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Setting with humans only (that is, all races as humans)
I'm planning on creating a new setting based on the Seven Citadels series (some info). I read it some 15 years ago, and now I'm reading it again after finding the books at my parents' house.
I'd like to hear some comments and suggestions on these points:
The first thing I want to do is eliminate all PC races and treat them all as humans. I mean, any player can pick whatever race he wants and use it as normal, but physically they all look like humans with slight differences. For example, Shifters are hairier humans, halflings are shorter humans, Tieflings are humans with red or black eyes with very small horns on his head, etc.
Basically there's only bloodlines (when mixed you only manifest one of them).
It's easy and ok, right?
Another thing, one of the players must be a Deva, as they're the rulers, descendants of the god Zeldin. Is it reasonable to impose this?
Secondly, they have to get seven keys from seven immortal wizards. I think the wizards should be at least high-paragon level. So, I'm not sure about how the PCs should get the keys. Intrigue/skill challenges? Fighting them? (players start at 1st level)
Another thing, one of the players must be a Deva, as they're the rulers, descendants of the god Zeldin. Is it reasonable to impose this?
Depends, really. I usually find that there's at least one person who, when characters are being created, has no clear idea what they want to play and are happy to "make whatever the party needs". Get that guy to be your Deva.
On the other hand, if everyone knows what they want to play, just give one guy a bunch of dreams of his past lives, visions of being Zeldin, that kind of thing. Ping, instant Deva. I'm sure that player wouldn't mind if you chucked the deva racial power his way on top of his other powers, too.
If you're starting a new campaign, impose any ex ante restrictions you like. The only thing that I find needs to be handled lightly are changes mid-campaign, because players have based expectations on the previous rules.
I feel like the concept of reskinning races into some form of human inherently dumb. Really, there's no difference between playing a "dwarf-like human" and a dwarf, and I can't really wrap my mind around something like a "dragonborn-like human".
There's nothing wrong with straight-up disallowing non-human races. D&D represents humans in a flexible enough manner that you've really got all your bases covered without needing the extra races, and you can choose to ignore racial prerequisites on feats or abilities on a case-by-case basis.
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In the Iron Kingdoms sourcebook, as well as the Blue Rose campaign setting (and iirc also the Northern Crown setting book), each area of the world has its own particular "type" of Humans with their own adjustments for their region. Seafaring folk might get +2 dex and Int but -2 to Cha and get skill focus (sailor) as a bonus feat... Desert folk bight get +2 con and wis but -2 to dex and get Track as a bonus feat...
In short, you could easily re-skin all of the races to be "human". Each region gets their own stat adjustments, a handful of "cross-class" skills that count as class skills (I'm not sure how that flies in 4e), and maybe 1 or 2 relevant bonus feats. Maybe some humans get low light vision, others have a resistance to sleep (or enchantments in general), or some have dragon blood... it's your world.
As to requiring a PC be a Deva, I would vote against this tack. Players have a habit of resenting other PC's who appear to be a "DM's pet" and responsible for 90% of the story arcs. Now... as mentioned above, having a PC have dreams about being a Deva would certainly be the way to go. In fact, have all of the players have dreams that come true on occasion. And in very important dreams, have each of the PC's have the SAME dream. This can be fun for players and the DM if, at random points in the game, you hand notes to every player - some are just for fun, others have the dream, and keep them guessing "who's got the button".
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Last edited by Herobizkit; 1st September 2009 at 03:30 PM..
I don't want to disallow anything. There's always a way to fit a weird race or class into the story. I just want all races to be more human-like.
About the Deva thing, he's not going to be the main character.
The things is, most of the characters are half brothers, sons of the Emperor. But some have a stronger royal/divine blood, which makes them Princes of the Godborn (probably because their mother was a queen). The others are just Lords (usually sons/daughters of concubines).
PCs with weirder races are just foreign princes/princesses married to the royal family, or servants.
Deva would be a perfect fit because of that otherworldly nature, but Eladrin could work (or even some other race with enough creativity)
Last edited by Wepwawet; 1st September 2009 at 04:49 PM..
I guess one could argue that all the races are already human-like.
Elves/Eladrin are tall, thin humans with pointy ears.
Warforged are human-shaped machines.
Dwarves and halflings are short, stout humanoids with big bellies and/or beards.
Tieflings are humans with horns (you can replace the cloven hooves if you want).
... and Humans are, well, humans, and you could STILL have the same number of "regional" humans with enough variety.
You could steal the inspiration for Tieflings/Aasimars from the Forgotten Realms and have a "blooded" race for every element, and if you check out some back issues of Dragon magazine, they have Planetouched for the quasi-elemental planes (ice, smoke, magma, ooze) plus one each for the Lawful and Chaotic alignments.
