"Humans are common and uninteresting."
If you see any fantasy or science fiction setting involving humans and other sentient races, humans are highly likely to be average. Smart but not the smartest, strong but not the strongest, having ability to use magic but no affinity for it, have plenty of bastards among them but not necessarily Always Chaotic Evil, having plenty of saints among them but not Always Lawful Good. They live longer than mayflies but shorter than elves. In other words, humans are the literary Jack of All Stats — as well as likely having average stats all around if this is an RPG Mechanics 'Verse.
Considering Most Writers Are Human, you can expect to see that Humans Are Special in a specific way regardless. The closest thing to humanity's "hat" is diversity, adaptability and non-linear thinking. Humans might not be as good at magic as elves or as good at blacksmithing as dwarves, but they're still better than dwarves when it comes to magic and they may still be better blacksmiths than elves. They are frequently portrayed as more driven and adaptable than other races which are significantly more stagnant, which accounts for what they're able to accomplish in comparison to other races that have longer lifespans or greater skills in any given area, often eliciting some Fantastic Racism upon themselves in response. If left unchecked, humanity may leave everyone else in the dust as it progresses on the fast-track on Kardashev's scale; the end result is the End of an Age when humans inherit the world, but, sadly, The Magic Goes Away.
A common justification is that "Humans Are Baseline" rather than "Humans Are Average". Since all readers can be expected to be reasonably familiar with the capabilities of a human, this can be used to define the abilities of other, non-human entities.
Common contrasts with humanity include spiritual Elves and phlegmatic Dwarves in Fantasy, mindless Bugs and soulless Robots in Sci-Fi, and purely good Angels and purely evil Demons in Mythology.
It may be worth noting that ecologically speaking, humans actually are an unusually well-rounded generalist species compared to other Earth creatures, especially in terms of diet, so this trope may well eventually turn out to be Truth in Television if we ever meet aliens.
Compare Rubber-Forehead Aliens (this tendency applied to alien looks), and contrast Humanity Is Superior (where humanity is... superior) and Puny Earthlings (where humanity is the worst). The inverse of this trope is Humans Are Special. Sometimes this is used as a justification for Humans Are Diplomats or Humans are Leaders when humanity's averageness makes them better-able to interact with or lead other species due to sharing traits with all of them, though those tropes can also be aversions. See Humans Are Warriors, Humans Are Survivors, and Humans Advance Swiftly for some of the other common ways this trope can be averted.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Delicious in Dungeon: In an omake, Laios notes that tall-men like him don't seem to have any special talents compared to the other races. Tall-men are stronger than elves but not as strong as dwarves, are better at magic than dwarves but not as good as elves or gnomes, live longer than half-feet but not as long as elves and dwarves, et cetera. Tall-men only stand out by being taller on average. And even then, ogres have them beat on height. Namari, a dwarf, suggests that tall-men have an affinity for singing and dancing, but this puts Laios off since he himself isn't good at either.
Comic Books
- Marvel Universe: Humans are the average between two secret sister races, the immortal Eternals and the monstrous Deviants. Despite their powers and technology, we came to dominate Earth simply because of our much higher birth rates, along with the fact that we've developed technology and powers of our own that allow us to keep up with them both, as well as the Deviants' war keeping their numbers down and the Eternals' lack of interest in anything that doesn't concern their city. The Deviants once dominated the Earth and enslaved humanity, but the Celestials, a race of space gods who created the Eternals and Deviants and gave humanity the potential for mutation didn't like the way things were headed and devastated Deviant civilization. The ongoing war with the Eternals and other feuding has prevented the Deviants from ever recovering.
Films — Live-Action
- Arena 1989: There is an intergalactic fighting championship. the film states that there has been no human champion in over 50 years, as well as featuring many creatures nastier than humans, along with many who were wimpier.
Literature
- Axiom's End: While details are scarce, Ampersand indicates that humanity is anything but average. Of the four sapient species known to the Pequod civilization, humans have evolved remarkably fast, taking leaps in technology and population size previously thought impossible for “natural” species to achieve.
