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Just because I'm in a thread-posting mood...
A lot of discussion's been up of late about "special snowflakes" and "Tolkien clones" (why people want to play deceased british novelists is beyond me).
A lot. It seems to be our new outlet of "GMs are Wise Overlords" vs. "GMs are Cruel Overseers", really.
Point is, it made me curious about what people actually do allow, and why they allow it.
Me, I allow the seven 'core' monster races (tengu, tiefling, kobold, aasimar, goblin, hobgoblin, orc), the Core races, and might consider other races depending on the group and game. Heck, in my "Home Under the Range" game I'm running, one guy wanted to play a flopping merfolk alchemist and I let him.
In general, I hold a great deal of distaste for any overly humanlike "monstrous" races. I let tieflings and aasimars off the hook for nostalgic reasons, but oreads? Dhampirs? Generally, sorry, no go. Something about those guys just bugs me. I also don't allow any obviously "eastern" races (tengu get off the hook because they remind me of kenku). Or catfolk.
My race banning system is highly arbitrary, though somewhat flexible. It's not an airtight jar keeping those races away, just a fairly fine mesh. Too many races spoil the ogre's stew.
What are your policies?
Anything that will fit the flavor of campaign I'm setting up. As long as players are open to discussion, then so am I.
The only things that would appear on a "banned list" would be races from core that for whatever reason were unavailable for play - because they either don't exist in that game world or because I've got them reserved for nefarious campaign purposes in such a way that a PC simply wouldn't work out.
Anything else is "come to me with the idea and we'll talk it over".
We play mostly core rulebook, plus I specifically made hobgoblins, goblins, orcs PC races. We still use level adjustment, and we are thinking of converting 3,5 races. The thing is, paizo races suck. They have like 150 words of description, so races are mostly mechanical benefits. In 3.5 dnd when they introduced a race they introduced it with 50 pages!!! Goliaths, killoren, illumians...all came with racial feats, extensive cultural background, gods, LANGUGAGE BITS and so on...even splat races like whisper gnomes had more info than paizo races.
My thought is when a race is familiar, either with as big description, or it is so ingrained in fantasy like elfs and dwarves, it's easier to relate to a race, and easier to create believable character. When I wan't heavy roleplaying, I always create a human.
That's because 3.5 wanted to encourage new races. All those races you're talking about are technically monstrous races, because Pathfinder discourages going beyond Core for your species.
My homebrew setting has eight custom races - Ael-Varan (think Raptorans from 3.5, and related to Elves), Araneas (and their evolved/mature form, Arachnes, which resemble Driders), Entomorphs (metamorphically-created moth-folk), Fenrin (an adaptation of the Lupin from Dragon Compendium), Glaistigs (a sentinel Fey race based on Scottish lore), Leanaí-dubh (Fey race with a cloak-like symbiotic plant growing in them, based on the Ghillie-dubh also of Scottish folklore), Leoni (lion-like catfolk), Naga (similar to the Oriental Adventures version), and Ti'Larinn (velociraptor-like lizardfolk).
We also use a modified version of Kobolds (bring it up to on par with the other races), as well as Tengu (straight out of the book) and we imported Yuan-Ti and Karsites (Tome of Magic, renamed "Murī") from 3.5 and rebalanced them for player-level use without level adjustment.
Of the core races, Humans, Elves, and Half-Elves are untouched. Halflings have the (human) subtype but otherwise unchanged. Gnomes are Fey (gnome) type but otherwise unchanged. Dwarves in my setting are sailors, pirates, and seafarers, so they have their racial traits juggled around with the Saltbeard traits and some other alterations being the "standard" Dwarf. There are no Half-Orcs - orcs and humans in my setting cannot interbreed - but pure Orcs are playable, and are adjusted to somewhere between Bestiary Orc and Half-Orc in power and flavor.
Those are the standard "races of the world" though I typically will allow any race as long as the player can help me find a place for them to have originated and explain why they are what they are, regardless if it's a PF race or a 3.5 one that I'll need to edit and rebalance a little. I'm pretty lenient and I like parties that don't have standard fantasy human-orc-elf-dwarf arrangements. I think the only races I've banned are Vishkanya and Nagaji, and only because I cannibalized them for the Yuan-Ti and Naga respectively.
