. I don't think many classes or subclasses actually benefit from both Cha and Int but it's good to get some diversity.

• I like that all of their height and weight stuff is just 'yeah exactly like a human, just go with that, greetings fellow humans'

• Magic Resistance is so overwhelmingly OP that I don't have words to express it. Why is this a trait for a player character?

• Straight up too many abilities, and all of them individually are extremely strong and would ordinarily define a race by themselves. Who the hell thought this would be a good idea?

• The nature of the race encourages players to backstab and betray their party, and that kind of PvP is only fun if literally every single person at the table is on board with it. And you know that some dipshit's gonna show up unannounced to an Adventurer's League game with a character he's pretending isn't a Yuan-Ti, and chaos will ensue. I really dislike what they've done here.

Absolutely not.

I don't know what to do with this.

It's insanely powerful and it promotes party strife. If it were homebrew, it would be the worst kind.

The fact that it's now a valid fucking player race published in an official book blows my god damn mind.

I am speechless.

I .. expected so much better.

I'm gonna pour myself a cup of tea and then I'm gonna end this suuuuuper long reddit post once and for all.

I want to make it clear that Volo’s Guide to Monsters is thus far my favourite 5th Edition book to have ever come out. I like it better than the PHB, better than the MM, better than the DMG (though that’s not hard to do), and better than all the campaign books and other supplements like EE and SCAG. It’s the best thing to have come out so far. I love it.

But if you don’t look closely at what you love, you don’t really love it at all.

So here’s the rundown. It’s amazing that they’ve finally come out with a huge list of new player races, but I feel that they could have put a lot more time and effort into making sure that the races didn’t fall into the same traps that homebrew races constantly fall into, and I’m not sure they’ve succeeded in doing that. There’s a lot of very questionable decisions that I vehemently disagree with.

Most notably, there was no attempt to balance the monster races with the PHB races, or even with the other races in Volo’s Guide, or even with each other. I know that’s kind of what they were going for -- that the monsters are weird and broken and totally incongruous with a regular adventuring party -- but I just don’t think that’s a good thing to have gone for. I think that’s really misguided and I think the fact that it’s so misguided really shows by how lopsided all of the races are with each other. The orc is strangely weak while the Yuan-Ti Pureblood is godlike and unstoppable. It’s unsettling.

What do we do?

In the interest of a tl;dr, I’ve sorted all of the races to represent my personal preferences.

• Firbolg

• Goliath

• Kenku

• Goblin

• Aasimar

• Tabaxi

• Triton

• Hobgoblin

• Orc

• Lizardfolk

• Bugbear

• Kobold

• Yuan-Ti Pureblood

As for all of these types of posts I make, don’t take my word as gospel cause under all this pomp and circumstance I am but a man.

The important bit is not the rankings at the end. The important bit is the discussion on the individual races. Feelings and impressions change with the seasons, but we should be focusing on how to examine and evaluate races in the context of everything that’s come out so far for 5th edition. It’s an important discussion to be had.

I’ll sign off here.

Goodnight.