- The Damned Trilogy, by Alan Dean Foster: This is subverted in the fact that humans are both average in ability— they can run, AND swim, AND climb, AND can adapt to climates wet and dry, hot and cold, etc.... yet this all forms a synergy with their psychology to make humans the deadliest damn warriors in the galaxy. (Of all the species in the universe, humans are the only ones who THRIVE in combat. To the other sentient races of the universe we are the equivalent of a Bengal tiger with tools.) To add a bit of background, most races in the galaxy are unable to even harm another sentient being. One species literally goes catatonic when viewing violence, and similar reactions of disgust are the norm. It's the area in which humans are not average that helps them here, as they are considered borderline insane for possessing individuals who find pleasure in war.
- Halo: Glasslands: Jul 'Mdama remarks that humans don't need to be really, really good at one thing in particular in order to survive and achieve galactic domination. They just need to be average in a sizeable range of vocations.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: While the galaxy's assorted Human Aliens in general tend towards various parodies of middle-class mediocrity, humanity and Earth in particular are firmly unimpressive — humans specifically descend from another species's middle class of blue-collar workers and pencil-pushers.
- Kadingir: There are several different races on planet Ki, all of them with different levels of special abilities, some with higher empathy, some with insane mental skills... However, their powers are always evened out by having much lower levels in their other abilities. The human-looking Ziti are the only race that has a perfect balance in Knowledge, Empathy and Mind Power, making them utterly unremarkable but with no obvious weaknesses either.
- The Mote in God's Eye: The Moties, who suffer from Crippling Overspecialization, see the humans this way: "They are amateurs at everything, second-best at everything they do." The fact that a single human being can be second-best at many roles, instead of being highly specialized, proves to be an advantage, of course.
- Power of Three: Diana Wynne Jones plays with this trope. The main protagonist race seem to be the human stand-ins in a world where there are also fairies and giants. They are 'normal', in-between the 'big people' and the 'little people'. It turns that the world is actually our world, or one close enough to it, and the 'giants' are actually humans, whereas the race we thought were humans are more akin to the small, shy and secretive elves of folklore.
- The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord's Army Was a Human: Human soldiers are weaker than the usual demon troops and don't have the special traits a lot of demons have, but they're much more numerous.
- Worth the Candle: Humanity's primary defining traits are falling almost perfectly in the middle of the average spread of any trait you might name, being the most common sapient species to the point of serving as a cultural reference for humanoids as a category, and adaptability so extreme that it can become actively maladaptive. Humans will alter their behaviors to fit into new environments and societies to a greater degree than any other species will, which has allowed them to become Aerb's most common species but also results in them trying to push themselves past the limits of their own physical and mental well-being to do so. Pathological cases of this are referred to as Human Derangement Syndrome.
Live-Action TV
- Star Trek: Throughout the series, this is true of the physical and intellectual prowess of humans. We lack the raw strength of Klingons, the mental abilities of Vulcans, the nigh-indestructibleness of Gorn, etc. It's our creativity and raw determination that allow us to match or surpass other species.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: As a general rule, humans tend to have greater flexibility in character creation at the cost of lacking innate bonuses in any specific thing.
- In 1st and 2nd, Humans don't get any special bonuses or penalties, but can be of any class and have no limits on what level they can achieve in any class.
- Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: Humans get a bonus feat at first level, an extra skill point at every level (four at first level), and are easier to multi-class because whichever class they have the most levels in is treated as their racially favored class. In addition, the Chameleon class can only be taken by humans and doppelgangers (along with changelings, who are hybrids of the two).
- Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: Humans get +2 to any one stat of your choice (other races get +2 to two fixed stats), +1 to non-armor defenses and an extra feat, trained skill and first level at-will power. That last one can be a major advantage, depending on class. In addition, the human-specific feats aren't specialized. Dwarves get feats that boost damage with hammers and axes, elves get benefits with swords and spears. Humans can take Action Surge, which gives +3 to hit to all attack rolls when they spend an action point (about once per two encounters), but this can apply to any attack rolls each time (bull rushes, weapons, spells...)
- Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: Humans either get +1 to every attribute or +1 to two attributes, one skill, and one feat. Both variants know two languages.
- Humans are also "average" in that there is very little roleplaying material given for them. For example, dwarves, elves, and halflings all have their patron gods, typical alignments, and "standard" cultural affinities, but humans are just considered to be widely varied in their cultures, living areas, and gods.
- Warhammer:
- Blood Bowl: The 'average' stat-line for a blood bowl player is movement 6, strength 3, agility 3, and armour 8. This, incidentally, (because it is) is the stat-line of the human lineman. Teams made up of humans are the empire, amazon and norse teams, where practically all the players are within one stat-point of the average (the empire teams have fast but fragile catchers and faster-than-average blitzers, while the amazons and norse take to the field in less armour. The norse can also hire werewolves).
- Warhammer Fantasy Battle:
- In any given thing, the Empire tends to be second- or third-best, better than someone else but worse than the real specialists, and its chief strength is being able to adapt its tactics to focus on whatever thing its current opponent doesn't do well. For instance, Imperial infantry can't hope to outfight the face-wreckers of the Chaos Warriors and the Orcs, but Imperial artillery can always outshoot the latter's expensive or crude versions. The Dwarfs and Skaven will always win artillery duels, but they lack access to any cavalry or heavy mobility. Bretonnian knights can run rings around Imperial ones, but Bretonnian infantry is very poor. Goblins and Beastmen excel at putting bodies on the field, assuming that Imperial gunlines don't scythe them down. Imperial gunners won't be winning shooting contests against High Elves or Wood Elves, whose archers outshine any human marksman, or winning fights with the High Elves' melee elites, but elven armies lack easy access to numbers. This also applies to the minor human factions like Tilea, Estalia, Marienburg, the Border Princes, and Kislev, since they use similar units and tactics (with a few unique additions like better light cavalry and fewer guns for Kislev, or better pikes and crossbows but smaller cannons and less magic for Tilea and Estalia). The main exceptions are Bretonnia and the Chaos Warriors, who are also humans from different cultures (albeit many of the latter are seriously mutated).
- In a general sense, humanity's "thing" in the setting is being adaptable and flexible but not really the masters of anything in particular. Humans are weaker, slower, and less magical than elves, weaker and less resistant to magic than dwarves, weaker and less resilient than ogres, and so on and so forth. The main skill in humanity's collective pocket is adaptability — the ability to fit themselves to new environments and situations — which combined with a faster reproductive rate than the rest has made them one of the most numerous species in the world and given them the ability to reliably bounce back from disasters that have crippled older species. The downside of this same adaptability is that humans are consequently also much more prone to Chaos influences and mutation and that the human species is splintered across dozens of distinct nations, cultures, and creeds.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Humans have average game stats across the board. An average human will have around 30 in Strength, Toughness, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, Fellowship, Weapon Skill, and Ballistic Skill, with 10 Wounds (hit points) and 4 Movement points. Dwarfs and halflings have strengths and weaknesses: compared to humans dwarfs get +10 to Toughness and +3 Wounds, but also -10 Agility and -10 Fellowship, as well as 1 fewer Movement point). Meanwhile elves are just all-around better due to being taller with better senses and denser musculature: compared to humans they have three positive modifiers - +10 to Agility, +10 to Ballistic Skill, and +1 Movement point - and no negatives. That said, some editions also give humans extra random starting Talents to reflect their versatility. The stat lines for the other, "evil" races also generally give them advantages and disadvantages compared to humans, so that a decently trained and armed human vs a decently trained and armed combatant of any other race is mostly a toss-up. For example Orcs are moderately tougher and stronger but also slower and less disciplined, Skaven are smaller and frailer but also faster, and Beastmen are generally slightly tougher at the cost of being dumber (the "good" races' advantage is that the evil ones often aren't decently trained and armed).
- GURPS: Humans are the template that everything else is based on. By definition, all other races (even ones functionally identical to humans) have some advantages and/or disadvantages relative to humans. A zero-point cost human in GURPS would have average-level basic stats, no training in any skills (just low defaults for untrained use where applicable), and nothing else. A Player Character, even one without special powers, costs much more.
