So I was playing around with the idea of putting my own spin on races. I am coming up against some mental walls though. It occurs to me that the issues are cultural versus not understanding the racial traits.
For example: I am totally OK with Dwarves (I get them). My spin on Dwarves is two related cultures: a conservative traditionalist culture more concerned with aberration attacks after delving too deep, so they have the minesight alternate ability and their hatred racial trait focuses on aberrations.
And a subculture of sundered Dwarves exiled by the traditionalists that now live in the vast forests adjacent to their former mountain home. They are craftsmen of wood and stone, no long have stonecunning (instead have an equivalent forest-based ability), and are also brewers. Their hatred is against giants and goblins.
I'm having issues with Elves; specifically their magical traits that seem too focused on the "magical economy" aspect of the game that I do not like, and not being able to place them in a different culture without going back to the tropes.
One idea is a somewhat closed nation of elves (Think FR Gold Elves or Dragonlance Sylvanesti) with half-elves being bred specifically as a sort of slave race that acted as envoys for the elves. The Half-Elves revolted or escaped, and now live in communities all their own and the Elves have become decadent and their nation has fallen into ruin.
Also as far as the small races are concerned, I like some of the Gnome alternate options for Halflings but haven't liked 3.5 or Pathfinder's takes on Gnomes at all. I'd phase them out completely but it would leave a racial hole in my opinion.
The question I have is: How would you make cultural changes to the various races if you were to put your own spin on them?
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I usually find that the main issue with elves are that they tend to have stronger tropes than other common races, making it harder to disociate from them.
Building upon your idea that elves bred half-elves, and that they rebelled, here is a proposition of a not necessarily decadent empire.
Following consecutive half-elf slave revolts (also known as The Patricide due to the number for elves killed by their slaves), the slave-driven supremacist beliefs that ruled the empire gave way to a self-centered xenophobic doctrine : the unruly nature of the half-elf breeds was attributed to their human parents.
Using their knowledge of breeding techniques, but not willing to risk contamination from non-elf sources, the elf empire decided to start a centuries-long project to create specialized pure elven breed.
As of now, centuries later, the project is considered a success, with various elf breeds living in all strates for society. While each breed has its specialities, all of them can be found at various levels of powers and responsability....
- The Old Ones : the Old Ones are mostly elves from before The Patricide, that still live today. A few newborns exist, born from parent that refused to follow the project; for this reasons, they are usually discriminated upon by the other breeds. Alternate Racial Traits : none.
- The Light-bearers : despite what strangers may believe, the Light-bearers aren't a prestigious or virtuous breed; the first of the new breeds, they are elves able to manipulate light. While this trait is considered interesting, it resulted in the loss of other major abilites. For this reason, experimentation on the Light-bearers breed was halted, and they continuous existence is due to the belief that future merging with other breeds may end in a breed able to wield light without such loss. Alternate Racial Traits : Lightbringer.
- The Wave-riders : this breed is adapted to life at sea, and the major reason for the current strength of the elven navy. Alternate
Wow, I like how your mind works. Being able to inform an entire subculture based on a single alternate trait is a fantastic skill. I love your creativity. Turning inward after dealing with revolution makes perfect sense and the eugenics idea taken to the extreme is so good.
I'm not sure I buy the idea of humans being as diverse and adaptable as Pathfinder makes them out to be. My idea is (if I include humans at all) to replace that with a version of dwarven culture:
* Clannish and insular.
* Obsessed with wealth.
* Like facial hair a lot.
* Obsessed with order.
* Distrust of magic power that doesn't come from the divine.
* Really, really stuck on tradition.
* Good at war and making war-related stuff.
* Drink a lot of alcohol.
I choose these because I see too many of them too often in human cultures.
I fully agree with you that human subcultures and a variety of ethnicities are essential with humans. I think pathfinder has done some good work with creating cultures but not applying alternate racial traits to those cultures. I feel 3.5 Forgotten Realms also had the same issues; great cultural differences with no racial traits to back them up. Creating human variants will be something I am going to tackle, I just wanted to bang out the demi-human races first.
If you really want to go all in on breaking out of the box, you should consider getting a copy of Talislanta, now that it's creator is giving the game away for free. And still completely Elf-free.
I fully agree with you that human subcultures and a variety of ethnicities are essential with humans. I think pathfinder has done some good work with creating cultures but not applying alternate racial traits to those cultures.That's not it at all: I don't care about human subcultures or ethnicities except in the area of getting people the representation they want. It's just not relevant TO ME. Because I don't care about humans at all. Instead I just feel like the standard "Humans can be anything and everything" completely fails to point out the limiting flaws of humans the same way as other races get flaws. My view of humans is closer to how dwarves are in personality, so I might as well transfer most of the stereotypical dwarven behavior on to them. There's still enough room for variation, it's just now humans are in the same limited way as other races.
