Beastfolk Thread - Savage Exterior, Civilized Interior Edition

Nice meme

In my setting there is a horse-people race that was created long time ago when according to legend Powerful witch turned 3 brothers into horsemen to use as slaves and labour.

That's pretty cool

Query; do anons think using 4e's Playing Gnolls info could work for a culture of wolverine folk? I sort of seem them as the Frostfell analogue to gnolls, for some reason.

Zootopia 2 is looking great

Bumping.

So, for anyone who saw that "new breed of skaven" thread, where would I actually post that fic I mentioned there if this thread goes under? The xenophilia thread?

I like a mix of 3rd and 4th. The stupid evil lolrandom theme of the skaven is taken a bit too far sometimes but I prefer grimy, aggressive and alien sewer rats over cute little furry hobbits or jawas.

Well not really, gnolls are cowardly race - wolverines are bad shit insane beresekers - I would describe them as bunch of creatures that attack anything - and have tales of such berserkers just going up against an ogre or something....and wining.

So yeah they are pretty much all world's anger in a small pack.

Can I have character art of Dragonborn that don't look awful? The official art is terrible with the knuckles dreads and awkward body shape.

>Query; what is the best form of ratfolk?

The rats beneath majula.

...

Reminder that most of the people arguing in favour of civilised beast races who coexist with humans are undercover furries trying to force their fetishes and waifus into RPGs. Beast races can have deep and interesting fluff but they should be animalistic, misshapen and generally hostile to mankind.
The beastmen and skaven from warhammer or the man-eating gnolls and evil yuan-ti from D&D are beastfolk done correctly.

I think that people like you who insist on sperging out any time beastfolk are anything but slavering monstrous savages are the real closet furries. I mean if you need them to be disgusting aggressive abominations for your mind not to jump to sexualizing them then I think you're the issue. Normal people can have civilized animals without frothing at the mouth with repressed sexual rage

>Multi-Boob plate on Gnoll Woman

Well she is probably pregnant too - because you know, gnoll breasts only show up when they are expecting or nurturing....

What are some examples of civilised beastfolk done right without being humans in fursuits?

Are you getting that from somewhere or just making shit up?

Gnoll description in most editions - males and females look similar unless pregnant or nursing a child

Iksar, they are not neccesarily civilized in the sense of beeing like knights with armor or sophisticated technology.

But they rule the largest empire on their continent, bringing order to a savage continent by beeing LE as fuck.
They are the only non human race that gets to be a monk in their setting and they genetically engineer all sorts of creatures to make new soldiers or mounts.

The other example id give as Charr from Guild Wars 2.
They are an industrialized society that is heavily militarized, so everyone is part of the military in some way, they still have a bestial sort of look in the sense that they walk in a hunched way and have a very non human body structure, but their society is quite advanced in a martial sort of way.

I don’t recall that in 3.5...

Khajit are a good example. The durulz from runequest, the Kulrathi from stardrive, arguably the Yuan Ti. Basically any setting that gives them a distinct culture and society rather than just making them generically human but loosely patterned after animal stereotypes

it was mentioned in 4e and 2e I think.

In my opinion Civilized Beastmen are best discribed as the Anti-Barbarian.

The barbarian is in many ways not dissimilar from an Orc, he is unreasonable, he has no concept of law other than his own code, he ofthen resorts to violence when words would be good enaugh and he generaly has no idea of technology or magic.

The difference between an Orc and a Barbarian is that the Barbarian is capeable of beeing a good guy.
He may be a raging berserker but he doesnt burn down every village he comes across because he has compassion.
He can be of the "good" alignment.

That makes him a possible ally for adventurers and thus a player character.

The Opposit should be true for a Civilized beastman.
The Civilized beastmen is Evil, by human definitions. He might eat sentients, he might enslave people, perform human saccrifice, or mereley worship evil gods.
His culture is inhuman, but it is culture.

The civilized beastman might be a good neighbour, a better one than a barbarian even.

