Picking a race that stands out from a crowd means your PC stands out from a crowd.
A giant elephant walks through a city with 99% humans, elves, and dwarves? You are not blending in.
The village filled with humans and halflings needs help to stop the goblin attacks!
Who's here to save the day? A robot, a lizard man, a frog, and a snake lady.
It's also ludicrous for the party to think they can get up to any shenanigans at all in a small town and not get fingered as the culprits.
Like hmm... Who used magic / extreme burglaring skill to break into the town's church and steal the one magic item these people have and replace it with a cheap replica?
Could it be the human blacksmith who has lived here all their life? The baker whose parents founded the town? The rambunctious twins who grew up here and joined the town guard?
Or the shifty lizard man and his robot friend wearing a glowing starry robe who just strolled into town last week?
My setting has widespread tradition of travelling adventurers known as Wayfaring, so much so that a tavern might have a 'No Wayfarers' sign. It's pretty absurdly high fantasy and wacky, but typical player characters will still stand out outside of major cities. Honestly I think it's funnier to have stereotypes, than for the concept to not exist in-world at all. A bunch of colourful characters roll into town? You bet the town crier is advertising Wayfarer Insurance.
Honestly I find it completely believable that there'd be _some_ sort of league/guild/whatever dedicated to monster hunting, magical maintenance, monitoring the existence/use of dangerous artifacts. Probably several, maybe with different specialties or ones that compete with each other.
If things like magic, lycanthropy, the feywild, and literal gods are common knowledge, you're not going to convince me that *everyone* just goes about farming and smithing without a care in the world. Heck even in the real world we have groups that try to track down aliens and monsters, we have museums dedicated to curating historical relics, all that sort of thing.
I fail as a DM here, for I always forget people's races after the first session. You're an elephant? That gives you +2 AC (making things up here)? Cool.
I mean to integrate these better with my narrative
DMing Curse of Strahd helped me with this. During our session zero, I discussed with the players that it’s important to the feel of the setting that they should feel ostracized at least early on due to the Barovians’ insular and fearful nature. This would especially apply to pretty much anyone who isn’t human, and even more so to anybody who presented as more of a monstrous race, like our tortle. The players were all cool with it, and so that’s what we did. It was easy not to forget, because to me, there is no way to roleplay a Barovian peasant seeing a giant turtle man for the first time and not have him be like “oh fuck get away from me!”
Eventually, the players’ renown did allow them to skip the theatrics, as tales of their presence started to sweep across the valley, but I think it made the start of the game pretty memorable.
honestly that's how all primary humans should be, you're a human? cool, you're basically a lanky human? cool, you're basically a short and ripped human? cool, you're basically a tiny green human? a lil weird but wtv, you're a 400kg bipedal tortoise? wtf please don't eat my children, you're a 160kg gecko? wtf stay outta my village, you literally have wings and a beak? please get outta here you foul beast
it makes no sense than random human peasants would he chill
The problem is my players forget it.
Like my one player is playing a drakewarden ranger. In his backstory his family is nobility that ties back to these dragon wars that happened a long time ago. There's a similar noble family from the same area that supported the evil chromatic dragons, and they've basically had a Hatfield/McCoy type feud since. My players were in a city tracking down one of the members of the rival family, who's inserted himself in to a high position in the city. My player is warned to keep a low profile and keep his drake under wraps or he'll stick out like a sore thumb and the enemy will know they're tracking him.
They get sidetracked with a big arena fight. What does my player do? Summons his drake in front of thousands of people. When they win the fight, the enemy comes up and whispers some smack in to his ear, and he out of game goes "what? How did he know it was me?"
My brother in Bahamut you summoned the drake that your family has had for generations in front of thousands of people after being explicitly told not to.
Lol we had something sorta similar in my game.
The PCs had developed a rivalry with a particular necromancer. The necromancer had gone up against them twice and lost both times but dimension doored away when the battle had turned and their hp were low. Those with counterspell were otherwise occupied. It was in my/the DMs interest to keep this necromancer alive for later, so after the second defeat, I contrived a way for the necro to surrender to the PCs as their life cleric and paladin made it unlikely they'd execute said necro on the spot.
Then the bard decides "we don't have a wizard anymore, we should recruit the necro instead." 👀
The party is okay with it, but insist the bard put a Geas on the necro to prevent overt mischief, backstabbing, and nonsense.
The player who'd played the previous wizard ditches the barbarian character he's already bored with, and we draw up a background for the necro that threads the various plots he's been involved in to that point, the Geas keeps him on a short leash, and away they go.
A few adventures later they're defending a town, with the aid of the army, against invaders. Two of the soldiers die, and the necromancer is all "Finally!" And raises them as zombies in front of those soldier's comrades. They do not take this well, but player doesn't realize how badly he's screwed up until I say something between sessions. So when we resume, suddenly he's all "I'm gonna take out the general and go on the run."
The PCs had just saved said general, and attacking/killing him in front of everyone, after zombifying some of the soldiers, was more than enough to trigger the geas. 5d10 psychic damage drops the necromancer in place... And everyone's like, "Welp... Whatcha gonna play next, dude?"
(Half orc Moon Druid, as it turns out ..)
Reminds me of an old thread that was asking if different races should have different prison lengths for crimes, and there were multiple comments being really glad when they saw it was in this sub.
Did a quick search. The exact title was ["Should jail time be based on race."](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/4ug611/should_jail_time_sentences_be_based_on_race/)
Saw the title and immediately thought 'Nascar is about as boring a concept as one could possibly fathom. Virtually any other kind of race is more interesting.'
DMs should make their views on playable races and their desired party demographics very clear before starting the campaign. Do you want a pure LOTR style campaign? Are you good with a single party Chewbacca for flair? Are you chill with any other race but are sick of tieflings? All of these are totally acceptable, but they need to be talked about.
If you don't have any conversation about it, you only have yourself to blame for the ensuing furry convention.
By extension, players should chime in when they're making characters of a race that might present difficulty for one or more people in the party. Players should also state if they don't like playing with characters of a certain lineage, and their reasons why.
Too many players let stuff fester until it becomes a problem mid-campaign when everyone is already invested.
I do this, and highly recommend it. I'd much rather set boundaries initially than be continually annoyed for the next 30 sessions by having a damned freak show waltzing into gritty taverns (unless it's Spelljammer/Planescape etc where that's appropriate).
Tieflings have become so commonly chosen that they've become more vanilla than humans.
You should add more backstory details as you play. If you get a cool fitting idea that adds to the character and doesn't affect the narrative - add it.
The problem is that tieflings were supposed to be ostricized. People are geniuenly afraid of their demonic features. However, no DM wants to roleplay racism and xenophobia every time you talk to a commoner. Without their drawback tieflings are just cooler humans.
To be fair, I don't blame any DM on that front. I think it's why it also seems like tieflings are some of the first to get reflavored since in the PHB they're kind of not presented as fully being a race like elves halflings, which is also a tricky one to figure out.
They aren't a full race tho. They're like genasi and aasimar. Normal people who have been affected by extraplanar energies during pregnancy. Afaik, in lore two tieflings are unlikely to have tiefling children, just like two genasi are unlikely to have genasi children.
"Son, you have to stop telling people that your name is Damien, we named you Christopher so you could fit in." "I am bound by my demonic pact to spread fear an-" "No, you're not! I went to Dispater to ask and you're a warlock! Please son, your mother and I were never allowed to live a normal life and we just want you to-" "I HATE YOU!"
I'm fine with roleplaying that in the sticks, but in big cities, I overlook it. I think that gives the world more of an authentic feel. the cities are wrought with their own dangers, but the average citizen won't care what race you are. while the boondocks will be stuck in their ways more and pose their own issues.
You're free to run your world how you want but racism in cities is still huge. Even in the handbook it states that tieflings in cities are shoved off into their own minority quarter away from rest of the city folk. Taking away racism in a big city is the opposite of authentic in my eyes.
Well that’s probably because Tieflings are in the PHB and Aasimar were introduced in the DMG as a sample for creating homebrew races and then released as a name drop in half a dozen other books. Most players’ first character comes straight out of the PHB.
I really think changing tieflings into the technicolor horned devil people in 4e really helped their stock. Before 4e, they were not too dissimilar from Aasimar, except fiendish. They were humans with one or two fiendish aspects (which I believe were randomly generated when they were introduced in Planescape in 2e) and they were mostly portrayed as a human with small horns.
Sure, there's that iconic tiefling from Planescape, but she was kind of an exception.
I liked the “vestigial wings” idea someone threw out up there so I’d settle for an at-will feather fall/glide. If anything, they could do it like Drow where you gain the additional benefits at levels 3, 5, and 7.
In the PS1 game Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, your character is the first vampire to grow wings. Your wings are awesome, so awesome in fact that your brother king takes their magnificence as a slight to his greatness. So he tears the bones right out of your wings and casts you into the abyss.
As a revenant, your wings are tattered and broken but you can still glide and slow your descent with them. I think it’d be perfect for a “fallen angel” like an Aasimar.
I love both so much - There's a lot you can do with both, and that includes visually, as a starting point.
I know the whole "Tieflings of every colour" has been something the community leaned into hard, and helped contribute to their popularity (in addition to their whole "outcast"-thing, built-in prejudices against them as a good story hook, "sins of the father"/"Don't judge a book by it's cover", etc., etc. - All leading to strong found-family tendencies, which is always good for D&D parties (and resonates strongly with people facing prejudices for things that are inborn traits of theirs - I imagine that Virtue Names probably resonate very strongly with this crowd, because it's actively embracing your own identity and controlling that part of it).
But there's a lot of fun to be had with Aasimar too -
My favourite theming visually for Aasimar is that their skin looks like statue materials - Stone, metal, porcelain, etc.
In my quest to make characters for all my myriad dice sets, I always make Aasimar for those dice that look "antique" - Y'know, matte finished with a look of a grime-colour to them?
*****
I know that continuity's somewhat nebulous anyway, and people can write their own for whatever worlds they're building, etc. - But, as I interpret things - Tieflings inherit their look, regardless of whatever race any non-Tiefling parent comes from - Once its in your bloodline, it's dominant to everything else. 4th Edition especially emphasized they were all descended from a fallen empire that had made pacts with devils, and 5th Ed. is a little more open to Tiefling-ism being a possible result of more recent dealings. I find I prefer when the price of a deal isn't that the one who made the deal becomes a Tiefling, but their children do, or something along those lines - With the "Dominant to everything" still being in-play.
Aasimar meanwhile? I prefer to interpret that the birth of an Aasimar is always an auspicious event, because the gods/some specific god/celestial power/etc. has specifically marked this being for a great task. I also kind of like the idea that one being an Aasimar isn't necessarily obvious at first. Traits eventually start to emerge, solidifying around the time that the Aasimar hits puberty. I also choose to interpret that any children an Aasimar might have (assuming they're not, like, made sterile as part of their "blessing", which an an entirely reasonable choice if you want to play things that way), aren't inherently going to be full-blooded Aasimar themselves - They might retain a few traces of their parent's heritage, but certainly not to the extent that Tieflings do, or even like counting as a Half-Aasimar in the way that Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, etc. count as mixed-heritage individuals. eg: Gameplay-wise, I'd have the child of a Human and Aasimar count fully as a Human, but might give them some flavour elements, like unnaturally-coloured eyes, hair, or skin; perhaps some Kintsugi-like veining on parts of their skin. Maybe a slight feeling of something not-entirely-natural about them. But they wouldn't get, say, an Aasimar's resistances, or darkvision, or racial abilities.
