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Hello! I like hearing about games and settings and how dms experiment in-game.
This thread is on how you (or your DM) have altered the fluff of classes, races to fit them into the game or setting. What did you/they do, what was it like, what worked and what didn't.
Was anything an absolute perfect fit, memorable, brilliant or did it just not fly. So it isn't only on summoners being banned, tell me what happened to the fluff!
An example of my own. Expanding upon Otyughs living near human civilisation and speaking common, into making them a pc race and Otyugh clan meetings as the beginning of democracy in my setting. In such sites they would come together to discuss and debate, and for those in the know the Otyughs aren't as stupid as they might at first seem. Yes, while initially roving garbage disposal machines, with time they take on more languages and knowledge skills, always watching from the trash heap and debating about what they have seen back in the great marsh. Charisma and intelligence skills are very important for the venerable Otyughs, and for the young Otyughs to move and be seen in Otyugh society.
An example of change to fluff that I have seen relating to two classes. Warriors are almost completely removed, fighters are reskinned as condottieri. Not just mercs, fighters represent a huge percentage of fighting forces, with most of these being professional mercenaries. Almost all fighters not in small national armies (or bodyguards) are mercenaries and lean heavily to a lawful bent. With the advance of these mercenary companies across much of the world, doing the fighting and monster slaying that needed to be done, bureaucracy and the important of reputation have soared.
Yes, being a fighter is closely aligned to keeping your word and finding work through bureaucratic channels. It worked, but felt like we were in a plane of law most days.
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When it comes to thelarge majority of "enemy races", mostly the ones with humanoid bodies (orcs, goblinoids, ogres, giants, trolls, gnolls, etc), the whole "CE tribal clans of raging primitives" gets thrown out the window and crushed with the rest of the garbage. That's a sweeping change I made for my world.
Smaller changes expand upon what I did above. Gnolls aren't slavers that raid the countryside and kidnap others and force them into slavery. Gnolls are still tribal, but they are bee keepers. Not the normal bees, but the giant bees. They harvest giant bee honey and roam the lands as travelling merchants.
Gnomes aren't happy-go-lucky tricksters (faeries in race form, basically) who love illusions. Instead they are a warrior society (think the Spartans from the movie 300) who live in a waterlogged country (tons of rivers, lakes, and swamps), and have a steampunk aesthetic. They still tinker with things, though. Lots of clockworks and golems.
Humans are the closest thing to an enemy race. They are extremely racist and xenophobic, with an overinflated superiority complex (thinking they are above all other creatures on the planet).
Kobolds aren't little halfling-sized dragonmen who have a hardon for traps. I combined them with the dragonborn from D&D.
I haven't really done much in the way of refluffing any of the classes. For the longest time, I renamed fighter to warrior (and warrior npc class to soldier), ranger to hunter (but now there's a hunter class in Pathfinder), and monk into martial artist. But that's the extent of refluffing of classes.
Nice, no more insane savages that can't be negotiated with because of their evil souls.
Giant bees make every game interesting. I had one country I crafted centered around them. Players versus a rogue hive was something else.
Humans are the worst...
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I made Half Orcs a full race of their own, as Orcs and Humans don't interbreed in my setting. Nor are they green. They are modeled after a Human ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis.
Everything can be negotiated with in my games..... if you can talk to it and have a good offer or line of reasoning.
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I altered Orcs to be like Klingons; Honor, warrior code, might makes right. They are a true warrior race to be feared by my players. This didn't really sink in for my players till a simple orc border patrol of no greater than 1st through 5th level members nearly TPKed their party of 8th to 12th level party members. But then they really weren't ready for such tactics from a lower level foe and massively underestimated them.
I also gave Kobolds a comedic twist. They have such grandiose plans but tend to be their own worst enemies... but their contraptions are amazing to behold... just super dangerous to both use and be on the receiving end of.
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I began playing Hobgoblins like that back in the 80s and the theme just stayed true all the way to today.
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Like others here, I really hate the concept of mortal races having an innate alignment. There might be cultural reasons for why race X is hostile and unpleasant, but that is it. Granted a lot of humans and similar races might THINK that is true, but that's true in the real world
This probably has the most effect in my homebrewed Golarion.