Sure in their city the Beastmen might drain people of their blood as an offering to their serpentine god.
But they understand that when entering a Human city, this is probably not a smart thing to do.

They understand that different cultures can coexist if it suits them, they understand that violence is not always the best option to end a disagreement.

In other words: they are evil, but they can be REASONED with.

This makes them a potential ally to adventurers and thus a player character.

My brother of darkened pigment and markedly different hair style.

Rat-Elf lewds when?

As someone with an unhealthy thirst for ratfolk, i'd say: "Go apeshit and have all of them."

So basically a race of ancient and perfidious yet refined snake or cat-people?

While I don't know much about them, I heard Burmecians are decent.

they fit the bill pretty well, tho arent they technically demons rather than a race? Id think theyd not be numerous to make an example.
but yes ive been thinking something along those lines, aswell as the examples i gave in my other post

I literally posted 4e's Playing Gnolls further up the thread, which gives non-Yeenoghu gnolls the best treatment they've ever had.

Wicked Fantasy has the Rhodun, which are basically ratfolk who colonized the ghettos of the human empire by tending to the sick during a massive plague epidemic and then never left. They're driven, confident, and have a culture that can be roughly described as mafioso who're dead serious about the "protect our neighborhood" thing.

Scarred Lands had the Terali, a deeply spiritual race of leopard-folk back in its 3e days. The 5e revival has new, deeper takes on the Asaatthi (serpentfolk), Sutak (horsefolk), Manticora (lionfolk) and Slitherin (ratfolk).

4e did Minotaurs and Dragonborn very well, not that anyone bothered to look them up.

Kobolds have been pretty good since 3e's Races of the Dragon.

Kenku in their 3e "Ecology of" article were pretty good.

Aranea were awesome when Red Steel introduced them way back in Basic/OD&D.

The 3e revival of Lupins was pretty good.

And those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head...

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Never heard of the Rhodun and I can't find much info online. Are they like bizarro world compassionate Skaven? I think rats have more potential as evil critters or at least dangerous outcasts and criminals because they are traditionally associated with filth, plagues, verminous swarms that breed very fast and devour grain stores, black magic, etc.
Of course real rats aren't actually evil but if you make them nice little tinkerers and merchants with a sense of community they become too much like gnomes or halflings, and nobody cares about gnomes and halflings.

Eh... not so much. They're morally shady, because they do have their fingers in a lot of criminal activity, but they are nowhere near as evil or destructive as the skaven are.

I'm sure you can find a pdf of Wicked Fantasy in either the /pfg/ or the pdf share thread... if the latter still exists on Veeky Forums, because I can't find it...

Or, I can post their lore from the book into a pastebin and link it here, if you really can't find it anywhere else.

I was there in that thread. Was the user looking for Skaven adventures and maybe a bit for the lewd fic.

Lewd fic?
Details?

Naw, you sound like a typical dorf.

It's alright. I can't find the pdf but 1d4chan has a handy summary.
From looking at the description of the various races, this is a setting where everyone is more or less morally gray?

Roddun: Nearly a century ago, a virulentdisease called the Blue Death swept through the Wicked Fantasy world, wiping out almost a third of humanity. When it ended, humanity had new neighbors; humanoid rats who had moved into the quarantined settlements and ghettos, the barrios, tending to the sick and dead, and settling... and then refusing to leave. Somewhat disparagingly known amongst humans as "ratters", rodduns can be summarized as Mafioso rat-people; an entire species of criminal rats who follow traditions clearly derived from the Italian mafia -with particular emphasis on the part about caring for and protecting the poor and disparate who choose to help them out in turn. Needless to say, not all of the human cities are so happy with the roddun openly ruling their barrios, and they face a lot of prejudice.

>From looking at the description of the various races, this is a setting where everyone is more or less morally gray?

Basically, yeah. And here, have a pastebin of the racial lore from the actual book anyway;

pastebin.com/i7qJ1mSJ

Admittedly, your search probably would have been easier if I'd given you the correct name of "Roddun" in the first place...

