Top 10 Most Viewed 5E D&D Homebrew Races

I’ve explored all the schools of magic, subclasses for every class, feats and several other categories of content for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons homebrew material found at D&D Beyond. This time I’m looking at homebrew races for 5E D&D. Ready for this? There’s currently over 36,960 of these at DDB! We get a kick out of checking out the 5E D&D content folks come up with and sharing their homebrew  creations. (There’s lots of these posts whether for homebrew subclasses, magic items, spells, feats and more floating around for the curious.) Not for nothing but the video from Nerdarchy the YouTube channel down below gets into homebrew Martial Archetypes for fighters and clever character builders might find this particular class extra useful when it comes to a concept that emerges in this post. Let’s get into it.

Races at D&D Beyond

Before getting started it’s important to note you can create homebrew content for private use and share your homebrew content publicly at DDB at no cost — there’s no subscription required to access these services. However if you want to add any of the homebrew evocation spells mentioned below or any other homebrew content you come across to your 5E D&D collection you must subscribe at the Hero Tier or above. There’s a lot you can do at DDB for free. Check out what you can do here.

The DDB homebrew collection uses several statistics to track entries. Views shows how many eyeballs any particular homebrew creation received, Adds shows the number of times a creation was added to someone’s collection and Rating is an upvote/downvote system. There are over 36,960 races in the collection and normally I share the top 10 highest rated, most viewed and most added selections and to see what’s out there along with any crossover between these three lists. However when it comes to homebrew 5E D&D races DDB only allows you to organize the content by views so the usual procedure won’t apply. You can organize them by how many comments are left on each individual race though, so I’ll include that ranking this time around to get a bit broader selection. [NERDITOR’S NOTE: Turns out while you can click the arrows to sort the material by comments, it doesn’t actually work. Too bad!]

I could not find any reason why this particular chunk of homebrew content is different but there is a forum thread I necro’d so if you’re interested then add your voice and maybe we’ll see a change. Check out the forum thread here.

Top 10 most viewed races

1. Minotaur. Starting off with some comparison to the existing official version of the minotaur race for players. This one moves faster, has darkvision, Powerful Build, proficiency in Intimidation, a Gore attack and knows Abyssal. Keep in mind this creator shared their homebrew minotaur long before Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica.
2. Centaur. Another pre-GGtR homebrew creation and vastly different. For starters they’re Large, which is a big 5E D&D no-no for a playable race. This one retains the monster version’s 50 ft. speed and greatsword-level Hooves of Fury damage. They’ve also got a Charge that scales with level. A variety of Equine Weakness traits attempts to balance things out.
3. Vampire. This is so far removed from anything close to a standard playable race it’s not worth commenting upon. For a certain kind of game with a certain type of gamer, sure. D&D Wiki might even balk at this!
4. Shadar-Kai. Preceding Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes by a few months it’s nonetheless quite similar, which speaks to this D&D creature’s clear presence in the lore. More interesting is the inclusion of the spiked chain as a new weapon, something I suspect a lot more players are interested in than the race itself.
5. Werewolf. Like the Vampire at No. 3 this is pretty ridiculous. For my 2 cp there’s much easier ways to play a vampire or werewolf in 5E D&D.
6. Dhampir. Another one predating the official version, this time by several years. The official version comes across a tad better in my view but I’m a huge sucker for spider climb. What do you think?
7. Mousefolk. Oh my gods finally a race neither with an official version or an outrageously overpowered monster. If I’m honest I’m so blasé about slapping “-folk” onto animal names. It ties the sentient humanoid to a beast in a way I find really awkward for one thing and it feels lazy and uninspired for another. That aside I would 100% play either a Meadowguard or Softpaw Mousefolk. There’s nothing mind blowing about this but I do fancy the simple elegance of the  very useful and uncomplicated Nimble Dodge trait.
8. Gnoll. Straddling the line between Abyssal fiends and mammalian carnivores I’m not surprised at all to see gnolls show this high in the rankings. A lot of people out there dig the idea of playing a bloodthirsty maniac and indeed do so already. Now they’ve got a violent and aggressive homebrew race to do it with. For extra gnoll power including racial feats consider playing a Quintessential Gnoll!
9. Succubus. I was prepared for this to be another wild ride through a complex kludgy mess of powerful traits and I’m happy to report this is not the case at all. This looks to be one of the more tame homebrew races I’ve seen and certainly among monster themed ones it’s far less convoluted. Nice job, creator!
10. Doppelganger. Isn’t this the Changeling’s jam? Preceding Eberron: Rising from the Last War by about a year I’m on board with the concept but the unlimited reading thoughts is a bridge too far.

