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Coming Next October: Paizonian Race Production Month!
PaRaProMo 2016 ended in a narrow success, and now it's time to start preparing for 2017!
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. To be precise, 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 be combining our efforts to shove thirty-one of these races against the membranes of reality until it gives way and they are statted up for all to see. We'll be 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.
Some people like to roll randomly to choose their race prompts, which is why these are numbered. Others prefer to choose. Some like to give full race summaries, while others prefer to just give the racial traits. Either is fine. All that matters is that we combine our totals to reach the magic number: Thirty-one. Also, some people like to get comedic with their suggestions. That's okay, but don't go too overboard. It makes it a lot harder to adapt, say, a sweater worn by a cat into a race. We can do it, but it's a lot harder.
Anyways, spoilered below are all the race ideas from last year. Just to kick us off.
I apologize in advance for any prompts given by Garbage-Tier Waifu.
1. Duck people
2. Liverwort people
3. Silverfish people
4. Angry birdz people
5. Donald Trump as a person
6. Carnivorous plant people
7. Lionfish people
8. Sea anemone people
9. People with skin made of tarmac
10. American possum people
11. Needlefish people
12. Barnacle people whose mouths hold massive fronds for filter feeding
13. 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 s#+% they just periodically vomit
14. horsetail people, or people who make a living farming horsetails and maybe eat them, who extrude silicon through their pores
15. Lilliputians
16. Robots, but like Wheatley from Portal 2.
17. Radioactive goblins that can turn people into Goblinmen by biting them.
18. People who use anenomes symbiotically, like pompom crabs.
19. People who live in hamster balls, but not hamster people.
20. Bat people
21. Like the Dvati, but for Pathfinder.
22. A literal hive of very smart ants. Or termites/naked mole rats/bees/wasps/hornets.
23. Adventurers
24. Martin Shkreli, but as a person.
25. Turrets, but like the turrets from Portal.
26. Gnome like beings that can turn into tea kettles
27. Goblin/Gnome hybrids.
28. Highly sexualized slime people, but and they all look like Slimer from Ghostbusters.
29. Lost Sock People
30. Catfolk but is actually a cat put in a sweater and carried around by a witch.
31. Broccoli People
32. The Last of the Summer Wine.
33. The Onion Tony Abbot bite into on national television, but with a knife.
34. Smeagol but with a heart.
35. The man whose heart Smeagol stole, and he wants it back.
36. Jort Bulkhard, whose name periodically changes every time he is mentioned
37. Brickfolk.
38. A reverse goblin.
39. Sneeple.
40. 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'
41. John Darksoul, the protagonist
42. The female character that was clearly written by a man and has 7 brothers.
43. A water fountain on a trolley hooked up to a tap. Removing the hose from the tap is instant death.
45. Life in Death
46. The smoke from the vaping that spells the words 'Ugh' and 'Kek'.
47. A banker.
48. The mold in a gamerbro's armpit given sentience and has a knife.
49. A race with a lifespan so short it actually comes up during the campaign. Potentially with some sort of reincarnation ability?
50. A race with a sonic attack.
51. Crystal people.
52. A race that can turn into sand to fit into small spaces.
53. A race so pampered by their god that the main racial abilities are based around that god pulling strings and doing them favors.
54. A race that spends the majority of its time climbing vertical surfaces.
55. A one-legged race, like the dufflepuds/monopods from Narnia.
56. 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.
57. Lesser spotted purple banana goblin.
58. Faceless people who talk through vibrations in their feet.
59. 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.
60. 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.
61. Existential dread given physicality.
62. Garbage people.
63. Garbage people with an anime body pillow over them.
64. Former President Richard Nixon, but with a mustache.
65. Deep Sea Merfolk.
66. Sheepfolk. They are the best at hugs.
67. Cactus People.
68. The Id of another player character given manifestation as a raven.
69. A "race" of children (think: Peter Pan and Neverland).
70. 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.)
71. A playable, race-builder-style gnoll race, with a racial witch archetype that plays off the "cackle" class feature.
72. A playable, race-builder-style myconid race.
73. A race of cactacae, complete with rivebows.
74. A race of hotchi, complete with giant rooster steeds.
75. 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.
76. A race with ancestral recall. Basically, they inherent the memories of their ancestors.
77. 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.
78. A (non-reptile) race that sheds is skin periodically.
79. 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.
80. 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.
81. Flying lizard people.
82. Hermaphrodite telepathic plant people with no vocal cords or mouth (they feed with their roots and their pair of feeder tendrils).
83. 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.