No set alignment or personality races. This is the no Kender rule. Kender have to roll a save to resist ruining the game by taking stuff. Drow have to be renegades that are not genetically chaotic evil. Werebears sooner or later conflict with the player because they are lawful good only.
We play mostly core rulebook, plus I specifically made hobgoblins, goblins, orcs PC races. We still use level adjustment, and we are thinking of converting 3,5 races. The thing is, paizo races suck. They have like 150 words of description, so races are mostly mechanical benefits. In 3.5 dnd when they introduced a race they introduced it with 50 pages!!! Goliaths, killoren, illumians...all came with racial feats, extensive cultural background, gods, LANGUGAGE BITS and so on...even splat races like whisper gnomes had more info than paizo races.
My thought is when a race is familiar, either with as big description, or it is so ingrained in fantasy like elfs and dwarves, it's easier to relate to a race, and easier to create believable character. When I wan't heavy roleplaying, I always create a human.
Likely so we can get more detail in the various "Race of Golarion" series, where the race is broken down in more detail.
In my games, you can play whatever you want, as long as you give me a compelling reason to do so. Even with those relatively small restrictions, our parties usually consist of mostly core races.
For the standard D&D/Pathfinder game I generally allow all core races. My players play humans 80% of the time, though, so the usual party is 4-5 hummies.
Our current campaign is set in Planescape, though, so I basically took the Advanced Races Guide and allowed everything inside. I still ended up with 3 humans (plus an earth genasi, an aasimar, and an elf).
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I generally allow anything that isn't mechacally broken and allow people to create custom races(which are looked over). Creativity is half the fun after all.
Depends on the setting. Ravenloft would see a pretty harshly enforced one wookie rule from humans. Planescape would be mostly anything goes. If I made my own setting, I would have worked out the races and their roles first, though which races would vary widely. See the "pick five random races and make a setting" thread. One setting I made had a four-armed homebrew race, a heavily modified halfling race, duergar, lizard men, elves and humans. Another was a primitive forest setting with elves and various sylvan races. When playing APs, I prefer to do core only, because I hate the freak show party as a concept. I loathe the "omgthetownsfolkthinkwesoweirdlol"-scene and would prefer it if I didn't have to spend half our time playing that scene. One weirdo is usually okay, but this usually gets the others players in a huff, so better nobody gets it.
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1. Whatever the story dictates.
2. See #1
If I had a group who were interested in this sort of challenge, I'd run Tekumel.
The creatures there are truly alien, and humanity's role is...odd. Unique.
I love the questions it raises and the challenge of a race which has over 34 different versions of the personal pronoun 'you.'
Explain?
EDIT: Nevermind, didn't notice the subtitle within the link.
Whenever someone mentions Empire of the Petal Throne, I have a reflex action that makes me reach for a rolled up newspaper
I have the same with some other things, so I can understand!
It's definitely not to everyone's taste. The creatures there are bizarre.
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The more bizarre the better IMO.
That said, I kind of like it when bizarre is normal. I like having the weird races interacting together as if that's the way the world is and has always been, they've sometimes been allies and sometimes enemies, but in the end they're just who and what they are. That feels more fantastic to me.
I've been wanting to run something like this, but I've been afraid people wouldn't buy it.The more bizarre the better IMO.
That said, I kind of like it when bizarre is normal. I like having the weird races interacting together as if that's the way the world is and has always been, they've sometimes been allies and sometimes enemies, but in the end they're just who and what they are. That feels more fantastic to me.
It's gone over really well in my Kingmaker game. We had quite a few nonstandard races to begin with and all the normal ones ended up dying and getting reincarnated into something weird, and their colony has been going out of its way to flaunt its weirdness in interactions with its neighbors, letting them know they're weird and proud of it and uninterested in trying to appear "normal". It's gotten mixed reactions varying between "I like your guts" to "someone needs to be taught how to fall in line".