For starters, stories of Lamashtu and similar gods being responsible for the creation of specific races is just...religious propaganda sponsored by clerics of said gods.
Kobolds are still xenophobic and prone to Napolean complexes, but are also incredibly loyal and democratic within their own society, and also have great inventors. Their small size and weak martial ability however has continually made them vulnerable to enslavement or marginalization by other races.
Hobgoblins are still close to the Pathfinder model, but are heavily based on the Peacekeepers of Farscape, in that they lack a real homeland and function as "neutral" peacekeeping forces brought in to pacify or police a region.
Orcs are from Akiton, and somehow got into the Darklands via a portal. They still have a "might makes right" background, but the current chaotic and barbaric practices are largely a result of Dwarves annihilating the culture.
Drow are basically the culture presented in the Purge movies. Decadent elite who remain in power (and curb their own violent tendencies) by fostering a kill or be killed attitude amongst those of lower (economic) class
Most of the core races remain the same, but I hate the fluff of Golarion Dwarves, which is basically about as cliched and unoriginal as you can get. Instead, I use the Midgard model, and most dwarves are more along the lines of neurotic German engineers than drunk scottish clansmen. I do like the variants dwarves in Garund however
Other minor tweaks:
Guns and similar technology is more widespread, but restricted to only a few races, such as Dwarves and Kobolds (who fiercely argue who originally invented the technology) and Ratfolk.
The Worldwound effort is a much more international affair, with crusaders receiving significant backing from practically every organized, united, and stable nation in Avistan, including Cheliax
Probably other stuff I haven't thought of. It should be noted that I am also developing my own setting (for writing purposes), which really doesn't share much in common at all with DnD/Pathfinder.
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Humans are a created race, made eons ago by the progenitors of the Elves. So were most of the other races, except Dwarves, who were Gated in from another world entirely. Humans were one of the last ones made, however, in an ornate eugenics program to bind the best traits of a Dragon into a Humanoid species that could breed true.
The end result was the "Favored Cattle", aka Humans. While their Creators were HOPING to get creatures with fairly low intelligence but built-in magical power that didn't take centuries to mature, they instead got a Humanoid race that could breed with almost anything. This is my way of explaining how the "Half" creatures out there are almost always Half-Dragon or Half-Human. Incidentally, some Humans do get some of the innate power, and thus they tend to have a higher percentage of Sorcerers than most. Also, in the real world, the existence of Rule 34 proves that real-world humans aren't so different when it comes to breeding habits. :p
Either way, it was a 'happy accident', the Creators rejoiced, and much more was done 'mixing' them with other races. (Since Dwarves aren't from that world, they can't interbreed with any of the other Humanoid races.) Things which are the modern Elves, Orcs, Hobgoblins (technically artic-based Orcs), and the like, all have some Human ancestry in them.
Also, the 'Human Aspect' can breed true. A Human + Elf results in 25% odds of Human, 25% Elf, or 50% Half-Elf. The same result occurs with two Half-Elves, which means they really can't form their own communities. H + HE = 50% H, 50% HE. Etc.
"Drow" don't exist, as such, instead having that roll filled by the "Shadow Elves", which few people know about. They dwell underground and whatnot but don't worship any Lolth-equivalent. Instead, they are a race of mostly Necromancers or those who use the dead in some way, mostly out of pragmatic necessity due to the harshness of their environment and low birth rate. (They are inspired mostly from the Death Gate Cycle, specifically the Sartan on the Earth-based world.)
As for the whole 'Mini Dragon' aspect, the Creators were successful, in the end. The runty, deformed, pathetic (though fast-breeding) creatures were considered a 'horrible mistake', given a name roughly equivalent to 'worthless excrement', and forced into the depths of the earth to forget about them. Sadly, they've passed down their (low on details, but still essentially true) creation myth over time, and that's one reason the Kobolds are so nasty to other races. They still have a chip on their shoulder about their treatment and how others view them, but they've got an even greater % of Sorcerers than even Humans do, and their leaders are almost always one (75% of which are female, due to the original Dragons from which they were made).