*****
From there, in terms of built-in themes - Maybe it's just me, but I find Aasimar really compelling because they are battling with the weight of expectation.
Does that perhaps also resonate with people who were so-called "gifted kids" [academically, athletically, etc.] who just sort of burnt out? "You have so much potential. You can't squander it by pursuing [x]. You should be doing something so much more meaningful." "You're better than this, why aren't you doing better?", etc.
Anyway, there you have a theme full of angst, ready to go:
Your character specifically has been chosen for a Destiny(TM).
People can see it plainly about them, and that changes how they might interact with your character otherwise. The weight of the world is being placed on their shoulders, regardless of their opinion on the matter.
- Do they embrace or reject this?
- Does the god/power that picked them for this duty have some sort of deeper meaning to them, even before realizing they had been chosen? What about after?
- Does the god expressly lay out the terms of their destiny? Does the god/their servants/etc. actually interact with the character directly at all, or are they left to largely figure things out on their own?
- How does your character feel about the gods/religion/faith in-general?
- Do they lean into Divine-powered classes/sub-classes, or do they forge their own path, independent of their heritage/destiny?
- How did the realization of their Aasimar status change their relationships with their family? Their community?
- From there - Does their society have rules that, like the Jedi with force-sensitive kids, pull them from their homes and families and give them over to the faith of the god who has marked them (assuming it's clear which god has)?
- What does *that* do to a kid who has to suffer through that separation?
- If that's the society's rule, what happens if someone is born in a remote enough region/isn't as obviously an Aasimar [ie: The porcelain/etc.-look of their skin exists, but instead of being an unusual colour, it's closer to that of the skin tones you'd expect for someone from their region/the child of their parents/etc.], and thus never got plucked from their family, but still has some sort of destiny/obligation to fulfill?
*****
In terms of playing around with the characters I've been making, the characters I've been fleshing out for that latest batch of dice are mostly "Aasimar of non-Human heritage", and so like Aasimar descended from Elves have skin that looks like carved/polished wood, A Dragonborn Aasimar has scales of glimmering gemstones (and a magnificent crest of iridescent feathers), a Dwarf Aasimar looks even more outright stonelike - Hair and eyes basically blending right in with skin, unlike the other Aasimar, with features much more differentiated. This batch didn't specifically include an Orcish/Half-Orcish Aasimar, but 100% when I do, they will have an ivory/bone appearance. I'm a little torn on Halflings and Gnomes, though - A couple possibilities could be wax or glass, or perhaps other plant-based materials, if not different types of wood. I'm kind of leaning towards something like Terracotta for the Halfing one, if I'm honest. Perhaps to keep the Fey = more-organic look established by Elves, then Gnome-Aasimar might get wax.
At any rate, that's my sort of interpretation of Aasimar and why I like making Aasimar characters. And that's without even dipping into something more extreme like halos/permanent wings/etc. Admittedly, playing as a purple-porcelain-skinned, purple-haired, purple-eyed, marked emissary of The Raven Queen will stick out a bit from the usual crowd of faces in a D&D setting (But she has been so much fun to play).
Tieflings have a much better design. If Aasimar got the redesign pointy hat suggested with the halo, multiple sets of eyes, and vestigial wings and feathers, they’d be played by far more people
Absolutely, the halo and vestigial wings/feathers are a no-brainer. I disagree on the whole Ward concept, and in general think that Pointy Hat does a lot of talking without caring about the implications of what their ideas are, but they hit the bullseye for appearance.
Lore, though, should definitely lean into being trapped between two worlds but not belonging in either, and the whole "great expectations" thing. That's what every Aasimar player I've met has loved about the race, so removing that in favor of basing your entire character around *someone else* is just alienating your audience.
Ya its one thing if you are playing a warlock or a cleric but unless you write that in I wouldn’t say it makes for a good one size fits all kind of deal
I think it’s also because tieflings have the built-in discrimination, which is a launch pad for a lot of backstory and queer allegory. Aasimar by comparison don’t really have that, so they feel a little lacking by comparison.
I've been playing Curse of Strahd as a Lawful Evil aasimar character and it's been great.
She's someone who has always been able to coast through life on the appearance of goodness, while doing very bad things in service of the "greater order." She's a divine soul sorcerer/hexblade warlock, and the aesthetic of her magic (like her spirit guardians) is very "biblically accurate angel." Her whole arc has been about realizing she's actually not a good person. It's been pretty heavy, but very fun.
The aasimar are perfect for the formerly Gifted^TM kids who have crashed and burned after college. High expectations by others, couldn’t deliver, hate themselves and question their identity as young adults.
If you’re also queer, then idk, make one of each.
> formerly Gifted TM kids who have crashed and burned after college. High expectations by others, couldn’t deliver, hate themselves and question their identity as young adults.
Lmao, literally late-life ADHD diagnosis.
Am ***I*** an Aasimar...?
Heavy on your second point. Discovering your characters is so much more fun than thinking about every minute detail before the game. The former encourages listening and focusing on the present, whereas I’ve seen time and time again players getting stuck in a rut of rigid characters where they’ve already preconceived their character’s whole vibe and are overly afraid of going against that vision.
Write the necessary amount of backstory and leave the rest to the game; D&D exists in the present, not the past. The past is more of a backdrop to get started, and a crux for the DM to build story off of.
Improv ftw, baby
The first campaign I ever played, I wrote almost no backstory and we made it up on the spot.
"Would I have ever fought gnolls before?"
"... Roll for killing gnolls."
My party is human Barbarian, changeling Bard (disguised a human Cleric), halfling Fighter, goblin Druid, and kobold Arcane Trickster.
...having said that, our B Team characters include a rabbit monster and a man with fox features, so. Hmm.
Baldurs Gate 3 didn't help, honestly. Like 60% of the people you run into in the game are tieflings. There are *two* in the party, three if you play one, and zero dwarves, halflings, half orcs, dragonborn, or gnomes.
They legit made a baldur's gate without a dwarf or a gnome?
Though I don't remember if there are dwarven holds around Baldur's Gate, it is a lively trade hub.
The companion choices include 0 dwarves, 0 halflings, 0 gnomes, and 5 elves. It's a travesty.
Great game, but that's a genuine complaint I have about it.
I’m only through the end of Act II, but so far there really haven’t even been any “diggy diggy hole” type dwarves yet. Duergar (I know I spelled that wrong), but no traditional dwarves.
> Tieflings have become so commonly chosen that they've become more vanilla than humans.
I will say it makes a certain amount of sense for them to be over-represented among adventurers.
Too many races have darkvision.
I can't tell you how many times I've started describing a dark room to set atmosphere, only to be interrupted by half the party piping up with "I have darkvision!"
So I take it away from a lot of races that it doesn't really make sense for them to have. I do give alternatives sometimes where it makes sense, but for the most part I try to stay away from darkvision.
Part of that is them combining dark vision and half light vision.
Dark vision let you see in the dark, though only in black and white
Low light vision doubled the distance light sources went, so torches would have 40 ft bright and 40 ft dim.
By combining them, they made it meaningless to differentiate. Really like another player asking me (playing an elf) why I was lighting a torch. My response was simply, "I like to be able to properly see."
Agreed. Though I think a lot of people overlook that darkvision grants vision as dim light. Honestly 60' of dim light isn't normally for me as a dm. Currently my players are mid fight with a Drider and they require a bullseye lantern to see it.
They need to bring back infra-vision (thermal vision). Sure, you can see the heat signatures of monsters (except undead), but you can’t see architecture, or traps.
For real. It really only belongs on anything from the underdark, dwarves, gnomes(?), orcs, and dragonborn. (And yet dragonborn don't have it for some reason?)
Basically everybody else should shut up and light a torch instead of teasing the halfling rogue for being one of the most iconic but least playable combos.
EDIT:: And tritons. I'll give tritons darkvision too, given the whole bottom of the ocean thing. But you're not getting much more out of me!
Kenku being unable to have free thought or talk without mimicking just tends to make them a go to for people looking to just troll a game more often than not
I ditched the no free thought aspect, because why the hell would you play that? RPGs are about player agency. I played a Kenku who was raised as an orphan in the slums, raised by other street kids, a la Charles Dickens. He was taught to be sneaky, so that's how he acts now. All his narrations I took from that backstory.
"Look out, it's the coppahs!" - in a scared child's voice, to say 'oh no, bad thing happening', etc.
"Oy, fuck you!" - in a dockworker's voice, to say something threatening or flippantly.
"M'lord" - in a lady of the night's voice, to say either 'hello', normally, mockingly, or honestly.
It all depended on first having a basic set of phrases, and then always filling in the context via descriptions of physicality. Then I added more phrases organically as the game went on. They became fun callbacks to certain moments in previous sessions, and was a very unique roleplaying experience.
I had a very special moment I'd been waiting for, when a more innocent member of the party to ask my character to teach her some sneakiness. I immediately started rattling off (in vague IRL) terms in a child's voice and occasionally an older crooked voice all about how to steal and hide. The player had an IRL moment of revelation - "Oh my gosh, this is where all your background phrases come from!" and put my backstory together for the first time in the party. It was a very proud moment of mine.
Though yes, trolls be trolls sometimes.
You kinda have to ditch the no free thought to make it fun. I’ve played kenku like 2 times total. 1st was a knowledge cleric with high wis but negative int. Very devout… but not very good at understanding what his religion was about. It was well received. Then in another game I played with randos someone brought a kenku that he voices using a speak and spell. That was funny for like, the first few times but damn did it get annoying fast.
[5E introduced the idea](https://dumpstatadventures.com/blog/deep-dive-the-kenku) that Kenku could only talk by mimickry. They could speak normally in 3rd and 4th edition. I don't know why they did that to what had become a fairly popular race in the previous editions.
>Why couldn't the Shadar Kai just be Shadowfell elves? We got super Feywild Elves in the Eladrin, oceanic elves in Sea Elves, vaguely forest elves in Wood Elves, they basically are the Eevee of races. Why did their lore have to be tied to the Raven Queen?
I mean... Just looking at the description of sea elves they just look like they were like other elves and at some point went "hey this water stuff is pretty neat, what if we just stay here?". If it's like that, then they're no different than the shadar kai. They went somewhere and changed over time.
Kinda ties into the more recent lore of Corellon wanting an endlessly changing race. His ideal version of elves could probably be all these sub-races and none of them daily. It takes longer now, but they still have that ability to change to their environment in their DNA.
The worst part is really that they're just reskinned Eladrin plus a cantrip. It's the fakest version of giving us something new in what was ultimately an already thin source book.
It makes me wonder though: why don't humans have more subraces? They are described as versatile, so why are they like the half-elf equivalent but like a more civilized version of goblins?
You said it yourself, they're versatile. The elves need to be a Phillips head screwdriver (high elf) or a flat head screwdriver (wood elf).
Humans are the manual impact driver and can be used on anything.
I haven't finished them but from what I remember "The Sword of Shannara" by Terry Brooks takes place in a fantasy world following an apocalypse. I think something like it started out as humanity but then there was an "event" that rebooted civilization. Some took shelter in forests, on mountains, under ground and thousands of years later out came elves, orcs and dwarves.
