D&D General How elder scroll does species

[Scott Christian]

It's impossible to do without a specific setting, aka quasi-medieval setting. I mean, if you have cultures that rarely travel away from home, like many people long ago - then sure, they are going to learn specific skills inherent to their region. They'll even develop various genetic flavors, a la, "Look at me, I'm not allergic to milk!"

But in a D&D setting, it makes zero sense.

 

[MGibster]

I am trying to see if the way that the elder scrolls games does their species is a better or worse model then the current or previous editions of dungeons and dragons.

I've never noticed a difference between species in Elder Scrolls. The game plays pretty much the exact same way no matter which species you pick.

Culture is a better model to vary humans as it avoids bioessentialism veering into racism. Humans with a Agrarian culture or a Seafaring culture might hail from anywhere, even if Humans with a Desert Nomad culture have a much more obvious analogue.

D&D does a fairly bad job of it because most players pick the background that bests suits the ability scores they want to increase based on their class. In the future, I suspect we'll just switch to floating ASIs disconnected from species or background.

 

[Tonguez]

I've never noticed a difference between species in Elder Scrolls. The game plays pretty much the exact same way no matter which species you pick.

D&D does a fairly bad job of it because most players pick the background that bests suits the ability scores they want to increase based on their class. In the future, I suspect we'll just switch to floating ASIs disconnected from species or background.

yeah 2014 Backgrounds were better, 2025 Backgrounds are junk (it was my biggest issue with 5.5e)

 

[Shades of Eternity]

After all this stewing, all that I ended up doing is making a whole slew of 2014 backgrounds for my rpg, and I don't think it was a bad thing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Some older eddtion of D&D had diffrent variations of Humans in some of the supplements, But honestly I think its a bad idea.

The only idea in this direction that I've ever been okay with is, well, one I came up with myself, but because I was trying to build a pattern of sorts.

That is, for the heartbreaker that exists in my head, Humans (aka "Wanderfolk") would have three variants, unlike other races which I tried to always give four variants to:

1. Earthfast. This is literally every human you've ever met in your entire life. All humans on Earth, at any point in Earth's history, have been Earthfast humans.
2. Starbound. This is for humans Weirded™ by the eldritch strangeness of The Great Dark Beyond (read: Outer Space, except messed with by the Far Realm). Think Gallifreyans, Kryptonians, Slann/Elan, Kalashtar, etc. All the "alien, but look 100% human" things.
3. Dual-Bloodline. This is your catch-all for all the zillion different types of "one of my parents was human, the other was Some Other Thing". Easy to add new bloodline options later, early focus would be stuff like tieflings, aasimar, half-elf/half-orc, etc.

I literally couldn't come up with anything else that fit, that made sense, that avoided any overtones of racism while still expressing a clear and meaningful distinction. So I just...stopped. If you try something for hours and hours and make no progress, that might be a sign to throw in the towel.

 

[Laurefindel]

I'm in a minority here, but characters having abilities and differences based on their home or adopted region is my preferred way of dealing with "species".

Games like Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, and The One Ring do it well, but they also have a much narrower scope, deal with a single well-defined world or meta-region, and all have systems where having a head-start in X at character creation based on clan/culture/home region isn't a bid deal because other characters will catch up and outgrow their regional advantage by mid-levels (or game equivalent).

D&D tries to be uniform across several settings, has a class structure that encourages niche protection, has limited (and competing) opportunities for ASI and universal feats, and has a static skills system; none of those are favourable for integrating regionalisms in character creation. D&D deals with species the best it can IMO. However, I'd be open to setting-specific variations on species. Some of those could be region-based.

 

[Desdichado]

All populations have differing clusters for their genetics and therefore their physical attributes. Being afraid of "the r-word" and denying this is blatantly anti-scientific and also dishonest. That said, nobody ever said that D&D is supposed to be scientific. But no, cultures or regions don't work very well for a generic D&D game. If we're migrating into the territory of Forgotten Realms is so integrated in the baseline of D&D that setting specific elements become the norm no matter what setting you're playing, then D&D is a much less useful tool for gamers to use. Therefore any such regional differences shouldn't be in the core rules, but rather in a setting specific supplement. Also, culture doesn't influence your actual attributes, unless the culture has been selecting for certain attributes for many, many generations and only those who possess heightened attributes have been able to pass on their lineage over the course of many, many generations, and those traits have become fixated in the genetic code of the population cluster.

I don't think that that's a better solution what what D&D has always done. 3e FR, for instance, had regional feats which is more modest than ability score adjustments, and also more flavorful, honestly, and felt more like they were influenced by culture rather than biology. There's no reason that that can't be applied to any fantasy race, like dwarves or elves the same as it was to humans.

Honestly, though, I'm not a huge fan of mechanical differences at character creation having a big impact on the game based on your race selection. That mostly just encourages people to pick their fantasy race for the mechanical benefit rather than for role-playing reasons, which is counter to my taste. Unless the mechanical differentiation has some kind of positive to the flavor of the game, I'm not in favor of it.

 

[NotAYakk]

I have replaced subspecies with Phenotypes.

Phenotypes isn't region specific. We have Ectomorphs, Mesomorphs, and Endomorph built people. Not following the junk science version, but there are build differences between people.

For my lizardfolk, I can break them down into crocadilian and gecko like lizardfolk. Doesn't have to be subtribes, they might exist mixed in with each other.

This "phenotype" lets me bundle up some "subspecies" like features without using species-specific feats.