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For my very first campaign, I restricted races to core, but this is primarily because I wanted to get the hang of GMing.
Later, more races became available for play.
As a player, the first time I stepped outside the core races was for a kitsune. I like foxes, so it seemed an easy pick. Later I played a Tiefling, then an Awakened Fox, and then another kitsune. (Did I mention I like foxes?)
So generally the only non core races I've played have been Kitsune and Tiefling. Not through lack of chances, but because I like playing elves and half elves enough that I've not found much cause to deviate.
Trox Barb is love, Trox Barb is life... also tpk. Dem will saves.
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I always allow oddball races, and by far I prefer to play them.
As a player I generally find some inspiration in the mechanical side of my character for their roleplay. Class often plays a big role in this, but race definitely does. And one of the biggest things in my mind and especially in my group that has been playing dnd together for more then 2 decades now (wow hard to believe that), is that the nature and flavor of the core races is really well established. We have a strong inclination for dwarves to be a certain way, elves to be another, etc etc. Humans are more of a blank slate, but blank slates don't work for me. If you give me a blank canvas I stare blankly.
Less common races give me more room to try out new ideas. They also give me an opportunity to establish things in Table cannon that were not there before. For instance one of my all time favorite characters was a wayang witch I played in a friends campaign. Because no one had any set ideas of how wayang should be and there was no established practice with them I felt free to go wild with both the character and the background information on the wayang themselves. It was a ton of fun.
Ive had similar experiences with things like changelings, gripplis, and other 'odd ball' races. They inspire me to put more life in my characters and give me a framework to do something fun and interesting. When I play a core race I often struggle to make them anything but dull and 'normal'.
I have played three tieflings (one modeled after Hellboy), a troll/half-dragon (red) in an evil campaign, and am currently playing a sylph staff magus. As a GM I have allowed an elf/half-dragon, an Irda (2E DragonLance), a changeling (Eberron race, in a homebrew setting), a DragonLance Minotaur in a homebrew setting, and currently an android, ghoran, goblin, and two aasimar in my Iron Gods campaign. As long as it fits the setting, I am fine playing uncommon races and allowing them in my games.
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Its good to see GMs embracing the out of the ordinary. All to often I see complaint after complaint about "special snowflake" characters, based on the oddball races a person chooses.
I encourage "special snowflakes" because I don't care about your thirteenth human ranger who focuses on archery or your wife's fifth elf druid who likes brewing alcohol a little too much. it lost it's charm. try something new... I am ranting...
But yeah, bring something unique to my table. something I can get interested about. your experience will be great regardless, but if you are playing something cool and weird and different, then I can feel more encouraged to try the cool and weird and different stuff that i normally down throw at the party.
I allow all core races, the "Core Six Monsters" (kobolds, orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, aasimars and tieflings), and the rest on a case-by-case "request" basis.
Variant tieflings and aasimars generally strike me as an excuse to get the stats you want without overmuch changing the core flavor you're after. As such, I generally don't allow them, but I do consider exceptions. I would also consider them if the player just took the default ability bonuses.
I'm not a huge fan of all the human-but-not races, like dhampirs and ifrits. Do not get the point of a lot of the races like vishkanyas and those monkey people. Not a fan. I don't ban them or anything, but I don't get their point most of the time.
Except wayangs. Wayangs are awesome.
I have to be sold on the concept for the campaign.
That's... really the only restriction. If one of my players had a really cool story, I might even tolerate a friggin' Catfolk.
It'd have to be a pretty epic sell, though, 'cause Catfolk... ugh.
However,over the years I've allowed (and played!) everything from human-only games to a lineup including an Ettin (with one player per head), a veiled Medusa, and the "kids" (a trio consisting of a kobold, a goblin, and a very put-upon half-elf who sort of played sounding board to the insanity of the others' interactions).
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It's not non-"core", though. ;) ;) ;) ;(
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(Did I mention I like foxes?)
Really, who doesn't like foxes?
Not many, especially once I've had a chance to talk a bit with them!
