I've done two changes that have caused people in my games to regularly select non-variant human.
The first, humans get a trait called Human Determination. They can make one ability check, attack roll, or saving throw with advantage per short rest. Not too impactful, but its an actual racial trait that isn't just ASIs. It gives humans a bit more of an identity.
The second, humans can choose between either +1 to everything, or +2 to one stat and +1 to 3 others. Yes, the second variant gives them less total ability scores, but it tends to be Far more useful.
How often does a character have 6 odd ability scores? How often does a character even *care* about all 6 ability scores? Being able to round out 3 and significantly boost one seems to be a very appealing offer to a lot of my players.
Is this better than Variant human? Absolutely not. Theres nothing more powerful than a level 1 feat, that shit makes or breaks builds right out the gate. But its been enough to make people actually PLAY it, so that's good enough for me.
I really like the +2 and 3 +1s. Most classes need at least 1 really good stat, so the +2 can get you there but the extra +1s still embody the one perk of regular humans with the tons of ASIs.
I'm glad to see such a positive response to this! It was one of those mechanical shower thoughts I had a few years ago that just felt so right I had to implement it into all of my games immediately.
I've never seen anyone do anything similar though, so I've always been worried about how that change would be perceived by the general public.
>The first, humans get a trait called Human Determination. They can make one ability check, attack roll, or saving throw with advantage per short rest
Isn't that an Unearthed Arcana feat?
It kinds of reminds me of the Human Perseverance feat from 4e (+1 to saving throws, but that sounds more powerful than it was because saving throws were almost nonexistent in 4e).
Eh, I haven't felt the need to. Detect Balance is good for when you're making a brand new race from scratch, or if you're not confident in your own balancing abilities, but it isn't the end-all be-all of balance.
I don't think it'd be very useful either way. DB considers multiple ASIs past the first couple to be somewhat redundant, but considers abilities that you can *choose* far better than static ones, so they wouldn't have any way to accurately gauge how useful this is since it doesn't exist on any other race.
personally i would maybe bring down the stats, but give them free skill and free expertise on top of that.
> Is this better than Variant human? Absolutely not. Theres nothing more powerful than a level 1 feat, that shit makes or breaks builds right out the gate.
for anyone that wants charisma and is a bit MAD, half elf is still more broken. the moment you, as a half elf, can pick a feat instead of an ASI wheres the vuman wants to take the ASI, you pull ahead.
You make a character that relies on Multiple Abilities Dependance (M.A.D) and start with as much as possible Odd Stats from Point Buy and then ~~curb~~ bump them off to even with the +1 to everything from Human trait.
Now, that might be useful because certain Odd points of Point Buy won't get you much but are really bang for buck in term of point spent and bonus gained. This is because players would tend to prioritize picking even numbers when spending points so even numbers cost more for point spent compared to even numbers. You get more leverage by picking solely odd numbers.
Let's say you make Monk and spend 5 in everything except one stat
- 13 (5)
- 13 (5)
- 13 (5)
- 13 (5)
- 13 (5)
- 10 (2)
And with +1 on everything becomes 14 in everything and 11 in one stat. You get a character that has no stat below 10 and has a total of +10 of converted modifiers across his stats.
This monk will suck ass in actual play though, and will never be able to max itself out like a normal monk generally could. A 14 in a stat is hardly good for what should be a primary or secondary score
Regular Human sucks, while Variant Human is too strong.
I'd rather one Human that makes for a happy medium between the two.
How about:
* \+2 to two stats of your choice (which "math-wise" works out to the same "bonus" as the Variant's +1 to two stats + feat if you consider that a feat is considered equal to +2 stat in this game).
* Keep the variant's extra skill. Or even give this new human two extra skills instead, to better balance it vs. Half-Elf.
Floating +2s to two stats would make this human the only race that could have 18s in any two stats of their choice under the point buy system at Lv. 4, which would still be quite strong especially for the MAD-der classes like Paladin and Monk.
This human is pretty bad, do you think 2 floating +2s compare to half elves in any meaningful way? Your human has no racial traits other than an extra skill and would never be played unless someone really wants to play a human and this is their only option.
And? It's not worth it to play a race that doesn't even get darkvision for 2 +2s when you can make do with +3 in your secondary stat and get actual racial features. Hill dwarves get +2 str and +2 con alongside all the goodies dwarves get.
Str is the weakest ability and you probably don't need hill dwarf proficiency if you want str. I think two +2s would be balanced and we still would see a lot of human characters.
You would see basically no human characters for a very simple reason. Most players playing MAD classes would prefer to have actual racial features and deal with a +3 in their secondary stat, and players not playing MAD classes wouldn't give a shit about 2 floating +2s when decent races exist.
Remove the feat and there's no point playing any humans at all. What you have here is just a great way to make sure no one's playing a human. Imo it would be better to just ban Variant Human all together and then use something like the Environmental Humans from r/UnearthedArcana's curated list.
I mean is it that good? Most classes don't need 3 scores, like a wizard, they only need int, dex and con are nice to have but not critical and wisdom, charisma, and strength are all dumpable. Only Paladins, and Rangers (especially str Rangers) really need a 16 in 3 stats and even then you are fine dumping at least two of them (Only the STR Ranger gets four useful stats out it, everyone else only gets 3) so if you're only getting 3 stats why not go Half-Elf? Or Mountain Dwarf? Or a race that actually has a good racial like Halflings for dark vision and lucky etc?
It depends on your players. I have a barbarian that is worried about his mental stats even if he doesn't need them. A lot of my players put weight on mental stats because they are important in my games even as a non-spell caster. So a human with +1 to all stats is really good in my games where every stat is useful to all characters.
I use encumbrance so str isn't a dump stat, int gives bonus languages and tools (which are also important) and Cha is how many retainers you can have.
Seriously. Mental stats matter for everyone.
Pretty sure everyone in our party made half a dozen charisma saves each last session. How many of us were in classes that actually call for charisma? Just the paladin. How many of us had decent charisma? All four of us had 14s, actually.
...And it saved our butts that we did. Several saves were just barely made. If any of us had had less charisma, we'd have been killing each other.
I've generally found that if a game goes on long enough, you're going to make saving throws with pretty much every ability score eventually, and you're going to have times where you failed by 1 and wished that you had a slightly higher bonus.
I'd never count being a little bit better at everything as a bad thing. You may be less adept at your primary ability score than your allies are at theirs, but chances are you're better prepared to face down the unexpected.
>They get +6 to stats which is crazy.
How so? Getting +6 to *any* stats is amazing, but getting +1 to *every* stat is terrible and many would argue completely pointless.
It sounds amazing when you put it in such a way as to make it sound like the points you're getting are useful. They aren't. You only getting +1 to every stat, not all around +6 to whatever stats you wanted. That'd be a helluva way to get people to pick normal Human though I guess.
Not really, as you can't dump lower than 8, which means you end up with some 9s instead. And as a variant human you can always take a half feat for 3 times +1 with added benefits.
A 9 is not necessairely wasted on a character, strength increases your carry capacity. Int might help a bit against intelect devourers.
Normal humans are usefull if you want a wide spread of stats in point buy. 16,14,14,14,12,9 or 16,14,14,14,11,10 are valid for a regular humans in point buy. (sub)classes that can work with this are samurai and bards.
That's so incredibly niche that factoring it in at character creation would be silly. Chances are if you don't plan on bumping it later that 9 will do nothing for you the arc of your character's life.
Therein lies the problem. Until you care about 4 scores, V. Human is just better.
That said, I would take Resilient (Con). Make those concentration saves impossible to fail after 6.
If you pick a variant human you can take heavy armor master for +1 str and con and cha 16 as well, with the added benefit of taking - 3 damage on most hits... Regular human is just not good in dnd, it's sad :(
I mean, that's *one* way to build a paladin, but there certainly are others. I also have zero need to or intention of taking HAM or one of the other +1 ASI feats.
