Tieflings are an extremely popular choice just based on their flavor alone. I mean who doesn’t want to play a literally hot and sexy devil whose skin color can be whatever you want? The flavor here is unquestionably on point, so the real question is if the mechanics are good enough to back it up.

By far the most commonly chosen race in the game, Humans offer quite a lot and definitely earn that #1 position. Are they the actual best race? Maybe, and definitely so for a lot of builds.

Halflings are well known by their most famous feature; Lucky. Certainly, that ability is very impactful at times, but it’s not enough to carry a whole race on its own.

Half-Orcs are the stereotypical “hit stuff with a big stick” race, and they sadly don’t really live up to that reputation. Powercreep has definitely been a factor, but the sad truth is that martials require feats to be functional, and races that get a feat at level one like the Variant Human have pretty much always been the best race for martials.

Half-Elves are one of the most versatile races in 5e, from their extra ability score increase to the laundry list of potential subraces, many of which read like a best hits collection of the various Elf features.

Gnomes might not be a super common selection according to some analytics that WoTC released a while back, but that is honestly a shame. There’s some really good stuff here, one ability in particular that any character would beg and plead to have.

There are far too many variants of Elves to cover in one review, so I’ll be sticking with the subraces found in the PHB and the subraces that are actually listed as subraces and not entirely new races for now and other Elves will get their own reviews.

A race so iconic that they’ve been here from the very beginning, Dwarves are a decent and reliable option with good abilities and features that make them decent, but not stellar choices for just about any build.

The Dragonborn, more than any other racial option, desperately needed to be revisited. Thankfully, WoTC actually has a very good track record with revisiting underwhelming content.

The Player’s Handbook Dragonborn has been commonly seen as the worst race option in that book, and honestly it might actually be just the worst race overall. This is such a shame, as the flavor of this is probably the single coolest race option in many player’s eyes, so thank goodness Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons fixed Dragonborn completely.