but a dozen humans? you could have a linguist, a more skilled specialist, a healer, a weapons master, another with ritual magic, one with extra spells. if you have a dozen elves, then you already know what they can do. which makes humans as a species better off in the long run, because they have a wider variety of specialists. or else humans are versatile while the demihumans are all focused in their own specific direction. whats better depends on how good your stats are in general, and how important that feat is (which may give an extra +1 to one stat).ĭemi-humans all have one stat better than a human would, and a few extra bonuses, but at the cost of 4 other stats. as a stat increase is the same as a feat, this means the variant human is actually at a technical disadvantage in absolute terms, with 1 and 1/3rd feats. really though, a standard human has the equivalent of two extra stat increases, but lacks the other bonuses that nonhuman races get. I am pondering a houserule that Persuade rolls vs members of other races get disadvantage, to emphasize that even the civilised races are relatively insular and xenophobic, in combination a human racial trait that exempts from this rule.

There are enough races with a Charisma bonus already, so I'd like not to go there. Humans are also supposed to be relatively accepting of other races and good at empire building, but that doesn't seem like something that translates well to a mechanical trait. This will make them advance a little faster than their peers, especially at higher levels, which I expect will appeal to a lot of players (but hopefully not to the point of all of them opting for a human). To reflect that, I'm pondering giving humans a 10% experience bonus. Humans above all are supposed to be ambitious. 0% flavor there, plus this implies that the other races are relatively unskilled and unaccomplished. Humans just get an extra feat and skill as a sop for the perks that other races get and that's it. I don't like the suggested alternate traits either, as there's nothing racial about it.

I considered making the stat increases a think that only human PCs get, but that officially turns humans into The Race That Sucks (Unless You're A PC). Apart from being generic, this shifts the baseline in odd ways: A race with a +1 in (say) Wisdom is not especially wise, it's human-average. Mainly, I don't like that while the actual race description does contain some flavor this time around, this gets ignored completely in favor of completely bland, flat stat increases. I have a few ideas for a different approach to humans, but as this edition is still very new to me, I'd like to have a bit of feedback before I inflict something potentially problematic on my players. I have a problem with both the 5e default human racial traits.

D&d 5e human races