Your favorite nonstandard races?

[Dragonbait]

Just adding some votes to:
Kenku
Giants (Arcana Evolved)
Sebeccai (spelling?, Arcana Evolved) They were created by the giants.
Hengeyokai (Oriental Adventures; shapeshifting, spirit-like, and with the Humanoid (shapeshifter) rule change in Dragon magazine, ECL +0)
Mojh (Arcana Evolved)
Drach (Arcana Evolved)

The giants could have definately built an empire, and if they like altering races with magic, like they did with the sebeccai, it could offer chances to use some odd races, templates and the like. The others are probably not empire builders.

They are not all my favorites, but they offer a variety of appearances, abilities, and the like. I can't remember the names of monsters from other MMs, so I just went with these.

 

[DMH]

The Emerging Forms line from Primal Urge is by far my most favorite set of races. The esuqam (plants that farm animals), alathreen (brain cells for a plane), d'ah rien (psionic insects that teach other races), ka ngrej (crab people with several sub races), thozeran (living coral) and zure (desert dwelling rodent-like people who are natural archeologists) are my favorites.

Oathbound has several interesting ones- Wrack and Ruin's scar are humans with skin parasites, Wildwood's ologatu are humanoids that rarely tire amd berns are giant yellowjackets, Domains of the Forge's silvers eat metals, lunars are shapeshifters (2 forms) and asherak are winged tiger people, and Plains of Penance's hovara are flying rays.

Races of Evernor (I-III) from Silverthorn are rarely mentioned in threads like this, and I don't understand why. They are not as creative and alien as those in Emerging Forms, but they are useful and fairly diverse.

 

[Aaron L]

My absolute favorite are Elan. So much so that in my personal game world, in which the only humanoid (and only playable) races I have are humans, dwarves, and elves, I also decided to include Elan

I altered them, however. Instead of going through a psuedo-magical-but-supposedly-psionic transformation ritual, they undergo many years of training to alter their body chemistry and metabolism and the functioning of their brains until at the end they have taken complete control of their body's functioning and can cease aging, but by then they've altered their brain pathways to the point that they have lost all but the most basic knowledge of the world and thier formers lives have to start over again fresh.

In essence they retrain their bodies to be immortal, but erase most of their own minds in the process. They rewire their bodies and reformat their brains.

And like you use them Psion, they're more a sect than a major race.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I really like the Mul (sic? ) from Dark Sun - half man/half dwarf always seemed like fun to me.

 

[Voadam]

Other ones I like

Asherake (Complete Minions, Oathbound CS, Wildwood)
Snailfolk (Into the Black)
Bladeling (Lord of the Iron Fortress, MMII, Planewalker.com)
Blue (psionic section of the SRD)

 

[takyris]

Kenku and Wemics. I always loved both of those guys.

 

[Agamemnon]

For me it's Kenku and Githzerai. The former because they've decent stats for rogues, the latter because of their backstory.

 

[Rhun]

I use some of the d20 Future races in my homebrew fantasy setting. Most of them can be used with some minor adjustments.

 

[Psion]

Wow, lots of Kenku love. Probably appropriate if I have an East Asian themed area.

Forgot about minions. There are a lot of suitable PC races in that one. Dover and Knuk should make it in.

 

[sckeener]

I'm surprised Thri-kreen haven't been mentioned yet. I loved playing them in Dark Sun.

other races I like to play are ghouls, Sean's vampires, shadow templated races, pixies, (groan-shoot me for mentioning half-dragons (but I can't help it), and cambions.