D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[Scribe]

In this thread.....because people will say it's too much work to add in an entire culture of tueflings to their finely crafted world....or...because they don't want too many different PC options for aesthetic reasons.

I believe that if push came to shove, unless they simply do not have fiends at all as that is fairly...foundational...its the aesthetics that truly are off putting.

Go back and read my posts, please. I'm not going to repeat myself again. I never discourage anyone from playing Tieflings in my world. A lot of others do because they either stick with the "Core Four" or because they run tieflings as described in the PHB.

I'll try and find them, its a long ass thread, and the centaur section kind of glazed my eyes.

 

[tetrasodium]

I dont see NEARLY the same push back against Assimar. I wonder why.

Looking over volos 103/104 they are more generic. The only specific being or place it mentions is mount celestia & immediately following that is an ambiguation about it being the divine realm of many deities over and over it sheds specificity right down to the note to gm sidebar including the words "or other celestial being" Take eberron & darksun. Eberron has different roles for a lot of those beings & doesn't have that place, but the lack of specificity means the gm doesn't need to deprogram an enthusiastic player with ideas spawned by specifics. Darksun doesn't really have either for various reasons but a GM who wanted to allow a tiefling in their athas game could say "Those don't really exist but the elemental chaos has x &y while the grey & the black are.... I'm willing to let you do this but you need to pick one of those & get back to me to work out the next step"

 

[Minigiant]

In this thread.....because people will say it's too much work to add in an entire culture of tueflings to their finely crafted world....or...because they don't want too many different PC options for aesthetic reasons.

Pre-4e, I'd agree with that statement as tieflings then had almost nothing in common as a race. A deep dive into old tieflings to give them a part in the world would require stripping them down and forcing them into a few core backgrounds.

And that's what happened in 4e.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Which is why I said it would be great if I could have my cake and eat it too.

Which is why I replied that you could, it just takes more time. You can "have your cake and eat it too", but you have to do more work.

I could conceive of a world that had far more races, it's just not the campaign world I've developed over the decades. There's also never been a big demand to extend allowed races even though many of my players were recruited from public games which allow any and all races. Since I always have a full group I see no reason to change. Which is no reflection on you, your preferences or your game.

And that's fine. I was just responding with a counterexample.

In addition, not caring about "depth" is neither inherently good nor bad. It's just a different preference.

That's fine, too. Never said it wasn't. However, a lot of people do like depth. I was just responding to say that depth and racial diversity are not opposites, which I had perceived your post to be saying. If you weren't saying that, there's no issue to discuss here.

Funny thing is I regularly go out of my way to say that other people's styles are perfectly fine, only to get a response like this that seems to almost willfully misinterpret what I said. Maybe it was my use of "have my cake and eat it too"? But there have been a ton of posts that say a DM is wrong if they limit races for "the wrong reasons". Those wrong reasons seem to often be in the eye of the beholder.

I interpreted you saying "have my cake and eat it too" as being a blanket statement, but may have misunderstood that. I don't want to put words in your mouth that you didn't say, but it seemed a bit unclear.

If you can have over a hundred races and it makes sense to you, great. I'm not sure how that works, but if you and your group have fun with it you're doing it right. I don't know how to state it any more clearly. Having a preference and a style does not invalidate or say that you preference and style is wrong.

It takes a lot of work and effort. It pays off, though.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'll try and find them, its a long ass thread, and the centaur section kind of glazed my eyes.

I wasn't really posting during then. The "Search" button lets you filter posts in this thread by poster.

 

[tetrasodium]

That does not apply to all settings, though. Eberron doesn't have Asmodeus, and it offers other ways you can play a tiefling. Go read Rising from the Last War. Specific beats general.

Like I said, you can wave that flavor text easily in your campaigns. It is not required.