But more seriously(ish), oddball races are nice. I've never seen any real problems arise from a "special snowflake" character when the player's made some efforts to make the character work with the group/setting and isn't just trying to hog the spotlight. There's a lot of interesting character development that can happen simply from taking a stereotypical view of your character's race and asking "How am I similar to this? How do I differ from this?"
I have played three tieflings (one modeled after Hellboy), a troll/half-dragon (red) in an evil campaign, and am currently playing a sylph staff magus. As a GM I have allowed an elf/half-dragon, an Irda (2E DragonLance), a changeling (Eberron race, in a homebrew setting), a DragonLance Minotaur in a homebrew setting, and currently an android, ghoran, goblin, and two aasimar in my Iron Gods campaign. As long as it fits the setting, I am fine playing uncommon races and allowing them in my games.
I forgot that I also allowed a goliath in my homebrew setting campaign. I had to change the racial ability adjustments of the Eberron changeling, the Dragonlance minotaur and the goliath to be in line with Pathfinder, but they worked out well.
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Its good to see GMs embracing the out of the ordinary. All to often I see complaint after complaint about "special snowflake" characters, based on the oddball races a person chooses.I encourage "special snowflakes" because I don't care about your thirteenth human ranger who focuses on archery or your wife's fifth elf druid who likes brewing alcohol a little too much. it lost it's charm. try something new.
I would be much more alongside this line of reasoning, except that I feel that changing the race is among the less effective ways of making a new and interesting character.
I don't care about your thirteenth human ranger who focuses on archery.
Okay, granted. I agree.
But somehow
* your human kasatha ranger who focuses on archery
... isn't that much better. Usually, I find that it's worse, because people have cherry-picked the new race to be that much more focused on building the same thing. (Kasatha can make even better archer rangers than humans can!)
Why not try instead
* your human ranger slayer who focuses on archery, or
* your human ranger who focuses on archery skirmishing and nature magic. or even
* your elven sorcerer who specializes in transformation magic?
My IRL group's usually fairly adamantly core-races-only, but when I took the GM reins this round to run Hell's Rebels I decided to allow aasimar and tieflings. They're extremely thematically appropriate for the story and the setting, without being too out there for the more grognard-ish among our number. The group's still half-human, as I expected , but a few people took me up on the offer. In games I'm running with other groups, I'm open to just about anything if someone brings a solid concept - but I do expect race choice to inform their roleplay and interactions, and I play the world responding as may be appropriate to their choices.
As a player, I lean strongly toward core races and demi-humans - the more clearly monstrous races for some reason just don't enter my brain when I'm planning characters. About the most off-the-wall I've gotten is a coldborn skinwalker, and that's mostly just because I've wanted to play around with a lycanthrope forever and skinwalkers are the closest out-of-the-box equivalent. I might branch further out eventually, especially if a particular campaign just screams for something more out-there, but for now I'm good with where I'm at.
(I s'pose I did roll a goblin once...but it was for We Be Goblins!, so I'm not entirely sure that counts.)
Yes.
I play weird races all the time! but I just realized that I've never actually played a halfling
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I'm a fan of letting people play what they like. After all, the point is to have fun.
If I was going to ban races, it would mostly likely be the core races that got the axe. I love LotR and all, but "Yet another Northern European fantasyland with standard fantasy races" just bores me to tears at this point.
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What Orfamay said.
I mean, there's so much room for interesting characters just being a human, much less the other core races. I have nothing against non-core races, but I don't think they add much by themselves. If a character's uniqueness is entirely based on their race, it's not a very strong character. It's just one detail of many. And if it's mishandled, it can lead to some very dull stereotypes.
That said, the Kasatha actually are one of the few races I'd really like to try, mostly because of their complete alienness. I'd like to play a character that emphasizes that... but that's a very tricky, fine line to walk.
There is only one race I do not allow with my current group, and that is for story reasons.
That said, the current group is 4 Humans, a Half Elf, a Dwarf, and an Aasimar who half the time forgets that he is an Aasimar.
