Jack7
First Post
It wouldn't be my cup of tea. If I were gonna do an animal race then I'd just make humanoids who through some means, magical or otherwise, possessed animal capabilities. Like the sight of an eagle or the hearing of a wolf or the olfactory sensitivity of a polar bear. Maybe also they would have some type of animal affinity or communications or shared sensing abilities.
But, I also don't imagine it would be too difficult mechanically to give outright animals psionic or magical capabilities to control certain objects. Maybe even symbiotically with people. For instance a man uses his Wizard's staff and a dog-race can't outright control it for him but dog-buddy can allow the man through the staff to do things that he couldn't do otherwise. Such as see or hear through the dog's senses, or perhaps the dog can guide the Wizard to the weak point on an enemy, or help him see the "invisible enemy" that the dog can sense easily enough. (This is how I'd use magical animals in my games, and have, but not as races, but as companions. They have a symbiotic relationship, but they aren't necessarily familiars, and they operate independently and without being guided - as creatures in their own right, not controlled or instructed, they are real independent "companions," though sometimes they can also be "totems.")
But as to your point it seems to me that in a fantasy setting or with a fantasy game race all you really have to do is say, "their magic (or psionic capabilities) includes the ability to control physical objects not with their hands but with their minds or with their magic." Then they "floaty around" whatever is needed when needed. Their companions could back-pack their rod or wand as needed, then they pull it out and employ it. Makes as much sense as anything else in most fantasy settings and you wouldn't have to retrofit anything. You'd make the race control the object, not tailor the object to the race.
I can also see a fantasy animal race developing over time in symbiosis with some other race. Say a group of elves notice over time that their animals are acting very oddly and then eventually they establish magical or mental contact with them. It wouldn't have to be real talking (though it could be), it could just be knowing what they other wants or intends. Then by experimentation the elves start devising collars or harnesses with magical properties that enhance the capabilities of their said animals, who later develop and evolve into a playing race. I'm primarily thinking here of already existing animal species but in a fantasy game you create an entirely new type of creature with animal capabilities.
Then again as many others have mentioned you could have chimeras (composite creatures), Centaurs, or what not. They'd be animal but with human capabilities as well. Or the reverse, depending on how you looked at it.
Or lycanthropes who retain some semblance of human thought and morphology. I mean heck, Wookies are just big, slightly anthromorphosized and anthromorphized animals, and they're supposed to be some kinda technology experts. I don't see it with the furry paws and all but, c'est la vie.
And come to think of it, if you did want to go the route of fashioning special magical or mundane equipment just for some particular animal race then that would give you another book to sell. You could call it something like Unorthodox Animal Equipment, or, the Book of Bizarre Stuff. Animal races aren't my thing per se, so I wouldn't buy it myself, but somebody sure would. (Not sure it would make a profit necessarily though, but then again I've often wondered about the profit motive of a lot of the books I've seen released.)
I guess what I'm saying is that if you can have horned demon people and dragon humanoids spitting acid and fey-stepping purple eyed folk from another world then it seems to me it wouldn't be too hard to make an animal race who can float objects in the air and smell into tomorrow.
It's not like it has to make real sense. It just has to pique the interest of gamers enough to make em wanna play. Like the half-orc. I never understood the I'd like to play virtues of the half-orc. But somebody liked it.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