- Munchkin and its various spinoffs: Humans don't have any special ability. However, while monsters can have combat bonuses against specific races, there isn't any monster with a bonus against humans. Half-Human Hybrids retain this advantage.
- Planet Mercenary: Humans have no racial skill bonuses or penalties, but they're hardy. They have higher base health than any playable alien species (Uplifted Animals and robots can have more) and a "last act" special ability if killed.
- Red Dwarf: Human characters have no major advantages or drawbacks compared to other races and have balanced stat caps. Holograms are this as well, given that they're former humans, barring issues regarding battery life and tangibility if in hard or soft light mode.
- RuneQuest: Humans appear to be the most "default" form of the Man Rune, and while they appear to have been created multiple independent times — the Orlanthi clans descend from the demigod children of the Storm gods, the Dara Happans from the ancient Solar Empire, the Doraddi from a race of fiery immortals who chose to become mortal in exchange for fertility... — none of these groups are so distinct as to not be human in the present; this is in contrast to the more "elemental" races like the Aldryami (elves, living plants), the Uz (trolls), and so on. This also makes humans the most accessible player race, as they lack the innate elemental affinities and rigid, often alien mindsets of the Elder Races.
- Shadowrun: Humans are the default race. In editions with a Point Build System all other "metatypes" cost character creation points. Humans receive no attribute bonuses or penalties, except they start with an extra point of Edge, which is basically luck.
- Star Trek Adventures: Humans uniquely get to freely choose where to put their 3 racial Attribute points.
- Star Wars d20: Humans gain an extra trained skill and extra feat at 1st level, making them decent at anything though every class has at least one race that can perform better.
- World of Darkness: Played with. To make a supernatural character, you start with a basic human for a template, then add all the supernatural perks and additions. In actual gameplay, though, even regular humans can be very dangerous to an unwary vampire or werewolf. The only real limitation that a human has is how easily they die compared to everything else. Other than that, a large enough and well-prepared group of humans can take out a werewolf without breaking much of a sweat. Taken to its logical extreme with the Hunter class; completely regular humans trained and outfitted specifically for the destruction of supernatural monsters of all sorts.
Video Games
- Anarchy Online: Justified. All four of the playable genetic breeds are homnids, but the original is Solitus, the direct descendants of modern humans. The others—Atrox, Opifex, and Nano—were developed by Omni-Tek during the colonization and development of Rubi-Ka with specific purposes in mind, leaving Solitus as the baseline.
- The Battle for Middle-earth 2: Human infantry and heroes are faster but weaker than the dwarves but slower and tougher than the elves. Though it's somewhat subverted with humans having the best cavalry units and having more heroes with leadership skills than other factions.
- The Battle For Wesnoth: Humans have no preferred terrain types (except maybe plains by virtue of no one else being exceptionally good on them), have no special preference for melee or ranged combat, have both lawful (loyalists) and chaotic (outlaws) units, and can learn many different kinds of magic without being racially focused on one specific kind.
- Blood Bowl 2: The Human League is a type of Mixed Team that allows coaches to form a single team from the Humans, Norse, Amazon, Bretonnia, and Kislev teams. Almost all the players in these teams have the human statline, but each has skills and skill accesses that, when brought together, go straight past this trope into Humans Are Special.
- Dominions: Human units typically have average but serviceable stats and no real weaknesses , and serve as the yardstick for judging other units. Some nations due stand out due to their humans having special abilities, the people of Ulm are slightly stronger and tougher then the average human, Agarthans can see better in the dark due to living in caverns where there is no light, and the men of Bogarus are a bit resistant to cold damage and ignore the snow while moving on the map. Non-human races tend to have much more noticeable abilities, such a flight or being amphibious but often have their own weaknesses as well.
- Dungeon Crawl: Humans have a 100% growth rate for all skills. Other species have some skills that train faster and some that train slower. Additionally, they have no major gimmicks, unlike many other spe cies. Although lack of gimmicks is not exclusive to humans, it does accentuate their averageness.
