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

[Maxperson]

So... just because you don't run Ravnica, the only rules for the playable race Centaur don't apply?

Why would setting specific rules apply to any other setting? If you want to use them, go for it. You don't get to make that choice for me, though. Those rules as they are written will never make it into my game. First and foremost, centaurs will never be fey in my game.

There is no playable large Centaur. It doesn't exist.

When has that ever stopped a DM? If you want a playable centaur in my game, ask. We can work something out.

I guess if you want to argue about how your homebrew Centaur race works, go for it, but I'm going off of the rules that exist, not the homebrew you are making up.

And you will fail each time as those rules do not apply outside of the two campaigns they are printed in.

Referencing the things you said regarding Fantasy Racism in your worlds. Like the Tabaxi argument. Should think that was obvious, since I repeated it later in the same post.

You exceeded what I said with your over the top comment. Don't put words or actions in my mouth.

Deflection

It's not a deflection. Without a specific action on the part of the PC for me to adjudicate, I have no idea what would happen.

 

[Oofta]

And this was what we were trying to advocate for in the beginning. And this is what we keep getting told we don't actually want.

Because it seems that after we agree to join Kelly's campaign, nothing they do should be seen negatively. Any attempt of ours to press against the limits Kelly tells us should be seen negatively.

But what we really want is just an honest conversation, where Kelly is willing to bend. Maybe they don't. That is a possibility. But every time I've asked the question "why shouldn't the DM be willing to bend?" I've gotten the response "Why would the player even ask the DM whose put in so much work to bend in the first place?"

If we can't even get the possibility of the DM changing to be an option on the table, without it turning into a "how dare you mere players question me" then is it really an open and fair conversation? And I'm not saying you do this Oofta, I'm not judging your campaign, I'm not calling you a bad person, I'm not saying your players don't love your game, I'm not saying that you are any of those bad words that you think I'm calling you. This is not an attack.

But inevitably, the conversation always seems to pivot into "well, players will accept nothing less than submission of the DM" and we are back on the back foot, instead of just everyone agreeing that having conversations where all possibilities are at least on the table, is a perfectly fine thing.

We agree then on the gist of DM authority. What I have an issue with is the red herring. The constant pairing of DM authority with bad DMing. Never listening, mocking or being dismissive is bad DMing. I don't think anyone has said otherwise.

We have had other threads not that long ago about DMs feeling pushed around and campaigns spinning out of control because they let the loudest person in the group bully them. I just want to reinforce that while a DM should listen, and sometimes the answer will be "yes" other times it will be "no, but here's what we can do", "no and here's why" or even just plain "no".

In 4E someone wanted to play a Deva which is not on my list. I thought about it, clarified that they would look human (and be unique as far as they knew) and said yes. When someone wanted to play a drow, I've said "no, but let's see if we can figure out something we can figure out." If someone wanted to play a loxodon I'd say "no, and here's why". If someone wanted to play a half-vampire half-dragon the answer would be "no" because it's so far out there that I'm not even sure where to start.

 

[embee]

Maybe, but just because it isn't easy doesn't mean they can't do it.

I didn't say they couldn't do it and you know I didn't say they couldn't do it. Here's what I wrote:

There is still the issue of the stairs. Average tread depth is less than 12." A large inn presumably has rooms on the second floor. The centaur can go up the stairs but damn if he isn't going to have a bitch of a time coming down the stairs.

Difficult, not impossible.

You want to play a centaur? Fine. Have at it.

First, give me a DC 15 DEX check to go up the stairs. Fail by more than 5 and you break a tread because you weigh 2,000 lbs. It's not a question of can a horse walk up stairs; it's a question of whether wooden steps can hold a horse's weight.

For comparison, 29 CFR 1910.24(c) states; "Fixed stairways shall be designed and constructed to carry a load of five times the normal live load anticipated but never of less strength than to carry safely a moving concentrated load of 1,000 pounds" [emphasis added]." Therefore, with respect to the design calculation, the normal live load is spread over the whole stair tread area and the moving concentrated load is considered to be a point load applied at a location on the stair system where the maximum stress would be experienced by the system (the 1000 lbs loading criteria is a minimum).