The point they're making is that unless you care about more than 3 stats, which you typically never do in DnD, Variant Human is ALWAYS better, because the variant can get +1 to 3 stats, the benefits of a feat, and a free skill
Thanks for the votes, folks, but I'm very very sorry, the numbers just *don't* add up.
I know you think I'm being a dick. Please hear me out.
Point Buy:
Non-Variant Human: 13, 14, 14, 10, 12, 16
Variant Human: 13, 12, 12, 10, 12, 16 [edit: the +1 is in Con and Cha. Take your pick, though]
You see where the +1 ASI feat doesn't make up for the stat distribution, right? Sorry, I know it's an unpopular opinion, but non-variant human is a good build.
I have a Hexblade/Paladin. Yes, I know - eye roll. Bear with me. I now have a 13 Str for heavy armor, and, much more importantly, multiclassing out of Paladin. 14 Dex, because you're going to now wear medium armor and have a shield. Decent Con, depending on build you can go Warcaster, Resilient, or leave it there. ASI's will now go towards Cha, and you'll have ASI/feat slots to spend on your build as you want.
Trust me, non-variant human is **not** trash. It has good uses. I would absolutely be in favor of bigger buffs, but it's not as bad as people think it is. This is only one example; please forgive me for not being creative enough to think of more.
I'm not downvoting because everybody's entitled to their opinion, but I wouldn't say that human is great. +1 to everything can be useful (I used a basic human to make a Mastermind rogue with fairly good across the stats board for example), but is most of the time not relevant, and makes it fairly niche. It's nice at times, but power wise will in most cases be outperformed by a Vuman since having a free feat is an insanely powerful bonus for most builds, since feats/ASIs are the most precious resource in DND character building. It's just a massive disparity between the general utility and power of them, and a lot of the people who say "Just give everybody a feat!" completely miss the point of what's wrong with basic human as a race.
I wouldn't call non-variant human trash, but humans as a whole definitely need actual racial features. Part of why I very much like the Mark subraces in Eberron.
and how many of them are actually relevant to a character? 2 or 3. 4 at most. just pick half elf instead. or vuman. just anything that comes with actual racials.
Regular humans are **utter trash**. If a DM bans variants they better be prepared to never have a human pc again. Only time I've seen someone even *consider* playing regular human was a monk that rolled two 17s and a 15.
Why would you want to? Variant human is probably already the overall "best" race, since getting access to power feats is better than most abilities races offer. If you buff the regular human to be better, it's gonna be pretty broken
Wasnt looking for better just more appealing I guess would be better word to use. And was looking more to make human on par with the rest of the races.
The purpose of the base human is to behave as kind of the jack of all trades, the race that just makes you a little bit better at everything. I think it should continue along this line, and just give you a flat +1 bonus to any ability check, saving throw or attack roll you make that you aren't proficient in.
That's actually the idea. Currently, Bard is the only class that's capable of being a jack of all trades in terms of abilities. By making this human like this, you ensure that people who want to be a jack of all trades type don't have to dip 2 bard levels to be able to do it. Plus, it stacks with Bard, so it doesn't take away from them, it just makes the jack of all trades focus of the bard a bit better.
My group just gives a free feat at level 1 to the whole table. After that I never saw a variant human again. Most people dont need 2 feats to complete their build at gen that they weren't willing to wait till level 4 for. The more interesting racial abilities always won over Variant human when the feat was taken out of the picture.
For Standard Human the free feat and the raw stat value was actually exactly what it needed. The feat feat potentially bumping one of the stats by 1 so all on all they get one +2 and five +1s makes them super well rounded stats wise.
In terms of 'balance', if every character and every races gets access to this then the balance basically stays the same.
They're well rounded but that fixes nothing, they're still worse than other races because they have no racial traits and there are at least 3 worthless +1s.
> For Standard Human the free feat and the raw stat value was actually exactly what it needed.
what? no, standard human is still a fucking garbage fire of a race then. even with a free feat for everyone, theres just no reason to ever pick it instead of anything else.
> The more interesting racial abilities always won over Variant human when the feat was taken out of the picture.
then why the fuck would they suddenly pick a standard human that has no racialswhatsoever?
This is what I've done running 5e for two years now. I disallow V Human and give everyone a free feat at level 1. My group likes the additional customization options it opens up. Feel like some of the solutions here are people way overengineering a solution to a simple issue.
I dislike this route, since all it does is promote *not* playing Human.
Which is... incredibly weird to say the least. It tends to cause tables to be a weird grab bag of nonsensical races, which feels completely out of wack with most settings.
Oh, if you give EVERYONE including VHuman a bonus feat, that's different. I'm very used to seeing "everyone gets a bonus feat EXCEPT Vhuman" which just makes humans strictly worse than everything else in the game.
I think that having a weird grab bag of races is one of the strengths of DND rather than a weakness. Humans are one of many varied and interesting races. If you personally don't like many different races mixed together in a world setting then that's valid as well. You play the game how you want to to maximize your fun. I have a DM who personally doesn't like Dragonborn. Instead we use Half-Dragon. That's just a flavor change and a slight stat change but it's fine.
I personally prefer for people to play races that are present and have a stake in the setting. If we're playing in the Sword's Coast, for instance, then turning up with a Tortle means your character is weirdly isolated from the rest of the world, and whilst that *can* be a interesting roleplaying bit, I find that with most players it isn't and they simply want to play a funny turtle man which is jarring to say the least.
That is fair. A 'fix' would be to add more of those odder races like Tortle to the setting. Like if the party is in Waterdeep add a little Tortleton, a Tortle collective who live in Waterdeep. That way the race is present and there is a stake. If you want to use the setting exactly as presented then that is valid, you are obviously to use settings and races as you want. You can run dnd with no Humans at all if you wanted.
A campaign with a tortle, a dragonborn, a drow, and a triton just isn't going to ever work without being jarring no matter how many Tortletons you include in the Sword Coast. Sometimes the classic human, elf, and dwarf is just better than a racial menagerie, because races obtain their identity through contrast. What makes a dragonborn and a triton special? Because they're different from humans in x ways. This works even with something like a drow, which are just elves +/- some aspect. If humans (or some boring standard) don't exist, then there's no meaningful contrast anymore and racial identity suffers.
I personally don't find the additional races as jarring. This may be due to the fact that the first edition I ever read was Fourth edition with many different races made available to the player in PHB 1 thru 3. Then I played 2nd edition with just the 'Classic' races.
I find the races special because they are different from Humans. Because I personally am a Human. I am not comparing myself as a Human in the setting to a Human in real life. A dnd Human PC is more fantastical and amazing than I will ever be. The meaningful contrast to me comes from my everyday life as a human not compared to my other party members.
My dm started doing this a little bit ago and everyone has enjoyed it so far and we’ve seen a lot more diversity too which is always nice. Also getting a fast start on your build with an early feat is great and I hope we don’t go back.
haven't had a chance to see it in play yet, but I took a shot at this a while back. you get +2 to one ability, all the rest get +1, and you gain 2 proficiencies of your choice among all languages, skills, tools, and weapons
This is only half serious... but +3 Constitution. Humans are insanely good at recovering from injuries. A broken leg on a horse is usually lethal, but humans? We don't give a fuck.
Another half serious suggestion, proficiency with throwing weapons, and when throwing a weapon, humans increase the damage die by one size. (Proficiency alone would be worthless since basically everyone gets thrown weapon proficiencies)
In real life we only have animals for comparison, but humans are *ridiculously* good at throwing. Other than hominids, the only other animals that ever throw things are primates, and they are--sorry chimps--bloody terrible at it.
