D&D General Are the Races of D&D races of Human or seperate Species according to lore?

[doctorbadwolf]

Ain’t reading all that, bud.

It wasn’t even you I first replied to on the topic, and I’m not especially interested in going in circles with you.

You seem to get your feathers rustled at the suggestion that a take other than yours might be perfectly reasonable. That isn’t my problem.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Ain’t reading all that, bud.

It wasn’t even you I first replied to on the topic, and I’m not especially interested in going in circles with you.

You seem to get your feathers rustled at the suggestion that a take other than yours might be perfectly reasonable. That isn’t my problem.

Its really odd how thats the conclusion i sort of came to about you. Earlier in the post though before o was replying to you. But whatevs.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

When did Modenkainen become the paragon of truthfulness? He is a fanatic, and will tell anyone whatever he thinks they should know to preserve balance.

The reason WotC puts NPC's names on splat books in 5e is so that if you think the NPC is wrong or lying, you are totally right at your table. There is a reason they started with Volo after all.....

 

[Umbran]

I think you are projecting.

You seem to get your feathers rustled ...

I think you are both getting personal over a fictional character. Please don't do that any more - specifically, stop inferring things about the person of the other writer. Thanks.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

When did Modenkainen become the paragon of truthfulness? He is a fanatic, and will tell anyone whatever he thinks they should know to preserve balance.

The reason WotC puts NPC's names on splat books in 5e is so that if you think the NPC is wrong or lying, you are totally right at your table. There is a reason they started with Volo after all.....

Yep. They’ve explicitly talked about his dishonesty in pursuit of his ends in interviews.

Edit: Which is why I liked the idea of adding an additional layer of deception, where it turns out that his enemies are right, but they don’t actually understand what’s going on, and he isn’t just being a dismissive ass about worlds he doesn’t get, but is actually intentionally spreading misinformation AND setting up his enemies to look like fools in some scheme.

But I also enjoy the idea of using him as a person who is just too self aggrandizing to even bother challenging his own assumptions, because it fits with the behavior of real very smart jerk-wagons who are obsessively convinced of their own infallible knowledge.

 

[Bohandas]

Actually, well, yeah. If you look very much into modenkainen thats pretty much the case. His character is essentially cast as the go-to extreme example of an absurdly knowledgeable wizard with information on things across the multiplanar expanse. Whether a defamation campaign or just simply a chronological exception in the pattern of people writing about him, ignorance on his part or the appearance of it is basically an out of place hiccup. Look more into that character's history and you will have serious trouble finding a character with an origin among mortals who even comes close to his knowledgeability level.

If a mortal ORIGIN is all that's required than immediately, just off the top of my head there's the entire Company of Seven (Zagyg, Murlynd, Tasha/Iggwilv, Nolzur, Heward, Keoghtom, and Quaal) and also Vecna. And possibly also Voyeux the Illusionist

EDIT:
Granted, I suppose Vecna and Voyeux aren't easy to find from a watsonian perspective, generally being located at the ends of dungeons

 

[Son of the Serpent]

If a mortal ORIGIN is all that's required than immediately, just off the top of my head there's the entire Company of Seven (Zagyg, Murlynd, Tasha/Iggwilv, Nolzur, Heward, Keoghtom, and Quaal) and also Vecna. And possibly also Voyeux the Illusionist

EDIT:
Granted, I suppose Vecna and Voyeux aren't easy to find from a watsonian perspective, generally being located at the ends of dungeons

Actually, i had already mentioned that there were individuals who exceed him in this arena. The point is that they are vanishingly rare. And they are. You will only get a handful. Also i actually stated vecna as a clear example toward the very beginning. There are some clear examples. But that was never the point. The point was his knowledgebility is platinum class and very few exceed said knowledgeability. Most of the point behind why i mentioned vecna a while ago was in fact that he is likely the example you cant top if you have considered things properly. The most signifficant god of secrets being a title he likely wears without close challengers. And a wizard that makes people like boccob look like they sit at the kids table sometimes.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Also iggwilv is probably one of the best examples of equaling or maybe surpassing that knowledge quotient. But shes leaps and bounds more powerful and graz'zts favorite consort. Shes sort of the exception that proves the point. You have to go as far as people like her to actually be sure you are in the right league or greater knowledge wise.

Ps i nominate iggwilv for most badass witch in d&d.

 

[Bohandas]

To get more in depth with it, what I don’t like is that it pushes much too close to a place where dwarves aren’t really people, but are so strongly defined in every aspect of their psychology by work and craft that they are just sophisticated self-replicating automated tools crafted by a god who only cares about them insofar as they serve that purpose.

Personally I feel it's good for them to be radically different. I personally feel it strains verisimilitude for a phylogenetically unrelated creature with different senses, a different habitat, and a different lifecycle to thing the same way and have the same innenwelt as a human

 

[the Jester]

"It does not strongly hold to real-world genetics. " … Sure, no one mentioned genetics before now. This is about which "races" can mix and which can not, which is a thing in D&D because we do no have unlimited hybridization.

I wouldn't be so sure- although, to be fair, this depends a lot on the edition and setting. As previously mentioned, in 1e, orcs and elves can't crossbreed. But on the other hand, you have stuff like the various "half-" templates in 3e, as well as the templates such as draconic, fiendish, and celestial creatures, which imply a more distant ancestry. Many monsters in early editions are described as a cross between some weird x and y creatures; brownies are, I think, speculated to be gnome/pixie hybrids, and sylphs are the result of dalliances between air elementals and nymphs, if I recall correctly.

The bottom line is that you're looking for consistent answers that don't really exist. The possibilities are sometimes absurd ("I'm a half-dragon, half-celestial, half-elemental minotaur!"), and sometimes change from edition to edition or setting to setting. If you're looking for a "big picture" answer, I would strongly dispute your assertion that we don't have unlimited hybridization- we probably do, if you look across the breadth of different settings and editions, have something much closer to unlimited hybridization than not.

And that's without even involving magic!