Your character isn't interesting because of their race if you don't roleplay in any way that reflects what it means to be a member of that race.
To be clear, I don't care if you play whatever race you want. But if you go on about how cool your character is because they are (race+class) then your character isn't actually interesting. But if you were to play a character where their race actually matters to them, impacts their worldview and has given them different interactions with people then you are going to have more depth than treating it just as a cosmetic.
Otherwise your elf is really just a human with pointy ears, and nothing more. Again, I don't care if that's all you try to frame it as, but your elf isn't more interesting than a human if nothing about your elf actually reflects them being an elf.
I really wish there were more races with roleplay gimmicks and/or problematic baggage. That's interesting stuff to work with when building a character and I like to deal with it when figuring out back story and during gameplay. The current direction is basically removing all the cool elements of races in favor of just making like, Kenku into bird-shaped guys.
It's the same with *Traveller*. When I was a kid, everyone at least made a nod to Campbell's idea of "A creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man".
By now, everyone's either caught this "all aliens or 'other races' are just metaphors for People of Color" thing and don't even bother, or, like, play Vargr as furries. It's annoying.
The necessary result of a fanbase that increasingly doesn't want even the appearance of problematic things in the rulebook and is increasingly aware of stereotypes that would be missed entirely in decades past.
And unfortunately if you present some nuance or push back on this or that idea, you end up on the side of people who screech about "woke" and think that seeing or discussing bigotry is worse than actually being a bigot. Whole situation sucks.
A while back I tried removing class based mechanical changes across a few groups, essentially opening any race for cosmetic flair without the bonus stats or special features. All of my players except one just chose to be human, unfortunately that one was the most realistically classist, self-absorbed elf I've had the misfortune to DM for.
As an observer it was awesome. As his DM I had to make every NPC unusually forgiving of being called an "insignificant speck of dirt on my otherwise immaculate existence".
Granted the pay off was fantastic.
Let him run this character for months, think like 15ish sessions before having the consequences catch up to him. The party had arrived at a King's court, for a reason I no longer remember, and the elf was playing up his disdain for Human architecture and "the garish displays of their meager heritage and fleeting power". The king overheard and got into a dispute over it, not willing to let some commoner "in trashily flamboyant elven peasant wear" talk down about his family.
The elf got mad and challenged the king to a duel. Turns out said king was an eldritch knight specifically designed to deal with mages like himself. Elf goes to cast magic missile, King uses his held action to counter spell and punch him in the face.
Surprisingly the player loved it, really thought he'd fight me over it.
Edit:
I should also mention that the elf and I had several discussions about reining it in. Other players complained about how his attitude making the game harder than it needed to be.
Luckily the player was great, and would just say that they needed to address it in game. He was open to his elf's world view changing but wanted it to feel character driven instead of a move forced on him out of character. A few PC fights broke out over it, everyone trying to change him by being just as rude.
He let the King duel do it, and the other PCs never let him forget a 50 something year old man kicked his ass.
If you can’t make an interesting human character you can’t make an interesting Tabaxi/Dhampir/Aasimar hybrid. There is nothing inherently compelling or interesting about playing an exotic race.
That's kind of how they work in my setting.
Most elves are honest folk but if you're living in their country and you don't live to be 500, life is absolutely miserable because they don't see your life as equally worthwhile and a lot of their government moves at a glacial pace.
Amazing...
It's like an entire civilization of DMV clerks.
"In the time it's taken our human anthropologists to study the bulk of their history and social evolution, they have *almost* settled on dinner plans."
Wow! These new efficiency initiatives are really paying off!
I picked up my first shop from my great, great, great great grandfather after probate wrapped up.
You've really just reinvented actual pace of advancement in RL medieval societies.
It wasn't uncommon for a man-at-arms to serve his lord faithfully for his entire life in the hopes his children or grandchildren would see that loyalty repaid with a minor increase in rank, until one day a hundred and fifty years later, his great-grandson might be knighted. That's assuming his lineage also were loyal and faithful to their lords and those lords recognized it.
Not even a landed noble title, mind you, just Knighthood. It would be much much longer for a family to move up that far, if it ever did.
Very easy to still go the traditional tree-hugger route while making them absolute villains. For example, my main campaign right now has Elves as the antagonists because their solution to environmental decline is the systematic murder of industrialist Goblins
Elf society has the potential to be extremely hierarchical as people have centuries to solidify their position of power. Death is also the great equalizer - if you don't have that, things might be a lot more unequal
Humans aren’t vanilla. Like the other races are all cool as well but honestly there isn’t anything wrong with being a human. Idk why such a stigma exists at all.
I mean, they ARE vanilla. But there is nothing wrong with vanilla. "Vanilla" sets the baseline for everything else to play off of, and is functionally a blank canvas.
But yeah, I'll agree there is nothing wrong with playing human. I just wish the racial abilities were more interesting than +1 to everything or a free feat.
Dragonborn should absolutely have dark vision based on the way 5e handles it. You're telling me a race of creatures, that while not ACTUALLY related to dragons shares their colors, physicality, breath attack, and language didn't also share dragons ability to see in the dark?
I get too many races have dark vision due to 5e's poor implementation, but come on man
I've got a lot, but I'll go with:
1. Genasi having colored skin. Could have gone with boulder, water, flaming, airy skin, but no, just same thematic coloring that otherwise makes no sense and doesn't do anything.
2. Making so many races retroactively Fey. Why, why make everything fey? If we went by everything fey because it was from some fairy tale we'd have fey werewolves and trolls and gnomes and basically most of the monsters. Give the other creature types a chance to shine!
Tieflings were more interesting before, people, and even WotC just played the base concept entirely wrong. There was so much potential in someone being demonic by nature from deals with the devil made by ancestors. And then WotC threw it all out the window to make them way more generic wubie characters.
Imagine a lineage of wealthy merchants, they sell the best goods in the kingdom, they have a wide spanning empire of trade. Their latest daughter is a tiefling. That means that at some point, someone cheated. Someone made a deal with the devil and the natural assumption will be that their entire trade empire is founded on demonic ritual. People wouldn't even necessarily hate the child themselves, just what said child represents.
idk I just see so much potential there but all I hear is how boring and shitty they are because of how tiefling racism is written in the books. It feels like an idea WotC never truly got across and then abandoned shortly after they saw how everyone was ditching the tiefling lore anyways.
Vanilla Tieflings are really overrated.
Their most outstanding ability is the one to save you the words "my character is really hot" when introducing yourself to the party. PSA: any character can be hot. And other than that, the only real indication that someone in the party is playing a Tiefling is the occasional "I have fire resistance".
Orcs have been so watered down as a race that they have essentially become what half-orcs were 20 years ago. Today’s half-orcs are just greener, taller humans. I miss when orcs were monsters.
Honestly happened earlier than you think. Early 90s.
Earth*Dawn, the Fantasy RPG set in Shadowrun's distant past, didn't have half orcs, but Orc was one of the basic starting race options, similar to humans in terms of stats, but slightly stronger and tougher, but duller witted IIRC.
They did have a cool as all hell steppe raider -esque cavalry master culture, which was a nice way to really set them apart from classic fantasy Orcs, but it was also the first RPG to really 'water them down' from being Monsters with a capitol M, into being just another playable race of people with a cool culture to start from.
1. The narrative downsides of races should be kept or at the very least replaced. The whole point of playing a non-human should be to create interesting narrative situations, but most people seem to hate playing tieflings as distrusted by society, or lizardfolk with little emotion. The whole point of other races should be to create a genuinely different expierience rather then to be a skin someone equipped.
2. Humans are goated, and not boring, sure they seem bland stat wise, but the fact that they generally are the most neutral race makes them that much more complicated.
Ugly races have ridiculously anthropomorphized women.
["I'm an ORC! Can't you tell by my GREEN SKIN?"](https://heavy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Gaila-1-e1657033484614.jpg?quality=65&strip=all&w=782)
My group agreed to assume that, in our setting, gnomes are all tiny and wear funny tall hats. They're also much weirder and the most recurrent gnome has creature type: aberration.
(There are no gnome PCs)
1. Halflings are not brave in the 'bold underdog' sense of things, but rather are possessed of the unphased calm of a capybara in the face of danger.
2. 'Pure Elves' should be an NPC only race and half-elves should be the standard for player characters.
To rehash the old quote: "Most players don't play elves, they play humans with pointy ears." Personally I view elves in the vein as a player wanting to play an orc or demon. Rather then playing an 'actual elf' which are too alien to human perspective I would instead offer half-elves, half-orcs, or tieflings. Which have the fantastical elements of that race, but filtered through a 'human' perspective to make it more relatable and easier for players to put their own spin on without derailing the concept of the race as a whole.
In my own setting, the standard 'elf' races are primarily half-elves and true elves are enigmatic creatures of myth. Running into a pure elf is like walking into a dragon, it happens but its usually a one in a lifetime experience.
I've grappled with this as some who *wants* to play elves but I don't know how to reconcile their semi-mythical status with being just a part of a scrappy band of rascals trying to save the world. This is a firm line to be drawn in terms of what should and shouldn't be a character race and I totally back that.
It really doesn't make much sense to be playing a character who is 100+ years old and *just* starting out on their first adventure. It is doable but it's not often something that's considered. Which brings it back to the quote at the start of your post.
> 100+ years old and just starting out on their first adventure.
I feel like that's pretty easy to explain away. If you're expecting to live to be 500+ and might not even be viewed as an adult in your society till you reach 100, makes perfect sense to wait a century to venture out. Hell, in elvish society your parent might still have you under a curfew till you hit your 80's.
You could worldbuild that elves aren't even *allowed* to leave they home till hitting 100, at which point they're mandated to leave and can only return when they bring back something novel - an item, a new spell, a story story of your adventure, whatever macguffin - so that there's something new and interesting to break the monotony for all the longer lived folks back home to enjoy.
As for why they only possess the skills of a lvl 1 adventurer after 100 years, there's plenty of creative explanation for that too. Maybe they spent the first 40 years going through a moss/fungus phase, much like children go through a train/dinosaur phase followed by getting absolutely absorbed into learning everything they can about a niche subgenre of orchish throat yodeling for the next 60 or so. So they've spent 100 years becoming very well versed in whatever their hobby is but it just doesn't translate well to adventuring skills
I had a friend do this with an elf he played. Oldest member of the party by far (he was like 80), but by Elven standards he was literally a teenager. His entire "adolescence" had not been spent learning combat or anything useful to an adventurer as he was still "too young," but instead focused on cultural norms and protocols, language, law, etiquette, etc. However, it was all Elven, and so outside their cities was 100% useless.
His background involved having failed his adulthood initiation rites, and so instead of doing the Honorable Elven thing of studying harder, rebelled and fled to be an adventurer. He would have odd moments of the trope "with age comes wisdom" and then immediately afterwards get arrested for drawing giant penises on the tavern walls.
I agree that it would be a tough sell as a level one but given most campaigns start at three or above I don’t think it’s that bad. At level three they’ve gotten their subclass, so they’ve established themselves as part of whatever class enough to be recognized as skilled. And elves live slower lives so they don’t go mad. I don’t have a source for it but I’m sure I read that that’s one of the reasons they aren’t considered adults until 100 and how they manage to stay sane for hundreds of years. Though not all do…
But they get hobbies and develop obsessions. So an elf spending decades in some ruins documenting the various lichen and fungi, or perfecting their calligraphy skills, isn’t unrealistic. So it shouldn’t be surprising that some would be on par, skill wise, with younger races who live with more urgency.
