This argument is inspired by the fact that in my current game one of my players (Joshx0rfz) has been playing a githyanki for 14 levels and his choice of that race has added a great deal to my campaign, the world it is played in, and the ongoing plots of the game. While the drow may be the iconic D&D villainous race, your average DM running in a custom campaign setting may be just as likely to have a githyanki PC as any other monstrous race.

The drow are the obvious first choice to fill the iconic “villainous race gone good” conceptual space, but I believe once you get further into a system and provide more abundant choices the concern of overloading a player with too many options for villainous races greatly diminishes. When it comes to the core books for a game system, especially with a brand like D&D, a lot of attention needs to be paid to the racial balance and how that effects the game. This is an argument that I agreed with originally, but the more I’ve thought about it the more I begin to dislike the argument. Mike Mearls: “While sometimes it’s fun to play against stereotypes, we don’t want every villainous race to go the way of the drow.” Making the drow a playable race spent a lot of that currency, and we don’t want to overdo it.” James Wyatt: “The githzerai’s evil kin are great villains, and we want to be careful about how often we turn villain races into player character options. In the Dragon article that previewed the githzerai race from the upcoming Player’s Handbook 3, the designers stated that the Githyanki were not being developed as a PC race due to their villainous nature and they feel the drow has taken up the available real estate for a villainous race in 4th Edition.

D&d monster races