Rethinking humans...

[AuraSeer]

The concept is interesting, but if you want to justify it based on science, I think your reasoning is rather weak. If multiple humanoid races evolved simultaneously, the pressures on them must have been very nearly the same. There's no reason to think that, for instance, the orcish ancestors had it any easier than the human ancestors; unless they developed in some secluded place all their own, they'd have been subject to catastrophes or near-extinctions just as often.

If you're suggesting that any humanoid race could evolve to sapience without becoming adaptable, without developing mathematical ability, or without losing its fear of fire, you're going to need a very good argument to convince anyone at all.

Note that the human ancestors may even be the same group as the orcish ones (and the dwarven, the elvish, et cetera). The humanoids are still so closely related that they can interbreed and have fertile offspring. A biologist would probably conclude that they split from their common ancestor very recently, on the evolutionary timescale.

Of course we're talking about a fantasy world, so it's not a given that evolution happened at all. If the humanoids were divinely created, the deities could give them any abilities they chose. Isn't it an odd coincidence that the races all turned out to be approximately balanced?

No ability to hustle without feat, humans may take feat to have x3 hustle speed
Non-humans do not get first-hour free when hustling.

I presume you're doing this only on the overland scale? A hustle is the same thing as taking two Move actions every round. If you remove that from the nonhumans' combat options, they'd almost become unplayable.

It also seems pretty harsh to stack penalties this way. A nonhuman must expend a precious feat just to move faster than a walk. If he does take the feat and make the slightest use of it, he becomes Fatigued and requires 8 hours of recovery. That's a very steep double price to pay just for an extra 3 miles of travel.

Combat is treated like running. Called 'intense activity'.
Non-humans can only go half the time and take twice as long to recover.

That means a dwarf with Con 20 can fight for approximately as long as a human with Con 10. Cripes. If you're going to go this far, why not just give all humans a +10 racial modifier to Con and have done with it.

Also, every six months, if the situation warrants, humans may swap 1 feat. They may swap a skill point every week.

Those bonuses are so great as to be unreasonable. There's a lot of training encapsulated in that single skill point-- to say nothing of a feat-- and it doesn't make sense to let them be changed that easily.

The world's best human blacksmith, who has been working the forge every day of his life for the past 50 years, may have 23 ranks in his Craft skill. Say he takes six months off for a vacation. When he comes back, he can have swapped those skill ranks and become the world's best carpenter, or surgeon, or lute player? Meanwhile he'll have somehow unlearned everything about his old profession, so he has less smithing skill than his newest apprentice? That's downright silly.

Taken together, your changes make humans the only possible race for any reasonably useful character. If that's your goal then you've done great, otherwise you've got some fine tuning to do.

 

[Xeriar]

Is this true? Cool. Not much help in escaping lions or crocodiles, but still a handy trait.

To outrun a crocodile, just run in a zig-zag pattern. A croc cannot turn and run at the same time.

There is supposedly a tribe in Africa whose members hunt lions with their bare hands.

It is rather noteable though - our endurance is a predatory trait more than a survival one.

Yesss... but, surely, there are more mental diseases we ARE subject to, due to our highly complex brains?

Well, there are the triopsies and other genetic factors - but most others do not set in until late in life.

Frankly, the reaosn why humans are set as the baseline for every RPG I can think of is simply familiarity. Surely, we need an average point to work from, and US seems as good as any.

Well, duh. I've been trying to get away from that, see. Otherwise, why would I have posted this?

 

[Xeriar]

The concept is interesting, but if you want to justify it based on science, I think your reasoning is rather weak. If multiple humanoid races evolved simultaneously, the pressures on them must have been very nearly the same. There's no reason to think that, for instance, the orcish ancestors had it any easier than the human ancestors; unless they developed in some secluded place all their own, they'd have been subject to catastrophes or near-extinctions just as often.

This is fantasy, for one. If I were going to go the sci-fi route, I wouldn't have orcs or elves or all that jazz (except those who gengineered themselves to be that way) - rather come up with some truly alien types, which is another reason I've been doing this - but anyway...