84. An incorporeal creature that possesses bodies. Possession lasts until the physical body dies.
85. A race that ripped their way back to the mortal plain from an afterlife.
86. A species who are this close to ascending to a purely mental state.
87. Gods bound into mortal form with their power stripped from them.
88. A species that exposed themselves to the horror of the cosmos and got shaped by it. Think Lovecraftian.
89. Deep ones.
90. A swarm of nanites.
91. The botanical equivalent to owlbears.
92. Dogfolk/Wolffolk
93. A Humanoid race, bred to be Familiars.
94. A race based on symbiosis, like a race of coral people, or a playable version of those anglerfish monsters.
95. 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.
96. An extremely diverse race of talking, non-anthropomorphic but sentient animals.
97. 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."
98. Floating bags of hot air from a gas giant, but playable
99. salamander people, but not made of fire
100. 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.
101. A playable duplicate from a mirror of opposition.
102. A "dead but doesn't know it, Bruce Willis from the Sixth Sense" race. Oh, and spoilers.
103. A small race capable of physcically enhancing each other.
104. A race that looks like whoever's looking at them.
105. A race which derives power from tattoos on their bodies.
106. A Race of turtle/tortoise people. Not like the ninja turtles.. has more of a wate re base culture
107. Tri-legged people.
108. People who have skin like plastic and enjoy beachhouses and expensive cars.
109. 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.
110. Zombie-like race that eats the brains of dead enemies, and for a short while, gain a vestige of their abilities.
111. Cuttlefish people, who can spray ink and make their skin glow like disco lights
112. Sentient weapons. They can take Weapon Focus in themselves. They float. They dislike being used as weapons.
113. A race that starts venerable and becomes younger as they age.
114. The bourgeois.
115. The inner workings of your GM's mind.
116. A ghoul girl.
117/118. Two races, who spawn one another. Race A only gets children of race B, and vice versa.
119. JPEG Artifacts
120. Magnetic people.
121. Peasants who took the Commoner Flaws.
122. Shadows turned into a player-friendly race.
123. Shambling mounds turned into a player-friendly race.
124. Froghemoths turned into a player-friendly race.
125. Myrmidons (antmen) as literal antmen - with six limbs.
126. A race that can occupy multiple non-adjacent squares.
127. A race that generates plasma.
128. A subspecies of goblins incredibly skilled at lying.
129. A race that can use suggestion as a spell-like ability.
130. A humanoid race with the lower half of some sort of animal.
131. A mime pulled from Earth, but cursed with speechlessness, so they can only communicate via miming.
132. A murderhobo. May already be a PC race.
133. People who are so tiny they have had to create halfling sized constructs to get around and be involved with the world.
134. 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!
135. 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.
136. 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.
137. 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.
138. 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.
139. 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.
140. (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).
141. 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.
142. Naiads
143. A goblin species that can undergo slight mutations at will. Sort of like Eberron's shifters, but with more options from moment-to-moment.
144. A race like the landstriders.
145. Crustaceans similar to dark crystals Garthim.
146. Camel Spider people.
147. badgerpanda hybrid humanoids.
148. A race of unseen servants somehow mutated into a new life form.
149. A race that can change its appearance, but not its form, with illusions.
150. A race that's tapped into a "hivemind"/"internet"-like communication system with all other members of its race or clan or family, but that is otherwise fully independent.
151. One goblin, stacked on a second goblin, stacked on a third goblin, in a trench coat.
152. A race so heavily endebted to a devil or god that the servants of that being constantly follow members of the race around, collecting every part of the debtor they can get their claws on. Your hand gets chopped off? A creepy winged monkey scurries in and grabs it, then runs off. Hairs fall out? Monkey grabs them and climbs into a nearby culvert. They're always there. Watching. Waiting.
153. Species of "world prospectors"—just looking this planet over for some potential new developments. Think Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on this one.
154. Eidolon blooded-Those with an eidolon in their ancestry.
155. Humanoind Llama's, because lovely llamas are lonely.
156. Coyote born--Born tricksters.
157. The Curiosity/Spirit Mars rovers, having acquired sentience and learned to produce more of their kind.
158. Jack-o-lantern people.
159. Alternatively, a race inspired by the Jack-of-the-Lantern story.
160. Spooky scary skeletons.
161. Actual monster mash given sentience.
162. Elf/dolphin hybrids.
163. A species that lives exclusively in the forest canopy and potentially never even knows the ground exists.
164. Aphid people.
165. A race of swamp people who are physically adapted to walk on stilts—think the Crow Fishers.
167. Swamp people who are very similar to onions.
I reserve the right to use anything people come up with for prompts 81, 82, or 83 for the firmani, botanicans, and shakai, respectively.
