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In PFS I keep seeing the Assimars and Teiflings but thats probably because its so easy to power game on them. Personally though I'm kinda bored of the Tolkien races and enjoy seeing the newer ones in the hands of good RPers who can bring new and interesting stories into the game by exploring the backgrounds of these races.
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I'm not bashing the way anyone wants to play their homebrew settings, but when you're in what one could call the "typical D&D setting" these races should be incredibly rare and specific to a location. How all these weirdos come together in one group all the time is just ridiculous at best and absolutely immersion breaking at its worst.
If you're a weirdo, the most realistic group for you to be a part of is a group of weirdos. No band of normals is going to accept you like that. It would be unrealistic.
Besides, all adventurers are weirdos. They willingly go into danger and fight monsters for rewards.
That was weird blank post. Anyway my current player wouldn't play non "classic" if you paid her. I think all the new races awesome though.
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(just for the record, I totally know what you mean about 3.5/PF's mechanical hangups, I'm mostly in it for the APs rather than the system itself)
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In my rotrl group the party consists of a human, an elf, a halfling, a gnome (who used to be a halfling until death and reincarnate happened) and a bugbear (who used to be a half-orc before the same story as the gnome).
In the cotct campaign we're planning to start after rotrl, the planned characters that I know of for now consist of two humans, a dwarf and a halfling.
Playing way of the wicked we have 3 humans and 2 tieflings. And no, it's not weird that they'd get together as they're all criminals who had to do a prison break together.
And then we have the rather large group I play in where I believe the races are... 1 aasimar, 1 tiefling, 1 tengu, 1 half-orc, 2 elves and 2 humans.Even with the most varied table I play at, there are still 62,5% core races present, one of which you don't accept as your "classics" which reduces us to 50%. I'd still say that's far from everybody playing something else. Of course I don't share your experiences, but based on my own I just don't see how the core (or "classic") races are gone...
EDIT: numbers :)
Joining in on the statistics fun!
Since switching to PF:
Curse of the Crimson Throne
3 humans (1 Chelish, 2 Shoanti)
1 half-elf
1 elf
1 gnome
Carrion Crown
3 humans(Varisian/Chelish)
1 dhampir
1 elf
Skull and Shackles
3 humans(1 Chelish, 1 Erutaki, 1 ?)
1 elf(Ekujae)
1 tengu -died-> 1 human
Kingmaker
4 humans
1 gnome
1 tiefling
1 elf -died-> 1 tiefling
Atah-Ouahe
2 humans
1 gnoll
1 tengu
Jade Regent
1 dwarf
1 elf
1 Halfling
1 half-orc(Shoanti)
Other Jade Regent group
1 human(Varisian?)
1 half-orc
2 gnomes
Wrath of the Righteous
1 aasimar
2 humans(1 Kellid, 1 Kellid/Mwangi)
2 tieflings
Coral and Bone
1 human
1 orc
2 undine
1 vishkanya
Shattered Star Group A
2 elves
2 humans(Shoanti)
1 undecided
Shattered Star Group B
1 catfolk
1 half-elf
rest undecided
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Not a fan of Mos Eisley cantina pathfinder either but its just options. Its not like everything is core in PF. I find it hard to believe all your players complain about a limited choice. Mine still pick human 90% of the time despite all the new options that keep rolling out.
Curse of the crimson throne
3 human
1 half-orc
Serpent skull
1 halfling
1 half-elf
3 human
Carrion crown
4 humans
1 elf
Kingmaker
1 dwarf
1 elf
3 human
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I'll say what I say every time one of these threads pops up:
Why is it so important for PCs to represent some imagined law of averages when PCs by their very nature are not typical characters in the setting.
If they're the only 4 people in the WORLD that possess the Sacred Swords of Yurick, the only weapon capable of smiting the Unholy Dragon Dorganno, why is it so bad that two of them are the only Tieflings in the whole world?
If one really has a problem with exotic races being in the party just becuase, a *good GM* can figure out a way to tie an unusual race choice into the plot, and suddenly their as appropriate as the humans characters, if not more so.
I don't care what people play, as long as it has a good story to go with it and it's not just because they want the mechanics of the race.
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A... were-rabbit? I want to see that!
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Please tell me that the were-rabbit is a wandering samurai.
One reason I decided to work on a new setting is to create one where a vast array of races can mix without very much to any social stigma.
So I made a world where the dominate races are Giants and dragons, all the various humanoid, monstrous and weirdo mix to different degrees either in those 2 species rule or in the wilderness.
So you can have a centaur blacksmith, working next to a ogre farmer, with a kobold lamplighter, and some lizard folk boatmen, and nothing is out of whack.
I tired many, many years ago of the standard human dominated world, and now want to experiment some. :)
Might as well join in, why not.
