PaRaProMo 2016 - 1,001 PC Race Ideas


Homebrew and House Rules

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Coming This October: Paizonian Race Production Month!

The guidelines here are simple, especially if you're already familiar with NaNoWriMo. For the majority of the year, we're gonna do what Paizo does best: Make lists of things that probably shouldn't exist. We're going to compile a list of short race ideas. You can include basic descriptions of ideas, but avoid specifying anything too firm or rules-y. Just list ideas for PC races to play.

Then, in the month of October, it gets interesting—because we'll each set out to drag thirty-one of these races kicking and screaming into rules-based reality, using Paizo's Race Builder where possible. There's no strict PB limit, but try to keep things below 20 points if possible. Sometimes it won't be.

You can keep to producing one race a day, or you can binge it all on Day 31, or anywhere in between. You can use your own suggestions, or carefully keep to only using those of others, forcing other posters to deal with your little abominations. All that matters is that final number: Thirty-One!

Because I'm hoping more people than just myself will be doing this little contest, and I'd like to avoid race repeats where possible, we're going to aim for quite a large number of race ideas here. So, let's begin.

Note: The following are cribbed off of Gark the Goblin, who inspired this thread. The following are entirely his fault and have not been edited at all from his original vision.

1. Duck people

2. Liverwort people

3. Porcupine people

4. Silverfish people

5. Angry birdz people

6. Donald Trump as a person

7. Carnivorous plant people

8. Lionfish people

9. Sea anenome people

10. People with skin made of tarmac

11. American possum people

12. Needlefish people

13. Barnacle people whose mouths hold massive fronds for filter feeding

14. Hydra people, but not fantasy hydras, real hydras ("a minute freshwater coelenterate with a stalklike tubular body and a ring of tentacles around the mouth.")
they dont shit they just periodically vomit

15. horsetail people, or people who make a living farming horsetails and maybe eat them, who extrude silicon through their pores

And now for some Good Ones from me:

16. Lilliputians

17. Robots, but like Wheatley from Portal 2.

18. Radioactive goblins that can turn people into Goblinmen by biting them.

19. Donald Trump but as a—wait someone already did this

19. People who use anenomes symbiotically, like pompom crabs.

20. People who live in hamster balls, but not hamster people.

21. Bat people

22. Like the Dvati, but for Pathfinder.

23. A literal hive of very smart ants. Or termites/naked mole rats/bees/wasps/hornets.

24. Adventurers

25. Martin Shkreli, but as a person.

26. Turrets, but like the turrets from Portal.

Liberty's Edge

27. Gnome like beings that can turn into tea kettles


28. Goblin/Gnome hybrids.

Liberty's Edge

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29. Slime people, but they all look like Slimer from Ghostbusters


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30. Highly sexualized slime people, but and they all look like Slimer from Ghostbusters.


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30. Lost Sock People
31. Catfolk but is actually a cat put in a sweater and carried around by a witch.
32. The sweater the cat is wearing.
33. Broccoli People
34. The Last of the Summer Wine.
35. Tik Tok Men.
36. The Onion Tony Abbot bite into on national television, but with a knife.
37. Smeagol but with a heart.
38. The man whose heart Smeagol stole, and he wants it back.
39. Jort Bulkhard, whose name periodically changes every time he is mentioned
40. A single french fry, but with a knife.
41. A bowl of soup.
42. Brickfolk.
43. A reverse goblin.
44. A waifu.
45. Sneeple.
46. Reptoids but their disguise is just really terrible latex masks and carry a sign that says 'Build The Wall, Ignore the Stars and Sky, Defund NASA'
47. John Darksoul, the protagonist
48. The female character that was clearly written by a man and has 7 brothers.
49. A water fountain on a trolley hooked up to a tap. Removing the hose from the tap is instant death.
50. A psychic bucket of fish bait.
51. Life in Death
52. A hipster who vapes.
53. The hipster's vaporizer.
54. The smoke from the vaping that spells the words 'Ugh' and 'Kek'.
55. A banker.
56. The mold in a gamerbro's armpit given sentience and has a knife.