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Just gonna link this rather than type it out. More updates forthcoming. Hopefully soon.
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I do this with Culture - rather than having an "Asian part of the world" and "Arabian Knights part of the world" I have that be racial cultures.
It started when decades ago I decided Elves were "asian" - so Kung Fu, Monks, Katanas, Wu Jen etc were "Elvish" in the world- the feel of arrogant nobility from those cultures seemed to fit Elves (as opposed to arrogent nobility from other culutres), and classic Japanese isolationism fit too. The Drow as Ninja was a nice side effect.
Gnomes ended up Celtic, Orcs were the "Mongolian horde", Men were pretty much western Europea that sort of thing.
Gave the world a really unique flavor.
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I treat Centaurs as my equivalent to the Mongol hordes.
I do not do always evil or usually evil races, and I feel every culture needs to have both good and bad aspects, including its own set of bigotries. I also like taking classical cliches and twisting them a bit without totally throwing them out. Here's what I did with Elves. Important to know that all playable races are considered human beings, with Magni being the race closest to us here on Earth. So, Elves are a variety of Human, not a separate race.
Elves see themselves as the children of the Sun, open and energetic. They are sociable and full of ideas, and their art is characterized by bold, broad strokes, brand new ideas, and bright colors. If you look at their treetop cities, they show little planning or subtlety. Elves throw up what looks cool and what is nice to live in, and have a thing for bold architecture. Elven social interactions are pretty direct, and elves can be considered somewhat flighty. As a race with magic in their veins, they are more likely have the blood of a sorcerer than any other race except the Drow, and sorcerers make up the majority of Elven arcane spellcasters. With the advent of industrialization, urbanization, explosive population growth, and technology such as trains, factories, and running water, Elven cities have proven quite inadequate to housing a modern population. The rich can keep their cities as they traditionally have been, at the cost of shutting the poor out to slums that aren't even able to provide the poor quality of life one could find in slums in non-forest dwelling races. This has led to a big rift between those who get to live in the beautiful tree cities and those who don't, and massive numbers of Elves are leaving the slums for the cities of the Magni, Dwarves, and Drow. Hence there is a split between Aboreal Elves and City Elves. Elven society preaches environmentalism, though City Elves would say that Aboreal Elves don't know the first damn thing about environmentally friendly city design and that forest cities just aren't sustainable and can't be the basis of Elven society anymore, whereas Aboreal Elves would concede past mistakes and talk about the need for smaller populations and a less technologically reliant lifestyle while deriding the places City Elves live as wasteful, concrete Hells with no connection to nature. Elves value education, but not formal schooling. They like their learning in pieces the size of their attention spans.
They are commonly considered promiscuous by other races, which doesn't fully reflect Elven sexual mores. Elves do attach a degree of importance to sex, but they don't restrict themselves to one partner, even though they practice monogamous marriage. Elves feel that love naturally comes in a spectrum, and your spouse should be that person you love above all others. Having sex with someone other than that spouse is both acceptable and perfectly normal (in fact, it'd be seen as unjustly controlling and a sign of an abusive relationship for an Elf to demand their spouse not have sex with other people), but giving another partner more love and attention than your spouse is adultery, which is an extremely serious offense that will ruin not only a marriage, but one's friendships and other romantic relationships. Divorce has a huge social stigma attached to it. Gay sex has no almost no stigma in Elven culture, as Elves don't see any problem with a man having a male lover or a woman having a female lover, but being exclusively homosexual leads to a lot of anger and ridicule from other Elves, and gay marriage is considered downright ridiculous. Many Elves do not accept the fact that some people do love others of the same gender as much as one loves a spouse. Other Elves don't understand why a gay man wouldn't just become a woman. If a child is born to the union of an unmarried partner and a married partner, the married partner gets full custody and their spouse is considered the opposite sex parent of the child. Elven society teaches that spouse should raise the child as their own without stigma, though society's rules aren't necessarily always followed. The unmarried partner has no parental rights and is not considered related to the child in any way. If both lovers are married, one must get full custody and the other will not be considered related to the child at all. Traditionally the family with fewer children will get the child, with the mother's family getting the child if both have the same number of children. If that arrangement is somehow unworkable, the two sides either come to an agreement as to who's child it is (joint custody would be considered unacceptable) or it turns into a court fight. If both lovers are unmarried, they either get married or the child is taken away and given to a suitable family. A gay couple would never be allowed to raise a child.
