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They aren't any more powerful than the 'standard' racesYes, they are. They just are, according to game's designers, who designated them as rare and even allocated them more race points in an effort to keep them that way.Are you one of those people who bow down and worship the designers' stated opinions? I don't mean to be rude, but that's how this quoted comment comes off- based on what I know.
Fact of the matter is, Race Points are bullcrap. The theory is good, but the execution? They were little more than an attempt to explain a supposed 'balance' among existing races.
Trust me here, as a GM, I would not allow a race built by the race builder. If a player wants a custom race we'll design it together.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the game's designers know a bit more about it than you (or me). Does that make me sound ridiculous?
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Simultaneously more and less than mortal, tieflings are the offspring of humans and fiends. With otherworldly blood and traits to match, tieflings are often shunned and despised out of reactionary fear. Most tieflings never know their fiendish sire, as the coupling that produced their curse occurred generations earlier.Half-fiend is a template, not the Tiefling Race.
[The Captain of the Guard] "Oh, you say your grandfather was a demon spawn from the deepest pits of the abyss, not your father? Okay, you're allowed in my town in that case. Come for dinner tonight and I'll introduce you to my daughter."
Incidentally, I'm loving that you thought to include the middle sentence in your quote from the book. :)
They aren't any more powerful than the 'standard' racesYes, they are. They just are, according to game's designers, who designated them as rare and even allocated them more race points in an effort to keep them that way.Are you one of those people who bow down and worship the designers' stated opinions? I don't mean to be rude, but that's how this quoted comment comes off- based on what I know.
Fact of the matter is, Race Points are bullcrap. The theory is good, but the execution? They were little more than an attempt to explain a supposed 'balance' among existing races.
Trust me here, as a GM, I would not allow a race built by the race builder. If a player wants a custom race we'll design it together.
Moreover, the race points aren't there to keep the various races rare. The fluff is there to discuss why the races are rare, whether due to being out bred, being from small clans or obscure points of the world, or other such concerns. Their points can assist, sure, but you can certainly have a race with few points that is rare or uncommon.
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It certainly sounds ridiculous to me.
Aaaaaaaand... we're done.
If I'm ridiculous because I choose to use the books as written and respect the game's creators as being knowledgeable about their own product, I think I can see where the rest of this conversation will go.
Goodnight, Pathfinders. See you at the table!
My last thoughts on the "special Snowflakes" (I really like that term for non-traditional races)...
If everyone is a Special Snowflake...
Then no one is.
Which is why when I play I check to see the races the other players have chosen. It is kinda pointless to play that rare out of his element race if everyone else is already playing one. (sucks the fun right out of it for me).
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Simultaneously more and less than mortal, tieflings are the offspring of humans and fiends. With otherworldly blood and traits to match, tieflings are often shunned and despised out of reactionary fear. Most tieflings never know their fiendish sire, as the coupling that produced their curse occurred generations earlier.Half-fiend is a template, not the Tiefling Race.[The Captain of the Guard] "Oh, you say your grandfather was a demon spawn from the deepest pits of the abyss, not your father? Okay, you're allowed in my town in that case. Come for dinner tonight and I'll introduce you to my daughter."
Incidentally, I'm loving that you thought to include the middle sentence in your quote from the book. :)
And yet you somehow missed "often".
Selective reading ftw.
Right alongside the deliberate obtuseness about the ancestry issue.
Tell us, how do you rationalize the tiefling cleric of Sarenrae or the tiefling servant of Iomedae in Blood of Fiends and Champions of Purity? How do you rationalize all the instances of tieflings not being treated like monsters throughout the setting, including how they're now even being welcomed into the Fifth Crusade according to the Wrath of the Righteous player's guide?
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My last thoughts on the "special Snowflakes" (I really like that term for non-traditional races)...
If everyone is a Special Snowflake...
Then no one is.
Which is why when I play I check to see the races the other players have chosen. It is kinda pointless to play that rare out of his element race if everyone else is already playing one. (sucks the fun right out of it for me).
It honestly wouldn't for me. Having three other people playing a vishkanya wouldn't take away from the point and enjoyment I would get out of playing a Vishkanya.
Hell, that's more of an opportunity.
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Once again, if you're going to run your entire game world like it's populated by enlightened 21st century Western progressives, accepting of all people and cultures, then yeah, there is absolutely no downside to playing an esoteric race and you should fully expect your players to min-max the system for combat optimization.Obviously, if a DM so desired, he could just limit his game to that, but nobody likes a draconian DM.
I don't know, playing a game GMed by a dragon would be pretty great. Depending on the color of his/her ski- scales.
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Which is why when I play I check to see the races the other players have chosen. It is kinda pointless to play that rare out of his element race if everyone else is already playing one. (sucks the fun right out of it for me).
You'd think he'd find a group of similar oddballs to band up with out of shared experience and 'us against the world' pressure.