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I had to change the racial ability adjustments of the Eberron changeling...to be in line with Pathfinder, but they worked out well.
currently playing a legacy Eberron Changeling, and very interested in the changes you made. Might we get a peek?
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I had to change the racial ability adjustments of the Eberron changeling...to be in line with Pathfinder, but they worked out well.currently playing a legacy Eberron Changeling, and very interested in the changes you made. Might we get a peek?
Sure. It was nothing big. I just switched it to +2 to one ability score of the player's choice, and called it a day. I didn't change the racial traits. I don't recall anything beyond disguise self at will since I don't have the ECS book in front of me. However, if they got a bonus to, say, Spot and Listen, I would just say they had the bonus to Perception. I make changes only where absolutely necessary.
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That said, the Kasatha actually are one of the few races I'd really like to try, mostly because of their complete alienness. I'd like to play a character that emphasizes that... but that's a very tricky, fine line to walk.
The problem with "complete alienness" is that few players (and fewer groups) are actually capable of that or prepared for it. I assume you're familiar with the Rubber Forehead Alien trope? The setting is set up under the assumptions that human players will be playing characters who react largely as humans do to human-like concerns, which is one reason that elves end up as Humans With Pointy Ears and dwarves end up as Short Grumpy Humans.
I don't think I've ever seen someone convincingly play an elf as an elf (think how different your life would be if you were 100 years old and looking forward to another five hundred years of active living? Why would you do anything as astonishingly dangerous as adventure?) . So theres's no need to play a kasatha when people can't actually play something as alien as an elf.
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An elf goes adventuring for many of the same reasons that regular shorter-lived people go adventuring, experience, maturity, the desire to do good, guiding short-lived people to better methods of living by giving them the view and experience of the longer lived races, and new sources of daisies to munch. Do you realize how hard it is to grow daisies under the shade of old growth forests? Or find orcs to kill if you stay in your forest and carve wood all day.
That said, the Kasatha actually are one of the few races I'd really like to try, mostly because of their complete alienness. I'd like to play a character that emphasizes that... but that's a very tricky, fine line to walk.
The problem with "complete alienness" is that few players (and fewer groups) are actually capable of that or prepared for it. I assume you're familiar with the Rubber Forehead Alien trope? The setting is set up under the assumptions that human players will be playing characters who react largely as humans do to human-like concerns, which is one reason that elves end up as Humans With Pointy Ears and dwarves end up as Short Grumpy Humans.
I don't think I've ever seen someone convincingly play an elf as an elf (think how different your life would be if you were 100 years old and looking forward to another five hundred years of active living? Why would you do anything as astonishingly dangerous as adventure?) . So theres's no need to play a kasatha when people can't actually play something as alien as an elf.
Cherryh's Foreigner novels are really good for this.
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As for playing non-core races, every time I get a chance. Especially non-humanoids. Having played for almost 4 decades, I've played the stock races far too much, from the old standard tropes to things like elven paladins using crossbows and dwarven barbarians dual-wielding longswords. So when you have races like kobolds, goblins, ratfolk, etc available, they fit my style of play better. I especially like the 3rd party supplements and retread of Savage Species that allow you to play monster classes that can also multiclass into the stock classes. Noble Wild, where you play an intelligent talking animal, is another cool change. I've had intelligent lion cubs becoming fighters, purple dragon psionicists, a goblin investigator who piloted a suit of steam-powered medium size armor, dwarven ghosts who were gun-mages from the Iron Kingdoms books, kobold mech pilots, intelligent cat rogues who had opposable thumbs due to a random fey wanting to spread mischief by cursing the entire cat's family line, and even more.
In fact, other systems ENCOURAGE radical race use such as Rifts by Palladium. Dimensional rifts dumping in things from all over the universe into a PA magic-devastated and rich Earth, why be human?
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The races I allow are based on the setting that I'm using. I don't have a general rule otherwise.
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Its good to see GMs embracing the out of the ordinary. All to often I see complaint after complaint about "special snowflake" characters, based on the oddball races a person chooses.I encourage "special snowflakes" because I don't care about your thirteenth human ranger who focuses on archery or your wife's fifth elf druid who likes brewing alcohol a little too much. it lost it's charm. try something new.I would be much more alongside this line of reasoning, except that I feel that changing the race is among the less effective ways of making a new and interesting character.