Plus from a high school biology standpoint both orcs and elves are humans since they can produce viable crossbreeds. (Presumably an orc/elf pairing would also be viable. Probably just gives you a regular human with self-esteem issues.)
Although Athsian Dwarves are not human since Muls are sterile. I don't know if any other D&D setting addresses dwarf/human crosses.
Where in Tolkein do you get halflings as short humans? I don't recall anything to imply that...
... Although it is worth noting that the 3e style athletic Halflings are not all that different from some human pygmy groups.
At any rate it souds like a fun game. Good luck!
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... Although it is worth noting that the 3e style athletic Halflings are not all that different from some human pygmy groups.
The anthropologist in me is cringing, here.
Pygmies aren't really as short as a lot of people would like to believe. I don't really see the similarities between 3e halflings and pygmies at all, I'm afraid.
That being said, I like your analysis on "humanity" in D&D - technically, elves and orcs ARE humans! I love it. Makes me think of shadowrun. And that's a good thing.
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I tend to allow reskinning. Mostly because I think its awkward for a game to have a couple dozen sentient races. It makes it harder to develop them since you're spread so thin. So certain races tend to become "one off" options for characters. Like if you wanted to make a character that's pyrokinetic, I'd recommend making a genasi and just describing it as one of the races already in the game. If there are cosmetic issues you want to keep, I say to go for it, just merge them with what already exists.
There are certain races that its just really, really easy to do that with:
Tiefling: accursed [X]
Genasi, Windsoul: [X] that can fly
Genasi, Others: [X] with elemental powers
Deva: [X] with memories of past lives, or angel born into the form of [X]
Goliath: [X] that's really huge
I ran a short campaign (back when only the core 3 books were out) where I required that everyone appear human. I let everyone "re-skin" anything about their character to create whatever it was they wanted to make. The restriction was that they couldn't change anything mechanically about their character: everything was Character Builder-legit, just how it appeared in game was different.
Examples:
Character 1: Mechanically a Human Tactical Warlord MC Warlock with a greatspear. In-game, a creepy human from a desolate land laced with Far Realm energies. In combat, he sprouted tentacles for attacks, blasted allies with thick protective slime for buffs, and threw healing globs of goo that coated and healed wounds for his heals.
Character 2: Mechanically a Tiefling Infernal Warlock. In-game, a dark-skinned human nomad shaman who summoned swirling walls of sand (pact-boon Temp HP/Armor of Agathys) and various summoned elements for other powers.
Character 3: A Dragonborn One-Hand Fighter. In-game, a wandering unarmed monk that was just extremely tough and durable.
Character 4: A Human Orb Wizard. In-game, a Tinker who used gadgets and explosive alchemical mixtures, caltrops, and the like.
It worked really well, especially since the players could potentially use the same power in three different combats and have it look mechanically different every time.
The monk still had to use a minor action to "get in fighting stance(draw his weapon mechanically)" and the like, they could just "reflavor" anything to make it match the theme of their character. It does require a willingness to radically divorce mechanics from in-game "reality".
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I'm a big fan of reskinning. The only problem I've ever really noted with it is just the "momentum" some words have: for some, for example, imagining a tiefling without hooves and little horns and wing stubs may be difficult. Words like "tiefling", or "elf", or "dwarf" have strong associated images.
With that in mind, I would rename the races as well as reskin them, in order to break those associations. So "tiefling" becomes "devilborn man" or something.
Pygmies aren't really as short as a lot of people would like to believe. I don't really see the similarities between 3e halflings and pygmies at all, I'm afraid.
That being said, I like your analysis on "humanity" in D&D - technically, elves and orcs ARE humans! I love it. Makes me think of shadowrun. And that's a good thing.
I yield to your expertise, but my brief bit of web research before I posted it seemed to show overlap between the upper range of the halfing size range and the lower range of some pygmy groups. At any rate if you allow that homo floresiensis was a human then it's clear that the homininae size range allows for pretty much all the PC races.
In fact drawning in extinct homininae like Homo floresiensis and neandertalensis and you can cover pretty much any non-giant humanoid. Even some giants depending on where you come down on gigantopithecus.
__________________ -Andor
"Congratulations. You just invented 'negligent regicide.'" - Schlock Mercenary
I'm a big fan of reskinning. The only problem I've ever really noted with it is just the "momentum" some words have: for some, for example, imagining a tiefling without hooves and little horns and wing stubs may be difficult. Words like "tiefling", or "elf", or "dwarf" have strong associated images.
With that in mind, I would rename the races as well as reskin them, in order to break those associations. So "tiefling" becomes "devilborn man" or something.
