Human PCs: why do you (or why don't you) play them?

[BlackOnyx]

In the midst of a conversation with one of my fellow party members, we discovered something interesting; whereas I always play human characters, he always makes a point not to.


Our main reasons were as follows:


I enjoy playing the straight man, serving as a foil to my (more often than not) racially diverse party members. There's just something satisfying about playing the "normal" one in the midst of a colorful cast that I can't get enough of. Additionally, I feel that I can more closely relate to the character, as if I myself am the one experiencing these adventures firsthand.


He, on the other hand, enjoys the idea of playing as something he's not. Why roleplay a human when he already lives as one in everyday life? He enjoys trying to get into the mindset of a being entirely different from himself (physically and mentally) and acting accordingly.


That in mind, what do you think, playgrounders? How often do you play human PCs? Why or why not? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[Matrota]

Humans aren't necessarily "normal" in D&D. In a racially diverse group or otherwise, D&D has so many different types of creatures and such that humans may only seem "normal" because we as players are humans. But more often than not, humans are the odd ones out in a diverse group. After all, many campaigns require you to travel to the lands of other races, the forests of elves, the mountain keeps of dwarves, the rolling plains where nomadic orcs reign. In those places, the humans are the exotic ones, whereas the natives are the "foil" or "normal ones."

That aside, a lot of the time when I play as a human, it's for mechanical purposes. Feats are precious things, and bonus skill points hardly ever hurt. However, I also play humans because I commonly adapt characters of my own creation for play in D&D, and many character's I've made for book ideas or otherwise are human due to the setting being exclusive to humans.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

I don't really like to play a human for 2 main reasons.

1. like your friend I like to play something different from myself.

2. I like to take my PC to the extreme and some time I want to take a race for it.
For example: My Chaos Sorcerer Was a Chaos Gnome. If I will build a Pyromancer I will probably choose a Fire Elf or another Fire race.
My LG Crusader was a Warforged because being a Construct fit the idea of following a set of rules.
Most of it is in my head but that fine, I am doing it for myself.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I can go either way so I'll answer both.

Human is easy. It's not even a little difficult to get into a human mindset once you've decided on which human society you're from. Beyond that, they're more... energetic than most other races, at least lore wise. You've got to go either halfling or gnome to get something similar and those both come with other racial baggage. The extra feat and skill points don't hurt either.

Humans are boring. You know more-or-less exactly what to expect from humans. There's a wide variety of interesting peoples to try on for a campaign. Mechanically, there's a bunch of interesting options that are race-locked to this or that race.

[Eldariel]

I play Humans occasionally since they're mechanically so superior to most other options and generally enable character builds that more interesting races can't realise, but in fantasy I like exploring different worlds, different beings, and how some creatures with fundamentally different physiology and history might behave. To that end, I find the very existence of humans nothing but a drag. I've often noticed that many players seem to subconsciously favour humans and human-like morality and logic in their campaigns. I find that a bit offputting; if I wanted to explore something I'm completely immersed in, I'd play a game built around this world that has a million times more depth than is ever possible for any game world. There's no need to go through the trouble of building complex histories, mysteries, geographies, power interplays, etc. if all that already exists as common ground for all the players with zero effort. It's a simple matter to just change a few details to fit in what you want and work from there.

If I go through the trouble of actually writing my own fantasy world, I make it a point to include no humans and no human-like races. This enables exploring something other than the everyday experience we're all too familiar with. I want to detach my gaming and fantasy from the real world and to enable the players to start off a tabula rasa and let people form their mental associations off a clean board and try and explore how something with such completely different existence might be, process information, or act. And what kinds of complex interrelations that might produce, and how those beings might coexist and what kinds of cultures and realities they form. I like elves from the default Tolkienian background in this sense, even though they're physically basically carbon copies of humans. What does it truly entail to be immortal and take hundreds of years to mature, what is it like to be unable to sleep and dream, how is a psyche affected by having to carry trauma for eternity, what kinds of reflexes and behaviour models are born out of such considerations, how do they approach more fleeting life, etc. Very interesting questions where an elven character provides an excellent vessel for exploring them. Of course, beings like constructs (inevitables for instance), outsiders (incarnations of "alignment" or its trait), fey (spirits embodying aspects of nature not unlike traditional animistic folklore beings), and especially all sorts of aberrations are absolute joys in this regard and D&D is so rich that it feels wasteful to mirror it all with the "basically human world" that most campaign settings are based on. Spelljammer and Planescape are joyful exceptions to this rule and unsurprisingly my favourite settings (yes, they have their humanoid-infested places too but those don't compose majority of the settings).

