


Also, halflings have advantage against being frightened, and stout halflings have extra constitution while lightfoots have more charisma. This means you essentially have inspiration at all times for the worst rolls you will have in the future. When you roll a d20 and get a one, you can immediately roll again for a better result. When creating one, you get a dexterity increase of two, and they have an insanely useful trait called Lucky. For decades, that open-endedness has brought players back to the table to fill out one more character sheet.Halflings are a community-driven race that enjoy the people they are around. You can play “Dungeons & Dragons” as a pure combat simulator, a murder mystery or even a dating competition. Players who are more interested in the action than the storytelling might relish the technicalities of more arcane race and class pairings, watching the dice fall and arguing over whether they have full or half cover. But these days I can get behind the combo’s simplicity: It lets you focus on creating a good story rather than spending time flipping through rulebooks to look up spells. There are already enough human fighters in movies, TV and books - my first character was an albino dragonborn sorcerer. When I started playing “Dungeons & Dragons” five years ago, I never would have chosen the game’s most popular match: the human fighter. And remember the bird people? Players who pick the avian aarakocra are most likely to adventure as martial artist monks, filling the skies of the Forgotten Realms with Jet Li Big Birds. Apparently the lumbering, scaly dragonborn are frequently cast as paladins, a class traditionally inhabited by snooty white men. Some pairings you won’t find anywhere in Tolkien’s books, but might stand at the vanguard of a new fantasy canon. The appearance of both these archetypes in Lord of the Rings and other works of fantasy likely also plays a role in their popularity. Halflings also have extra points in dexterity and may have access to the “naturally stealthy” trait, which makes them exceptional rogues.

The wood elf 5 gets a bonus to dexterity as well as proficiency in longbows, perfect for the ranger class. Other races dovetail nicely with particular classes. Humans - the most popular race by far - get an extra point in all of their ability scores, which makes them a balanced pick for any class.

But some of the common character choices can be explained by the game’s structure of racial bonuses. So what does this data say about players’ character preferences? At first blush it looks like characters are drawn from literature and everyday life, which seems surprisingly unimaginative considering that “Dungeons & Dragons” is the quintessential fantasy game.
