Recent content by jmartkdr2

Met Fair Folk, kept souls

Dog people are the original furries - the ancient Greeks called them cynocephaloi (lit. Dog-head) and had a whole mythology about them. This was common-ish folklore through the middle ages. Maybe it’s like druids and bows: it’s so obviously appropriate that it cannot be allowed!

You could also offer cinnamon and nutmeg directly.

My headcanon is that kolbolds and dragonborn are the same species anyways (with a middle-size variant as well) but represent different castes. I like your idea as a soft way to add dragonborn to existing settings as essentially giant kolbolds. It's about as good as my personal go-to of...

For a slightly more nuanced answer: I do think it’s important that the pcs are the protagonists, though exactly what that means depends a lot on the genre of play. Horror protagonists aren’t very different from everymen, but superhero story protagonists are some of the most distinct and powerful...

I prefer the pcs to be very special indeed; Exalted is pretty much my personal sweet spot. I can enjoy a wide range of course, but I can be a regular guy in real life.

There was a supplement that had "racial paragon classes" so you could 3 levels of elf (gaining proficiency with traditional elven weapons, a little bit of magic, some bonuses to elven senses, etc.) They were available for all the PHB races and maybe some others, and I think the biggest one had 5...

By default: tails but no wings. Tail-less could be a genetic variant or the result of losing one's tail, but most dragonborn have one. Tails are not prehensile and don't give any specific benefits, but a dragonborn can make tail-strike unarmed attacks (with full Martial Arts features for monks)...

Started a cult, lost protection (exalted playing as solars)

The only canine-people in a dnd-alike I know of offhand are Starfinder's Vlaka - they're kinda wolf-folk, but not particularly wolf-like in theme. Other than that, my main suggestion would be to call them cynocephaloi, which is the ancient Greek name for dog-headed people.

The argument against Tucker's Kolbolds is "if your players don't like traps, they're not going to like manned traps." The original idea is very old-school in its attitude. It's about punishing the pcs for being too heroic and not cautious enough. Is that your goal? Then go for it. Is that...

I think the differences in timescale are a factor here; ttrpg design is only 50 years old. I would think we’ve learned things in that time. Painting, as an art, is hundreds of thousands of years old. We probably haven’t had the same pace of discovery in that field in the past few decades...

Species-based subclasses could work if you first universalize the “budget” for subclasses, which they tried but abandoned for 5.5.

My actual favorite is the playtest exhaustion just a blanket -X to all rolls (and dcs) to a max of -10. Simple, affects everyone, easy to track.

I broadly agree; but there's at least a spectrum of ways a game's design might support these kinds of distinctions (or not). I don't think we're any closer to a consensus on what part of the spectrum is 'better' in any kind of general or objective sense, though many of us know our preferences...