Index | Playable Races | Monsters (Humanoids | Animals | Beasts | Plants | Fungi | Fey | Dragons | Aberrations | Constructs | Oozes | Undead | Spirits | Elementals | Ethereal | Shadow | Vitality | Void | Dream | Time | Astral | Celestials | Monitors | Fiends)
Adventurers in Pathfinder come in many shapes and sizes and from as many backgrounds as you can imagine. A character's class is only half of the equation; their species plays an equal part in determining that character's history, how they view the world, and how the world views them.
Pathfinder has a Massive Race Selection to choose from. While there are countless creatures in the bestiaries that could be considered "races", this page is for specifically detailing the ones intended for players; creatures without racial hit dice that have specific entries for their use as characters.
For tropes pertaining to playable species in Starfinder, see Starfinder Player Races.
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Humanoid Races
Anadi
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Since most others found their appearance to be extremely objectionable, anadis invented a fusion of transmutation and illusion magic that allows them to assume a humanoid form.
- Exotic Extended Marriage: Anadi traditionally form "web marriages", were five of them join together and take care of any offspring that arrives from them.
- Friendly Neighborhood Spider: They are generally pacisfist and shy, prefering to keep it to themselves in their communities.
- Giant Spider: The anadi's natural form. They're five feet long from their front to back legs, and come in a variety of colors.
- Mage Species: Anadis possess an innate talent for illusion and transmutation.
- Spider People: Some anadi can assume a hybrid form, but otherwise they're either fully human-looking or a Giant Spider.
Android
Type: Humanoid (android)
Creations of the technologically advanced society of Androffa, androids are a race of Artificial Humans (quite literally — the Androffans are as human as Golarian's own) with subdued emotions and symbiotic colonies of nanites living in their blood. The androids of Golarion were the crew and constructions of a spaceship that crashed on Golarion long ago after a battle with the mysterious alien empire known as the Dominion of the Black. Unsure of their origins and unlike any other lifeform on Golarion, the androids now make their own way in the world.
- Android Identifier: They look almost exactly human except for a subtle metallic sheen in their eyes and faint circuit-like patterns on their skin, which glow when they active their nanite surge. As an Android ages, it's stated they become more obviously inhuman in appearance.
- Artificial Human: The most notable aspect of androids is that despite being artificial creatures, they actually have souls and are classified as humanoids, not constructs. They are often depicted as unusually pale (almost white), with unnatural hair colors and Tron Lines on them, and can generally pass as human despite "awkward mannerisms", but bleed watery coolant.
- Going Native: When the Technic League was overthrown and the Black Sovereign Kevoth-Kul offered androids a home, some entered his palace, becoming honorary Kellids. In the following years, these androids have dedicated themselves to adopting the Kellid way of life. They no longer hide their heritage, instead openly embracing their dualistic android and Kellid identities.
- Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Their racial ability "nanite surge" gives them a bonus proportional to their character level on any one d20 roll per day.
- Machine Blood: Androids bleed watery coolant instead of blood.
- Marked Change: When the tattoos that cover their body start to glow, that means that they've activated the nanites in their blood, giving them a huge bonus to one roll.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: Androids are Ridiculously Human Robots and even have souls. They are purely synthetic Artificial Humans, but respond to healing magic and have souls as organic creatures do. They breathe and eat much as humans do, but through artificial organs, and they circulate their healing nanites like blood through their bodies via pale fluids. They are inexhaustible, immune to diseases and resistant to other biological effects, and fortified against mental effects, but also suffer the same maladies and vulnerabilities of constructs and are susceptible to supernatural curses, including lycanthropy.
- The Nth Doctor: Inverted, the same body is host to a succession of different people.
- Reincarnation: Inverted. When an android dies of old age, its nanites go into an accelerated repair mode. But once the body is repaired just like new, a brand new soul will come to inhabit it. They call this "renewal".
- Robot Wizard: They can become spellcasters as easily as any natural race, and in fact tend to have keen interest in magic and spiritualism.
- Tron Lines: These cover their bodies when they use their nanites.
- Uncanny Valley: It's stated that as androids age and get closer to their rebooting, the more obviously creepily-inhuman-trying-to-be-human they get. It's left amibiguous as to how this shows, likely to be left to player hands.
Astomoi
Type: Humanoid (astomoi)
Mysterious, psychically inclined humanoids.
Athamaru
Type: Humanoid (aquatic)
Fish people with an emphasis on the fish part, unlike merfolk. They smell as foul as they look, but are in fact a friendly race.
- Adaptation Name Change: When first brought over to Pathfinder from Dungeons & Dragons, this species was called locathah, and had to be renamed when the Open Game License stopped being used.
- Alternate Company Equivalent: Were initially straight ports of D&D's Locathah fishmen until the OGL change, and primarily resemble their 3rd Edition incarnation.
- Creepy Good: Despite their repulsive appearance and odour, athamarus are friendly towards their own kind and go to great lengths to befriend surface folk.
- Fish People: Athamarus are humanoids with fish faces and crested fins that exude a foul odour and live in the sea.
Azarketi
Type: Humanoid (aquatic)
The mutated offspring of the few Azlanti to survive Earthfall.
- Apparently Human Merfolk: Depending of the type. Some look more or less like average humans, albeit with purple eyes and gills on their necks. Others have small fins instead of hair, and the ones that live in more deep area of the seas such as the one in the image, have a much more alien look, with blue skin and glowing spots across their bodies.
- Slave Race: Remnants of the Azlanti who were mutated and enslaved by the alghollthus after they destroyed the Azlanti Empire during the Earthfall, they feeling on the subject are mixed, some still default to their rule, while others go out of their way destroy them were they can find it.
Caligni
Type: Humanoid (dark folk)
Dark folk, remnants of the Azlanti driven underground eons ago; Caligni is both an umbrella term occasionally used by the dark folk themselves for the various dark folk subraces such as stalkers, creepers, and dancers, and a term for the unique variant that are suitable as player characters.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: While not blinded by the light, they are dazed in bright light.
- The Exile: Caligni often end up suffering an unfortunate accident before adulthood (apparently they tend to end up annoying the powers that be) unless they anticipate this and leave first. This is naturally an excuse for a caligni PC to be where the other PCs are, and for the GM to introduce complications into the PC's life.
- Human Subspecies: Dark folk, in general, are this; humans altered by the extraplanar owbs into creatures of shadow after having fled Earthfall; they're not so monstrous or degenerate as the morlocks, but are still often malevolent. Caligni specifically are genetic throwbacks among dark folk; they're closer to what the race was before the owbs began breeding them into specialized subraces.
- Innate Night Vision: All dark folk have the "see in darkness" ability, which allows them to see perfectly even in supernaturally dark places (which block the more typical darkvision).
- Light 'em Up: Oddly for a race shrouded in darkness; when they die, they explode in a flash of light that blinds all those within five feet of them.
- The Quisling: Evil caligni tend to work closely with the owbs who enslave their race.
- Slave Race: To the owbs. Caligni may rebel, or not.
Catfolk (Amurrun)
Type: Humanoid (catfolk)
A race of anthropomorphic cats native to southern Garund, but whose restlessness and curiosity often brings them to every corner of the world.
- Beast Man: At the far end of their portrayals' anthropomorphic zigzagging, they resemble bipedal felines whose only concessions to anthropomorphism are opposable thumbs.
- Cat Folk: A fairly typical species of fantasy humanoid felines, generally native to the tropics and distinguished by very feline curiosity.
- Cat Girl: Their official artwork tends to flip-flop on their anthropomorphism, and at the most human-like end they tend to resemble humans with minor feline features — usually, the ears.
- Depending on the Artist: Catfolk tend to be represented wildly differently from one another in artwork. They vary between the cat girl trope, one that is more evocative of the Khajiit, and one that looks like something out of Thunder Cats. James Jacobs, the creative director, prefers the cat-girl look, but fan opinion is mixed. Inner Sea Races seems to have worked this inconsistency into the species' lore, saying that catfolk can run the whole spectrum mentioned above, "varying wildly between regions or even between families." 2nd Edition seems to have pretty much been set on the "anthropomorphic cat" look as far as art is concerned, although it restates that appearances canonically vary.
- Uplifted Animal: According to their own legends, the catfolk originated from panthers and other large cats that were given intelligence, bipedalism and thumbs by ancient spirits to act as guardians for the world.
Drathnelar
Type: Humanoid (gnome)
An offshoot of the gnomes, inhabiting the subterranean Darklands.
- Alternate Company Equivalent: They're a lawyer-friendly reinterpretation of the svirfneblin, or "deep gnomes", of Dungeons & Dragons. In 1st edition, they literally were just svirfneblin, but in 2nd edition, they got renamed and a new culture.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: They fight against the myriad horrors that dwell in the Darklands, but they don't particularly care about those who dwell above them.
- Fantastic Racism: They hate dwarves, especially the hryngar.
Dwarf
Type: Humanoid (dwarf)
Dwarves once lived deep in the Darklands beneath Golarion's surface, until Earthfall, the impact of which was taken as a sign to begin the Quest to the Sky, a long exodus to the surface world.
- Family Honor: Extremely important to them, and a Berserk Button if challenged.
- Fire-Forged Friends: The surest way to win their respect.
- Good Old Ways: With long lives and strong traditions, there's a lot of cultural inertia.
- Long-Lived: Barring misfortune, they can easily live over 300 years. It's a factor in their slight mistrust of humans since they're used to building friendships over a century or more.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The Grondaksen and Holtaksen are standard dwarves that originated underground, tunneled their way to the surface during the Age of Darkness, and pulled humanity out of the dark ages. Otherwise, the bald-shaved, monastic Ouat and xenophobic Pahmet dwarves of Osirion, the traditionalist Mbe'ke and totemist Taralu dwarves of the Mwangi Expanse are a bit different from the stereotype.
Elf
Type: Humanoid (elf)
Elves were one of the first races on Golarion but fought a losing war for space against the developing humans. Foreseeing the coming Earthfall, the majority of Elves fled for the sanctuary of Sovyrian, only to come back to protect their ancestral homes from the demon Treerazer.
- Ancient Astronauts: Their refuge Sovyrian, where they bunkered down for a few thousand years to wait out the Earthfall, is actually on the neighbouring planet Castrovel and is accessed via Portal Network.
- Elves Versus Dwarves: Even less so than the dwarves themselves. While they look down on other races as immature children, they acknowledge the talents as a whole of said races, from gnomish magical talent and dwarven craft to even mere pity for halflings and fascination with humans.
- Immortality Begins at Twenty: This trope was averted in 1E for elves due to it using Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rules, played straight by the start of 2E (which explained that elves become physically mature around the age of twenty but aren't considered adults by other elves until the end of their first century), and deconstructed in the Lost Omens Travel Guide. According to that book, many elves have a tradition of spending part of their adolesence living among humans, departing just quickly enough to avoid becoming Forlorn. This means that most elves the average person on Golarion encounters are not considered adults by elven society, with no one around them knowing any better.
- Long-Lived: The longest-lived of the common races by a large margin.
- Monochromatic Eyes: Elf eyes are pretty much all iris.It's noted to be alien-looking
- Our Dark Elves Are Different: Ayindilar (cavern elves) are descended from those who sought the Darklands as shelter from Earthfall. They maintain small, isolated, self-sufficient settlements throughout Nar-Voth and Sekamina that often serve as safe havens for explorers. Unlike the drow (who were retconned out of existence around the same time they were introduced), cavern elves fulfil a very different and primarily non-villainous role.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: An elf keeps their personal name secret among their family and gives a nickname when meeting other people.
- Reincarnation: Their culture supports this belief, hoping for a final rebirth as creatures of the wild.
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: By now they've more or less assimilated into Golarian society along with the rest of the Fantasy Kitchen Sink, but their species actually originates on the planet Castrovel.
- Time Dissonance: Such that being raised in the company of shorter-lived races can lead to shock that their friend just up and died one day, when said this friend was ancient and died of old age. This can leave them emotionally damaged.
- Vestigial Empire: They left it behind when they realized what a catastrophe Earthfall would be, were quite put out to return from Sovyrian to find their old lands occupied by humans, and have had only occasional success in reclaiming parts of their territory since.
Fetchling (Kayal)
Type: Outsider (native)
Descendants of humans who traveled to or were trapped in the Plane of Shadow.- Alternate Company Equivalent: They're conceptually similar to D&D's shadar-kai and shades in origin, if not in personality.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Downplayed Trope. Their adoptive home has drained their hair and skin of bright colors. Their complexion ranges from stark white to deep black, and includes all the various shades of gray between those two extremes.
- Casting a Shadow: They have in-born shadow magic that lets them Lie to the Beholder and eventually shift into the Netherworld.
- Creepily Long Arms: Artwork of the male and female fetchling show their arms are incredibly long, reaching past their knees.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Many fetchlings consider the term fetchling an insult and prefer the term "kayal", which means "shadow people". The reason behind this is that the term "fetchling" was given to them by humans who saw them as tools to "fetch" unique and rare resources from the Netherworld. However, many Fetchlings do work as merchants and tradesmen between the Universe and the Netherworld which just fuels the term and the way humans might still see them.
- Human Subspecies: They're descended from humans who were magically changed after living for long periods on the Netherworld (in 2nd Edition, they're treated as an independent ancestry instead of a versatile heritage, suggesting that fetchlings descended from non-human humanoids do not exist). They're too warped to be of the same ancestry, similarly to how drow are descended but distinct from elves. This makes them closer to a species of Homo than a subspecies of Homo sapiens.
- Living Shadow: They have an ancestral feat that lets them interact with nearby objects by manipulating their own shadow, and can later learn to turn their shadow into a Hyperspace Arsenal with enough space to hide a spare weapon or two in their own shadow.
- Monochromatic Eyes: Their eyes are pupilless and pronounced, and they typically glow a luminescent shade of yellow or greenish yellow, though rare individuals possess blue-green eyes.
- Stealth Expert: They're humans who were trapped in the Netherworld and developed an affinity to it, eventually becoming another planar-themed human offshoot.
