Hi all, just adding my 2 copper pieces to this thread.
First of all. Leave the female/male BS at the door, and lets move on to something much more sensible for this thread.
BIOLOGY.
Lets go with the basics.
- If a creatures young don't suckle ofter being born then there is no need for breasts nor nipples.
- If a creature gives birth to suckling young then:
- Does it give birth to a bunch of young? More nipples/breasts.
- Does it give birth to only a few or singular young? Then A pair will do.
- Variants may include marsupials.
- Talking about marsupials, another major variant is the duck-billed-platypus. Birth via egg then suckling.
Now since humans are animals and assuming D&D's naturally evolved races are the same, then the above mentioned logic should apply.
Thus:
- No breast for lizard folk, shaugin, mind-flayers, gripply, koa-toa... and other reptilian and amphibian and fish people.
- If lets say catfolk give birth to a litter then it would make sense for the female to have multiple nipples.
- Dragonborn, depends, if they suckle their young then breasts make sense.
- Created races...depends on what the creator intended.
- Minotaur, its not the race originally, it was born as a deformed man. But it evolved slowly into a race of its own in fantasy games. Just use the Tauren from Warcraft if you want to use a minotaur race.
Again, a bit of science makes sense of it all, then you discover that the platypus exists and messes up conventional biology.
In adition: A non-human race might/should idealise other characteristics as appealing/sexual. For instance a race in Guild Wars 2 named the Asura, idealize ears the bigger the better.
Or maybe brighter and/or more varied colored scales of a lizardfolk.
As a bonus, during the development of Guild Wars 2, there was an interesting debate about a humanoid cat-like race called the Charr. More specifically should it have human breasts or cat-like nipples/breasts. In the end this is what they came up with:
ArenaNet guy:
"Finally, there was the matter of the chest. It really didn’t make any sense to have boobs on a charr female, particularly with all the effort we took to make her sleek and fierce. We thought they should have no breasts at all or at least hide them under some fluffy fur. Above all else, we needed to be true to the race, of course! There was still some debate, however, so I gave them a choice: either be subtle and downplay the breasts (it wasn’t a point of the race, anyway) or go full-on realistic. Yes, that’s right —
none or six!! But really, the armor augmentation required for six boobs would be just as ridiculous,
so none it was!"
- these are both female charrs.
In closing:
- Use science and common sense as much as possible.
- Be creative, humans are one of many races in D&D,thus human ideals won't exist in other races, heh, not even other human societies idealize the same thing.