Oh I get you now. Sorry.
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The question I have is: How would you make cultural changes to the various races if you were to put your own spin on them?
For elves, to 'alien' them up a little, or make them feel more 'fey' in the 'fair is foul' sense, I like the idea that their long, long lives lead to them sort of unpacking and discarding things during their nightly. Not only would they completely forget things they have deemed irrelevant, practically overnight, but some of their memories might get a bit more colored by perspective than is normal for most humans, so that an elf might remember a place she didn't like as squalid and filthy, despite it being clean and lovely, by any standards, or remember someone he found attractive as superlatively beautiful, only for others to find the reality perhaps not quite so magical as his tales of it.
Additionally, elves might have mercurial, even volatile, emotions, such that an elf might seem to be your best friend, and then take offense at something you said and try to kill you, only to start weeping and apologizing after drawing blood, and, mere moments later, seeming to forget the entire matter. Quick to temper, quick to forget, and, as a result, often considered unpredictable and dangerous, to be treated like wild animals, by humans who regularly deal with them. When challenged on their 'inability' to control their sometimes violent emotions, an elf might snark that humans can control their feelings because their feelings are weak enough to be controlled, or even twist things around and accuse the human of racial bias, judging en elf's behavior by human standards of behavior. Of course the elf isn't living up to human expectations. The elf isn't human, after all!
Another option would be to take a note from the dark elves, and have standard elves be 'lesser elves' of a sort, their 'elf-y-ness' being diluted by their time in / on this world, and that in their hidden lands, the full blooded elves have magical powers similar to those of the dark elves. So called 'half-elves' would be more like 'quarter elves,' having only marginal elven blood, and being mostly human, while even the elves that humans consider to be full blooded elves are considered thin-blooded shirt-tail relatives at best, by their mysterious and magically potent elders. (This would generally be a big secret to other races, and even the half-elves would rarely know about it, since the standard elves would be unwilling to share this embarrassing information about their own 'thin-blooded' status.)
The question I have is: How would you make cultural changes to the various races if you were to put your own spin on them?For elves, to 'alien' them up a little, or make them feel more 'fey' in the 'fair is foul' sense, I like the idea that their long, long lives lead to them sort of unpacking and discarding things during their nightly. Not only would they completely forget things they have deemed irrelevant, practically overnight, but some of their memories might get a bit more colored by perspective than is normal for most humans, so that an elf might remember a place she didn't like as squalid and filthy, despite it being clean and lovely, by any standards, or remember someone he found attractive as superlatively beautiful, only for others to find the reality perhaps not quite so magical as his tales of it.
Additionally, elves might have mercurial, even volatile, emotions, such that an elf might seem to be your best friend, and then take offense at something you said and try to kill you, only to start weeping and apologizing after drawing blood, and, mere moments later, seeming to forget the entire matter. Quick to temper, quick to forget, and, as a result, often considered unpredictable and dangerous, to be treated like wild animals, by humans who regularly deal with them. When challenged on their 'inability' to control their sometimes violent emotions, an elf might snark that humans can control their feelings because their feelings are weak enough to be controlled, or even twist things around and accuse the human of racial bias, judging en elf's behavior by human standards of behavior. Of course the elf isn't living up to human expectations. The elf isn't human, after all!
Another option would be to take a note from the dark elves, and have standard elves be 'lesser elves' of a sort, their 'elf-y-ness' being diluted by their time in / on this world, and that in their hidden lands, the full blooded elves have magical powers similar to those of the dark elves....
Thank you Set, you've done an amazing job of describing fey. I'm not sure how easily they would fit into a party being so mercurial, but I'll think about that. I like the less than true elf idea as well. A friend once created a world setting where what humans considered "elves" had the half-elf traits (2nd Edition D&D) and lived very much like wood elves. Full trait elves were legendary to humans and had a more gray elf or gold elf civilization focused on learning, magic, and large scale war with knights and chivalry, etc.
Also the idea that they literally remove memories or alter memories to their extremes due to such long lives is really intriguing. You could have an elf that was involved with a human family for 3 or 4 generations and then he or she removes those memories. The next time they encounter a family member of that lineage who may have learned stories of the elf passed down, the elf could have no idea who that person is by name or family lineage.
If you really want to go all in on breaking out of the box, you should consider getting a copy of Talislanta, now that it's creator is giving the game away for free. And still completely Elf-free.
