D&D General [+] More Robust 'Fantasy Race' Mechanics for D&D-alikes / Redeeming 'Race as Class' for Modern D&D [+]

[fuindordm]

That sounds like reflavoring. I know this is a good solution for many people, but I have never been in favor of it. For me, if you are simulating different things they should be represented differently in the rules.

That was not my intent. I would personally give each race some options to spend feats and/or levels to enhance their racial traits, as a new rules module. But these new abilities need not be entirely unique. One dwarf PC engages with the new rules, the other does not.

 

[DammitVictor]

Nor is there anything wrong with a player saying "I'm a human orphan raised by elves, so I am taking the elven shadowdanceweaver class". [...]

But if adventuring classes are essentially cultural, where does this leave the species?

It occurs to me that many fantasy RPGs (including some D&D offshoots) have a system wherein, instead of having a bunch of separate ancestries for mixed heritages, they have a little subsystem for being "half whatever".

There's little practical reason why this couldn't be used for "cultural whatevers", if the system included rules for choosing which benefits the PC got. And there's no practical reason whatsoever such a system couldn't exist in parallel with the "biological" hybrids. We're talking... two or three pages, tops, for all of the "standard" ancestries in D&D and two or three more racial feats on top of the two or three every new ancestry should already be getting?

 

[Angus MacDeth]

There's little practical reason why this couldn't be used for "cultural whatevers", if the system included rules for choosing which benefits the PC got. And there's no practical reason whatsoever such a system couldn't exist in parallel with the "biological" hybrids.

That sounds a lot like the approach to Culture in Level Up (or A5e), which has already been mentioned.

A5e separates Culture from Heritage (i.e., race/species/ancestry) and Background. Each culture is a bundle of traits that aren't tied to heritage, allowing you to, for example, combine the Deep Dwarf culture with any heritage to represent a non-dwarf who was raised by deep dwarves (or a non-elf raised among high elves, or a non-gnome raised among forest gnomes, etc.).

And since not all of the cultures are based on specific races/species (e.g., there are "descriptive" cultural options like Nomad and Villager), you can go the other way and create an Itinerant Halfling or a Cosmopolitan Orc. Or you could create a character with the Dwarf heritage and the Deep Dwarf culture to really emphasize their "dwarfiness."

It's a neat system... If I ever run any 5th Edition again, I'll definitely be using A5e.

 

[DammitVictor]

It's a neat system... If I ever run any 5th Edition again, I'll definitely be using A5e.

Yeah. Probably never going to be my cup of tea, but I'm reacquiring the books. I'm starting to consider my perpetual "work in progress" to be a mashup between Sword World and A5E with a bunch of "90s Old School" in it.