[Elder_Basilisk]

I like playing humans.

1. They don't suck mechanically.

2. Setting appropriateness. I rather dislike the traveling carnival freak show that a lot of adventuring parties end up as. Most settings are human dominant but somehow there's a good drow, a half-vampire, a Goliath, and three robots in every single adventuring party? Really? If the campaign is based on exploring the underground for the dwaven monarch I'd play a dwarf too. I don't feel the need to scream, "look at how unique my half-pixie gnome barbarian who dresses only in purple, refuses to use a weapon, and only communicates by shrieking is." Yeah, I played with "Shrieker." The only person who was impressed was the player.

3. Playing humans gives you the freedom to play a character rather than play a stereotype (or a "look at me, I'm playing against type snowflake.") There is a great range of real and fictional human motivation, culture, and personality. In order to let us know what dwarves or elves are like, most of the time, players, DMs and setting writers peel off a small subset of human characteristics and say, "this is dwarvish." So if you're playing a dwarf, you can conform to that stereotype (which can be fun but is limiting) or you can play against type, but if you play against type, for the most part, you only have some words on your character sheet to differentiate the dwarven snowflake from a human. (Well that or the super annoying, "look at me. I'm a unique snowflake who isn't like other dwarves act.") Why not just cut out the pretense and scrub "dwarf" off the character sheet?

[Nifft]

Why I do: sometimes I want to be an Everyman, exploring the wonder of a fantasy setting.

Why I don't: sometimes I want to be the wonder that others experience.

[martixy]

I explicitly don't.

I've been human. However diverse humans can be, a non-human can be just as diverse, in addition to being more diverse in the race department. I also avoid rubber-forehead races.

Mostly I like the idea of exploring something that's not easily relatable like a bipedal humanoid with 4 limbs and all the other boring old bodyparts.

[Psyren]

It depends on the concept and build honestly. For some builds I will definitely be a human, because the bonus feat is that valuable - this is especially true in 3.5, where feats are scarce and a lot of the racial alternatives tend to be lackluster anyway.

[Falontani]

I will play whatever seems appropriate. If I think that playing a multiheaded reptillian half dragon troll is going to fit what I want to play as while also thematically fitting the DM's perception of the world then I will play it, however if it seems like an evil drow rogue will add to the flavor of the group and be thematic, I'll play that. It doesn't matter what race it is, as long as I believe that the character will fit, and that I'll be able to enjoy the character. This said there are times that I will have to speak out of character because my character would have no place saying something or knowing something but I feel the need to bring up regardless. I try not to meta game however.

[NomGarret]

I’ll do both, for many of the above reasons. Mechanically, it’s always a solid choice. Power gaming isn’t the sole factor in build choice, but it is a factor. I like building characters that are an archetype with a twist. Not necessarily playing against type, but riffing on it a bit. Oftentimes this plays out in either my class or race choice, rarely both. I am drawn to non-core options as often as not, so mixing one element in lets me focus on that as the unusual element rather than piling on disparate elements that alone are cool but don’t work well together.

[AnimeTheCat]

As most of the lands that I game in are human dominant, with patches of other races intermittently dispersed throughout in cloistered areas with few exceptions, the races are not so incredibly diverse as others describe. Every race has to pass the DM check and not every race passes. Some things just make no sense unless explained with an appropriate backstory.

For example: There are maybe 10,000 goliaths in one of our worlds, and back in a great war, the goliats were hunted to near extinction and are viewed with disdain by the majority of the vast human kingdoms and empires. As such, most goliath characters will either be slaves or entertainers (of the servant gladiator type) and are rarely trusted with anything more than simple or mundane tasks. Goliath wizards are nearly unheard of in general, and only 2 have been documented in the history of the world. Neither of them were ever seen outside of the known goliath lands. In fact, only a stark few goliaths use magic, a total 2% of the living population. Before the third war, there were many Goliath Clerics, but they were the first to be hunted and snuffed out, their teachings and records burned, their temples destroyed. The human empires knew that not only were clerics great in power, but also could rally their people to a holy cause giving them a vigor and fervor that they were lacking in the face of countless defeats.