- The Elder Scrolls: While this is averted for most of the races of Men, who tend to specialize into being Proud Warrior Races (the Nords and Redguards) or have a distinct Mage Species being (the Uneven Hybrid Bretons), the Imperials play it straight. They are the Jack of All Stats among the races of Men (and just behind the Dunmer (Dark Elves) for all races) who are outclassed in each skill category (combat, magic, stealth) by at least 2-3 other races each but also lack the deficiencies of those races. The Imperials have managed to forge three empires from their homeland of Cyrodiil (under the Alessian, Reman, and Septim dynasties) thanks to their skills in leadership, diplomacy, mercantilism, and by having a greater focus on tactics and collective martial prowess, making them the soldiers to the Nord/Redguard warriors. In terms of gameplay, they are a Boring, but Practical race to play as, making them a very diverse and accessible race. Their bonuses make them good diplomat-style characters who can back that up with solid cross-class combat ability.
- EverQuest: Humans are "the race by which all others are judged by". They have completely average stats, excelling in nothing, but lacking in nothing either. Their strong sense of adaptability is the reason why the Gods chose the Human cities of Qeynos and Freeport to be spared from being destroyed by war, tectonic and geographical cataclysms, and even a Lunar Armageddon in EverQuest II. All the other races had to abandon their home cities for one reason or another over the last 500 years and flock to those two Human cities just to survive.
- Fall from Heaven: Humanity is the original race in which all of the Angels had an equal hand in creating. The other races are simply humans whose ancestors who spent a lot of time with a particular Angel, whose presence caused them to become more like that Angel. For example, elves hung out with the Angel of Nature, Sucellus.
- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance mostly gives humans access to classes that at least one other species can access. Not counting slight variations like our Fighter and the Bangaa Gladiator, only unique classes are Blue Mage, Ninja, and Hunter, and we can't take any of the classes that require exceptional speed, magical skill, or technological aptitude (though interestingly, our Paladin is a slightly-faster variant of the Bangaa Defender.) The sequel differentiates us a bit more with the Parivir and Seer classes, but we're still noticeably non-unique compared to, Bangaas or Vieras, the Moogles, potentially lethal Seeqsnote or even the powerful Gria who can fly. (Note that unlike most examples, this does not make us useless, since a): we're better at multiclassing, and b): Ninjas can dual-wield.) There are also human-unique classes, of course, which are good enough reasons for using them. Some classes do have similarities with others and are basically just the same class with different names.
- FTL: Faster Than Light: Humans are completely average in every way, without any special abilities as the other races have, but have no weaknesses either - even the one race equivalent to humans has a telepathic ability. Even the game itself notes that humans are common and boring. FTL: Advanced Edition buffs them up a little by boosting their skill development rate by 10% and giving them a single blue option.
- Fuzzy Knights: Human type fuzzies are stated to be the baseline, like in most games, but they also are a tiny minority, making up only 1% of the Fuzzy population.
- Halo: Humans tend to fall into the middle range compared to the Covenant's member species; they're not as numerous as the Grunts, not as strong/tough as the Elites/Brutes/Hunters, not as smart as the Engineers, not as long-lived as the Prophets, have worse senses than the Jackals, etc. Nonetheless, humanity is able to hold out against the Covenant for nearly three decades precisely because of how balanced they are, though the only reason humanity doesn't ultimately become extinct is that the Covenant falls into civil war. Once the Covenant breaks apart, humanity is able to rebuild much quicker than most of the Covenant's more specialized species, despite humanity having lost a lot more during the war, again because they're average at everything. In contrast, the Elites take a while to start finding their footing again, because they've spent at least the last couple of millennia being good at nothing but war.
- League of Legends: One of the cosmic dragon Aurelion Sol's taunts to human champions is that 'As far as fauna goes, humans strike a firm... middle.'
