I often delve into designing post apocalyptic fantasy campaign worlds. Some of the ideas from those can be found in the ”Campaigns” link in my sig, and included:
- no half races at all, or at least, none based on cross breeding with other standard races. However, I redrafted all the “Plantouched” as a template for beings with ancestry including otherplanar beings. These, I called Nephilim.
- I had an idea to use Warforged as Gnome-tech mecha (the Juggernaught ones, at least), but revised them to be The Inheritors- Warforged who are basically fantasy versions of the Cybermen & Daleks. The brains within them are from psionically active Dwarves (who constructed them for another psionically race who were wiped out before they had the chance to accept the devices they commissioned). Culturally, they’re fully Dwarven, with the same stonecunning and anti-giant animus & fighting techniques. But physically, they’re Warforged, albeit with darkvision.
- Something a bit more outside of the box: instead of the usual suspects for a "D&D" dungeon-making race- Drow, Dwarves, Duregar, etc.- use the Seshayans from D20 Future, p218-219 (translated from Alternaty: Star*Drive). With their alien forms (bat-wings, multiple eyes)* and sonar-based blind-fighting, etc., they're visually perfect for a real “boogeyman” race that rose up out of the Underdark, dominated the world, and whose civilization then collapsed, so that they are now a "degenerate" race. I used them as the unknowing and scattered remnants of the fallen lords of a vast and powerful Underdark empire. They are mostly meek as a rule because of their small size, stature and outsider status. They've fallen so far that now they inhabit the caves and caverns associated with major cities, or near trade routes...Until one of them found a statue of one of the early Seshayan emperors...then they realized how far they have fallen, and go in a rampages to get it all back.
- In a time when it seemed the world was dying, I had a druid cast Awaken on an aspen tree. What he didn’t realize was that aspen are a colonial species, and he had effectively made an entire forest become sentient. The trained the aspen in the Druidic tradition, and when he passed, the aspen cast awaken on other trees and animals within its reach. Those were not generally playable, per se, but were instead used as a hidden “empire” with spies virtually everywhere.
- Similarly, I posited using an Awakened deep-sea coral with Psionic or magical powers as an analog to an aquatic Illithid Elder Brain. Perfect as a BBEG hidden within one of the aquatic civilizations. Possibly holding the nominal ruler as its thrall...
Beyond that? Drawing inspiration from the novels of Kurt R.A. Giambastani, I used the Plains Indian cultures to help a fellow ENWorlder create a tribe that used moas and/or other large flightless terror-birds instead of horses & dogs as steeds and hunting animals. Almost used velociraptors (like Giambastani did), but thought the birds were more fun. That could work for almost any surface dwelling species with lots of land but possibly lacking the full suite of technology lost during the war.
* For those who haven't a clue as to what Seshayans are:
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