Gnome
Type: Humanoid (gnome)
Gnomes were originally from the First World, a fey-dominated realm that was the Super Prototype for the Universe. It is currently unknown why they were exiled to the Universe.
- Albinos Are Freaks: Gnomes can literally die of malaise if they suffer chronic boredom. Those who survive the ordeal become colourless, ageless, and eerily serene; these Bleachlings are alternately revered and reviled, and tend to withdraw from gnomish society.
- Animesque: A common "look" for gnomes is overly large eyes and unusually small noses and mouths, making them resemble an older anime character come to life.
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: Their eyebrows routinely extend well past their temples, sticking far out into the air.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Even when they have Good or Evil alignments, gnomes tend to look at it differently than other races.
- Curiosity Causes Conversion: One explanation for their migration to the mortal realm.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Gnomes who fail to seek out new experiences and otherwise get too bored tend to suffer the Bleaching, so called because it turns their (normally very colorful) skin a stark white, makes them lose their sense of wonder and lust for life, and often results in Death by Despair or them being Driven to Suicide. Aside from the skin color change, this pretty much exactly describes the symptoms of clinical depression. In a similar vein, comparisons could also be drawn to ADHD and its more overlooked and disfavorable aspects in favor of the common stereotype, particularly those who have it physically having trouble summoning up the motivation to do anything unless it involves personal curiosity, novelty, or a personal passion- referred to as an "interest-based nervous system"- and being just as much affected by their emotional lows to a far greater degree than neurotypical people as they are their emotional highs, referred to as "emotional hyperarousal" (both of which are described here
). - Gonk: Lore establishes that gnomes can often be weird-looking to the point of being shockingly ugly. The most common manifestations are either unusually oversized noses or a combination of oversized eyes and undersized noses and mouths that just looks jarring to humans.
- Ice-Cream Koan: A feat in Gnomes of Golarion allows gnome monks to befuddle combatants by reciting these.
- Improbable Weapon User: One of the gnomish racial weapons is the Battle Ladder. You heard that right.
- Living Forever Is Awesome: 2nd editions states that gnomes could theoretically live forever, provided they can avoid the Bleaching by staying busy with interesting work/hobbies and new experiences. Which, in effect, means that they can live forever so long as it is an awesome life.
- Mythology Gag: The "big nosed look" is an homage to the earliest editions of Dungeons & Dragons, where the signature distinctive feature of a gnome as opposed to a dwarf or a halfling was its large, bulbous nose, and gnomes considered nose size to be a sign of attractiveness or even social status.
- Otherworldly Technicolour Hair: Gnomes are originally from the First World, and can have unusual hair colours (bright green being a common one). Those who don't have enough whimsy and excitement in their life suffer from a terminal condition called the Bleaching, where they lose all their colour.
- Our Gnomes Are Weirder: They actually have to be. They have to keep themselves interested and entertained at all times; once they start becoming bored, they go through a process known as the bleaching, which is often fatal. Yes, gnomes can literally be bored to death.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: One of their racial abilities lets them do this.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: It's noted that gnomes who have an "big eyes, small mouth" look are seen as shockingly weird or outright ugly, rather than cute.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Boredom can literally drive them insane and kill them.
Goblin
Type: Humanoid (goblinoid)
Small and stupid, but still crafty and dangerous, goblins are very widespread on Golarion. However, their general mannerisms and lifestyle means that most are incompatible with society at large.
- Abusive Parents: The goblin approach to parenthood consists of tossing their newborns into a central cage and leaving them there, sporadically throwing in food and water and only letting them out when they've grown into physical adults. Fortunately, goblin infants are born relatively self-sufficient, but even so, the neglect they undergo results in many infant goblins starving to death or being cannibalized by their siblings.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Not always, but there's a definite trend. A lot of goblins live, breed, and die so quickly they're stuck in a state of perpetual childhood. It's actually possible for goblins to be relatively mild Cloudcuckoolanders, but it's only recently become common for them to reach that point. A lot of goblins are still debased anthropophages and barghest and Lamashtu worshippers.
- Ascended Extra: Goblins were playable in 1e, but being an Always Chaotic Evil monster race made it a stretch to have them work with most player character parties. Come 2nd Edition, they've been promoted to a core race, and have had their lore developed so there's legitimate reasons for goblins to be seen in civil Golarion society.
- Big Beautiful Woman: They consider obesity to be a sign of female beauty. Which, given both their primitive culture makes access to food unpredictable and their hyperactive metabolisms make it hard for them to keep weight on, is one of the most logical things about goblins.
- Breakout Character: Pathfinder goblins' much more unique design and characterisation from their original Dungeons and Dragons versions proved immensely popular with players, eventually prompting Paizo to promote them to a core race in 2nd Edition.
- Chaotic Stupid: As much so as they are Stupid Evil. The basic description of goblins in Golarion portrays them as essentially entire race of deranged toddlers with a sadistic streak and extremely bad ADHD. Games Masters are even encouraged to portray goblins doing random stupid things in the middle of a fight, like suddenly running off after a small animal, stopping to pick their nose, or charging off at another goblin for a punch-up or a Burping Contest.
- Extreme Omnivore: If you are not a goblin, you are a source of food. Even the most obviously inedible of organic matter will be given a cursory nibble.
- Fetus Terrible: Goblins are born with a full set of teeth and an appetite for meat, to the point that pregnant goblins secrete a hormone that makes their flesh unbearably bitter less to keep themselves from being eaten by predators and more to stop their unborn children from chewing their own way out of the womb!
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Look at all these other tropes, then ponder what kind of massive mental stat penalties 1st Edition goblins must have. Ready for the answer? A -2 to Charisma, which arguably is the only mental stat that makes sense for them to be high in because of their bombastic personalities. This is because they're still based on 3rd Edition D&D goblins, who weren't remotely insane or stupid. This was rectified in 2nd Edition, with Charisma being their boosted mental stat and Wisdom being their penalty stat.
- Genius Ditz: They have a penalty to Wisdom, not Intelligence; many goblins are gleeful and highly competent alchemists, even if they can be dangerously scatter-brained, impulsive or foolish.
- Gonk: Complete with comically oversize heads, Bald of Evil, Red Eyes, Take Warning, and More Teeth than the Osmond Family.
- Hates Reading: Goblins traditionally hate reading and writing, because of a superstition that it will rob them of their souls and steal their thoughts. This superstition is born of their origins, when Asmodeus tricked the goblin gods with a contract that enslaved them until Lamashtu liberated them. As with most of their overtly negative aspects though, Second Edition has downplayed this aspect a bit, with some goblins starting to learn to read and write so they can integrate themselves better with other societies. Others have found workarounds. For example, goblin wizards have invented a pop-up Spell Book.
- Incendiary Exponent: Goblins who take the Torch Goblin feat can set themselves on fire to make themselves more dangerous in close combat. It's not quite as insane as it sounds, since it can only be taken by goblins who are resistant to fire, but still a good illustration of their pyromania. After all, it only hurts them less until high levels.
- Laughably Evil: While they are as malicious as the bigger goblinoids, they tend to be much more comical, hedonistic, and scatterbrained about it.
- Man Bites Man: Goblin gnashers are pretty extreme anyway, but there's a racial trait that gives goblins a full-fledged Bite attack as a natural weapon. They even have their own racial Barbarian archetype, the Feral Gnasher, that specializes in biting its enemies to death.
- Mascot Mook: Goblins were the very first monster that Paizo gave a massive makeover to in order to start building the Golarion setting. Combined with their frequent appearances and rather comedic nature, and they're easily the most iconic monster in Pathfinder. And as of 2nd Edition, they've been made into a core race and have their own Iconic character.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Goblin flesh is pretty much the primary food source for goblins.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Goblins are dangerously stupid pyromaniacs who loathe dogs and horses (the feeling is mutual), are terrified of writing (it can steal your soul!), and sing horrible merry songs about eating babies. They also have a subrace called "monkey goblins" who use their hand-like feet and prehensile, rat-like tails to live an arboreal life. They serve as the franchise's Mascot Mook, and are included among the base playable races of Second Edition alongside the traditional humans, elves and dwarves, which operate under the assumption that players are taking the role of one of a small but growing minority of goblins who are attempting to integrate more into civilization.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Particularly in their more comedic portrayals. They're vicious little airheads who take a childlike joy in songs, games and setting things on fire.
- Pyromaniac: They love fire and have several abilities (and an alchemist archetype) dedicated to their love of making things burn or explode.
- Stupid Evil: They're often portrayed as manic vermin who usually do themselves in by sheer idiocy halfway through their natural lifespan. With nonexistent attention spans, no grasp of tactics, and no regard for each other's well-being, they tend to deal hefty Friendly Fire before they even reach their targets and abandon each other as soon as something spooks them — a poor strategy to pursue a violent grudge against almost every other species.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Pickles. Salt is one of the few flavors that goblins can actually taste effectively, and so they're absolutely addicted to anything with a strong salty flavor. Goblins will shove anything into brine and proceed to eat it, resulting in rather stomach-turning pickling experiments.
- Underground Monkey: Goblins are very adaptable, quick and eager colonizers of new locations, and worshippers of the goddess of mutation, and as such it's quite common for populations of goblins who settle extreme or exotic environments to develop into new variants on the basic goblin theme adapted to that area. Common variants include the prehensile-tailed, arboreal monkey goblins of the jungles of Mediogalti Island, arctic goblin populations with thick fur or blue skin and resistance to cold temperatures, aquatic grindylows (who have octopus tentacles instead of legs) and cavern-dwelling goblins with bulbous eyes and long limbs adapted for climbing.
Goloma
Frightening-looking horselike humanoids whose faces resemble elaborate, equine wooden masks/helmets.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Their face/snout has a portion that looks like a wooden visor or mask. Their hair? Those are eyes.
- Dark Is Not Evil: While Goloma are daemonic-looking horse-men with too many eyes and often dark-coloured in appearance, as a whole, their society simply wishes to be left alone.
- Eminently Enigmatic Race: Being descendents of a prey race, they find safety in not being seen and looking like scary, tough demons.
- Extra Eyes: A goloma's face has eight gelatinous, shining eyes. The back of a goloma's head and neck is coated in black hair that is filled with thousands of tiny, peering eyes.
- Face of a Thug: They look incredibly frightening, but don't mean any harm. In fact, they're descended from prey.
- Lovable Coward: Exaggerated. The goloma are an entire species of this, as they know that others will be afraid of them and may respond by "defending" themselves. Fluff states they picked up their tendencies towards cowardice and stealth due to having descended from a prey race a long time ago.
Grippli
Type: Humanoid (grippli)
Frog-people that tend to live in marshes. Distantly related to Boggards.
- Bewitched Amphibians: Not literally, but they do invoke it, especially with the "Princely" trait.
- Chameleon Camouflage: In swamps and jungles, they just blend into the background.
- Frog Men: Literally two-and-a-half-feet-tall bipedal frogs.
- Poisonous Person: The Toxic Skin alternate racial trait makes them this. With the right feats, they can literally weaponize this — that is, they can create a simple melee weapon out of their poison.
- Royal Rapier: The Princely alternate racial trait, among other things, gives them automatic proficiency with rapiers regardless of their class.
Halfling
Type: Humanoid (halfling)
Nobody really knows where halflings come from. As far as even the halflings themselves know, they have always lived in the shadow of Humanity. And that suits most of them just fine.
- Beneath Notice: In many cases, living unobtrusively at the fringes of civilization is a survival mechanism for them.
- Creepy Doll: Invoked by a racial option, where they can look so much like dolls come to life they can get a stealth boost by pretending to be dolls.
- Expy: Like in Dungeons and Dragons, they're still more-or-less LOTR hobbits: bare-footed not-quite-humans who prefer the simple life, living in close-to-nature villages]] and generally tending towards trying to not get involved in other peoples' world-ending businesses.
- Hobbits: Pathfinder halflings tend to be cheerful opportunists who prefer to avoid the limelight and the problems that come with it. In many human nations, halflings are prized as servants and, in less enlightened kingdoms, slaves.
- Indy Ploy: They tend to jump into situations and figure things out from there.
- Oral Tradition: Fables and folk histories are their cultural mainstays.
- Prefers Going Barefoot: Most halflings prefer to walk barefoot rather than wear shoes.
- Slave Race: In Cheliax, Katapesh, and other locations they're most often found as slaves. It's mentioned in many parts of the world they're often servants.
- Suffer the Slings: Slings are a signature weapon for halflings.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: Jinxed halflings are bereft of the typical halfling luck, but can instead manipulate the fortunes of others.
Hobgoblin
Type: Humanoid (goblinoid)
Larger, tougher, and meaner cousins of goblins, the hobgoblins have recently begun to rise in prominence in Golarion's political stage through the founding of two hobgoblin nations: Kaoling, in Tian Xia, establishing during the chaos following the collapse of Lung Wa, and more recently Oprak in the Mindspin Mountains of Avistan.
- Bald of Evil: Males and females alike, though the evil part is societal rather than inherent.
- Evil Chancellor: Hobgoblins sometimes take legitimate jobs as advisers or warmasters, but even there, they constantly scheme to pull their employers into more wars and conflicts.
- Fantastic Racism: Hobgoblins hate elves, which they were created to fight — elves and aiuvarins are the only captives they always kill out of hand rather than enslave, and they detest magic chiefly because elves commonly practice it.
- Non-Indicative Name: The word "Hob" in English pertains to impish creatures; "hobgoblin" therefore, was traditionally an impish goblin, while true goblins were human-sized.
- Since Pathfinder descends from D&D, which was written by people with a tentative understanding of European folklore at best and which took a great deal of inspiration from The Lord of the Rings, which largely made the same mistake, the misnomer stuck, and "Goblins" became the diminutive guys while "Hobgoblins" became the taller, smarter cousins.