Now, are this inn's stairs up to OSHA code? (fun exercise: read about moving long gun safes into basements - the safe weighs 1,000 lbs and the people weigh another 600 lbs)

Mazel tov! You made it upstairs. Now, give me a DC19 DEX check to come down the stairs. Why? Again, because you weigh 2,000 lbs and are now trying to walk down those wooden stairs with the lower body of a horse. You are trying to put your hooves on 11" treads (at the deepest) and assuming the risers are even. If the treads are shallower, maybe a DC 20. If the risers are uneven, DC 22.

Can a horse walk up stairs? If the stairs are strong enough to hold a horse, sure, with difficulty. Can a horse walk down stairs? Yes. With extensive training. Without extensive training, it's damned hard to do and a misstep will cause injury to the horse and the stairs.

Like I said, the centaur is going to have a bitch of a time.

 

[Dire Bare]

Its the eternal clashing of the new people against the old guard. We challenge the older ideas and question why they were made in the first place. We don't just accept the basic options and instead explore for alternatives, and look into why certain things are done certain ways

Not exactly. It's not about how old you are or how long you've been playing the game. It's about mindset. You can certainly characterize the mindset of "DM as Ultimate Authority" as old school, but as we discussed in this thread 300 pages ago, many DMs back in the 70s and 80s were a lot more open-minded and flexible than some of the folks in this thread. I think it's also been demonstrated in this thread that this isn't a binary thing, but rather a continuum with Ultimate Authority on one end and perhaps a more freeform collaboration on the other.

The DM doing all the heavy lifting with world-building and story generation, and being the "Ultimate Authority" at their table, is a traditional way to play D&D. In part, because D&D in the 70s and 80s was a pretty nerdy past-time, and nerds have a tendency to be obsessive, detail-orientated, and sometimes control freaks. While D&D is a lot more mainstream today with a wider variety of folks playing, the game still attracts some pretty nerdy types. Note: I'm not slamming "nerds", I wear the badge proudly myself. The father of D&D himself, Gygax, started out with a relatively freeform game, but he was definitely "in charge" at his table and he became more "Ultimate Authority" after he published the game, and even more so after publishing AD&D.

Ultimate Authority was the way I played when I was younger, because it was the norm. I didn't like it back then, although I couldn't articulate why. I'm much older now, hopefully wiser, and I don't want to play that way anymore, as a player or as a DM. If I'm invited to a game, I'll put up with a degree of Ultimate Authority, as many folks do still play that way . . . but there are quite a few closed-minded folks in this thread where I'd walk after Session 1. The games I run, will be closer to the open collaboration end of the spectrum as possible. I'm a big fan of the developing Arium: Create ruleset, a collaborative RPG that is both standalone and can be used with other games like D&D.

 

[Maxperson]

I guess the thing with this type of argument is that it seems to assume that centaurs also have the brain of a horse, memory of a horse, etc.

Unless I've missed something somewhere, they are considerably more intelligent than horses, which means they can do things like train themselves and each other how to do difficult things, build and deploy tools to help themselves, etc.

And, unless they live in complete isolation, they would have a lot of incentive spend time making themselves more capable in bipedal society.

Edit: basically it seems folks get so hung up on physical limitations brought in by the horse part that they're missing the mental contributions from the man part.

I didn't say the centaur couldn't do it. I said it would be problematic. The centaur could fit into the room like you fit in a couch. Lie down, stick torso and first pair of legs in, shimmy until back legs are in, then treat possible scratches and sore spots.

A horse couldn't do that.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Between this thread and the erosion of racial distinctiveness post-Tasha's, I'm toying with a "Wild Cards"-like setting in which all the non-human races are humans who have survived but been changed by a magical disease.

There are different nations and cultures, but they are not built around race. "Changed" humans, whether elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, dragonborn, tiefling, tabaxi, shifter, warforged, centaur, satyr, triton, loxodon, kobold, orc, goblin, or whatever, are a known quantity and are tolerated - or not - based on culture and individual preference.

With this, the default response to a player asking, "Can I play Race X?" is, "Sure, you got changed by the disease."

As someone who gets really bad body horror night terrors, that is prolly the one campaign where I’d play a vanilla human.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Fail by more than 5 and you break a tread because you weigh 2,000 lbs.

Centaurs weigh about 800lbs on the outside. Nowhere near 2000.

 

[Umbran]

But we've being talking about the player race the entire time. Not the monster race. We've been specific this entire time that we are talking about the Player Race, the Fey Centaur, the only option that players can play.

With respect, the discussion is about far more than that.