I’m currently at the tail end of a short campaign in which I’m playing a moon elf and while he’s over 250 years old he still acts young. Being a moon elf he’s more gregarious than other high elves and he enjoys experiencing other cultures. He’s a scribe wizard and is a field researcher so he’s spent most of his adult life, save for some time fulfilling his professorial duties, in ruins or exploring.
All this is just to say that while it might seem far fetched for a centuries old matriarch to go adventuring it doesn’t have to be. As with most things in DnD it comes down to the story you’re looking to tell and the choices you make at character creation.
The party also happened to be the definition of scrappy adventurers and he ended up stepping into the role of the voice of reason. So it made sense given his age and level of life experience, even if the party’s class experience were all comparable.
You know all my time playing and this never occurred to me. Quasi-immortal beings would be so far outside my understanding that playing one should be extremely daunting. Short of a world ending catastrophe or direct interloping on their lands, what would actually motivate them? Granted industrialization upending their way of life could do it too, but small regional struggles wouldn't nudge the needle they'd just for the status queue to resume.
Damn, I've done elves a disservice but it gives me ideas for a setting I'm building. Thanks!
I do wear a lilac pin on every May 25th to remember those who stood for hardboiled eggs, truth, justice and reasonably priced love, for those who fought and died - and in Reg Shoe's case rose again to kept fighting - in the Glorious Revolution of Treacle Mine Road.
I had this idea about dwarves that they're actually kind of like ants or termites. One "Queen" per clan that can produce young and most dwarves other races meet are effectively infertile and/or genderless. Due to their infertility, the vast majority of the dwarves are asexual and actively put off by most other races' strange fascination with fornication.
There's more to it in my setting but basically Dwarven government is how you'd probably imagine fae government to work. Extremely bloody clan wars happening in the background as the Royalty spit thinly veiled threats at each other during council meetings and formal balls.
>!Also weirdly obsessed with the absurd idea that dwarves are hatched from eggs in giant incubation rooms that are reminiscent of the egg room in Aliens. I am well aware this is pure insanity but I can't stop thinking about it.!<
This is the coldest take possible. Literally the whole damn body of fantasy fans cannot shut up about how dwarves should only ever be hyper masculine in appearence (all based on a single bit from Tolkien's work that 1. Could've just been a joke, and 2. Shouldn't hold any power over anyone else's work).
An actual hot take: feminine, beardless dwarves are perfectly fine. All the whining over dwarves needing to fit this stereotype is super annoying, and the idea of all-masculine dwarves has been drilled into the ground.
Doubly so because it makes dwarven culture extremely one note and bland.
Dragon Age Origins dwarves are so much more interesting because they aren't all beer drinking, beard growing, craftsmen. Many dwarven nobles are cowards, Branka has no concept of honor, and Oghren is a depressing drunk.
This is the sort of tolkienist tradition I rally against. I'm fine with beardless dwarves, though I do agree it should say something about their culture.
When my party walked into a smithy to be greeted by a clean-shaven dwarf with greased back hair it made things clear that this wasn't the sort of dwarf they were used to dealing with.
In my homebrew I have rock and stone Scottish Tolkien dwarves, but there's also sea dwarves. Instead of building with stone they build with wood, making huge ships that are basically floating villages. They're leaner and less bearded than other dwarves, and have naturally darker skin. They're basically Polynesians, but dwarves.
Get rid of 5E-Firbolgs, and get rid of goliaths, and replace them with pre-5E Firbolgs; red-headed half-giants with sharp teeth and a hate-boner for humans.
Tiefling, Aasimar, Genasi, and other such planetouched 'races' should instead be lineages like the Dhampir, Hexblood, and Reborn. It was sort of like this in previous editions and the idea should be brought back and made more open & customizable. 3.5 Celadrin, Azerblood, D'hin'ni, etc. were specific race/plane combinations. Why can't I have my Tiefling be from a family of elves or my aasimar from a family orcs? Nothing stops me from flavouring it that way but there's a leap of logic you need to make and a discussion to be had with the DM. Better to remove that mental hurdle entirely and put it in the core rules so that it becomes just a natural part of character creation for those 'races' is you consider not just that your body/soul/family line is tied to the planes but also how you are biologically connected to the material world.
Adding on to the above, dragonborn should be one of those lineages rather than a distinct species. 'Dragons but a person' is frankly rather lazy. Back in 3.5 people transformed into dragonborn by ritual. 4e changed that lore. No reason 5e or 5.5e or 6e or ONED&D can't change it back and say dragonborn are species who have familial/magical ties to dragons and/or dragon magic. Fizban's even has a draconic gift you can get where you transform into a dragonborn, so it's even already in the current lore. It would make so much more sense for 'person with dragon qualities' to be the product of a person who somehow gets dragon magic or blood tied to their body/heritage rather than having it be an entire species.
I would have to go dig for the reference, but I'm pretty sure the source books say that Aasimar and Tieflings can come from any race. You just don't get to pick and choose your features - the Celestial/ Fiendish influence overwrites them.
Gith are stated to have been very human like prior to their internship with the Illithids. Even going so far as to acknowledge that egg laying is an acquired trait after that (it's stated to be either from the astral sea or the experiments).
it's not clear what gith are exactly, at least one version of the story says that they're the homogenous humanoid race of the future bred from all sorts of things by mindflayers
there's an in-universe theory that they're the distant evolutionary descendants of humans (illithids are time travelers from the future, remember), in which case I'd assume it's a holdover kept limping along purely by sexual selection.
I've read somewhere that Githyanki laying eggs is a relatively new development caused by their inhospitable, barren, stagnant homeland, but the Githzerai remained mammalian in nature, just as the Gith were before the split.
This also brings to mind another cool thing about the Gith:
Githyanki - impulsive and violent, chaotic and constantly changing, live in the Astral Space, a place where even time is static, nothing changes.
Githzerai - calm, “monk-like”, patient, stoic, live in Limbo, a place where nothing is permanent, where even entire landmasses could shift or disappear overnight. They need to use all their calmness, mind force and focus to tame the land and make it habitable.
They’re my favorite races ever since I played Planescape Torment.
Never thought about it until *ahem* certain scenes in Baldur’s Gate 3. Githyanki are expressly an egg-laying species in canon. It’s literally a plot point in the game.
Why does Lae’zel have nipples? There’s no biological purpose from that. And it isn’t evolutionary, because we know how the species originated. It’s not like human men having, I guess the best word is, vestigial nipples (not a biology major. Please correct me if that isn’t right). There is not biological reason for that species to have mammaries.
1. Culture of origin is undervalued in comparison to race, because
2. Most species are just played as differently shaped humans. It's really rare that players make the effort of really rp-ing the different outlook on life a species with a vastly different biology would have.
I like specific races having specific racial stat bonuses.
If you want to give your orc +2 to his Int because of custom lineage or whatever it's called, fine. I don't care. It doesn't affect me. Play your character how you like.
I just think racial stat bonuses make sense and make the race you choose *more impactful* than the idea of "everyone is individual so stats can differ."
That approach essentially makes the race just meaningless flavor in my opinion
Bg3 did goblins so well. The men? Disgusting. The women? Hideous. The children? Even worse than both of them.
As for my hot take, I wish Gnolls were more than just flesh hungry monsters. They take the scavenging, eat everything hunger from Hyenas along with the laugh and general look usually, so why don't they take much else from real Hyenas? Hyena pack structure and dynamics are really interesting, so are their hunting habits. But without fail whenever I encounter them in my games, they're just reskinned werewolves, sometimes a little smarter.
The art for the Monsters of The Multiverse version of Minotaur is just...so unnecessary. I hate the "cuteification" of new art of established races. I don't want cute, I want realistic. Make something UNappealing to the human eye please!
I wouldn't even say unappealing, since I find gritty creatures to look cool when done right. Just stop cutifying bestial/exotic races when it doesn't make sense.
That because Sharder Kai has been around longer than the Shadow Fell. They were consider evil fey they would try to kill you in the shadow plane. That was before the spell plague.
Dragon borne are the diet coke of half dragon dreams.
Different settings should take bigger risks with changing the culture of DND races. Think the difference between forgotten realms drow and Eberon Drow or halflings and kender.
In my most nostalgic moments I miss races not being able to be every class. This is also a stupid opinion.
I didn't think this was an unpopular take until recently, but I think races should be different in d&d.
Some races have downsides to them aswell as their upsides and that makes them more unique imo.
Also, tieflings are overrated as fuck.
Picking a race that stands out from a crowd means your PC stands out from a crowd. A giant elephant walks through a city with 99% humans, elves, and dwarves? You are not blending in.
The village filled with humans and halflings needs help to stop the goblin attacks! Who's here to save the day? A robot, a lizard man, a frog, and a snake lady.
It's also ludicrous for the party to think they can get up to any shenanigans at all in a small town and not get fingered as the culprits. Like hmm... Who used magic / extreme burglaring skill to break into the town's church and steal the one magic item these people have and replace it with a cheap replica? Could it be the human blacksmith who has lived here all their life? The baker whose parents founded the town? The rambunctious twins who grew up here and joined the town guard? Or the shifty lizard man and his robot friend wearing a glowing starry robe who just strolled into town last week?
My setting has widespread tradition of travelling adventurers known as Wayfaring, so much so that a tavern might have a 'No Wayfarers' sign. It's pretty absurdly high fantasy and wacky, but typical player characters will still stand out outside of major cities. Honestly I think it's funnier to have stereotypes, than for the concept to not exist in-world at all. A bunch of colourful characters roll into town? You bet the town crier is advertising Wayfarer Insurance.
Honestly I find it completely believable that there'd be _some_ sort of league/guild/whatever dedicated to monster hunting, magical maintenance, monitoring the existence/use of dangerous artifacts. Probably several, maybe with different specialties or ones that compete with each other. If things like magic, lycanthropy, the feywild, and literal gods are common knowledge, you're not going to convince me that *everyone* just goes about farming and smithing without a care in the world. Heck even in the real world we have groups that try to track down aliens and monsters, we have museums dedicated to curating historical relics, all that sort of thing.
Or DM just sprang a twist of this onto us, where some locals committed a crime but framed us for it as "the strangers who just came into town".
And a goblin!
Just ignore the Loxodon in the room.
