Spinning off from the drow thread, it got me thinking about the seemingly endless elf variations, along with other race variations.

Quote from: Zelen on May 25, 2021, 01:29:52 AM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on May 25, 2021, 01:15:27 AM
A neat idea I heard is that Elves naturally soak in their environments. Put elves in a swamp and in a few generations you get swamp elves. Same stuff with Deserts or even underwater. They are not so much a sub-species as a regional variant.

As such they could interbreed without distilling the species, as its dependant on location, not bloodline.

I'd love if the core Elf race just had a flexible environment feature and we could dispense with the millions of Elf subtypes. But we all know the people who want infinite Elves won't stop there.

It seems to me that in D&D and related games, there doesn't seem to be any serious idea of "niche protection" for races. i.e. It's OK for there to be a wide range of races including ones in between the current races. Thus, there isn't an issue with half-elves -- but people would have an issue with lots of new classes that cover the in-between ranges.

This can go with how in many settings, different races can interbreed -- so according to background, a character could be half-drow, quarter-human, quarter wood elf -- or even more mixed ancestry with eighths and sixteenths. In Middle Earth, for example, there are many variations in Numenorean or elf ancestry in different characters.

--

So covering all the race variations with a single list of dozens of races seems tough. However, the mechanical race features seem a lot more of a limited set than class features - a few special abilities and such. It seems like the massive race variations might call for abandoning a long list system, and instead going with a mix-and-match system. So race would be more like a point-buy, where you select from a set of optional features to represent your race rather than picking from a list of races.

I wonder - has anyone used a class system, but had variable racial features like this? I've done a lot of point-buy games (i.e. GURPS, Hero) where players represented their race by point-buy options, but I haven't used a hybrid.

Is it crazy to suggest such? I also wonder if it might be good in a setting like Star Wars where there are dozens of little-known races.

I haven't done exactly what you are suggesting.  I did play around with something that worked more or less like this:

There are various components of ancestry and environment that are the building blocks of most creatures.  I was using (abusing?) some old Norse terms but for purposes of this discussion think of them as "blood" and "element".  If you have fey blood and a connection to the wood element, then you get certain properties as a race. 

The bloods and elements range in degree on a 9-point scale, from -4 to +4.  Picking fey blood at +2 has certain features (some positive, some negative, some flavor).  Things get weird at -3/+3 and downright alien at the -4/+4 range (more often the province of extra-planar creatures or elemental beings).  It's assumed that normal creatures don't diverge too much from a total of zero--maybe -2 to +2 over the course of all the bloods and elements added together.  So anyone could have a single -2/+2, but if you go more extreme, there has to be an opposite reaction in some other bloods or elements. 

However, the intention is not that the player custom design a creature for their character.  Rather, it is assumed that the GM and/or the players design a few creatures before play starts, some of which become the playable character options.  (I was intending that this be role played as the group working out the creation myths of the world.  The design has been tabled while I work on something else.)

The GM is free to set inter-breeding limits where they want, with the default assumption that anyone more than 1 degree off in any blood or element is not compatible.

Humans are the flexible "mongrels".  The center of "human" is every blood and element set to +0, as they are a mix.  Plenty of "close enough to human" for most people not to notice are running around with a stray -1 or +1 or so. This lets a human player dabble from the base at character creation. 

I have 8 elements and 10 bloods for a very particular setting idea.  The concept is meant to be tweaked to fit the GM's world.  Elements are meant to be in the classic pairs or something equivalent "fire/ice" whereas bloods are everything else that you want to make an option in the system.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 25, 2021, 12:40:49 PM
I haven't done exactly what you are suggesting.  I did play around with something that worked more or less like this:

There are various components of ancestry and environment that are the building blocks of most creatures.  I was using (abusing?) some old Norse terms but for purposes of this discussion think of them as "blood" and "element".  If you have fey blood and a connection to the wood element, then you get certain properties as a race. 

The bloods and elements range in degree on a 9-point scale, from -4 to +4.  Picking fey blood at +2 has certain features (some positive, some negative, some flavor).  Things get weird at -3/+3 and downright alien at the -4/+4 range (more often the province of extra-planar creatures or elemental beings).  It's assumed that normal creatures don't diverge too much from a total of zero--maybe -2 to +2 over the course of all the bloods and elements added together.  So anyone could have a single -2/+2, but if you go more extreme, there has to be an opposite reaction in some other bloods or elements. 

However, the intention is not that the player custom design a creature for their character.  Rather, it is assumed that the GM and/or the players design a few creatures before play starts, some of which become the playable character options.  (I was intending that this be role played as the group working out the creation myths of the world.  The design has been tabled while I work on something else.)

The GM is free to set inter-breeding limits where they want, with the default assumption that anyone more than 1 degree off in any blood or element is not compatible.