People don't necessarily play those races to be a special snowflake. I don't always play Grippli but I often consider them, and I wouldn't be less inclined to play a Grippli if they were a major race in the world/party. Actually, that sounds fun.
Edit: Wow, four replies within the same minute on that. Excellent baiting.
Which is why when I play I check to see the races the other players have chosen. It is kinda pointless to play that rare out of his element race if everyone else is already playing one. (sucks the fun right out of it for me).You'd think he'd find a group of similar oddballs to band up with out of shared experience and 'us against the world' pressure.
Been there; done that; got the T-shirt...
Those types of games get old for me after a while.More power to those who enjoy them though.
Me? I like to try and be unique in some way to the group.
In a party of all "odd-balls" I tend to opt for playing the token human.
But then I have played a Barbarian Elf, A Dwarven Sorcerer, A Half-orc Paladin, A Drow Cavalier, and a Goblin Monk so who am I to judge?
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Nobody knows what their role in the party is...
Simply from a story-telling perspective, I think this may be the best thing that could have happened to an RPG. Change for the sake of change is sort of meh, but breaking players out of the 2e mold this way has lead to far more enjoyable gaming, from where I sit. (Both in the DM chair and the players chair)
The me-too explosion of video games / media based on the same old D&D party role tropes and configurations can easily meet my appetite for that kind of play if I want it...being able to apply a wide array of class mechanics to a potential character concept and come up with (almost) exactly what I had in mind is refreshing.
...or just who their character is anymore.
See above; I'm not sure this is really the case. YMMV, obviously. It may be more of a challenge to express the mechanical nuances to the other people at the table now, due to the sheer complexity of the system, but it's far easier now to know that the character you have in your head is adequately reflected on the character sheet in front of you. I think it calls for more focus than ever on playing the role expressively and descriptively, which is a Good Thing in my book.
I know outside of eastern themed games I'd prefer to be in a party of all Kitsune. Four kitsune come into town word will spread fast that something odds hapening. One kitsune comes into town if she's not in human form you just know someone's going to spread a rumour about the "werewolf" a group of adventurers have caught resulting in mass panic and possible attacks if she goes anywhere alone.plus of course having someone around who understands why things like a bad fur day are such a problem.
And whats to stop the townfolks from spreading the rumor that a full pack of weres has descended upon them?
-Sigh-. Does anyone else feel similarly?Nope. Humans are still the overwhelming majority among PCs.
Really. Just because you see some weird things out there, doesn't mean everything out there is weird.
My group plays entire campaigns where humans are the only playable race. Mostly those are the games we base on a historical period on Earth, or are set in the modern world.
For the most part, we stuck with the "classic" races from about 1981 to about 1999, at which point somebody decided they wanted to play a drow. (Not too great a departure, there.) Then, my wife joined the game in 2000, and she immediately changed things up with a gem dragon "cursed" to remain in human form.
Since then, my wife has played two elves, a half-elf, three different humans in our modern/historical games, and an angel. My son has played an elf and a turtle-man that I statted up for him. But now he is back to a dwarf. Another friend has just statted up a sylph. We had a friend in our game for a long time who loved her lizard-woman. Our upcoming game, I allowed them to stretch a little, and one player is taking a xorn bard.
I think we have so much variety because, aside from me and an occasional other player, nobody in our group is very rules-savvy. They all rely on me to adjudicate and know the rules encyclopedically. Because they come from a more creative place than a rules place, they are thinking outside the box and allowing their imaginations to run free. Thus, they have more unusual concepts.
But all that said, these are the exceptions. Of our last four campaigns since we began using Pathfinder, counting the one we're about to start, we've had:
Eleven humans
Two dwarves
One elf
One half-elf
One gnome
One aasimar
One sylph
One angel
One homemade turtle-man
One xorn
The humans pretty much take it in a landslide. And then the dwarves. And if you count the aasimar, the remainder are pretty much tied between "normal" or "classic" races, and anything unusual. And in my experience, we play a "weirder" game than is reported by my other GM friends.
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There are no playable races at my table!
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Humans - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Half-Elves - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Elves - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Dwarves - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Half-Orcs - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Orcs - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Gnomes - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Halflings - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Goblings - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Hobgoblins - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Tieflings - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Aasimar - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Geniekin - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Dhampir - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Vishkanya - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Nagaji - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Tengu - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Grippli - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Strix - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Harpy - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Merfolk - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Gillmen - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Kobolds - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Wayang - Depends on whether or not the individual player has them look like John Waters
Samsaran - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Ghoran - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Android - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Vercite - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Lashunta - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Ilee - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
Triaxan - Depends on what the individual player does with them.
As a GM, I'd rather keep an open mind about these things. As a player, I'd rather play with a GM that didn't pigeonhole every member of a race into a narrow stereotype, especially when it results in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy where they dislike that race as they percieve it yet insist everyone play that race under that perception.
You forgot Gnolls! ;_;
Those types of games get old for me after a while.Wait, wasn't this the same justification for people not wanting to play the classic races anymore?