That's just an example for goliaths. We have, essentially, 5 "different" world's but they are all just different eras of the same world. That example was the fourth (and longest) era, the era of men. Goliaths would be more common in the second era when they formed strong tribes and began creating their religion.

So... long story short, it depends on the era we're playing in as to what races are being played.

[RoboEmperor]

I only play humans because I need that 2nd feat and extra skill points.

Also I like the self-made man. Common human becoming ludicrously powerful through effort and willpower instead of god given gift.

[tadkins]

I play human mostly because at some level I like playing an extension of myself in a game. I also like to play casters and humans seem to me like a more "down to earth" race for caster types, as opposed to more traditional caster races like elves that tend to be arrogant and haughty.

That's not to say I don't like non-human races (dwarves and gnomes are a favorite) but human is my default go-to race.

[Necroticplague]

I usually play human because for the most part, their bonus feat and skill points ranges in worth from 'vital' to 'incredibly useful'.

[Doctor Awkward]

Mechanical:

Humans are generally the go-to race if you cannot decide which race to play for a given build. Unless you have a specific reason or need for another race-- such as ability score modifier, racial substitution level, or racial proficiency-- human is generally the way to go. It might not always be the most optimal choice, but with the free feat, skill points, and no other significant drawbacks, it is never a bad choice. It's also helpful in ignoring the Multiclass EXP penalty rule in those rare tables where that is actually enforced.


Flavorful:

A lot of the time it comes down to my own personal role-playing comfort zone, and being able to more effectively roleplay what I know. While I am always interested in the cultural norms and values of other races, I often find it difficult to relate to them and be able to think and make decisions about my character while taking those values into account. As I will never have the life experience and perspective of a 230-year-old elf, I can't really say for sure how he would react to a given situation or if he would still find the great-granddaughter of his old adventuring companion endearing when she becomes a rowdy, rebellious teenager.

[Maryring]

Feat and skillpoint.

I've yet to play at a table where race actually matters. So if races end up just being statpacks anyway, might as well pick the best statpack.

[Pex]

In 2E humans sucked. Non-humans had helpful racial abilities and could multiclass. Humans had no racial abilities and dual classing was The Suck because you were forbidden to use your original class abilities or else gain no XP for the encounter and half-XP for the adventure arc, plus you needed godly stats. The human so called racial trait of unlimited levels was meaningless because the campaign ended before it matters for non-humans or DMs ignored the level limits so the campaign can continue. Because of this I only played humans out of protest. I played 2E because that's what there was at the time and I did have fun, but this was my first of a long list of gripes against the system.

Having played humans so long I now play them out of habit. I have occasionally played a non-human, but human remains my first choice. The biggest draw to it (3E, Pathfinder, 5E) that makes me want to play it is the bonus feat. It is so good. It is great flexibility for whatever I want.

[Crake]

I'll mostly just play what fits with what I want to play. More often than not though, the idea is race independant, so I just end up going human because it works fine.

I have a problem with people who state that they never play humans though. I wouldn't call it a dealbreaker in and of itself, but it's certain a red flag for me. It's especially a problem for the setting I run, which is very human dominant, and most humans are quite xenophobic, so anything that cant reasonably pass as human(-ish, this includes most "normal" dwarves, gnomes, halflings and to a degree, elves) is going to have a lot of trouble in towns, with the more monstrous and exotic creatures either being kill or capture for sale on sight respectively.

My main issue with those kinds of people is the justification they use, typically something like "I'm already a human, why would I want to play one" or "Humans are boring" or even once I heard "Humans are the source of all evil on the planet, why would I want to play one". Well, it just so happens that all the most interesting people in the world are humans, and humans are also the number one source of good in the world. The first justification is just alienating to me, and seems like a poor reason to refuse to play something. I can understand wanting to play something else, but refusing to play humans... yeah, nah.

[Kobold Esq]

I play a lot of humans. The bonus feat and +1 skill point per level are a huge boon to flexibility and building the character that you want to build, instead of being locked into a specific set of racial abilities.

I don't need a racial stereotype to create an interesting character. My human may be a mine-loving prospector or a haughty wizard. I don't NEED my character to be a dwarf or elf as a roleplaying crutch.

[Endarire]

1: Stats.

2: GM and campaign allowances/expectations/advice.

[Zanos]

I've always found the mindset that humans are boring bizzare. Every historical figure, great or terrible, that ever lived, was human. The massive diversity of the human species and you can't find anything interesting?