Humans are the flexible "mongrels".  The center of "human" is every blood and element set to +0, as they are a mix.  Plenty of "close enough to human" for most people not to notice are running around with a stray -1 or +1 or so. This lets a human player dabble from the base at character creation. 

I have 8 elements and 10 bloods for a very particular setting idea.  The concept is meant to be tweaked to fit the GM's world.  Elements are meant to be in the classic pairs or something equivalent "fire/ice" whereas bloods are everything else that you want to make an option in the system.

Cool. That sounds pretty close to what I'm thinking. The point is that rather than exhaustively having separate rules for all race variations, you have some general rules and derive from there.

Is your system available publicly?

Actually, that reminds me, for environments - the World of Xoth for 5e is a swords-and-sorcery setting. It details the different races of the world, but they have no significant mechanical effect since they're all human. Instead, there are adjustments for a character's culture: Savage / Nomadic / Civilized / Enlightened / Decadent / Degenerate. They each have some special abilities and a stat bonus (Savage +2 Str; Nomadic +2 Dex; Civilized +1 to any two; Enlightened +2 Wis; Decadent +2 Cha; Degenerate +2 Con). That fits very well with R.E. Howard view of cultures, I thought.

But this or a variation could also be combined with D&D-style races, allowing Savage Halflings; Degenerate Elves; etc.

Quote from: jhkim on May 25, 2021, 12:54:12 PM

Cool. That sounds pretty close to what I'm thinking. The point is that rather than exhaustively having separate rules for all race variations, you have some general rules and derive from there.

Is your system available publicly?

Actually, that reminds me, for environments - the World of Xoth for 5e is a swords-and-sorcery setting. It details the different races of the world, but they have no significant mechanical effect since they're all human. Instead, there are adjustments for a character's culture: Savage / Nomadic / Civilized / Enlightened / Decadent / Degenerate. They each have some special abilities and a stat bonus (Savage +2 Str; Nomadic +2 Dex; Civilized +1 to any two; Enlightened +2 Wis; Decadent +2 Cha; Degenerate +2 Con). That fits very well with R.E. Howard view of cultures, I thought.

But this or a variation could also be combined with D&D-style races, allowing Savage Halflings; Degenerate Elves; etc.

It's not finished.  It's in my "Inspired by Dragon Quest not really a clone but a new system" design that is tabled.  If you are interested, I'll dig up my notes and PM how far I got.  Note that the actual abilities assigned to each level are very sketchy and certainly not in any way play tested!  In any case, you'd want to do your own list.  It also needs to tie into the mechanics of whatever system it is part of.

To give you an idea of where I was going, consider the Fey blood range.  Fey is tied to iron in the blood.  Extreme fey (+3/+4) don't have any/much, which makes them inherently magical creatures.  They are also susceptible to "cold iron".  Whereas in the negative range, a character finds it both harder to cast magic and more resistant to magic being cast on them.  (This is a straight DQ lift, where non-magical creatures gain a significant advantage in magic resistance).

Another blood is the "thread" one, which is tied to fate.  -4 is completely outside of fate while +4 is inexorably tied to a destiny.  Obviously, most creatures don't have either extreme.

As for the rest of the environment part, I have that as a completely separate piece of the design, in the "culture" section.  The blood/element part is what they have picked up from their environment over centuries as a people. 

I'm one of those people that really doesn't like the D&D "half" everything with culture tacked on.  I either want my races separate, simple, not cultural archetypes, and generally not interbreeding; or I want a more complex system as we are discussing here.  The in between options really leave me cold.

I've played games with some of the Pathfinder alternative racial traits, where you could trade out certain racial benefits for others, or using their race creation rules from the Pathfinder Advanced Race Guide. I seem to recall playing in a game years and years ago using AD&D skills and options rules where you could customize racial traits.

I've also played some more open ended point based character creation systems with lists of powers/traits as suggested ones for a given fantasy race. Right now my group is planning a fantasy game using Cortex where there are a number of "races" that we have some suggested advantages and disadvantages for.

Personally, I like the added flexibility of this kind of method, especially for setting where the races aren't exactly in accord to D&D stereotypes.

what if we just gave all the races penalties and the non-penalized version was the platonic form to which all could aspire

On the grounds that it's easier to cut than add, my way of handling variant species in my game was to build as many options as I could reasonably devise directly into them so that GMs only need to decide which options they actually wanted for their campaign.

Basically, it's easier for a GM to say "only humans, dwarves and elves (halflings being human pygmies defined by culture and not putting your stat bump into Strength)" than it is to design a dragon or troll or centaur race to fit with those (or replace one or more of the Tolkien defaults).

Also, there's a bit of, call it "slop room" in the species for more fantastic species where you could land on some of them by different means depending on your setting. This is done primarily through a couple of species; Beastmen, Eldritch and Mutants; covering some very broad bits of real estate to be catch-alls for various fantastic species.

For example, while I have elves as a distinct species, the default version has specific ties to the astral realms and to dreams and so their options reflect that. If you wanted more elementally themed elves for your world you could instead build them using the Eldritch species and have elves of wind, water, fire, plant, earth, etc.

