D&D General why do we lack a canine race?

[billd91]

I'm not convinced that werewolves actually fill the niche, though it's not a terrible working hypothesis. Might explain why rat-based races are also scarce in D&D outside of 3e OA and nezumi. Though why weretigers wouldn't similarly suppress Tabaxi becomes a question.

And for canid races - we did have dog hengeyokai back in the days of OA - as well as a few other shape changing animal forms.

 

[Corinnguard]

Honestly, I think the way forward is to just have one race/ancestry to cover all animal-hybrids. There are just so many that you'd end up with dozens if you did them separately. This is how I'm handling it. A generic ancestry, and you choose which traits you want to fit the appearance you want.

View attachment 316048

The Thunderscape RPG did have a PC race like this for PF1 several years ago. Which RPG is this image from? curious

 

[Sacrosanct]

The Thunderscape RPG did have a PC race like this for PF1 several years ago. Which RPG is this image from? curious

It's for GEAS, my project currently in playtesting.

 

[Alzrius]

In PF2, there are the Shoony. Shoony - Ancestries - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Database

Fun fact, Michael Mars has back-converted the shoony for both Pathfinder 1E and Starfinder, for those who prefer those systems.

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Gamma World has got antropomorphic canis, the "arks". My opinion is lots of creatures from GW could be recycled to be used in D&D.

Ark

Also called Hound Folk, these intelligent dog-men stands about just short of 3 meters tall and always walks on their well-developed hind legs. They are ferocious enemies, but have a deathly fear of large winged creatures. Arks carry primitive weapons like stone spears and large clubs, and most...

gammaworld.fandom.com

 

[Alzrius]

Gamma World has got antropomorphic canis, the "arks". My opinion is lots of creatures from GW could be recycled to be used in D&D.

Ark

Also called Hound Folk, these intelligent dog-men stands about just short of 3 meters tall and always walks on their well-developed hind legs. They are ferocious enemies, but have a deathly fear of large winged creatures. Arks carry primitive weapons like stone spears and large clubs, and most...

gammaworld.fandom.com

Just wait until the hoops start showing up in dungeons.

 

[Corinnguard]

Just wait until the hoops start showing up in dungeons.

They're already here. Harengon - DND 5th Edition

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The hoops had got special powers, therefore we could say these could see a subspecie/lineage/bloodline within the harengons. They were like the Gamma World version of metal-destroyer rust-monsters.

 

[Willie the Duck]

This is pretty surprising to me since it pops up in a lot of other modern fantasy media.

I suspect it's mostly because dog people just haven't been featured in a lot of the fantasy stories that were used as inspiration for the first few iterations of D&D. Also, maybe WotC is made up of cat people instead of dog lovers? Seattle is famously rainy, so it would make sense to favor an indoor pet.

The snarky answer would be, canine races never appeared in Tolkien, so, they shouldn&t be in D^D

I think it is certainly worth thinking about what early A/D&D looked like. Most of the PC races looked like something that falls within the actual phenotypes of humanity, aside from a few minor quirks like pointy ears (and by '77 half-orcs being the default exception). Playing as anything else certainly started early enough, but it was always rather haphazard and DM-fiat-y. Aside from alternate settings (ex: the hengeyokai and such in OA), I don't recall a consistent normalization of that until Complete Humanoids for AD&D (2e) and the Gazetteers/Creature Crucibles on the D&D side. Slowly a bunch of MM entries started being playable, but that was more 'there's no reason someone couldn't play as this,' and less 'let's fill out all potential options for playable species,' so it all conformed to what was already present in the monster manual (gaps and all). And when it comes to antagonist roles, I think werewolves and gnolls (yeah, yeah, feiliform. doesn't change feel) filled that role for most groups. At least enough that a specific dogfolk antagonist race didn't take off.

Part of that might also be that there maybe isn't a clear-cut single concept of what people want out of a dogfolk (as antagonist monster or as PC option). Like, I think we know what we want out of wolf-folk (maybe a split on whether they should be the fearsome or noble) or cat-folk (quick and agile and stealthy with tigers maybe being bigger and stronger but still stalker-ish more than brutes), or bird-folk. What defines dog-folk? Loyalty? Gregariousness? Playing fetch?

 

[Vaalingrade]

In addition to the other reasons, it's probably because people want to have dogs, but they don't want to be dogs.

In terms of animal stereotypes, with a cat, you're an aloof, independent agility monsters. with a dog you're a obedient follower with maybe a good scent ability.