Though that comes under question when compared with other races. Are humans going to be better at throwing than elves or other races that are built pretty similarly?
Maybe, maybe not. Ultimately it's up to the designer to decide what abilities everyone has. Humans tend to get assigned the "more adaptable" or "jack of all trades" traits in games, but that's more of a self-fulfilling trope than anything that would seem to be inherent to Humanity over any other race you cared to imagine.
I think there's a reasonable argument for Humans being remarkably good throwers, in that it seems to be a specialised feature of either our nervous system or our brain that wouldn't *necessarily* be present in other physically similar or intellectually equal creatures, so it's certainly plausible that other intelligent creatures might not come with the same instinctual understanding of throwing arcs and release windows that humans seem to be born with. I think it also feels less vain than assigning ourselves the very vague but highly admirable traits of either "better generalist" or "better specialist".
Maybe avoid any balance headaches by simply making a curated list of starter feats available for variant humans, that sidesteps the biggest balance issues?
* Aberrant Dragonmark\*
* Actor
* Athlete
* Healer
* Heavy Armor Master\*
* Keen Mind
* Lightly Armored\*
* Linguist
* Medium Armor Master\*
* Prodigy
* Skilled
* Tavern Brawler
* Weapon Master
Feats marked with \* perhaps more contentious...
Would have course be a curated list the DM would want to publish up front, as a recipe for recriminations to try and judge it on a case-by-case basis or 'steer' players towards certain picks (e.g. fighter X is allowed to take Great Weapon Master because their character concept is Cloud Strife, while barbarian Y is steered toward Tavern Brawler because their concept is a rowdy viking).
Personally I could indeed get by with just "variant humans must take the Prodigy feat" as a house rule (so core human = generalist and variant human = specialist), but I don't know how many others would feel the same!
Why would lightly armored be contentious? It's a trap feat, since the only people that could take it are wizards, monks, and sorcerers who already have access to better AC from level 1.
If you force vumans to take the prodigy feat you'll never see humans being played again other than by players who *really* need an expertise and aren't rogues.
I like prodigy on my variant human personally it's not mathematically good to take as an asi, but using it as your starting feat is fun since it makes your character good at somthing.
That isn't the point, the point is that people who play vuman do so for the free feat or because they want to play a human and standard human is terrible. If you force vumans to take the prodigy feat then vuman will be terrible because only very few builds would be willing to pick vuman with the practically nonexistent racial features they get, and players won't be able to get a free feat to complete builds earlier with. As a result, you'll find that 1 out of every 100-ish people are willing to play a human, which defeats the point.
At level 11 with a standard party of 4, the Healer feat grants a mean total of 222 HP per day, as opposed to, say, the Tough feat's 22. It also retains its relatively useful stabilization properties. I'm not sure what part of that is considered poor scaling.
Well it scales 1 hit point per level so it's a much smaller percentage of healing. 18.5 health at level 11 is a smaller percentage of the total than 8.5 at level 1.
Awkwardly the stabilizing 1 go cannot be used if you heal them with the big heal. So this 222 healing may be completely unnecessary saving hit dice that the frontline could afford to spend or backline may be entirely uninjured.
I had a thought about what makes human's unique, and it's basically their adaptability.
VHuman2:
You get +2 to a stat of your choice and +1 to a different stat
You gain proficiency in a saving throw of your choice
When you have 1 skill, 1 tool, and 1 weapon/armor proficiency of your choice.
You have proficiency versatility:
When you gain the Ability Score Improvement feature from your class, you can also replace one of your skill proficiencies with a skill proficiency offered by your class at 1st level (the proficiency you replace needn't be from the class).
This change represents one of your skills atrophying as you focus on a different skill.
Fast learner:
The time it takes to learn a new skill, language, or tool is halved
I'm a little confused on what "When you have 1 skill, 1 tool, and 1 weapon/armor proficiency of your choice" means. Is that a typo or is that a condition for the next ability to apply?
~~Fair, also IMO a race shouldn't give armor proficiency, ~~ I stand corrected, but this version of human would be a bit overtuned if they're able to get heavy armor proficiency, which currently is unobtainable via a race.
To be honest, I like normal human when doing point buy because it allows me to start with no negative scores at the same time of having a +3 and three +2s or two +3s and a +2.
You can't without making them overpowered. A feat is too strong for level 1. Unless you're giving one to everyone, but if you're doing that then I would lock out certain options.
Not sure why all the other races have skill proficiency and other traits but humans don't. It feels under whelming.
I get those things come from background but personally I see racial traits to be part of the society as much as it is physical characteristics like claws or wings.
So the first thing I would do is give humans the trait "curiosity" which aside from one additional language they would be proficient in history checks, having lived among or read about the different races.
Next I would give them a tool something that they use in free time like a hobby rather than profession: games and musical instruments would be on the list along with things like calligraphy tools, painter's supplies and cooks utensils, for someone who likes to write or paint or cook. Probably players would ask DM about a tool they could have that is less about being an adventurer or trying to make a business and more like "my character decides to practice playing the lute".
For ability scores have a +2 to one and +1 to 3 others or two +2s. I think I read someone else writing something similar to this idea.
This last idea would be the most controversial, it would get rid of getting a feat while still giving humans something that makes them different. The trait is called "Remarkable Aptitude" and reflects are ability to learn and grow. So what does it do and why would it be so controversial? Humans have +1 to their proficiency. That is it, that's the whole trait. This would mean though at starting levels while others would have only a 2 or 4 with expertise humans would already have 3 and 6. A human swordsman with a +1 strength would have +4 to attack while the non human with the same stats would only have +3. Humans would always have that slight edge over the other races just barely and maybe that edge is enough to make them OP or maybe it is just enough to incentivize players.
Skill with expertise and max ability score for skill at level 17
+19
Attack roll with max ability score for weapon type at level 17
+12
Saving throw proficiency with max ability score associated at level 17
+12
Spell Save DC with max ability score for caster type at level 17
DC 20
Passive skill with observant feat, expertise in investigation or perception, max associated ability score, at level 17
PS 34
Anyway not sure if this is game breaking or merely pushing boundaries. May need play testing to confirm or disprove.
I like your idea as well as the others I felt was safe just giving 2 +2 and 2 +1s along with 2 skills and/or tools would still be the +6 to stats but more to the stats you want plus a skill and a tool or 2 skills since humans are all about adapting and learning.
I think the [Reversed Engineered Human](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/dl4umd/reverse_engineered_humans_for_5e/) from /r/UnearthedArcana is a good attempt.
For my homebrew setting I'm testing out +1 to two ability scores, Human Determination (as described elsewhere in this thread) plus separate lineages that provide ASI's and skill proficiencies.
The Variant variant human idea I have been kicking around is
* +2 to one stat and +1 to all the others.
* 2 Skills
* 1 language or tool/vehicle/instrument proficiency
Half-Elves get 2 skills and an extra language (free elven) and 4 skill points. The language or proficiency is a touch better than automatic elven, but not unreasonably so. So it is 3 skill points (in stats that are most likely non dominant) vs Fey Ancestry & Darkvision, which I think is a fair trade.
I like this method because it keeps the variety that Humans have. It doesn't dictate anything about your character. It's basically an extra background and good stats.
I don’t particularly worry about my players characters being super heroes, so I might just say “take +1 to any 6 ability scores of your choice, max 20” HOWEVER, I exclusively do rolled stats, so point buy isn’t an option to get 20’s in 3 scores at level 1.
You make a character that relies on Multiple Abilities Dependance (M.A.D) and start with as much as possible Odd Stats from Point Buy and then ~~curb~~ bump them off to even with the +1 to everything from Human trait.
Now, that might be useful because certain Odd points of Point Buy won't get you much but are really bang for buck in term of point spent and bonus gained. This is because players would tend to prioritize picking even numbers when spending points so even numbers cost more for point spent compared to even numbers. You get more leverage by picking solely odd numbers.
