Favourite races (D&D)

Callon: There was an article that focused on Shardminds in D&D Outsider. It proposed using the malleability of their physical forms to do tripy stuff; for instance, wearing enchanted goggles on the elbow, or growing a second head while keeping watch.

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

This article, you mean?

And I like the wilden or killoren or whatever you want to call them a lot better now that they're somewhat more alien.

Humans.

If you make a human as your character and manage not to be The Everyman of the group, you're worthy of playing the game.

The trouble is that they're too popular. Can anyone be The Everyman of the group when everyone is?

Yes, you've just got to have a human character with actual motivations, goals, and feelings instead of cardboard cut outs from the Player's Handbook.

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.

Admittedly humans are pretty wicked, because lolminmaxing.

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

Anyway, for the second time, Doppelgangers/Changlings. So damn much you can do with them and even if their stats don't fit the class, you can still pull off outrageous stuff with the ability to change appearance. Sure, you can go the rogue route, but why bother with that when you can be a Changling Wizard with Illusion Specialty?

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.

But that's absolutely basic, for any given race. Stereotype characters are annoying, unless Played for Laughs in an appropriate game (and sometimes, even then).

In short: if someone is playing a human because, say, their paladin concept concept fits best as a Farm Boy from Erehwon Nwotelttil who's trying to find out what caused the plague that killed his sister, ruined his mother's health, forced him to sell himself into indentured servitude, and was—in retrospect—clearly of magical origin? I like. (Yes, I was deliberately piling on the angst there. Why do you ask?)

But if that player couldn't care less about any of that and just wants the extra feat? Well, I mean this in the least vicious way possible, but said player can GTFO my table.

(Edited for clarity.)

edited 18th Jun '11 5:01:25 PM by FarseerLolotea

Yeah, see, I just had a wizard who worked at a magic shop for a while before deciding that was boring and then decided to have some fun and explore the world a little before dying of old age. And so Lithine the Human Wizard was born and did everything for kicks and laughs.

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.

So kind of like Ezren with a less traumatic backstory, then?

Eh, I guess so. I don't know, I've never liked traumatic back stories, it makes your character seem like a single trick pony and once you fix or avenge whatever happened in the past, you're kind of left wondering where to take that character. Yeah, yeah, suffering builds character, but it's over saturated. It takes more character to rise from a comfy present and become a hero instead of simply enjoying that comfort. You choose to rise to the challenge, the challenge doesn't force you to rise to it.

edited 20th Jun '11 4:33:22 PM by Usht

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.

Exotic races give the illusion of depth and uniqueness, even if the player makes no actual effort to make their character stand out.

Every player's first character should be a human, just so they'll have to learn how to create an interesting character through story and acting.

My favourite race is halflings. I have a strange fascination for playing these hairy-footed Lilliputians as everything BUT rogues. I just like the idea of being smaller than everyone else, and still marching into the certain death that is the adventurer's lifestyle.

Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.

Hey guys, on the matter of races, I have a question. You see, Dragon has started a policy of leaving open only a certain short window for people to submit articles. And I was planning to submit an article for three new weird PC races, for those sorts of people like me who like playing freakish races. My ideas are as follows:

• A PC version of the spectator (Basically a friendly, four-eyestalked beholder from earlier editions), albeit with twenty tentacles below its body for fine manipulation.
  • It is unrelated to beholders, but instead looks like that due to convergent evolution in an area of the Astral Sea that the gods forgot (L Ike the creatures in the abyssal regions of Earth's seas).
  • They are a race of scholars and guardians that come to the main world when something big's going down.
• A race of adorable sentient slimes based heavily off of Dragon Quest's created by a legendary alchemist at the end of his life as his great work (IE, to create a new race).
  • They are friendly and jovial, but heavily focused on self-improvement (Because that is a major theme of alchemy), both physically and mentally.
• A patchwork race of creatures spawned from a battlefield of a war between a legion of angels and a Horde of Alien Locusts (though technically they're more Cnidarian based), merging features of both.
  • They have Crazy Awesome as their racial "hat"

So, my question is, do you think that Dragon would accept them being statted up (With a few alternate powers) for an article, or do they fall into the problem of "How do the P Cs know not to kill this weird thing on sight?".

Figuring out what the thing is doing in a party full of humanoids is a matter for the DM and players to work out, as party dynamics have always been out of necessity. You're goal is to present a usable and interesting set of mechanics for the players to use in their own plots as they see fit, not to build a set of rails for them.

However, it can't hurt to include some sample plot seeds with your article. ("Perhaps the slime worked for a villain in a prior, backstory adventure and joined the side of the heroes when the tide started to turn.")

Add me on Skype: Al Cook (darnpenguin)

Drow. Before Drizzt, I loved them for their exotic look. They are part of why my homebrew settings reject any concept of Always or Usually Any Alignment.

What I especially like doing is crossbreeding them. Half rat folk, half regular elf for blond drow, a bit of human for fantastic white facial hair on black skin, etc, etc. I fluffed an entire line of half-drow siblings like that. Their mother got around a lot.

@Dreamer: I really like the spectator idea. You COULD even keep it as an actual Beholderkin, since 4E is much more friendly to PC races other than Natural Humanoids, and it would be cool to have an Aberrant PC race.

Also, there was another Beholderkin from the 3.5 book Lords of Madness that had several manipulating tentacles dangling from it's body. You could give that feature to the Spectator for it's fine manipulation abilities.

edited 5th Jul '11 3:22:27 PM by ZealotVedas

After having been in a group with a creepy guy*

^{who later ended up in jail for unrelated reasons, thank heaven}

who always played more or less the same female drow every time, no argument on that count.

Sorry, can't agree on that count. The sort of new players who use exotic races as a "crutch," if forced to play humans, tend to just make either "Bob the Fighter" (that is, not even bother with story or acting or making an interesting character) or a knockoff of Luke Skywalker.

In other words, making new players roll humans is just as much of a crutch...and it doesn't even help.

And if human culture in the setting isn't generic quasi-medieval, this goes double. The newbie would either need an extensive primer on the appropriate cultures ahead of time, or end up not really "getting" it.

edited 5th Jul '11 4:29:26 PM by FarseerLolotea

I think honestly the "Human as first charrie" might be a bit much. Newbies will be newbies, no matter what race they play. I didn't start off as a great roleplayer, hell, my DM didn't start off as a great roleplayer. I'd be shocked to find someone who did (that is, without an extensive background in improvised theatre.)

edited 7th Jul '11 5:11:58 PM by Diamonnes

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

On the topic of favorite races, I wasn't that fond of Tieflings at first, but I have to admit that they've grown on me. Goliaths didn't appeal to me until unusual character concepts began to appear in my mind. A Goliath fighter isn't all that interesting, but with the right choice of exploits and equipment, you've got a massive samurai.

Massive Samurai

And now I have the urge to go watch Sucker Punch again. Gods damnit.

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

Or Paul Bunyan.

I haven't seen Sucker Punch. But the mixed reviews (is it a cheap, exploitative pander to disturbed fanboys, a witty, scathing take-that at pandering to fanboys, or an attempt at the latter that fell flat and just came off like the former?) have gotten me curious. So I think I may have to see it now.

edited 8th Jul '11 1:42:06 AM by FarseerLolotea

It's technically possible to play a Half-Ogre as something other than a professional wrestler who is Fluent In His Own Tongue and has no knowledge of pronouns, but I don't see why you'd want to.

...and that's terrible.

This one is quite fond of tieflings, kobolds, kalashtar and githzerai.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common