- However, Hob (usually Old Hob) has also been a nickname or euphemism for the Devil, and Pathfinder's Hobgoblins were, according to in-universe speculation, a creation of the long-disappeared Devil Canzoriant, who wanted something more robust and obedient for his slave warriors. This is their canon origin in Second Edition, as there are several feats that reflect a fount of vitality they were blessed with when they were created by Canzoriant using the Cantorian Spring, and the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide doesn't offer any alternatives.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Hobgoblins are a highly militaristic offshoot of the main goblin species and are much more organized and orderly than their smaller cousins, but are so universally ambitious that they have consistent trouble in holding a tribe or army together for long. Despite this, two hobgoblin nations exist, although both are fairly recent. Kaoling, in Tian Xia, was established following the collapse of the empire of Lung Wa a century or so before the setting's present time, and is known for its incredibly treacherous and cutthroat politics; Oprak, in the Mindspin Mountains of Avistan, is established after the events of the Ironfang Invasion Adventure Path as a homeland for hobgoblins in particular and monster races in general, and is held together by the iron will of its ruler, General Azaersi.
- Proud Warrior Race: Their entire society is organized around their military.
- Slave Mooks: Hobgoblins were created from regular goblins by a now long-forgotten faction in order to provide armies of magically-controlled soldiers with whom to attack the then-powerful elven civilization.
- The Starscream: Despite being militant and well organized, this is the reason they aren't a bigger power; any high-ranking hobgoblin spends as much time watching his back from underlings as planning conquest.
- The Spartan Way: Their childhoods aren't fun.
Human
Type: Humanoid (human)
- Barbarian Tribe: Most humans can trace their histoy back to the Kellid people, who settled a large amount of the Inner Sea region, and became known for their battle prowess and connection to nature or the elements in some way. Though the Kellid's have split into various groups, many who trace their heritage to ancient Kellid are fierce warriors, with some like the humans of the Realm of the Mammoth Lords invoking the barbarian culture associated with the trope.
- Humans Are Average: As expected, they're pretty much the "default" race and don't have any unique race traits. Later material eventually did give them unique alternate race traits.
- Humans Are Special: As with Dungeons & Dragons, notable for being able to take an additional feat and able to fit into any class. Also, there are a handful of other, non-human races descended from them, such as skum, gillmen and mongrelmen.
- Jack of All Stats: Humans are regarded as basically the best race in Pathfinder, since their versatility lends them well to every class — though there are some cases where specific races have special class synergies that top humans.
- Purposely Overpowered: In 1st Edition, Azlanti humans gain a bonus to all ability scores. For comparison, normal humans only gain that bonus in one single ability score. They're also effectively extinct (except for a few who have survived to the present day via very specific means), particularly implausible PCs in most adventures without a convoluted backstory, and the game instructs that they should be only playable with explicit GM permission. One of few times you could play an Azlanti was because a trap in the Shattered Star AP that puts a player character into a clone body of one. In 2nd Edition, as it became more plausible for them to be PCs (courtesy of a city that was transported from ancient Thassilon to the present day after escaping a Stable Time Loop), they're no longer overpowered. They can take a background to reflect having once been a resident of Thassilon, but otherwise aren't any different from other human characters.
Hryngar
Type: Humanoid (dwarf)
The ancestors of hryngar were those dwarves who refused to undertake the Quest for the Sky. Most of them fell to worshiping Droskar, the god of endless toil.
- Alternate Company Equivalent: They're ports of Duergar from Dungeons & Dragons, down to being fatalistic, pessimistic jerks who worship work for work's sake and utilitarianism to the extreme.
- Bald of Evil: Unlike surface dwarves, hryngar men can't grow hair on their scalps.
- Deal with the Devil: After centuries of losing battles against Darklands monsters drove the dwarven remnant to the brink of extinction, Droskar offered them survival in exchange for their absolute obedience. They reclaimed much of their empire with his backing, at the cost of becoming the hryngar.
- Evil Counterpart: Hryngar are the evil versions of dwarves.
- Fantastic Racism: They despise surface dwarves above all others and usually kill them on sight.
- Horse of a Different Color: Hryngar traditionally use giant insects as mounts and beasts of burden; chapel beetles, a type of especially large stag beetle-like creatures, are the favored steeds of Droskar's priests.
- Invisibility: Most hryngar can go invisible as a spell-like ability.
- Never My Fault: Hryngar rarely accept personal responsibility for failures, preferring instead to blame their misfortune on others. This extends to a cultural level; they do not enjoy their servitude to Droskar, but would rather blame everyone else, especially other Darklands residents and the rest of the dwarven race, for their lot rather than admit their own faulty choice.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Evil, subterranean offshoots of the main dwarf race whose culture of tradition and physical work has curdled into dogmatism and joyless toil.
- Psychic Powers: Very rarely, hryngar are born with innate psychic abilities. As the hryngar believe such powers to be a blessing from Droskar, such inviduals are held in high esteem in their society.
Kasatha
Type: Humanoid (kasatha)
Four-armed aliens from a barbaric desert world who were brought to Golarion in the same spaceship that spawns the androids.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Four arms.
- Multishot: Kasatha specialize in archery, and even have a ranger archetype that specializes in using two bows at once.
Kashrishi
- Beast Man: Kashrishi resemble halfling-sized bipedal rhinoceroses with the occasional odd insectile feature.
- The Empath: Kashrishi are capable of discerning a creature's emotional state and impulses through proximity.
- Hive Mind: They're mistaken to have this, but they're really incredibly empathetic.
- Horned Humanoid: All kashrishi have signature crystalline horns.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: They're humanoids with rhino and insect characteristics, with some having more insect features and some having more rhino features. As they evolve in response to the environment, they may also take in aspects of other animals.
Kholo
Type: Humanoid (gnoll)
Humanoid hyenas, infamous for their savagery and laziness.
- Beast Folk: Leaning more towards the "animal with generally humanoid anatomy" than the "human with animal features" side of this trope, they are bipedal hyenas with human-like arms and opposable thumbs.
- Cute Bruiser: Ant kholo are pretty cute—they're visually based on aardwolves, big-eyed, big-eared, and the size of halflings, but they're as strong as their larger relatives.
- Divergent Character Evolution: As a creature brought over via the OGL, gnolls in 1st Edition heavily resembled the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition version: (mostly) evil-aligned hyena-men known for their savagery and laziness when an orc won't do. In 2nd Edition, they have been given a more nuanced portrayal, while gnolls in D&D 5th Edition have become outright demonic.
- Fate Worse than Death: Kholo consider exile to be this — they're very social creatures, and fear dying far less than they fear being alone. In kholo society, the death penalty exists but is used for crimes that, while serious, are not considered the worst possible. The most serious crimes, such as heresy, treason or freeing slaves, are all punished with exile.
- Heinous Hyena: They're humanoid hyenas known for their tremendous slothfulness and horrific savagery, with lifestyles centered chiefly on raiding other people for food, supplies and slaves. Most worship Lamashtu, the
Chaotic Evil Mother of Monsters. That said, they are also noted to have some positive qualities: they are immensely loyal to their packs, and never war against or enslave other kholo. Kholo of the Mwangi Expanse are far less malevolent but still seen as rather sinister by other peoples of the region for being ruthless Combat Pragmatists who eat the corpses of other humanoids, though the Kholo themselves view the latter as a sign of respect. - I'm a Humanitarian: Kholo eat their own dead as a sign of reverence, and extend the "honor" to any respected foes they fell in battle, hoping to incorporate their enemy's strength into their clan as a genuine sign of admiration. Other humanoids tend not to understand this. It doesn't help that Lamashtu-worshipping kholo eat their enemies just because they're hungry.
- Klingon Promotion: The default response of a kholo tribe to regicide is to make the old leader's killer their new leader.
- Lazy Bum: Their laziness is their defining attribute.
- Little People: Ant kholo are a breed that stands only three feet tall and resembles an aardwolf more than a hyena.
- Pet the Dog: In spite of being cannibalistic demon-worshipping monsters, kholo are often fiercely loyal to their "pack", and many become depressed or unhinged without one. This is often given as a reason for kholo to become adventurers: to find a new family.
- Made a Slave: They tend to be extremely lazy, and take slaves of other species to do the necessary but tedious work they refuse to do themselves.
Kitsune
Type: Humanoid (kitsune, shapechanger)
Shapeshifting fox-folk native to Tian Xia.
- Asian Fox Spirit: Based on the mythological kitsune (and sharing traits with the mythical creatures themselves, along with the Chinese and Korean equivalents, the huli jing and kumiho), and similar to the real myth, they're shapeshifting foxes with magical affinities and frequently are tricksters. They get a feat for growing additional tails (just like versions of the kitsune myth), which can be taken eight times and grants more spell-like abilities with each tail (just as the same versions claim that kitsune grow more powerful with each additional tail). Lore notes there are large communities of kitsune in the equivalents to East Asia.
- Animorphism: Kitsune who grew up in sparsely-populated areas usually have the secondary form of a fox.
- Cunning Like a Fox: They have a reputation for trickery, often well-earned.
- Fox Folk: Kitsune are shapechangers with two forms. Their default form is that of a fox-headed humanoid, while the secondary one resembles either a humanoid without fox features (if they grew up in cities) or a fox (if they were raised in the countryside).
- Humanshifting: Kitsune raised in populated areas areas can each take a specific, single human form of the same sex as them as a standard action. The Realistic Likeness feat upgrades this ability, allowing them to copy others' appearances.
- I Have Many Names: Some kitsune have different names for each form: a kitsune name for their kitsune form, a regional name for a tailless form, and possibly no name at all for a fox form.
- Lovable Rogue: Arguably, their Rogue Racial Archetype runs on exploiting this view. The Kitsune Tricksters use their guile and charms to get what they want.
Kobold
Type: Humanoid (reptilian)
Short, profoundly arrogant reptilian humanoids with delusions of grandeur - particularly given how their very biology makes them an ideal Servant Race for anyone with a great deal of magic, especially dragons.
- Abhorrent Admirer: Kobolds worship true dragons (both metaphorically and literally, depending on the circumstances), which they see as the greatest beings in creation and the only things genuinely superior to themselves; they also proudly claim draconic heritage, which is the source of their claims to being the true masters of the world. The dragons, on their part, find the kobolds as weak and contemptible as everyone else does, and their fawning admiration as anywhere between acutely embarrassing, kind of pathetic or downright insulting, depending on the dragon in question.
- Absolute Xenophobe: For the most part, other species are to be tormented, killed, avoided, or distracted with flattery until they slip up - unless they incubate kobold eggs, of course, in which case they are to have the very ground they walked on worshipped.
- Breath Weapon: A very rare variety of kobolds, the dragonbreath kobolds, are capable of using the breath weapon associated with the breed of chromatic dragon that their scale color matches — corrosive gas for green-scaled kobolds, fire for red-scaled ones, acid for black ones, frost for white ones and bolts of electricity for blue ones.
- Combat Pragmatist: Since one-on-one melee combat usually turns out badly for kobolds, they love to use ambushes, traps, skirmish tactics, and the advantage of numbers.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Kobolds of Golarion states that while kobolds are weak, they should never be underestimated. There are a lot of them, they work marvelously well together, they're the ultimate Trap Masters, and they taste too terrible for Darklands predators to eat them.
- Draconic Humanoid: While they are reptilian humanoids, they boast about how they are more related to dragons, and they physically do bear some resemblance to their greater kin — most notably, their scale colors match those of chromatic dragons, and some very rare kobolds can use draconic Breath Weapons. The immensely proud and powerful dragons find these links to such weak, cowardly creatures profoundly embarrassing.
- Dirty Coward: Their hat. Although with proper characterization, they can be promoted to Lovable Coward since they're more pathetic than obnoxious.
- Evil Counterpart: They often come across as this to the dwarves. Both species traditionally live in extensive underground settlements, are dedicated and untiring workers who consider a life spent toiling productively to be a life well-spent, and are often noted to be extremely skilled at creating things out of stone and metal. They both lean towards predominantly lawful alignments, and are often depicted as actively at odds with each other over living space and mining grounds.
- Long-Lived: Well not as Long-Lived as the elves, their lifespans are still quite long by the standards of most humanoids. Kobold life expectancy is usually 30 — 40 years due to their tough lives, but some can live up to 140 years if they survive.
- Our Kobolds Are Different: Much like their Dungeons & Dragons predecessors, they're small, reptilian humanoids distantly related to dragons. Second edition reimagines them as squatter beings with almost toadlike faces and broad, backwards-pointing horns. Their myths generally link them to dragons in some manner, usually with kobolds being dragons who were stripped of their power in some manner or with dragons having been created by empowering preexisting kobolds. In the modern day, kobolds live underground in mazelike warrens behind layers of deadly traps, are ancestral enemies of goblins, dwarves and gnomes and worship powerful entities, especially dragons, as living gods who grand their strength to their offspring. The vastly more powerful dragons, in turn, mostly see kobolds as a cheap source of expandable minions and as a source of mild embarrassment otherwise.
- All kobolds have the scale color of one of the five types of chromatic dragon (white, black, green, blue and red). This is normally purely cosmetic, but a very rare variety, the dragonbreath kobolds, are able to use the Breath Weapon of their associated dragon type (respectively ice, acid, poison gas, lightning and fire).
- Culturally, kobolds are defined by strictly hierarchical societies, profound xenophobia towards anything that isn't a kobold or a host for their eggs, fanatical devotion to their tribes and a vastly overwrought sense of self-importance — kobolds believe themselves to be the true rulers of the world and as the creators of most forms of technology and civilization.
- While most kobolds live in complex tunnel systems underground, some tribes of green-scaled kobolds live nomadically deep within ancient forests.
- Servant Race: Biologically adapted to it, in fact! They will attach themselves to anyone who can incubate their eggs and lets them, causing the kobolds hatched in their magical influence to develop thematically linked abilities.
- Small Name, Big Ego: They like to play up their draconic heritage in order to compensate for their obvious inferiority to their actual dragon ancestors. It's a big sore point.
- The Symbiote: Kobold eggs are incubated by exposing them to powerful magic, which assists their development and causes the hatchling to develop unique abilities. In return, the kobolds serve the source.
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: An entirely literal example: apparently they taste too terrible for even the predators in the Darklands to eat them.
- Trap Master: Their specialty. Kobold lairs are almost always riddled with numerous, creative and deadly traps, and they have several racial bonuses and archetypes to help with trapmaking.
Kuru
Type: Humanoid (kuru)
A savage, cannibalistic race that inhabits the westernmost islands of the Shackles.