Talislanta always felt more sci-fi or sword and planet to me, but I'll see if I can find some old stuff with more in depth cultures to look at. The 3.5 conversion material feels light on racial traits and society breakdown.
Thanks for the idea.
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Thank you Set, you've done an amazing job of describing fey. I'm not sure how easily they would fit into a party being so mercurial, but I'll think about that.
Much like playing an evil character, or a Paladin, etc. that's pretty much on the player, to play their PC in such a way as to function as part of a team, cooperatively, without any sort of PVP nonsense.
Also the idea that they literally remove memories or alter memories to their extremes due to such long lives is really intriguing. You could have an elf that was involved with a human family for 3 or 4 generations and then he or she removes those memories. The next time they encounter a family member of that lineage who may have learned stories of the elf passed down, the elf could have no idea who that person is by name or family lineage.
Yeah, there's a lot of potential there, and some of it can get pretty creepy. Imagine an elf who has, in the past, behaved villainously, and then decided that this was an ugly part of their life and 'edited' it away. But then they end up visiting a place, or encountering people, to whom they are a notorious bad-guy, and have to deal with people who regard them as a villain for events that they don't even remember.
The opposite could also be true, jarringly for a human Paladin, for instance, to meet an elf who is a saint of her faith, and has since moved on and lost interest in that faith, to the point of not just having forgotten writing the Paladin's holy texts, but finding the whole branch of the faith somewhat wrong-headed (and the holy canon they wrote 'overwrought and frantic'). Talk about major disillusionment!
The family thing is fun. Neat idea. It could be crazy to meet an elven ancestor who spent decades as part of the family, meticulously arranging things like a master gardener, only to have abandoned the whole endeavor when they got bored with it (or one of the last generation married someone that elf-gramps didn't approve of, and 'spoiled the experiment').
Holy moley! Huge potential for affecting religions, and even potentially whole cultures depending on how driven the elf was at a certain task. Art, research, engineering, forms of magic; any of these could have lost branches of knowledge due to this penchant of elves forgetting things they helped to create.
And overall, I like my elves immortal, not bound by 3 or 4 centuries and then off the The Grey havens or whatever. I read somewhere that Tolkien stated that those elves who refused to sail West lived on and eventually just faded from the physical world, basically still sentient but incorporeal (I think whimsically implying that elves could be living right along with us in the modern world but we don't realize it).
I could go "Birthright Elven culture" (D&D 2nd Ed); but that would make the elves as much antagonists as protagonists. That can create issues.
Or I could go "Sea Elf"; not aquatic elves, but sailors. Adapted to living aboard boats; being merchants or explorers.
Fur-wearing "Polar Elves"? Frostburn (D&D 3.5) gave a write up of elves in the Frostfell clustering around volcanic vents.
Or an advanced culture of Elven knights riding war-stags through mist-covered forested hills and mountains.
How about a culture of elves that lives simultaneously on two planes? One is in the material plane where Elven culture is seemingly in decline; tracts of woods and hills harbor clusters of delicate marble ruins with scattered Elven settlements. The elves have hidden portals to a realm of mist and twilight where the majority of them actually live These lands have the same sort of structures but they are in perfect condition; here is the actual seat of Elven power and culture. The elves travel between the two planes regularly.
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As far as halflings are concerned, I like Pathfinder's "human shadow" idea. The concept that halflings and humans have developed side by side, either in the slave/master dynamic or as equal partners. Opportunistic races are always a fun thing to play with. I'd feel like dividing halflings into nomadic and sedentary sub-groups with different traits for each. Variety is always a good idea.
I can see a sturdy, upbeat, companion archetype for halflings that love travel. Or a pragmatic, hard-working, provincial sort for sedentary halflings.
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What about elves that like some versions of Fay cannot lie? Sure they can imply things, leave things out and otherwise manipulate things, but they can't directly lie. Phrasing becomes super important, multiple sentences that mean the same thing to humans mean completely different things to elves. The elves native tongue would probably have many, many more words. It would have a huge impact on their entire culture.
OK I'm putting elves on a back burner until my head processes the options and inspiration strikes.
Next, I have an idea for halflings. My halflings are mercantile overland traders living side by side with a burly medium sized race (upper limit in height, roughly 7 feet tall) who act as their heavy labor force (carrying supplies, cargo, etc). Also they use wooly big horn sheep for their wagons and as mounts.
I need help with the burly race. I thought orcs but light blindness sucks
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Fur-wearing "Polar Elves"? Frostburn (D&D 3.5) gave a write up of elves in the Frostfell clustering around volcanic vents.