I trend towards human and humanoid races for sure. I always find that if you leap towards the "exotic" races then you run the risk of your character being defined by what they are rather than by who they are and what they do. When you play a human you don't have a racial crutch to fall back in as a replacement for writing a personality.

[martixy]

I'll mostly just play what fits with what I want to play. More often than not though, the idea is race independant, so I just end up going human because it works fine.

I have a problem with people who state that they never play humans though. I wouldn't call it a dealbreaker in and of itself, but it's certain a red flag for me. It's especially a problem for the setting I run, which is very human dominant, and most humans are quite xenophobic, so anything that cant reasonably pass as human(-ish, this includes most "normal" dwarves, gnomes, halflings and to a degree, elves) is going to have a lot of trouble in towns, with the more monstrous and exotic creatures either being kill or capture for sale on sight respectively.

My main issue with those kinds of people is the justification they use, typically something like "I'm already a human, why would I want to play one" or "Humans are boring" or even once I heard "Humans are the source of all evil on the planet, why would I want to play one". Well, it just so happens that all the most interesting people in the world are humans, and humans are also the number one source of good in the world. The first justification is just alienating to me, and seems like a poor reason to refuse to play something. I can understand wanting to play something else, but refusing to play humans... yeah, nah.

Oh, and another reason why I refuse to play humans is my ongoing crusade to expose/disrupt human-dominated realms, which I have grown dead-tired of. 99 out of 100 settings I see are human dominated xenophobic culture. It gets stale real fast.
Either I don't wanna play in such a world or the DM doesn't want me to play in such a world. Best to discover that as early as possible.

[Telonius]

I tend to play a lot of demihumans and halfbreeds. Half-elves, Changelings, Sharakim, Azurin, (currently) Draconic template Human. I like the idea of straddling multiple cultures, or being odd within a culture; so that sort of thing fits in well with what I want to do.

[Eldariel]

I've always found the mindset that humans are boring bizzare. Every historical figure, great or terrible, that ever lived, was human. The massive diversity of the human species and you can't find anything interesting?

This argument is absurd. Yes, humans are the only race that has historically existed and thus all our real examples of living tool & language-using singing and building intelligent creatures are human but that same variety should exist within each fictional race. The whole point of fantasy is that you're not limited to history or reality. You can do reality just fine within all the other genres (historical fiction in all its countless forms), why do it within the single genre that's looking to do something different? Fantasy is exploration of what exists beyond this reality. And writing non-human races as simple stereotypia (or worse, "stocky human with a beard and a taste for alcohol" or "long-eared lithe humans with racial superiority complex") is just poor writing/playing, not an inherent trait of playing non-human races. I don't think it's a valid argument against said choices that some people do so poorly. Well, unless you're going for a campy Wheel of Time-style game, which is of course its own genre and can be quite rewarding and a lot of fun. But something a bit more light-hearted and less rules heavy like FATE would certainly suit such a game better; in a D&D forum I'd expect a rather heavy tone as defined by the system.

[Crake]

Oh, and another reason why I refuse to play humans is my ongoing crusade to expose/disrupt human-dominated realms, which I have grown dead-tired of. 99 out of 100 settings I see are human dominated xenophobic culture. It gets stale real fast.
Either I don't wanna play in such a world or the DM doesn't want me to play in such a world. Best to discover that as early as possible.

Literally any humanoid shaped race (2 arms, 2 legs and a head) can find a way to hide in my world by simply taking a single level of shaper psion and picking up the minor shape change ACF. I never said you couldn't play non-human races, I said you need a reasonable way to fit in.

Hell, even things like tieflings can blend in, wear a hat/bandana over your horns, wrap your tail around your waist or wear baggy clothes. I even had a half fiend strap their wings to their back to help hide them. It's a hurdle to overcome, not a wall of force blocking your passage.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'm a big fan of the azurin, silverbrow human, kalashtar, illumian etc., especially for practical play (for theorycrafting, also, just a bit less). "Humans with a twist" form a versatile group of races, avoid too much of a "special snowflake syndrome" (compared to the thri-kreen and dragonborn warforged of this world), and the first two retain that all-important mechanical advantage: the bonus feat. In low-level builds, there are few things more useful than a single extra feat.

[martixy]

Literally any humanoid shaped race (2 arms, 2 legs and a head) can find a way to hide in my world by simply taking a single level of shaper psion and picking up the minor shape change ACF. I never said you couldn't play non-human races, I said you need a reasonable way to fit in.

