Homebrew Worlds and Races

[Grazzt]

Alorel (my homebrew setting) has:

Humans (various subcultures with unique traits- including one race of humans that live as long as the elves (course they trade off things for this, but it all balances out)

elves (gray and drow, high are rare)

dwarves (derro and mountain)

gnomes- very rarely encountered. Believed to be part of myth and legend.

half-orcs- as the PHB


No halflings exist.

Unique races:

Eshena: winged humans that have inhabited the world longer than any of the other races can remember.

Vallhir: aquatic humanoid race; basically aquatic humans. Most believe they are myth and legend and dont actually exist.

 

[kenaustin]

Pext (my world) is a hodgepodge of different things I have read about and just thought would be cool to have in a world. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure if anything in it is mine originally.

Races:
Humans - The most widespread race with an offshoot (Shinans) based on the Haruchai.
Dwarves
Elves - Moon Elves and Drow (both based on the FR subtypes)
Halflings - A nearly extinct race that has been almost totally assumed by an evil race of Doppelgangers.
Hengeyokai - OA inspired race of tribal shapechangers
Illithids - Two clans: the benevolent Illithids, and the malevolent Hasha
The White Council - Inspired by the articles in Dungeon 70 and Dragon 252. A race of True Ghouls.
Gnomes
Half Elves - Very rarely seen
Half Orcs - Not common

PC races allowed so far are; the standard PHB races, some of the sub-races from FR, and a Dwarf from Athas. All of my players come to my world from somewhere else.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I keep most of the standard fantasy races but have a 'master race' that I use to bring them all together and to explain the ruins and such.

My master race have degenerated to Trogs.

 

[Agback]

G'day

In my campaign PCs can be:

* Humans (a.k.a. drowners, a.k.a. muddyfeet)

* Divers (strong, but a trifle clumsy, able to breathe water, good low-light visions but poor vision in bright light).

* Flyers (smallish winged people, capable of soaring but not much powered flight, weaker than humans).

* Leshy (roughly like Tolkien's elves: bigger, faster, stronger, more beautiful, immortal humans).

* Sprites (little people about 20-24 inches tall)

* Winged sprites

* Ogres (strong, slow, people, rather ugly and stupid, but eight-to-ten feet tall)

In addition to which the following templates can be applied:

* Child of a powerful geist (better stats all around)

* Child of a lesser geist

* Gathin (Gathins are born female to members of other races. They change sex after each time they have sex. They can't get pregnant, but can beget children. These bear a family resemblance to the male the gathin coupled with before it begat the child, and are gathins.) Leshy tend to hate gathins.

And the 'half-leshy' template can be applied to humans or divers.

Regards,


Agback

 

[arwink]

(OT) Hey Agback, you didn't have a player move up to Queensland to do a writing degree did you? I vaguely remember one of my students turning in a story based around Leshy earlier this year?

Back on topic, I use all the normal races, usually with a fair number of sub-races thrown in. The subraces are more or less just colour though.

Drow got dumped in my world, getting replaced by a race of tall, pale norse-raider type elves that live in the Perpetually dark polar icecaps. Occasionally, small clans sail furhter south and settle on small islands, but they're a race more commonly heard about rather than seen.

Orcs, goblins, kobolds and hobgoblins are all fair game as character races. As are genasi. As levels advance, any intelligent humanoid race that has a fair population is also available to anyone who wants to take them.

No custom player races as of yet, but my players haven't really explored a lot of the world yet. Heck, they still haven't even gone into the big dungeon below the city they started in after a year and a half of gaming. Exploration isn' their strong point.

 

[Jamdin]

In my world of Shadorm, players can choose from the following races: Darklings (dark elves), Felurrs (feline-like race), Halcons (bird-like race), Humans (they are the most wide-spread race), Hunds (canine-like race), Shydhe (high elves) & Woodlings (wood elves). The races they cannot play are Chiroterans (bat-like race) & the Torcs (trollish orcs). Each race has their own nation except for the humans, which has serveral nations. Some races are at war with other races such as the Halcons & the Chiroterans. Some races have unstead peace treaties such as the Felurrs and the Hunds. Many of the human nations do not get along with Britance, which is basically the Roman Empire meets the Spanish Inquisition.

There are, of course, other minor races roaming the world depending on the region.

 

[Ace]

My normal table rules limit the number of non humans IMC to one per party, first come first serve.