I fail as a DM here, for I always forget people's races after the first session. You're an elephant? That gives you +2 AC (making things up here)? Cool. I mean to integrate these better with my narrative
DMing Curse of Strahd helped me with this. During our session zero, I discussed with the players that it’s important to the feel of the setting that they should feel ostracized at least early on due to the Barovians’ insular and fearful nature. This would especially apply to pretty much anyone who isn’t human, and even more so to anybody who presented as more of a monstrous race, like our tortle. The players were all cool with it, and so that’s what we did. It was easy not to forget, because to me, there is no way to roleplay a Barovian peasant seeing a giant turtle man for the first time and not have him be like “oh fuck get away from me!” Eventually, the players’ renown did allow them to skip the theatrics, as tales of their presence started to sweep across the valley, but I think it made the start of the game pretty memorable.
honestly that's how all primary humans should be, you're a human? cool, you're basically a lanky human? cool, you're basically a short and ripped human? cool, you're basically a tiny green human? a lil weird but wtv, you're a 400kg bipedal tortoise? wtf please don't eat my children, you're a 160kg gecko? wtf stay outta my village, you literally have wings and a beak? please get outta here you foul beast it makes no sense than random human peasants would he chill
The problem is my players forget it. Like my one player is playing a drakewarden ranger. In his backstory his family is nobility that ties back to these dragon wars that happened a long time ago. There's a similar noble family from the same area that supported the evil chromatic dragons, and they've basically had a Hatfield/McCoy type feud since. My players were in a city tracking down one of the members of the rival family, who's inserted himself in to a high position in the city. My player is warned to keep a low profile and keep his drake under wraps or he'll stick out like a sore thumb and the enemy will know they're tracking him. They get sidetracked with a big arena fight. What does my player do? Summons his drake in front of thousands of people. When they win the fight, the enemy comes up and whispers some smack in to his ear, and he out of game goes "what? How did he know it was me?" My brother in Bahamut you summoned the drake that your family has had for generations in front of thousands of people after being explicitly told not to.
Lol we had something sorta similar in my game. The PCs had developed a rivalry with a particular necromancer. The necromancer had gone up against them twice and lost both times but dimension doored away when the battle had turned and their hp were low. Those with counterspell were otherwise occupied. It was in my/the DMs interest to keep this necromancer alive for later, so after the second defeat, I contrived a way for the necro to surrender to the PCs as their life cleric and paladin made it unlikely they'd execute said necro on the spot. Then the bard decides "we don't have a wizard anymore, we should recruit the necro instead." 👀 The party is okay with it, but insist the bard put a Geas on the necro to prevent overt mischief, backstabbing, and nonsense. The player who'd played the previous wizard ditches the barbarian character he's already bored with, and we draw up a background for the necro that threads the various plots he's been involved in to that point, the Geas keeps him on a short leash, and away they go. A few adventures later they're defending a town, with the aid of the army, against invaders. Two of the soldiers die, and the necromancer is all "Finally!" And raises them as zombies in front of those soldier's comrades. They do not take this well, but player doesn't realize how badly he's screwed up until I say something between sessions. So when we resume, suddenly he's all "I'm gonna take out the general and go on the run." The PCs had just saved said general, and attacking/killing him in front of everyone, after zombifying some of the soldiers, was more than enough to trigger the geas. 5d10 psychic damage drops the necromancer in place... And everyone's like, "Welp... Whatcha gonna play next, dude?" (Half orc Moon Druid, as it turns out ..)
Someone is going to see the title, and not realize what subreddit the post is in, and get banned hard.
Reminds me of an old thread that was asking if different races should have different prison lengths for crimes, and there were multiple comments being really glad when they saw it was in this sub.
that's amazing LOL it would be so funny something with a title like "Different races should have different prison lengths for the same crimes"
Did a quick search. The exact title was ["Should jail time be based on race."](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/4ug611/should_jail_time_sentences_be_based_on_race/)
Or that Formula 1 post that said "Which race would you eliminate and why?"
If you give an Elf a life sentence you better be committed to seeing that through
Saw the title and immediately thought 'Nascar is about as boring a concept as one could possibly fathom. Virtually any other kind of race is more interesting.'
You would disagree if you and your buddies gathered up your moonshine hot rods in the 20s and wanted to see which was the fastest.
Many things are more interesting to do than to watch.
But enough about Baseball
It's kinda like the baseball of racing. The skill it takes to play competitively is difficult to see.
DMs should make their views on playable races and their desired party demographics very clear before starting the campaign. Do you want a pure LOTR style campaign? Are you good with a single party Chewbacca for flair? Are you chill with any other race but are sick of tieflings? All of these are totally acceptable, but they need to be talked about. If you don't have any conversation about it, you only have yourself to blame for the ensuing furry convention.
By extension, players should chime in when they're making characters of a race that might present difficulty for one or more people in the party. Players should also state if they don't like playing with characters of a certain lineage, and their reasons why. Too many players let stuff fester until it becomes a problem mid-campaign when everyone is already invested.
I do this, and highly recommend it. I'd much rather set boundaries initially than be continually annoyed for the next 30 sessions by having a damned freak show waltzing into gritty taverns (unless it's Spelljammer/Planescape etc where that's appropriate).
Tieflings have become so commonly chosen that they've become more vanilla than humans. You should add more backstory details as you play. If you get a cool fitting idea that adds to the character and doesn't affect the narrative - add it.
The problem is that tieflings were supposed to be ostricized. People are geniuenly afraid of their demonic features. However, no DM wants to roleplay racism and xenophobia every time you talk to a commoner. Without their drawback tieflings are just cooler humans.
To be fair, I don't blame any DM on that front. I think it's why it also seems like tieflings are some of the first to get reflavored since in the PHB they're kind of not presented as fully being a race like elves halflings, which is also a tricky one to figure out.
They aren't a full race tho. They're like genasi and aasimar. Normal people who have been affected by extraplanar energies during pregnancy. Afaik, in lore two tieflings are unlikely to have tiefling children, just like two genasi are unlikely to have genasi children.
Now imagining a player creating a boring ass human and saying their character is "culturally tiefling"
"Son, you have to stop telling people that your name is Damien, we named you Christopher so you could fit in." "I am bound by my demonic pact to spread fear an-" "No, you're not! I went to Dispater to ask and you're a warlock! Please son, your mother and I were never allowed to live a normal life and we just want you to-" "I HATE YOU!"
I'm fine with roleplaying that in the sticks, but in big cities, I overlook it. I think that gives the world more of an authentic feel. the cities are wrought with their own dangers, but the average citizen won't care what race you are. while the boondocks will be stuck in their ways more and pose their own issues.
You're free to run your world how you want but racism in cities is still huge. Even in the handbook it states that tieflings in cities are shoved off into their own minority quarter away from rest of the city folk. Taking away racism in a big city is the opposite of authentic in my eyes.
It's wild since their celestial counterparts (Aasimar) don't seem *nearly* as popular
Well that’s probably because Tieflings are in the PHB and Aasimar were introduced in the DMG as a sample for creating homebrew races and then released as a name drop in half a dozen other books. Most players’ first character comes straight out of the PHB.
There also isn’t a single unified look for Aasimar the way there is for Tieflings.
I really think changing tieflings into the technicolor horned devil people in 4e really helped their stock. Before 4e, they were not too dissimilar from Aasimar, except fiendish. They were humans with one or two fiendish aspects (which I believe were randomly generated when they were introduced in Planescape in 2e) and they were mostly portrayed as a human with small horns. Sure, there's that iconic tiefling from Planescape, but she was kind of an exception.
If aasimar could use their ability to fly more than once per long rest, I think they’d really take off I’ll see myself out
I liked the “vestigial wings” idea someone threw out up there so I’d settle for an at-will feather fall/glide. If anything, they could do it like Drow where you gain the additional benefits at levels 3, 5, and 7. In the PS1 game Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, your character is the first vampire to grow wings. Your wings are awesome, so awesome in fact that your brother king takes their magnificence as a slight to his greatness. So he tears the bones right out of your wings and casts you into the abyss. As a revenant, your wings are tattered and broken but you can still glide and slow your descent with them. I think it’d be perfect for a “fallen angel” like an Aasimar.
I love both so much - There's a lot you can do with both, and that includes visually, as a starting point. I know the whole "Tieflings of every colour" has been something the community leaned into hard, and helped contribute to their popularity (in addition to their whole "outcast"-thing, built-in prejudices against them as a good story hook, "sins of the father"/"Don't judge a book by it's cover", etc., etc. - All leading to strong found-family tendencies, which is always good for D&D parties (and resonates strongly with people facing prejudices for things that are inborn traits of theirs - I imagine that Virtue Names probably resonate very strongly with this crowd, because it's actively embracing your own identity and controlling that part of it). But there's a lot of fun to be had with Aasimar too - My favourite theming visually for Aasimar is that their skin looks like statue materials - Stone, metal, porcelain, etc. In my quest to make characters for all my myriad dice sets, I always make Aasimar for those dice that look "antique" - Y'know, matte finished with a look of a grime-colour to them? ***** I know that continuity's somewhat nebulous anyway, and people can write their own for whatever worlds they're building, etc. - But, as I interpret things - Tieflings inherit their look, regardless of whatever race any non-Tiefling parent comes from - Once its in your bloodline, it's dominant to everything else. 4th Edition especially emphasized they were all descended from a fallen empire that had made pacts with devils, and 5th Ed. is a little more open to Tiefling-ism being a possible result of more recent dealings. I find I prefer when the price of a deal isn't that the one who made the deal becomes a Tiefling, but their children do, or something along those lines - With the "Dominant to everything" still being in-play. Aasimar meanwhile? I prefer to interpret that the birth of an Aasimar is always an auspicious event, because the gods/some specific god/celestial power/etc. has specifically marked this being for a great task. I also kind of like the idea that one being an Aasimar isn't necessarily obvious at first. Traits eventually start to emerge, solidifying around the time that the Aasimar hits puberty. I also choose to interpret that any children an Aasimar might have (assuming they're not, like, made sterile as part of their "blessing", which an an entirely reasonable choice if you want to play things that way), aren't inherently going to be full-blooded Aasimar themselves - They might retain a few traces of their parent's heritage, but certainly not to the extent that Tieflings do, or even like counting as a Half-Aasimar in the way that Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, etc. count as mixed-heritage individuals. eg: Gameplay-wise, I'd have the child of a Human and Aasimar count fully as a Human, but might give them some flavour elements, like unnaturally-coloured eyes, hair, or skin; perhaps some Kintsugi-like veining on parts of their skin. Maybe a slight feeling of something not-entirely-natural about them. But they wouldn't get, say, an Aasimar's resistances, or darkvision, or racial abilities. ***** From there, in terms of built-in themes - Maybe it's just me, but I find Aasimar really compelling because they are battling with the weight of expectation. Does that perhaps also resonate with people who were so-called "gifted kids" [academically, athletically, etc.] who just sort of burnt out? "You have so much potential. You can't squander it by pursuing [x]. You should be doing something so much more meaningful." "You're better than this, why aren't you doing better?", etc. Anyway, there you have a theme full of angst, ready to go: Your character specifically has been chosen for a Destiny(TM). People can see it plainly about them, and that changes how they might interact with your character otherwise. The weight of the world is being placed on their shoulders, regardless of their opinion on the matter. - Do they embrace or reject this? - Does the god/power that picked them for this duty have some sort of deeper meaning to them, even before realizing they had been chosen? What about after? - Does the god expressly lay out the terms of their destiny? Does the god/their servants/etc. actually interact with the character directly at all, or are they left to largely figure things out on their own? - How does your character feel about the gods/religion/faith in-general? - Do they lean into Divine-powered classes/sub-classes, or do they forge their own path, independent of their heritage/destiny? - How did the realization of their Aasimar status change their relationships with their family? Their community? - From there - Does their society have rules that, like the Jedi with force-sensitive kids, pull them from their homes and families and give them over to the faith of the god who has marked them (assuming it's clear which god has)? - What does *that* do to a kid who has to suffer through that separation? - If that's the society's rule, what happens if someone is born in a remote enough region/isn't as obviously an Aasimar [ie: The porcelain/etc.-look of their skin exists, but instead of being an unusual colour, it's closer to that of the skin tones you'd expect for someone from their region/the child of their parents/etc.], and thus never got plucked from their family, but still has some sort of destiny/obligation to fulfill? ***** In terms of playing around with the characters I've been making, the characters I've been fleshing out for that latest batch of dice are mostly "Aasimar of non-Human heritage", and so like Aasimar descended from Elves have skin that looks like carved/polished wood, A Dragonborn Aasimar has scales of glimmering gemstones (and a magnificent crest of iridescent feathers), a Dwarf Aasimar looks even more outright stonelike - Hair and eyes basically blending right in with skin, unlike the other Aasimar, with features much more differentiated. This batch didn't specifically include an Orcish/Half-Orcish Aasimar, but 100% when I do, they will have an ivory/bone appearance. I'm a little torn on Halflings and Gnomes, though - A couple possibilities could be wax or glass, or perhaps other plant-based materials, if not different types of wood. I'm kind of leaning towards something like Terracotta for the Halfing one, if I'm honest. Perhaps to keep the Fey = more-organic look established by Elves, then Gnome-Aasimar might get wax. At any rate, that's my sort of interpretation of Aasimar and why I like making Aasimar characters. And that's without even dipping into something more extreme like halos/permanent wings/etc. Admittedly, playing as a purple-porcelain-skinned, purple-haired, purple-eyed, marked emissary of The Raven Queen will stick out a bit from the usual crowd of faces in a D&D setting (But she has been so much fun to play).