Since Paizo has introduced the concept of Siccatite, a 'skymetal' like adamantine that can generate heat (or absorb it, making it cold, depending on the variety found), and Paizo elves are more 'otherworldly' than most, I sort of homebrewed that the Snowcaster elves who live in the polar regions make up for their racial Con penalty (which would make them more likely to die to temperature extremes in those regions than humans) by hoarding trace amounts of 'hot' Siccatite, and weaving them into their clothing. Snowcaster boots and gloves and headbands would include very thin wires of hot siccatite, wrapped carefully to not burn the wearer, and their extra long ears (which radiate heat away and keep their heads cool in the jungles of Mwangi, or the warmer jungle regions of Castrovel) bear earrings of hot siccatite, that keep their long pointy heat-dissipating ears from freezing off.
They even have an alchemical means of causing siccatite to 'switch polarity,' so that when they locate siccatite, which, in the polar regions is more likely to be *cold* siccatite (which is worse then useless to them), they can fiddle with it and cause it to flip to hot siccatite (which is nearly priceless, by comparison, a fuel-less source of perpetual warmth, much, much cheaper than buying rings of warmth for every elf).
GOOD STUFF
OK I'm putting elves on a back burner until my head processes the options and inspiration strikes.
Next, I have an idea for halflings. My halflings are mercantile overland traders living side by side with a burly medium sized race (upper limit in height, roughly 7 feet tall) who act as their heavy labor force (carrying supplies, cargo, etc). Also they use wooly big horn sheep for their wagons and as mounts.
I need help with the burly race. I thought orcs but light blindness sucks
You're altering other races, why not the Orcs? They could be more like the shamanistic WoW Orcs or they could be something akin to Vikings. As far as that goes you could have Hobgoblins for the burly race. Who knows? Maybe in this reality Goblins are really the hybrid offspring of Hobgoblins and Halflings. As far as that goes Gnomes could be a variation of Halflings that bred with Fey (possibly Elves).
They could have both land and sea trade. There could be some cultural differences between the two where the land variety tend to be more opportunistic schemers and the sea variety are eager explorers. Some of them could become pirates and their burly allies are only too eager to help them pillage. Maybe some of the overland Halflings are under a curse that is turning them into Ratfolk.
Then again, no one ever seems to make Halflings more like Brownies, even though there's no reason some couldn't be. The more magical versions could have the more homebody lifestyle that Hobbits are known for, setting up their hill-villages and farming. They use bits of magic as defense or to help tidy around the old hole. On the other hand, maybe they were made into something like a Brownie as a sort of household slave by Humans or other races.
If you really want to go all in on breaking out of the box, you should consider getting a copy of Talislanta, now that it's creator is giving the game away for free. And still completely Elf-free.Talislanta always felt more sci-fi or sword and planet to me, but I'll see if I can find some old stuff with more in depth cultures to look at. The 3.5 conversion material feels light on racial traits and society breakdown.
Thanks for the idea.
Considering what's on Golarion, it seems far more scifi than Talislanta, although I'd grant that the latter seems more towards classic pulps. Every bit of Talislanta ever published, books, all editions, and area supplements are freely downloadable from talislanta.com. Now that's value for a price that can't be beat.
My personal favorite is the 4th edition "Big Blue Book".
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You're altering other races, why not the Orcs? They could be more like the shamanistic WoW Orcs or they could be something akin to Vikings. As far as that goes you could have Hobgoblins for the burly race. Who knows? Maybe in this reality Goblins are really the hybrid offspring of Hobgoblins and Halflings. As far as that goes Gnomes could be a variation of Halflings that bred with Fey (possibly Elves).
In one game notion that's not compatible with Golarion's, I had the goblinoid races, elves and gnomes all be fey-descended. Goblins and Gnomes were the seelie and unseelie sides of a single race (and generally hated each other that reason). Hobgoblins and elves were similarly the unseelie and seelie branches of progenitor fey races, with the hobgoblins being evil, elegant and graceful, and totally replacing the dark elves in this setting, both thematically and mechanically. And finally bugbears were the unseelie side of a pair of races from the fey world, but had no living counterpart, *since they'd hunted down and killed every last one of them.*
(At least that was the official position. If there were any survivors, they were unconfirmed rumors of sasquatch-like peaceful furry humanoids.)
Orcs I generally would just divide into two types, the black-blooded orcs of Orv, who claim to be the original Vsult-Builders, who lost their grand empire when their dwarf slaves rebelled. They'd be fond of necromancy and gifted at it, in the same way Tieflings are gifted at infernal sorcerer bloodlines. (In the case of black-blood orcs, it would be bonuses to stuff like Bones Oracles and Undead Bloodline Sorcerers, instead of Abyssal/Infernal sorcery.) The more diluted-blood orcs, who've interbred with humans and no longer share the same taint as their elders (and subterranean light-hating kin) would be more Warcraft-y, primal and wise and savage, with a preponderance of barbarians, druids, hunters, rangers, etc.
