How do you prefer to use subraces in your campaign?

[Aaron L]

I henerally dont like teh idea of subraces, but since it exists as it is, I allow pretty much anything that a player would want, as long as it can be justified with a good story. Not saying that Id like a slew of exotic subraces all the time, but if someone wants to play something out there every once in a while, well hey, what is this game for, anyway??

 

[Psion]

My campaign is the river of worlds. PCs may bump into -- or be -- one of a great variety of races (and subraces) from a variety of worlds. It's part of the game.

 

[suburbaknght]

In most of my campaigns I actually make all non-human races subraces. The world has very specialized races and using subraces builds up this association. All elves are aquatic (though capable of breathing air as well), half-elves get some swim and sailing bonuses, halflings are desert halflings, dwarves are deep dwarves, half-orcs don't exist, and all the gnomes are dead. Not undead, dead dead.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I choose the subraces avalible in each world. Halflings have three - but they take the place of halflings, gnomes and goblins, and are all tweaked.

two dwarven subraces (tweaked)

High an common elves

although lastnight sombody started a halfling covered by a moss like symbiot - (basied on Mycoinds) they are only one tribe, but I guess it is a fourth subrace. It was supposed to be a oneshot until he could come up with a more longterm, PC but he liked the moss-man, with this player its wierdness over utility.

 

[Sarellion]

I´ve got some subraces in my campaign and a whole slew of different races. The world where the campaign is situated was the former gome of two elder races with access to a lot of different worlds, the ability to tinker with the races abilities an a nice war that removed all restrints on not conscripting other races as cannonfodder and changing them to make them suitable for certain tasks.

 

[ydirbut]

each country in the United States is ridiculous

How many countries are there in the us?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I allow lots of subraces...

... of humans, goblins, moogles, minotaurs and warforged (and mind flayers, now that the PCs are of a high enough level to use them).

In a 'standard D&D game' I'd probably allow most of the published ones; I don't care about them one way or the other.

 

[Staffan]

I chose "Only standard PHB stats used for any member of any race", but with the caveat that there are some races in addition to that. I'm running an Eberron campaign, which of course includes changelings, kalashtar, shifters, and warforged. Other than that, almost all the differences between the members of the same race are cultural and not mechanical. The exception being that Valenar elves use scimitars and shortbows instead of longswords and longbows and get familiarity with the valenar double scimitar, and that Talenta halflings get familiarity with a couple of racial weapons too.

 

[Arkhandus]

Generally, I'd prefer either no subraces or a just a handful of subraces, if appropriate. I.E. in my Rhunaria homebrew campaign, the only playable race with subraces is elvenkind, and they only have 2 subraces besides the standard jungle elves of Rhunaria; dark elves and sea elves were both created from normal elves by the Mage-King centuries ago, near the end of his magical experiments (after making a lot of Rhunaria's aberrations, monstrous humanoids, and other wierd critters). The dark elves turned out as he wanted, amoral, elf-centric, and loyal to the Mage-King, with greater arcane affinities than normal elves, but the Mage-King was unsuccessful in changing the sea elves' minds through his experiments, so instead of conquering the seas for him as he had created them to do, they just fled and stayed in hiding until the Great Rebellion had toppled Linaerelesti and its Mage-King.

No other subraces are known in Rhunaria except for the different varieties of dragon and giant, and no one really knows why they have different varieties, though there are theories. The PCs recently learned from a gold dragon that dragonkind is descended from the divine dragon Xaritheon (whom no humanoid religion mentions nor recognizes). The gold dragon said that Xaritheon bred with ten different great beasts of the land, each bearing twin children, half- dragon and half-beast. Each pair mated and produced a clutch of eggs that were the first true (worldly, only semi-divine) dragons, possessing none of the mortal beast blood of their parents, only the divine dragon blood. This, according to the gold dragon, is what produced the five chromatic and five metallic dragons (as mortals tend to call them, anyway). Of course, the different Rhunarian religions have their own views on how this or that was created, and there's no telling who's right......

 

[GuardianLurker]

I'm about half-way inbetween "Standard with restrictions" and "non-standard".

Basically, I take the PC subraces from back in the days of 1e/2e, drop some of them, find the corresponding update to 3e for the rest, tweak (in some cases, quite a bit), and rename.

Blur the details and you'll find
high, wild, and grey elves,
hill, mountain, and sundered dwarves,
hairfoot, stout, and tallfellow halflings,
non-psionic and psionic humans,
and gnomes.

Bring them back in focus, and you'll find that a lot of the small mechanics have changed.