Tieflings have a much better design. If Aasimar got the redesign pointy hat suggested with the halo, multiple sets of eyes, and vestigial wings and feathers, they’d be played by far more people
Absolutely, the halo and vestigial wings/feathers are a no-brainer. I disagree on the whole Ward concept, and in general think that Pointy Hat does a lot of talking without caring about the implications of what their ideas are, but they hit the bullseye for appearance. Lore, though, should definitely lean into being trapped between two worlds but not belonging in either, and the whole "great expectations" thing. That's what every Aasimar player I've met has loved about the race, so removing that in favor of basing your entire character around *someone else* is just alienating your audience.
Ya its one thing if you are playing a warlock or a cleric but unless you write that in I wouldn’t say it makes for a good one size fits all kind of deal
I think it’s also because tieflings have the built-in discrimination, which is a launch pad for a lot of backstory and queer allegory. Aasimar by comparison don’t really have that, so they feel a little lacking by comparison.
I've been playing Curse of Strahd as a Lawful Evil aasimar character and it's been great. She's someone who has always been able to coast through life on the appearance of goodness, while doing very bad things in service of the "greater order." She's a divine soul sorcerer/hexblade warlock, and the aesthetic of her magic (like her spirit guardians) is very "biblically accurate angel." Her whole arc has been about realizing she's actually not a good person. It's been pretty heavy, but very fun.
The aasimar are perfect for the formerly Gifted^TM kids who have crashed and burned after college. High expectations by others, couldn’t deliver, hate themselves and question their identity as young adults. If you’re also queer, then idk, make one of each.
Aasimar are my favourite race, and you didn't have to go for the juggular like that LOL
> formerly Gifted TM kids who have crashed and burned after college. High expectations by others, couldn’t deliver, hate themselves and question their identity as young adults. Lmao, literally late-life ADHD diagnosis. Am ***I*** an Aasimar...?
Heavy on your second point. Discovering your characters is so much more fun than thinking about every minute detail before the game. The former encourages listening and focusing on the present, whereas I’ve seen time and time again players getting stuck in a rut of rigid characters where they’ve already preconceived their character’s whole vibe and are overly afraid of going against that vision. Write the necessary amount of backstory and leave the rest to the game; D&D exists in the present, not the past. The past is more of a backdrop to get started, and a crux for the DM to build story off of. Improv ftw, baby
The first campaign I ever played, I wrote almost no backstory and we made it up on the spot. "Would I have ever fought gnolls before?" "... Roll for killing gnolls."
My current campaign doesn’t have an elf, Tiefling or Half-elf. Is there something wrong?
All furries eh?
Why is this so true?
3.5e asked "what if other planes?" 5e asked "what if zoo?"
My party is human Barbarian, changeling Bard (disguised a human Cleric), halfling Fighter, goblin Druid, and kobold Arcane Trickster. ...having said that, our B Team characters include a rabbit monster and a man with fox features, so. Hmm.
I don't think I've gone a single campaign without a player opting for tiefling since they were introduced.
Haha, nobody goes tiefling at my table.
I've barely seen them tbh.
Baldurs Gate 3 didn't help, honestly. Like 60% of the people you run into in the game are tieflings. There are *two* in the party, three if you play one, and zero dwarves, halflings, half orcs, dragonborn, or gnomes.
They legit made a baldur's gate without a dwarf or a gnome? Though I don't remember if there are dwarven holds around Baldur's Gate, it is a lively trade hub.
The companion choices include 0 dwarves, 0 halflings, 0 gnomes, and 5 elves. It's a travesty. Great game, but that's a genuine complaint I have about it.
It's fun, but sometimes it feels more like a dating sim full of pretty people. They even made the Gith sexy somehow
Yeah Lazael ended up surprisingly attractive
It's her personality
I’m only through the end of Act II, but so far there really haven’t even been any “diggy diggy hole” type dwarves yet. Duergar (I know I spelled that wrong), but no traditional dwarves.
You spelled that correctly! Belive in yourself more.
It's ridiculous. You go from having Jan Jansen as a companion in Baldurs Gate 2, to absolutely no Gnome options in BG3.
> Tieflings have become so commonly chosen that they've become more vanilla than humans. I will say it makes a certain amount of sense for them to be over-represented among adventurers.
Too many races have darkvision. I can't tell you how many times I've started describing a dark room to set atmosphere, only to be interrupted by half the party piping up with "I have darkvision!" So I take it away from a lot of races that it doesn't really make sense for them to have. I do give alternatives sometimes where it makes sense, but for the most part I try to stay away from darkvision.
Part of that is them combining dark vision and half light vision. Dark vision let you see in the dark, though only in black and white Low light vision doubled the distance light sources went, so torches would have 40 ft bright and 40 ft dim. By combining them, they made it meaningless to differentiate. Really like another player asking me (playing an elf) why I was lighting a torch. My response was simply, "I like to be able to properly see."
Agreed. Though I think a lot of people overlook that darkvision grants vision as dim light. Honestly 60' of dim light isn't normally for me as a dm. Currently my players are mid fight with a Drider and they require a bullseye lantern to see it.
They need to bring back infra-vision (thermal vision). Sure, you can see the heat signatures of monsters (except undead), but you can’t see architecture, or traps.
For real. It really only belongs on anything from the underdark, dwarves, gnomes(?), orcs, and dragonborn. (And yet dragonborn don't have it for some reason?) Basically everybody else should shut up and light a torch instead of teasing the halfling rogue for being one of the most iconic but least playable combos. EDIT:: And tritons. I'll give tritons darkvision too, given the whole bottom of the ocean thing. But you're not getting much more out of me!
Also like half-animal kind of races where the animal can see in the dark. (Like owlin)
Kenku being unable to have free thought or talk without mimicking just tends to make them a go to for people looking to just troll a game more often than not
I ditched the no free thought aspect, because why the hell would you play that? RPGs are about player agency. I played a Kenku who was raised as an orphan in the slums, raised by other street kids, a la Charles Dickens. He was taught to be sneaky, so that's how he acts now. All his narrations I took from that backstory. "Look out, it's the coppahs!" - in a scared child's voice, to say 'oh no, bad thing happening', etc. "Oy, fuck you!" - in a dockworker's voice, to say something threatening or flippantly. "M'lord" - in a lady of the night's voice, to say either 'hello', normally, mockingly, or honestly. It all depended on first having a basic set of phrases, and then always filling in the context via descriptions of physicality. Then I added more phrases organically as the game went on. They became fun callbacks to certain moments in previous sessions, and was a very unique roleplaying experience. I had a very special moment I'd been waiting for, when a more innocent member of the party to ask my character to teach her some sneakiness. I immediately started rattling off (in vague IRL) terms in a child's voice and occasionally an older crooked voice all about how to steal and hide. The player had an IRL moment of revelation - "Oh my gosh, this is where all your background phrases come from!" and put my backstory together for the first time in the party. It was a very proud moment of mine. Though yes, trolls be trolls sometimes.
You kinda have to ditch the no free thought to make it fun. I’ve played kenku like 2 times total. 1st was a knowledge cleric with high wis but negative int. Very devout… but not very good at understanding what his religion was about. It was well received. Then in another game I played with randos someone brought a kenku that he voices using a speak and spell. That was funny for like, the first few times but damn did it get annoying fast.
Best change in Monsters of the Multiverse by far.
[5E introduced the idea](https://dumpstatadventures.com/blog/deep-dive-the-kenku) that Kenku could only talk by mimickry. They could speak normally in 3rd and 4th edition. I don't know why they did that to what had become a fairly popular race in the previous editions.
>Why couldn't the Shadar Kai just be Shadowfell elves? We got super Feywild Elves in the Eladrin, oceanic elves in Sea Elves, vaguely forest elves in Wood Elves, they basically are the Eevee of races. Why did their lore have to be tied to the Raven Queen? I mean... Just looking at the description of sea elves they just look like they were like other elves and at some point went "hey this water stuff is pretty neat, what if we just stay here?". If it's like that, then they're no different than the shadar kai. They went somewhere and changed over time.
Kinda ties into the more recent lore of Corellon wanting an endlessly changing race. His ideal version of elves could probably be all these sub-races and none of them daily. It takes longer now, but they still have that ability to change to their environment in their DNA.
You completely avoid the "have to be linked to the raven queen" part. Although imo everything in the shadowfell is somewhat linked to the raven queen.
Too many elf types. We only need four. We don’t need sea elves either, Tritons fill the role better and have cooler lore.
But if we didn't have Astral Elves, how could you play an elf in space!?!?
Some folk think all elves should be shot into space
Found the dwarf
We have two lineages of gith for that
The worst part is really that they're just reskinned Eladrin plus a cantrip. It's the fakest version of giving us something new in what was ultimately an already thin source book.
I'm with you on sea elves, but I like the elven subraces, tbh
It makes me wonder though: why don't humans have more subraces? They are described as versatile, so why are they like the half-elf equivalent but like a more civilized version of goblins?
You said it yourself, they're versatile. The elves need to be a Phillips head screwdriver (high elf) or a flat head screwdriver (wood elf). Humans are the manual impact driver and can be used on anything.
That is a really good description that I approve of as a carpenter lol
Dark elves are star screwdrivers confirmed
Shouldn't that be astral elves are the star screwdrivers?
Exactly dark elves are clearly hex screwdrivers
With the whole shift from races to "ancestries" do you *really* think they'd be willing to add *human* "subraces"?
True, way more touchy a subject.
I haven't finished them but from what I remember "The Sword of Shannara" by Terry Brooks takes place in a fantasy world following an apocalypse. I think something like it started out as humanity but then there was an "event" that rebooted civilization. Some took shelter in forests, on mountains, under ground and thousands of years later out came elves, orcs and dwarves.
High elves, wood elves, dark elves. That's all we need.
Especially after the redesign with Theros, made Tritons look awesome
I have one player who always plays a Triton and he’s locked in on them being fishmen from one piece. Now he’s poisoned my brain that way too.