168. A race of people who eat rocks.
169. A small or tiny race with a Strength bonus.
170. Playable dryads/hamadryads who carry their potted plants around with them.
171. A race of people who can't be seen.
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177. People with skin like smartphone touchscreens that lights up and stores information
178. Anthropomorphic anticores
179. Extradimensional spirits possessing mobile willow trees
Oh, no! Now my thread is about to be locked!
181. A race of shapeshifters that can swap between multiple preset forms, or 'aliases', and gain more as they level.
But that'll drive down the resale value... lower than it already is... like one of mine. :-)
That's how I houserule aasimars in my game.
Punks still play them. -_-
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183. Catfolk, but more like Garfield.
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184. Flamingo people.
185. Heron/egret/crane people.
187. Sebastian, but as a playable race.
188. Smurfs.
189. An incorporeal race (good luck).
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190.) A race of sentient gorgonopsids. Non-anthropomorphic.
191. A race that won't. Stop. Eating.
192. A race that gets bigger from eating things.
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Good to have some free community-built races for PF. ;)
196. A race for whom sleepwalking and/or dreaming is extremely important in some way.
198. A race of orc-dwarf hybrids, light-sensitive packmules with a raging short temper and a physical hardiness that impresses even dwarves. These creatures have a mutual hatred of 'true' dwarves and orcs, and barely get along with half-orcs.
199. A race of intelligent, free-willed evolving undead. They have a distinct life cycle: they start their existence as mostly intact ghouls, then evolve progressively into other forms: zombie, skeleton, swarm of bones, undead cloud of ash, incorporeal humanoid form, incorporeal floating head, and finally total invisibility before losing all ability to affect reality altogether (essentially becoming a powerless ghost). This race may be functionally immortal but has a finite 'lifespan' of being able to interact with the mortal realm.
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200. A race similar to stories about Hecate, that changes its shape depending on the time of day/night.
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167. Swamp people who are very similar to onions.
IAmNotAJudge, but I would award bonus points if this people/race are a fey-touched/kami-touched cousin to the Princess Mononoke kodamas.
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202. A race of these not quite-humanoid feline-ish beings. (Note: creepy and unsettling.)
219. A race of people who feed on fear, or another emotion.
220. A race of intelligent equations that can teleport at will between flat surfaces that can hold writing or etchings.
221. A race of sentient cravings for various kinds of food.
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222. A race closely linked to matryoshka dolls, like a golem race.
223. A race of animated magical debris. Made of very solid, yet mobile withing the creature, items used in magic (potion bottles, spent scrolls, spent wands, once spelled weapons, etc.). They spontaneously animate when concentrated and 'heal' as more is added. Absorb magic to 'heal' and levitate. Anti-magic is lethal, as are dispels, etc.
I have one wandering my world as a source of trade goods and plot bridges.
224) An apex predator
225a) miniature space kaiju hamster, with cheek pouches of holding
226. A race that is round. Like, round enough that it can roll away to safety.
227. A race that moves on wheels. Like the Wheelers from Return to Oz, or those weird critters from His Dark Materials.
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232. A race with only one arm.
233. A race with true cylindrical symmetry
234. A race that feeds off of the presence of positive emotions in other intelligent races.
235. A race that photosynthesizes, but is not a plant.
236. Technically two races in physical symbiosis.
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238. A race with that requires three parents to reproduce.
239. A race that communicates primarily via scent and gesture.
240. A race that reproduces primarily via parthenogenesis.
241. An extreme predator that relies on looking like a helpless child of another species/race to attract prey.
242. A race that reproduces via parasitically infecting other races with a disease, like tapeworms or flukes, but probably larger.
243. A race who has evolved to be somewhat cannibalistic, and sees it as a truly good act of sacrifice to the community.
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I did actually make a race that reproduced via parthenogenesis, though that is its only option for reproduction, so there's some distinction.
244. Filthy peasants, but filthy rogues instead
245. Race born when the local mage academy put a little too much waste in the local sewage treatment plant
246. Extremophile race
247. Easily offended clawed water spirits/demons
248. Bouncing off of #242, a race that can only reproduce by colonizing the corpse of a Gargantuan or larger monster
249. Tarantula hawk people
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250. Cherubs.
251. Cherubs that are just normal goblins with wings strapped to their backs.
246. Extremophile race
252. A race that is EXTREME.
249. Tarantula hawk people
In what ways do you see these differently than the xill?
Gark didn't clarify here, but he did mention this idea to me, so I'll give the impression I got.
First, and obviously, xill aren't playable. They're also evil and have a lot of Ethereal baggage.
Second, xill pretty much "impregnate" just about anything alive. Tarantula hawks have a very specific type of target.
Third, Gark specifically mentioned to me a race dependent on the parasitism of a "Gargantuan-sized creature". Maybe these are "dragon hawks", let's say.