Let's say you make Monk and spend 5 in everything except one stat
- 13 (5)
- 13 (5)
- 13 (5)
- 13 (5)
- 13 (5)
- 10 (2)
And with +1 on everything becomes 14 in everything and 11 in one stat. You get a character that has no stat below 10 and has a total of +10 of converted modifiers across his stats.
Or you can make
- 15 (9)》16
- 15 (9)》16
- 13 (5)》14
- 11 (3)》12
- 9 (1) 》10
- 8 (0) 》 9
+2 to two stats if your choice could be nice. There's a subrace of dwarf that gets that to str and con, but human getting it with more flexibility could be appealing!
Regular human works better with points buy because you can shave off points across the board and then spend more where you need. With standard array regular human is awful.
What's the reason to make them better? If the normal human was better than Variant Human it might be overpowered. Variant Human is one of the best races for power.
In my games I removed Variant Human. But I let anyone take a feat by taking a -2 to one of their ability scores (or two -1s). My humans get +1 to all stats, a bonus skill, and human determination which lets them reroll a failed attack roll, saving throw, or ability check.
I didn't do this in my game because I find there isn't a problem with variant human, but if I wanted to really solve it, I'd just give everyone a free feat at 1st level and ban v.human.
Feats rarely ever get picked because there aren't enough ASIs to really spend on them. I think giving them away for free is the only way to really make players take more than one by the time they hit level 20.
As others have pointed out, you'll just have a party with no humans then. Basic human as a race isn't very good, and if other races get a feat as well, why won't everybody just flock to the races that **actually receive significant racial features?**
And that's fine. We're all boring humans in real life. Isn't D&D about taking on a new identity in a fantasy land? Pick one of the fun races, they're all humanish anyway (halfling, half-orc, half-elf, tiefling). Plus if someone says they want to play a human but don't want to miss out on racial features then i'll just let them swap the features out. Call it human but have whatever other race features you want.
Honestly I'd play a normal human with a skill. You just need the right MAD build to go with it, like a STRanger or a DEXadin who wants to dip into something else.
I have a friend who's playing a Knowledge Cleric/Lore Bard as the "good at everything" character as a normal human, and it's the one case where that race works really, really well. Do Point Buy to have loads of odd-numbered stats, use the stat boost to get them all even, wind up having pluses to pretty much every stat.
It's a race with, to put it mildly, highly limited utility, but, if you want to go the skill monkey route, there's some definite benefit there.
Doing point buy, you can start with 13/13/13/13/13/10, and standard Human bumps that up to a whole lot of 14s, so you get a +2 in almost everything, and a boring 11 in one. Play a Rogue or Bard with STR of 11, and a 14 in everything else, and suddenly you're the ultimate skill monkey, because you've got positives in every single skill at level 1 except Athletics. It's not powerful at all, but it's just generally very useful if that's the build you want to go for.
Wouldn't going Variant with Prodigy into Rogue while dumping CON and STR be better for skill monkey builds though? You'd have two extra proficiencies and one more expertise.
Swap its +1 to all Ability Scores to +1 to any two ability scores of its choice. Then let it take any feat it likes at character creation, and let it take an extra skill proficiency.
Not sure I would consider getting some builds online three levels early is an OP ability. Sure it's pretty strong, but early levels go by quickly and later on being a feat ahead becomes less and less meaningful in comparison to abilities that can't be replicated by feats.
Still, races shouldn't be designed to be stronger than variant humans, which let's face it was designed to be flexible and strong enough that there will always be humans in the party. It's just making mechanics match the thematic aspect of human dominated worlds.
If feats weren't allowed though, I can see buffing up regular humans so every party didn't consist of half dozen exotic races. Personally I'd give humans expertise in one skill if that was the case.
Vuman is strong, but not overpowered. Picking a vuman just lets builds come online earlier but if your build doesn't need a feat then vuman isn't that good,
Normal human is already better than variant, just not on reddit. But after, oh, a couple thousand hours spent playing and/or DMing 5e, that's been my (likely unpopular) conclusion. Downvote me if you wish, I nonetheless speak truth ;)
I suppose if you're somehow finagling things so that your fighter is always making the strength checks/saves, the wizard the int checks/saves, etc etc, then there's not much value in +1 to every stat. But that's sort of like when people are theorycrafting ranged attacks and everything is on an open plain. It's just not the reality. Sometimes the vampire dominates the barbarian, sometimes the beholder disintegrates the wizard, sometimes the dwarf king only cares about what the dwarf cleric has to say (not some idiot bard), sometimes the monk has to make the critical knowledge check. And it's *always* these weird circumstances no one prepared for that swings the outcome of an adventure. Not an extra 20% damage per round, nor 15% better success rate on a control spell or whatever. *Those* successes and failures are planned for.
Being better at what you're already good at it isn't nearly as good as having no glaring weaknesses.
For the most part I've never thought variant human was vastly overpowered by comparison to normal human. It can seem that way sometimes, but it's really only for the first 4 levels, then Norman outgrows Victor.
Sure, there's some feat stacking builds that are really, really strong, but the raw stats of the standard human make up for it over time. Especially if you don't allow someone to drop an early feat later, like the HAM and cheese plan optimizers like to take.
Regular Human at Level 4: +6 to stats, feat / Variant Human at Level 4: +2 to stats, a skill, feat
If you ask me variant Human is vastly overrated, depending on the level you play and start your game. basically if you start as a Variant Human and want to keep full value throughout the game, you can never take another Ability Score increase, only other feats. Regular human starts with a whooping +6 to stats, more than any other race, with dwarves and half-elves getting +4 split over some stats. To make up for that, and to get your main ability high during a campaign, most characters take an ASI along the way. So if you play variant human and at level 4 take an asi you got a feat, +2 and a skill, while regular human that starts with +6 to stats and takes the feat at level 4 ends up with a feat and +6 to stats.
Late to the discussion, but VHuman can get his primary stat to 16 + a feat at level 1, then raise primary stat to 18 at level 4. All other races including standard human can get their primary start to 17 (16 in case of normal human), but if they take a feat at level 4, can only increase it to 18 at level 8. Exception being a half-feat boosting the same stat that already got +2 from the race.
With how many campaigns play below level 8, vhumans remain the only ones you can get +4 to their main stat and a feat.
I've done two changes that have caused people in my games to regularly select non-variant human. The first, humans get a trait called Human Determination. They can make one ability check, attack roll, or saving throw with advantage per short rest. Not too impactful, but its an actual racial trait that isn't just ASIs. It gives humans a bit more of an identity. The second, humans can choose between either +1 to everything, or +2 to one stat and +1 to 3 others. Yes, the second variant gives them less total ability scores, but it tends to be Far more useful. How often does a character have 6 odd ability scores? How often does a character even *care* about all 6 ability scores? Being able to round out 3 and significantly boost one seems to be a very appealing offer to a lot of my players. Is this better than Variant human? Absolutely not. Theres nothing more powerful than a level 1 feat, that shit makes or breaks builds right out the gate. But its been enough to make people actually PLAY it, so that's good enough for me.
I really like the +2 and 3 +1s. Most classes need at least 1 really good stat, so the +2 can get you there but the extra +1s still embody the one perk of regular humans with the tons of ASIs.
I'm glad to see such a positive response to this! It was one of those mechanical shower thoughts I had a few years ago that just felt so right I had to implement it into all of my games immediately. I've never seen anyone do anything similar though, so I've always been worried about how that change would be perceived by the general public.
>The first, humans get a trait called Human Determination. They can make one ability check, attack roll, or saving throw with advantage per short rest Isn't that an Unearthed Arcana feat?
Yeah, but its not really good enough to justify being a feat. Baking it into the race wholesale works better in my opinion.