57. a culture of small-government free market halflings who deeply resent being called kender, and has exiled such people from their lands
58. a commune of kender who have abolished all property laws (property is theft, we just borrow) and despise their elitist halfling neighbours gentrifying their town by evicting them


Garbage-Tier Waifu wrote:

56. The mold in a gamerbro's armpit given sentience and has a knife.

59. Scooby Doo With a Knife

with apologies to gark


These seem a little bit silly.


Okay, just a reminder that these don't have to be totally silly.

60. A race with a lifespan so short it actually comes up during the campaign. Potentially with some sort of reincarnation ability?

61. A race with a sonic attack.

62. Crystal people.

63. A race that can turn into sand to fit into small spaces.

64. A race so pampered by their god that the main racial abilities are based around that god pulling strings and doing them favors.

65. A race that spends the majority of its time climbing vertical surfaces.

66. A one-legged race, like the dufflepuds/monopods from Narnia.


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Oh, one that was bugging me recently:

67. A kenku analog. Yes, we have tengu, but aside from being corvid people, tengu are entirely distinct from kenku as a race. I miss those sneaky, cursed, voice-mimicking a~+@+~*s.


68. Lesser spotted purple banana goblin.


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69. Faceless people who talk through vibrations in their feet.
70. Outsiders but are actually a group of people displaced in time and split throughout mutliple timelines. Sometimes they are identical to the original. Sometimes they have taken a dramatic change in personality, appearance or behaviour. Any given individual could have multiple selves running around in the same timeline. The death of one has no impact on the death of the others.
71. Tiny blobs of slimes with minute black specs for eyes, and small pseudopods for hands and arms. They are 2 feet tall and eat grass and fallen tree branches for nourishment. They do not sleep, drink water and breath in oxygen through their mass.
72. Existential dread given physicality.
73. Worm That Strolls, which is totally NOT a way to get a template on your spellcaster and a totally balanced player race because it can only move 10 feet a turn.
74. Garbage people.
75. Garbage people with an anime body pillow over them.
76. Former President Richard Nixon, but with a mustache.
77. Deep Sea Merfolk.
78. Sheepfolk. They are the best at hugs.
79. Cactus People.
80. The Id of another player character given manifestation as a raven.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

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81. A race borne of a wish spell.

82. A race whose members are uniformly overweight. Perhaps similar to halflings - fat, happy, and jolly.

83. An otherwise-neutral (or even evil) race that is cursed to help others and do good or suffer horrible ramifications. Maybe a great tragedy or genocide occurred because this race did nothing when they could have easily stepped in and helped, so a powerful entity cursed the whole species so that its members lose their minds or souls or somesuch, little by little, each time they refuse to help someone in need.

84. A playable hivemind. (As in: a PC plays one member of a hivemind species whose other members are presumably elsewhere).

85. A "race" of children (think: Peter Pan and Neverland).

86. A "race" of clones - all physically identical to the original, and all with similar - but not identical - personalities, shaped by their own experiences. For example, if the original was Lawful Neutral, a Chaotic Good member must have experienced extraordinary things to be changed so profoundly. (Yes, this is basically The Council of Ricks, from Rick and Morty.)

87. A race of diminutive parasites who form long-term bonds with human hosts. They don't hijack their minds; they actually live in harmony with their hosts, and develop relationships with them.

88. A playable, race-builder-style gnoll race, with a racial witch archetype that plays off the "cackle" class feature.

89. A playable, race-builder-style myconid race.

90. A race of cactacae, complete with rivebows.

91. A race of hotchi, complete with giant rooster steeds.

92. A flumph-style race: an alien race that looks very, very silly, but whose members are actually quite grave and serious-minded, possess a tragic backstory, and who have no real idea how silly they look to humanoids.