Male to female or female to male gender transition has little stigma, but Elven culture does not understand the fact that somebody can be born with the body of one gender and the mind of another. To an Elf, a person who transitions is changing their gender (which most Elves don't see as bad, just weird), not bringing their body over the gender of the mind. Elves do have poorly defined gender roles, as feminine acting men and masculine acting women aren't stigmatized, but they have a feeling that everybody needs to identify with one or the other, even if they can't explain exactly what feminine or masculine is.
Elves are a bit shorter than Magni (think Earth people), and only have body hair on their scalp. Their ears are noticeably pointed, and actually droop or perk up slightly based on emotion. They are light skinned, with red, pink, brown, blonde, orange, green, blue, black, or purple hair and blue, green, brown, orange, or purple eyes. Lighter hair and eyes are more common than darker hair and eyes. Faint colored stripes or spots are not uncommon, though not in the majority either, and can come in any color.
The basic idea here is something that feels similar enough to the classic idea of what an Elf is, while having unique aspects, some desirable cultural attitudes, and some really bigoted and harmful social attitudes. This is the level of complexity I want to have for other races in my world.
I made Half Orcs a full race of their own, as Orcs and Humans don't interbreed in my setting. Nor are they green. They are modeled after a Human ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis.
Cool, did they get past handaxe tech? How do they culturally compare to the humans?
I treat Centaurs as my equivalent to the Mongol hordes.
I did the same!
It makes them much cooler, and a very serious threat. For you: http://jordanabernethy.deviantart.com/art/Centaur-1-321390595
I made Half Orcs a full race of their own, as Orcs and Humans don't interbreed in my setting. Nor are they green. They are modeled after a Human ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis.Cool, did they get past handaxe tech? How do they culturally compare to the humans?
They use "modern" metal weapons, usually bartered for or taken in battle from fallen foes, and some tribes have mastered metallurgy, having learned it from other races. The more remote tribes can and do still make stone tools.
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I treat Centaurs as my equivalent to the Mongol hordes.I did the same!
It makes them much cooler, and a very serious threat. For you: http://jordanabernethy.deviantart.com/art/Centaur-1-321390595
Awesome pic! Thanks!
I remember the first time the PCs encountered them. They were told to be wary of the bands of "horsemen" on the plains they had to cross. They never suspected they would encounter "horse men". I was pelted with dice and garbage for that little pun.. lol
I altered Orcs to be like Klingons; Honor, warrior code, might makes right. They are a true warrior race to be feared by my players. This didn't really sink in for my players till a simple orc border patrol of no greater than 1st through 5th level members nearly TPKed their party of 8th to 12th level party members. But then they really weren't ready for such tactics from a lower level foe and massively underestimated them.
I also gave Kobolds a comedic twist. They have such grandiose plans but tend to be their own worst enemies... but their contraptions are amazing to behold... just super dangerous to both use and be on the receiving end of.
I've experimented with that in some of the orc tribes, like those prone to raiding into Isger in smaller more organised groups. Players and orcs were scouring a zombie overrun city and trying to take/loot parts of it when they came into conflict.
Mixed class mounted character sees an orc greatswordsman in nice kit. They identify each other, the orc salutes and the orc laughs (he has to wait for the cav to charge, couldn't chase him) as he knows he is in trouble but still confident and slightly into the trees. Player charges, slices that orc brilliantly. In response, orc crits with immense damage, almost killing the low level char outright. Ruins the character's left leg. Player finishes him off juuuust. Orc chuckles and coughs blood, salutes again, tries to express the equivalent of "gg mighty enemy", dies. Cavalry char is stuck in enemy territory (of multiple enemy types) heavily wounded. The orc seems happy and at peace.