Short-Lived First Attempt at Running the System in College:
3 humans (2 Shoanti, 1 Varisian)
1 half-elf
1 half-orc
Skull & Shackles:
2 humans (1 Mwangi, 1 unknown)
1 half-elf
1 half-orc
1 catfolk
1 gillman
Rise of the Runelords:
2 humans (Varisian)
2 half-elves
1 dwarf
And if we include campaigns where a party was assembled but it never got off the ground...
Skull & Shackles
1 half-elf
1 half-orc
1 goblin
Kingmaker
2 dwarves
1 human (Taldan)
1 half-elf
Elves & halflings: 60 years.
Dwarves: 60 years, loosely based on norse mythology.
Gnomes: 30 years, loosely (though closer than dwarves) on norse folklore.
"monkey people" = 2500 years.
Whine all you want, but dont come here calling halflings "classic" while dismissing the vanara.
The Homegrown hero play style is why I decided to make my setting, with some limitations, once a party decides what its background culture is, then a suite of races become available, or they can all be from the wilderness, but each of these choices will bring both character and RP consequences.
What I will encourage and so far the players that have contacted me have expressed is to build a reason these vastly differing races are mixed in a party, so I have gone with a warband building theme.
Anyway, I can understand the perfect snowflake murder hobo players dilemma, and one I will work diligently to curb, each player will have as much input as is required from me to make things work with the others.
I don't see it as ruining somebodies own melody as so much as creating a symphony with all the players playing in it.
But hey your mileage may vary. :)
if one is going to include less than 15-20 playable races, the few races included better have an intense variation to differentiate them. i don't see this in Pathfinder's core. you have to open up the ARG to truly get racial variation.
lets look at another RPG with 7 core races, just like PF does. one that i believe did a better job of making their races stand out, even if 2 are more widely popular than the other 5 and those 2 popular races happen to be subject to lots of rule 34. Tera Online.
Human; Generic Human, Jack of All Trades
Elf; Magical Pointy Eared Tree Huggers
Dwarf; Short Angry Alcholoic Greedy Viking Scottsmen whom wield large axes. claim to be best blacksmith Evar
Half-Elf; pointy eared generic humans
Half-Orc, big beefy green guys whom fight with large axes and also, have a drinking problem
Halflings; pint sized thieves whom pretend to be children
Gnomes; pint sized aberrations
Human; Same as PF Human
High Elf; Same as PF Elf
Baraka; Giant Race of fire resistant metalworkers akin to Azers
Amani; large sized dragonborn, proud warrior race. essentially follows a westernized flavored version of bushido.
Castanics; petite descendants of fallen celestials, essentially tieflings, 2nd most popular race in the game and has the 2nd highest amount of rule 34 attached. most of them live in human communities because the fallen celestials don't want them
Popori; a race of all pint sized male furry nature spirits, subservient counterparts to the dominant Elins
Elins; a race of all female pint sized fey with the ears and tails of cute animals, they are the most popular race in the game and have the most rule 34 attached. they are a race of agents belonging to the goddess of nature, whose whole purpose, is to murder anything that defies the natural order. whether immortals, aberrations, demons, or undead, and they do so in a very familiar manner i would best not mention on these boards. just that they do early 1940's style chaotic evil acts in the name of nature.
Back. I like this last j gal. Its all about your approach here. I agree with this latest point, in the context you provided. Like i said earlier, i prefer to play only the big 7 races myself(though not a fan of small races).i allow my players about 85 % of the expanded races barring things i seeas balance issues like the trox.
My home group:
2 elves.
2 half-elves.
1 human.
And a human cohort for one character, and an elf for another.
Oh, and you know what? All core classes.
Well then I can certainly see where you're coming from. I can picture both of those parties working, but it depends on the campaign and setting (that first one sounds like prime Carrion Crown material). To be honest, if a player's reaction to NPC conflict is "kill 'em all" rather than "how do I win them over," then the problem may have deeper roots than their choice of species.
The best compromise I can think of is to use a setting where weird half-elemental animal people ARE the homegrown heroes, but that doesn't seem up your alley.
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At what point is everyone SO BLOODY UNIQUE that it becomes more about who can create the most cheesy, overpowered character who comes from a land far away and less about some homegrown heroes (which is the feel I prefer)
That has everything to do with player attitude and nothing to do with choice of race.
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People haven't stopped playing those races.
It's just that a lot of folks enjoy other races as well.
A lot of people enjoy fantasy outside the narrow scope of LotR.
That is certainly true. And due to the overuse of those 'core races', many of them have gotten stale.
