Planar Humans = Outsiders?

[Soel]

I am wondering about this...It seems to make sense that humans born on outer planes would be considered outsiders. Of course, part of what gives other outsider races their LA is the fact that they are considered outsiders...

Thoughts on this?

 

[The Thayan Menace]

Outsider Level Adjustments

Although outsider status is computed when devising ECL, it is often secondary to the wide array of special powers and enhanced ability scores that many non-human outsider races possess.

 

[Rkhet]

Extraplanar and Outsider status are completely different things. A human born on a plane other than the material plane gains the Extraplanar subtype while on the Material Plane, but a normal human is never an Outsider without Perfect Self or equivalent.

 

[Li Shenron]

I am wondering about this...It seems to make sense that humans born on outer planes would be considered outsiders. Of course, part of what gives other outsider races their LA is the fact that they are considered outsiders...

Thoughts on this?

On a general level I agree with you. That's what an "outsider" was supposed to be since the start, someone born on outer planes and following the rules of life of such places.

The "rules" probably say that a human born in hell is just a human native to that plane (for purposes of the "extraplanar" temporary subtype and spells which make us of it), and it does not have the outsider type, unless he is specifically an outsider.

On a more personal level, I think the whole thing seriously suck. Having a heaven or a hell or another similar outer plane, then populating it with mortals becomes ridiculous IMHO.

edit:

With my last comment I mean that if a human was "born" on an outer plane, I'd definitely make it an outsider and I would make it follow the concepts of being an outsider (i.e. like a demon or angel, being immortal, not aging and not needing to eat sleep etc.).

Otherwise you can play a setting like Planescape, where there is not really much difference between the material planes and the outer planes, and the "outsider" types just means the set of immunities and features such creatures get.

 

[Sejs]

I am wondering about this...It seems to make sense that humans born on outer planes would be considered outsiders. Of course, part of what gives other outsider races their LA is the fact that they are considered outsiders...

Thoughts on this?

They'd be Humanoids with the [Extraplanar] subtype maybe, but not Outsiders.

Being an Outsider is more than just being from not 'round here. A human born in Mechanus would still have a seperate body and soul; they could still be raised and so forth. An Outsider doesn't have that distinction - their body is their soul, their soul is their body. And that's just one example. Suffice it to say that it's a duck of a different colour.

 

[Shemeska]

They'd be Humanoids with the [Extraplanar] subtype maybe, but not Outsiders.

Being an Outsider is more than just being from not 'round here. A human born in Mechanus would still have a seperate body and soul; they could still be raised and so forth. An Outsider doesn't have that distinction - their body is their soul, their soul is their body. And that's just one example. Suffice it to say that it's a duck of a different colour.

What Sejs said is correct. A human is a human is a human, not an outsider, regardless of where they happen to be born.

Here's an example: githyanki. The githyanki are native to the Astral, I think we can agree on that. The githyanki are the descendants of an original human stock, another thing we can all agree on. And guess what, if we look at their entry, the githyanki are -not- outsiders. They're explanar humanoids. As would be any human born on another plane.

 

[UltimaGabe]

On a general level I agree with you. That's what an "outsider" was supposed to be since the start, someone born on outer planes and following the rules of life of such places.

It's much more than that, though. Being born somewhere else doesn't change your race- it might change your views, and your diet, and maybe how you speak, but nothing can change your race, short of getting new parents. If two people from Cincinatti go down to Zimbabwe and get married and have children, their child will end up physically the same as if he was born in America, won't he? Same skin tone, same genes, same everything. He might talk a little different, and sure, he might end up with a tan, but he's still human, and he's still American (though that doesn't really mean anything). Just because a person is born on another plane doesn't mean he's soulless, can fly, is immune to things his parents aren't immune to, and is proficient with all simple and martial weapons. That's just silly. After all, what's so different about him? He's still born of the same parents, and is physically the same. So why would he be of a different type? Living among vermin wouldn't turn him into a bug, would it? Would living in the City of Brass turn him into a Fire Elemental? Creature type is a heck of a lot more than just where a person was born.

 

[Soel]

Thanx for all the replies! I was muddled by the distinction between outsider and native outsider. I forgot completely about Githyanki and even the extraplanar subtype. I am going to be running a nother planar game, and am narrowing the fields a little bit, and trying to get the current system to play along, as its devised with a totally prime point of view.

Course, this all beckons the question of why tieflings and many of the other planar races would fall under outsider and not extraplanar. They are not natural occurances on their planes of origin, after all...

 

[UltimaGabe]

Course, this all beckons the question of why tieflings and many of the other planar races would fall under outsider and not extraplanar. They are not natural occurances on their planes of origin, after all...

Well, they're not human. If you take a human, and it marries other humans and has human babies, they're all human, no matter where they are. Tieflings, however, aren't human- they're outsiders (that is, some fiendish thing a long time ago mated with other fiendish things, and maybe there was some human blood in there or something, and the end result was a tiefling). They're not Extraplanar because they were born on the Material Plane, but they're still Outsiders. Just like a human can be born somewhere else, so can Outsiders.

 

[Sejs]

Course, this all beckons the question of why tieflings and many of the other planar races would fall under outsider and not extraplanar. They are not natural occurances on their planes of origin, after all...

Because they're not all human. Tieflings and the like have some ammount of Outsider ancestory. A tiefling is a native outsider to where ever it is they're from. If they go elsewhere, they're Extraplanar.