- The Legend of Zelda: The Hylians are typically portrayed this way compared to the other races, especially in games like Majora's Mask and Breath of the Wild where such differences form a major component of the gameplay and the story. They aren't reliant on the makeup of any particular biome to survive like, say, the water-reliant Zora or rock-eating Gorons, nor do they have any particular elemental weaknesses, all of which results in them being the most widespread of all the races. Even certain other human or Ambiguously Human tribes such as the Sheikah and the Gerudo tend to have cultural quirks that result in them being more insular. Granted, they're also said to be the chosen people of the Goddess Hylia who have a special role in protecting and preserving the land of Hyrule, but this usually only overtly applies to very special individuals such as Link or Zelda.
- Lineage 2: The lore describes humans as being made of a combination of all the four elements, but because the "better" elemental essences have been used up to create the other races, the humans end up as a lesser, Jack of All Stats creatures who aren't much good for anything.
- Mass Effect: Humanity appears to be more or less average on all counts: compared to other galactic races, they don't have any particular physiological advantages, their level of technology is quite low, and their military is rather small. By all rights, humans should be one of the lesser civilizations of the galaxy... if not for the fact that within seventeen years of discovering Prothean artifacts on Mars, humanity went from being barely able to make it out of their biosphere to becoming a notable galactic power. While humanity as a whole may not be naturally gifted, they don't suffer from any particular shortcomings and have even demonstrated the capacity to match other species on their own terms when they fought the turians to a draw. The main advantage humans have is that we specialize on an individual rather than organizational scale and avoid Klingon Scientists Get No Respect.
- Later in the series, this is slightly averted; While humans sure like to think of themselves as the jack-of-all-trades of the civilized galaxy, the rest of the galaxy does not. To many of these races, the humans are a young, slightly naive, but most of all ambitious race, who relies on mental and physical fortitude outside the norm of most of the races - In fact, humans are counted among the more brutish races, which include turians and the krogans. However, humans are less outright aggressive than the former in warfare and likes order much, MUCH more than the latter. On the other hand, humans are infamous for their incredibly laissez-faire manner of colonization, which includes complete freedom for companies to make a colony wherever they want, as long as it isn't owned by another race. Or at least, that's how the traditionally more dogmatic council races, who spends hundreds of years planning each expansion, sees it.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda: This comes up with the kett. A species of Evilutionary Biologists who can identify desirable genetic traits in all other Milky Way species — krogan aggression and stubbornness, asari biotics, salarian cleverness, turian discipline... but nothing, no obvious advantages whatsoever, in humanity. That humanity is clearly the ones in charge flummoxes them.
- Mordheim: City of the Damned: The Human Mercenaries warband. All their units have fair (but not exactly stellar either) points in mobility, attack, and defence, and they have the widest selection of weapons and armour among the six factions. It's the best choice for a first-time warband because they lack the finickiness of the other five; you can throw just about any combination of equipment and skills on your units and they'll probably turn out decent. You can run tanky troopers with shields and heavy armour, lightly-armed raiders with clothing and bows, you can take handgunners or riflemen plus pistols on your heroes and melee fighters for More Dakka, you can have a pair of Warlocks slinging spells everywhere, or you can go a combined arms approach.
- Phantasy Star Online: Human playable characters tend to be more average in their capabilities in comparison to newmans and androids. Newmans tend to make for better Technique-users than humans, but both have a leg up in that department over androids, who cannot use techniques at all. Conversely, while androids have heartier defensive stats, humans are still better-equipped to take a beating than newmans.
- Phantasy Star Online 2 downplayed this before the player character distinction between races were eliminated. Among the playable races, Humans were better spellcasters than CASTs but still outdone by Newmans, were tankier than Newmans but not as much as CASTs, and were also tankier than Dewmans who otherwise had superior damage output. Regardless, the differences between the races in the game's meta were negligible.
- Phantasy Star Universe: Justified. Humans are average, but that's because they're the creator of the other races — CASTs, Newmans, and Beasts — who were developed for specific purposes. Excluding the Dewmans in Phantasy Star Portable 2 and Infinity, who are instead humans that were exposed to the SEED.