I do not do always evil or usually evil races, and I feel every culture needs to have both good and bad aspects, including its own set of bigotries. I also like taking classical cliches and twisting them a bit without totally throwing them out. Here's what I did with Elves. Important to know that all playable races are considered human beings, with Magni being the race closest to us here on Earth. So, Elves are a variety of Human, not a separate race.
Elves see themselves as the children of the Sun, open and energetic. They are sociable and full of ideas, and their art is characterized by bold, broad strokes, brand new ideas, and bright colors. If you look at their treetop cities, they show little planning or subtlety. Elves throw up what looks cool and what is nice to live in, and have a thing for bold architecture. Elven social interactions are pretty direct, and elves can be considered somewhat flighty. As a race with magic in their veins, they are more likely have the blood of a sorcerer than any other race except the drow, and sorcerers make up the majority of Elven arcane spellcasters. With the advent of industrialization, urbanization, explosive population growth, and technology such as trains, factories, and running water, Elven cities have proven quite inadequate to housing a modern population. The rich can keep their cities as they traditionally have been, at the cost of shutting the poor out to slums that aren't even able to provide the poor quality of life one could find in slums in non-forest dwelling races. This has led to a big rift between those who get to live in the beautiful tree cities and those who don't, and massive numbers of Elves are leaving the slums for the cities of the Magni, Dwarves, and Drow. Hence there is a split between Aboreal Elves and City Elves. Elven society preaches environmentalism, though City Elves would say that Aboreal Elves don't know the first damn thing about environmentally friendly city design and that forest cities just aren't sustainable and can't be the...
Nice, elven sorcerers always seemed to fit more in my view as well.
dot
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Thanks for that link, Orthos. Soon I will have put a couple hours to good use!
Nice, elven sorcerers always seemed to fit more in my view as well.
Thanks. Wizardry seems more an aristocrat in general thing to me, and a race with a deep magic connection really should just manifest magic instead of studying it.
I did bork up. There was a line about relatively common hermaphroditic Elves, which was a quality I used to ascribe to Elves but switched to different race when I finalized Elven sexual and gender mores.
In regards to Golarion elves following the actual fluff in the elf book led to other changes to the fluff following on from this. This was in both my setting and in the setting of another dm, who emphasised it when the players encountered the elves.
Elven society is divided into two classes, never officially, but this is how it is. If elves are whimsical and carefree, dabblers in this and that, partial experimenters in magic and even agriculture this creates a real problem of defence and the future of the people. Elves mostly end up being subsistence farmers, but extremely cultured ones that rarely choose a specialty, and live very distracted lives following their whims, bickering, romancing and mostly staying in the safe elven settlements which are amazingly old and still on-going.
The elves that are not this are the protecting classes, those that actually protect elven civilisation. Elves are very dependent upon their adventurers, the determined and specialised elves that leave the dabbling to fight threats and protect their kin and homes. The elven militia are rubbish, they are too easily distracted, and protection comes from the small elven units of elves that have actually taken multiple levels in single classes, fought foes and not distracted themselves from pressing concerns for decades unto centuries.
Heroic adventurers protecting highly cultured stoners basically. From this, the players found this quite alarming, were surprised it worked, were impressed by the determined elves and scornful of the slackers (they didn't encounter their cultural achievements like poetry or song very much). With this blatant divide some elven warriors were very critical of elven society, but ultimately powerless to change it - because the courtier dabblers are in control of the major settlements, they have had centuries to scheme, play politics and get into their positions they won't be leaving anytime soon.
Now run along noble protectors, we have more important matters to attend to.
Additional note
With the fluff changed in such a fashion and original fluff taken to certain conclusions, it actually meant the adventurer/protector elves were extremely hardcore, nicely high level on average, but quite unlike the adventurously inactive elves that required their protection. Few beyond the protectors realised how fragile elven society was, if its high level protectors and strike teams were to ever fall it would be in great peril.
