What I think is wrong with the non human races.

[Ferret]

This post assumes that the random people are taken from the Forgotten realm, however I do believe it would work with most other CS.

This is what I think is wrong with them. Pick an elf, any elf and I can almost guarantee that he respects nature, has some affinity with magic (not able to cast, but knows, has seen, assumed to be good at), is good with swords and always come from forests. Now if this were the Pc I would loosen up some expectations, but most would stay.

If you took a dwarf it would be from underground, they would all have a strong sense of tradition and law, all know how to battle giants (even though 1) giants would find it hard to live in tunnels and 2) not all dwarves live near/come to blows with giants), and take an interest in stones. And so one (Gnomes are born with gogles, halflings only exist on the streets of cities)

In short there are their stereotypes, and when they break them they are special.

I would assume that the Subraces are attempts to break these, some do, some don't. But what I think is wrong is that practically all of the races (bar humans) seem duplicates of each other no matter where they come from. Whereas humans change with were they are from.

So maybe regional elves and dwarves rather then subraces. I don't want more mechanics to represent this, just flavour. In fact I don't 'want' anything, I'm jsut speaking my mind, and if you survived to the end of this post, I thank you.

 

[Crothian]

Well, this is actualyl seen in many races not just fantasy one. Humans are always the diverse people but Vulcans or Narn or whatever are usually seen as the same. I do agree and deo have regional differences between all my races in my homebrew. Its not that hard to add, but really enhances the characters.

 

[WizarDru]

This post assumes that the random people are taken from the Forgotten realm, however I do believe it would work with most other CS.
So maybe regional elves and dwarves rather then subraces. I don't want more mechanics to represent this, just flavour. In fact I don't 'want' anything, I'm jsut speaking my mind, and if you survived to the end of this post, I thank you.

Well, I'm not sure what you're getting at, exactly. Mechanically, under the realms, the only thing makes a human different from another are the regional feats. Non mechanically speaking, from an outsiders point of view, most of the human societies are similar. They all follow most of the basic traditions, live in similar urban settings of varying density, are more adept at picking up personal talents and skillsets and generally far more adaptable than other races.

In fact, that's part of the reason non-humans are so inflexible, in some ways...to contrast against the humans.

 

[Arnwyn]

If you don't want mechanics, then just use the "dwarf" from the PHB.

I prefer different mechanics, and am glad that they did the work for me. Thus, there is absolutely nothing "wrong" with them.

(And, an aside: My players and I love the racial stereotypes and cliches. What some people think is "thinking out of the box" seems to just fall into the "humans with pointy ears" syndrome... and smacks to me of lazy roleplaying. IMO. YMMV.)

 

[Ferret]

In fact, that's part of the reason non-humans are so inflexible, in some ways...to contrast against the humans.

Still, you can contrast without being the opposite (inflexable not the mirror opposite.)


@Crothian, cool.

 

[Belen]

You would be correct, sir. This is why I have changed things for my homebrew. I scaled it back to just 6 races: Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gremen (Bear folk), Human, and Half-elves.

Those are the only races allowed and each is completely different in tone from the PHB versions. Each races fits within the regions culture. Yes, all elves will have a wanderlust, but beliefs and such with change. They may be gypsies in one area and bedouin in another.

Elves: Wandering race of vagabonds and gypsies.

Halflings: Mountain folk who have learned to harness natural magical talent to live in harsh conditions.

Dwarves: A druidic people who wander the forests cultivating nature in order to keep it healthy.

Gremen: Warrior people who take pride in their streak of independence. They epitomize strength and free will.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Here is my generic take on humans:

They tend to live in above-ground communities of wood or brick built homes in regions that are good for fishing, farming or raising livestock. Often large tracts of land are cleared and leveled to make room for more homes or agricuture. These communities are usually primarily populated by other humans. Humans tend to spend most of their short lives working at some job or another trying to make more money. They tend to be a bit on the selfish side, worrying first about their own families needs. As a race, humans are unfocused and have little identity beyond a certain amount of adaptability and a strong ability to breed.

 

[Stormborn]

Ferret, I see exactly what you are getting at. I am currently working on a CS in which I am trying to stick as close to the core rules as possible, with little or no variants, beyond a few things like action points and some class abilites that can be swapped out based on group affiliations like churches, orders, and the like.
However, sticking to standard DnD rules we have decided that only applies to the crunch, not the flavor. So we are working to figure out why dwarves have those racial bonuses you mentioned. But have altered the Favored Class to help explain our views of each culture.
For example: Dwarves are the arcane magic users in the setting, so they have Wizard as a favored class, and the bonus to saving throws isn't becuase they are resistant to magic but because they are familiar with it.. Elves are nature worshipers, so their favored class is Druid.
It is difficult, but I think you can take the numbers and make them racial memories or whatever, or allow simple substitutions that make sense. The real challange is creating a Settign where the rules as written are reality, and then coming up with PCs that fit that.

 

[der_kluge]

These traditions come from Tolkien.

I've never really thought about it, but you have a good point. I've always found it difficult to understand how a whole race of people could successfully live underground. What the heck would they eat?

I see a lot of people removing gnomes from their world. To me, dwarves are the more implausible of the two, but no one ever removes them from their CS. I think just to be different, I'm going to remove dwarves.

I guess one could say that "elves love nature", "dwarves love rocks", etc. That would be a human perspective, like I might say that all Japanese people love technology, and everyone in India loves curry. We form opinions about our world based on stereotypes since they're easy. That's not to say that you couldn't have a race of dwarves living on a tropical island, or elves being real urban. You might have to modify the racial stats a bit, obviously, otherwise they wouldn't make any sense, some of 'em.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

See, what I never got is why humans have a reputation for being strong breeders. We take a long time to bring kids to term, have horrible infant mortality rates, don't live that long, and often fail to form succesful families or communities.

Traditionally human populations are pretty stable.

Dwarves always struck me as having the more favorable population growth rate. They live in less spread out communities, are more resistant to environmental effects and parasites, and live long enough that at least 4 dwarven generations are going to be fully functional during any given period.