Fluff Changes You've Made to PC Races

[Tequila Sunrise]

Have you ever tweaked a race's fluff just to get away from D&D's traditional tropes? It might be a big tweak, or a small one.

For example, instead of stoic beer-swilling tunnel-dwelling scottish miners, dwarves in my campaign are isolationist desert dwellers with black skin and a difficult-to-pronounce racial name that makes many non-language-experts throw up their hands and say "dwarf!"* I've never been in love with the underdark, or races that live underground. And I think that dwarven durability makes the race perfect for the harsh desert environment.

*Haven't settled on the actual name yet. It shouldn't be simply ambiguously spelled, like 'Gwenwhyfar,' which is actually easy to pronounce.

I'm currently trying to think of something new to do with humans and halflings. What have you done?

 

[Yora]

I set elven life expectancy to a more reasonable 300 years with maturity at 30.
Meaningfully different to humans, but still comprehensible.

I think dwarves are so stuck in their extremely tiny niche that I simply dropped them entirely and gave all their stuff to gnomes. Gnomes are already a lot more richer and varied and the fluff of stoneworking, forging, and underground cities complements them very well.

Vampires are a form of demonic possession, in which the demon spirit fuses with the mortal soul. The vampire remembers the demon world but also has all the memories of the mortal body and will live entirely in the mortal world for a few centuries until the body is destroyed. They can't make others with their bite but need to summon another demon spirit and channel it into a living body, and they also are not vulnerable to sunlight.

 

[GhostBear]

I've never really been all that fond of elves. So I decided to torture them a bit. The short of it:

The Elvish empire was at war with the dwarves and the minotaurs, but it was discovered that elves had a weakness: They had an exceptional addiction to a common smoking weed. So the dwarves and the minotaurs subsidized halfling farmers who grew the crop and sold it to the elves at extremely low prices, flooding them with the stuff. The addiction problem ate their empire from the inside out and it crumbled within a few years.

So my elves are now a displaced, addiction-ridden, poor society. They commonly find legitimate work as servants (much to their horror), but are just as likely to thieve or beg to fund their needs.

Halflings, aside from being a peaceful farming people, are also the world's first expert economists. Some halflings have vast holdings and control certain areas of regional economies through strong trade cartels. They have also set up some of the very first banks, a concept that is generally foreign at this time.

Although not typically PC races, I have also included Griffins and Minotaurs.

The Minotaurs have a small but strong empire, with their emperor defending his right to rule in an arena in their central city. They are located on a small archipelago, and have exceptional sailing skills and a very strong navy. Ancestor worship is prevalent, and their shamans can invite spirits into their body to harness their power (using some content from the Secrets of Pact Magic book - it's Cool Stuff (tm)).

Griffins are a religious people who worship a sun diety and have prophecies about a phoenix. They also keep the most detailed (though sometimes biased) histories. Many griffins travel as bards, interacting with various people, carrying news, and recording local events. The capability of flight really helps enable their ability to do this. Other griffins travel as priests, healing the sick and whatnot - normal good guy stuff.

As is typical with birds (and the Griffins do see themselves are Birds, not a half and half), the males are brightly colored; they tend to be the bards. The females tend to be the priests.

 

[Janx]

The gnomes were a decadent imperialist society.

The gnomes had once enslaved the dwarves.

The dwarves finally rebelled and the gnomes retreated.


dark elves have white hair and white skin.

 

[Smoss]

Definitely some fluff changes for my world (Doulairen)

Dwarves - Call themselves the Halz. More "german engineers" than "scottish drunkards" (Halz is actually based on the german words for dwarves in their folklore). They also have a more earthy appearance (Craggy looks, like hewn from stone. beards that look crystalline in the light, etc).

Elves - Physically more narrow (Like many "grey alien" styles). Ability to be completely still is quite unnerving (Showing no emotion or visibile movement like a statue) - then moving sharply and fast to somewhere and being a "living statue" again.

Nothing special, just enough to make them feel distinct from each other and humans a little.

Smoss
** Coming July 4th! New fiction series by me! "Enzi's Irregulars" **
irregulars The Silver Tower Chronicles

 

[Mallus]

Coincidentally, I just put together a few race descriptions for a new Pathfinder campaign In my setting, The World of CITY, I re-skinned/re-flavored all the demi-human races, leaving the mechanics more-or-less alone.

Replacing Halflings:

The Hannumin, or Hannu, are a race of small, quick, curious, child-like monkey-people said to have been brought to the world by the ancient Gate Builder Empire to serve as pets. The eschew intellectual pursuits in favor of a simple life of meditation, play, and deadly martial arts.

Two quirks of the Hannu: they completely lack foresight and abhor the practice of slavery.

Replacing Elves:

The Shirac are a tall, thin, race of humanoids. Most Shirac have hair that resembles very fine feathers, though some have a variety of divergent features; cat eyes, turtle shell-like head coverings, claws. A few even look completely human. The majority of their race lives in a desert region called the Lassantees Wastes.

They refer to themselves as the “Great Ummab of the Shirac” and are rumored to be “all witches”. They claim to be "migrating towards Heaven".