- Always Chaotic Evil: They're essentially the Shackles' answer to orcs.
- Cannibal Tribe: Kuru are savage, degenerate cannibals.
- Body Paint: A distinctive quality of theirs; it might be blood though.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: They're sensitive to the light.
- Face–Heel Turn: They were once a peaceful race native to the Shackles. They were driven to the Cannibal Isles by encroaching pirates, and the Blood Queen's influence turned them into what they are today.
- Human Sacrifice: Kuru often sacrifice their prey to the Blood Queen.
- I Am a Humanitarian: They habitually eat other humanoids: the islands they inhabit are even known as "the Cannibal Isles".
- Man Bites Man: They have a natural bite attack and gain temporary hit points from consuming the blood of their enemies.
- Meaningful Name: In real life, kuru is a prion-based disease that affects the nervous system, chiefly characterized by violent trembling and spasms. It is primarily contracted through cannibalism.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Their eyes are naturally solid red.
- Religion of Evil: They worship a monstrous entity known as the Blood Queen.
Lashunta
Type: Humanoid (lashunta)
Telepathic aliens from the planet Castrovel that resemble humanoids with antennae.
- Expy: At least partly inspired by the Cupians from Ralph Milne Farley's ''The Radio Man," in being telepathic humanoids with antennae who hail from a fantasy version of Venus and are at odds with formians.
- Green-Skinned Space Babe: Female lashunta look like "idealized human or elf women", are renowned for their beauty, and live on a hot planet that is most comfortable in minimal clothing.
- Proud Scholar Race: Lashunta are drawn to scholarly and magical pursuits and gain a bonus to Intelligence.
- Psychic Powers: They have minor telepathic abilities, which they can learn to amplify to aid their allies and Bond Creatures, and their home planet is renowned for its psychics.
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Their most alien feature is their antennae.
- Sexy Dimorphism: In 1st Edition, female lashunta are tall, lithe, commanding, and graceful; male lashunta are short, burly, brusque, and hirsute. Starfinder detaches the dimorphism from gender and retcons them as responses to different environmental stresses during puberty, something that was later carried over to Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
- Space Elves: The women. The men are more like Space Dwarves.
Lizardfolk (Iruxi)
Type: Humanoid (reptilian)
Reptilian humanoids that live in swamps and marshes, the lizardfolk — iruxi, as they name themselves — are one of Golarion's most ancient species.
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: They take loyalty within a tribe very seriously.
- The Beastmaster: Lizardfolk are quite skilled at taming large, powerful animals — typically reptilian ones — to serve as mounts, beasts of burdens and war animals. They typically use dinosaurs of almost any species in this role, but will sometimes keep wyverns as well.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The main cause of their conflicts with other races. For example, they view sending one's greatest fighters to war instead of keeping them to guard the young to be completely insane.
- Dying Race: Downplayed. Their relatively slow birthrate compared to mammals, plus the fact that most mammalian humanoids hate swamps and will happily drain them, means that iruxi are being slowly outcompeted by mammalian humanoids. However, they anticipated this after the Earthfall (which was even more of a disaster for them than the mammals), and most tribes have contingencies in place; it's unlikely they will ever dominate the world again, but they're unlikely to go extinct anytime soon.
- Emotionless Reptile: The iruxi are known for their extremely stoic personalities. They tend to take a very passive, objective and long-term view to life and problems, preferring to calmly wait and watch before reaching decisions.
- Expy: They're essentially the same as Dungeons & Dragons' own Lizardfolk, down to dwelling in swamplands, slow to trust outsiders, having aquatic bonuses, and having odd morals.
- Fantastic Racism: They refuse to deal with elves due an unknown betrayal in their past, deeply distrust humans do their long history of territorial conflict and absolutely loathe boggards, whose society they consider a degenerate mockery of their own. On the other hand, they get along fine with dwarves and gnomes.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Lizardfolk aren't particularly malicious about it. To them,
having someone die and not letting their nutrients be used to help someone would be disrespectful. - Large and in Charge: The lizard scions, a sub-race of lizardfolk, are much larger than their kin, and usually hold positions of authority.
- Lizard Folk: Human-sized, bipedal reptiles who live in tribal societies and inhabit swamps.
- Noble Savage: Lizardfolk society, while primitive by the quicker-breeding races' standards, has a great degree of cultural sophistication and artistic capability.
Merfolk (Sapiaquali-oth)
Type: Humanoid (aquatic)
Reclusive inhabitants of the ocean depths, the merfolk are secretive to the point of paranoia. Unknown to many, they're among the numerous servitor species created by the aboleths in ancient times, and are known as the sapiaquali-oth in the aboleth tongue.
- Absolute Xenophobe: While they generally don't seek out other species to kill, they defend their own territories mercilessly and view all other species as invaders and enemies.
- Odd Friendship: With the aboleths, of all things. The aboleth were their creators, and to this day they're the only creatures the merfolk think of as allies.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: Amphibious, pointy-eared and extremely reclusive, but otherwise fairly standard.
- Servant Race: They were created as the aboleths' first foray into creating humanoid servitor species, and to this day often serve the fishlike aberrations as agents and unwitting wardens.
Monkey Goblin
Type: Humanoid (goblinoid)
A goblin subrace from Mediogalti Island off the coast of Garund, they're distinguished by their prehensile tails and tree-dwelling nature.
- Demoted to Extra: In mechanical terms, they went from being their own ancestry in 1E to just a Heritage in 2E.
- Human Sacrifice: They're believed to practice it.
- Prehensile Tail: Their main distinction from other goblins is their prehensile, monkey-like tail, which they can use as an additional grasping limb.
- Pyromaniac: Like regular goblins, they love them some fire. It's suspected that their current city is at least the fifth site to bear the name, the previous incarnations having been burned down by its inhabitants.
- Religion of Evil: They're suspected to be demon-worshipers.
- Tree Top Town: Ganda-Uj is an especially primitive example of this.
Munavri
Type: Humanoid (munavri)
A race of human-descended albinistic psychics who dwell Beneath the Earth, the munavri sail the lightless seas of Orv and make up the only non-evil faction of any real size in the bowels of the world..
- Born Under the Sail: They descend from Azlanti seafarers who were pulled along with the seas as they rushed into the Darklands and maintain their ancestors' maritime traditions, sailing the breadth of the Sightless Sea on ivory ships and living on floating island-cities. Not all munavri take to the sea — most priests and craftsmen never leave their islands — but sea travel still plays an important part in their culture and all young munavri are expected to build a skiff and learn how to sail.
- Crafted from Animals: Their distinctive ivory ships are crafted from the bones and teeth of the monsters of the Sightless Sea.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Munavri do not handle bright light well, due to their subterranean lifestyles and their albinism.
- Human Subspecies: They're descended from ancient Azlanti humans who were trapped in the depths of Orv when their empire fell, and developed their albinism and telepathy as side effects of inhabiting mysterious, magical islands and being forced to adapt very rapidly to survive the hostile environment they found themselves in. Albinism aside, they still largely resemble their human ancestors.
- Mage Species: All munavri are psychic.
- No Social Skills: Munavris have little reason to engage in spoken conversations with one another and have thus very little familiarity with common social etiquette. When non-telepaths have to interact with them, munavris will routinely go off on lengthy tangents, overshare personal problems and private information, and completely miss their speaking partners' cues to end the discussion. In general, conversations with a munavri tend to be both rather uncomfortable and a lot longer than they need to be.
- Psychic Powers: All munavri are natural psychics, having gained the ability shortly after coming to Orv. Telepathy is present universally, as is the ability to instantly tell an object's purpose and nature, but other powers can manifest as well.
- Purposely Overpowered: In 1st Edition, outside of Azlanti humans, munavri are the most overpowered race not to have any racial hit dice; they gain bonuses to all of their ability scores, only taking a slight penalty to strength, and have a plethora of other bonuses, with only slight mechanical weaknesses. On the other hand, they live in an isolated cavern beneath the earth on a separate continent from where most of the action in Golarion takes place, meaning they are particularly impractical and implausible for them to be PCs in most adventures without a convoluted backstory — and by the time an adventure can make its way to where they live, most enemies will be even more ludicrously overpowered anyway.
- Telepathy: Munavri are natural telepaths, and almost never speak aloud to one another.
Nagaji
Type: Humanoid (reptilian)
Snake-humanoids created by the goddess Nalinivati, who was inspired by both humans and nagas themselves. Many devote themselves to naga, or at the very least, an ideal.
- Dumb Muscle: First edition nagaji have a racial bonus to Strength, a penalty to Intelligence, and a lack of understanding for logic and education.
- Long Neck: Whipfang nagaji have a long, flexible neck that can curl into a striking pose like that of a snake, and allows them to bite with surprising distance and speed.
- Poisonous Person: Some nagaji are capable of spitting venom.
- Progressively Prettier: Inverted. In 1st edition, nagaji had fundamentally human faces, apart from the serpentine eyes, scaly skin, and snake-like fangs. In 2nd edition, nagaji literally have the heads of giant snakes on an otherwise humanoid body, with the exception of the sacred nagaji, who look like attractive normal humans from the waist up.
- Servant Race: According to legend, nagaji were created by the naga as servants. They claim to be okay with it. 2e subverts this, stating that they were created by their goddess as equals and venerate the naga as spiritual guides and guardians rather than necessarily as rulers (even though many nagaji societies are ruled by nagas), but most other humanoids assume that they have no interests aside from mindlessly serving nagas.
- Snake People: The typical nagaji has a scaled humanoid body and a serpentine head. Sacred nagaji stand out from the rest of their species, with the upper body of a beautiful human and the lower body of a green or white snake, to the point they're sometimes mistaken for lamias.
Orang-Pendak
Type: Humanoid (sasquatch)
A race of small, reclusive, apelike hunter-gatherers related to sasquatches.
- Beast Man: They resemble orangutans that have grown slightly larger (though still only about the size of a halfling or gnome) and developed a fully bipedal body-structure, as opposed to a true orangutan's knuckle-walking stance.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: They're a smaller offshoot of the sasquatch species.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: They get a strength bonus despite their small size.
Orc
Type: Humanoid (orc)
Ancestral enemies of the dwarves, they were driven to the surface before the advancing dwarves in their Quest for the Sky, and have been a scourge on the surface ever since. On Golarion, most live in the hold of Belkizen.
- Always Chaotic Evil: As befitting the Trope Codifier of Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons orcs being violent warmongers, they were usually depicted as evil throughout 1st Edition, mostly due to having evil gods and demon lords as patrons. In 2nd Edition, this has mostly been dropped with the introduction of good-leaning orc societies on Golarion such as the Matanji orcs of the Mwangi Expanse; even the Belkzen orcs (which received focus as the typical evil orcs in 1st Edition) are slowly becoming less xenophobic out of necessity to fight Tar-Baphon.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: All orcs have bright green skin.
- Arch-Enemy: Dwarves; their oldest and most hated enemy, the dwarves have shattered orc empires both above and below ground.
- Blood Knight: Their culture revolves around combat.
- Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: The greataxe is a favoured weapon among orcs, and synergizes well with their brute strength.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Orcs are a subterranean race in origin and have low light tolerance. There's an alternate racial trait to avert this, however, described as the result of an orc staring into the sun for long periods rather than "be defeated" by it.
- Determinator: Orcs can keep fighting even when their hit points slip into the negatives, and a lot of their racial feats are based around jacking up survivability and endurance even more.
- Does Not Like Magic: Subverted. They're extremely paranoid of curses, hidden occultism, and sorcery...precisely because they have a cultural fascination with and respect of magic, especially after having served under, then fought the Evil Sorcerer Tar-Baphon. An orc who picks up a magical career, while infrequent, is not seen with any prejudice, especially if they are of a martial disposition.
- Dumb Muscle: In first edition, they receive the second highest strength bonus out of any race in the game, surpassed only by the trox. They also receive penalties to all mental scores. Averted in 2nd Edition, where they just had the bonus to Strength and a free boost before the remaster (enabling Genius Bruisers who also boosted Intelligence or Warrior Poets who boosted Wisdom), and two free boosts in Remastered while keeping their endurance.
- Fantastic Racism: They view elves and dwarves with hatred and resentment, halflings and gnomes with hatred and contempt, and humans with plain hatred. Played with, as orc hatred is tinged with respect, as it implies you're actually an enemy worth fighting - hence why they can be cooperated with.
- Horse of a Different Color: Orcs like their mounts powerful, frightening and impressive. They usually tame megafaunal predators for this purpose, especially dire wolves and smilodons, and will eagerly bribe or pressure more exotic monsters such as drakes and manticores to serve as steeds when the opportunity arises.
- Kill the God: A pretty core belief of orcs is that the souls of dead heroes among them can challenge a god for a place in the pantheon in a process called the Crucible; for that reason, gods tend to avoid naming too many gods, as said gods would be targets. The Burning Suns chieftain Menja Firehair is slated to win her Crucible in War of Immortals.
- Macho Masochism: A common orc saying goes "you are your scars"; they believe that Misery Builds Character, and even the loser of a fight that endures incredible pain with dignity earns almost as much as the winner.
- Proud Warrior Race: Of Blood Knights, though they tend to view things like honor and loyalty as getting in the way of brute force. From 2E on, they also have an egalitarian view of strength, a Badass Bookworm who assists the tribe in survival and magic is just as much a warrior as a swordsman, but they expect glory in battle.
- Real After All: Orc folk beliefs are notorious for two things, how ridiculously complex and tedious they are to uphold when not outright violent, and how effective they are at actually being a Power Nullifier.
- Smarter Than You Look: As of Second Edition, orcs are explicitly a lot more perceptive and canny than their tribal culture and Proud Warrior Race mentality makes them seem - their "superstitions" are in fact effective countermagic measures, though they don't know quite how it works.
- Stone Wall: Their 2E heritage feats, especially the Remaster, emphasizes this; orcs win by outlasting the other guy, with their superstitions blocking magic used against them while other feats make them even harder to physically keep down.
- Worthy Opponent: They see humans as this, partly because they see them as being just as bloodthirsty as they are.