I don't like the +4 racial bonus to Strength (or the lopsided penalties to all mental scores used to 'balance' it), so I'd go with black-blood orcs having +2 Str and no other stat adjustments (and a 'Tiefling Sorcery' racial traits that allows them to count their Cha as 2 higher for the purposes of Undead Bloodline and Bones Oracle). 'Primal' orcs would have +2 Str, +2 Wis (keen senses and stronger wills) and -2 Int (turns out that black blood they've gotten away from was good for something...).
Another way to mix things up would be to allow *most* PC races to have multiple stat array options, to make them more versatile for class use, and make them less monolithic, as compared to humans, aasimar or tieflings, who can almost have any stat array they want;
'Country mouse' Halflings would have -2 Str, +2 Dex and +2 Wis. 'City mouse' Halflings would have -2 Str, +2 Dex and +2 Cha. The 'slips' of the city would be particularly skilled at interacting with the more dominant (and physically and socially powerful) humans they live amongst, while 'shire' halflings would have less need for that step-and-fetch nonsense, and be more in-tune with the natural world, even if more likely as farmers than as rangers.
The kind of dwarves who go adventuring would be more likely to have +2 Con, +2 Wis and -2 Cha. The kind who stay at home and work the forges, dominate masterwork armor and weaponsmithing, the proprietary dwarven techniques of forging cold iron and adamantine weapons, rune magic, etc. would have +2 Con, +2 Int and -2 Dex. They'd have a strong caste system, and often look askance at 'crafter' dwarves going adventuring, and since 'crafter' dwarves are the ones most likely to be rune-wizards, geomantic sorcerers, etc. there's a (false) perception that dwarves don't have many arcane casters, which can make it all the more fun to play one, and subvert expectations.
Elves 'fresh off the boat' from Castrovel have some health issues adjusting to the new world's ecosystems, and have the standard +2 Dex, -2 Con and +2 Int. 'Forlorn' or Erutake or Snowcaster elves who have adapted to Golarion (and might find Castrovel's ecosystem equally alien and hostile...) would have instead a -2 Str (slightly different gravity, you see), +2 Dex and +2 Cha (less access to their vast stores of knowledge in their ancient civilization, more ties to the fey).
Gnomes would be the most versatile, in a way, having a +2 to Int, Wis *or* Cha, determined at character generation. It would not be genetic. A pair of intelligent 'tinker' gnomes, fond of trapsmithing and alchemy, might give birth to a daughter with a strong connection to the natural world and bright eyes (+Wis) or a son who has a strong voice and charming personality (+Cha). In any event, no bonus to Con or penalty to Str (or any other physical adjustments).
Some simple additions to stat array options (or fairly radical changes, in the case of Gnomes) can add a lot of role-playing versatility to the various races, as well as some mechanical versatility (elven and dwarven bards and sorcerers are more a thing, for instance, thanks to either adding +Cha, or removing the Cha penalty).
If you want another route, look at the Elder Scrolls. Look how they have Orcs.
Or elves, for that matter (which include orcs. Orcs are elves in the Elder Scrolls series). The elves in Elder Scrolls are quite varied and unique. Particularly the Dwemor and Dunmer, who are completely unlike traditional elves, and the Bosmer and Altmer are both very different takes on more traditional depictions of elves.
I've got most of the crunch worked out with my Halfling/Orc culture.
Salt-blood Orcs
+2 Str & Con, -2 Int & Cha
Size, type, speed remain the same
Languages Orc & Common, plus Halfling, Elvish, Dwarven, Goblin, Giant if they want.
Altered Traits
Orc ferocity as half-orc trait
Weapon familiarity scimitar, falchion
Sea Raider +2 prof (sailor) & craft checks to repair ships, +1 damage vs. Foes in or on water, +2 appraise to evaluate treasure found in, on or under water.
No darkvision
No light sensitive
My Halfling I'm missing one ability. Need some advice on what to add.
Gilded Halfling
Ability scores, type, size, speed remain the same.
Fearless & sure footed remain the same
Gain underfoot +1 dodge bonus vs. Enemies larger than them. +1 reflex vs trample
Gain aquisitive +2;appraise, +4 if used to determine most valuable piece in a hoard.
I have weapon familiarity but don't like it. Slings seem common, pastoral. And I think combat might seem beneath wealthy halflings
First idea I had is +1 die & +2 to multiplier to determine wealth.