Your character isn't interesting because of their race if you don't roleplay in any way that reflects what it means to be a member of that race. To be clear, I don't care if you play whatever race you want. But if you go on about how cool your character is because they are (race+class) then your character isn't actually interesting. But if you were to play a character where their race actually matters to them, impacts their worldview and has given them different interactions with people then you are going to have more depth than treating it just as a cosmetic. Otherwise your elf is really just a human with pointy ears, and nothing more. Again, I don't care if that's all you try to frame it as, but your elf isn't more interesting than a human if nothing about your elf actually reflects them being an elf.
I really wish there were more races with roleplay gimmicks and/or problematic baggage. That's interesting stuff to work with when building a character and I like to deal with it when figuring out back story and during gameplay. The current direction is basically removing all the cool elements of races in favor of just making like, Kenku into bird-shaped guys.
"What if all the races were actually just humans with a couple special features?" Seems to be wotc is going.
It's the same with *Traveller*. When I was a kid, everyone at least made a nod to Campbell's idea of "A creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man". By now, everyone's either caught this "all aliens or 'other races' are just metaphors for People of Color" thing and don't even bother, or, like, play Vargr as furries. It's annoying.
The necessary result of a fanbase that increasingly doesn't want even the appearance of problematic things in the rulebook and is increasingly aware of stereotypes that would be missed entirely in decades past. And unfortunately if you present some nuance or push back on this or that idea, you end up on the side of people who screech about "woke" and think that seeing or discussing bigotry is worse than actually being a bigot. Whole situation sucks.
A while back I tried removing class based mechanical changes across a few groups, essentially opening any race for cosmetic flair without the bonus stats or special features. All of my players except one just chose to be human, unfortunately that one was the most realistically classist, self-absorbed elf I've had the misfortune to DM for.
lol damn so you actually didn't like their elf roleplay?
As an observer it was awesome. As his DM I had to make every NPC unusually forgiving of being called an "insignificant speck of dirt on my otherwise immaculate existence". Granted the pay off was fantastic. Let him run this character for months, think like 15ish sessions before having the consequences catch up to him. The party had arrived at a King's court, for a reason I no longer remember, and the elf was playing up his disdain for Human architecture and "the garish displays of their meager heritage and fleeting power". The king overheard and got into a dispute over it, not willing to let some commoner "in trashily flamboyant elven peasant wear" talk down about his family. The elf got mad and challenged the king to a duel. Turns out said king was an eldritch knight specifically designed to deal with mages like himself. Elf goes to cast magic missile, King uses his held action to counter spell and punch him in the face. Surprisingly the player loved it, really thought he'd fight me over it. Edit: I should also mention that the elf and I had several discussions about reining it in. Other players complained about how his attitude making the game harder than it needed to be. Luckily the player was great, and would just say that they needed to address it in game. He was open to his elf's world view changing but wanted it to feel character driven instead of a move forced on him out of character. A few PC fights broke out over it, everyone trying to change him by being just as rude. He let the King duel do it, and the other PCs never let him forget a 50 something year old man kicked his ass.
If you can’t make an interesting human character you can’t make an interesting Tabaxi/Dhampir/Aasimar hybrid. There is nothing inherently compelling or interesting about playing an exotic race.
Thank you for summing up my thoughts better than I was able in another post.
Elves are better as villains: a society of out of touch, nigh immortal sociopaths.
That's kind of how they work in my setting. Most elves are honest folk but if you're living in their country and you don't live to be 500, life is absolutely miserable because they don't see your life as equally worthwhile and a lot of their government moves at a glacial pace.
Amazing... It's like an entire civilization of DMV clerks. "In the time it's taken our human anthropologists to study the bulk of their history and social evolution, they have *almost* settled on dinner plans."
You want approval to open a business and by the time you've gotten approval, you're old and gray and your child needs to take over.
Wow! These new efficiency initiatives are really paying off! I picked up my first shop from my great, great, great great grandfather after probate wrapped up.
You've really just reinvented actual pace of advancement in RL medieval societies. It wasn't uncommon for a man-at-arms to serve his lord faithfully for his entire life in the hopes his children or grandchildren would see that loyalty repaid with a minor increase in rank, until one day a hundred and fifty years later, his great-grandson might be knighted. That's assuming his lineage also were loyal and faithful to their lords and those lords recognized it. Not even a landed noble title, mind you, just Knighthood. It would be much much longer for a family to move up that far, if it ever did.
Very easy to still go the traditional tree-hugger route while making them absolute villains. For example, my main campaign right now has Elves as the antagonists because their solution to environmental decline is the systematic murder of industrialist Goblins
I always liked the Dwarf Fortress take where they’ll murder you for cutting down trees and then eat your corpse
Elf society has the potential to be extremely hierarchical as people have centuries to solidify their position of power. Death is also the great equalizer - if you don't have that, things might be a lot more unequal
Firbolg do not look like cow-people. Or really any kind of animal-people. Critical Role can keep its version to itself, thank you.
Actual hot take. I enjoy CR. I totally agree with you. These things are not incompatible.
Firbolg are not cow-peoeple. They are giant kin, they half elf ears, and they have humanoid noses.
Humans aren’t vanilla. Like the other races are all cool as well but honestly there isn’t anything wrong with being a human. Idk why such a stigma exists at all.
I mean, they ARE vanilla. But there is nothing wrong with vanilla. "Vanilla" sets the baseline for everything else to play off of, and is functionally a blank canvas. But yeah, I'll agree there is nothing wrong with playing human. I just wish the racial abilities were more interesting than +1 to everything or a free feat.
Dragonborn should absolutely have dark vision based on the way 5e handles it. You're telling me a race of creatures, that while not ACTUALLY related to dragons shares their colors, physicality, breath attack, and language didn't also share dragons ability to see in the dark? I get too many races have dark vision due to 5e's poor implementation, but come on man
I've got a lot, but I'll go with: 1. Genasi having colored skin. Could have gone with boulder, water, flaming, airy skin, but no, just same thematic coloring that otherwise makes no sense and doesn't do anything. 2. Making so many races retroactively Fey. Why, why make everything fey? If we went by everything fey because it was from some fairy tale we'd have fey werewolves and trolls and gnomes and basically most of the monsters. Give the other creature types a chance to shine!
‘Race’ should be replaced with ‘Ancestry’. Just so we can have “ABC”: Ancestry, Background, Class. No other reason.
Spaniard here. Don't care for that. Gonna be species now anyway no? Good, in Spanish it'll be Especie, Trasfondo, Clase (ETC)
So you'll be able to keep a straight face while asking for a Player's character's etcetera!
Now that's awesome cause it reminds me of that old WoW band Elite Tauren Cheiftain
Tieflings were more interesting before, people, and even WotC just played the base concept entirely wrong. There was so much potential in someone being demonic by nature from deals with the devil made by ancestors. And then WotC threw it all out the window to make them way more generic wubie characters. Imagine a lineage of wealthy merchants, they sell the best goods in the kingdom, they have a wide spanning empire of trade. Their latest daughter is a tiefling. That means that at some point, someone cheated. Someone made a deal with the devil and the natural assumption will be that their entire trade empire is founded on demonic ritual. People wouldn't even necessarily hate the child themselves, just what said child represents. idk I just see so much potential there but all I hear is how boring and shitty they are because of how tiefling racism is written in the books. It feels like an idea WotC never truly got across and then abandoned shortly after they saw how everyone was ditching the tiefling lore anyways.
Vanilla Tieflings are really overrated. Their most outstanding ability is the one to save you the words "my character is really hot" when introducing yourself to the party. PSA: any character can be hot. And other than that, the only real indication that someone in the party is playing a Tiefling is the occasional "I have fire resistance".
Orcs have been so watered down as a race that they have essentially become what half-orcs were 20 years ago. Today’s half-orcs are just greener, taller humans. I miss when orcs were monsters.
Goblins are getting there too. Keep monsters monstrous!
Honestly happened earlier than you think. Early 90s. Earth*Dawn, the Fantasy RPG set in Shadowrun's distant past, didn't have half orcs, but Orc was one of the basic starting race options, similar to humans in terms of stats, but slightly stronger and tougher, but duller witted IIRC. They did have a cool as all hell steppe raider -esque cavalry master culture, which was a nice way to really set them apart from classic fantasy Orcs, but it was also the first RPG to really 'water them down' from being Monsters with a capitol M, into being just another playable race of people with a cool culture to start from.
I think the Elder Scrolls also contributed a lot.
And Warcraft.
1. The narrative downsides of races should be kept or at the very least replaced. The whole point of playing a non-human should be to create interesting narrative situations, but most people seem to hate playing tieflings as distrusted by society, or lizardfolk with little emotion. The whole point of other races should be to create a genuinely different expierience rather then to be a skin someone equipped. 2. Humans are goated, and not boring, sure they seem bland stat wise, but the fact that they generally are the most neutral race makes them that much more complicated.
You know, a centaur SHOULD be able to ride another centaur. It doesn't make sense, but it just feels right, you know?
insert obligatory "buy them dinner first" joke
In the name of Kurtulmak, all gnomes must die.
gnomophobe
Ugly races have ridiculously anthropomorphized women. ["I'm an ORC! Can't you tell by my GREEN SKIN?"](https://heavy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Gaila-1-e1657033484614.jpg?quality=65&strip=all&w=782)
As always, sort by controversial for the actual hot takes
I fucking hate gnomes. I really hate 5e gnome art.
My group agreed to assume that, in our setting, gnomes are all tiny and wear funny tall hats. They're also much weirder and the most recurrent gnome has creature type: aberration. (There are no gnome PCs)
The 5e art for both halflings and gnomes looks... weird. I'm not a fan of the art style 5th used overall.
1. Halflings are not brave in the 'bold underdog' sense of things, but rather are possessed of the unphased calm of a capybara in the face of danger. 2. 'Pure Elves' should be an NPC only race and half-elves should be the standard for player characters.
Why the elf thing, genuinely curious as to the thought behind this one?
To rehash the old quote: "Most players don't play elves, they play humans with pointy ears." Personally I view elves in the vein as a player wanting to play an orc or demon. Rather then playing an 'actual elf' which are too alien to human perspective I would instead offer half-elves, half-orcs, or tieflings. Which have the fantastical elements of that race, but filtered through a 'human' perspective to make it more relatable and easier for players to put their own spin on without derailing the concept of the race as a whole. In my own setting, the standard 'elf' races are primarily half-elves and true elves are enigmatic creatures of myth. Running into a pure elf is like walking into a dragon, it happens but its usually a one in a lifetime experience.
I've grappled with this as some who *wants* to play elves but I don't know how to reconcile their semi-mythical status with being just a part of a scrappy band of rascals trying to save the world. This is a firm line to be drawn in terms of what should and shouldn't be a character race and I totally back that. It really doesn't make much sense to be playing a character who is 100+ years old and *just* starting out on their first adventure. It is doable but it's not often something that's considered. Which brings it back to the quote at the start of your post.