Similarly, the orcs of my default setting are part of the Mutant species, but depending on your vision of them a variety of Beastman might fit your world better (the pig-headed variety being referred to as "Porks" in one of my home games).

Quote from: ShieldWife on May 25, 2021, 02:43:34 PM
I've played games with some of the Pathfinder alternative racial traits, where you could trade out certain racial benefits for others, or using their race creation rules from the Pathfinder Advanced Race Guide. I seem to recall playing in a game years and years ago using AD&D skills and options rules where you could customize racial traits.

I've also played some more open ended point based character creation systems with lists of powers/traits as suggested ones for a given fantasy race. Right now my group is planning a fantasy game using Cortex where there are a number of "races" that we have some suggested advantages and disadvantages for.

Personally, I like the added flexibility of this kind of method, especially for setting where the races aren't exactly in accord to D&D stereotypes.

How did Pathfinder players feel about the alternative racial traits and/or race creation rules?

In my experience of open-ended point-based games, it was perfectly normal to have mixed race traits, because it's a different style of character creation. Players often think of an general idea for the character first, and then build to suit, rather than picking only two or three options like race and class.

But in class-based game like D&D, it seems ingrained to just pick one of a standard set rather than mix-and-match traits.

One of the things that's always bothered me about how 3+ D&D/Pathfinder systems handle this is that the racial choices boil down to more or less a +1 bonus on your class-specific schtick.

Personally I feel like character races should be probably more significant than character class in a lot of ways. A character who is an Elf should be distinctive from a Dwarf in a qualitative way that isn't just captured by bonuses to dice rolls.

I think one of the issues we run into is that D&D/Pathfinder similar games are deeply centered about the advancement/numbers going up conceit. If you're on board with the premise of making race a more central characteristic to play, then you can make races more meaningful with existing mechanics, or you can try and design new mechanics orthogonal to the existing ones to try to bring a new dimension to play.

I kind of lean toward the latter but exactly what that looks like is up for grabs. I envision something like Cypher or Fate, but have yet to actually run with the idea.

Quote from: Zelen on May 25, 2021, 11:04:31 PM
If you're on board with the premise of making race a more central characteristic to play, then you can make races more meaningful with existing mechanics, or you can try and design new mechanics orthogonal to the existing ones to try to bring a new dimension to play.

I kind of lean toward the latter but exactly what that looks like is up for grabs. I envision something like Cypher or Fate, but have yet to actually run with the idea.

I think making race a more central characteristic is a different topic, though an interesting one. The most straightforward way to make it more meaningful is to have more meaningful and unique special abilities. The Aarakocra, for example, are quite distinct as a race because they can fly - which is a very prominent distinction. When I ran Middle Earth, for example, elves were very meaningful because they were much more different from human compared to D&D.

I was originally thinking this was about how to handle swamp elves, mountain dwarves, river halflings, deep gnomes, fire humans, and infinite other variations without having an endless list -- plus the possibility of two-way, three-way, or more crossings of races -- like being able to have 1/4, 5/8, or 15/16 elf blood.

A game could certainly do both -- but they seem distinct to me.

Quote from: jhkim on May 25, 2021, 07:57:30 PM
How did Pathfinder players feel about the alternative racial traits and/or race creation rules?

In my experience of open-ended point-based games, it was perfectly normal to have mixed race traits, because it's a different style of character creation. Players often think of an general idea for the character first, and then build to suit, rather than picking only two or three options like race and class.

But in class-based game like D&D, it seems ingrained to just pick one of a standard set rather than mix-and-match traits.

I think people mostly had a positive approach to it. They enjoyed the customizability of those races, getting the bonus or power that better suited their character concept or the specific setting details of the race in question. A few people chose to just go with the straight race characteristics, but I think that they were in the minority. I certainly liked it.

Our games were always in homebrew settings where the humanoid races didn't quite mesh with with standard D&D or Pathfinder.

As for the topic of race being more important than class, I feel a bit conflicted. For being with human-like intellectual abilities and little to no overt supernatural abilities, it seems like class would matter more than race. An English knight would be a more mechanically similar character to Japanese samurai than to an English monk, but that's because English and Japanese people are very biologically similarly. With creatures who are extremely different from humans, that may not be the case, though I don't think that the standard D&D races are inhuman enough to make race more mechanically important than class.

Quote from: Zelen on May 25, 2021, 11:04:31 PM
Personally I feel like character races should be probably more significant than character class in a lot of ways. A character who is an Elf should be distinctive from a Dwarf in a qualitative way that isn't just captured by bonuses to dice rolls.

Agreed. I play in a 5e game and race rarely plays a significant role. In fact, I am not sure if I could list out all of the races represented. On the other hand, I organize and run OD&D/Basic where Elf is the class, and it seems to make the experience more unique.