That set of stats is a starting point in one part of a discussion that has been far more about GMs and their conceptions of their settings than it is about one race printed in one book. Thus the conception of centaurs is at least as important as the published stats. And the conception is probably more based on the traditional view than the recent book about a setting most of your audience probably has little experience with.

The stats, in fact, really seem to be trying to wedge centaurs into a medium size - after calling them medium, they jack up the carrying capacity and state that they "tower over" other humanoids. Basically, while they are technically medium, they are about as large as you can be and still be in that category. They are an edge case. So, maybe leaning away from the technical size is warranted.

This would be, for example, a space for a player/GM discussion. "You wanna play a centaur? Well, okay, but to meet my conception, there may be some terrain that is easy enough for humanoids that I may call difficult terrain for you...."

 

[Dire Bare]

Between this thread and the erosion of racial distinctiveness post-Tasha's, I'm toying with a "Wild Cards"-like setting in which all the non-human races are humans who have survived but been changed by a magical disease.

There are different nations and cultures, but they are not built around race. "Changed" humans, whether elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, dragonborn, tiefling, tabaxi, shifter, warforged, centaur, satyr, triton, loxodon, kobold, orc, goblin, or whatever, are a known quantity and are tolerated - or not - based on culture and individual preference.

With this, the default response to a player asking, "Can I play Race X?" is, "Sure, you got changed by the disease."

"Wild Cards" is a good reference, as your idea is very comic book! I'm getting X-Men mutant vibes from your idea. The comic book universes of Marvel and DC (and others) are a great way to look at a very open-ended setting, where virtually any type of character is possible. It's hard to imagine a DM running a comic book heroes game telling a player, "Sorry, that character doesn't make sense in my world"!

Space opera or science fantasy like Star Wars or Trek is also another good model, even on just one fantasy planet. Hell, the default D&D game itself is just chock-a-block full of hundreds of sentient species all existing somewhere within the setting. Granted, you don't have to use them all . . . but you certainly can!

A setting with a more limited scope could be fun to play in, but it certainly isn't anymore realistic than the "anything goes" campaign. Most of the tightly controlled DM worlds I've played in over the years . . . weren't very well designed or very good really, but as long as I was gaming with friends and having a good time, it wasn't too overbearing to choose from an arbitrarily small list for races and classes. Being a DM is usually a pretty amateur role, and I don't expect perfection. A degree of open-mindedness and a willingness to let go of control-freak tendencies is preferred, however.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I didn't say they couldn't do it and you know I didn't say they couldn't do it. Here's what I wrote:



Difficult, not impossible.

You want to play a centaur? Fine. Have at it.

First, give me a DC 15 DEX check to go up the stairs. Fail by more than 5 and you break a tread because you weigh 2,000 lbs. It's not a question of can a horse walk up stairs; it's a question of whether wooden steps can hold a horse's weight.

For comparison, 29 CFR 1910.24(c) states; "Fixed stairways shall be designed and constructed to carry a load of five times the normal live load anticipated but never of less strength than to carry safely a moving concentrated load of 1,000 pounds" [emphasis added]." Therefore, with respect to the design calculation, the normal live load is spread over the whole stair tread area and the moving concentrated load is considered to be a point load applied at a location on the stair system where the maximum stress would be experienced by the system (the 1000 lbs loading criteria is a minimum).

Now, are this inn's stairs up to OSHA code? (fun exercise: read about moving long gun safes into basements - the safe weighs 1,000 lbs and the people weigh another 600 lbs)

Mazel tov! You made it upstairs. Now, give me a DC19 DEX check to come down the stairs. Why? Again, because you weigh 2,000 lbs and are now trying to walk down those wooden stairs with the lower body of a horse. You are trying to put your hooves on 11" treads (at the deepest) and assuming the risers are even. If the treads are shallower, maybe a DC 20. If the risers are uneven, DC 22.

Can a horse walk up stairs? If the stairs are strong enough to hold a horse, sure, with difficulty. Can a horse walk down stairs? Yes. With extensive training. Without extensive training, it's damned hard to do and a misstep will cause injury to the horse and the stairs.

Like I said, the centaur is going to have a bitch of a time.

This just comes across, to me, like one of two things.

1) a thing you say on a forum to make a point that doesn’t reflect how you actually play D&D .
2) Petty adversarial DMing of a type I’ve not seen IRL since I was a kid.