Races rising to the top

I can’t say for certain what I look for in a 5E D&D race or what jumps out at me other than evoking any kind of idea for a character who’d be fun to play. In this regard Mousefolk stand alone out of these selections. Almost all the rest are very dark and violent, which are two descriptors that’ll turn me off a campaign. I’m not at all surprised to see very common and very popular concepts at the top of the rankings but to me these are largely boring. Current era tabletop RPG discussion about the tug of war between playing other games and hacking 5E D&D into endless variations finds me pretty firmly in the middle. If sticking with one general game system is your jam then go for it but for my taste I’d rather play a game designed around a specialized premise like playing a monster.

As a designer myself I hold a different philosophy than many of the creators whose homebrew races show up on this list. Whereas some of these present more of a hybrid race-class combo with lots of features, choices and scaling I’m more keen to keep things simple and develop racial feats to go along with a playable race. The concept of a racial paragon is something I found fascinating from 3.5 D&D and in lieu of prestige classes in 5E D&D feats make serviceable replacements. We’ve shared quite a lot of them here on the website and TTRPG luminary Adam Bradford put together racial feats for all of the races, which are awesome. Find out more about those in the Top 10 Homebrew Feats post here.

5E D&D race resources

I mention our own forays into homebrew content creation for 5E D&D several times to plant the seed in your mind. Now you’re wondering, “What kind of homebrew content do you create, Nerdarchy? I’m extremely interested!” In addition to the monthly rewards our Patreon supporters receive we’ve presented tons of material in our videos and right here at Nerdarchy the Website ready to drop right into your games too. Another place we frequently create new content for Dungeon Masters and players to drop right into games is Nerdarchy the Newsletter and you’ll also get several gifts including $9.99 in store credit so you can add whatever you like there to your own collection when you sign up. Over the years you could say we’ve dabbled in creating races and racial feats a little bit.

• • • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game with a Crafty Vulpin New Playable Race
    • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game as a Lizardfolk with Racial Feats
    • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game as a Raucous Satyr with Racial Feats
    • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game with a Quintessential Gnoll Playable Race and Racial Feats
    • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game with a Friendly Octopod New Playable Race and Feats
    • With This 5E D&D Human Racial Feat, You Got This!
    • Two New 5E D&D Feats for Grung
    • New 5E D&D Feats for the Goatfolk
    • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game with a Primal Draconic New Playable Race
    • Bullywug Playable Race for 5E D&D
    • Saurial Playable Race for 5E D&D
    • Mogrelfolk Playable Race for 5E D&D
    • Grimlock as a Playable Race for 5E D&D
    • Wemic — Monster and Playable Race for 5E D&D
    • Dark Paths: Dream Weaver includes New Playable Race — Dwelf
    • Dark Paths: Winter Lord’s Throne includes New Playable Race — Dullahan
    • Frost King includes 3 New Player Character Races
    • Order of the Wizened includes New Player Character Race: Oreamnos
    • Taking Chances includes New Playable Race — Dwelf
    • Treasures of the Tundra includes new playable race — yaska, diminutive cousins of the tundra yeti
    • Trip to the Planar Zoo includes New Player Character Race — Zookeeper
    • Vargarian Collective includes New Player Character Race — Vargarian
    • Wizard’s Wake includes new Playable Races: reptilian ambryl and otaraa sealfolk

*Featured image — The 5E D&D Basic Rules describes race thusly: “Your choice of race affects many different aspects of your character. It establishes fundamental qualities that exist throughout your character’s adventuring career. When making this decision, keep in mind the kind of character you want to play. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

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