- SaGa games (particularly the early ones) use this as part of their Class and Level System. Humans can equip anything they want, but have meh stats and are totally at the mercy of the RNG for getting stronger. All other races get awesome abilities at the sacrifice of something else equally useful: Espers/Mutants can learn magic and special skills at the cost of having only half as many equipment slots as Humans, Monsters are completely reliant on devouring meat from other Monsters for their growth and changing skillsets, and Robots are entirely reliant on armor for their stats and can only use weapons for half as many times as Humans (although they could recharge weapon uses at a Trauma Inn) while also being more susceptable to magical damage.
- Space Rangers: Human-made spaceship parts are exactly average in quality, better than Maloqs' and Pelengs', but worse than Faeyans' and Gaalians'.
- Star Craft: The Terrans are descendants of human colonists who originally came from Earth. By comparison to the other races in the setting, humans come off as rather weak: their technology is nowhere near as advanced as that of the Protoss and they lack the biological prowess of the Zerg. However, whatever technology they do have allows them to make cloaking devices and powered armour and employ a variety of powerful ranged weaponry. One biological advantage that Terrans do happen to have over the Zerg is that they're the only race—other than the Protoss—to have innate psionic potential, which is one of the main reasons why the Zerg seek to assimilate humanity in the first place. In gameplay, however, humans subvert this. While numerically, they are the average faction, with the Zerg being the Trope Namer for Zerg Rush and the Protoss being the Elite Army, Terrans as a whole are oriented towards Glass Cannons. All Terran units that can attack except for the SCV have ranged attacks and on average, terran units have fewer hit points than their alien counterparts.
- Starflight: Humans are pretty much the most average species you can select for a crew member. For a starting ship, they can handle most roles competently (and are the best at Science), but once your ship has more capital, you're best getting a mix of species to have the most effective crew. In 2, humans are a liability at the end of the game, as bringing them into the main nebula will cause them to go insane and force the rest of the crew to quarantine them, and your ship will be lost if you have an all-human crew.
- Star Ruler 2 has the empire of man, the Terrakin, as completely average in stats; they do not have any unusual mechanics or the special strengths or weaknesses of other races. They utilize the most Boring, but Practical form of Faster-Than-Light Travel, hyperspace, and have an Empire-type government that allows them to generalize.
- Sword of the Stars: Humanity has average industrial capacity, research ability, terraforming speed, and population growth. They are almost in every respect the Jack of All Stats, except for their unusual FTL drive that makes human fleets something of a Fragile Speedster on a strategic level, and also much more vulnerable to entrenchment. Humans also have a fairly high chance of getting most of the weapons techs, unlike most other races, who tend to favor one or two lines of weapons.
- Warcraft:
- WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos: The Human Alliance has relatively average middle-of-the-road units, spellcasters, and heroes, all of which combine to make them the most flexible faction in the game. With that said, they do have clear advantages when it comes to defending bases or attacking them.
- World of Warcraft: Humans are of about average height for humanoids, somewhat bland and inexpressive in appearance. Diplomacy for getting rep faster, a bit of extra spirit, and a free trinket for escape are basically all they have gameplay-wise. In terms of pure starting stats, they quite literally are THE average, with 20/20/20/20/20 across the board.
- X: Both main human factions being variations on Jack of All Stats. The Argon Federation builds ships with average, balanced stats and with good utility (their Discoverer scout is the only M5 that can carry a Jump drive, for example). Earth State ships are even faster and better shielded than Argon ships at the cost of adaptability in that they can only mount Terran weapons. Terran capital ships in particular have "balanced" stats, but because Humanity Is Advanced, they're overall the best capital ships in the game (bar the OTAS Boreas). Earth's AGI Task Force throws balance out of the window, with far superior capabilities than other ships at the cost of being outrageously hard to acquire until X3: Albion Prelude. This is also why Humans Are Special, as they can compete with every race's hat. To paraphrase a Teladi character in Farnham's Legend, humans are as good at business as the Teladi, as good at diplomacy as the Boron, as good at fighting as the Split, and when pushed can be as fanatical as the Paranids.