Ratfolk (Ysoki)
Type: Humanoid (ratfolk)
Child-sized, quick-witted anthropomorphic rats, more properly called ysoki.
- Bash Brothers: As part of the below trope and their "Swarming" racial trait, it's possible for a pair of Ratfolk to go Back-to-Back Badasses and use a teamwork feat to draw weapons from each other's gear.
- Close-Knit Community: They resolve conflicts to be mutually beneficial among their people if it can be helped, and care deeply for their kin. They even get a racial trait that allows a pair to share the same square.
- Plague Master: The Plague Bringer Alchemist, their Animal Stereotype archetype.
- Rat Men: Humanoid rats about the size of a halfling, who live in large groups within twisting warrens, are strongly associated with disease and common rodents, and are typically highly distrusted by other species.
- Resourceful Rodent: They are cunning and adaptable survivors who have spread across Golarion, and who make great alchemists.
- Thinking Up Portals: Ratfolk created a special discipline of psychic magic called Ranatagi, which allows them to detect and manipulate rifts in reality. The most gifted practitioners were said to guide entire caravans across vast reaches of space to distant worlds, which would explain their presence on Akiton, Golarion, and Castrovel.
- You Dirty Rat!: Averted. They tend towards neutrality and have close family ties. Some actually are so against the Animal Stereotype they get an alternate race trait for it.
Reptoid
Type: Humanoid (reptilian, shapechanger)
Bipedal reptiles from another planet, or perhaps another plane. Reptoids disguise themselves as other races and take positions of power to prepare Golarion for an invasion of Reptoids.
- Ancient Conspiracy: No one has any idea of how long the Reptoids have been screwing around on Golarion, but it's clear they've been here a while.
- Lizard Folk: In their true form, they're scaly, tailed humanoids with wide, lipless mouths filled with sharp teeth.
- Nebulous Evil Organisation: They're invading, all right, but no one, even those who are lucky enough to take a Reptoid alive, can figure out why they're invading.
- Reptilian Conspiracy: They're shapeshifting humanoid lizard aliens from another world or dimension sent to infiltrate society, gain positions of power, and prepare for the invasion.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: They have one specific humanoid form they can transform into, but can alter their humanoid form with a week of preparation.
Rougarou
Type:Humanoid (rougarou)
Wolf-headed humanoids who can shapeshift into wolves.
- Dumb Muscle: Described as "strong and alert, but simplistic". They gain a bonus to strength and a penalty to intelligence.
- I Am Not Weasel: They hate being mistaken for werewolves. (Understandable, since werewolves in Pathfinder are usually Chaotic Evil.)
- Noble Wolf: Wolf people, and described as generally trustworthy and upstanding.
- The Nose Knows: Appropriately for canids, they have the scent special ability.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Have the ability to turn into wolves once per day.
- Wolf Man: Their usual form, easily mistaken for being that of a werewolf.
Samsaran
Type: Humanoid (samsaran)
A group of blue-skinned humanoids who reincarnate rather than reproduce conventionally.
- Alien Blood: It looks like water.
- Alternate Company Equivalent: They are very similar in concept to the Devas of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, which are also a highly spiritual race that endlessly reincarnates into new identities, relies on Past-Life Memories to guide them, and seek to guide those around them to the path of spiritual enlightenment and devotion to the principles of good. Both races have Blank White Eyes and Mystical White Hair, but Devas lack the Alien Blood and are two-toned in purple and white rather than solid blue. Also, devas are Fallen Angels, whereas samsarans just randomly happen amongst humans.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Samsarans have blue skin which, combined with their Blank White Eyes and Mystical White Hair, marks their biggest visual difference from humans.
- Blank White Eyes: A samsaran's eyes are solid white in color, with no discernable pupil or iris.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: A common reaction to their reincarnation is to see it as a curse, much like the Rakshasa. They disagree.
- Mystical White Hair: A samsaran's hair is always bright white in color, a visual symbol of their enlightened and mystical nature.
- Past-Life Memories: Samsarans retain faint but accessible memories of their past lives, which they can use to help guide them in their current incarnation.
- Reincarnation: Samsarans reincarnate in an eternal cycle in search of enlightenment. Each time they are reincarnated, they retain some faint memories of their past life, but might have a vastly different personality. This reincarnation is even part of their reproduction: samsaran women give birth to human children, who may reincarnate into samsarans if they led a harmonious first life.
Shabti
Type: Outsider (native)
A race of outsider-constructs, they are created to bear the punishment of the sins of mortal kings.
- The Ageless: They have biological immortality and will never die of old age, but can still be killed.
- Artificial Human: In theory, they could be artificial versions of anything — it just takes mortals with the proper magical know how to make one to take their place in the afterlife. As a result, they're biologically sterile and can't sexually reproduce.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Their skin comes in gold, ivory, ebony, and jade.
- Chrome Champion: Superficially. Their gold skin is cool to the touch but isn't actually metal.
- The Scapegoat: Their purpose; kings will have them made so that they will be punished in the afterlife for the excesses of the mortals whose likeness they bear. This pisses Pharasma off to no end, and her agents free shabti wherever they are found.
- Sculpted Physique: They're created to look like idealized versions of mortals, appearing like living statues.
Shisk
Subterranean humanoids with bony quills prominently on their bodies. They rarely encounter others in the Mwangi Expanse, partially by choice and partially because they biologically have little need to seek anything outside a cave.
- Little Bit Beastly: One of the most human-looking non-core ancestries, shisks are in essence humans with quills. The game does hint that they may have been Bird People once upon a time, as the quills are described as atrophied plumage and are concentrated around their arms.
- Natural Weapon: An ancestry of lorekeepers and mystics who are also covered in deadly spines, just in case anyone thinks they can get away with picking on the Squishy Wizard.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: Shisks eschew materialism and freely give away material goods for knowledge or even performances, considering themselves winning a bargain if people are willing to take material things in exchange for valuable information. They never give away information for material goods, only for other knowledge, and they rarely ask for material goods in trades. This is also one reason it's rare to see Shisk: they subsist on cave vegetation and insects, so why would they need to find new resources in the outside world?
Shoony
- All-Loving Hero: Shoonies are very sociable and cooperative by nature and always see the best in others.
- Arcadia: Most shoony communities are small, idyllic farming villages.
- Beast Man: They're humanoid pugs.
- Cuteness Proximity: People sometimes unconsciously fawn over them.
- Hobbits: Shoonies are small, hairy (or in this case furry), good-natured people who enjoy the simple pleasures of life who will heed the call of heroism if they need to, but otherwise would prefer to live the simple life, not unlike halflings.
- Logical Weakness: Being pug-people, shoonies are prone to the breathing problems of normal pugs. They take a racial penalty to Constitution and only live half as long as humans do.
- Mister Muffykins: Strongly averted. Shoonies are friendly and peace-loving pug folk.
Strix
Type: Humanoid (strix)
Black-skinned Winged Humanoids who primarily live on isolated peaks and mountain ranges around Cheliax.
- Close-Knit Community: Despite their bad reputations.
- The Exile: A strix PC is likely to be this as they otherwise generally don't venture far from their mountains, but as it turns out the whole of the Inner Sea strix community views themselves this way; their mythology holds that they were banished from their homeland in Arcadia by the gods — likely the Syrinx — for some unknown offense, and that all of the misfortune they've suffered since is the result of this curse.
- Fantastic Racism: Strix loathe humans due to having been hunted by them to near extinction. There is even an ancestry feat in 2nd Edition that gives you bonuses against humans specifically.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: In 2nd Edition, despite having wings, strix PCs cannot fly by default until they take ancestry feats, with strix in 1st Edition and NPC strix in the Bestiary 3 having innate fly speeds. A sidebar in Ancestry Guide states that a GM can allow free flying for strix should they want, but be aware of its game breaking potential at lower levels.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: This is part of their philosophy; they rarely attack first, but take great vengeance against any offense, such as killing dozens of humans to avenge the death of a single strix. This hasn't done anything to help relations between the two races.
- Slave Race: They were originally bred to be this by the syrinx.
- You Killed My Father: Strix have a long history of taking revenge for their fallen family members.
Syrinx
Type: Humanoid (syrinx)
Cerebral, philosophical, wholly evil owl-like humanoids who seek to build a perfect enlightened culture — with them at the top, and everyone else in chains.
- Fantastic Racism: They believe that they have the right to mastery over every other race, especially the ones without wings.
- Light Is Not Good: A race of gold-feathered philosophers who desire to bring peace to all lands that they lay eyes upon. By conquering and enslaving them.
- Ominous Owl: Of the anthropomorphic variety — the syrinx are evil, imperialistic slavers seeking to conquer the world.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: Only their culture is right and enlightened, and they justify mass slavery and genocide as a means to spreading their "right" cultural values to the rest of the world.
- Wicked Cultured: Their culture highly values art and philosophy. It's also solidly Lawful Evil.
Tengu
Type: Humanoid (tengu)
Crow-like, bird-headed humanoids.- Alternate Company Equivalent: Tengus are equivalent to Dungeons & Dragons kenkus, being thieving, wingless crows based on Japanese mythology treated with suspicion by others.
- Bird People: Hunched-over crow people, normally lacking wings.
- Fantastic Racism: They receive this, being one of the beastly races that, while not actively chased out of town, are only just tolerated.
- Good Luck Charm: They've cultivated a reputation as "Jinx Eaters" among Inner Sea pirates who believe that they soak up the bad luck from people around them. They exploit this to get a measure of acceptance and protection.
- Master Swordsman: They are trained from birth with every kind of blade, and considered proficient with all sword-like weapons.
- Power Gives You Wings: The "Tengu Wings" racial feat allows a sufficiently strong and experienced tengu to sprout functional wings, giving them back the gift of flight that most of their people lack.
- Shapeshifting: Two racial feats grant them this ability: one allows them to become long-nosed humans, the other allows them to become Large crows... though the latter requires Tengu Wings first.
Triaxian
A winterborn triaxian.
Type: Humanoid (Triaxian)
The natives of Triaxus, a planet in Golarion's solar system with a long, elliptical orbit that gives it decades-long seasons. Triaxus is primarily divided between the Drakelands, a continent dominated by evil dragons, and the Allied Territories, who fight for their survival alongside good dragons.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Triaxians are seasonally dimorphic: summer and winter on Triaxus last for several generations each, so the species has developed different-looking variants that are more suited to either summer or winter.
- Dragon Rider: Triaxians live alongside dragonkin, lesser dragons with opposable thumbs that can form bonds with humanoids. Only the ones in the Allied Territories will, however.
- Little Bit Beastly: Triaxians have pointed ears, and in winter grow a coat of short fur, giving them a slightly catlike look.
- Named After Their Planet: On Golarion, this species (whose proper name is ryphorian) is simply referred to as Triaxians, after their home planet Triaxus.
- Our Elves Are Different: They're essentially just either albino elves who might grow some fur, or actually dark elves In Space! Oh, and with a symbiotic link to the local Dragonborn equivalents.
Triton
Type: Outsider (native)
A long time ago, the tritons came to Golarion from the Plane of Water. Having dwelled in the Universe for ages, the tritons now consider Golarion their home and live in all of its major seas and oceans.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: They're usually depicted with blue or blue-green skin.
- Arch-Enemy: Tritons oppose all evil creatures on principle, but have a particular loathing for aboleths and krakens.
- Blow That Horn: They have a tradition of shaping conch shells into large horns, which they can blow to summon marine creatures to their aid; some have different effects, such as causing supernatural fear in the blower's enemies or battering them with jets of water. They cannot be used by members of other species, but inspired the creation of triton's conches.
- Fish People: Downplayed. They're mostly humanoid, but breathe water, have blue skin and fins, and have either fish tails for legs or frog-like webbed feet.
- Horse of a Different Color: They often ride sea creatures such as dolphins, sea turtles and giant seahorses.
- Prongs of Poseidon: Fitting a race of aquatic warriors named and designed after Poseidon's herald, they usually wield tridents.
Trox
Type: Monstrous humanoid
A hulking subterranean insectoid race with a history of really bad neighbours.
- The Big Guy: The only standard race to be in the "large" category.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Though scary in appearance and very short-tempered, their violent attitudes are due to a history of abuse, and they were originally agents of the Forever Queen of Nchak, a Lawful Good deity, before they were enslaved.
- Dumb Muscle: They're very big and very strong, but they also have a penalty to all their mental ability scores.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They have four smaller arms that they use for grappling.
- Slave Race: The descendants of a docile race who were enslaved by the hryngar and bred to be brutes. Some escaped to the surface... where more races wanted to enslave them.
- Super-Strength: Trox outdo Orcs by having a natural +6 to their base strength.
- Tunnel King: The only 0 hit die race to have a burrow speed.
- Unstoppable Rage: Any time trox take damage, they go into a frenzy. It's basically a watered-down, minute-long rage, but it stacks with a Barbarian's Rage.
Vanara
Type: Humanoid (vanara)
- Beast Folk: Vanaras are intelligent, monkeylike humanoids.
- Curious as a Monkey: They have innate curosity and desire to explore both the world aroung then, and their own internal selves.
- Mischief-Making Monkey: Vanaras tend to appreciate and play pranks and games, though they usually draw the line at actually harming others.
- Prehensile Tail: A vanara has a long, flexible tail that can be used to carry objects.
- Slave Race: They were enslaved by Rakshasas, until the freed themselves by tricking the king of the Rakshasas into summoning the gods.
- Stealth Pun: They are good at roguish roles, making them skill monkeys.
Vishkanya
Type: Humanoid (vishkanya)
- Alternate Company Equivalent: Their 1st Ed incarnations were more-or-less Yuan-Ti Purebloods, being strange, magical Snake People. 2nd Ed does away with this by removing their snake-like traits.
- Blank White Eyes: Whether they have these or Hellish Pupils varies Depending on the Artist, but either way they are usually the only noticeable tell that they are not human.
- Poisonous Person: Vishkanya have poisonous fangs, and delight in coating their weapons with a layer of venomous saliva before attacking.
- Progressively Prettier: Their artwork in 1st edition sources gives them visually scaly skin and forked, snake-like tongues. 2nd edition artwork makes them all but indistinguishable from humans outside of the very subtle giveaway of their eyes.
