D&D (2024) How the Aardling should be reintroduced in the future. With a fiendish bestial counterpart

[Incenjucar]

The player base needs a better introduction so they can get past the whole "furries!" knee-jerk reaction for these species. They need to be part of an adventure or two so there's room to educate on what they are.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

The player base needs a better introduction so they can get past the whole "furries!" knee-jerk reaction for these species. They need to be part of an adventure or two so there's room to educate on what they are.

I think a lot of that 'furries' reaction (to a much greater extent than any of the other animal species) was because everyone can pick their own animal to mix with human traits. So literally everyone can make their own 'furry oc' in the game.

Where something like a tabaxi is a consistent species.

 

[Tonguez]

The player base needs a better introduction so they can get past the whole "furries!" knee-jerk reaction for these species. They need to be part of an adventure or two so there's room to educate on what they are.

I dunno if it was an outright kneejerk reaction to furries per se as much as it was piling celestial furries with cosmic wings on top of ‘mundane’ furries, especially when they trampled on the Aasimar shtick to do so.
I recall it being bring back Aasimar - we dont need new furry angels when people can already be tabaxis or aaracockras or loxodons

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

How about this: "Beastfolk". Sometimes humanoids in communities near deep wilderness will be born with animal traits and/or appearance. Pick game mechanical traits from a table and decide freely what your character looks like.

 

[Minigiant]

Although I did think the Aardling as initially presented bit into the Aasimar's celestial angle, that wasn't my primary objection. My primary objection was that we already have a lot of animal/humanoid species in the game, so this added another layer of animal/species hybrid that was more generic and narratively confusing. Is that person a Tabaxi? An Aardling?

This is because frankly fanasty designers are in a creative rut. They want to create more that LOTR races and have short cut to animal-folk.

D&D 5e has not tried Plant people, Lesser Aesir, Golems, revived Mummies, Hiveminders, etc.

SciFi is good at creating cool new non-beastfolk races like Twileks, Klingons, Predator, Martians, and Asari.


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This is why I've converted Aardlings to a Secret Wars Lore. Aardlings would not be beast people. Sir Croak would not act frog due to his frog head. Sir Croak is just swimming into a community of sea elves, doing good deeds, and urging them to act against the Crab cultists.

Then one day Sir Croak calls out Senator Ssnap. Ssnap removes his cloak to display is chitin. Ssnap reveals he is a Ghest and the two duel on a ship swashbuckler style. They are men with animal skin and notbeastfolk (unlessyou roll play them that way.)

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

This is because frankly fanasty designers are in a creative rut. They want to create more that LOTR races and have short cut to animal-folk.

I think it's simply because "animal people" are a common trope both in myth and fiction, and WotC wants to have something to offer the large numbers of potential players who want to play such characters.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My opinion is to sell merchandising WotC has to create original content. If 3PPs create catfolk, frogfolk and bunnyfolk, then WotC has to show us the tabaxi, the grunts and the harengon.

The concept of ardlings like the guardinal version of aasimars sounds as a wink for the furry fandom but also to sell toys for children.

It needs the right specie traits, useful but also showing their own identity.

 

[Minigiant]

I think it's simply because "animal people" are a common trope both in myth and fiction, and WotC wants to have something to offer the large numbers of potential players who want to play such characters.

They could do that AND create new types of races.
But that's not what they did. They first made generic celestial planetouched with Animal heads with no real story. Then they made Shifters who don't shift who again had a generic story.

It's not just WOTC. Many fantasy companies have defaulted to "LOTR races + Animal People"

This is why I am glad Dragonborn and Tiefling got too popular to be pushed aside and Goliaths are being added to the PHB.

But the reason why Aardlings didn't make it in is because WOTC were not into them enough to find a creative niche for them. So they felt like either they were taking the Aasimar's place or were reject Animal-folk among a lake of other Animal folk.

They were just like Guardinals they were based on. Or 3e Archons. Aasimar but different. But there's no point to that because Aasimar exist. They did that with 4e Devas but that didn't cross over.

If Aardlings are Celestial humaniod with a animal aspect, WOTC should do that and write a story for them like I did.
If Aardling are Animal olk with an celestial excuse for existence, WOTC should do that.

But like many aspect of 5e, it felt like WOTC D&D designers were creating things they didn't care for but made because it was popular with da yutes

Excuse me... it was popular with the youths and it came out underpowerd or with bland lore.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Guardinals were a thing in 2E. Straight out of Elysium in the outer planes. But they haven't really been a thing since then. So it's no wonder why people were sniffy towards Aardlings, which were meant to be prime plane descendants of Guardinals originally. If Guardinals were more prevalent in the game... having a player race for them would have been more acceptable as something the game could "want".

Do I think there needs to be a "fiendish" version of Aardlings? No. Because there isn't a "fiendish" version of Guardinals. Instead, the racial mirror equivalent would be a player race based upon daemons/yugoloths, as Hades is the opposite side of the Great Wheel from Elysium.

Now that being said... it also is going to come down to exactly how the designers wish to define which planes Aasimar and Tieflings are descended from. They've already made "demonic" tieflings, just like the standard ones were "devilish". So they are saying that the descendants of the Lawful Evil outer plane and Chaotic Evil outer plane both fall under the category of "tiefling". Which should mean really, that descendants of the Neutral Evil outer plane (Hades) should probably be considered tieflings too.

Which woud mean thus on the Celestial side... Aasimar should be the category of all the good planes-- the Lawful Good archon descendants of Mount Celestia, the Neutral Good guardinal descendants of Elysium, and the Chaotic Good whatever-creatures-come-from-Ysgard-anyone-really-know? descendants of Ysgard are. They all should be considered Aasimar.

And the two remaining primary-alignment outer planes of Lawful Neutral Mechanus, and Chaotic Neutral Limbo? Maybe the Modrons and Slaad get their own special descendant races, or perhaps we just suggest that those two planes just couldn't support or ever have relations with Prime creatures to actually create descendants of those planes?

 

[Frozen_Heart]

And the two remaining outer planes of Lawful Neutral Mechanus, and Chaotic Neutral Limbo? Maybe the Modrons and Slaad get their own special descendant races, or perhaps we just suggest that those two planes just couldn't support or ever have relations with Prime creatures to actually create descendants of those planes?

Shame WotC kinda forgot that lawful and chaotic sides of the spectrum exist, unless linked to the good/evil part.

Then again Slaad are a really poor 'chaotic' planar species too. They're not chaotic. They're just evil.