This is because the other races are rare outside of a few areas and several cultures are rather xenophobic

With a good story I will waive this restriction of course

The races available IMC are

Human--

Changeling-- Half elf more or less

Dwarf--- As core
my dwarves are loosely in three catagories standard tolkienesque Hill Dwarves (With scots accents) Mountain Dwarves (Neiblunged-- with german accents and bad attitudes) Surface Dwarves (rather Narnian in flavor)

Half Dwarf: Not allowed yet as I am still working on the stats. These wil only be from Surface Dwarf Stock though

Halfling-- rather rare: as core

Gnome: As core with an added fae template +1 ECL

Elf-- as core with the following additions : no con penalty, +2 Cha, Fae template, sorcerer or bard prefered class, immune to all normal diseases

Shen--- Human more or less

The degenerate men and changed are artificial servitor races made with genetic magic in a far gone age

Degenerate Men-- Half orcs with an additional +2 to con

Changed: Cat Folk--- +2 to dex -2 to wis 1d3 claws, night vision (as elf) racial aleartness feat and strong will purrfurred class-- Infiltrator

Changed: Wolfen--- human stats Scent feat +2 stackable natural armor prefered class: Fighter

Changed: Ursine--- +4 to ST +2 To Con +4 stackable natural armor prefered class: barbearian +2 ECL

Half Fiend Human

Half Celestial Human

Tiefling Human

Assimar Human

Spirit Folk (OA)

Shapechangers (Henyagoki sp? from OA)

other fee stuff on request---

I also have bloodline feats

Elemental

Fae

Dwarf

Celestial

and maybe just maybe Yuan Ti or an Avarial

 

[Maerdwyn]

IMC, Humans:Orcs much as Elves:Humans in standard D&D. Humans are longer lived, much less common, considered more beautiful, more intelligent, generally live apart from larger centers of population, etc.

Not that humans are any different from normal, it's just that the human norm is the "other" in most of the campaign world, as the humans have been pushed back to remote locales by advancing orcish empires. The PCs IMC are mostly humans, and are defending one of the last bastions of human civilization against the ever-expanding orcs.

My orcs are surface dwellers (w/o penalties for being in sunlight), and are generally a bit better organized and honorable than standard orcs (They are also less malicious), but otherwise recognizable.

Demihumans are present in even smaller numbers than the humans.

A few tribes of centaurs control a large area of plains in the world, but they haven't been encountered by the PCs yet, and therefore haven't been fleshed-out all that well yet.

Giants, ogres, etc.: These guys are also quite common, and a bit more "civilized" than I've played before.

"Deep Ones": Catch all term used only in my own notes for Sahuagin, Kuo-toa, modified Ghouls, and other Lovecraft-esque humanoid creatures the party has encountered from time to time. As the PCs have no special knowledge of any of these races, I'm relatively vague in describing them. With each encounter, the party gets the idea that something is going on, but so far other events (a war in the PCs' homeland, mostly) have prevented any concerted invesitgation of their activities.

Other race:

Jinn: A large number of jinn (more like humans than they are like standard D&D genies) refused to accept slavery under Solomon, and so fled "the real word" (or at least the world described in the Bible and Middle Eastern folklore) and established a few communities in my campaign world. Lots of curltural/religious/planar stuff going on with the jinn, which may become more important to the PCs as they learn moreabout what's goin on in the campaign. Or maybe not.

 

[the Jester]

Cydra (my campaign world) has all the standard PH races available as pc races, plus the following subraces:

Dwarf- both mountain and hill dwarves available as pcs
Elves- high, wood, wild and grey available as pcs (my Drow are more akin to 1e Drow; NO PCS, pretty much ever)
Halflings- all standard subraces, but the tallfellows I have are gypsie-like, can speak with equestrians, and look like human children. Nobody likes, trusts or respects them.
Half-orcs- Valonian half-orcs have fighter as their favored class.

Homebrewed or Nonstandard Races:
Orcs (Valonian only)- like a normal orc, but racially LE and favored class is fighter. Valonian orcs have been trying to be accepted as a civilized race to get into the FTA (Free Trade Alliance) of human states near them for about two hundred years now.
Tabaxi- catfolk from first/second edition AD&D.
Merellin- essentially dolphinweres, they are cetaceans that can shapechange into an almost-hairless chubby (one might say blubbery) humanoid form. While on land they suffer a -1 on attack rolls. One of their racial abilities is the ability to freely multiclass as a paladin; along with dolphins, they're known as the "good guys of the sea."

Aquatic game races:
Merellin (as above)
Dolphins (all cetaceans in my game are typically as smart as humans and have advanced cultures)
Mermaids (females outnumber males over 20:1 and they can and often do breed with anything humanoidish; sailors call them "slutfish"- a term coined by players in my game.)
Locathah (generally surface races deny that locathah have sentience, since they just evolved it within the last few hundred years and the greatest delicacy anywhere is tropical red-finned locathah)

Depending on exotic locales, sometimes there are other weird options available (if your character dies in the Great Redwood Forest I'll let you make your new character a hadozee, for instance, which is a 2e Spelljammer monster that is essentially an ape with flaps of skin that allow it to glide like a flying squirrel; these are the dnd equivelent of yazirians from Star Frontiers)

 

[Agback]

(OT) Hey Agback, you didn't have a player move up to Queensland to do a writing degree did you? I vaguely remember one of my students turning in a story based around Leshy earlier this year?

I might have, I've had a lot of players over the years.

But the word 'leshy' is from Slavic folklore: the leshy were supernatural beings that lived in the forest. And the word was used by James Branch Cabell for the group of beings in his Poictesme series including Mother Sereda and Koschei the Deathless Who Made Things As They Are. So there are other explanations.

Regards,


Agback