- Snakes Are Sexy: Some sourcebooks go in this direction. (Justified since they're based on seductive assassin-courtesans in India historical legends).
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: One of their defining traits, alongside the scales.
Wayang
Type: Humanoid (wayang)
Gnome-like creatures native to the Netherworld.- Casting a Shadow: They even have a bard archetype built around shadow puppetry, and are themselves named for and designed after Javanese shadow puppets.
- Covered in Scars: It's part of their body art.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Their philosophy of Dissolution strives to merge with the Shadow, but they tend to be shy, averse to conflict, and uninterested in the extremes of Evil (or Good, for that matter).
- Hidden Elf Village: When not in the Netherworld, they try quite hard to avoid notice.
Dragon Races
Dragonkin
Type: Dragon
These smaller dragons share the planet of Triaxus with the natives and other dragons of all kinds. Though small, they have developed opposable thumbs, allowing them to use weapons much like the smaller humanoids around them.
- Breath Weapon: Dragonkin have the respective attacks their scales would indicate.
- Draconic Humanoid: Dragonkin, while being far more bestial in form than DND's Dragonborn, can stand on their hind legs and have opposable thumbs that allow them to wield weapons as humanoids do.
- Dragon Rider: Inverted. Dragonkin can form bonds with a humanoid, usually Triaxians, whom they will allow to ride them into battle.
- Psychic Link: The bond between Dragonkin and Rider is one of these.
Wyvaran
Type: Dragon
A rare winged offshoot of kobolds, whose closer association with dragons gives them great prestige among their people.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: Inherited from their wyvern ancestry.
- Draconic Humanoid: They're crossbreeds of kobolds and wyverns, which gives them something of a canine look, only with scales and dragon wings.
- Dragon Hoard: Like most dragonkin, they're largely driven to build their own. Their constantly shifting borders due to conflict with neighbors means that there are multitudes of treasure caches hidden throughout the areas where they occupy, left abandoned after they were driven back.
- Winged Humanoid: They're otherwise regular kobolds — diminutive Lizard Folk — with draconic wings, a mark of great status among their kind.
Aberration Races
Fleshwarp
Not all fleshwarping results in insane, mentally broken monsters; sometimes the fleshwarper wished to enhance rather than destroy, sometimes they made something new and wonderful from inanimate matter, sometimes someone wasn't lucky enough to avoid the mutation of wild magic entirely but were so enough to retain their minds. Whatever the case, sentient fleshwarps, while unique and often freakish, are no better or worse than anyone else.
- Artificial Human: A few fleshwarps are sapient beings created whole cloth from inanimate flesh.
- Ditzy Genius: Some fleshwarps created by Ustalavic scientists are taken as pupils by their masters, raised with a startlingly deep knowledge of alchemical or scientific practices but limited experience with the wider society.
- Forced Transformation: Fleshwarpers intentionally use painful methods to transform unwilling victims into predictable shapes, most often driders. The playable fleshwarps are those who escape before the process is complete or who survive a faulty process. Cultists of evil deities of transmutation like Haagenti or Yamasoth also sometimes forcibly transform victims, though in this case the fleshwarps are usually released afterwards, since it is the transformation itself that honours the gods.
- Lighter and Softer: Im 1E, fleshwarps were all Tragic Monsters at best, and the art itself Black Magic of the highest degree due to how painful and unethical it was. In 2E, the very existence of playable fleshwarps shows the art has ethical applications by more benign (or at least carefully restrained) practitioners; it's outright stated that many fleshwarps are created by people who love them.
- Too Many Mouths: Some fleshwarps can have extra mouths or even entire extra faces.
Yaddithian
Type: Aberration
Bizarre, tapir-snouted aliens whose world was devoured by bholes long ago, yaddithians are now a race of wanderers scattered throughout the universe.
- Long-Lived: Yaddithians live for thousands of years, and are completely unaffected by magical aging.
Construct Races
Automaton
- The Ageless: Since their cores provide them with a seemingly endless power source, many automatons have lived for millennia, their bodies as efficient as the day of their creation, even if their minds might have deteriorated.
- Alternate Company Equivalent: Automatons fulfil a similar niche as warforged do in Dungeons & Dragons and especially Eberron: unaging robotic frames manufactured by a cabal made to house souls and survive a world-ending conflict.
- Cyber Cyclops: The majority of automatons have a single eye that glows with a dim, magical light.
- The Fog of Ages: Only the strongest willed automatons have managed to retain their memories, sense of self, and lucidity after millennia of existence.
- Magitek: They are magical robot-like constructs made via techonology from a cabal of mages, soldiers, and artificiers trying to save their kingdom by transferring their consciousness to a Construct and setting out to save it by any means.
- Robot Wizard: The chamber housing a mage automaton's core has a more direct connection to the rest of their humanoid shape, allowing them to tap into the core's magical energy.
- Running on All Fours: Hunter automatons, designed to serve as scouts or assassins, have a body resembling a pack hunter like a large cat or wolf. They typically move like a quadruped, but can still stand and fight like a biped.
- Soul-Powered Engine: Each automaton is powered by an automaton core, an artefact that houses its individual soul.
Poppet
- Clockwork Creature: Made primarily of soft metals, a windup poppet's life force dwells within an exceptional array of clockworks deep in their body. They must wind metal tabs on their body a few times each day but don't need food or water. They still need to breathe to ventilate internal mechanisms.
- Companion Cube: Awakened poppets might have regular conversations with animated objects, golems, houseplants, statues or toys, in which they're deeply polite out of a desire to leave a good impression for the time when the object wakes up.
- Dead Guy Junior: A poppet fashioned to look like a particular person, such as a doll sewn to resemble a deceased child, might proudly take the name of that person after awakening.
- My Little Panzer: Some poppets have built-in weapons as they were designed to be the bodyguards of noble children.
- Weak to Fire: Poppets are often made of flammable materials like wood, cloth, and wicker.
Wyrwood
Type: Construct
Small wooden constructs created as assassins by a wizard, the wyrwoods killed their master and stole the secret of creating more of their kind.
- Artificial Intelligence: Designed as living servants by the Azlanti.
- Captain Ersatz: Of Eberron's Warforged.
- Fantastic Racism: The people of the Inner Sea don't recognize them as sentient or deserving of rights, so they primarily stick to their own holdings in Arcadia.
Fey Races
Gathlain
Type: Fey
Small fey humanoids with wings made up of a symbiotic woody plant.
- Our Fairies Are Different: They're pretty much your standard fairy, but with plant wings.
- Plant Person: While the gathlain itself is made of regular flesh, it's impossible to separate the plant symbiont from the fey.
Naiad
Type: Fey (water)
Nymphs who watch over rivers, lakes and other bodies of freshwater, naiads are far more likely to interact with nearby humanoids than other nymphs are, visiting their towns and on occasion even becoming adventurers themselves.
- Healing Factor: Naiads steadily recover their hit points while in a body of water they are bonded to.
- Making a Splash: Unsurprisingly, naiads have a fair bit of control over water — most notably, they can create a direct powerful waves when near their bonded body of water.
- Nature Spirit: Inhabitants, embodiments and guardians of freshwater environments.
- Our Nymphs Are Different: Female, humanoid fey who watch over and protect bodies of freshwater, and inspired by the minor Greek deities with the same name and role. They were distinct creatures from "true" nymphs in 1st edition, but are reclassified as part of a broadened nymph species in 2nd edition's reshuffling of creature categories.
Sprite
Size: Tiny
The various members of the sprite family are often the first thing one pictures when thinking of the fey — tiny, whimsical beings resembling insect-winged humanoids, living carefree lives in the wilderness.- Lilliputians: Few sprites get to much taller than nine inches or so.
- Winged Humanoid: Most sprites have insect wings, typically those of either butterflies or dragonflies. The Wingless, which include all PC sprites, slowly grow wings over time as their magical potential manifests, though some never grow wings at all.
Nyktera
Nykteras, also called bat sprites, are highly gregarious and hospitable beings. They will shelter and care for anyone who needs their hospitality, but will react wrathfully if their generosity is abused.
- Bat People: Nykteras resemble tiny humanoid bats, and usually live underground and alongside bat species whose features they share.
- Sacred Hospitality: Nykteras take hospitality extremely seriously. They will not deny aid and rest to anyone who needs them, even bitter foes; however, if their hospitality is betrayed, the nyktera will fly into a rage and savagely attack the perpetrator, and it and its family will try to mete out an appropriate punishment if they can't avenge themselves then and there.
Melixie
Melixie are a particularly insectoid variant of sprite, possessing the antennae and shells of several types of insects in addition to the typical wings. They possess powerful sweet teeth, and will ingest sugary liquids of any sort in alarming quantities.
- Stock Animal Diet: While they can have the traits of any type of insects, melixies most often resemble bees; fittingly, their favorite foods are sweet liquids such as honey and nectar.
- Sweet Tooth: Melixies live off of nothing but sugary liquids such as honey, nectar, juice and sugar water, which they drink in tremendous quantities.
Grig
The musicians of fairy society, the cricket-bodied grigs have a tendency to get themselves in more trouble than they can really handle in their zeal to vanquish foes.
- Our Centaurs Are Different: Grigs have the basic centaur body-structure of a humanoid upper torso replacing the head of a beast, but in their case the grig's upper torso resembles a tiny elf with dragonfly wings and their lower body is a cricket.
Draxie
Draxies are tiny draconic humanoids with an undying passion for elaborate pranks.
- Draconic Humanoid: Draxies resemble tiny humanoid dragons with brilliant colorations, complete with a Breath Weapon.
- Fairy Dragons: Draxies are tiny, mischievous and prankster fey in the shape of humanoid dragons, and breathe clouds of pixie dust instead of fire. They descend from an ancient fairy dragon who, after death, was reincarnated by the First World's mercurial magic into a swarm of tiny draconic fey instead of a singular being.
- The Prankster: Draxies adore pranks and jokes, and can spend months or even years patiently crafting the perfect prank to lure somebody into.
Pixie
Tiny, immensely magical and very curious fey, pixies spend their lives wandering in search of novelty and adventure.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: In 1st Edition, their skin was usually a light cerulean blue.
- Motor Mouth: They speak very quickly, and it can be difficult for other to keep up with their rapid-fire monologues.
- Our Pixies Are Different: Tiny humanoids with pointed ears, colorful skin and butterfly wings and the ability to produce pixie dust with various magical effects. They're endlessly curious, excitable beings fond of playing tricks and experiencing new things, and tend to speak extremely rapidly
Plant Races
Conrasu
A cosmic force given consciousness and housed in a robot-like wooden body. Their origins aren't really known, but the best guesses anyone (even themselves) have is that either some Ancient Conspiracy tried to summon another cosmic force but got these guys instead, or that they were totally-not-robots designed by The Precursors to evolve like organic beings do.
- Bio-Armor: The wooden part is just an exoskeleton for a spiritual entity.
- Guardian Angel: Conrasu all have an outsider as a spiritual guide. In most cases, this is an aeon, but it can also be another kind or even their patron if they are a witch.
- Heal Thyself: Once per day, a conrasu can enter a meditative, healing state for 10 minutes when exposed to direct sunlight.
- Plant Person: Conrasus surround their cores with bodies made out of still-living wood, and can't maintain their integrity without their wooden exoskeletons.
Ghoran
Type: Plant
Humanoid plants originally created by human wizards as a source of food, ghorans attained sentience and have become a culture unto themselves.
- Anthropomorphic Food: The intelligent humanoid descendants of magically bioengineered mobile vegetables.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Ghoran psychology is fairly alien to most humanoids; they don't experience emotion in the same way we do, and their thought process, in general, is completely different.
- Dying Race: Ghorans lack the ability to reproduce naturally. While they can resurrect indefinitely by planting their Ghorus seed in the ground before dying, they can be permanently killed if their seed is destroyed, and this is often done by those who illegally harvest ghorans for food and don't want to be identified by the ghoran once it is reborn. As a result, the ghoran population has only shrunk since their race was created. On the other hand, they made it into Starfinder's second Alien Archive, so they do manage to beat the odds.
- Fantastic Racism: They're the victims of it; they aren't recognized as people in most of the world and are looked at as a food product. In the one nation that does acknowledge them an give them some rights, they're still second class citizens at best and are often preyed upon and sold on the black market.
- Plant Person: Shelled, tree-like people, specifically.
- Resurrective Immortality: They can invoke this option by sprouting a seed that germinates into their replacement if they're killed.
- Servant Race: They were created as food and served this role for centuries in their homeland of Nex. Currently, they're afforded citizenship and rights there, but this doesn't extend very far beyond, so they're forced to remain in the one nation that knows how delicious they are.
- Took a Level in Badass: The artwork for them in Inner Sea Bestiary was well done but made them look fairly harmless. Inner Sea Races and Bestiary 5 make them look much more formidable.
- You Taste Delicious: Their flavor is so good as to be a drawback in combat — one of their special abilities, "Delicious", means that opponents that bite them get a bonus against being shaken off.
Leshy
Type: Plant
Reclusive guardians of nature, leshies are nature spirits incarnated within bodies grown from plants, and return to nature when they die rather than entering the River of Souls. While they have normally avoided humanoid civilization, recent upheavals have driven many of their kind to venture into the broader world to more proactively champion their wildernesses' well-being.
- Artificial Human: They're created rather than born — their bodies are grown through special magic rituals much like normal plants, at which point a magic ritual is used to call a nature spirit to animate them.
- Ascended Extra: Leshies were introduced as an obscure family of monsters in 1E. Vine leshies were the only type that was playable. They were added as an option for players that enjoy "strange" ancestries in the Lost Omens Character Guide. Their cute designs and eccentric personalities made them popular, so they were promoted to a core ancestry with a note that they're on the rise and may develop their own nation soon.
- Plant Person: Their bodies are grown from vegetable manner much like normal plants, and as such they resemble humanoid clusters of vegetable matter. Their specific type depends on what specific sort of vegetable organisms went into growing their bodies, resulting in gourd leshys, seaweed leshys, fungus leshys, leaf leshys, etc.
