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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9756207" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Well (in case I wasn't as clear as I thought), I meant like "animal person" with traits done like those of a shifter, rather than an actual shifter, so you pick "Vicious Predator: Get claws and fangs as natural weapons that inflict 1d6 piercing (bite) or slashing (claw) damage" and then decide on your own if you're a wolf-folk, lion-folk, bear-folk, grasshopper mouse-folk, or whatever. Or your "Speedy Runner: Move increases by 10 feet and you can Dash as a bonus action" could be a horse-folk, rabbit-folk, or cheetah-folk, depending on whatever you want. It would be one race with maybe 5-8 traits to choose from.(Personally, I prefer shifters too.)True, but it also depends on how broad they are. Draw Steel has five environments: nomadic, rural, secluded (meaning things like monasteries, castles, prisons--places you don't normally leave), urban, and wilderness. There's two organizations: bureaucratic and communal. And then six upbringings: academic, creative, labor, lawless, martial, noble. There's definitely room for additions there--I can see three or four without even thinking about it--but not "30 environments" worth, because they're deliberately broad both in scope and in what sort of skill it grants (DS has skill groups, so you get a skill of your choice from, say, the intrigue group).The first thing would be to figure out what each culture actually grants you. In LU and Tales of the Valiant, they give you lots of stuff. In Draw Steel, they give you three skills (one from each section you choose). In Daggerheart, you get one trait. Then you'd need to decide whether culture leans more heavily to, well, environment or upbringing.You might also want to decide if there's anything else a character can have that can be used to indicate culture. In Daggerheart, there's a Wanderborne community--you're a nomad. But the game also has you make Experiences, which you can "invoke" to get a bonus to appropriate rolls. There's a list of examples, but you can make anything you want as long as it follows the guidelines. So you could pick "Circus Performer" as an Experience, and that means you don't need, in Level Up terms, Circusfolk. You could represent this with a free skill or tool kit.The first two things are flavor, though, and not mechanics. And the latter matters only if you bring back things that can drain life.Now, I'm all in favor of the latter, especially if there are also things you can do that can make you get young again (which can be either an interesting quest for the party or eevil things that would make for a good villain). And I'm in favor of the former as well, because Gran'ma orc would be a lot of fun to play in the right party. But I'd advise against making actual mechanics for lifespans unless you are also going to have aging effects be enough of a part of the game for it to be worth it. Ghosts that age you through fright, fey or demons that trade you magical trinkets for just a year of your life, spells, magic items, and monsters that suck the life out of you and its represented by you aging rather than through attribute drain or lowered hp max.(Speaking of which, bring back level drain in some variety--maybe not actual levels, because that's a pain to calculate, but permanent-until-magically-reversed drops in stats, hp level, or in number of spell slots.)So, if you're planning on doing that, then by all means stat out lifespans--and for the love of all things shiny, don't have them all live over a century. But if you aren't, then just write it as flavor. "People of other ancestries who live in or were raised in Elven or Dwarven cultures tend to live as much as half-again as long as those who live in or were raised in their own cultures."Also, I'd wager that city-dwellers would not have an extended lifespan in comparison to their rural counterparts--not unless that city has really good sanitation. Crowded areas turn into disease vectors, plus there's lots of water and air pollution. People may live longer in Elven cities simply because they're magically clean, not because there's better health care or fey magic in the air.Honestly, I've barely even glanced at P2, so if I copied that, it was accidental.I mean, you could disallow multiclassing... or get rid of classes entirely and turn everything into either feats or subclasses for a single Adventure class....</blockquote>

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