Is the Warforged not enough of a robot for you? Do you really want to double down on that fantasy? Do you want to play an actual literal construct, not some humanoid pretending to be a construct. The Autognome is here for you.

Between a busted glide ability that had to receive nearly immediate errata and a piece of art so blatantly racist that caused some people to genuinely quit the game and was the clearest example of the Spelljammer books being rushed and unfinished, there may be no race as controversial as the Hadozee.

I’m blue, daba-dee daba-dye. The blue men of Ravnica are a famously intelligent and dispassionate folk, valuing perfection above all else. They’re also one of the strongest defensive races in the game, and a great choice for just about any character. Let’s see why.

Created by the horrifying biotech of the Simic Combine on the plane of Ravnica, Hybrids are a normal race who have elected to be enhanced by the guild. These enhancements make for a very unique race (and definitely a shorter life expectancy).

Everyone needs a big elephant friend! Loxodon are another race that seeks to fulfill the “big tough strong guy” fantasy, and I’d say they definitely do that job better than most similar races do. They’ve also got a unique feature that could potentially be built around, so let’s get into it.

You can be an undead minion that regained consciousness, a Frankenstein’s monster-like creature who’s been stitched together from multiple bodies, a deteriorating corpse who’s missing limbs are replaced with ghostly appendages, the potential is limitless. Whatever you are, your character is defined by their memories, or rather their lack thereof.

Another of the Lineages provided in the Ravenloft book, the Hexblood represents a being whose essence has been touched by one of the many types of Hags. While I rate this as the weakest of the three lineages, it’s still a very strong race and provides a unique feature with a lot of potential.

Let me just get this out of the way, this is my favorite race. I fully and readily admit it is not the strongest, but it is definitely one of the most powerful non-flying races. It does actually have the potential to be the strongest race in the game, but we’ll get into that in a minute.

A race bound to a spirit that acts as a guiding force for the individual to follow, the Kalashtar has great lore and roleplay opportunities. It’s also the default psychic race, and has all of the abilities one would expect that concept to have.

For those of you who only sort of want to play as a werewolf, there’s the Shifter. With a good number of choices for how your transformation affects you, the Shifter can be great for a wide variety of builds and classes.

Hobgoblins might have had the most drastic change to their lore with their revision of all races that got a rework, going from warmongering, highly intelligent martial paragons to fairly hospitable folk with a penchant for helping out and a strict policy of always paying back a gift.

For the three of you on the back row who wanted to play a frog man, or if you’re just a big fan of the old school Battletoads, the Grung is the race for you. You may have to ask permission to play this first though, as this race comes from an Extra Life charity event, however it is still an official, WOTC published race, so it should be legal at pretty much all tables.

Any race with a non-standard body type is worth a deep look, as they potentially have the ability to do things no other race can. The poster child for this rule is the Centaur. Half horse, half man, all muscle, and very unique in just about every way.