Back in 1979 I had a player who was overcome with love for the setting Empire of the Petal Throne, to the point of begining to write letters to the creator. I resisted incorporating the setting into our games because, well, duh, MY setting is way more special
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The way I describe it, I don't approve a race, I approve a character. Which is of course dependent upon many other factors, including setting, game, players, etc. This includes that I may let Player A play a race that I won't let Player B play, based on past experience. I'm also pretty lenient on the topic, since I want it to be fun for everyone involved. If the campaign involves working for an elven noble, I may well approve a bugbear ranger specializing in demon hunting. On the other hand, a bugbear ranger specializing in elf hunting, probably not. Of course a backstory could let me approve even that if it's a good one.
What are your policies?
I only ban races for balance reasons.
I DM 4e, so I that means everything is in!
The PCs keep dying and getting reincarnated, or the kingdom as a whole?
PCs, sorry. Nobody is the same race they started as, four have died and gotten reincarnated, the fifth got a wish from The Puck.
There are a fair number of monstrous race or otherwise odd NPCs in their kingdom as allies, councilors, or simply citizens, though. So it's not just the rulers who are weird, the populace is too.
The Core races, plus 3 homebrew, a slightly modified Elan, a slightly modified Hobgoblin, and the Anpur from the Hamunaptra setting by Green Ronin. Left to my own devices, it'd be Humans only.
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The Core races, plus 3 homebrew, a modified Elan, and the Anpur from the Hamunaptra setting by Green Ronin. Left to my own devices, it'd be Humans only.
To each their own, but I have to say I like the last part. Given my own choice, human is the first race I'd ban. And it has nothing to do with being overpowered so much as I just can't stand the statement, "Do I want to play X, or should I just go human for that extra feat?"
I game with a bunch of intelligent and creative players, all of whom can come up with some interesting character concepts which I enjoy. But so often they end up taking something that could be cool, and abandon it for that extra feat. I've even tried giving two free feats at first level to counter it, which just becomes "Two feats or three? Hmm."
I include humans in 3.X/PF as one of my top ten reasons for balding.
I allow the core races, the planetouched races from the ARG (aasimar, tiefling, oread, ifrit, undine, sylph), orcs, and some I have made myself/imported from 3rd edition.
Those include: modified gnome (took away the illusion crap, gave them +2 Str +2 Cha -2 Wis, and made them more martial in focus), imported and modified warforged, lizardfolk, verdani (plant people originally influenced by the volodni from FR), 4 subraces of canids (canine-ish humanoids: wolf, fox, african wild dog, gnoll), 4 subraces of felisids (large cat humanoids: lion, tiger, cheetah, leopard), and 4 subraces of karhu (bear humanoids: black, grizzly, polar, panda), and 4 more planetouched based off the extra elements in my campaign world (light, shadow, life, death). I would probably also allow goblins, kobolds (modified), hobgoblins, and possibly bugbears. All these would be reduced to 0 HD races. I have also modified all the races to be built on 10-13 RP, though I haven't tested it out yet. Still working on my campaign world.
Those are what I allow in my homebrew campaign world, when it comes to races. If running something in Golarion, I would allow the core races, as well as a number of the ARG races. Despite people almost always (seems like 70% or more) choosing humans no matter what.
I am curious to those that allow custom races. Do your players come at you with a race that gets the free bonus feat like humans?
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The setting I'm currently working on has the following playable races:
There are five that are considered 'core', at least with regard to their prominence in the setting.
Human
High Elf
Dark Elf
Orc
Dwarf
And then there are others that can fit in with relative ease.
Gnoll
Dryad
Gnome
Goblin
Halfling
Kobold
Others are available but may have some issues due to unusual size, body shape, movement or environmental requirements.
Hyphean (mushroom person)
Hydran (intelligent nonhumanoid mollusc-like creature)
Hivekin (humanoid termites)
Ogre
Merfolk
Pixie
Minotaur
Centaur
Undead are okay! Well, if you can hide it. Both ghouls and vampires that feed regularly appear living and may be subject to the weaknesses of the living while 'fresh'.