Absolutely agree. While a few might remain the same (dwarf, shifter (they have wolf blood or some such), goliaths (these along with dwarfs are not so much racial names as racial descriptions) maybe halfling) I would go for a whole hog renaming of all the races you are using. To that end....
PHB 1
Elf - Woadman
Half-Elf -Half-Woad
Tiefling - Demane (a shortened form of Demonman)
Eladrin - Feytouched Human
Halfling - Shorties ( )
Human and Dwarf could stay the same of course. Dragonborn, given the radical differences between them and `regular`races would probably best be dropped. I can`t really think up a good reason that a human would be able to breath acid on people.
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Dragonborn, given the radical differences between them and `regular`races would probably best be dropped. I can`t really think up a good reason that a human would be able to breath acid on people.
Well another idea would be an absolutely ironclad rule that says all Dragonborn-humans are carnie folk! I.E. fire breathers ..... sword swallowers .... bearded ladies ......
C.I.D.
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I've considered doing something like this myself, and I broke the races into a few groups (it's still in very rough form):
Northmen
- mechanically choose from human, goliath, half-orc, dwarf
- description is large human, bearded, tough, hardy, sometimes savage
??
- mechanically choose from human, half-elf, elf
- description is human, with an emphasis on agile, cunning, polite
Fair Folk
- mechanically eladrin, shadar kai
- description is basically like eladrin, but view humans as far beneath them
Tainted
- mechanically dragonborn, genasi, tiefling, deva
- description is somewhat hunched/feral human with occasional raw energy dancing/bubbling/seeping from their skin ("dragonborn" don't breath energy, but can fling it about)
Each race would lose its Fey/Shadow/Immortal Origin, but keep everything else.
I yield to your expertise, but my brief bit of web research before I posted it seemed to show overlap between the upper range of the halfing size range and the lower range of some pygmy groups. At any rate if you allow that homo floresiensis was a human then it's clear that the homininae size range allows for pretty much all the PC races.
In fact drawning in extinct homininae like Homo floresiensis and neandertalensis and you can cover pretty much any non-giant humanoid. Even some giants depending on where you come down on gigantopithecus.
I just finished reading The Forest People, which is about pygmies. It mentions the size myth, in fact - while they are a short people, they are not as short as D&D halfligns, which is what got my feathers all ruffled up.
As for floresiensis, one of the problems with this particular field of anthropology is that everytime someone makes a new discovery, he tries to label it as a new species of hominid. Which is what floresiensis is - during my time in classes (about three years ago, now? Maybe a year more), it wasn't even considered a homonid by mainstream anthropologists for this reason. Looking on the web, I see that opinion is changing, for a variety of reasons.
But, if you look a bit closely, you'll see that chimps are also members of the hominid group. In other words, I wouldn't read much into it. So, I wouldn't allow it as a "human" anymore than I'd say a chimp was a "human" (and that's not insulting chimps, by the way... I love those little guys!)
Gigantopithecus is AWESOME, by the way, but it's not a species of hominid, and wasn't ever considered to be. From what I've read (and I could be wrong, it's been a while), it probably had the intellect of a dumb gorilla. But, damn, it's a cool species!
As a sidenote, that's only sort of related: Neanderthals are an interesting case, because a lot of anthropologists (and myself) believe that they are really just a variant homo sapiens, and that they didn't "Disappear" or go extinct, but instead interbred with mainstream homo sapiens. There are a few pieces of evidence to support this - here's my favourite.
Feel the back of your head, where the neck meets the skull. Some people (primarily those of northern european descent) have a small protrusion there, a sort of "bump" (I have one). Archaic homo sapiens (those skeletons found that first show all the signs of homo sapiens... but they look super weird) do not have these. Neanderthals do. They say having one is evidence that there's a neanderthal somewhere in your family tree.
I always thought that was neat.
***
Anyways, that's the science of the situation. But, I'll be the first to say "to hell with science" in a fantasy game. There is no reason why you can't have three-foot tall humans in a fantasy game. Obviously. While I may not believe it's ever happened on Earth, I could be wrong - anthropology is a changing field.
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One way to get around this is reduce certain racial features to cultural ones, like dwarven stonecunning or some races' proficiency with certain weapons.
In line with Cyronax's "carnie" idea, the acid-spitting "Drachen" could be a tribe of people who have developed a secret alchemical weapon- a kind of "binary acid"- and a new way of delivering it...spitting. Learning how to produce, store and attack with this breath weapon would be a cultural secret and a rite of passage into adulthood.
In the alternative, that spit could be the result of a mystical pact between that culture and a powerful outsider, evidenced by each member having a "draconic" birthmark somewhere on their person.
The "Devilborn" could have a totemic belief system that includes displaying their faith with external signs- like horned helmets or devilish facial tattoos.
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