Fluff Changes You've Made to PC Races

[Jon_Dahl]

BMI is intended for adults, presumably halflings are more childlike in physique.

Also, BMI is bollocks.

Nevertheless, I think 97 cm and 13 kg is extremely light. I guess a child with this sort of physique could be normal, that's fine, but I like my halflings kinda heavy.

 

[Shades of Green]

I once had Elves as felinoid humanoids, rather than 'proper' fey, with their woodland and hunting (and predatory!) aspects emphasized. Sharp eyes, stealth, proficiency with the bow - all fit well with cat-like hunters of the woodland.

Attached is a portrait painted by my fiancée Hannah which fits this fluff.

 

[radja]

problem: elves mature slowly. a 60 year old elf is still a kid, with the knowledge to match a human 16 year old. Now, I could have been mean and give elves -2 to int... but I didn't. It turns out elves have a 45 year larval stage, which is why there's no such thing as elf children.. there are elf grubs, and they look a lot like oversized maggots.

 

[BriarMonkey]

I've always had issues with why there are half-elves, but not half-dwarves; or half-orcs or half-giants, but not half-lizardmen; or why outsiders only seemed to breed with humans...

So, partly fluff, and partly mechanical, I dumped half races. No half-elves nor half-orcs. Offspring took after the dominant parent. Thus you would be an orc or an elf, not a half-breed.

So of course, in with that, I allowed for orcs and a few other races to be PC races.

One of the races I allowed was gnolls. They are fluffed much more as the hunters and scavengers of the wild places than as demonic hyenas (though this does vary a bit between tribes).

Similarly, I moved aasimar and similar "touched" races into either bloodlines or templates - which meant that you could have a "touched" orc, or a "touched" elf. No longer do just humans get to be the interplanar strumpets.

And finally, pretty much all fluff, I pushed halflings back into how I interpreted hobbits; easy going simple folk who enjoyed a good ale and good food and the simpler things in life. None of this gypsy or war-monger or kender nonsense.

 

[spudspotato]

My setting has elves as the majority race, along with are eladrin/high-elves (I built the setting thinking 5E would probably keep 4E races, I was probably wrong but oh well). Tieflings exist as well (and are elf-outsiders, not humans) but are very rare and only come from one dynastic bloodline (so not really a player race). Drow/dark-elves exist but aren't a player race either, but rather are a legendary/lost race.

Elves (all kinds) live to be 200 (a little over twice human lifespan on average) and mature at 30.

Dwarves are rare and their great city has been ruined. They are the longest living race. I haven't really classified them as drunken scottish or german engineer type, as their culture is dying.

Halfings are isolated and nomadic. I like the sturdier hobbit types but as wanderers.

Half-orcs were common for backstory reasons as the bulk of humans had t migrate through orc lands ~100 years before my campaigns are set, but now have probably returned to "baseline" levels. I haven't changed them any but I think of orc culture as being like the Dothraki from ASOIAF but not horse-based (so basically a basic, cool warrior tribe society)

For a long time I wanted to strip out gnomes because no one really plays them in my campaigns and I don't like the "earth-halfling" or pathfinder "fey-halfling" archetypes, but I decided to make them half-halfling half-elf, probably the rarest race, and in general personality be prone to wandering like halflings and have ingenuity/invention skills. I don't half a particular reason for why half-breeds don't work every way, but none of my players or I mind that.
I didn't want to move away from traditional D&D races too much, but I wanted it to be memorable in some way.

ETA
I've found that the further a race gets from what they expect, my player's tend to not play it. They rarely play dwarves, but insect-dwarfs wouldn't get touched with a ten foot pole. Although I have a particular player who finds the most bizarre races he can in 3.5 supplements and asks if he can play them in pathfinder. If I had a dime for every time I said "no, there are no-aquatic bug men with bonuses to psionics in my world..."

 

[Shades of Green]

It was pretty straight forward.

I liked the caste idea (and the attached political intrigue) which the dwarves from Dragon Age: Origins had. So, what I did was simply implement that into my vision of dwarves for the campaign. It was a very easy fit; dwarves are already a race which stereotypically reveres tradition and clan relationships. The ancestor worship was a natural fit as well.

All of that was extremely easy to mix with a Soviet stereotype. I simply applied what DA:Origins had going on with dwarves to what I can only describe as some kind of mix between monarchy and communism. The 'king' would give the clans a general direction toward what to work for. Lower castes had little to no say in what occupation they were born into or what they would be doing. Dwarves in higher castes would have more freedom to choose their own fates. Ancestors of great reknown were not worshipped in a religious sense, but were instead held up as a state-sponsored ideal; a model against which citizens would be measured.

Socially, it seemed pretty natural to change the hammer and sickle symbol (Soviet Union Flag Wallpaper 1920x1280) of the USSR to a crossed hammer and axe for a Dwarven Empire. Likewise -in my head- it was easy to imagine a choir of dwarves singing something like this: CoD4 Spetsnaz Victory Theme - YouTube

I should also note that these dwarves did not live as deep underground as typical D&D dwarves. They did often build settlements which were partially underground, but that was due to their homeland being frigid, cold, and hostile. Those who worked in deep mines and didn't see the light of day were slaves, prisoners, and/or criminals who were working off their debts. Here the DA dwarf influence came back into play, and I had something akin to the Legion of The Dead. For those who don't know, the basic idea is that you commit yourself to serve in a military branch which is constantly sent on missions which are near-suicidal in nature. It is an option for those who have no hope of redeeming their lives, but do not want to pass their dishonor onto the rest of their family. Dwarves - Dragon Age Wiki

Attached is an old drawing by my fiancée which probably fits the theme.