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Message: <blockquote data-quote="crazy_monkey1956" data-source="post: 3359412" data-attributes="member: 49514">One way to break stereotypes, that doesn't require much "work", is to strip out the flavor text of the standard PHB races and look at what the mechanics suggest.  For example, if we look at elves in this manner...+2 Dex, -2 Con usually translates as frail and graceful.  What if this race is instead afflicted with a racial disease that cannot be cured in any traditional sense because it is inherited, possibly due to inbreeding.  In fact, the race could be sterile with it's own kind and seek out "new blood" in attempt to revitalize themselves.Immune to sleep and +2 vs enchantments could mean that they are denied the capacity to sleep and dream and are more resistant to enchantments because their minds have been forced to adapt to dreamlessness and the resulting partial madness that inflicts.Low-light vision could have resulted from adapting to semi-nocturnal scavenger existence because other races mistrust and revile them.Proficiency with bows and swords, being scavengers, this race has pilfered the fallen in the battlefields of humanity.  Since swords and bows are the most common weapons of mass warfare, these are the weapons the race has had the most experience with, and they teach all of the members to use them as a means of self-defense.+2 Listen, Search, Spot heightened senses as a means of avoiding those that hunt them down as plague-ridden pests.Favored Class: Wizard - The race has focused it's research on curing itself on arcane magic because they believe their racial deity has forsaken them and cursed them with their affliction.This is just off the top of my head, but the idea here is that without the standard stereotype flavor text, the bare bones mechanics in the PHB can provide inspiration for a whole new concept...without the expense in time or money of a new book for "new races."  Same game mechanics, different race.Quentin</blockquote>

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