93. A race with ancestral recall. Basically, they inherent the memories of their ancestors.

94. A race sent to [insert campaign setting] in order to catalogue everything on it. Plot twist: ...because it's going to blow up / die / dis-corporate soon! Plot twist two: ...because their masters are preparing to assimilate / conquer / absorb it soon! Plot twist three: ...because they're really from the future / an alternate timeline / a parallel dimension.

95. A (non-reptile) race that sheds is skin periodically.


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96. Plantfolk and Fungalfolk seem moderately popular in current and previous editions... so what what about Lichenfolk? Bonus points if such a race is composed of three symbiotic partners.

97. What about a human (or other humanoid) offshoot bioengineered as a high-speed, high-G pilot. Kinda like a Starfinder version of Graham.


98. Flying lizard people.

99. Hermaphrodite telepathic plant people with no vocal cords or mouth (they feed with their roots and their pair of feeder tendrils).

100. A human offshoot resulting from humanity's promiscuity with other races. They have a always-active low-level telepathic field that makes them really good at understanding other sentient (or maybe just sapient) beings.

Also, are we supposed to name these? If so, firmani, botanican, shakai.


101. An incorporeal creature that possesses bodies. Possession lasts until the physical body dies.

102. A race that ripped their way back to the mortal plain from an afterlife.

103. A species who are this close to ascending to a purely mental state.

104. Gods bound into mortal form with their power stripped from them.

105. A species that exposed themselves to the horror of the cosmos and got shaped by it. Think Lovecraftian.

106. Deep ones.

107. A swarm of nanites.

Liberty's Edge

108. The botanical equivalent to owlbears.

109. Dogfolk/Wolffolk


110. A Humanoid race, bred to be Familiars.


111. A race based on symbiosis, like a race of coral people, or a playable version of those anglerfish monsters.

112. Leading off of the "coral people" notion, a race with a built-in shelter it can go into. It can be snail-people, hermit crab people, coral people, people who just happen to live in shells like hermit crabs, turtle people, etc.

113. An extremely diverse race of talking animals.

114. A race of very normal humans doing some very normal human adventuring. In other words, a race of extremely unconvincing "humans" that are clearly very strange but difficult to technically prove the real nature of, in the style of Ted Cruz For Human President, Normal Human Blog, or, if you're willing to stretch the requirements slightly and really want to avoid the political satire site, Thrackerzod the Typical Pony.

"So, tell Thrackerzod—as a joke, because she is a normal pony—what would normal ponies consume? I AM BLENDING IN."

Liberty's Edge

Abandoned Arts wrote:
90. A race of cactacae, complete with rivebows.

Dragon #352 actually has these, though they are in 3.5 stats and have a +2 LA.

111. Floating bags of hot air from a gas giant, but playable
112. salamander people, but not made of fire

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

113. A race that can see ethereal creatures, and speak with dead.

114. A sage, lavender-skinned "race" that consists of exactly one guy. Whenever s/he dies, he's reincarnated elsewhere, born to another set of parents.

115. A playable duplicate from a mirror of opposition.

116. A entire race of people who are cursed to rise as (playable) undead upon their death.

117. A "dead but doesn't know it, Bruce Willis from the Sixth Sense" race. Oh, and spoilers.

Liberty's Edge

118. A small race capable of physcically enhancing each other.

119. A race that looks like whoever's looking at them.

120. A race which derives power from tattoos on their bodies.


Kobold Cleaver wrote:
113. An extremely diverse race of talking animals.

Do you mean like anthropomorphized animals (like a single original precursor race to kitsune, tengu, ratfolk, etc.) or actual animals that are fully sentient?

Grand Archive

114. A Race of turtle/tortoise people. Not like the ninja turtles.. has more of a wate re base culture

Liberty's Edge

122. Tri-legged people.


123. People who have skin like plastic and enjoy beachhouses and expensive cars.


124. A people who are always cloaked and masked, and wear really long gloves to hide their bodies. Anyone who sees their actual form is blinded, and the creature disappears.