Ghoul
Vampire
Constructs, too!
Fabricant (warforgedish)
Forgecursed (flesh and metal crudely forged together by magic smiths)
Twigjack (wood and string inhabited by nature spirits makes the best robots!)
There are no hybrids. To be fair, a lot of the races are genetically engineered hybrids. New hybrids don't occur otherwise. Interbreeding doesn't work. The gene magic was wiped out and is no longer supported by the gods that granted it in the first place.
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It depends on the themes of the campaign I am running, whether I'm running an AP or a homebrew game, whether my players can convince me that their unusual choice is a thematic fit for the game I'm running etc.
There are races that I would never play, but would definitely allow my players to choose because the game is about more than my own tastes.
If I disallow a race it's for thematic reasons.
A dhampyr in Legacy for Fire is a poor fit, just as an Ifrit is a poor fit in Carrion Crown. Someone started a thread called: "Colouring in the lines", and that's a great metaphor for how I run games.
Yes, I restrict choice, but that's just a method of fuelling creative exercise.
In the current campaign I ran, which is on hiatus, I allowed all races with the exception of goblins, Drow Nobles, and Svirneblin.
Goblins = because I was running RotRL and they were going to be a major antagonist race for the first chapter, and it would have been confusing to have PCs as goblins during the goblin attack
Drow Nobles and Svirneblin (or however you spell them) for mechanical reasons
I advised against aquatic races as well. Didn't really need a ban as thankfully no one wanted one.
The players ended up a changeling witch, a kitsune ninja, a Nagaji saurian shaman, and a kobold paladin of Apsu. The kitsune stayed in human form when in town so as not to freak out people, so most people thought she was just a human with some sort of outsider blood. I did run (mostly) with Golarion canon, so players picking exotic races had to give reasons why X race was in Sandpoint.
The kitsune family in Sandpoint were guarding the Kajitsu line so they someday could be put back on the throne in Minkai
The nagaji was a trade envoy from Kaer Maga, and served a Naga in that city (Since Naga are major players there, it would make sense that a small population of Nagaji would serve them).
I hate Golarion Kobolds, so just use Midgard fluff for them, which makes them reasonable choices to be present in human towns and cities
At the moment, beyond story and level reasons, about my only restrictions I can think of would be nothing built by a player using the race builder and nothing that wasn't a OHD race, with the exception of the ARG gnoll and lizardfolk. I would even be open to 3rd party races if they were from a publisher I knew to be reliable and the player could supply me with the base stats.
Humans
Half-Orcs
Half-Highborn Elves
Half-Drow
Half-Grey Elves
Half-Wood Elves
Half-Paraloxians
Half-Snow/Desert Elves
Highborn Elves
Orcs*
Dwarves
Aasimaar
Tiefling
Drow
Fetchling
Suli
Undine
Sylph
Oread
Ifrit
Dhampir
Changeling
Half-Nymph*
Lesser Vampire*
Lesser Nymph*
Wood Elves*
Grey Elves*
Lesser Liliths/Lesser Succubi/Lesser Incubi*
Samsarans
Lesser Ghosts* (Incorporeal Race with reduced benefits)
Snow/Desert Elves*
Tiger Nekomimi*
Nekomimi*
Shifter*
Lesser Lycanthrope*
Gnoll*
Lizardfolk*
Giant*
Pixie*
Clockwork Doll*
Steelfolk* (Living Construct Race)
Paraloxian* (Psionic Albino Drow)
Soulbound Plushie* (Plushies Animated by Elemental or Outsider souls)
Child of the Harvest* (planetouched descended from a Shinigami)
Lesser Valkyrie/Lesser Einheirjiar/Lesser Angel*
Small Elemental*
Lesser Genie*
Dragonborn*
Kobold*
Kitsune
Karasu Tengu (Standard Crow Tengu)
Wolf Tengu*
*= Homebrew, Rewrite and/or Conversion, may be balanced by giving lesser PCs a PC boon.
the majority seem to be rewritten, reskinned, conversions or homebrewed. it's a lot of races. most of these tend to be region specific or campaign specific.