- Promoted to Playable: Except for the vine leshy, all leshies were only monsters in First Edition before being made playable in Second Edition.
- Reincarnation: Of a sort. The spirits that animate them remain in existence after their corporeal bodies die, and can be summoned to animate a new leshy. They can thus inhabit any number of physical bodies of any and all sorts of leshys over time, although each death robs them of all but a few faint memories of their corporeal lives.
Cactus Leshy
- Cactus Person: Cactus leshys are born from succulent plants, and exist to protect and nurture desert flora. There are also pesh leshys, or "peshys", a variant whose bodies are crafted from the pesh cacti that the setting's main narcotic drug is derived from and who are known to aid pesh farmers in their trade.
- Spike Shooter: They can launch their own spines like projectiles at several feet of distance.
- The Spiny: The sharp prickles that cover every inch of their bodies will stab into and damage anyone who engages them in melee with bare hands or natural weapons.
Flytrap Leshy
- Dark Is Not Evil: They're highly aggressive and eagerly attack intruders, they're the only leshys to eat meat and the natural process that they oversee are typically those that cause other creatures to die. They're not evil, however, just territorial, and the processes they tend to are necessary for the continued health of ecosystems — natural environments rarely thrive without predation, for instance.
- Fusion Dance: Flytrap leshys can fuse with each other to form a towering, multi-headed carnivorous behemoth that splits back into its component leshys when "killed".
- Immune to Fire: Flytrap leshys are resistant to fire damage, allowing them to more easily control wildfires as part of their duties.
- Man-Eating Plant: They're humanoid, ambulatory flytraps around the size of a child, and unlike other leshys they greatly enjoy eating meat. Downplayed in that, although they have no problems whatsoever with eating vertebrate meat (including that of would-be intruders on the land they protect) and are quite aggressive, they much prefer eating insects when they can.
- Multiple Head Case: More powerful flytrap leshys are distinguished from their kin by their greater number of heads.
- Required Secondary Powers: The duties of flytrap leshys include starting and managing controlled wildfires and corralling uncontrolled ones — thematically, both fires and predation are destructive processes necessary for the health of ecosystems. In order to be able to actually do this, and quite unlike the standard weaknesses of plant people, they have innate fire resistance.
Fungus Leshy
- Dark Is Not Evil: Fungus leshys are the most visually monstrous leshys — they have multiple beady red eyes dotted randomly on the fronts of their mushroom-like caps and gaping mouths full of sharp teeth, and make their homes deep underground and in the middle of rotting swamps. They are no more malevolent than any other leshy, and in fact serve an important role in overseeing the natural processes of rot and decomposition, ensuring that dead matter is efficiently recycled and sent back into the environment.
- Extra Eyes: While there are exceptions, art of fungus leshys usually depicts them with multiple eyes scattered across their faces.
- Mushroom Man: They resemble stout, humanoid mushrooms with a large numbers of small eyes dotting the front of their cap and large, gaping mouths. They are grown in compost heaps, swamps and underground fungal gardens, and manage and oversee the natural processes of rot and decomposition.
Gourd Leshy
- Bullet Seed: They can spit their own seeds as a ranged attack.
- Cranium Compartment: As they need to have the large gourds that serve as their heads physically carved in order to create their faces, all gourd leshys' heads are hollow and with a "lid" where their pumpkins were originally cut into. They often take advantage of this in order to store small items inside their craniums.
- Pumpkin Person: They have heads made from pumpkins carved into faces. This is not an inherent part of their anatomy — their gourds are solid while the body is being grown, and need to be carved so that the leshy will be able to see and speak. Since the carving is done artificially, it can reflect any number of styles — grinning jack-o'-lanterns are the most common, but others are depicted with elaborately decorated African gourds for heads, for example.
Lichen Leshy
Lichen leshys are the wanderers of their kind, possessed of strong urges to travel and seek out stark, isolated landscapes. There they sit and rest, contemplating the new vistas they're found while their fungal bodies slowly degrade the harsh rock into soil that can support new life.- Acid Attack: The bodies of lichen leshys secrete a powerful acid capable of dissolving stone. This is mostly useful for breaking down large chunks of hard material when the leshy has several hours to spare, but can also be used in combat by spitting a cluster of acid-laced fungal filaments at a target.
- Garden Garment: Lichen leshys wear cloaks woven out of their namesake flora.
- Mushroom Man: Partly. Lichen leshys are humanoids with bodies made up of amorphous fungus-alga symbiotes.
- Wall Crawl: Lichen leshys cling to surfaces just as stubbornly as their namesakes, and can scramble right up vertical surfaces at need.
Leaf Leshy
- Blood Knight: Downplayed. Leaf leshys are some of the most combat-happy of their kind, and spend much of their free time engaging in extensive mock battles and duels. However, they're quite aware that real battles are not games and act much cautiously and strategically during them.
- Forest Ranger: Leaf leshys are meant to oversee the health and protection of trees and other arboreal plants, making them the primary type of leshy found guarding forests from harm. Due to their diminutive size and limited strength, they typically serve as a first line of defense and troubleshooting before more powerful beings, such as nymphs and treants, get involved.
- Garden Garment: Leaf leshys wear armor made from pinecones and hats and cloaks made from leaves, flowers and fruit rinds, which they fashion themselves.
- Not Quite Flight: Leaf leshys can use their leafy "wings" to pull off a serviceable glide.
Lotus Leshy
Secretive and contemplative leshys who protect ponds, springs and lakes.- Bullet Seed: Lotus leshys can spit a jet of up to six seeds at a ranged action, either all at one target or subdivided between different enemies.
- Forced Sleep: Their pollen can force other creatures to sleep, as can their Bullet Seed attack.
- Mystical Lotus: Lotus leshys are the most monastic and contemplative of their kind, spending most of their time meditating in lotus form while watching over isolated ponds but eagerly engaging visitors in discussions on philosophy, enlightenment and theology.
- Walk on Water: A variant. Lotus leshys automatically create paths of lotus and water lily leaves when walking across bodies of water.
Seaweed Leshy
- Breath Weapon: Seaweed leshys can spit a high-pressure jet of water at a range of thirty feet.
- Fantastic Racism: In a somewhat odd example, seaweed leshys have this attitude towards freshwater plants, which they treat like city dwellers might treat country bumpkins.
- Plant Hair: Their illustration in the 2E Bestiary 3 depicts them with long strands of seaweed for hair.
Sunflower Leshy
- Bullet Seed: Sunflower leshys can spray dense bursts of their seeds in a wide cone from their heads.
- Living Mood Ring: When they're happy or excited, their eyes and petals glow with stored sunlight. Conversely, when sad or depressed, they become dull and muted in color. This is noted to have had a noticeable impact on their cultural associations with colors — for instance, while a human artist would likely depict Hell as full of blazing fire and glowing lava, a sunflower leshy would depict it as a place of shadows and dull monochromes.
Undead Races
Skeleton
- Dark Is Not Evil: While undead are almost always evil, some intelligent skeletons manage to stave off the corruption of the negative energy that powers them.
- Dem Bones: Skeletons' defining feature is their complete lack of flesh and organs.
- Elite Zombie: While ordinary skeletons are mindless (and utterly unsuited as player characters for obvious reasons), skeleton adventurers' might and intellect persist even in death.
- Identity Amnesia: The very act of rising as a skeleton is traumatic. Memories of one's former life are usually fractured or hazy, if anything can be remembered at all. In some cases, they're forgotten forever.
- Non-Human Undead: Any creature that has bones in its body can potentially be raised as a skeleton. Three heritages are available for those who want to play as a non-human skeleton: compact skeletons (Small-sized creatures like gnomes and halflings), sturdy skeletons (hardy creatures like orcs and dwarves) and monstrous skeletons (beasts).
Mixed Ancestries
Aiuvarin
Type: Humanoid (human, elf)
The children of humans and elves, aiuvarins often find themselves torn between the two very different societies they were born to — too human to fit in among the long-lived elves and too elven for the human families they will outlive, aiuvarins have trouble finding places they belong in.
- Beneath Notice: In many cases, living unobtrusively at the fringes of civilization is a survival mechanism for them.
- Blessed with Suck: Whether their heritage brings pride or shame depends on the region and the author.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Elves view their human traits as an obstacle. Humans view them as a way to link the social bridge between them.
- Half-Human Hybrid: They originated, and many still are born, from human-elf parings, although they're now a true breeding race in themselves.
- True-Breeding Hybrid: Some countries have significant enough populations of aiuvarins that it's far from uncommon for self-sustaining communities to form, most notably the aiuvarin city of Erages within the elven kingdom of Kyonin. In many places, it's far more common for an aiuvarin to be born to two aiuvarin parents, and for those parents in turn to be the children of other aiuvarins, than for them to be born from a human and elf pairing.
- Uneven Hybrid: In-universe, many aiuvarins are actually born to human parents who just both happened to have faint elven heritage, although they still count as full aiuvarins characters from a gameplay perspective and keep most of the same traits from their elven blood that ordinary aiuvarins get (including long lives), with the exception of perceptive ability.
Dromaar
Type: Humanoid (human, orc)
Dromaars are the offspring of orcs and other humanoid races, chiefly humans. If aiuvarins have a hard time fitting into society, dromaars tend to have it even worse. To orcs, they're made tainted and weak by their human blood, though they are open to being impressed; to humans, they're monsters no better than their orcish parents. This drives most dromaars to the fringes of civilization, where they seek the companionship of others of their kind, or to the adventuring life, where the details of your ancestry matter less than the trust between True Companions; many also find solace in the worship of Gorum, whom they view as a proud, idealized example of their kind, unbroken and unbowed.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Zig-zagged. They are often looked at as no different from pureblooded orcs by other societies, but while they lack the sheer strength and endurance of those same orcs to thrive in their war-like society, they are still valued for potential cleverness by their beastly forefathers.
- Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: Orcs are remarkably cross-fertile with other species, and as a result many dromaars have goblin or hobgoblin blood. These different crosses all look mostly the same, largely due to orc traits tending to dominate those of the other parent, which actually ties into their name - "dromaar" means "war drummer" in Orcish, and thus dromaars are heralds of them fully integrating themselves into a cross-cultural territory. Elves are one of the few species with whom orcs cannot successfully reproduce, something the elves rarely let other species forget.
- Not Quite Dead: Dromaars can still stand even at negative hit points for one more round after their hit points go to zero. With the "Ferocious Resolve" feat, this crosses into Determinator, allowing them to keep fighting on even as their life goes into the negative numbers.
Heritages
Races usually resulting from the intermingling of heritage, whether through interbreeding or magical influence. In First Edition, they were treated as distinct races (with the implicit assumption that the mundane half is human); in Second Edition, they are changed into versatile heritages that can be taken by player characters on top of their own ancestries. Beastkin
Type: Humanoid (skinwalker, shapechanger)
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: Beastkin come in many variants, such as the werebear-blooded coldborn, the wereboar-blooded ragebred, the werecrocodile-blooded scalehearts, and the wereshark-blooded seascarred.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Beastkin is a blanket term for any person who has gained the ability to partially or fully transform into an animal, while maintaining a balance with their humanoid side. Most beastkin are born of werecreatures or have a werecreature ancestor in their lineage.
- Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Depending on the individual, their beast forms can be anything from 'is very nearly the creature they are turning into', 'The Wolf Man (1941)-style humanoid creatures with some forms that suggest the animal they're turning into', to 'has cute ears and a tail'. Likewise, their "normal" forms may be anything from said cute ears and a tail to being obviously humanoid-shaped animals.
- Uplifted Animal: There are rumours that some rare beastkin might be shapeshifting animals that somehow gained the form of a sapient species.
Changeling
Type: Humanoid (changeling)
Changelings are secretly conceived by hags from mortal fathers, or were mutated in the womb by hag magic. When they grow up, their mothers call them back to complete their transformation. Not all of them are willing.
- Child by Rape: Hags tend to take mates by trickery or by force, and generally do so without consent.
- Creepy Child: Their supernatural eccentricities tend to lead to awkward and ostracized childhoods. Their hag blood can also lead them to have cruel streaks to the point of being Enfant Terribles, although that's highly dependent on their precise heritage and has been a bit downplayed since the start of 2nd edition.
- Femme Fatalons: Changelings have dangerously sharp fingernails, and can get feats that allow them to make them more powerful in combat.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Many are the true offspring of human men and hags, though some are the result of a hag enchanting an existing pregnancy.
- Mark of the Supernatural: The easiest way to figure out if someone is a changeling is to check their eye color — all changelings have have heterochromia, aka eyes of different colors. This is not the source of any of their abilities, however, as one-eyed changelings can attest.
- Metamorphosis: Changelings are essentially the "larval" version of hags. Though some resist the Call, a plurality end up succumbing to the lure of power and transform into hags like their mothers, and said mothers often never stop tempting those who ignore the Call.
- Mystical Pregnancy: Since extraplanar hags can't reproduce in the traditional sense, they rely on magically corrupting already-existing pregnancies, typically from their own covens or witches they associate with.
- One-Gender Race: All changelings are female in first edition. Downplayed in second edition, where male changelings exist but rarely become hags and are Beneath Notice as a result. Perhaps because these male changelings can become hags, it's not unusual for changelings to be drawn to other gender expressions, although female changelings are still most common.
- Parental Abandonment: The standard procedure for hags is to leave their children for someone else to rear. If the changeling is lucky, they can live a moderate happy life, but most tend to end up being outcasts because of it, making them more likely to seek out their mother. Many hags will actively arrange for their changelings to be tormented and made as miserable as possible, so they'll become so bitter that they'll embrace power for revenge, even if it means becoming a hideously ugly old woman for eternity as a result.
- Polyamory: Although changelings strongly desire companionship and commitment, they tend to not be completely comfortable in monogamous relationships. Their ideal relationship structure is one with multiple partners, each in a relationship with all the others. They also tend to be quite aware that their hag-tainted blood is the probable source of these feelings, since that structure very much resembles a coven.
- Prehensile Hair: They can grab a feat that allows them full, conscious control of their hair.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Changelings who embrace the Call generally do so because they've given up on being accepted as people - if they're going to be the creepy witch, let them be the immortal, empowered hags rather than put-upon exiles.