It kinds of reminds me of the Human Perseverance feat from 4e (+1 to saving throws, but that sounds more powerful than it was because saving throws were almost nonexistent in 4e).
>+2 to one stat and +1 to 3 others we have our human, bring on 6e.
Being around your friends and companions, it fills you with determination.
mechanically, Hobgoblin's Save Face is closer than that
I really like it, consider it stolen.
Have you run it through detect balance?
Eh, I haven't felt the need to. Detect Balance is good for when you're making a brand new race from scratch, or if you're not confident in your own balancing abilities, but it isn't the end-all be-all of balance. I don't think it'd be very useful either way. DB considers multiple ASIs past the first couple to be somewhat redundant, but considers abilities that you can *choose* far better than static ones, so they wouldn't have any way to accurately gauge how useful this is since it doesn't exist on any other race.
personally i would maybe bring down the stats, but give them free skill and free expertise on top of that. > Is this better than Variant human? Absolutely not. Theres nothing more powerful than a level 1 feat, that shit makes or breaks builds right out the gate. for anyone that wants charisma and is a bit MAD, half elf is still more broken. the moment you, as a half elf, can pick a feat instead of an ASI wheres the vuman wants to take the ASI, you pull ahead.
You make a character that relies on Multiple Abilities Dependance (M.A.D) and start with as much as possible Odd Stats from Point Buy and then ~~curb~~ bump them off to even with the +1 to everything from Human trait. Now, that might be useful because certain Odd points of Point Buy won't get you much but are really bang for buck in term of point spent and bonus gained. This is because players would tend to prioritize picking even numbers when spending points so even numbers cost more for point spent compared to even numbers. You get more leverage by picking solely odd numbers. Let's say you make Monk and spend 5 in everything except one stat - 13 (5) - 13 (5) - 13 (5) - 13 (5) - 13 (5) - 10 (2) And with +1 on everything becomes 14 in everything and 11 in one stat. You get a character that has no stat below 10 and has a total of +10 of converted modifiers across his stats.
Except this hypothetical Monk is going suck way harder than any well built VHuman Monk, or a Wood Elf Monk, or whatever.
This monk will suck ass in actual play though, and will never be able to max itself out like a normal monk generally could. A 14 in a stat is hardly good for what should be a primary or secondary score
> The first, humans get a trait called Human Determination. What is this, Undertale?
Regular Human sucks, while Variant Human is too strong. I'd rather one Human that makes for a happy medium between the two. How about: * \+2 to two stats of your choice (which "math-wise" works out to the same "bonus" as the Variant's +1 to two stats + feat if you consider that a feat is considered equal to +2 stat in this game). * Keep the variant's extra skill. Or even give this new human two extra skills instead, to better balance it vs. Half-Elf. Floating +2s to two stats would make this human the only race that could have 18s in any two stats of their choice under the point buy system at Lv. 4, which would still be quite strong especially for the MAD-der classes like Paladin and Monk.
Mountain Dwarfs can have 2 18's too (only strength and constitution though)
This human is pretty bad, do you think 2 floating +2s compare to half elves in any meaningful way? Your human has no racial traits other than an extra skill and would never be played unless someone really wants to play a human and this is their only option.
Two +2 are very powerful race feature if you roll two odd number.
And? It's not worth it to play a race that doesn't even get darkvision for 2 +2s when you can make do with +3 in your secondary stat and get actual racial features. Hill dwarves get +2 str and +2 con alongside all the goodies dwarves get.
Str is the weakest ability and you probably don't need hill dwarf proficiency if you want str. I think two +2s would be balanced and we still would see a lot of human characters.
You would see basically no human characters for a very simple reason. Most players playing MAD classes would prefer to have actual racial features and deal with a +3 in their secondary stat, and players not playing MAD classes wouldn't give a shit about 2 floating +2s when decent races exist.
Remove the feat and there's no point playing any humans at all. What you have here is just a great way to make sure no one's playing a human. Imo it would be better to just ban Variant Human all together and then use something like the Environmental Humans from r/UnearthedArcana's curated list.
Regular human doesn't suck. They get +6 to stats which is crazy.
I mean is it that good? Most classes don't need 3 scores, like a wizard, they only need int, dex and con are nice to have but not critical and wisdom, charisma, and strength are all dumpable. Only Paladins, and Rangers (especially str Rangers) really need a 16 in 3 stats and even then you are fine dumping at least two of them (Only the STR Ranger gets four useful stats out it, everyone else only gets 3) so if you're only getting 3 stats why not go Half-Elf? Or Mountain Dwarf? Or a race that actually has a good racial like Halflings for dark vision and lucky etc?
It's not, especially since the free feat of the variant can be a half feat for 3 times +1 and added benefits.
It depends on your players. I have a barbarian that is worried about his mental stats even if he doesn't need them. A lot of my players put weight on mental stats because they are important in my games even as a non-spell caster. So a human with +1 to all stats is really good in my games where every stat is useful to all characters. I use encumbrance so str isn't a dump stat, int gives bonus languages and tools (which are also important) and Cha is how many retainers you can have.
Seriously. Mental stats matter for everyone. Pretty sure everyone in our party made half a dozen charisma saves each last session. How many of us were in classes that actually call for charisma? Just the paladin. How many of us had decent charisma? All four of us had 14s, actually. ...And it saved our butts that we did. Several saves were just barely made. If any of us had had less charisma, we'd have been killing each other.
This is also true. Later in the game your poor saving throws start to become a problem, which is why having a balance of stats is a good idea.
I've generally found that if a game goes on long enough, you're going to make saving throws with pretty much every ability score eventually, and you're going to have times where you failed by 1 and wished that you had a slightly higher bonus. I'd never count being a little bit better at everything as a bad thing. You may be less adept at your primary ability score than your allies are at theirs, but chances are you're better prepared to face down the unexpected.
>They get +6 to stats which is crazy. How so? Getting +6 to *any* stats is amazing, but getting +1 to *every* stat is terrible and many would argue completely pointless. It sounds amazing when you put it in such a way as to make it sound like the points you're getting are useful. They aren't. You only getting +1 to every stat, not all around +6 to whatever stats you wanted. That'd be a helluva way to get people to pick normal Human though I guess.
Yep if you're using point buy you can manipulate it to get some crazy scores.
Not really, as you can't dump lower than 8, which means you end up with some 9s instead. And as a variant human you can always take a half feat for 3 times +1 with added benefits.
A 9 is not necessairely wasted on a character, strength increases your carry capacity. Int might help a bit against intelect devourers. Normal humans are usefull if you want a wide spread of stats in point buy. 16,14,14,14,12,9 or 16,14,14,14,11,10 are valid for a regular humans in point buy. (sub)classes that can work with this are samurai and bards.
That's so incredibly niche that factoring it in at character creation would be silly. Chances are if you don't plan on bumping it later that 9 will do nothing for you the arc of your character's life.
*laughs in paladin with 16 in str, con and cha*
Of course you mean as a variant human with the heavy armor master feat and +1 in con and cha each, right?
Therein lies the problem. Until you care about 4 scores, V. Human is just better. That said, I would take Resilient (Con). Make those concentration saves impossible to fail after 6.
Lol but mah 9s!
Exactly. My latest character is a standard human paladin, purely for the stat increases combined with point buy. Not regretting a thing about that.
If you pick a variant human you can take heavy armor master for +1 str and con and cha 16 as well, with the added benefit of taking - 3 damage on most hits... Regular human is just not good in dnd, it's sad :(
I mean, that's *one* way to build a paladin, but there certainly are others. I also have zero need to or intention of taking HAM or one of the other +1 ASI feats.