I'm trying to promote the term people. That's any race that can have PCs. There's some gamers who play pony people or the little blue folk.
Calling Elves humanoids confuses me.
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Depends on the campaign I'm running.
In some campaigns, I only allow races that are appropriate to that setting (no warforged in a Dragonlance campaign, for example). For other campaigns, I allow anything that you can justify (and some things that can't be justified). I've run a party composed of a dwarf barbarian, an ogre mage fighter/magic-user, a pixie thief, and a drow fighter/cleric (back in the days of 2E).
For me it depends on the campaign of course. My preference is for core races, and above all humans, but if my PCs can make a good case for a more unusual race I'll usually work with them. I've also played a lot of PbP, so as the DM I've had the opportunity to pick and choose to some extent.
I like the 'one wookie' feel.
In more 'typical' fantasy campaign settings I dislike seeing the more 'brutish' races (the goblins, orcs, kobolds, bugbears etc.) in the party as my need to cleave to verisimilitude means that most civilised people the PCs encounter immediately want to grab a pitchfork and run them out of town.
I've got a personal bias against catfolk, and lady dwarves just aren't right.
The demographics of my current campaigns are thus:
Golarion: two humans, two half-orcs
Forgotten Realms: two humans, two gnomes (deceased PCs include an elf, a human and a raptoran)
Greyhawk: one human, one half-elf, one tiefling, one drow noble*.
*Drow Noble - in this campaign we rolled stats. The player did so terribly allowing the drow noble seemed like a good booby prize.
I reskinned the orcs in my campaign to be close to the warcraft orcs following the removal of the demon blood. AKA not rampaging brutish raiders who apparently love raping humans. I just got tired of orcs always being Hulks. My gnomes (as mentioned earlier) are martially inclined. But my elves and dwarves still follow the stereotypes. Can't really think of how to go about changing them.
Maybe making the elves rampaging rapey brutes...
I reskinned the orcs in my campaign to be close to the warcraft orcs following the removal of the demon blood. AKA not rampaging brutish raiders who apparently love raping humans. I just got tired of orcs always being Hulks. My gnomes (as mentioned earlier) are martially inclined. But my elves and dwarves still follow the stereotypes. Can't really think of how to go about changing them.
Maybe making the elves rampaging rapey brutes...
How about mix some Star Trek in with your orcs and have a clan or subgroup of orcs that dedicates itself to a philosophy of suppressing its emotion - 'Vulcan orcs'.
I allow any level balanced race.
Seriously that guy over there just transformed into a bear, she turned into a fire elemental, and that guy over there just summoned a bunch of celestials to fight the group of fiends that sorceress had just summoned.
With all that going on, I don't think Joe Poopscooper is going to get too worked up about a hobgoblin riding into town on the back of his centaur companion. Hell he'd probably offer his services, you know, because the horse end might need to do its business from time to time.
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I allow pretty much everything. The only race (besides the "Extreme" races like Gargoyle and such that screw balance sideways) I exercise veto rights over is Strix.
You better have a DAMN good reason why a Strix is in the party, especially if said party contains a Human.
I guess it's harder for me to relate to or believe in numerous races. Our world barely contains humans, and I'm expected to believe there could be dozens of races running around.
I know, right?
Our world barely has stage magicians, and I'm expected to believe there are people flying around shooting Fireballs and healing people with magic wands?
I allow pretty much everything. The only race (besides the "Extreme" races like Gargoyle and such that screw balance sideways) I exercise veto rights over is Strix.
You better have a DAMN good reason why a Strix is in the party, especially if said party contains a Human.
I guess it's harder for me to relate to or believe in numerous races. Our world barely contains humans, and I'm expected to believe there could be dozens of races running around.I know, right?
Our world barely has stage magicians, and I'm expected to believe there are people flying around shooting Fireballs and healing people with magic wands?
our world doesn't even have stage magicians, just people who use a combination of sleight of hand and false compartments and other dirty deceptive tricks to pass themselves off as magicians
the stage magicians of our world, are nothing more than con artists and scammers