In the Thread about a new breed of Skaven, one user said he had a fic for a possible scenario when it comes to luring man-things in their clutches. In this case, cute femboi Skaven seducing mankind to their doom. No it couldn't be female because they are needed baby factories.

Still lurking in the shadows as ramen often do

No, that was the thread's base scenario. The lewd fic concept was a cute femboi ratfolk assassin being outwitted, hypnotised and tenderly sexed by the femboi human mage he was sent after.

Thanks for the link, it was an interesting read. I'm always a bit ambivalent about beast races that are depicted as downtrodden morally grey gypsies like the Khajiit from TES or the Roddun. I like the complexity they bring but part of the appeal of the vanilla gnoll or skaven is that they just wreck shit and don't care about being accepted into human society or respected.

But , let's be honest, "shit-kicking bags of evil for the stabbing" is a niche that is surprisingly race blind; humanoids can fill that niche just fine, as orcs, goblinoids and ogres prove.

Why does the human have to be a femboi too?

And a femmy rat with that much titty and ass is straight up shemale/trap at that point.

You say that if it was a bad thing.

Reminds me of the time in a DND 5e game where I played an artificer lizardman named bubba. His thunder cannon was named Thelma and he rode a mechanical snake called Luise.

Personal appeal. Plus, the only ratfolk pic in this thread is some furry's female Skaven OC, so I don't know what you're talking about.

Fun fact; alligator-folk actually go back as a PC race option in D&D all the way to OD&D, as the Gurrash show us.

On a random topic... I just checked out (wrote) the Beastfolk article on 1d4chan, and holy shit, there are a LOT of official D&D beastfolk races.

Low tech, tribal style, living just outside the outskirts of the civilized realms
Either meso-American style (ie large native empire) or Native American (fringe tribals, varying levels of aggression and openness to foreigners)

I had often thought of a fetishy reversal of the Skaven- basically a few alpha male rats with the majority being female fleabags. They fight and backstab each other just for a chance to get 'backstabbed' by the big male rats, reproducing like mad. They worship the horny rat more like right?

But imagine this with a cock. This is the kind of 'female' skaven your wizard can get his hands on. Not bad.

So what your saying, in this bizzaro world, where there are female skaven , is that their whole goal is to literally drown us in pussy by their numbers? What a hell of a way to go.

The artist who did that also did do a futa Master Moulder pic, just FYI.

I have several beast races for my campaign world.

The ysoki are ratfolk who have three general types. Wandering merchant caravans, mixed among human nations, and the great Underwarren cities. In addition, there are varying cultures depending on what part of the world they reside in. Ysoki tend to live in just about every human or dwarf settlement barring the highly xenophobic ones. Their specialty is technology and its integration with magic. This is because they are descended of alien rat people who crashed upon the world in a large scientific exploration spaceship.

Gnolls come in two varieties, demon worshiping monsters and the semi nomadic herders, fishers and farmers. Style wise the civilized gnolls are basically Kazakh and other related cultures. The intricately patterned rugs and clothing they make is currently in vogue among certain eastern notEuropean nobility.

The Ipotane are an ancient fading culture of horse people whose empires have long fallen to ruin and now live and rule of a small series of islands. Style wise they are a mix of Mycenaean aesthetics with elements stolen from other mediterranean cultures.

Kitsune are basically PFs kitsune.

Catfolk are eerily human looking (like the Cathar of Star Wars: The Old Republic) due their god's attempt to woo a human goddess and the measures he had to go to to finally win her love. African culture (that I haven't nailed down specifically yet) that is in constant tension with the various human nations they live near. Can be nearly any coloration of cat, even differing versions among the same family unit such a tiger striped mother, calico father, jaguar daughter, and lion son.

Interesting ideas; for your catfolk, you might want to see if you can track down a PDF of the Campaign Setting: Termana splat for Scarred Lands. Their Terali (leopard-folk) had some very unique pseudo-African tribal aspects, like a huge emphasis on ritual purity.