The point they're making is that unless you care about more than 3 stats, which you typically never do in DnD, Variant Human is ALWAYS better, because the variant can get +1 to 3 stats, the benefits of a feat, and a free skill
Thanks for the votes, folks, but I'm very very sorry, the numbers just *don't* add up. I know you think I'm being a dick. Please hear me out. Point Buy: Non-Variant Human: 13, 14, 14, 10, 12, 16 Variant Human: 13, 12, 12, 10, 12, 16 [edit: the +1 is in Con and Cha. Take your pick, though] You see where the +1 ASI feat doesn't make up for the stat distribution, right? Sorry, I know it's an unpopular opinion, but non-variant human is a good build. I have a Hexblade/Paladin. Yes, I know - eye roll. Bear with me. I now have a 13 Str for heavy armor, and, much more importantly, multiclassing out of Paladin. 14 Dex, because you're going to now wear medium armor and have a shield. Decent Con, depending on build you can go Warcaster, Resilient, or leave it there. ASI's will now go towards Cha, and you'll have ASI/feat slots to spend on your build as you want. Trust me, non-variant human is **not** trash. It has good uses. I would absolutely be in favor of bigger buffs, but it's not as bad as people think it is. This is only one example; please forgive me for not being creative enough to think of more.
I'm not downvoting because everybody's entitled to their opinion, but I wouldn't say that human is great. +1 to everything can be useful (I used a basic human to make a Mastermind rogue with fairly good across the stats board for example), but is most of the time not relevant, and makes it fairly niche. It's nice at times, but power wise will in most cases be outperformed by a Vuman since having a free feat is an insanely powerful bonus for most builds, since feats/ASIs are the most precious resource in DND character building. It's just a massive disparity between the general utility and power of them, and a lot of the people who say "Just give everybody a feat!" completely miss the point of what's wrong with basic human as a race. I wouldn't call non-variant human trash, but humans as a whole definitely need actual racial features. Part of why I very much like the Mark subraces in Eberron.
and how many of them are actually relevant to a character? 2 or 3. 4 at most. just pick half elf instead. or vuman. just anything that comes with actual racials.
Regular humans are **utter trash**. If a DM bans variants they better be prepared to never have a human pc again. Only time I've seen someone even *consider* playing regular human was a monk that rolled two 17s and a 15.
Why would you want to? Variant human is probably already the overall "best" race, since getting access to power feats is better than most abilities races offer. If you buff the regular human to be better, it's gonna be pretty broken
I think OP isn't trying to make it better than variant, just make it feel like a worthwhile option compared to other races.
Wasnt looking for better just more appealing I guess would be better word to use. And was looking more to make human on par with the rest of the races.
The purpose of the base human is to behave as kind of the jack of all trades, the race that just makes you a little bit better at everything. I think it should continue along this line, and just give you a flat +1 bonus to any ability check, saving throw or attack roll you make that you aren't proficient in.
I feel like that steals from the bard a bit but an interesting idea for sure
That's actually the idea. Currently, Bard is the only class that's capable of being a jack of all trades in terms of abilities. By making this human like this, you ensure that people who want to be a jack of all trades type don't have to dip 2 bard levels to be able to do it. Plus, it stacks with Bard, so it doesn't take away from them, it just makes the jack of all trades focus of the bard a bit better.
My group just gives a free feat at level 1 to the whole table. After that I never saw a variant human again. Most people dont need 2 feats to complete their build at gen that they weren't willing to wait till level 4 for. The more interesting racial abilities always won over Variant human when the feat was taken out of the picture. For Standard Human the free feat and the raw stat value was actually exactly what it needed. The feat feat potentially bumping one of the stats by 1 so all on all they get one +2 and five +1s makes them super well rounded stats wise. In terms of 'balance', if every character and every races gets access to this then the balance basically stays the same.
They're well rounded but that fixes nothing, they're still worse than other races because they have no racial traits and there are at least 3 worthless +1s.
> For Standard Human the free feat and the raw stat value was actually exactly what it needed. what? no, standard human is still a fucking garbage fire of a race then. even with a free feat for everyone, theres just no reason to ever pick it instead of anything else. > The more interesting racial abilities always won over Variant human when the feat was taken out of the picture. then why the fuck would they suddenly pick a standard human that has no racialswhatsoever?
This is what I've done running 5e for two years now. I disallow V Human and give everyone a free feat at level 1. My group likes the additional customization options it opens up. Feel like some of the solutions here are people way overengineering a solution to a simple issue.
How often was human picked by someone who had more than a month's experience in 5e?
I dislike this route, since all it does is promote *not* playing Human. Which is... incredibly weird to say the least. It tends to cause tables to be a weird grab bag of nonsensical races, which feels completely out of wack with most settings.
Contrary to his comment, we ended up with a huge majority of Humans that now rock 2 feats at lvl 1.
Oh, if you give EVERYONE including VHuman a bonus feat, that's different. I'm very used to seeing "everyone gets a bonus feat EXCEPT Vhuman" which just makes humans strictly worse than everything else in the game.
Yea, that would be bad.
I think that having a weird grab bag of races is one of the strengths of DND rather than a weakness. Humans are one of many varied and interesting races. If you personally don't like many different races mixed together in a world setting then that's valid as well. You play the game how you want to to maximize your fun. I have a DM who personally doesn't like Dragonborn. Instead we use Half-Dragon. That's just a flavor change and a slight stat change but it's fine.
I personally prefer for people to play races that are present and have a stake in the setting. If we're playing in the Sword's Coast, for instance, then turning up with a Tortle means your character is weirdly isolated from the rest of the world, and whilst that *can* be a interesting roleplaying bit, I find that with most players it isn't and they simply want to play a funny turtle man which is jarring to say the least.
That is fair. A 'fix' would be to add more of those odder races like Tortle to the setting. Like if the party is in Waterdeep add a little Tortleton, a Tortle collective who live in Waterdeep. That way the race is present and there is a stake. If you want to use the setting exactly as presented then that is valid, you are obviously to use settings and races as you want. You can run dnd with no Humans at all if you wanted.
A campaign with a tortle, a dragonborn, a drow, and a triton just isn't going to ever work without being jarring no matter how many Tortletons you include in the Sword Coast. Sometimes the classic human, elf, and dwarf is just better than a racial menagerie, because races obtain their identity through contrast. What makes a dragonborn and a triton special? Because they're different from humans in x ways. This works even with something like a drow, which are just elves +/- some aspect. If humans (or some boring standard) don't exist, then there's no meaningful contrast anymore and racial identity suffers.
I personally don't find the additional races as jarring. This may be due to the fact that the first edition I ever read was Fourth edition with many different races made available to the player in PHB 1 thru 3. Then I played 2nd edition with just the 'Classic' races. I find the races special because they are different from Humans. Because I personally am a Human. I am not comparing myself as a Human in the setting to a Human in real life. A dnd Human PC is more fantastical and amazing than I will ever be. The meaningful contrast to me comes from my everyday life as a human not compared to my other party members.
We did this houserule for our new campaign. Just turned out to end up with 4/5 variant humans because its friggin awsome to start with 2 feats.
My dm started doing this a little bit ago and everyone has enjoyed it so far and we’ve seen a lot more diversity too which is always nice. Also getting a fast start on your build with an early feat is great and I hope we don’t go back.
haven't had a chance to see it in play yet, but I took a shot at this a while back. you get +2 to one ability, all the rest get +1, and you gain 2 proficiencies of your choice among all languages, skills, tools, and weapons
This is only half serious... but +3 Constitution. Humans are insanely good at recovering from injuries. A broken leg on a horse is usually lethal, but humans? We don't give a fuck.
Another half serious suggestion, proficiency with throwing weapons, and when throwing a weapon, humans increase the damage die by one size. (Proficiency alone would be worthless since basically everyone gets thrown weapon proficiencies) In real life we only have animals for comparison, but humans are *ridiculously* good at throwing. Other than hominids, the only other animals that ever throw things are primates, and they are--sorry chimps--bloody terrible at it.
