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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 6774061" data-attributes="member: 6777454">Well, I can recall two times when D&D has had races that on their surface had a really ridiculous wide possibility for variation, but ended up being hamstringed because ultimately they did have to limit the number of forms artificially in order to assign stats to them.Those were the Saurians (a really poorly constructed and cynical way of having dinosaur people in the world-- just make furries of a handful of the most popular species) and the Hengeyokai (literally furries with the only seeming limitation being that they be mammals). I suppose you could lump werecreatures in general in there too, AD&D certainly got a lot of mileage out of releasing a new werecritter in every monster book they put out.But, on the flip side you have things like Rakasta/Catfolk or Lizardfolk where... details aren't really so important, its more of the vague idea and it is up to the individual to fill in those small details.Granted, the concept of "all dinosaurs" or "all mammals" is probably far too wide to really be terribly vague about while "cats" or "lizards" is a considerably narrower band of appearances and the concept all supports the same sort of abilities. But "monkeys and apes" seems like a narrow enough concept that one could just say "the deity was somewhat ape-like with maybe a tail" and you needn't be too specific beyond that. Those twisted by his magics could have all the various fur colors and body dimorphisms of the various primates, maybe even combinations that don't actually exist in any real primates (or, at least the ones that have been scientifically recorded). The deity (and I would really suggest just one instead of a dozen simply because you'll just end up with the overwhelming majority of them never being used and effectively just becoming meaningless filler in a way a proper deity never should be) doesn't at all necessarily have to have a precise physical form that everyone can universally agree upon and depicts in precisely the same manner.The other problem with trying to pull out and trying to differentiate a handful of similar animals in the same group is that you run the risk that in the process of differentiating them from one another that you will make them more different than standard races which are clearly far more different from one another. One can see where this has been done by WotC such as in 3rd edition Wood Elves were as strong as Half-Orcs or in 4th Edition, Half-Elves were as hardy and tough as Dwarfs... neither of these were intended to be the case, but they ran head-long into this situation due to trying to make them different and running head-long into giving them wildly inappropriate stats.</blockquote>

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