I’ve heard the argument before that humanoids need more magic to hold their own… I say it depends on your setting.
Let’s talk about the standard AD&D setting as used in the Forgotten Realms, since that it what DC and FRUA use.
Ideally, the costs and balances of each class will more or less equal out with the others. I.e. an average thief can do as well as an average fighter can do as well as an average mage can do as well as an average cleric when adventuring in an average adventure. That doesn’t mean that 1st level mage and 1st level fighter have an equal chance when being dropped solo into a room full of skeletons…one can come up with examples that show any class to be superior over another in a particular situation. The point is that on average they are balanced.
But, the races are not balanced in the same way. An average human and an average elf and average kobold and an average ogre are not equal to the others. But that’s okay, because that was the way it was designed to be. If all “humanoid” individuals were essentially interchangeable, there would be no point in having anything other than humans, unless your focus is only the role playing - which the spirit of this discussion shows is not the case.
Now I realize that we are not talking necessarily about individuals, but about parties of adventurers versus parties of monsters. 6 human and demi-human companions take on 6 kobolds, who wins? This set up is not about being equal. 5 human and demi-human companions take on 6 ogre magi, who wins? It is still humanoid versus humanoid but quite possibly a very different outcome. How much does it matter that in the first example the companions are all 1st level or all 10th level? What about in the second example?
If you compare the various races on a cultural level, they are even more unequal. Let’s say a village of 1000 humans comes into direct conflict with a village of 1000 kobolds, who wins? what about the same village of humans versus a village of 1000 mind flayers?
How much of this inequity is due to magic? I wager that you will find the larger the scale you examine, the more you will find magic playing a role. If all humanoid species had the same access to magic would things be different? Probably, but I still don’t think we’d find kobolds being the dominant race on Faerun. What about if we made all humanoid races of equal capabilities? What if kobolds were as smart as as humans and ogres were as strong as halflings? What if the various races were homogeneous? Well, if everything were equal, then guess what, everything would be equal. 
AD&D was not designed for all things to be equal, it would be a very, very different game if it were.
But, if a designer wanted to create their own game world where things were this way, well that would be okay. You could have some really good role playing situations if “lowly” kobolds were the equals of elves and humans. But, it wouldn’t be the Forgotten Realms.
For purposes of Dungeon Craft I am only concerned with the Forgotten Realms, that is in my capacity as the project manager. For sake of the “Default” DC spell list, I consider the spells available in the AD&D core reference books and the books devoted to the Forgotten Realms.
Others are interested in the Greyhawk setting or the Dragonlance setting. I fully support that as a community member and as the project manager, but I won’t be adding anything from those settings to the default DC spells list. I will however, fully support alternative spell lists and find a place to host the completed ones on SourceForge as an alternative or supplement to the default.
This whole topic comes up because of discussion on whether or not to include a particular spell in DC, one that is in FRUA but feels out of place, and in fact it because it was left in the editor by error.
Specifically, this whole discussion is about the Iron Skin spell. How does this spell effect the game balance in a Forgotten Realms setting? Well, it shouldn’t effect it at all. Iron Skin is a spell made up for a computer game that didn’t take place in the Forgotten Realms. I don’t know if it was a good spell in that game, but it doesn’t seem very good for FRUA/DC. Ah, but it is in FRUA - how many designs use it? It is highly unlikely that any of us will open each and every design and check each and every monster to see if they have the Iron Skin spell. But it’s not impossible to look at all of the monsters in the FRUA database for vanilla FRUA. The answer is that none of them of the monster have it. Now, this is not the same as saying that Iron Skin never influenced the outcome of a battle, it very well may have. But, I am only concerned with how it effects FRUA, and it doesn’t appear to. You must also know, that I am fairly certain that there are no FRUA mods that hinge on the use of the Iron Skin spell. But, even if there is I find it highly unlikely that anyone will be importing it into DC. But, even if I”m wrong about this, the spell will still be right there, just commented out.
I am far more concerned with how DC works than how FRUA works because the programmers forgot to remove a spell. 
Today’s offering is a virtual zoo. There are a dozen small pictures of creatures from the Monster Manual and Monster Manual II first edition books. Visit the Bestiary page and scroll down to find the following: Buffalo; Camel; Dog, War (2 images); Dog, Wild (2 images); Eagle; Elephant; Giant Eagle; Manticore; Phoenix; and Rhinoceros.
From work I was doing for my contest entry for the manor/house/castle contest, comes this elven sage. This elf is in his middle years and has devoted his life to the study of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Of course, an elf of middle years is four or five times older than the oldest human in Dungeons & Dragons.
Forget the king of all barbarians, if you need something done and done right, you want the Barbarian Queen. Loosely inspired by the classic movie “Red Sonja”. Loosely. Obviously I went with a different hair color, and mad her more muscular and more attractive, which is the artists prerogative. She’s the perfect companion for the Barbarian King, or should I say, he’s the perfect companion for her?
There are a whole host of NPCs for use in Dungeon Craft. This update adds 6 new NPC portraits and removes 6 old ones. The new NPCs offer several options including a pair of shopkeeps, and several ’seasoned’ gentlemen to popuulate your town.
Say hello to the King of all Barbarians, at least if you ask him. These portraits were inspired by the barbarian made famous by a certain governor of California.
For quite a long time, I’ve been thinking about adding half-orcs to default Dungeon Craft. Our first and most important goal is to emulate FRUA, but a secondary goal is to implement as much of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as possible, particularly First Edition, as this is what FRUA uses, but also to allow customization to Second Edition.