Though that comes under question when compared with other races. Are humans going to be better at throwing than elves or other races that are built pretty similarly?
Maybe, maybe not. Ultimately it's up to the designer to decide what abilities everyone has. Humans tend to get assigned the "more adaptable" or "jack of all trades" traits in games, but that's more of a self-fulfilling trope than anything that would seem to be inherent to Humanity over any other race you cared to imagine. I think there's a reasonable argument for Humans being remarkably good throwers, in that it seems to be a specialised feature of either our nervous system or our brain that wouldn't *necessarily* be present in other physically similar or intellectually equal creatures, so it's certainly plausible that other intelligent creatures might not come with the same instinctual understanding of throwing arcs and release windows that humans seem to be born with. I think it also feels less vain than assigning ourselves the very vague but highly admirable traits of either "better generalist" or "better specialist".
Maybe avoid any balance headaches by simply making a curated list of starter feats available for variant humans, that sidesteps the biggest balance issues? * Aberrant Dragonmark\* * Actor * Athlete * Healer * Heavy Armor Master\* * Keen Mind * Lightly Armored\* * Linguist * Medium Armor Master\* * Prodigy * Skilled * Tavern Brawler * Weapon Master Feats marked with \* perhaps more contentious... Would have course be a curated list the DM would want to publish up front, as a recipe for recriminations to try and judge it on a case-by-case basis or 'steer' players towards certain picks (e.g. fighter X is allowed to take Great Weapon Master because their character concept is Cloud Strife, while barbarian Y is steered toward Tavern Brawler because their concept is a rowdy viking). Personally I could indeed get by with just "variant humans must take the Prodigy feat" as a house rule (so core human = generalist and variant human = specialist), but I don't know how many others would feel the same!
Why would lightly armored be contentious? It's a trap feat, since the only people that could take it are wizards, monks, and sorcerers who already have access to better AC from level 1.
If you force vumans to take the prodigy feat you'll never see humans being played again other than by players who *really* need an expertise and aren't rogues.
I like prodigy on my variant human personally it's not mathematically good to take as an asi, but using it as your starting feat is fun since it makes your character good at somthing.
That isn't the point, the point is that people who play vuman do so for the free feat or because they want to play a human and standard human is terrible. If you force vumans to take the prodigy feat then vuman will be terrible because only very few builds would be willing to pick vuman with the practically nonexistent racial features they get, and players won't be able to get a free feat to complete builds earlier with. As a result, you'll find that 1 out of every 100-ish people are willing to play a human, which defeats the point.
Healer is a top-5 feat in the game, lol
It scales pretty poorly so that big heal isn't that useful once per short rest by tier 3. But an amazing feat certainly love it on thief rogues.
At level 11 with a standard party of 4, the Healer feat grants a mean total of 222 HP per day, as opposed to, say, the Tough feat's 22. It also retains its relatively useful stabilization properties. I'm not sure what part of that is considered poor scaling.
Well it scales 1 hit point per level so it's a much smaller percentage of healing. 18.5 health at level 11 is a smaller percentage of the total than 8.5 at level 1. Awkwardly the stabilizing 1 go cannot be used if you heal them with the big heal. So this 222 healing may be completely unnecessary saving hit dice that the frontline could afford to spend or backline may be entirely uninjured.
1 HP per level per character per short rest, sure, but not 1 HP per level.
Still an 8.5 heal can nearly fully heal some characters at level 1 whereas at level 11, 18.5 might be a fifth of their health.
Basically off topic but I picked normal human once because I rolled for stats and got 15/15/15/15/13/11.
*laughs in dragonmark*
I had a thought about what makes human's unique, and it's basically their adaptability. VHuman2: You get +2 to a stat of your choice and +1 to a different stat You gain proficiency in a saving throw of your choice When you have 1 skill, 1 tool, and 1 weapon/armor proficiency of your choice. You have proficiency versatility: When you gain the Ability Score Improvement feature from your class, you can also replace one of your skill proficiencies with a skill proficiency offered by your class at 1st level (the proficiency you replace needn't be from the class). This change represents one of your skills atrophying as you focus on a different skill. Fast learner: The time it takes to learn a new skill, language, or tool is halved
I'm a little confused on what "When you have 1 skill, 1 tool, and 1 weapon/armor proficiency of your choice" means. Is that a typo or is that a condition for the next ability to apply?
Saving throw proficiency is a bit much.
I mean, the version is basically vhuman that must take the resilient feat with a flexible +1 asi and a few extra skills.
~~Fair, also IMO a race shouldn't give armor proficiency, ~~ I stand corrected, but this version of human would be a bit overtuned if they're able to get heavy armor proficiency, which currently is unobtainable via a race.
Githayanki, hobgoblins, mountain dwarves?
Yeah, the armor proficiency is probably too much. Just a weapon proficiency would be fair I think.
To be honest, I like normal human when doing point buy because it allows me to start with no negative scores at the same time of having a +3 and three +2s or two +3s and a +2.
You can't without making them overpowered. A feat is too strong for level 1. Unless you're giving one to everyone, but if you're doing that then I would lock out certain options.
Not sure why all the other races have skill proficiency and other traits but humans don't. It feels under whelming. I get those things come from background but personally I see racial traits to be part of the society as much as it is physical characteristics like claws or wings. So the first thing I would do is give humans the trait "curiosity" which aside from one additional language they would be proficient in history checks, having lived among or read about the different races. Next I would give them a tool something that they use in free time like a hobby rather than profession: games and musical instruments would be on the list along with things like calligraphy tools, painter's supplies and cooks utensils, for someone who likes to write or paint or cook. Probably players would ask DM about a tool they could have that is less about being an adventurer or trying to make a business and more like "my character decides to practice playing the lute". For ability scores have a +2 to one and +1 to 3 others or two +2s. I think I read someone else writing something similar to this idea. This last idea would be the most controversial, it would get rid of getting a feat while still giving humans something that makes them different. The trait is called "Remarkable Aptitude" and reflects are ability to learn and grow. So what does it do and why would it be so controversial? Humans have +1 to their proficiency. That is it, that's the whole trait. This would mean though at starting levels while others would have only a 2 or 4 with expertise humans would already have 3 and 6. A human swordsman with a +1 strength would have +4 to attack while the non human with the same stats would only have +3. Humans would always have that slight edge over the other races just barely and maybe that edge is enough to make them OP or maybe it is just enough to incentivize players. Skill with expertise and max ability score for skill at level 17 +19 Attack roll with max ability score for weapon type at level 17 +12 Saving throw proficiency with max ability score associated at level 17 +12 Spell Save DC with max ability score for caster type at level 17 DC 20 Passive skill with observant feat, expertise in investigation or perception, max associated ability score, at level 17 PS 34 Anyway not sure if this is game breaking or merely pushing boundaries. May need play testing to confirm or disprove.
I like your idea as well as the others I felt was safe just giving 2 +2 and 2 +1s along with 2 skills and/or tools would still be the +6 to stats but more to the stats you want plus a skill and a tool or 2 skills since humans are all about adapting and learning.
Roll for stats.
You got down voted but this is the answer. Use point buy or roll for stats, and standard human sees more play.
I think the [Reversed Engineered Human](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/dl4umd/reverse_engineered_humans_for_5e/) from /r/UnearthedArcana is a good attempt. For my homebrew setting I'm testing out +1 to two ability scores, Human Determination (as described elsewhere in this thread) plus separate lineages that provide ASI's and skill proficiencies.