- XCOM 2 reveals that this is why the aliens invade earth. Humans are the Jack of All Stats in physical, mental, and psionics, compared to the Sectoid's small size and weakness, Muton's clumsiness and lack of intelligence, Thin Men's lack of psionic despite intelligence and loyalty, etc. The splicing of human DNA into the existing alien races have made them smarter, stronger, faster, but that still pales in comparison to the Avatar Project: the creation of artificial body from the genetic material of psionically-gifted humans, for the Ethereals to inhabit.
Visual Novels
- Last Chance in Xollywood: Human culture, food and entertainment are seemingly fairly popular in Ingress, though the way they are talked about by the characters implies they are nothing really special. Earth is also mentioned as being a "third-rate planet".
Webcomics
- The Order of the Stick is set in a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired RPG Mechanics 'Verse where humans are more versatile than the other fantasy species but lack those species' specific advantages. Sometimes
Lampshaded by members of other species, some of whom don't even realize that humans lack abilities they take for granted.
Roy: What's wrong with human senses?
Belkar: Nothing. I'm sure it's very relaxing to be oblivious like that. Like living at a spa.
Vaarsuvius: To be fair, you are quite bad at seeing in starlight.
Durkon: Or total darkness.
Vaarsuvius: Or noticing secret doors.
Durkon: Or yer depth underground.
Vaarsuvius: Or hearing things. - Surviving the Game as a Barbarian: Humans in the RPG Mechanics 'Verse don't have an innate special ability like the Demihuman races but are the only people who can pursue certain powerful careers like Wizards. Although this serves Competitive Balance collectively, it puts most humans at an individual disadvantage — as an ordinary human, Brown Rotmiller struggles with feeling like he Can't Catch Up.
Real Life
- Humans are unusually well-rounded in a number of ways compared to other animals, especially other mammalians:
- We're omnivorous, allowing us to subsist on a variety of food sources. While we lack the specialized gastric acids of carnivores to safely consume raw meat, or the ruminating stomachs that allow herbivores to effectively digest grass, the sheer variety of things we can eat and digest allows us to survive in a number of climates.
- We have rather average bite strength compared to specialized carnivore animals, with two sets of canines and not as much raw jaw strength. However, anyone who has been bitten by another human could vouch that our bites still really hurt. Human bites are also much more likely to cause infections than most animal bites, due to the sheer amount of bacteria in our mouth that surpasses that of most other animals.
- We have average or downright sub-par arm and grip strength compared to other primates, with gorillas having around twenty times the grip strength of a human; however as we are completely bipedal and don't need to use our arms for movement, we have evolved to use our hands in far more varied, and at times more destructive, ways than any other simian.
- We're not really that good at swimming either; we have to actively learn how to do it and are quite slow and clumsy compared to other animals, mammalians included. However, we're by far the BEST swimmers amongst great apes, for the simple fact we learned to swim at all.
- There are however areas where we aren't average:
- In contrast to ambush and rapid pursuit predators (like large felines or crocodiles) capable of immense speed and strength but only in short bursts, humans are comparatively slow and weak but built for physical endurance and capable of maintaining continuous effort for much longer than other large land animals, as early humans adapted for tracking and running prey down over very long pursuits before finishing off exhausted animals with weapons. Many human physical traits evolved to suit this lifestyle, such as long legs for taking long, efficient strides and hairless skin and sweat to cool the body and prevent overheating during long periods of physical effort under the equatorial sun. Even today, fit humans can keep walking and running continuously long past the point where most other creatures would keel over.
- Intelligence. Complex intelligence and problem-solving isn't rare in animals — other primates, elephants, corvids, and parrots all show similar mental traits— but humans have more developed intelligence than any other animals. Human children have to actively learn everything, from walking, to communicating, to what is dangerous and what is not, while most other animals learn these behaviors either by instinct or passively from their parents, but it also allows us to absorb new information and pass it down onto future generations as well as communicate extremely complex ideas, and eventually create tools that make up for our physical shortcomings. The other trait is social behavior; even the simplest tribes have social behaviors and structures magnitudes of complexities higher than even other social animals. Both of these combined traits, as well as our well-rounded physical attributes, allowed us to become the dominant species on the planet despite there being many animals faster and stronger than us.