If you're suggesting that any humanoid race could evolve to sapience without becoming adaptable, without developing mathematical ability, or without losing its fear of fire, you're going to need a very good argument to convince anyone at all.

Are any of those things necessary for sentience? They aren't necessary for humans to be sentient.

Note that the human ancestors may even be the same group as the orcish ones (and the dwarven, the elvish, et cetera). The humanoids are still so closely related that they can interbreed and have fertile offspring.

It's a matter of when that split occured, and what a species did to handle the situations presented it.

Of course we're talking about a fantasy world, so it's not a given that evolution happened at all. If the humanoids were divinely created, the deities could give them any abilities they chose. Isn't it an odd coincidence that the races all turned out to be approximately balanced?

I actually want to balance dwarves/humans/elves/orcs/ogres, and put them in the 'rather scarey' range from the point of view of the majority of other 'sentient' races.

And, of course, they're going to be scarey to eachother.

I presume you're doing this only on the overland scale? A hustle is the same thing as taking two Move actions every round. If you remove that from the nonhumans' combat options, they'd almost become unplayable.

Err, yes.

That means a dwarf with Con 20 can fight for approximately as long as a human with Con 10. Cripes. If you're going to go this far, why not just give all humans a +10 racial modifier to Con and have done with it.

Always bugged me why dwarves would have such great endurance for standing in one place all century.

Those bonuses are so great as to be unreasonable. There's a lot of training encapsulated in that single skill point-- to say nothing of a feat-- and it doesn't make sense to let them be changed that easily.

It's how we work - and how our brains work. A healthy human will significantly adapt - mentally and physically - to most any new situation within six months. This includes language immersion, living in Antartica - etc.

The world's best human blacksmith, who has been working the forge every day of his life for the past 50 years, may have 23 ranks in his Craft skill.

I think the variable skill focus feat may be a better one, but that wasn't the point of it. Someone uses a new skill over and over and over and over agian... In the current d20 system, you are SOL if you don't gain a level.

Taken together, your changes make humans the only possible race for any reasonably useful character. If that's your goal then you've done great, otherwise you've got some fine tuning to do.

Yes, that's great! Now just make sure the other races are properly balanced - but with abilities that set them apart rather than 'long-lived humans with a slight affinity to x and shaped differently'...

 

[Limper]

What illnesses are we not prone to?

 

[Desdichado]

It is rather noteable though - our endurance is a predatory trait more than a survival one.

That seems a rather odd comment, since it's not believed our evolutionary ancestors were predators. Unless you're claiming we developed this endurance just in the last few thousand years?

All in all, I think you're making a bigger deal out of this than needs be. We tend to see social or behavioral adaptations in human populations that make radical physical adaptations superflous. Hence the Inuit body type, which is perhaps well suited for arctic conditions, and the neighboring nordic populations of Scandinavia, which in theory are almost the exact opposite of an ideal physical type for the environment. To use one example.

However, I'd rather take your idea of the population bottlenecks and run with it -- what would our diversity be like if they hadn't occured? Or if Neanderthals hadn't gone extinct?

Also, just to point out (not that I'm a real expert here, or anything) but the mDNA evidence for population spread and evolution is in many ways contradicted by traditional evidence. The jury is still out on a lot of issues about the development of Homo sapiens sapiens.

 

[Xeriar]

That seems a rather odd comment, since it's not believed our evolutionary ancestors were predators. Unless you're claiming we developed this endurance just in the last few thousand years?

It is believed to have developed due to the necessity of following herds, and scouring a wide area for food.

All in all, I think you're making a bigger deal out of this than needs be.

Perhaps.

The thread on RPG.net got a much better response, maybe because I phrased it differently? There were still a few who pattered 'Humans are average because that's all we know!'

Well duh! If I knew about some alien species to draw pointers from I would not be asking the question.

Sorry, that was probably a bit harsh. I want a starker contrast between humans and other races.

