D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[overgeeked]

If only there were a way to tell a compelling story that allows for something as silly as centaurs climbing ropes (or humans running up bamboo stalks and fighting 30' in the air on them)....but I guess it's not possible without the story devolving into something visually absurd versus cinematic and interesting.

That's great if you're wanting to play a wuxia D&D game with centaurs. If not, it doesn't really apply.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

And then we get into the fact that dragons should have a hump or something on their back to have their flight muscles which is, y'know, the reason Smaug just has two legs in The Hobbit movies. Because dragons don't physically work. Giant spiders and insects would collapse under their own weight, giants themselves can't really function by using a human-style body plan at their size....

If you go to realism, a lot of stuff has to go.

I got one.....let's calculate the energy of a two handed hammer swing by a fire giant in newtons, then compare that to how much damage that would actually inflict when slamming into a squishy body encased in steel plate.

I'm saying best case scenario is losing a hand or foot and it gets worse from there.

#DnDdoesnotusereallifephysics

 

[Jack Daniel]

If only there were a way to tell a compelling story that allows for something as silly as centaurs climbing ropes (or humans running up bamboo stalks and fighting 30' in the air on them)....but I guess it's not possible without the story devolving into something visually absurd versus cinematic and interesting.

Snark aside, your example is actually quite apt. Saying "centaurs must be allowed to climb walls in D&D!" is rather akin to insisting "fighters must be allowed to make wuxia leaps in D&D!" Not every campaign includes every genre.

I got one.....let's calculate the energy of a two handed hammer swing by a fire giant in newtons, then compare that to how much damage that would actually inflict when slamming into a squishy body encased in steel plate.

I'm saying best case scenario is losing a hand or foot and it gets worse from there.

Oh, for Pete's sake. Are you trying to turn this thread into a flame-war about "what a successful attack roll represents" and "what a hit point represents"? Sometimes a loss of HP can still mean that the character dodged.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

That's great if you're wanting to play a wuxia D&D game with centaurs. If not, it doesn't really apply.

The crux of the argument is why not just let it slide and move on with the game? You don't have to allow characters to lift castles because you handwaved centaurs climbing a rope unless you decide it's an issue.

His case is even more concrete since there are literal rules for how centaurs interact with climbing in the actual book that has the rules for centaurs. Not allowing them to climb is ignoring printed rules for "realism" purposes, which is a slope so slippery a centaur couldn't climb it.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Snark aside, your example is actually quite apt. Saying "centaurs must be allowed to climb walls in D&D!" is rather akin to insisting "fighters must be allowed to make wuxia leaps in D&D!" Not every campaign includes every genre.


Oh, for Pete's sake. Are you trying to turn this thread into a flame-war about "what a successful attack roll represents" and "what a hit point represents"? Sometimes a loss of HP can still mean that the character dodged.

So what if it's the one that KOed you? Do you rule instant death as the GM?

 

[Jack Daniel]

So what if it's the one that KOed you? Do you rule instant death as the GM?

I play OD&D, so 0 hp is always instant death.

 

[overgeeked]

The crux of the argument is why not just let it slide and move on with the game? You don't have to allow characters to lift castles because you handwaved centaurs climbing a rope unless you decide it's an issue.

His case is even more concrete since there are literal rules for how centaurs interact with climbing in the actual book that has the rules for centaurs. Not allowing them to climb is ignoring printed rules for "realism" purposes, which is a slope so slippery a centaur couldn't climb it.

Yeah, but those rules are dumb. Because they break suspension of disbelief. Just like the resting rules about how you can do up to an hour's worth of strenuous activity (including fighting) during a long rest but still gain the benefits. This is clearly dumb. I don't care what the book or Mearls says. I don't care what any writer of any game book tells me. If it doesn't make sense to me as the DM, I'm going to change it. Period. And, funnily enough, the books back me up on that.

 

[Mecheon]

Yes. I my new world dragons have four-limbed bodyplan. Not that they still could fly, they're far too heavy. But we all have our reality suspenders calibrated differently. To me centaurs look patently ludicrous whereas those those other things do not, even though I intellectually know that they don't work.

I mean height wise you've got a lot of room for flying with that four limbed plan. Arambourgiania and Quetzalcoatlus were about the height of a giraffe and got around fine, alongside, y'know, eating dinosaurs and all.

Mind, they were almost all neck

 

[doctorbadwolf]

But again, we don't allow nonsense at our table. If you want to attach a rope to the centaur's neck and heave, go for it. Maybe the head won't pop off before it chokes to death. If you want to lift one without killing it or ripping an arm out of its socket, you're going to need a horse harness to lift it

I'm absolutely certain, if we here at Enworld could comb over your game, we would find plenty that is ridiculous. Probably at least one or two restrictions in place to satisfy your personal sense of verisimilitude are ridiculous to someone who is more knowledgeable on a related field of study, simply because you can't be an expert on every field.

For instance, the idea that you can lift a centaur safely with a rope is just nonsense. Completely ridiculous.

Simple centaur fix: They can bend the human part of their body a good 90 degrees to use those parts to help them climb

I mean, let's be honest. They're hexapodal beings that have the top half and the upper digestive system of an omnivore and the back half and subsequent digestive system of a dedicated herbivore. Where are the lungs? Where's the food go?

Climbing is the least of a centaur's problems from a biological perspective and singling out 'climbing' as the issue seems a bit.... Eh.

Yeah, the best way to look at centaurs is that they only look like half horse, half human. In fact, they are 0% either creature, and have a phisiology that suits their particular construction and allows them to interact with the world in a way that wouldn't make it nearly impossible for them to actually function and maintain their species.

So we have a more realistic set of rules implying that Centaurs cannot climb, and we have a ridiculous rule that exists for "balance" reasons.

No, we don't.

Not that they still could fly, they're far too heavy.

If you're changing their phisiology to be 4-limbed, why not also make them lighter? How much bigger does a dragon need to be than quetzalcoatlus? If dragons have body parts that are valuable, which is the case in most dragon fiction where dragons are a big deal that I can think of, why couldn't they have hollow bones, teeth, claws, and scales, with properties similar to mithral? A mithral breastplate can be worn under a shirt, and is so light that it doesn't impair moving stealthily even when turned into full heavy armors. Why coudln't a similar material make dragons substantially lighter than they look, allowing them to be a bit bigger than the biggest flying creatures of the real world, and fly more easily over greater distance and at greater speeds than those creatures?

I guess my question for this whole thread remains the same. Why bend your will toward finding reasons to ban or otherwise restrict a thing (or in this case to say, dragons are too heavy to fly), when the same energy and imagination could be used to find ways to make those things work? What is gained?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I mean height wise you've got a lot of room for flying with that four limbed plan. Arambourgiania and Quetzalcoatlus were about the height of a giraffe and got around fine, alongside, y'know, eating dinosaurs and all.

Mind, they were almost all neck

I prefer my dragons to be a lot of long sinuous body and wings to blot out the sun. The "huge scaled tiger with wings" body type can look cool, but it isn't what dragons should look like it, IMO.