How many races are in Dungeons & Dragons?
Ten in the current Player's Handbook — up from nine — and there's a twist: as of 2024 they aren't called races anymore. They're species.
The ten core species
Tap a species for its size and signature traits.
Elf
MediumGraceful, long-lived, magical.
Darkvision, Fey Ancestry (charm resistance) and Trance — four hours of meditation instead of sleep. Lineages: High, Wood, Drow.
Most species move 30 feet a round; size mainly affects which weapons and spaces you can use. In 2024, ability score bonuses come from your background, not your species.
The short answer
The 2024 Player's Handbook gives you ten playable species: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Dragonborn, Gnome, Tiefling, Aasimar, Goliath and Orc. The 2014 edition had nine races instead — the newcomers to core are the Aasimar, Goliath and Orc, while the standalone Half-Elf and Half-Orc were retired as separate options.
Count beyond the core book and the answer balloons. Across decades of supplements — from tabaxi to tortles, kenku to githyanki — D&D has published several dozen playable peoples. So “how many races” has the same honest answer as most big questions: it depends what you count.
Why “race” became “species”
The headline change in 2024 isn't a number — it's a word. Wizards of the Coast replaced race with species throughout the rules, partly to shed the real-world baggage of the term and partly to fit a setting where a dragon-person and a halfling are different in biology, not ethnicity.
The mechanical half of that change matters more at the table: in 2024, your ability score bonuses come from your background, not your species. In 2014 a clever player picked a species to prop up their class's key stat; now any species pairs cleanly with any class, so you can build the elf barbarian or gnome paladin you actually want.
Don't forget the background
Species answers what your character is; background answers who they were before the adventure. The 2024 book lists sixteen backgrounds — Acolyte, Soldier, Sage, Criminal, Farmer and so on — and each now grants your ability bonuses, two skills, a tool and a level-1 feat.
Practically, that makes background the quiet engine of a 2024 character: it's where your numbers come from. Species sets your traits and flavour; background sets your strengths.
Species check
How many species are in the 2024 Player's Handbook?
Sources
- D&D Beyond — The 10 species in the 2024 PHB. The ten species and the ability-score-to-background change.
- D&D Beyond — What's new in the 2024 PHB. New species (Aasimar, Goliath, Orc); 16 backgrounds.
- D&D Beyond — Updates in the 2024 PHB. Ten species and sixteen backgrounds confirmed.
More from the table
Ten species, one new word, and a rule change that finally lets you play any of them as anything you like.