In Second Darkness, a new dm faced the baffling problem of the xenophobic and extremely rude elves insulting their non-elven mercenary allies. This brought into question why they should be assisted, and that the Drow were actually much more accepting of foreign mercs and help.
Yes, for a while there the Drow seemed better than the Elves which had a real attitude problem. Eventually it seemed both were bad guys, but we stuck with the "good" elves.
Anyway, that is all I have to say on elves, this isn't an elf fluff(er) thread.
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In my home game Drow and Elves are born to the same lands, divided by the elves being on the surface, and the drow being in the depths. They are passive aggressive with moments of risen tensions, but otherwise Drow and Elves are considered by every other race to be equally capable of good and evil (though some prejudices still occur against either side, depending on what the observer values and disdains)
Kobolds serve as the humanoid envoys of the dragon lands, and display fierce pride in their connected heritage. People are wary of kobolds, not because of a history of trickery and being pests, but because any one of them could be an agent for a CR 20 creature, with a long memory and flight.
Orcs combat a racial inner rage, (I believe Wow does that), but are not inherently evil. There is also a nation in my home world where the orcs have gone monastic in an effort to quell the rage. It's governed primarily by half orc masters.
Duergar don't exist, and instead dwarves from one society schism way in the past perform horrid slavery, and the rest don't. Though, their actions color the reception all dwarves face in those lands.
Halflings intermingle with societies all over, but largely tend to prefer their 'city boats', where they ride the world's waves to freedom, and trade (My home world is a flooded world that was salvaged via druidic terra forming after it's planar boundary temporarily crossed into the Elemental plane of water. Most of it is just elevated mountain peaks formed into islands, in an otherwise drowned world. Fun times...)
I've kinda just nuked gnomes, along with Wayangs, vanaras, and most of the Uncommon races from the race guide from my game; as I like to focus on a select controlled group of humanoid races, and build their societies expansive. Still not sure where to end the cuts though.
I do the 4th edition thing of separating the elves, drow, and eladrin and giving each their usual flavor. Elves are at one with the natural places they live in taking on a sort of camouflage in the way they artistically mimic their environment, born rangers. Eladrin are high minded favoring the mysteries and beauty of magic. While Drow seek only to survive a world turned against them, whatever dark deeds were done in the past the Drow lost their place in the world and ran underground where they turned to forbidden magics and dark rituals to save themselves, every race is an enemy of the Drow and they know this, they kill to survive, they torture to understand their enemies, and they long ago lost any compassion for those they hurt while saving themselves.
Yes the Drow only have a slightly different flavor in my setting, they are the victims lashing out at everyone who has ever hurt them however old that crime and the memories of the various elven peoples are long indeed. Of course this just reinforces the worlds hatred of the Drow. An endless cycle of hate set up long long ago in one of the finest gambits the demons have ever pulled off. Rare indeed are the Drow who give up their hate and rare indeed are the other races who would accept that. Truly an epic win for demons.
...so wait, is this thread about altering the fluff of Golarion, homebrew settings, or both?
Both I would imagine any altered fluff regardless of source becomes a homebrew setting.
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I... Don't really run in Golarion outside of published APs. Even when I run pre-published stuff (which is rare in any case), I wind up with a bit of my own home-brew world (designed for writing purposes) bleeding through.
Some of the bigger changes wind up with Orcs, and Dwarves.
Orcs: These guys I do like most and remove the ALWAYS CHAOTIC EVIL right off the bat. However, I've generally made them a nation of their own, heavily influenced by feudal Japan and Han Dynasty China. It's the general "Asian" culture, as it were. A focus on fine arts, fine foods, and warfare. There are a lot of subtle nuances along with this, but that's the general idea. A very heavy caste system, with little wiggle room for advancement, but some tracks lead up.
Dwarves: Viking miners. Whilst I like the whole 'Men of the Earth' aspect of Dwarves, I wanted to pull a bit closer to the Norse origins. Of course, I must have been half-asleep when I came up with this, but rather than go fully with their mythological origins, I decided to go a bit more for the Scandinavian origins... Thus, they're miners in their homeland, and elsewhere, they're the terrors of the high seas.
