D&D (2024) All about Ardlings

[Chaosmancer]

Sure, people will play humans. But, let's just imagine for a moment. Let us say that a truly massive 50% of all players prefer to play human.

That means a human-only PHB is leaving 50% of the player base in the cold. And unless they are doing it intentionally, you will rarely see an all-human party. A party with at least one human? Sure, that's the majority of parties, but that still leaves a lot of other races being picked for those other party members.

 

[Temporalgod]

If people have played the PHB Dragonborn this much, clearly mechanical advantages aren't the determining factor in race choice.

You're literal a Dragon Person that alone is more then enough, One of my Favorite Dragonborn characters was a blue one named Zeus, I wasn't very good at naming characters back then so I had to borrow names from Greek mythology, hell my First TTRPG character was a Tiefling named after the Titan Cronus, I'm getting off topic but honestly Dragonborn rule just off their design alone.

 

[Temporalgod]

I might play a human character if I can be a cannibal named Shia LaBeouf.

 

[Temporalgod]

And if it is flight, why does it have to be wings?

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Cool with Ardlings, I can make a knock off Monkey King or at least his descendant.

We're getting off topic people, derailing thread we should get back to talking about Ardlings Specifically Monkey Ardlings, did you know that Egyptian, Mayan, Hindu and Chinese pantheons all have Monkey deities, it's pretty cool TBH, Personally Monkey Ardlings should be a thing and be aligned as CG.

 

[ersatzphil]

We're getting off topic people, derailing thread we should get back to talking about Ardlings Specifically Monkey Ardlings, did you know that Egyptian, Mayan, Hindu and Chinese pantheons all have Monkey deities, it's pretty cool TBH, Personally Monkey Ardlings should be a thing and be aligned as CG.

I mean, we're all going to have our own cultural touchstones for what 'people with animal heads' ought to act like.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I mean, we're all going to have our own cultural touchstones for what 'people with animal heads' ought to act like.
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what on earth is this?

 

[ersatzphil]

what on earth is this?

'Danger 5', an Australian tv show. It was sort of a pulpy, surrealist, 'swinging 60s' depiction of WW2, where animals can talk and the Nazis did things like steal the Eiffel Tower and unleash dinosaurs with machine guns mounted on them on Europe. The colonel who gives the titular team their missions had an eagle head; it's never addressed. I believe it's all on YouTube: I danced for Hitler!

 

[Puddles]

Reading through the UA yesterday, I am not really sold on Ardlings. Firstly, I’m not a fan of the name, does anyone know it’s etymology? “Ard” to me makes me think of “hard”, like the Orc ‘Ardboyz of Warhammer.

Secondly the spectral wings feel at odds with a lot of the animals (e.g. a Toad).

Lastly, having all the sub-races being different flavors of heaven seems a bit heavy handed on the worldbuilding. I would have liked if one of the options was a curse, like in Porco Rosso (where the main character is cursed to look like a pig), and maybe another where it was mysterious and unknown. It seems the race has been created to be a very versatile option to cover any idea the player has for an animorphic humanoid, but then the lore attached to them is super specific.

 

[Corinnguard]

Reading through the UA yesterday, I am not really sold on Ardlings. Firstly, I’m not a fan of the name, does anyone know it’s etymology? “Ard” to me makes me think of “hard”, like the Orc ‘Ardboyz of Warhammer.

Secondly the spectral wings feel at odds with a lot of the animals (e.g. a Toad).

Lastly, having all the sub-races being different flavors of heaven seems a bit heavy handed on the worldbuilding. I would have liked if one of the options was a curse, like in Porco Rosso (where the main character is cursed to look like a pig), and maybe another where it was mysterious and unknown. It seems the race has been created to be a very versatile option to cover any idea the player has for an animorphic humanoid, but then the lore attached to them is super specific.

Agreed. A number of people on this thread aren't sold on the idea of them being the good-aligned counterparts of the Tieflings. Not when you have had the Aasimar around for several editions.

The subraces really need to reflect the different kinds of Celestials in 5e. Especially since one group of Celestials already resemble anthropomorphic animals.