I don't care about your thirteenth human ranger who focuses on archery.Okay, granted. I agree.
But somehow
* your
humankasatha ranger who focuses on archery... isn't that much better. Usually, I find that it's worse, because people have cherry-picked the new race to be that much more focused on building the same thing. (Kasatha can make even better archer rangers than humans can!)
Why not try instead
* your human
rangerslayer who focuses on archery, or
* your human ranger who focuses onarcheryskirmishing and nature magic. or even
* your elven sorcerer who specializes in transformation magic?
Exactly! I just want my players to break their mold more often and try some COMPLETELY different sometimes.
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For me the reason I don't deviate from human/half-elf much is becuase of how I make my characters most of the time, namely browsing Dabooru's Original tag and looking for any pictures that spark a character muse. Since 99% of that tag are anime girls there's usually not much room in the race department for them, just human, half-elf, and halfling. There's also elves but they have a con penalty while I love con way too much. Sometimes I can make an aasimar, teifling, changeling, or ganzi out of them though, and there is a gnome in my back pocket.
Edit: Right, there's also kitsunes, those are easy to make with all the foxgirls running around.
An elf goes adventuring for many of the same reasons that regular shorter-lived people go adventuring....
Right. An Elf is a Regular Shorter-Lived Person With Pointy Ears. Got it.
You don't get to play unconvincing kasatha at my table until you can play convincing elves.
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Our Skull and Shackles game started with...
...a sexy female catfolk gunslinger (pistoleer),
...a fit male vanaran monk (a crane wing trip specialist),
...a charismatic male tengu bard (our resident linguist)
...a confident female half-elf rogue (a true rake, a red mantis assassin, and our captain).
Later on, the captain also acquired the female human cleric, Sandara Quinn, as her cohort (eventually evolving her into a holy vindicator).
The monkey and bird eventually died, and were replaced by a female half-elf ecoterrorist (arcanist) and a female human river pirate (sage sorcerer).
So we basically went from having a woman with her pet zoo, to just a crew of all women (and one catwoman).
The ships in our fleet have some rather creative names as a result: The Moist Wench, The War Whore, and The Red Tide to name a few.
Not once did we stop to think "it's too much." We just tried to have fun, going with the flow. ;P
That's all any other 'race' is going ot be.An elf goes adventuring for many of the same reasons that regular shorter-lived people go adventuring....Right. An Elf is a Regular Shorter-Lived Person With Pointy Ears. Got it.
You don't get to play unconvincing kasatha at my table until you can play convincing elves.
Which, in turn, means that any attempt to play a kasatha "because of their complete alienness" is doomed to failure, so there's no point in trying.
Basically, if your argument is "I can't play an interesting elf," why should I let you play an equally uninteresting but more freakish race?
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Basically, if your argument is "I can't play an interesting elf," why should I let you play an equally uninteresting but more freakish race?
To give the player a chance to grow into it.
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After a while you’ve played all the standard the core rulebook. You’ve done hundreds of dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings and you want to try something new. Or maybe as a GM you want to open up some additional options for your players. But just throwing a gnoll into a game doesn’t always work, if your GM even allows it. So here are some things you should think about when trying to use oddball races .
As a GM have you allowed something beyond Pathfinder’s core races? As a player have you gotten a chance to play something out of the ordinary?
"Non-core" races can be fine, as long as the selection is:
- Thematically appropriate for the campaign (gillmen are probably not the best choices for Mummy's Mask, for instance)
- Make sense for the setting/region ("What the heck is a gnoll doing in Taldor for Reign of Winter or Sandpoint for Jade Regent?")
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That's all any other 'race' is going ot be.An elf goes adventuring for many of the same reasons that regular shorter-lived people go adventuring....Right. An Elf is a Regular Shorter-Lived Person With Pointy Ears. Got it.
You don't get to play unconvincing kasatha at my table until you can play convincing elves.
