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Exactly what it says on the tin. One of my players reminded me recently I should share this here is case anyone else is interested or wants to use any of this. I can joke around about publishing or whatever but it's only ever gonna be for me and my players and others for free that I write all this, so hope y'all enjoy!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tgev-TGOsByKFojUL7VHgWNPeyibshbNyB908R_ xNls/
Anyways! Caveats before y'all get to telling me things I'm aware of:
- "These seem super overpowered!": Yes, I aim to give my players choice of race when building their character the strength of between 1 and 2 levels of a proper class. Consider these is conversation with each other, and perhaps not with the base races of the Core Rulebook
- "Are these the only races in your world?": As far as playable ones? Yes.
- "Why the higher power?": I prefer it that way. We tend to go extremely magic item light for my campaigns (as I know a number of DMs and players prefer) and setting them up this way has worked great in that sort of setting.
- "A lot of these abilities have to do with things like food consumption, environmental effects like heat and cold, and carrying capacity?": Well spotted! I absolutely adore playing games where these things are heavily factored in and as such built them to be a more core part of the experience from character building onward.
Outside of that, or if you even have additional questions on any of that, feel free to drop things here and I'll be happy to answer. I've been using these with some edits off and on to run a consistent game world between a bunch of groups over the course of about a decade. But only recently did this document reach a point of "done" where I feel pretty proud of it.
Hope y'all enjoy and let me know any thoughts you might have!
Fixed link Races of Elrahst V2.2
Apologies for the first one being busted
To summarize we have
- Oruk: The closest to a "default" race in my setting. An amalgam of humans, orcs, elves, and a number of others who all mixed together following a massive disaster causing an evolutionary bottleneck. Extra skill points, bonus feat, DR against nonlethal damage.
- Gilemb: Leathery skinned salamander/sharklike peoples who were driven from deep underground by abominations. Possessing prehensile tails, adaptation for rocky terrain, and a breath weapon.
- Lioria: Mouselike smallfolk with a focus on community building and repair/reclimation of abandoned buildings and places. Ability to shrink themselves even smaller, stealth bonuses, basically the minish.
- Dollüg: Ooze that take on humanoid formes and feed off the psychic impressions left behind my sentient creatures. Go mad if isolated for too long from others. Can be medium or small size, ooze traits (with some obvious exceptions), detect thoughts at-will
- Aegolell: Owl-like humanoid birdfolk. Gain flight ability based on ranks in fly skill. Naturally good at stealth, get eschew materials as a bonus feat, claw attacks included.
- Dracolin: Humans taken before the great disaster and hybridized with dragons, due to dragons loosing their ability to age or reproduce. Draconic aging gives them faster ability score improvements, bonus spells per day, but also makes them require much more food than average.
- Gnoll: My own take on one of my favorite monsterous races. First of my list of "no default evil" races (because the idea is silly). Aligned with and in possession of instincts to located and follow leylines and their nexus points. Bonuses when in and around these nexuses. Able to grab an animal companion as a racial trait (1/3rd level). And I went ahead and gave them quills in their oversized names because I wanted them to have a bit more of a mythical beast vibe.
- Nyuama: Small fae creatures looking like bipedal hairless cats covered in tiny scales with gecko like tails. All members are in a symbiotic relationship with colonies of mushrooms that differentiate the different clans of nyuama from one another. Fae with the new (native) subtype, ability to cast a few SLA's, additional healing per day when resting, resistance to poisons, and a natural toxicity to their bodies.
- Hobgoblin: My second revamped "evil" race that is no longer stuck as such. Very lore focused in my world. Biggest ability gained from this lore focus is the ability to activate an effect similar to "Sanctuary" as an move action, but only for a couple of rounds a day, bonuses to crafting, armor, and an ability to adapt to their environment. Feedback here is welcome, I've somehow never had a player pick to play one so I don't have much play test experience with them
- Nellebrae: Tall angular lithe partial people partial construct race created by a god. Constructed portions of their bodies made from stone or wood, never metal. Limited number of them in the world at any point, when one dies another is brought into existence immediately. Natural armor bonuses, innate SR, resistances to force damage.
- Tunner: Bipedal Otterfolk with antlers, aligned to the moon and able to produce light from said antlers at-will. Natural focus towards community, construction, swimming, knowledge, and extremely complex family ties and webs of intermarried clans. Swim speed, tail slap ability, casting light at-will, enviotnmental adaptations, what amounts to a single level of bardic knowledge (can make checks untrained)
- Solan'Ecae: Medium sized plant/treefolk. Technically 3 symbiotic organisms working together, with the head being the one with actual intelligence, but the body and the stomach working together to move the three around and provide them with nutrients. Often find themselves given strange urges or quests by the innate force that animates them, having sprung up after the great disaster to repair and heal the world. Plant subtype (but most of the immunities cut), natural armor, an ability to learn spells that are cast on them by making a series of skill checks.