125. Zombie-like race that eats the brains of dead enemies, and for a short while, gain a vestige of their abilities.

Liberty's Edge

126. Cuttlefish people, who can spray ink and make their skin glow like disco lights


127. Sentient weapons. They can take Weapon Focus in themselves. They float. They dislike being used as weapons.
128. A race that starts venerable and becomes younger as they age.
129. The bourgeois.
130. The inner workings of your GM's mind.
131. A ghoul girl...the best character...


132 Two races, who spawn one another. Race A only gets children of race B, and vice versa.


VRMH wrote:
132 Two races, who spawn one another. Race A only gets children of race B, and vice versa.

That sounds somehow... familiar. ;)


133. JPEG Artifacts

Liberty's Edge

134. Magnetic people.


135. Peasants who took the Commoner Flaws.


136. Peasants who can only take levels in Commoner, but gain incredible powers at later levels.


137. Shadows turned into a player-friendly race.
138. Shambling mounds turned into a player-friendly race.
139. Froghemoths turned into a player-friendly race.
The pattern is so subtle.

140. A race that makes tentacles seem sensible.
141. Myrmidons (antmen) as literal antmen - with six limbs.
142. A race that can occupy multiple non-adjacent squares.
143. A race that generates plasma.

(Sorry for any repeats; I'll be honest when I say I didn't read quite everything up above)

Liberty's Edge

144. A subspecies of goblins incredibly skilled at lying.

Radiant Oath

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

145. People that are DUNGEONPROOOOOOF! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!


146. A race that can use suggestion as a spell-like ability.

147. A humanoid race with the lower half of some sort of animal.


147a. Bunnytaurs :3
148. A mime pulled from Earth, but cursed with speechlessness, so they can only communicate via miming.
149. A murderhobo. May already be a PC race.
150. People who are so tiny they have had to create halfling sized constructs to get around and be involved with the world.
151. A race of space lizards come to infiltrate the planet to set up for future invasion, because there doesn't exist a race like this already!
152. A race of flower people that constantly release hallucinogenic spores.
153. A race of spindly nightmare people who aren't all that mean but every creatures primal instinct upon seeing them is to be terrified of them.


this seems like it could be useful for some here


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154. A race accidentally created when one of the low-fecundity races (probably elves or dwarves) tried to create vat-grown kids... and they ended up with a mentally-twisted, physically-stunted offshoot race that can psychically infect other humanoids into transforming into new members of this new race. Think 1 part meenlocks, 1 part Reavers, with a pinch of mutant's deformities.


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155. A race with abilities largely based on the specific breeds of symbiotic vermin they are raised from birth with. Choose 1-2 for your PC. Each type gives a different sort of benefit.

Liberty's Edge

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156. A race with no nose and no tail. How does it smell? Terrible!

Liberty's Edge

157. Naked mole rat people (not composed out of multiple naked mole rats, but wrinkled-ass blind humanoids with big teeth who don't cope well with high gravity and have an empathic connection with all their hive members)


158. Mini-otyughs who live in small communities on oceanic garbage patches or graveyards of wrecked ships who accept donations from passing ships and trade the salvaged items they find.

158b. (I already worked this one up for a 3PP that never materialized:) An amphibious or fully-aquatic offshoot of mini-otyughs who consume waste from the water with their teeth (for carrion and larger waste), baleen-like filters (for smaller waste), and gills (which exchange oxygen and absorb the smallest waste chemicals and contaminants). While occasionally found singly or in pairs following large ships or small fleets, they prefer lakes, rivers, small seas, and coastlines near humanoid settlements cleaning up the sewage and other pollution (like tannery runoff).

158c. As a & b above, but a race of mini-otyughs adapted for outer space. While they can usually eek out subsistence calories from photosynthesis/solar radiation, they will often follow (or remora onto the hull) of Starfinder ships for the jettisoned waste. A few enterprising colonies have set-up in Lagrange points, near shipping lanes, and in starship wrecks to consume the waste from passing ships and trade items they scavenge.

Liberty's Edge

159. Naiads


159. A goblin species that can undergo slight mutations at will. Sort of like Eberron's shifters, but with more options from moment-to-moment.

160. A race like the landstriders.

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