D&D General I finally like non-Tolkien species for PCs

[Bohandas]

to use a term I've recently heard, almost entirely "candy" with no "spinach". (I will be heavily drawing on this essay for this post, so if you prefer, just read it from the source.)

The essay lost me when it said that the term "Mary-Sue" is sexist. I've heard it used plenty of times for male characters; the claim that it's overwhelmingly or exclusively used for female characters is a strawman

 

[Micah Sweet]

Tieflings have a designated niche, being scrappy underdog devil people, which has made them super popular. Especially amongst people that can relate to the fact that they’re discriminated against. It is very easy to come up with plots that involve discrimination against Tieflings, like Baldur’s Gate 3. And the fact that they look devilish gives them a solid visual identity that compliments their story one.

Aasimar don’t have that. Sure, they’re “angel people,” but they can’t look like angels unless they use Celestial Revelation, which lasts for one minute and is a once per day ability. Because DMs are afraid of flying races. And Aasimar don’t have any solid story niches, either. Even though the story niche of Tiefling is that they aren’t inherently good despite their fiendish heritage and Aasimar are supposed to be a mirror to Tieflings, the races aren’t linked in the lore and Aasimar are very much implied to be a bit “inherently good.” The guardian angel lore is weird because it doesn’t have a Tiefling parallel and isn’t even stated to be the angel you’re descended from.

This is also probably partially because fiends have more solid lore in D&D than angels do.

And frankly the scrappy underdog that happens to look like a devil is a better playable option than the goody two-shoes that gets to look like an angel 60 seconds a day.

I think the fact WotC created the Ardlings also illustrates the Aasimar’s identity crisis. I’ve made my own version of Aasimar to give them a niche I felt was a good reflection of the tiefling’s. My Aasimar are oppressors as opposed to the Tieflings being the oppressed.

That isn’t to say you cannot do interesting things with angelic characters, I just don’t think D&D does. And it is very common to make angelic characters interesting by just making them evil or “fallen.”

I use Planetouched from Level Up. It covers both Tieflings and Aasimar, and feel interesting for both (as well as several other planetouched heritages).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

a cool look and angst.

Honestly, I more question why the traditionists favour the halflings and gnomes, they do not seem to do anything with them, and they are the least useful at present for world-building?

I could see them going down a one liniage per major state, as that would be useful to them but not present

For my own homebrew stuff, if I ever ran a (slightly) more traditional D&D-type setting, I would merge gnomes and halflings into the hinnfolk, fey beings of the land. Lightfoot (forest gnome/lightfoot halfling), tree-guardians and forest-keepers; Stoutheart, plains-wandering and flock-tending; Cragstep (rock gnome + more settled halflings), earth-dwellers and tinkerers; and Ghostwise (that halfling type + svirfneblin), depth-delvers and mystics. Those that more overtly express the "fey" nature might be seen as "gnomes", while those that are outwardly more human-like might be called "halflings", but all of them are hinnfolk.

This dovetails with my general effort to give each heritage or kin (my preferred terms, rather than "species") four variations; for hinnfolk, their nature is determined in part by where they are born, rather than only who they are born to; a clan of Lightfoot hinn that emigrate to the Underearth will tend to slowly become Ghostwise over several generations, for example. The only heritage I just could not produce four variations of was human; I could only come up with three. Standard humans, which would cover all Earth humans and essentially all other humans; dual-heritage/dual-blooded, where you get a blend of human and a second non-human heritage (e.g. half-elf, half-orc, etc.); and Starbound, which is for all humans Weirded™ by exposure to fantasy outer space (so slann/elan, lower-power Kryptonian-equivalents, non-immortal Gallifreyans, Betazoids/El-Aurians, etc.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The essay lost me when it said that the term "Mary-Sue" is sexist. I've heard it used plenty of times for male characters; the claim that it's overwhelmingly or exclusively used for female characters is a strawman

Statistical evidence suggests that it is, in fact, sexist.

That it is also sometimes applied to male characters does not mean it can't be disproportionately applied to female characters.

Remember, Luke is a beloved hero, while Rey is frequently derided as a Mary Sue...when she was written specifically to imitate Luke. The writing is certainly more clumsy in Disney's trilogy, but the core character is fundamentally the same. Presenting literally 100% identical characters, where one is male and the other female, does in fact disproportionately generate negative responses for the female version.

It is, unfortunately, very very common that something can be sexist even when it isn't EXCLUSIVELY anti-women. This is improving with time--in part because writers are finally actually writing female characters, so we get a greater diversity of them AND writers now have more experience writing them!--but it's slow going.

Besides, one of the greatest problems with "Mary Sue" as a concept is that it has always been far too vague and almost totally useless in terms of writing advice. Every time people try to nail down a clear definition of what "Mary Sue" means, it just produces a new generation of "See, it's totally not a Mary Sue, I didn't do any of the things you said were wrong!" Attempts to subvert the basic Sue gave us the Villain Sue (can't be a Mary Sue, they're the bad guy!), the Canon Sue (can't be a Mary Sue, it's a pre-existing character!), the Jerk Sue (can't be a Mary Sue, they're a butthole, no one likes them!), or the Sympathetic Sue (can't be a Mary Sue, the universe hates them!) Now that those things have become common-knowledge, we're getting third- or even fourth-generation Sues that try to avoid those flagged symptoms without addressing the underlying disease.

And that underlying disease is very, very neatly packaged up in the candy-vs-spinach thing. Candy glorifies. Spinach humbles. It is possible to have high-candy characters that are still likeable, even lovable (as noted, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, particularly the latter; he's cooler than cool, the sexiest super-spy, wealthy and fabulous and highly intelligent and funny and badass and...etc., etc.) Doing so is a risk, however. Reliably good characters eat their spinach, and only get their candy after the narrative has given the spinach some time to digest.

 

[Mind of tempest]

didn't they used to have like, aesthetically metallic bodies in a previous edition or something? that'd be a cool distinguishing look to bring back for them.

it is a start, but does not scream angel.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

it is a start, but does not scream angel.

Had I my druthers, I would make them take on an aspect of the Biblically Accurate Angel sort of thing.

Their soul is angelic, it just happens to be scrunched up inside a thin mortal shell. The shell is slightly distorted by what it is covering--not enough to be ugly, but enough to be unsettling.

It's when they allow it to leak out a little (read: what 4e would call a "racial encounter power"; what 5e would probably implement as a PB/LR ability) that it becomes eldritch.

Because there are two things nearly every appearing-as-their-true-form Biblical angel says when they encounter humans. "FEAR NOT", or--speaking colloquially--"For the love of God, please do not worship me."

That, I think, could make aasimar have the little kick--and just a smidge of "spinach"--to bring them at least within tieflings' orbit. You're never gonna match the HEAVY METAL ROCKER, HELL YEA DEVIL HORNS BAYBEEEE! element of tieflings. But making them genuinely eldritch and spooky? Genuinely something that even devout people might wonder "is this child really...safe? Might it be a danger?"