D&D 5E If not the word "race", what word instead?

[DammitVictor]

I think "species" is bad. It's even more factually wrong than "race", but I am willing to accept it as less gross. I do not mind species in science fiction games, like space opera and post-apocalyptic settings, where it's an accurate description.

I prefer "kith" and "clade". In Shroompunk, "class" and "clade" are mechanically synonyms but "class" refers to human professions while nonhumans belong to their respective clades. In a separate race-and-class system, I would refer to "kith" and "class".

 

[Dausuul]

I like "people" or "kindred." "Species" is technically the correct term, but thematically jarring. Most of the other options suggest a focus on personal ancestry, which doesn't fit the concept at all, or on cultural rather than biological traits.

 

[the Jester]

I favor people, folk, or lineage.

 

[SkidAce]

That actually is untrue, depending on setting. In older settings elves were made to be able to bread with humans with a curse as revenge by the wife of the creator of elves to punish her husband. Orcs were given a blessing to bread with any humanoid and create half orc off spring in order to rapidly increase their numbers. Half Orcs breading with half orcs generate full orc off spring so the they can increase there numbers then purify their blood lines. So in those settings that fallow that lore they are different species that can't normally bread together but magic. Its kind of link a scientist adding frog DNA to dinosaurs because the can.

That's a lot of bread being baked.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

The standard dictionary definition not-withstanding, in science some different species can interbreed and make hybrids - some of them with apparently just fine fertility. Humans & Neanderthals, or different types of Macaws seem to do just fine out to at least three generations so far. And there's the Beefalo. With a bit less robustness in either habitat for the hybrid, the Carolina Chickadee and the Northern Chickadee have a narrow but very long range of interbreeding. And then there's the Liger and Tigon and Hinny and Mule where the female is sometimes fertile.

I would be flabbergasted (assuming elves were real) if any mammologist would classify elves (adulthood at 100 and lifespan of 750, darkvision, no sleep) and humans (adulthoodin late teens, lifespan under 100, regular vision, sleep) as the same species, even if the produce a hybrid (adulthood 20, lifespan 180 years, inferior darkvision, need sleep). Similar for orcs and humans. All in the same genus seems like a thing, perhaps as a ring species, if they actually had a common descent (which, for example, in Tolkien the elves and men wouldn't - what's the standard D&D origin?).

Feel like every time the species debate starts up, everybody just forgets this so they can argue over the hybridization issue, when really it's not all that big a deal.

Speciation isn't a done deal folks.

 

[Eltab]

That's a lot of bread being baked.

Well, the point does seem to be about 'a bun in the oven'.

 

[Eltab]

That actually is untrue, depending on setting. In older settings elves were made to be able to bread with humans with a curse as revenge by the wife of the creator of elves to punish her husband. Orcs were given a blessing to bread with any humanoid and create half orc off spring in order to rapidly increase their numbers. Half Orcs breading with half orcs generate full orc off spring so the they can increase there numbers then purify their blood lines. So in those settings that fallow that lore they are different species that can't normally bread together but magic. Its kind of link a scientist adding frog DNA to dinosaurs because the can.

The important point was at the end of my post, the part you did not react to.

 

[R_J_K75]

RACE!

 

[Haldrik]

So far, the rankings from the top down among the double digits are:

• Species
• Folk
• People
• Ancestry
• Kin

Among the single digits:

• Heritage
• Origin
• Culture
• Kindred

 

[aco175]

I could go with folk. We already have the fair folk, the stout folk and just Ffolk so a lot of people have heard it used for race already. You could add the small folk and the tusked folk if you did not want savage folk.