A Concern About Wizard's Race Designs of Late

[Rechan]

Ok, so the problem is:

Player wants to play a race that doesn't fit in your game world.

There are three easy solutions.

A) Tell the player to play a different race. Sucks for the player, but if you're a bit diplomatic, it should work.

B) Create a niche / unchartered territory / far away continent and place the race there. PC comes from there. Details will be added in when necessary. If nothing else works, use dimensional travel. Problem solved.

C) Make the PC a one-of-a-kind exception. Say, the Dragonborn is the result of an ascension ritual of Bahamut, the Tiefling the result of some demonic curse, the Eladrin a child stolen by fey etc.

Or even:

D) Use the mechanics and reskin the race. I've seen lots of people reskin dwarves as stout folk/goliaths are mountain folk, etc.

 

[Rechan]

Here's a question.

Do you find the multitude of monstrous races limiting your ability to worldbuild?

Let's do a quick count of what is out there that lives on the Prime Material:

Orcs
Lizardfolk
Gnolls
Troglodytes
Giants (of all kinds)
Ogres
Yaun-ti
Doppelgangers
Drow
Goblins (Goblins, Hobgoblins, AND Bugbears)
Derro
Harpies
Duergar
Kou-tua
Kobolds
Minotaur
Kenku
Trolls
Grimlocks
Ettercaps
Sahuagin

If you have no problem cramming all of those into your world, regardless of how weird they are, then what's one more weirdo race?

Especially if you can simply wave your hand and say "That weirdo race - rare, unique, or even from another plane (since weird stuff like Genasi, Shadar-Kai, and a multitude of WEIRDER monstrous races are found on other planes).

 

[Marshall]

I don't have a problem with adding races. I just don't think these ones (the wilden and the shardminds) are very good. That worries me. That is what I want to talk about.

They are mechanically sound races with decent broad ideas behind them. "Plant Men" and a "mental" Living Construct race are both solid ideas.
I agree however that the flavor behind them is way too specific.

 

[Rechan]

I agree however that the flavor behind them is way too specific.

That's the issue?

I've never felt compelled to stick to the book fluff. Considering that the racial fluff has been fairly skimp to begin with.

 

[Mort_Q]

Or even:

D) Use the mechanics and reskin the race. I've seen lots of people reskin dwarves as stout folk/goliaths are mountain folk, etc.

This.

In my 4e Ptolus campaign, Razorclaw Shifters and Longtooth Shiftersare are female and male Litorians respectively. Dragonborn, Tieflings and Devas are generally not distinguishable from humans, Kalashtars are humans that undergo a ritual, etc.

 

[Zaran]

Once PHB2 and Eberron came out that was pretty much put all the "classic" races out there. I wasn't very thrilled with the races PHB3 had to offer, but off the top of my head I can't really think of anything cooler. They also seem to tie the new races in with the power sources of the new classes. PHB2 fit primal/arcane/divine, and 3 was psionic and primal. So what will be next, shadow or elemental or something?

Actually I'm hoping this is the last PHB. I think they were reaching deep to come up with what they did for PHB3. Unless the PHB4 is something like Oriental Adventures, I would think they have all the bases covered.

What I really would like to see is for them to redo the first PHB so as to bring it up to the new standards they have in later books.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Oh come on...

I cannot be the only person who has grown sick and bored of playing one of the core sundry races (human/elf/dwarf/halfling/gnome) and wouldn't mind trying his/her hand at a more exotic race which offers a unique and memorable gaming experience? (by virtue of possessing powers or abilities which normal mundane races cannot otherwise access).

I haven't played a core race for the past 4 years. I was already a bit sick of them from playing BG/BG2/NWN/NWN2. The only race I played in DDO was the warforged, only because he brought something different to the table. So far, I have tried my hands at an assortment of monster PC classes (using the savage progression rules) such as the ghaele, astral deva, troll, even a gold dragon. Even when using LA+0 races, they tend to comprise of more esoteric choices such as dragonborn warforged.

Honestly, I cannot envision myself playing a core race ever again.

You're not the only one. I have several players who are excited at playing both wylden and shardminds. Ironically, I have suitable entry points for both of these races in my own setting, which does include fey plant folk and an entire race of crystalline parasites that convert living beings in to thralls and are a general menace. I've used my own stat write-ups for these entities for years....adding shardminds in to the mix as a unique variant on the existing theme is easy enough. Minotaurs and Gith alreadye existed and played important roles in my setting, so this was simply a case of "finally, material I have needed for some time now."

The hardest race to date I had to include was the eladrin, which for various reasons did not fit well in one of my campaigns; I allow players to run eladrin, but they have to come from extraplanar realms for the story to work. In my other campaign setting, I reskinned my high elves to work as eladrin, to accomodate my players who want to run them.

This idea of having a metric ton of content when you only need a bucket-full is not a new concept to D&D; if anything 4E's approach is downright modest compared to the "drinking from the fire hose" approach of 3.X. I don't think anything anywhere in this edition or others requires a DM to employ all of the concepts presented in his or her campaign, but I also think that at least in terms of the default assumptions of the broader "D&D multiverse" a good D&D campaign will make efforts to accomodate what the players want....and thus, the reason I am making a space for wylden and shardminds for those players I have who want to take advantage of them.

 

[Amaroq]

Rechan has some good points about adjusting the races to fit your vision: there's no reason you can't re-skin any or all of the "fluff" to fit your world, and simply adopt the mechanics. I mean, there's no reason a tiefling has to be red-skinned, with horns, and recognizably demonic .. you could have just as much fun with the same mechanics applied to a "normal human" with demonic heritage or a demonic pact.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

The only race I have a problem with is the kalashtar, since their racial write-up in the Eberron PG had too many Eberron-specific references. The write-ups for warforged and changelings had much less Eberron "baggage."

 

[the Jester]

Let me just say that new races are my LEAST FAVORITE part of the various game books I've accumulated over the years. With very few exceptions, I don't need or want them.

In 4e, the PH1 races plus gnome would have done enough for me. The PH2 races? Well, gnome and half-orc are old favorites... the others are meh. Goliaths have grown on me because there was a pc goliath imc for a while, but really, I don't need them.

The PH3 races leave me cold. I'm not down with gith pcs of any flavor, nor do minotaurs fit my image of a pc race in my campaign. Wilden and shardminds, ditto. These are pretty much wasted space as far as I'm concerned; I'm not interested in artificially shoehorning new homelands into my campaign world for them.

That said, I'd probably still let a pc play most of them if he or she really wanted to, but I've really taken an unusually "anything goes" approach to 4e. (Unusual for my gming style, anyhow.)