And those are the normal ones. Next up I'll detail the planar race subtypes. I have them set up to be layered "on-top" of the base races of my world, removing a set number of abilities from each one (usually the strongest or stronger abilities of that base race), to be replaced with selected traits from a list provided with the planar one.
Pretty cool! I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but I liked what I've seen. Your a daft hand and lore and world building. I was particularly excited for your mouse-like race, I'm always on the hunt for good options for that concept.
I'd be very interested to see if someone could stat these races using RP. They seem strong, but not super broken. For instance, with the mouse types, wether it was be design or not, you effectively blocked any pocket blaster shenanigans.
Thanks for sharing your creations.
Yes indeed lol. That was a hard learned lesson. Balancing the Lioria was one of the more difficult things I did over the years. I absolutely adore the idea of a race that can change their size to be smaller and all the amazing things that provides you RP wise, but when you let them cast while tiny there is just no way to balance it where you don't just end up with "Wizards, but with +2 AC at attack bonus"
Thanks for the compliment! I'm just glad to know the link works, I couldn't tell if I'd gotten no comments because it was broken or because it was too overwhelming for folks to dig into quickly.
Like I said above feel free to steal or use anything I provide here!
As far as stating them with RP I've never really tried, I think the Tunner were the first ones I put together and the last ones I tried to use RP for. I think the old thread should still be here on the forums somewhere. If I had to guess off the top of my head I'd say somewhere in the 15-25 range.
I'll address the style/formatting and usage
my only comment on the first race is that it contains a lot descriptive text (just a statement and not a critical review). Paragraph headings/ability description titles are not well defined/styled and missing at times. The mechanics are couched in descriptive text to the point of being unclear.
The font is large at 14pt. Maybe 10 or 12? Use 105-115% line spacing.
I personally dislike two column style but it is useful where there are a lot of short statements and paragraph breaks or indents such as lists or definitions. It's also helpful if there will be artwork inserted in the column. If the art goes across both columns then you lose the advantage. If there are more than 20-30 words per paragraph(text before a line return/break) it's not helpful.some existing type and style definitions;
→ creature type
→ creature subtype
→ Gray Maiden, a human fighter layout
→ small humanoid (goblin), from Inner Sea.
→ Vine Leshy from Ultimate Wilderness. Scroll down for the racial description
I appreciate the formatting help, it is one of the things I struggle with. The 14 font has largely been a compromise between my dyslexia and my hatred of dyslexic friendly fonts lol.
I suppose I put the descriptive text into the abilities when it felt like I needed to clarify why an ability was being given, without having to have a block of text at the end of the lore section just going "And here follows my list of while lore supported, still quite convenient reasons for the below abilities."
Any suggestions on how to better format this? Perhaps have the ability name, then it's effect, then perhaps the explanations below? Maybe in a smaller text, italicized, with a sort of written proze form akin to the excerpt style openings for each race? Or that could just be me indulging my writer self too much and getting in the way of the actual content lol. I'm open to any suggestions but when I do my next big pass I'm gonna put this on the to-do list along with developing feats/spells for the various races.
I'm sure if this ever got sent to an editor or the like it would absolutely get shredded for stuff like that and not being formatted in a way that is rather "book-like". But I also guess it's probably something I should concern myself with more now that the volume of what I've written has reached this length.
Do y'all have any suggestions for dyslexia friendly fonts (times new roman was chosen not due to being dyslexia friendly but because it's what I am used to) that don't look, well bad?
As far as artwork is concerned I'd need to actually get some made if I ever wanted to include that. I know some may suggest using some AI generative stuff but as a lifelong writer the stuff just feels wrong to me so that's not on the table.
I appreciate folks taking the time to read my stuff and give suggestions. I'll put in a few of the formatting changes suggested soon.
Any other advice from folks or comments? Maybe I should give summaries of the plannar subtypes available.
While I do have the normal 6 you are familiar with (Oread, Sylph, et-al elemental races, Tieflin and Aasimar) I also decided to work up ones for fae influenced folk, partial undead that aren't all dhampir, and four new ones for the oft unused paraelemental planes, aka the border elemental planes of Ice, Storms, Magma, and Murk.
Would an ability summary here on the forums interest people? Obviously it's all in the document, but folks seem disinclined to read that so far.