D&D (2024) Ardlings, Shifter and Hengeyokai as different variations on animal people

[Charlaquin]

So, is the Ardling suppose to be a new core race or for a upcoming source book?

They’re testing for the 2024 core rulebooks, so that.

 

[Incenjucar]

I think it's important to make the baseline divine, but I'm all for distributing them around. Arcane ardlings being fey, perhaps.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think it's important to make the baseline divine,

Why?

 

[Incenjucar]

Why?

Ties them to a lot of good existing ideas and myths and art and makes the planes more diverse. Even has interesting implications with the devas and rakshasa.

 

[Lojaan]

I disagree on this one strongly. You'd lose a lot of the neat individual stuff that these groups have by themselves. Plus, well, those races have a history. They're not related and don't have anything feywild to 'em. Certainly more viable to have seperate beast-people race than 7 different types of elves

Totally fair if that is how you like your world. I find heaps of different races that are basically human-but-animal to be boring and lazy (Yes I'm looking at you PF2) but that is totally just my preference for my made up worlds.

 

[Marandahir]

I like the distinction of Ardlings as humanoid with full-on animal heads and a few vague animal features like vestigial wings, versus Aarakocra, Lizardfolk, and Tabaxi with full on animal forms that are vaguely humanoid as well.

Ardling vs Shifter is a distinction primarily of facial form and origin; Shifters are Weretouched and look like Sabertooth from the X-Men - something in-between human and animal but much more on the human form than the beast form - and Ardlings are Egyptian Gods that look like these attachments. Note the differences from extant D&D species, which lack the very-humanlike bodies. These look like agents of the Gods rather than natural or fey peoples - ex Aarakocra, Lizardfolk, Jackalweres, Yuan-Ti, and Tabaxi, for comparison.

 

[Lojaan]

Ties them to a lot of good existing ideas and myths and art and makes the planes more diverse. Even has interesting implications with the devas and rakshasa.

I think you will find way more animal people in fey myths and art from around the world than divine but hey. The lines between the two blur a lot

 

[Marandahir]

I think you will find way more animal people in fey myths and art from around the world than divine but hey. The lines between the two blur a lot

The line is very blurred yes, mostly because we're used to using the terms Fey, Demon, and Devil for any deity that isn't a well-known named god from Semitic, Greco-Roman, Norse, Celtic, Indo-Aryan, Chinese, Japanese, Aztec, Mayan, or Incan stories. Any other culture, any lesser divinity that isn't clearly an Angel variant, and we call them a Fairy or a Demon or something, because we don't know what else to refer to them as and we've only JUST begun to reclaim those listed traditions above from demonization and religious persecution…

 

[Lojaan]

I like the distinction of Ardlings as humanoid with full-on animal heads and a few vague animal features like vestigial wings, versus Aarakocra, Lizardfolk, and Tabaxi with full on animal forms that are vaguely humanoid as well.

Ardling vs Shifter is a distinction primarily of facial form and origin; Shifters are Weretouched and look like Sabertooth from the X-Men - something in-between human and animal but much more on the human form than the beast form - and Ardlings are Egyptian Gods that look like these attachments. Note the differences from how Aarakocra/Owlin, Lizardfolk/Dragonborn, and Shifter/Werewolf/Jackalwere/Gnolls look:

Ugh. Let's just make Egyptian gods from real life a playable species. No thank you. Leave the real world religions alone please.

People get the difference in taking a species from myth like saytrs, or elves and making them playable is different to taking the actual gods yeah?

 

[Incenjucar]

I think you will find way more animal people in fey myths and art from around the world than divine but hey. The lines between the two blur a lot

Depends on the definitions you use and what you read. The fey is pretty tied to a specific region of the world. Lots of other mythic systems chock full of animal headed people.