We tend to see social or behavioral adaptations in human populations that make radical physical adaptations superflous. Hence the Inuit body type, which is perhaps well suited for arctic conditions, and the neighboring nordic populations of Scandinavia, which in theory are almost the exact opposite of an ideal physical type for the environment. To use one example.

Physical adaptations still occur - paler skin in both groups, for example. Not only do they conserve heat better, but their skin (should say 'our skin' since I'm a whitey too) produces its own vitamin D.

However, I'd rather take your idea of the population bottlenecks and run with it -- what would our diversity be like if they hadn't occured? Or if Neanderthals hadn't gone extinct?

My idea is similar - rather than one group making it through the bottlenecks, multiple, seperate groups do. Branches from the austropilithene tree making orcs, for example.

Also, just to point out (not that I'm a real expert here, or anything) but the mDNA evidence for population spread and evolution is in many ways contradicted by traditional evidence. The jury is still out on a lot of issues about the development of Homo sapiens sapiens.

Mitochondrial evidence is easier, but real analysis has been done to back it up where possible (y-adam studies and an analysis of some 200 human groups from around the world.)

There are three branches of African humanity. L1, L2, and L3. Everyone else in the world is a sub-branch of L3.

 

[Desdichado]

The thread on RPG.net got a much better response, maybe because I phrased it differently? There were still a few who pattered 'Humans are average because that's all we know!'

Well duh! If I knew about some alien species to draw pointers from I would not be asking the question.

Sorry, that was probably a bit harsh. I want a starker contrast between humans and other races.

But the rules you propose look like you merely want to crock the other races to the point where human is the only attractive choice for a player to take.

Physical adaptations still occur - paler skin in both groups, for example. Not only do they conserve heat better, but their skin (should say 'our skin' since I'm a whitey too) produces its own vitamin D.

Inuit aren't exactly pale-skinned. Some recent studies predict a behavorial cause for the development of pale skin and multicolored hair and eyes, though -- apparently those were the ones that had better luck attracting mates in the harsh period of the Ice Age. Females needed that adaption to survive and procreate, and they also happened to pass the same traits to their children.

I wonder if I can still find that article?

Anyhoo, I've never seen any convincing evidence that while skin is an adaptation to colder climates. The ideas I've seen are all seriously 'reaching.'

 

[Xeriar]

But the rules you propose look like you merely want to crock the other races to the point where human is the only attractive choice for a player to take.

That's where I'm starting, yes.

Then I try to think of what I can do for the other races. I don't want to go -too- overboard, but enough to put them in a league of their own.

I'll give an example: Dwarves.

Inuit aren't exactly pale-skinned. Some recent studies predict a behavorial cause for the development of pale skin and multicolored hair and eyes, though -- apparently those were the ones that had better luck attracting mates in the harsh period of the Ice Age. Females needed that adaption to survive and procreate, and they also happened to pass the same traits to their children.

I've always thought Inuit were paler than their asian ancestors. At least that is my impression of it.

Anyhoo, I've never seen any convincing evidence that while skin is an adaptation to colder climates. The ideas I've seen are all seriously 'reaching.'

Most of the energy we recieve from the sun is in the form of visible light (~60%, I forget the exact number. Much of the rest is heat and UV). So, white absorbs far less energy than black does, and also retains it for longer.

 

[Xeriar]

What illnesses are we not prone to?

Apparently the incidence of mental disorders is unusually low in humans. I'll need to find a link somewhere.

 

[Desdichado]

I've always thought Inuit were paler than their asian ancestors. At least that is my impression of it.

Not mine!

Most of the energy we recieve from the sun is in the form of visible light (~60%, I forget the exact number. Much of the rest is heat and UV). So, white absorbs far less energy than black does, and also retains it for longer.

That sounds actuall maladaptive to cold climates the way you describe it. Really, the biggest reason I don't buy pale = cold is that the Inuit are adapted to cold climates (thick, robust trunk, shorter limbs, etc.) and don't have pale skin, while Northern Europeans, which supposedly grew white during the Ice Age are completely the opposite physical type -- tall, fairly thin, and in other words completely maladapted to cold weather. The reason they do fine there is behavioral adaptations rather than physical ones.