Humans will always be used most often, due to being 'normal', and optimization wise they are the most flexible (not always the best, but never, ever the worst). But the rest, which were in many ways supposed to have the same amount of alien flare as the "dark and edgy humans" or the planetouched have just become caricatures. Elves are hippy humans with spock ears. Dwarves are short humans with Scottish accents. Halflings are just short humans. Gnomes are short humans with ADHD. Half orcs are humans in need of a denstist and dermatologist. Etc, etc....
But originally, each were supposed to give you a feel for a world different from your own. Elves were in tune with nature, and were closer to the fey than they were to humans. Gnomes in Pathfinder have this even more so, but even that kind of falls to the wayside sometimes. Dwarves hale from a large society alien and separate from out own, embedding itself into the deep earth while facing the darkness that lurks within the depths. When your players go for these so called 'snowflake' races, they are trying to shroud themselves in the wonder and mystery of a different world that was originally evoked by the 'core' races. People want to role play in order to experience an different kind of life, and restricting them from trying to catch that feeling of an alien nature is merely restricting their creative freedom.
At the same time, I think that an over abundance of options is likely bad (since an over saturation of unique creatures does, as the arguments suggest, remove their unique flavor; could you play four different elementals without it just being stereotypes?), but you would do well to switch out some of the 'classics' in your setting with new fare that gives it a distinct taste from all the other generic tolkenesque fantasy settings.
Obviously humans aren't really going to replaced except in extreme situations, but maybe do things like have fetchlings take over the role of half-orcs as the 'outcast' race when you don't plan on having orcs appear in your game. Oread are just crying out to take over the dwarf role...and for an interesting twist, don't have all four elementals available in the same place. That can give your region a certain....something. Maybe play up the the 'earth vs fire' angle instead of the 'good vs evil' one and take out aasimar and tieflings entirely (not really core, but close enough for PFS to think so, no?). And tengu are similar enough to an elf in terms of physic that they could possibly play an elf. Or have the tengu take over the role of the held by the tricky halfling.
There are countless options, and by carefully choosing which ones are available, you can provide your players new options for roleplaying without the new races simply being character options chosen merely for optimization.
Well then I can certainly see where you're coming from. I can picture both of those parties working, but it depends on the campaign and setting (that first one sounds like prime Carrion Crown material). To be honest, if a player's reaction to NPC conflict is "kill 'em all" rather than "how do I win them over," then the problem may have deeper roots than their choice of species.
The best compromise I can think of is to use a setting where weird half-elemental animal people ARE the homegrown heroes, but that doesn't seem up your alley.
planetouched have existed since first edition, all 8 of them, under a variety of different names. they might as well be core.
though, i really like the idea of playing a Fey, and well, Gnome, Elf, and Half-Elf, don't evoke a fey enough flavor for me, a Nymph. Elin, Half-Nymph or Pixie, Even a Nixie or Neried, evoke it better and i often convert them downward for PC useage.
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At what point is everyone SO BLOODY UNIQUE that it becomes more about who can create the most cheesy, overpowered character who comes from a land far away and less about some homegrown heroes (which is the feel I prefer)That has everything to do with player attitude and nothing to do with choice of race.
More precisely, I believe that it has to do with different expectations on the gamers' part (ie, both players and GM) that were not clarified beforehand.
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First for some clarifications, I don't use Golarian, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, nor any other published setting (except sometimes my own; Kaidan) - I only really homebrew, as far as settings go. I also don't participate in PFS. Also of my own PCs, they are almost always exclusively human (and half our group primarily run humans as well.)
That said, I find the endless iterations of Middle Earth (as many if not most homebrew and published settings seem to somewhat emulate) where you've got dwarves in these mountains, and the realm of elves in that forest, as a statement on how sad and unoriginal most of these world builders are. As if J.R.R. Tolkien determined what races qualify as 'normal' for fantasy, and any other races are just weird - I find that sentiment terribly, terribly sad.
I get it that Lord of the Rings is a major starting point for modern fantasy, and why D&D used that as a basis in building its initial version in their game design. Still there are hundreds of other fantasy stories, and many of them include their own unique races - sometimes not based on folklore examples.
From a mechanical point of view, you could almost say everyone is playing a human, but players like options, and races offer one more layer of available options for running their PCs. You can almost hand-wave all non-humans as racial trait options for basically human PCs. The fluff of being non-human shouldn't affect how the game is run, nor really be some kind of problem worth complaining about.
Finally, because I rely on my own homebrews, when I design a world or region, I never include elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-orcs. There definitely are more races than human in my worlds, but I choose races appropriate for a given setting, fitting the intended theme of the design.
For example in my Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG), there are humans, kitsune, kappa, korobokuru, henge and tengu - that's it. If you ask where do the elves live, I'll respond with Lothlorien, but that's in Middle Earth and not here. Not that those who use my setting in their games can't put those races in - nothing in the setting guides mention those races as even existing anywhere.
