The premise that humans are the most common race in a fantasy setting has always seemed contrived to me anyway. Certainly because of breeding patterns there should be more human than dwarves or elves because even though they are both longer lived races, familys with half a dozen children or more aren't as common in their cultures... However, a lot of the other races breed like rabbits: orcs for example spend a lot of time breeding and not just with themselves...if orc or similiar races ever got their act together, they'ld swamp human based civilizations... besides, why cant gameworld "whatever-its-called" not be set in an era where the elves are the dominant speciaes and have the great cities and humans still haven't dominated any one area....
In LotR for example...outside Mordor, humans are the most common race by far, yet didnt the halflings/elf/dwarf/and an outsider(gandalf) outnumber the humans in that adventuring party....
How about no. If anything we need more Non-Human like races (and I just don't mean pointy eared human, short human, shorter human, and the like).
IMC humans are on the decline, the return of a nature goddess from a age long imprisonment has brought a great forestation to the world. The creatures that do well in forests to well in my world. This has brought about a gnoll empire and the flourishing of several elvish kingdoms.
Human kingdoms are falling behind due to the encroachment of forests on arable land. With less land to farm they cannot maintain their economy and hence their culture. This has caused the dwarves to retreat into their mountains due to lack of trade.
A point of fact is that the setting will be Golarion the Pathfinder setting, so the human races will be those already given prime placement mainly Cheliaxians, Shoanti, and Varisians. Those are the ones in Rise of the Runelords anyways.
Anyways those are going to be the cultures that are going to get focus and such.
Though a lot of the setting said here are interesting I don't beleive the designers are going to redesign the setting to add these in.
Making none generic humans would be good too. I'm not on the boat of more or less humans, humans are a race that are easily related to and give the most creative flexibility in the game.
I would be interested to see Human "Races" though which have designs much like the non-humans. Starting with the three mentioned in RotRL.
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There is an asian culture too. I don't know if they have been named, but Ameiko Kajitsu (sp?) and her father in RotRL were immigrants from an eastern culture.
Also Golarion has an Egyptian like setting (Entombed with the Pharoahs is set there). I don't have that mod so I don't know if the locals are racially a different culture, but I imagine they are.
IMC humans are on the decline, the return of a nature goddess from a age long imprisonment has brought a great forestation to the world. The creatures that do well in forests to well in my world. This has brought about a gnoll empire and the flourishing of several elvish kingdoms.
Human kingdoms are falling behind due to the encroachment of forests on arable land. With less land to farm they cannot maintain their economy and hence their culture. This has caused the dwarves to retreat into their mountains due to lack of trade.
Mow, that's a fun idea. ^^
My campaign does have humans, but they just discovered the fire, so to speak. Magical fire. They are only able to compete because of elven magic and dwarven engeneering and their slightly higher number is the only real advantage they have (Humans:Elves:Dwarves 9:6:5).The most numerous race are actually goblins, because they breed in masses and live everywhere, unlike other races, which only small parts of the continent for themselves. Goblins are about 25% of all humanoids.
LotR had 6 humans (Aragorn, Baromir, Theoden, Denethor, Faramir, and Wormtongue) 1 dwarf (Gimli) 5 elves (Eowyn, Legolas, Arwen, Eomer, and Elrond) 5 halflings (Meriadoc, Pippin, Bilbo, Sam, and Frodo), 1 gnome (?) (Gollum), and 3 outsiders (Saruman, Sauron, Gandalf)
So, humans are the most common character in the story.
excuse me but the party was the fellowship... only two humans in it...one dwarf, one elf, one outsider and 4 hobbits... and you didnt even come close to naming all the humans that had an impact in LotR (for example Eowyn slays the Witch-King of Angar)...i believe Gollum was originally a hobbit before the ring corrupted him but i could be wrong on that part and has nothing to do with my original point...
getting back to my original point... LotR, a story that clearly shows that outside Mordor, humans are the dominant race... yet the Fellowship( the 9 person adventuring party)isn't even half human... so that the group at your table has a Human Wizard, a Dwarf Fighter, an Elf Ranger and a Half-Orc cleric doesnt mean that that party is indicative of who the dominant race in in that campaign world... it just means these 4 individuals decided to make common cause with each other for whatever reason....
He was a different kind of halfling, not a hobbit though. He was one of the Riverfolk. I don't beleive there are any of them left actually.
He was a different kind of halfling, not a hobbit though. He was one of the Riverfolk. I don't beleive there are any of them left actually.
yes, but the various tolkien books seem to imply that not all hobbits are the same (that there iare a few subraces as it were) and most rpgs only uses the term halfling because of copyright issues..
and while we are at it Aragorn II (yup Strider isn't the first Aragorn) could technically be refered to as not human as he is of the High Men, those whose blood is intermingled with the Elves... when is the last time a pure huma lived to 210years of age in a feudal setting like Aragorn II did...
And again...my point is that you don't need to make more subraces of humans to get people to play them.... people will play the races that appeal to them... I for one like Half-orcs... and I think they've done a better job at balancing the races than 3.5 did.
BTW, digressing again..i like bards too, so just wait and see if I don't play Wilhem Shakeaxe, the Chanting Great Axe wielding Skald...
(Anyone got a copy of that Biz Marki song to get me in the mood: "Oh baby you... you got what I need...")
My typing need skill focus
*chuckles* I was just saying. I've not read Tolkien in a long while...I can't stand it actually. Find it as bland as soggy plain bread.
Besides I'm not saying their needs to be "specific" human subraces. I just thought it would be interesting to see.
In most campaign settings, humans are supposed to be the most common race. However, if you balance all the races, humans will be no more common at the table than are any other race.
The easy way to change that is to offer different races of human in the book.
I think any added races should come out in campaign-specific supplements. Keep the core rules as generic as possible please.
I'm all for subraces. Makes backgrounds more interesting.
I'm all for subraces. Makes backgrounds more interesting.
I'm all for them too... just not in the core book. ;)
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What may be useful would be, within the Human Race category, have minor play adjustments if you select a chosen national origin or culture, much like WotC's work in Forgotten Realms. Perhaps 1 extra pre-designated class skill. Not big, but reflective. Or weapon proficiency of some exotic weapon, or some "special" first level feat available only to people of that culture.
I don't like it.
Because it just can't be done right: You either have only a few subraces - and not nearly everything is represented - or you have three dozen races for humans, and the book won't have any space for classes, so everyone will have to be commoner.
I think that's the main reason elves and dwarves and so on have subraces, but humans don't. What bonus to give someone from Cormyr? What attribute penalty will a Chultan have?
I've seen one campaign setting pulling off the subrace idea: Midnight. And that was because they basically only had three (actually, two, plus a mixed-heritage) human cultures in there. But Golarion with its dozens of nations? Too much.
Plus, I'd say they wouldn't be representative at all. What will you put in the core books? They don't want to put too much Golarion-specific stuff into the books, so what subraces will they use? Will they use real-world subraces? They don't need to have counterparts in every (or any) world. Plus, I really don't want to go there.
I think they'll move away from sub-races in general.