Quote from: AsenRG;1008355(snip) Well, if that same caster doesn't have Protection from Normal Missile, he/she very well should, since every 20 orcs would score one missile hit:D!

Yep, that's why I mentioned fly - stay out of missile range!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1008116Remove meaningless distinctions.  Elves are elves, we don't need high elves, low elves, dark elves, light elves, forest elves, meadow elves, sea elves, lake elves, mountain elves, valley elves...

More importantly we dont need the stat bonus variances that are the real reason they were created. So no we dont need Wisdom Elf and Charisma Elf and Strength Elf and... you get the picture.

Q: What do you do if there are too many humanoids or too similar monsters?

A: This question makes no sense. You simply don't use any that you don't want in your world and the "problem" never arises. Is someone requiring you to use every entry in the Monster Manual?

The D&D Players' Union. That's one of their rules. You must allow every character class published is another. Currently the union is negotiating with the owners to institute uniform, universal XP instead of play for pay.

Quote from: Bren;1008485The D&D Players' Union. That's one of their rules. You must allow every character class published is another. Currently the union is negotiating with the owners to institute uniform, universal XP instead of play for pay.

I was not aware of that...I run a non-union sweatshop...

Quote from: Dumarest;1008455Q: What do you do if there are too many humanoids or too similar monsters?

A: This question makes no sense. You simply don't use any that you don't want in your world and the "problem" never arises. Is someone requiring you to use every entry in the Monster Manual?

Pretty much this.  It's just, as so many elements of "What/how/where do you game?", an amour propre issue.  You and your players can handle thirty different races?  Spiffy.  Want there to be eleventy different versions of "drow?"  Spiffy.  Prefer a homogeneous game setting?  Sure, why not.

I think a lot of gamers put too much emphasis on having a ton of different monsters (or the notion that every monster must be unique), rather than making races actually interesting.

I don't think I ever used Orcs, even when I ran D&D, or Gnolls or Bugbears. I retained the Humans, Elves, Dwarfs and Halflings, largely due to player demand but the human-like bad guys, and not always bad guys, were Kobalds, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Trolls and Ogres, which gave a good range of sizes. And I gave them _levels_ so that they presented varying amounts of challenge. Only Goblins and Deep Trolls had magicians or priests with spell-like abilities, I think.

When I started to design my own system, I wanted _fewer_ species on both sides of the usual conflicts but I was convinced by my players that they wanted to be able to play the usual suspects in our next campaign and "you can always edit out things for future campaigns." They also like the range of possible foes and a GM who was going to run a campaign really wanted Giants, so I added them in.

Since then, I have run human-only campaigns with edited foe-lists but right now my campaign is infested with Elves and Dwarfs and they just arrested a Hobbbit. What are you gonna do? Players be playing.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1009084I think a lot of gamers put too much emphasis on having a ton of different monsters (or the notion that every monster must be unique), rather than making races actually interesting.

I don't think it's any different than a ton of gods with four bulletpoints about how Bunsgrabber is the God of Partying Down, and his priests all wear orange cut-off robes, and his holy city is the Fort of Lauderdale, and his alignment is Chaotic Horny.  Make thirty gods like that, and all you need do is run a random table, and the players can safely ignore it all.  Make THREE gods, each with a six-page writeup of doctrine, dogma, practices and prayers, and the "I only wanna Play The Game" crowd sullenly clenches their dice bags and grits their teeth.  

A lot of gamers just want to play fantasy Squad Leader.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1008099With demi-humans, there a few major groupings like humans, elves, dwarves, etc and numerous ethnic groups under that. With humanoids, it seems like you cannot walk ten feet without running into a whole new race of them. Many of these races are fairly one-note and become boring and predictable after a while (particularly if you constantly memorize the monster books). This is a bit too extreme for my world building to account for, so I figured I would cut down the number of races by folding the similar races into subraces to keep the same XP values/CR ratings, which also makes the existing races more diverse and less predictable. Making variants of existing monsters is a tried and true method of making new monsters, even giving superior versions like the dracomera (to the point that it displaced the chimera in some editions) or regularized templates, so why equivocate? I often run into some obscure sourcebook that introduces a fascinating race that I want to keep, so making them all into subraces accomplishes my goal the most efficiently.

If you have ever encountered the same problem, what did you do in response? Any interesting stories of monster variants you wish to share?

First, just cut the number of species down to a number you like. There is no need to use them all.  None.  It's your world.  You paid for the rules and content use them as you wish, don't allow them to use you.  I ditched gnomes and kobolds from my D&D games decades ago to no ill effect.

One grouping I did do was make all the "goblinoids" in D&D, goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears into one species. The different monsters represent different stages of their life cycle, that is, goblins continue to grow throughout life if well fed, plus a few other things.   Mechanically this works as you describe sub-races.

Another thing I do is make certain intelligent humanoids mutants of a base stock.  For example, ogres are a mutant form of male orc.  This way I avoid a whole separate ogre culture.  Likewise Ettins are a mutant form of Hill Giant (well what I call earth giants as my giants are based on Norse mythology, I completely nixed cloud giants and storm giants...my version of a lesser Titan can fill those gaps.)

If I came across some fascinating species in a source book I'd make them a mutant or possibly a version from a parallel world.

I think you get the idea. A large part of this was motivated in my world building (started circa 1979) as I want to answer the question what the world would have looked like if all these species co-evolved, and the fewer the better.  For me almost all the intelligent species except for 9 (and magic) did not exist until circa 10,000 years prior to campaign start.   This way I can use Earth as a guide.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1009084I think a lot of gamers put too much emphasis on having a ton of different monsters (or the notion that every monster must be unique), rather than making races actually interesting.

Well said.

Quote from: Bren;1008108.....
For fantasy settings, I eliminate creatures who are demi-elven half bugbear hemi-aardvark mixes. Those sorts of things annoy the shit out of me.

Exactly.  If you allow that then there really is only one species, the very ability to pro-create and create fertile off spring with another creature means you are a part of the same species.   If you can create sterile young, such as the mule, the liger, then you are a very closely related sub-species.  The whole fantasy game trope of half-this and half-that reeks of metagaming stat bonus seeking. blah.


In my campaign only humans and elves and humans and orcs can breed successfully, although their offspring are sterile.  The implications of the half-elf/human disturb elves and their sense of distinctiveness from humans.  The human-orc thing, well that is just chalked up to orcs being created from a base stock ala The Silmarillion.   I leave it as an unanswered question then if elves and orcs can successfully breed.

QuoteOtherwise I prefer a clear vision of the setting not a kitchen sink with a bunch of species and racial additions tossed in because someone, somewhere read a book or saw a movie and felt the need to add just one more humanoid species to the mix or wanted a new card to add to the possible decks one could create.

Yes 100%.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1008116Remove meaningless distinctions.  Elves are elves, we don't need high elves, low elves, dark elves, light elves, forest elves, meadow elves, sea elves, lake elves, mountain elves, valley elves...

I certainly remove them from a game mechanic sense, I use these distinctions as cultural/ethnic groups.  I really never liked non-human species being so culturally monolithic...although that is one thing that makes them non-human.

Quote from: Ravenswing;1009146I don't think it's any different than a ton of gods with four bulletpoints about how Bunsgrabber is the God of Partying Down, and his priests all wear orange cut-off robes, and his holy city is the Fort of Lauderdale, and his alignment is Chaotic Horny.  

Now I'm curious. Why are their robes orange?

Quote from: Bren;1009275Now I'm curious. Why are their robes orange?

Because that's what the DM rolled on the Random Deity Attributes Table, keep up!  (winks)