Deep One Hybrid
Type: Humanoid (human, deep one)
Yes, now you too can play as the degenerate spawn of Dagon.- Half-Human Hybrid: The offspring of humans and Deep Ones.
- Metamorphosis: Similar to changelings, they're the larval stage of the deep ones. Deep one hybrids have it worse, though. While changelings can avoid their fates by simply ignoring the call of their mothers, the only way for a hybrid to escape their fate is to die before sixty; otherwise, they've got a year at most to live before their body agonizingly reforms into a deep one.
Dhampir
Type: Humanoid (dhampir)
Half-alive children of vampires and mortals.
- Dark and Troubled Past: As a rule. Most cause their mothers' Death by Childbirth and are ostracized by society from then on.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Downplayed. They are not Always Chaotic Evil, but their undead legacy and the Fantastic Racism they tend to suffer mean a lot of them have a good chance of succumbing to evil. Some, however, do resist and turn out well, allowing them to be used for any alignment.
- Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Without the "Dayborn" alternate race trait, dhampirs are dazzled by daylight.
- Dhampyr: The half-living children of vampires and living mortals.
- Fantastic Racism: They get it pretty bad. Being half vampire, a dhampir is likely to be mistreated by others because of the physical characteristics they have, and being possibly the result of something horrific.
- Lineage Comes from the Father: Generally a dhampir is born from a mortal female, and a male vampire, though the rules do generally allow for them to be born differently, such as being conceived prior to the mother being made a vampire.
- Mortality Grey Area: Dhampirs are technically living beings but are animated by void, rather than vitality, energy, and inherit their undead parents' aversion to the sun.
- Revive Kills Zombie: Like their undead forefathers, vitality energy can leave a nasty sting, even kill them, while void energy heals them.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: A common motivation for evil dhampir is that, after having been shunned and treated as a monster for simply being born, they would rather embrace the part of them that seems to define them and get back at those who wronged them.
Genie-Kin
Type: Outsider (native)
- Adaptation Name Change: They're renamed, but otherwise functionally identical, versions of Dungeons & Dragons' genasi, planetouched humanoids descended from elemental beings, since the name genasi itself is trademarked. Individual types also have proper names (naari, oread, sylph, undine) instead of being simply called fire/earth/air/water genasi.
- True-Breeding Hybrid: All genie-kin originated from the intermingling of elementals, usually genies, and mortal humanoids. They're entirely capable of having children with each other, however, and in the present day most are born to parents of their own kind.
Ardande
- Flowers of Nature: Ardandes, who are born under the influence of powerful elemental forces tied to the First World or Plane of Wood, usually have coils of ivy or flowering vines for hair.
- Make Them Rot: Moldersoul ardandes, whose connection to elemental wood asserts itself in the form of decay, can exude void energy, causing nearby living matter to decompose.
- Plant Person: Downplayed. Though not real plants (instead sharing the same types as their mortal ancestors), ardandes might have green mossy skin, vines instead of hair, or twig-like appendages, due to the Plane of Wood's influence on their heritage.
Naari
- Fantastic Racism: Like many other planar races, they're often looked down on for their heritage. This is especially true in Qadira, where genies are seen as servants to be bound — not equals to have children with — and in Medina Mudii'a, where ifrits treat them firmly as second-class citizens.
- Horned Humanoid: Naaris often bear horns, a trait inherited from ifrits.
- Personality Powers: They tend to be both literally and metaphorically hot-headed.
- Playing with Fire: They can produce flame as a spell-like ability.
Oread
- Beware the Quiet Ones: They tend to be quiet and reserved, but almost unstoppable when provoked.
- Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": In myth, oreads were nymphs of the mountains — beyond a general association with things of earth, they don't have much in common with Pathfinder's genie descendants.
- Dishing Out Dirt: And all the variants thereof, depending on racial traits, due to their own heritage from the Plane of Earth.
- Elemental Hair Composition: Most oreads inherit crystalline hair from their elemental ancestors.
- Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid: Not quite, but close. A significant portion of oreads are descended from dwarves instead of humans.
Suli
- Elemental Powers: Sulis get their pick of these.
- Heinz Hybrid: Crossing two or more elemental bloodlines may produce a suli.
- Power Fist: Sulis can sheath their hands (or the weapons held in them) in any of the four classical elements.
Sylph
- Blow You Away: Descended from humans and those from the Plane of Air, they have a limited connection to weather and air, including limited use of Feather Fall as a spell-like ability.
- Stalker without a Crush: Their usual strategy when someone strikes their interest.
Talos
- Extra-ore-dinary: Taloses are gifted with magic from the Plane of Metal.
- Poisonous Person: Quicksoul taloses, whose bloodline flows with liquid (and often toxic) metals, can impart venom with a touch.
Undine
- Fish People: They're usually portrayed with traits such as blue skin and fins, which contrasts considerably compared to the other elemental plane-touched races but harkens back to some early depictions of water genasi from Planescape. Despite this, they can't all actually breathe underwater.
- Making a Splash: They can use Hydraulic Push and Create Water as spell-like abilities and are descended from creatures native to the Plane of Water.
- True-Breeding Hybrid: They're a particularly notable example among the genie-kin, and maintain self-sustaining populations on the Plane of Water that are large and common enough for people to suspect them to be making a bid for becoming one of the plane's major powers in their own right.
Nephilim
Type: Outsider (native)
- Nephilim: The Remaster uses "nephilim" as a collective name for beings born from mortals and the natives of the Outer Planes, including celestials, fiends, and monitors, alongside mortals altered in similar manners by exposure to planar energies.
- Semi-Divine: Most, but not all, nephilim have at least one celestial, monitor or fiendish ancestor. Aversions are usually the result of a parent being exposed to the Outer Planes, usually as a result of a Deal with the Devil or occasionally an Artifact of Doom, though these nephilim aren't biologically different from their Semi-Divine cousins.
Aphorite
Denizens of Axis that are halfway between axiomites and mortal beings.
- Chrome Champion: Aphorites have metallic skin coated in crystalline dust.
Cambion
Cambions are touched by fiendish origins, whether directly descended from a fiend, the result of a Deal with the Devil, or simply tainted by unholy energy in the womb. For unknown reasons, the rate of cambion births has increased at a steady pace since the death of Aroden.
- Beast Man: Rakshasa-descended cambions, known as beastbrood, often develop traits such as fur, fangs or animal eyes. Many end up looking like Cat Folk, as most rakshasas resemble tigers themselves.
- Casting a Shadow: One of their racial powers is to create magical darkness.
- Combat Clairvoyance: Faultspawn, asura-descended cambions, have the ability to instinctively detect flaws in the fighting styles of their opponents, getting a bonus if said opponents are affiliated with the god their asura ancestor hated the most.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Despite their unsettling nature and darkness-related powers, they have no innate tie to their ancestors' evil and are free to choose their path in life.
- Death by Childbirth: Qlippoth-spawn are notorious for almost always killing their mothers on the way out, to the point that they're often referred to as the motherless.
- Divergent Character Evolution: Cambions were originally known as Tieflings, and brought over via the OGL from Dungeons & Dragons. Since that time, D&D Tieflings have narrowed a bit in scope, with their ancestry becoming specifically infernal and their appearances being much more standardized. Cambions, on the other hand, can have ancestry from just about every fiendish creature out there, and thus vary wildly in appearance and demeanor.
- Fantastic Racism: Cambions get this worse than just about every other race in the game. Even in openly Hell-aligned Cheliax they get looked down on; the locals see their deals with devils as purely professional, so a hybrid being born is treated like someone being indiscreet with the maid (by both sides) or an uncomfortable indication that the locals aren't actually in control of The Corruption.
- Horned Humanoid: Most cambions, especially those with demonic, infernal or div heritage, sport horns as an outward sign of their ancestry.
- Humanoid Abomination: Qlippoth-spawn cambions, also known as the motherless or riftmarked, have a tendency to look like this. While all cambions have obvious physical traits setting them apart from their neighbors, the motherless are so heavily adorned with tentacles, barbed tendrils, fangs, distorted faces and limbs, carapaces or scales and other deformities that they're barely recognizable as members of their parent species. Even those who look less ugly tend to be covered in birthmarks that resemble the Black Speech lettering of Chthonian.
- Reincarnation: Rakshasa-spawn cambions are often the result of a failed or only partially successful rakshasa reincarnation rather than fiendish blood. They have some memories of their past lives as fiends but aren't any more inclined towards evil than other cambion varieties.
- Super Mode: The most powerful cambions (level 17 and later) have attained a mastery of their heritage to the point where they can assume a Final Form, a purebred version of their fiendish ancestor, but as a weapon of last resort; it's exhausting, and leaves them highly vulnerable to celestial magic for a while afterwards. Notably, Good cambions can take it too.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Some cambions respond to the prejudice they face by figuring that, if they're going to be seen as fiends and monsters no matter what they do, they might as well act the part — why bother to try to change people's minds when it's never going to work? At least thieves and assassins don't much care about their associates being evil.
- True-Breeding Hybrid: Cambions can reproduce with each other same as any other species, and are in fact likelier to breed true than other planar races, although their relative rarity often precludes the formation of truly self-perpetuating cambion populations.
Duskwalker
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Duskwalkers tend to have blue skin.
- Reincarnation: Each duskwalker is a mortal soul who was given the chance to incarnate in a new body and walk the Universe once more.
Empyrean
Humanoids touched by the blood or power of benevolent divine beings and imbued with some of their strength. For unknown reasons, the rate of empyrean births has increased at a steady pace since the death of Aroden.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: They tend to be Good-aligned and exceptionally, even preternaturally, pretty. One racial trait exploits and subverts the trope by making an empyrean so angelic and innocent-looking that it gives them a huge edge in lying to people.
- Belief Makes You Stupid: A common Start of Darkness for empyrean villains is being harassed by superstitious people with a limited grasp of what their parentage actually means who want blessings they can't grant and get... unhappy when they don't.
- Blessed with Suck: Empyreans are born with the blood of celestials in their veins, supernatural beauty and endurance, enhanced lifespans, and more often than not a good magic trick or two up their sleeves. They're often pariahs in their communities, as their peers and neighbors tend to view them with a mix of envy, superstitious awe and fetishistic attraction, they're often targeted by evil creatures and governments and their beauty and skills make them popular targets for the slave trade.
- Light Is Good: Zig-zagged. Their magic, aesthetics, and morality lean strongly this way by default, but the ones who fall to evil tend to be exceptionally depraved.
- Mixed Ancestry Is Attractive: Empyreans generally appear to be particularly physically attractive versions of the base creature thanks to inheriting some of the beauty of their celestial ancestor, in contrast to cambions, who tend to look stereotypically fiendish and are widely feared due to their ancestry.
- Mystical Pregnancy: Some empyreans are the result of a benevolent god answering a devout follower's prayer for a child, or a mortal being impregnated by a celestial in the form of a sunbeam or a gust of wind.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: The otherworldly beauty of empyreans often saddles them with obsessive and unhealthy levels of adoration, when it doesn't simply paint a slaver's target on their back.
- Superhuman Trafficking: They're often targeted for slavery due to their beauty, the strength and resilience granted them by their heritage, the prestige of owning empyrean slaves, and the fact that their rarity means they almost never have their own communities to protect them.
- True-Breeding Hybrid: Empyreans can breed true to produce more of their kind. This is often a moot point due to how rare they are — it's uncommon for more than a couple to live in the same settlement at any given time — but the Tian Xia nation of Tianjing is populated almost exclusively by empyreans.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Evil empyreans find they can metaphorically (and sometimes literally) get away with murder.
Ganzi
Ganzi are humanoids who've been affected by the swirling chaos of the Maelstrom. Unlike cambions and empyreans, they aren't the result of intermingling between mortals and outsiders, but rather the result of mutation in mortals who reside close to fonts of pure chaos.
- Body Horror: Some ganzi are unlucky in their mutations and end up like this, missing major features such as eyes or ears.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Explicitly averted more often than not. Ganzi tend to have happy childhoods by the standards of planar scions, provided the community they are born in isn't close-minded and the ganzi's mutations don't manifest in horrific ways.
- Eye Color Change: Ganzi eyes and hair are constantly but slowly shifting in color over the course of weeks or months. This isn't so much related to mood or appearance, just an expression of their chaotic and mutable natures.
- Feathered Serpent: A slim majority of ganzi manifest as proteankin, who have the tails of feathered serpents and patches of scales and feathers throughout the rest of their body. As a consequence these ganzi are frequently mistaken to be related to couatls and avoid stigmatization as a result.
- Lighter and Softer: The part about ganzi mutations frequently manifesting in horrific ways is deemphasized in 2E. Among the core races it's most common among goblins, who celebrate that kind of birth. Instead ganzi tend towards bright colors, feathers, and scales, making them an almost literal example.
- Mutants: No two ganzi are exactly the same; each one manifests their chaotic mutation differently. This can lead to some Blessed with Suck cases.
- Snake People: Downplayed. Proteankin ganzi naturally look like the snake-like proteans, but they aren't the entirety of ganzi, and as noted, it tends to be more Feathered Serpent than humanoid snake.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: They have the power to influence probability. In game terms, this means once per day they can force any creature to re-roll a single d20 roll.
Reflection
- Artificial Human: Some reflections are created as magical clones by spellcasters, only to turn on their creators or be left adrift.
- Clone Angst: Many reflections have a degree of existential angst, struggling to find somewhere they feel they belong and won't be identified as a fake.
- Copied the Morals, Too: If their alignment doesn't oppose their progenitor's, reflections usually share the same alignment as the progenitor.
- Evil Doppelgänger: Reflections created by a darkside mirror are always evil, as are those whose alignment is opposite of a good-aligned progenitor.
- Morally Superior Copy: If they don't share their progenitor's alignment, reflections usually have the exact opposite one—many good-aligned reflections arise from the nefarious experiments of an evil alchemist or spellcaster.
- One-Steve Limit: These creatures only share the name with and are otherwise completely different creatures from Starfinder reflections (the former are clones of people, the latter are water elementals infused with Ethereal essence).
