DungeonmasterCal
First Post
Try Ghost Elves from Dragon Magazine (the issue number escapes me at the moment, though).
Non-stereotypical versions of PHB races
Cam Banks
Adventurer
The first thing I thought about when I picked up 3.0 D&D back in the day was that I wanted my halflings to be a race caught up in a diaspora. They would have all the elements of Jewish communities, living alongside others but separate, in urban locations. They have traditions and rituals and even a religion that is close to but still alien to the humans in the area, which makes them easy scapegoats. If you blend in some of the elements of the Rom or gypsies, perhaps the halflings are ruled by their elder women, with the men acting as enforcers of this matriarchal system; they favor dance, passionate lifestyles, freedom; but they are co-dependent on humanity, as they have no homeland of their own.
Birthright halflings are somewhat like this - they used to live in the Shadow World, but fled the Darkness of Azrai and entered the material plane as a race in exile. They continue to have a sensitivity to evil, darkness, and spirits, because of where they came from, but they are not themselves evil or spirits.
Cheers,
Cam
Birthright halflings are somewhat like this - they used to live in the Shadow World, but fled the Darkness of Azrai and entered the material plane as a race in exile. They continue to have a sensitivity to evil, darkness, and spirits, because of where they came from, but they are not themselves evil or spirits.
Cheers,
Cam
Kahuna Burger
First Post
Why? Why not just make minotaurs a player race?AbeTheGnome said:
I'm not sure I understand your goal here. If you wanted different core races for your campaign, I would understand, but why give them innacurate names? Its as if you decided that a "sword" in your campaign was an inexpensive ranged weapon that threw lead shot, and a "crossbow" was a bludgeoning melee weapon.
What does this contribute to your campaign?
AbeTheGnome
First Post
Minotaurs in Dragonlance (which I took the entry from) are a PC race. It just so happened that the flavor text for the Dragonlance minotaurs were exacly what I wanted a particular subrace of elves to be in my homebrew.Kahuna Burger said:
I'm not sure I understand or agree with your analogy, but from what I can tell, you have trouble separating "this short, burly race" from "lawful clan-oriented miners" and separating "these pretty pointy-eared critters" from "chaotic forest-dwelling archers." That's OK, most people do have trouble getting away from the tropes. However... the fact that elves are imaginary gives me full license to do with them anything my imagination dictates (hell, look at the drow for a prime example), whereas my imagination really has little effect on the crossbow.I'm not sure I understand your goal here. If you wanted different core races for your campaign, I would understand, but why give them innacurate names? Its as if you decided that a "sword" in your campaign was an inexpensive ranged weapon that threw lead shot, and a "crossbow" was a bludgeoning melee weapon.
Shock value.
SpiderMonkey
Explorer
Yup. The best success I've had with this is playing the neighboring "high elf" race as mysterious, but generally elf-like. When the PCs unwittingly returned to them a certain dingus called the "Branch of Binding," it allowed the elves to break all of the magically-enforced treaties they had been obeying; enter the colonizing, human slave-taking, degenerate, Shub Niggurath worshipping, neo-Melniboneans.
"That's what we've been helping this whole time?" Classic.
Gundark
Explorer
What I did in my Homebrew is took a standard race and turned them evil. I took elves and created a history were the humans and some of the other races were in slavery for generations, the humans and some other races left (somewhat similiar to moses and the Isrealites). The elves still want their old slaves back and occasionally invade. Half elves ended up being magically altered soliders for the elven empire.
I know that "evil elves" isn't a new concept. These guys aren't drow. IMC all elves are either part of, or come from the evil elven empire.
I know that "evil elves" isn't a new concept. These guys aren't drow. IMC all elves are either part of, or come from the evil elven empire.
crazy_monkey1956
First Post
One way to break stereotypes, that doesn't require much "work", is to strip out the flavor text of the standard PHB races and look at what the mechanics suggest. For example, if we look at elves in this manner...
+2 Dex, -2 Con usually translates as frail and graceful. What if this race is instead afflicted with a racial disease that cannot be cured in any traditional sense because it is inherited, possibly due to inbreeding. In fact, the race could be sterile with it's own kind and seek out "new blood" in attempt to revitalize themselves.
Immune to sleep and +2 vs enchantments could mean that they are denied the capacity to sleep and dream and are more resistant to enchantments because their minds have been forced to adapt to dreamlessness and the resulting partial madness that inflicts.
Low-light vision could have resulted from adapting to semi-nocturnal scavenger existence because other races mistrust and revile them.
Proficiency with bows and swords, being scavengers, this race has pilfered the fallen in the battlefields of humanity. Since swords and bows are the most common weapons of mass warfare, these are the weapons the race has had the most experience with, and they teach all of the members to use them as a means of self-defense.
+2 Listen, Search, Spot heightened senses as a means of avoiding those that hunt them down as plague-ridden pests.
Favored Class: Wizard - The race has focused it's research on curing itself on arcane magic because they believe their racial deity has forsaken them and cursed them with their affliction.
This is just off the top of my head, but the idea here is that without the standard stereotype flavor text, the bare bones mechanics in the PHB can provide inspiration for a whole new concept...without the expense in time or money of a new book for "new races." Same game mechanics, different race.
Quentin
+2 Dex, -2 Con usually translates as frail and graceful. What if this race is instead afflicted with a racial disease that cannot be cured in any traditional sense because it is inherited, possibly due to inbreeding. In fact, the race could be sterile with it's own kind and seek out "new blood" in attempt to revitalize themselves.
Immune to sleep and +2 vs enchantments could mean that they are denied the capacity to sleep and dream and are more resistant to enchantments because their minds have been forced to adapt to dreamlessness and the resulting partial madness that inflicts.
Low-light vision could have resulted from adapting to semi-nocturnal scavenger existence because other races mistrust and revile them.
Proficiency with bows and swords, being scavengers, this race has pilfered the fallen in the battlefields of humanity. Since swords and bows are the most common weapons of mass warfare, these are the weapons the race has had the most experience with, and they teach all of the members to use them as a means of self-defense.
+2 Listen, Search, Spot heightened senses as a means of avoiding those that hunt them down as plague-ridden pests.
Favored Class: Wizard - The race has focused it's research on curing itself on arcane magic because they believe their racial deity has forsaken them and cursed them with their affliction.
This is just off the top of my head, but the idea here is that without the standard stereotype flavor text, the bare bones mechanics in the PHB can provide inspiration for a whole new concept...without the expense in time or money of a new book for "new races." Same game mechanics, different race.
Quentin
AbeTheGnome
First Post
This is somewhat similar to what I'm doing IMC. The elves from the empire aren't necessarily evil (I don't place a lot of emphasis on alignment), but they are racists, conquerors, and slavers. My half-elves take the role of the normal elf. They were once culturally indistinct from neighboring humans, but when the High Elves began exterminating them, they retreated into the moors and forests and became guerilla fighters. Viva la resistance!Gundark said:
AbeTheGnome
First Post
crazypixie: Wow. That's quite a thing to come off the top of your head. It doesn't quite fit what I'm trying to do, but it's an awesome idea. Props.
Kahuna Burger
First Post
AbeTheGnome said:
no, but thank you for trying to make it something I "have trouble" with rather than a preference for not changing things just to show you can.
Unicorns are imaginary as well. However, if you said "unicorns in my campaign are going to be bipedal reptiles with no horns but long claws on each of their 7 fingers" People would reasonably see this as a misassignment of the name rather than "getting away from tropes".
Thats refreshingly honest for this sort of world changing.
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