I... Don't really run in Golarion outside of published APs. Even when I run pre-published stuff (which is rare in any case), I wind up with a bit of my own home-brew world (designed for writing purposes) bleeding through.
Some of the bigger changes wind up with Orcs, and Dwarves.
Orcs: These guys I do like most and remove the ALWAYS CHAOTIC EVIL right off the bat. However, I've generally made them a nation of their own, heavily influenced by feudal Japan and Han Dynasty China. It's the general "Asian" culture, as it were. A focus on fine arts, fine foods, and warfare. There are a lot of subtle nuances along with this, but that's the general idea. A very heavy caste system, with little wiggle room for advancement, but some tracks lead up.
Dwarves: Viking miners. Whilst I like the whole 'Men of the Earth' aspect of Dwarves, I wanted to pull a bit closer to the Norse origins. Of course, I must have been half-asleep when I came up with this, but rather than go fully with their mythological origins, I decided to go a bit more for the Scandinavian origins... Thus, they're miners in their homeland, and elsewhere, they're the terrors of the high seas.
Naval raiding dwarves - now there's a visual!
O'er we sweep while buzzed with grog!
Our only goal is the next big slog!
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I... Don't really run in Golarion outside of published APs. Even when I run pre-published stuff (which is rare in any case), I wind up with a bit of my own home-brew world (designed for writing purposes) bleeding through.
Some of the bigger changes wind up with Orcs, and Dwarves.
Orcs: These guys I do like most and remove the ALWAYS CHAOTIC EVIL right off the bat. However, I've generally made them a nation of their own, heavily influenced by feudal Japan and Han Dynasty China. It's the general "Asian" culture, as it were. A focus on fine arts, fine foods, and warfare. There are a lot of subtle nuances along with this, but that's the general idea. A very heavy caste system, with little wiggle room for advancement, but some tracks lead up.
Dwarves: Viking miners. Whilst I like the whole 'Men of the Earth' aspect of Dwarves, I wanted to pull a bit closer to the Norse origins. Of course, I must have been half-asleep when I came up with this, but rather than go fully with their mythological origins, I decided to go a bit more for the Scandinavian origins... Thus, they're miners in their homeland, and elsewhere, they're the terrors of the high seas.
Naval raiding dwarves - now there's a visual!
O'er we sweep while buzzed with grog!
Our only goal is the next big slog!
Yes, very much. That's the route I went, primarily to do something new with them, and partially because I wanted Kobolds as a primary race and thus needed to move one or the other out of the "mining and forging-focused, subterranean-dwelling race" niche.
Will post in thread later if it's a general home brewed thread.
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My group started a new D&D 5e campaign about two months ago. The GM of this campaign is using a homebrew world setting, in which non-humans are practically unknown. But she agreed to allow me to build my character as a tiefling.
Because 5e tieflings as written have a very distinctive appearance (horns, hooves, and tails), my GM didn't want to deal with the kind of attention that look might attract. So she ruled that in her setting, people with such infernal heritage aren't always so easily identifiable. My character looks a little unusual, but not in a way that would immediately allow anyone to identify her as a tiefling.
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If I ever get around to my campaign one thing I'm changing is that Changelings have the same height/weight range as their non-hag parent. It's mostly because they're described as tall but they're barely taller than dwarves.
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I treat Centaurs as my equivalent to the Mongol hordes.I did the same!
It makes them much cooler, and a very serious threat.
Thirded!
Will post in thread later if it's a general home brewed thread.
No restrictions, go for it. How you have changed the fluff of generic fantasy, golarion or done something very different in your homebrew.
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If I ever get around to my campaign one thing I'm changing is that Changelings have the same height/weight range as their non-hag parent. It's mostly because they're described as tall but they're barely taller than dwarves.
Same. I used the elf tables (although that was before the ARG).
Between this and the aasimar/tiefling age problem, they need to completely revise those tables in the next printing. :(
Please share more of the altered fluff, I have an addiction.
Hmm, that sounds pretty good to me.
So they choose their racial traits and move it around, but it has to all make sense and flow.