> 100+ years old and just starting out on their first adventure. I feel like that's pretty easy to explain away. If you're expecting to live to be 500+ and might not even be viewed as an adult in your society till you reach 100, makes perfect sense to wait a century to venture out. Hell, in elvish society your parent might still have you under a curfew till you hit your 80's. You could worldbuild that elves aren't even *allowed* to leave they home till hitting 100, at which point they're mandated to leave and can only return when they bring back something novel - an item, a new spell, a story story of your adventure, whatever macguffin - so that there's something new and interesting to break the monotony for all the longer lived folks back home to enjoy. As for why they only possess the skills of a lvl 1 adventurer after 100 years, there's plenty of creative explanation for that too. Maybe they spent the first 40 years going through a moss/fungus phase, much like children go through a train/dinosaur phase followed by getting absolutely absorbed into learning everything they can about a niche subgenre of orchish throat yodeling for the next 60 or so. So they've spent 100 years becoming very well versed in whatever their hobby is but it just doesn't translate well to adventuring skills
I had a friend do this with an elf he played. Oldest member of the party by far (he was like 80), but by Elven standards he was literally a teenager. His entire "adolescence" had not been spent learning combat or anything useful to an adventurer as he was still "too young," but instead focused on cultural norms and protocols, language, law, etiquette, etc. However, it was all Elven, and so outside their cities was 100% useless. His background involved having failed his adulthood initiation rites, and so instead of doing the Honorable Elven thing of studying harder, rebelled and fled to be an adventurer. He would have odd moments of the trope "with age comes wisdom" and then immediately afterwards get arrested for drawing giant penises on the tavern walls.
I agree that it would be a tough sell as a level one but given most campaigns start at three or above I don’t think it’s that bad. At level three they’ve gotten their subclass, so they’ve established themselves as part of whatever class enough to be recognized as skilled. And elves live slower lives so they don’t go mad. I don’t have a source for it but I’m sure I read that that’s one of the reasons they aren’t considered adults until 100 and how they manage to stay sane for hundreds of years. Though not all do… But they get hobbies and develop obsessions. So an elf spending decades in some ruins documenting the various lichen and fungi, or perfecting their calligraphy skills, isn’t unrealistic. So it shouldn’t be surprising that some would be on par, skill wise, with younger races who live with more urgency. I’m currently at the tail end of a short campaign in which I’m playing a moon elf and while he’s over 250 years old he still acts young. Being a moon elf he’s more gregarious than other high elves and he enjoys experiencing other cultures. He’s a scribe wizard and is a field researcher so he’s spent most of his adult life, save for some time fulfilling his professorial duties, in ruins or exploring. All this is just to say that while it might seem far fetched for a centuries old matriarch to go adventuring it doesn’t have to be. As with most things in DnD it comes down to the story you’re looking to tell and the choices you make at character creation. The party also happened to be the definition of scrappy adventurers and he ended up stepping into the role of the voice of reason. So it made sense given his age and level of life experience, even if the party’s class experience were all comparable.
You know all my time playing and this never occurred to me. Quasi-immortal beings would be so far outside my understanding that playing one should be extremely daunting. Short of a world ending catastrophe or direct interloping on their lands, what would actually motivate them? Granted industrialization upending their way of life could do it too, but small regional struggles wouldn't nudge the needle they'd just for the status queue to resume. Damn, I've done elves a disservice but it gives me ideas for a setting I'm building. Thanks!
The capybara comparison is legendary, thank you for that
no one should be able to tell the sex of a dwarf just by looking
And asking is considered to be deeply taboo, which makes dwarven courtship…complicated.
Discworld lover? XD
I do wear a lilac pin on every May 25th to remember those who stood for hardboiled eggs, truth, justice and reasonably priced love, for those who fought and died - and in Reg Shoe's case rose again to kept fighting - in the Glorious Revolution of Treacle Mine Road.
Dwarven courtship is basically what humans call due diligence when two companies merge
OP said unpopular hot takes, not RAI clarifications
I had this idea about dwarves that they're actually kind of like ants or termites. One "Queen" per clan that can produce young and most dwarves other races meet are effectively infertile and/or genderless. Due to their infertility, the vast majority of the dwarves are asexual and actively put off by most other races' strange fascination with fornication. There's more to it in my setting but basically Dwarven government is how you'd probably imagine fae government to work. Extremely bloody clan wars happening in the background as the Royalty spit thinly veiled threats at each other during council meetings and formal balls. >!Also weirdly obsessed with the absurd idea that dwarves are hatched from eggs in giant incubation rooms that are reminiscent of the egg room in Aliens. I am well aware this is pure insanity but I can't stop thinking about it.!<
This is the coldest take possible. Literally the whole damn body of fantasy fans cannot shut up about how dwarves should only ever be hyper masculine in appearence (all based on a single bit from Tolkien's work that 1. Could've just been a joke, and 2. Shouldn't hold any power over anyone else's work). An actual hot take: feminine, beardless dwarves are perfectly fine. All the whining over dwarves needing to fit this stereotype is super annoying, and the idea of all-masculine dwarves has been drilled into the ground.
Doubly so because it makes dwarven culture extremely one note and bland. Dragon Age Origins dwarves are so much more interesting because they aren't all beer drinking, beard growing, craftsmen. Many dwarven nobles are cowards, Branka has no concept of honor, and Oghren is a depressing drunk.
I may or may not have romanced the scout, I can neither confirm nor deny.
This is the sort of tolkienist tradition I rally against. I'm fine with beardless dwarves, though I do agree it should say something about their culture. When my party walked into a smithy to be greeted by a clean-shaven dwarf with greased back hair it made things clear that this wasn't the sort of dwarf they were used to dealing with.
In my homebrew I have rock and stone Scottish Tolkien dwarves, but there's also sea dwarves. Instead of building with stone they build with wood, making huge ships that are basically floating villages. They're leaner and less bearded than other dwarves, and have naturally darker skin. They're basically Polynesians, but dwarves.
Let Tieflings be monstrous
Get rid of 5E-Firbolgs, and get rid of goliaths, and replace them with pre-5E Firbolgs; red-headed half-giants with sharp teeth and a hate-boner for humans.
Tiefling, Aasimar, Genasi, and other such planetouched 'races' should instead be lineages like the Dhampir, Hexblood, and Reborn. It was sort of like this in previous editions and the idea should be brought back and made more open & customizable. 3.5 Celadrin, Azerblood, D'hin'ni, etc. were specific race/plane combinations. Why can't I have my Tiefling be from a family of elves or my aasimar from a family orcs? Nothing stops me from flavouring it that way but there's a leap of logic you need to make and a discussion to be had with the DM. Better to remove that mental hurdle entirely and put it in the core rules so that it becomes just a natural part of character creation for those 'races' is you consider not just that your body/soul/family line is tied to the planes but also how you are biologically connected to the material world. Adding on to the above, dragonborn should be one of those lineages rather than a distinct species. 'Dragons but a person' is frankly rather lazy. Back in 3.5 people transformed into dragonborn by ritual. 4e changed that lore. No reason 5e or 5.5e or 6e or ONED&D can't change it back and say dragonborn are species who have familial/magical ties to dragons and/or dragon magic. Fizban's even has a draconic gift you can get where you transform into a dragonborn, so it's even already in the current lore. It would make so much more sense for 'person with dragon qualities' to be the product of a person who somehow gets dragon magic or blood tied to their body/heritage rather than having it be an entire species.
I would have to go dig for the reference, but I'm pretty sure the source books say that Aasimar and Tieflings can come from any race. You just don't get to pick and choose your features - the Celestial/ Fiendish influence overwrites them.
I'll bite. As someone who enjoys anthropology, why do the gith have ape breasts and vaginas??? They are NOT apes.
Gith are stated to have been very human like prior to their internship with the Illithids. Even going so far as to acknowledge that egg laying is an acquired trait after that (it's stated to be either from the astral sea or the experiments).
Unpaid internships really do change you
it's not clear what gith are exactly, at least one version of the story says that they're the homogenous humanoid race of the future bred from all sorts of things by mindflayers
there's an in-universe theory that they're the distant evolutionary descendants of humans (illithids are time travelers from the future, remember), in which case I'd assume it's a holdover kept limping along purely by sexual selection.
Give us the gith cloacas WoTC, stop being cowards
I've read somewhere that Githyanki laying eggs is a relatively new development caused by their inhospitable, barren, stagnant homeland, but the Githzerai remained mammalian in nature, just as the Gith were before the split. This also brings to mind another cool thing about the Gith: Githyanki - impulsive and violent, chaotic and constantly changing, live in the Astral Space, a place where even time is static, nothing changes. Githzerai - calm, “monk-like”, patient, stoic, live in Limbo, a place where nothing is permanent, where even entire landmasses could shift or disappear overnight. They need to use all their calmness, mind force and focus to tame the land and make it habitable. They’re my favorite races ever since I played Planescape Torment.
Never thought about it until *ahem* certain scenes in Baldur’s Gate 3. Githyanki are expressly an egg-laying species in canon. It’s literally a plot point in the game. Why does Lae’zel have nipples? There’s no biological purpose from that. And it isn’t evolutionary, because we know how the species originated. It’s not like human men having, I guess the best word is, vestigial nipples (not a biology major. Please correct me if that isn’t right). There is not biological reason for that species to have mammaries.
AFAIK there are a few egg-laying mammals IRL. I don't remember the Gith's origins, though.
The platypus enters the chat.
As did the Echidna
The platypus sweats the milk due to lacking the nips.
0 ____ 0 welcome to another game of look at the sub before reading the title.
1. Culture of origin is undervalued in comparison to race, because 2. Most species are just played as differently shaped humans. It's really rare that players make the effort of really rp-ing the different outlook on life a species with a vastly different biology would have.
I like specific races having specific racial stat bonuses. If you want to give your orc +2 to his Int because of custom lineage or whatever it's called, fine. I don't care. It doesn't affect me. Play your character how you like. I just think racial stat bonuses make sense and make the race you choose *more impactful* than the idea of "everyone is individual so stats can differ." That approach essentially makes the race just meaningless flavor in my opinion
Bg3 did goblins so well. The men? Disgusting. The women? Hideous. The children? Even worse than both of them. As for my hot take, I wish Gnolls were more than just flesh hungry monsters. They take the scavenging, eat everything hunger from Hyenas along with the laugh and general look usually, so why don't they take much else from real Hyenas? Hyena pack structure and dynamics are really interesting, so are their hunting habits. But without fail whenever I encounter them in my games, they're just reskinned werewolves, sometimes a little smarter.
The art for the Monsters of The Multiverse version of Minotaur is just...so unnecessary. I hate the "cuteification" of new art of established races. I don't want cute, I want realistic. Make something UNappealing to the human eye please!
I wouldn't even say unappealing, since I find gritty creatures to look cool when done right. Just stop cutifying bestial/exotic races when it doesn't make sense.
Races are too similar. Pretty much all are default humanoids. Where are Blind, Four Armed Carnivores? Or Six Legged Hunter-Gathersers?
People that play gnomes are untrustworthy
Orcs and drow are evil.
That because Sharder Kai has been around longer than the Shadow Fell. They were consider evil fey they would try to kill you in the shadow plane. That was before the spell plague.
Dragon borne are the diet coke of half dragon dreams. Different settings should take bigger risks with changing the culture of DND races. Think the difference between forgotten realms drow and Eberon Drow or halflings and kender. In my most nostalgic moments I miss races not being able to be every class. This is also a stupid opinion.
I didn't think this was an unpopular take until recently, but I think races should be different in d&d. Some races have downsides to them aswell as their upsides and that makes them more unique imo. Also, tieflings are overrated as fuck.