You could say the same "does not apply to all settings" about wotc using so many of the core books as a vehicle to replace a planescape & FR setting book but that doesn't change the hurdle of needing to make players unlearn it before something else can be taught. It breeds frustration because it's so blatant & excessive I was still fighting the 4e warforged are totally monotone speaking robots as recent as late 2019 despite having rising from the last war to point at "yea I know but..." When someone needs to fight the same battles over and over again to strip out a specific setting that is always represented in practically everything wotc has put out in the history of 5e people develop a raw nerve towards the most glaring & unforgivable ines even if they are stripping out different parts of it

 

[Maxperson]

In other words, you hold no responsibility for your actions.

I absolutely own my actions. I would 100% own using the word in proper context. Would you own your action of allowing your bias to inappropriately apply someone else's arguments to me?

Because, let us not lie to ourselves here, Scott has been in this thread since the beginning. They aren't "someone new"

I think a lot of us skip posts when we come back to pages worth. There are also 239 pages. I certainly do not remember Cantina being used that way. I'm not doubting you on that, but I don't remember it.

You are responsible for the things you say. End of story.

Yep. And YOU are responsible for your misinterpretations based on your bias. If you refuse to look at something for what it is, that's on you. End of story.

If he didn't know it was an insult (which I highly doubt since he has been in this thread too long) then he could have easily said "my bad, I didn't realize" instead he has called the other side childish for refusing to see "see both sides" while refusing to see that the other side has legitimate reasons for their reaction.

That side has a legitimate reason to look critically at what he said to see if it was a pejorative. They do not have a legitimate reason to assume that he's using it that way.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Pre-4e, I'd agree with that statement as tieflings then had almost nothing in common as a race. A deep dive into old tieflings to give them a part in the world would require stripping them down and forcing them into a few core backgrounds.

And that's what happened in 4e.

I'm literally just paraphrasing the two most common arguments on this thread on why a poster disallows races in their campaign....that isn't my opinion (I allow anything in the official books and will look at 3rd party things and allow unless its game breaking in some way mechanically)

In fact, the only disallow I have seen mentioned that makes sense to me is Aarokokra at low levels because of how flight can ruin many low level challenges (usually prepublished as opposed tonGMs customizing challenge for the party).

EDIT: I do want to clarify that by aesthetics I'm talking about someone who feels that a "cantina" of oddball beings ruins their (often influenced by old editions) view of what a D&D populace should look like. I'm not talking about the particular look of any particular race.

 

[Maxperson]

Wow. I am on the Autism Spectrum so I am always at the end of "sorry, I must have misunderstood that" or "maybe I wasn't clear enough" or "there may have been a miscommunication, let's start over". Your constant "it's your fault, not mine!" attitude is really turns a lot of people off of having conversations with you.

Both of the participants in a conversation are at fault when there's a miscommunication/error in understanding. Whether you like it or not, claiming that you didn't intend any offense does not stop offense from happening. Communication is two way, which means that offense is also two-way.

There was a time here where I said something and used the wrong words. A woman took offense at them and when I looked, I realized how my misstated words could easily have offended. I immediately apologized. That was my fault an I owned it.

However, if I say, "All the books have added so many races that they have become like the Cantina. I love it." and you choose to be insulted, that's on you. I did not miscommunicate at all. My statement was very clear and any miscommunication is on your part. You don't get to make something my fault where my intent is clear.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

There was a time here where I said something and used the wrong words. A woman took offense at them and when I looked, I realized how my misstated words could easily have offended. I immediately apologized. That was my fault an I owned it.

However, if I say, "All the books have added so many races that they have become like the Cantina. I love it." and you choose to be insulted, that's on you. I did not miscommunicate at all. My statement was very clear and any miscommunication is on your part. You don't get to make something my fault where my intent is clear.

Have you ever stopped to think how often you end up arguing about yourself, your actions, or something personal about you in a thread instead of remaining on topic?

Maybe side discussions about personal behavior shouldnt be public discussions??

It's not just you that does this, but it seems like there is always some sort of domestic squabble happening mixed in with vaguely slightly on topic banter....and franky NOBODY wants to hear it.