Which, in turn, means that any attempt to play a kasatha "because of their complete alienness" is doomed to failure, so there's no point in trying.
Basically, if your argument is "I can't play an interesting elf," why should I let you play an equally uninteresting but more freakish race?
The moral of the story is to never try anything since you're going to inevitably die.
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Which, in turn, means that any attempt to play a kasatha "because of their complete alienness" is doomed to failure, so there's no point in trying.Basically, if your argument is "I can't play an interesting elf," why should I let you play an equally uninteresting but more freakish race?
Why does there need to be some weird 'interestingness' tax in the first place?
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The races I allow are based on the setting that I'm using. I don't have a general rule otherwise.
Same here. Very early on in my first campaign, I started creation at core only, but later opened up races. But this started some issues that some people wanted to play races that I was not prepared to explain. Some races have very fiddly origins. Others have extremely Golarion specific origins, and my campaign isn't set in that setting.
As it became clear that this world of mine was going to become something multiple campaigns were going to be set in, I realized I needed some amount of order so that somebody doesn't decide to play something like a Wyrwood, and then now I have to figure out where they fit in canon.
To this end, at one point, I just sat down, went through all the myriad races on d20pfsrd (my players' primary source for knowing what's available), and went through each one to narrow down whether that race was and was not in my campaign setting, and if so, in what context.
It's been very interesting to take races but give them fantastically different origins, tied into my setting's history. I feel like it really helps bring a lot of things together.
Why does there need to be some weird 'interestingness' tax in the first place?
Which, in turn, means that any attempt to play a kasatha "because of their complete alienness" is doomed to failure, so there's no point in trying.Basically, if your argument is "I can't play an interesting elf," why should I let you play an equally uninteresting but more freakish race?
Because I insist you play the character written on your sheet. So don't write what you can't play.
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Here are some UNIQUE RACES MY GM HAS MADE
Whenever we play a game he runs, these races are available. I am on my second flower-type plantfolk (one a nature oracle, the other a leshy-warden druid). I have also recently played ahalf-orc slayer, a panthor-varient catfolk monk, a were-tiger two-handed ranger, a half-undead graveborn skald, a halfling filtcher rogue, a goblin feral gnasher barbarian, a gnome heavens shaman, an ifrit oracle, a half-orc wizard, an orc dirty fighter, an elf witch, a halfling barbarian, and a half-orc barbarian.
So then in your games no one can ever play anything other than a human ever.Because I insist you play the character written on your sheet. So don't write what you can't play.Why does there need to be some weird 'interestingness' tax in the first place?
Which, in turn, means that any attempt to play a kasatha "because of their complete alienness" is doomed to failure, so there's no point in trying.Basically, if your argument is "I can't play an interesting elf," why should I let you play an equally uninteresting but more freakish race?
Probably not, because I'm not going to let you play anything strange until you demonstrate you can make an elf convincingly elvish, and being an elf isn't special-snowflake enough for you.
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So then in your games no one can ever play anything other than a human ever. Because really everything is going to be tinged by what you know. You can;t ever truly play alieness because it is alien. You are always going to drag a lot of your human into your character, To understand your character you have to say oh its like when we do this, or its like how our bodies do that. We always, always couch things in terms of our existence. So all humans for you it is which sounds completely boring to me.Because I insist you play the character written on your sheet. So don't write what you can't play.Why does there need to be some weird 'interestingness' tax in the first place?
Which, in turn, means that any attempt to play a kasatha "because of their complete alienness" is doomed to failure, so there's no point in trying.Basically, if your argument is "I can't play an interesting elf," why should I let you play an equally uninteresting but more freakish race?
And actually, you can't play other humans either, since who can say what it is really like to be a different person? Your perception of what a different human experiences will always be influenced by what you yourself perceive, so it is actually impossible for you to play a different person.
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Because I insist you play the character written on your sheet. So don't write what you can't play.
So if I write I'm a really boring kasathsa you're fine with it?
I guess I'm just not sure why being a non core race implies some weirdness threshold necessary to make them playable