Replacing Half-orcs:

The Ruhk-Kaza are a created race, manufactured in the ancient capital of the Gate Builder Empire by imperial bio-alchemists. They were slaves used to perform dangerous manual labor and gladiatorial combat. They have various physical and mental gifts, except for intelligence. Their horns are purely decorative.

As a species, they have the reputation of being taciturn, stoic, and, occasionally, hyper-violent. Their religion is the worship of death unpersonified, the so-called “Final Destination”.

Replacing Dwarves (with a dash of gnome):

The Garahjah are a race of sturdy mole-people imported to the world by the Gate Builder Empire to serve as garderers. They have an innate connection to the earth, well, more specifically, to dirt, that manifests in several useful ways. Garahjah, male and female, are extremely phsysically similar to one another to the naked eye. Fortunately it’s Garahjah custom to wear elaborately personalized dreadlocks and signature hats.

The Garahjah love language and pratical jokes. Scholars believe the untranslatable Garahjah language itself is something of a practical joke being made at the expense of non-Garahjah.

 

[Madapplejack]

Elves and Orcs are the same species: all the males are orcs, all the females are elves. Either can breed with humans, but the offspring are the reverse: all females are half-orcs, and all males are half-elves.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Copying myself from elsewhere:

Dwarves: I made them into sentient stone in one campaign, and they reproduced by carving new ones. The type of stone determined their exact stats and favored class. Tougher minerals were better at being the warrior types. Gemstones were better at being the spellcasters.

In another one, I killed them all off...sort of. I made the dwarven survivors of an apocalyptic war into a fantasy version of Dr Who's Cybermen or Daleks. Psionically active dwarves transferred their consciousnesses into the bodies their slain bretheren constructed- Warforged. They had the physical attributes of Warforged (but with darkvision added), but the mental and cultural attributes of dwarves. They called themselves "Inheritors."

Elves: In one campaign, I combined elements of the Minbari (from Bab5) with making them sentient plants). This latter twist is one of my most common.

Another common twist for me- making them true "fey" and using the "Drift" rules from the Geomancer PrCl to warp them as they age.

In another campaign, they were sci-fi "Greys" who had crashlanded on a fantasy world. They used their high tech stasis devices and tesseract generators to create what humans called "Underhill" to give them a nearly timeless and quite vast space in which to live while awaiting either rescue or for native tech/magic to be up to the task of repairing them.

Another old post, with some other reflavorings of note:

I do this a lot...my Bugbears taste like Watermelons.




What?

OH!

I do re-imagine races quite frequently, but I seldom get to use them to the fullest. I've mentioned several on these boards:

1. Elves who are actually alien Greys (you know- the skinny, big headed, pupil-less eyed guys from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, X-files, etc.). Their ship crashed hundreds of thousands of years ago, becoming covered by a mounded clearing in a forest. Their stasis fields (keeping them alive all those centuries) teleporters, image scramblers and account for legends of Underhill, how they dissapear in the woods, and how they are mighty enchanters...
2. Elves who are part plant, truly one with The Green. I basically applied the Woodling template and took a few hints from Dragonstar's Galactic Races. I also made them true Fey.
3. Dwarves who are elementals. They carve each other from stone, and the kind of stone they are made from determines their favored class.
4. Warforged who are essentially D&D versions of the Daleks or Cyber-Men: their metal bodies house the brains of psionically active dwarves (minimum 1PP).
5. The Nephilim are my reworked Planetouched. "They were the hybrid offspring of fallen angels and human women." says one definition...but mine are the hybrid offspring of any sentient race and any extraplanar being. To pull that off, the Nephilim were designed as a racial character class, a la Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved RPG.
6. A size S, flying version of the Thri-Kreen. They are ultra-high dex, and favor spears/javelins rather than the gythka, etc., and can communicate by bioluminescence.

I've also enjoyed helping others at ENWorld reflavor or shuffle races for their campaigns, most notably suggesting:

1. Anthropomorphic Snapping Turtles, an amalgam of river-dwelling Halflings, the powerful physique of Dwarves, certain reptilian characteristics from Lizardmen and the business acumen of Ferengi. They are the master tradesmen of the lakes, rivers and freshwater wetlands.
   
2. Humans who ride Giant Flightless Birds- like axebeaks or real-world Moas- and have a culture analogous to those of the Plains Indians.
   
3. Reworked Kobolds who are arboreal, and have gliding membranes.
   
4. Using Alternity/D20 Modern Sesheyans as rulers of an Underdark empire- possibly as replacements for the Drow.

 

[Aeolius]

Sea elves, locathah, and merfolk are among the "core races" in my current campaign.

First I made the locathah a hermaphroditic race, similar to the anthias fish . When a tribe is reduced to all females, one will "change" to become male. Then I gave them a caste system based on the coloration they develop as they mature. Envision a tribe of locathah where the mature members have the coloration of larger angelfish , while the juveniles are nearly identical in color.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ah yeah, Sea Elves...

Alternately a racial refluff or a specialized Monk PrCl- depending on the campaign- I had Sea Elves who had an ability similar to that of nudibrancs. They could consume anemones & sea jellies and relocate the still-intact nematocysts to their own skin...and could do likewise with the chromatophores of cephalopoda.

In other words, they et certain critters what let them change their colors and sting people painfully.