Did I ever say I was against the use of the other races?
I only ever expressed what bothered me about their use.IE: Overused Unimaginative Builds. (But this is a common complaint from me concerning characters in general.)
Just for fun, here's the layout of the last major campaign I played in. (Not all characters were involved at the same time, but all of them belonged to different people.)
Onispawn Multiclassed Beatstick (My PC)
Lolidusa ('Young' template Medusa with psi-like abilities and augmentation for a scaling power which started with slow and scaled up to flesh to stone at higher level.)
Tengu Hexslinger
Half-Dragon Monk
Drow Rogue
Half-Nymph/Half Human Dhampir Sorcerer
Human Rogue/RangerEDIT: my character in the current campaign I'm in? Human Wizard for the win.
Corrected Umbriere's Race
she was a Half-Human Half-Nymph whose human half was converted to Vampire but had toned down abilities from both.
you found her in a town of undead
she merely appeared human on the surface
Current Party in my Monday Night Roll20 Group keeps changing, but the following characters are the only consistent members
1. Loli Half-Nymph Arcanist, a Fey Queen's Second Cousin by Blood and a Count's Niece and Heiress by marriage, a Social Build
2. Loli Sylph Urban Ranger and Street Magician whom works as the Half-Nymph's Bodyguard, Retainer, and Personal Scout and Courier, Slowly Becoming a Switch Hitter
3. Male Tengu Spymaster of an undetermined Class
4. Female Human Cleric of Possibly Good Alignment and an Undetermined Goddess. Daughter of a Lord and part of a pair of Twins
3-6 Random Characters that last no more than a handful of sessions at a time from a pool of like 18 people.
Those types of games get old for me after a while.Wait, wasn't this the same justification for people not wanting to play the classic races anymore?Did I ever say I was against the use of the other races?
I only ever expressed what bothered me about their use.
IE: Overused Unimaginative Builds. (But this is a common complaint from me concerning characters in general.)Are you trying to say Oversimplified Unimaginative Characters? Because for every build there are bound to be well over a thousand distinct Characters available.
Remember, the build is not the character, its just what that character is capable of.
No; I meant Overused.
Case in Point...Just last week a player sat down to the table in the FLGS and proceeded to tell us all about his "new" character.
(Stop me if you have heard this one before)
Drow, Ranger, TWF (Scimitars), Panther animal companion, tortured soul because he is of an evil race but is really good but no one understands him or is willing to see past his race. (There was a collective groan from the table).
On my way out front for my usual pre-game cigar (no smoking in the shop) I passed 5 more tables with games in progress at each table there was at least one Drizzt clone (one had three; I kid you not).
Overused was the correct word choice.
Worst random come as you are game I ever ran was at a FLGS, and after I arrived and unpacked to begin the session each of the new players (that signed up and were sorta organized by the store staff)
Were in order..
A Drow ranger with 2 swords and wanted/had a big cat...you know the drill
another Drow ranger, almost the same as the above..but female!
A Old wizard with a tall pointy hat and grey beard..that smoked a pipe.
A fighter/bounty hunter that never removed his full face helm, and wanted to have some trick gauntlets and a repeating crossbow.
A elven ranger with long blonde hair and 2 fighting knives and was a awesome archer.
And a Dwarf cleric with no obvious influence, just drank a lot of beer.
anyway, was a very interesting game, since the above players really tried to play their characters in the manner of their inspirations, other than the dwarf, that just acted dwarfy.
Ah, yeah, that 'tortured soul' bit is the real clincher there.
I'd be totally fine with players playing Scimitar TWF Drow with Big Cat animal companions. Just give him some unique individual depth and I'd be happy.
I like a good "inspired" character just as much as the next guy but after a certain point (for the sake of your fellow players sanity) tweak it some and make your own and not a straight up Ripoff.
Worst random come as you are game I ever ran was at a FLGS, and after I arrived and unpacked to begin the session each of the new players (that signed up and were sorta organized by the store staff)
Were in order..A Drow ranger with 2 swords and wanted/had a big cat...you know the drill
another Drow ranger, almost the same as the above..but female!
A Old wizard with a tall pointy hat and grey beard..that smoked a pipe.
A fighter/bounty hunter that never removed his full face helm, and wanted to have some trick gauntlets and a repeating crossbow.
A elven ranger with long blonde hair and 2 fighting knives and was a awesome archer.
And a Dwarf cleric with no obvious influence, just drank a lot of beer.
anyway, was a very interesting game, since the above players really tried to play their characters in the manner of their inspirations, other than the dwarf, that just acted dwarfy.
Last Dwarf I ran?
Eternally Sober. Hated alcohol. Couldn't stand the taste of it. So of course that made him an outcast in Dwarf society.Most fun I ever had with a Dwarf.
Adventurers are Outliers, regardless of their race. it matters not whether they are Human, Genasi, Half-Nymph or Werefox, in fact, some of the rarer races, are more likely to produce adventurers because many humans have the privilege of being accepted.