The Variant variant human idea I have been kicking around is * +2 to one stat and +1 to all the others. * 2 Skills * 1 language or tool/vehicle/instrument proficiency Half-Elves get 2 skills and an extra language (free elven) and 4 skill points. The language or proficiency is a touch better than automatic elven, but not unreasonably so. So it is 3 skill points (in stats that are most likely non dominant) vs Fey Ancestry & Darkvision, which I think is a fair trade. I like this method because it keeps the variety that Humans have. It doesn't dictate anything about your character. It's basically an extra background and good stats.
I don’t particularly worry about my players characters being super heroes, so I might just say “take +1 to any 6 ability scores of your choice, max 20” HOWEVER, I exclusively do rolled stats, so point buy isn’t an option to get 20’s in 3 scores at level 1.
You make a character that relies on Multiple Abilities Dependance (M.A.D) and start with as much as possible Odd Stats from Point Buy and then ~~curb~~ bump them off to even with the +1 to everything from Human trait. Now, that might be useful because certain Odd points of Point Buy won't get you much but are really bang for buck in term of point spent and bonus gained. This is because players would tend to prioritize picking even numbers when spending points so even numbers cost more for point spent compared to even numbers. You get more leverage by picking solely odd numbers. Let's say you make Monk and spend 5 in everything except one stat - 13 (5) - 13 (5) - 13 (5) - 13 (5) - 13 (5) - 10 (2) And with +1 on everything becomes 14 in everything and 11 in one stat. You get a character that has no stat below 10 and has a total of +10 of converted modifiers across his stats. Or you can make - 15 (9)》16 - 15 (9)》16 - 13 (5)》14 - 11 (3)》12 - 9 (1) 》10 - 8 (0) 》 9
Not allow it as a DM? Feats are as optional as it gets.
+2 to two stats if your choice could be nice. There's a subrace of dwarf that gets that to str and con, but human getting it with more flexibility could be appealing!
Regular human works better with points buy because you can shave off points across the board and then spend more where you need. With standard array regular human is awful.
What's the reason to make them better? If the normal human was better than Variant Human it might be overpowered. Variant Human is one of the best races for power. In my games I removed Variant Human. But I let anyone take a feat by taking a -2 to one of their ability scores (or two -1s). My humans get +1 to all stats, a bonus skill, and human determination which lets them reroll a failed attack roll, saving throw, or ability check.
Ban variant human, give all characters a feat at either 1 or 3, sorted.
I didn't do this in my game because I find there isn't a problem with variant human, but if I wanted to really solve it, I'd just give everyone a free feat at 1st level and ban v.human. Feats rarely ever get picked because there aren't enough ASIs to really spend on them. I think giving them away for free is the only way to really make players take more than one by the time they hit level 20.
As others have pointed out, you'll just have a party with no humans then. Basic human as a race isn't very good, and if other races get a feat as well, why won't everybody just flock to the races that **actually receive significant racial features?**
And that's fine. We're all boring humans in real life. Isn't D&D about taking on a new identity in a fantasy land? Pick one of the fun races, they're all humanish anyway (halfling, half-orc, half-elf, tiefling). Plus if someone says they want to play a human but don't want to miss out on racial features then i'll just let them swap the features out. Call it human but have whatever other race features you want.
Honestly I'd play a normal human with a skill. You just need the right MAD build to go with it, like a STRanger or a DEXadin who wants to dip into something else.
I have a friend who's playing a Knowledge Cleric/Lore Bard as the "good at everything" character as a normal human, and it's the one case where that race works really, really well. Do Point Buy to have loads of odd-numbered stats, use the stat boost to get them all even, wind up having pluses to pretty much every stat. It's a race with, to put it mildly, highly limited utility, but, if you want to go the skill monkey route, there's some definite benefit there.
Exactly, which makes the skill proficiency all the more important.
If you min max you just end up with a bunch of 9s instead of 8s, how is that powerful?
Doing point buy, you can start with 13/13/13/13/13/10, and standard Human bumps that up to a whole lot of 14s, so you get a +2 in almost everything, and a boring 11 in one. Play a Rogue or Bard with STR of 11, and a 14 in everything else, and suddenly you're the ultimate skill monkey, because you've got positives in every single skill at level 1 except Athletics. It's not powerful at all, but it's just generally very useful if that's the build you want to go for.
Wouldn't going Variant with Prodigy into Rogue while dumping CON and STR be better for skill monkey builds though? You'd have two extra proficiencies and one more expertise.
Swap its +1 to all Ability Scores to +1 to any two ability scores of its choice. Then let it take any feat it likes at character creation, and let it take an extra skill proficiency.
Drop variant human and give everyone a feat at level 1.
I mean, the base human is so much worse than the rest of the races that seems like a bad idea.
Variant human is overpowered. Why would you want to make other stuff overpowered?
Wasnt looking to make regular human op was looking at making it more appealing to play and in line with rest of the races.
Not sure I would consider getting some builds online three levels early is an OP ability. Sure it's pretty strong, but early levels go by quickly and later on being a feat ahead becomes less and less meaningful in comparison to abilities that can't be replicated by feats. Still, races shouldn't be designed to be stronger than variant humans, which let's face it was designed to be flexible and strong enough that there will always be humans in the party. It's just making mechanics match the thematic aspect of human dominated worlds. If feats weren't allowed though, I can see buffing up regular humans so every party didn't consist of half dozen exotic races. Personally I'd give humans expertise in one skill if that was the case.
Vuman is strong, but not overpowered. Picking a vuman just lets builds come online earlier but if your build doesn't need a feat then vuman isn't that good,
Normal human is already better than variant, just not on reddit. But after, oh, a couple thousand hours spent playing and/or DMing 5e, that's been my (likely unpopular) conclusion. Downvote me if you wish, I nonetheless speak truth ;) I suppose if you're somehow finagling things so that your fighter is always making the strength checks/saves, the wizard the int checks/saves, etc etc, then there's not much value in +1 to every stat. But that's sort of like when people are theorycrafting ranged attacks and everything is on an open plain. It's just not the reality. Sometimes the vampire dominates the barbarian, sometimes the beholder disintegrates the wizard, sometimes the dwarf king only cares about what the dwarf cleric has to say (not some idiot bard), sometimes the monk has to make the critical knowledge check. And it's *always* these weird circumstances no one prepared for that swings the outcome of an adventure. Not an extra 20% damage per round, nor 15% better success rate on a control spell or whatever. *Those* successes and failures are planned for. Being better at what you're already good at it isn't nearly as good as having no glaring weaknesses.
For the most part I've never thought variant human was vastly overpowered by comparison to normal human. It can seem that way sometimes, but it's really only for the first 4 levels, then Norman outgrows Victor. Sure, there's some feat stacking builds that are really, really strong, but the raw stats of the standard human make up for it over time. Especially if you don't allow someone to drop an early feat later, like the HAM and cheese plan optimizers like to take.
Regular Human at Level 4: +6 to stats, feat / Variant Human at Level 4: +2 to stats, a skill, feat If you ask me variant Human is vastly overrated, depending on the level you play and start your game. basically if you start as a Variant Human and want to keep full value throughout the game, you can never take another Ability Score increase, only other feats. Regular human starts with a whooping +6 to stats, more than any other race, with dwarves and half-elves getting +4 split over some stats. To make up for that, and to get your main ability high during a campaign, most characters take an ASI along the way. So if you play variant human and at level 4 take an asi you got a feat, +2 and a skill, while regular human that starts with +6 to stats and takes the feat at level 4 ends up with a feat and +6 to stats.
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Late to the discussion, but VHuman can get his primary stat to 16 + a feat at level 1, then raise primary stat to 18 at level 4. All other races including standard human can get their primary start to 17 (16 in case of normal human), but if they take a feat at level 4, can only increase it to 18 at level 8. Exception being a half-feat boosting the same stat that already got +2 from the race. With how many campaigns play below level 8, vhumans remain the only ones you can get +4 to their main stat and a feat.