So while I'm not wild of including every possible non-human race in my settings as available in the PF system, I do include several non-human races, they are never the bland "vanilla" flavored races from everybody else's setting. I don't ever want to see another elf in my game.
If PF ever made accurate Tolkien races into the game..every powergaming/munchkin -insert favorite term here , type would play elves, Numenoreans and for the dark edgies Black Numernoeans.
the difference in Tolkiens power level of races is pretty vast.
D&D at its roots took many ideas from the Prof. , but rolemaster actually did it, and take this from somebody that played quite a bit of that old game...there were to many elves running amok in the 3rd age :), the GMs just let most players bring what they wanted and it was usually a High elf, My Rohan warrior was basically a cheerleader :).
But I am a believer is everything has its place, and have in the past asked my players as a whole before any Character generation is even begun, what each is interested in, once I have some kind of consensus, I make the campaign, its not hard to change the window dressing.
Problems do arise when players show up at random games with random characters and do random things, but that's why I avoid doing pickup games at stores and that sort of thing, as in most of these situations communication between GM and players is key, just get everyone on the same sheet of paper, and then season to taste. :)
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More precisely, I believe that it has to do with different expectations on the gamers' part (ie, both players and GM) that were not clarified beforehand.At what point is everyone SO BLOODY UNIQUE that it becomes more about who can create the most cheesy, overpowered character who comes from a land far away and less about some homegrown heroes (which is the feel I prefer)That has everything to do with player attitude and nothing to do with choice of race.
I think I heard it best said like this.
"A Hobgoblin [anything] is a viable character, but if you want your mouth to taste like velveeta you’d make your Rogue a Deep Halfling, you’d make your Wizard a Gray Elf, and you’d make your Fighter a Dwarf."
One of my favorite campaigns I ran was a Hyborian one..only humans, various races of humans, with different base skill sets and mods..but still all humans, very fun.
And our stygian sorcerer was a total evil tool.
Reaper Miniatures
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I play non humans, but usually stick to core races personally.
And I agree with the above that the reason all the weirdo's group together is the same reason all the 'members of group' stick together in real life. How many HS lunch tables did you see where the jocks and nerds and goth kids and punks and stoners didn't clique-up?
Of course my band of non-human fire-headed monkey people banded together. The cool kids never let us sit at their table.
I like humans. I prefer to play humans. My favorite past campaigns have been all-human.
That said, as DM, it's my job to set up and run exciting scenarios, and to adjudicate the rules. It's not my place to tell the players what or how to play.
I am unsure what the implication of your raised eyebrow is, but if it's because of the exclusion of half-orcs, I assure you, it was purposeful.Welp, that seals it. I wouldn't want to be stuck in such a "classic" game and am grateful it's not the default assumption.Ditto.
I wonder if this same feeling extends to classes as well, there's significantly more commoners than wizards, after all. . .
Pretty much the same for me. My current game allows custom races. MUHAHAHA!
I see no reason to limit options (unless that is the theme, like an all-dwarf campaign, or an all-mage campaign), it does nothing to "improve" the roleplay. I've had GMs say "you cant play a woman, it wont be able to roleplay them properly" and that frustrated me a lot. It seems to go against a fundamental reason of roleplay, IE being something you are not. (For that same reason, I avoid most RPGs set on earth between the 19th & 21st centuries. It's just too close to home.).
As for my own games (GM-ed), they are currently all run in Genericland, land of all fantasy tropes. Want another option? It exists somewhere! Hehe!
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Also, it may just be me, but i have never understood thewhole "racial superiority" thing. Why humans would just be assumed to have reasons to work together but for a group of tiefling, tengu, vishkanya and dhampir they would need some special explanation. For many or most people, species is a very minor part of your motivation or identity - at least in a society where there arent huge power structures pushing down certain species.
I mean, sure, certain races have loads of racial tentions between them, but even so there doesnt need to be some special motivation to cooperate.
Not saying fantasy species and RL race issues are the same thing, but even here where we have racial issues at least as large as most in golarion most people have friends of a different "race".
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That said, as DM, it's my job to set up and run exciting scenarios, and to adjudicate the rules. It's not my place to tell the players what or how to play.
But you're certainly allowed to request your players work with you in their character choices rather than against you. After all, I played a human and elf in the campaigns you ran for me. :)
But you're certainly allowed to request your players work with you in their character choices rather than against you. After all, I played a human and elf in the campaigns you ran for me. :)
True enough -- you did. But Silverhair insisted on one of his usual damn half-orcs, and we made that work... and although nobody was sure what the hell race Jess' Trog was, no one can say that she wasn't fun!
I've always thought it's a little amusing how Gygax didn't like the idea of people playing elves and dwarves (God forbid orcs and drow), but caved because there was such a demand from people who wanted to play as the Fellowship.