Perhaps the race with the most misleading name, Bugbears resemble neither bugs nor bears, but are rather a tall goblinoid covered in hair with disproportionally long limbs. Yeah, they’re not exactly lookers, but if you can look past their scary face you’ll find one of the strongest build-around races in the game.

Coming to us from Acquisitions Incorporated, the Verdan are a type of goblinoid who are a very new race to the lore and therefore don’t have much history behind them. They do have some incredibly unique mechanics though, so let’s see if those can make up for it.

Often wrongly referred to as merfolk, the Tritons are an extremely proud and pompous race who believe all other races owe them a debt for keeping them safe from the horrors of the depths.

Let me know when you’ve got the TMNT theme song out of your head, because we need to talk about how awesome it is to be a hero in a half-shell. This race is a very good pick for a ton of different classes as it single-handedly solves a big problem that every character needs to address; defense.

This race is picked for two reasons and two reasons only. Either you want to be a cat girl, or your build centers around movement speed. Half of you are here for the first reason, and the other half claim to be here for the second reason but are definitely lying. Either way, I’ll humor you by going over the mechanics.

A frequent entry into the most edgy race of all time competition, the Shadowfell cousins of the Eladrin also happen to be one of the strongest races in the game. They share many traits with their Elf brethren, but the ones unique to them are the parts that make this a strong pick for most any build.

The party animals of the Feywild (a place that’s already pretty down to party, so that’s saying something), Satyrs are more than a pretty face. They also happen to be one of the strongest non-flying, non-feat granting races in the game.

Silvery Barbs wasn’t the only powerful thing to come out of Strixhaven. Owlin have flight, and that makes them top tier alone, so we should really be ranking them in comparison to the other flying races. Let’s see how they stack up.

Do you want to play as an actual, literal fish? Are Tritons and Sea Elves not cutting it for you? Then boy do I have a race for you. The Locathah are one of the most obscure races in 5e, coming from a charity promotion called “Locathah Rising”, but they are an official WOTC created and printed race.

The lore of the Kenku used to be both really cool and supremely restrictive, meaning it worked really well as a piece of world building, but much less so as a playable race. To summarize, in the old lore Kenku could only speak by imitating the voices and words that they have heard, and weren’t allowed to have any original thought of their own.

Both races that debuted in Wild Beyond the Witchlight are crazy good, the Fairy being potentially the best race in the game and the Harengon as one of the best non-flying races. The reason being that we just get a ton of great features, all of which happen to work well with just about any build, but especially for spellcasters.

The Gith are a really cool race on multiple fronts. A warrior race of astral monks who sail through space fighting Mindflayers and other aberrations sounds like the best sci-fi action movie ever, it’s just a shame the whole race looks like it has jaundice.

The Genasi advertise the ability to play a race defined by one of the classic four elements: water, earth, fire and air. That’s definitely a fantasy that many players love to pursue, but do these races contribute to that idea in a meaningful way?

I’ve always had a soft spot for the funny-looking cow folk of D&D. Their flavor of just being chill nature dudes who live for centuries and definitely grow their own hallucinogenic mushrooms resonates with me for some reason

The celestial mirror to the Tiefling, Aasimar are both versatile and powerful on multiple fronts thanks to their different options for their unique minute long transformations. We’ll talk about the base features first and then get into those mutually exclusive transformations.

The premier flying race of 5e, Aarakocra are as hard to spell as they are fantastic to play. Flight is busted, and this race is built around it.