The variations of humanity

[JacktheRabbit]

In the average Forgotten Realm, Greyhawk, etc campaign world are humans limited to the average range of humans in our world?

In reality we have humans who size and shape wise fit the physical dimesions of halflings, dwarves, and in some professional athlete examples even half-ogres.

Should those possibilities exist in DnD as variations of humans or should they be limited to the various races that match their description?

 

[Sunseeker]

Within D&D, what "should" exist is whatever you feel fits the world you're working in.

There are, IMO, always outliers. Heck, the average adventurer is an outlier. But when it comes to the physical body, having something grossly outside the average is generally a sign that there's something out of whack with their body. Which is generally a bad thing for an adventurer.

 

[kitsune9]

In the published campaigns, they are based on real human cultures; however, there's nothing to state that you should follow their strictures. If you want humans to have a greater variable range of pigments, size, and weight, go for it!

 

[billd91]

I consider most of the stats that apply to a race like halflings or dwarves to be part of the intrinsic difference between those races and humans. I wouldn't give a very short human halfling stats just because they were about the same size.

Since these would be humans with some physical variations, I'd use the human stats to represent them. If there were other really significant differences, like a player wanting to play a little person, I'd make some adjustments. Perhaps a human with a small size and the other things that reasonably flow directly from that: a 20' movement rate, +4 on hiding, +1 to hit/+1 AC.

 

[SKyOdin]

It is possible to model a wide range of humans using the natural range of variation in stats that arises from rolling 3d6. Because of how the stat system works, while dwarves are stronger than humans on average, and it is possible for a dwarf to be stronger than any human can be, it is also true that an individual human can be vastly stronger than an individual dwarf. So I would say that the D&D stat system is pretty good at modeling a wide range of body-types and characteristics.

However, this is also one of the reasons that I like it when fantasy exaggerates the differences between various races (such as dwarves with skin made out of stone). This makes non-human races feel more distinguished from humans, and allows more room to experiment with unusual human cultures and ethnicities.

As for fantastic human features, I have always been partial to giving fantasy characters anime hair colors. I am also occasionally tempted to hand out really unusual skin colors, such as deep red, green, or gold.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

I don't see any particular reason not to include humans (or any other race) sized outside their norms, unless there's some setting reason. I don't know if such outliers would necessarily be suitable as PCs, but sure they could exist.

 

[Thagdal]

I liked the variations of 'man' that MERP (middle earth role playing) had.

From the Wose to high men. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_(Middle-earth) ) each had sutble differences, eg Coming from Rohan granted bonus for riding.

 

[Haltherrion]

In the average Forgotten Realm, Greyhawk, etc campaign world are humans limited to the average range of humans in our world?

Should those possibilities exist in DnD as variations of humans or should they be limited to the various races that match their description?

I think it depends very much on your setting. However, if you are going to allow humans to be all over the map in size and longevity, you might want to make them the only race (i.e., no dwarves, elves and hobbits). The overlap might get confusing or awkward. I'm sure you could make it work in a pinch, though but in the end, the other races are the "stand-ins" in most settings for other combinations of size and longevity. Give the full variation space to humans and you don't need the other races so much.

Many years ago I ran a world of all humans but there was Lamarckian Evolution on a fairly rapid time scale. Humans who lived in tall grass might grow taller in a few generations to see over the grass, for instance. It was a lot of a fun and one of the more interesting settings.

There were two main races. One, the Pellanim had originally been small (90 pound), barbaric type humans from the steppes who exploited griffons to defeat a more civilized people. The game was set some generations after the Pellanim conquered the civilized folks. By this time, they had few griffins (because they eat alot and are expensive). Plus since they weren't riding griffins and were now living in a land of plenty, they had grown larger and it was harder for them to ride the griffins.

The players started off as members of the conquered race looking for a way to regain their "proper" place. It was a fun campaign.