Hell, even things like tieflings can blend in, wear a hat/bandana over your horns, wrap your tail around your waist or wear baggy clothes. I even had a half fiend strap their wings to their back to help hide them. It's a hurdle to overcome, not a wall of force blocking your passage.

In my previous post I specifically called out exactly what you describe. And if tieflings are "even things" I shudder to think what hoops I'd have to jump through to play something like a Lhosk or a Tsochar.

See, this is why I have such strong opinions on the subject. I'm not interested in "fitting in". The xenophobic angle's been done to death. Along with occasional misguided appeasement by DMs. It's taxing as a player. I really wanna move on.

[Elder_Basilisk]

This argument is absurd. Yes, humans are the only race that has historically existed and thus all our real examples of living tool & language-using singing and building intelligent creatures are human but that same variety should exist within each fictional race. (snip)

And writing non-human races as simple stereotypia (or worse, "stocky human with a beard and a taste for alcohol" or "long-eared lithe humans with racial superiority complex") is just poor writing/playing, not an inherent trait of playing non-human races.

Arguably, but there's a pretty good case for Neanderthals being a separate race that coexisted with the more common ancestors of modern humans.

More to the point there are a lot of good reasons that human-like variety should not exist in all or even most fictional races.

1. Variation in individuality and free will. Hive minds and insect-like races are a staple of science fiction and fantasy. By definition, such races have to have less variety than humans. Formians, Modrons and their progenitors in Abraham Merritt's Metal Monster are examples of this. Early wierd fiction also had a variety of degenerate races who suffered from a racial madness or degeneracy that left them with the appearance of less free will than most humans. The pseudo vampiric descendents of Atlantis and the inhabitants of the city in Red Nails are two examples of this from Conan. More modern fiction tends to use undead for this kind of thing (the treatment of vampires in Buffy is a good example of limited free will) though the treatment of drow in D&D canon comes close.

2. Genre necessities. A staple adventure concept begins "the PCs find an isolated village of XYZs that people from the rest of the world have not encountered before in remote valley." (The Goliath write-up practically copy/pastes this). If the race is only a small number of people in a remote mountain valley, of course they won't exhibit the entire range of human diversity. Even isolated human cultures in remote mountain valleys don't do that.

Another example of this is the Githyanki. In D&D lore they are ruled by a lich queen who keeps close tabs on them and kills anybwho could threaten her power. Their story demands that they are a relatively small, tightly controlled group. That is incompatible with displaying the full range of human diversity.

3. Narrative necessity. You can adopt an anti-essentialist philosophy in real life, but it doesn't work for communicating a D&D world. It is nearly impossible to write or think of demi-humans and humanoids without using racial stereotypes. Take dwarves and gnomes for example. They are short and long-lived compared to humans. But if you don't want to refer to stats and say they're both basically long-lived humans with a con bonus, you need to reduce their diversity from human levels. You need to be able to say, these XYZ traits are dwarvish and those QRS traits are gnomish.

This is not only necessary in order to distinguish between dwarves and gnomes other than the numbers on the character sheet. It is also necessary in order for a DM to be able to present them to the players and have the dwarves or gnomes or whatever feel distinct from the other groups they encounter. In a travelogue people have to go from Germany to Italy to Greece to Turkey to Tibet and Taiwan and they all feel different because they are inhabited by people with distinct characteristics who live life differently. If the fantasy travelogue takes people from cosmopolitan Greyhawk where most people have round ears to cosmopolitan pomarj where people have tusks, to cosmopolitan celene where people have pointy ears to cosmopolitan Ulek where people have beards but each of those areas displays the same variety of people and characteristics, the players will justifiably feel gipped. By all having the same variety, they all become the same.

[Lord Raziere]

In my previous post I specifically called out exactly what you describe. And if tieflings are "even things" I shudder to think what hoops I'd have to jump through to play something like a Lhosk or a Tsochar.

See, this is why I have such strong opinions on the subject. I'm not interested in "fitting in". The xenophobic angle's been done to death. Along with occasional misguided appeasement by DMs. It's taxing as a player. I really wanna move on.

Agreed with this 100%. I don't play nonhumans to HIDE it. If I wanted to be a hidden outcast who is secretly supernaturally super-special awesome and would get utterly destroyed if anyone ever found out, I'd just play World of Darkness.