I'm having the same issue. I'm probably just going to go off the Ironclaw horse description and change a few things here and there.

Posts like this are why I really don't get Veeky Forums on what is and isn't acceptable "smut-inclined" material.

Like, why is something like "drow houseboy comes home from a long day and takes what comfort he can in his illicit relationship with his she-orc slave" or "female duergar forms a bond with the male drow sex slave she won in a drugged poker game" taboo here, whilst something like "femboi human wizard captures a gnoll/sutak brigand and magically hypnotizes & trappifies him whilst sexing him, which results in the former beastman being reduced to his lovestruck, doting, pregnant shemale waifu" is acceptable?

...Or have I got the order on those reversed...?

I was thinking of having three different tiers of beastfolk in my setting.

The lowest tier being regular animals that can speak.
The middle tier being upright animals that have human intelligence but retain most of their animal anatomy. (Sort of like Redwall)
The highest tier being humanoid beastfolk that are generally seen as blessed by the gods.

Is this too much or could it be interesting?

Personally, it could be really interesting. I'm guessing non-beastfolk humanoids either exist in the setting in small numbers or did exist at one point?

They do exist. I'm a fan of more races in fantasy settings although the beastfolk are isolated from the rest of the world.

I really need to pick a favorite Beast Race, but using my favorite animal would look stupid in humanoid form

Give me an beast to homebrew for my next D&D character, Veeky Forums

Squids wouldn't look bad. You could go the Ursula route or even Mindflayers might not be a bad start.

Even if they are cultured you still need to consider that animals nature when thinking of a society for them.

Snakes culturally are seen as sinister and linked to deception - a china analogue, large - powerful kingdoms that have quite a bit of backstabbing and infighting would fit them very well.
Dogs and Hyena on the other hand work in tight nit packs. Its pretty easy to imagine those packs forming tribes, then those tribes eventually being condensed into larger tribal federations in order to ward off more advanced threats.

Birds could by themselves make up a greater society comparable to humans, their inherent curiosity and ability to work together in massive numbers leading them on a path to create rather stable civilizations.

Make a badger

I legitimately forgot about Mind Flayers. I feel dumb.

Squids can work as a race if you have the mantle ( The head portion ) be the torso and have the arms stick out of the head like a elephant-person.

>Even if they are cultured you still need to consider that animals nature when thinking of a society for them.
Please no. That way lies terrible stereotypes and lazy writing. At its most basic, as intelligence increases so does social hierarchies, until you get stuff that is basically human. Human social structure is basically just a more complex form of already existing animal hierarchies, and even then our social structure is basically roughly the same size as a very large hyena clan/chimp troop but with far more fluidity (the monkeysphere of roughly 150 or so individuals). Beyond that we have abstracted heirarchies tied to greater allegiances, such as ties to large cities or states or such.

If your beast race is roughly human in intelligence, they are going to have the same social structure as us, and that's taken straight from how nature works.

And most mammals are actually already fairly human like in nature, but just at a much less complex iteration that often has intense specialization. (it should actually be the reverse, we are very much like other mammals but with more complexity, but whatever, it's just another way of saying the same thing). Brains are conserved and structures only vary in size and complexity.

Is that an Ash Spawn?

>your favorite races
I'm a huge fan of all types of beastfolk so I don't really have a favorite. If I had to pick it'd either be gnolls or lizardmen.
>how you like to use them
I like for them to be just be people in the setting.
>beastfolk PCs
As a forever GM I never really get the chance to play, much less a chance to play a beastfolk.
>races you'd like to adapt for your own setting,
I'm currently working a sort of 12 Zodiac creatures that were blessed to be beastfolk after the goddess of animals got too drunk and decided to give each god a divine "pet".

After ascending to divinity, the pets realized how much lower the animals live compared to everyone else so they pleaded with the gods to make a few of the animals more like people.

Or something like that. Just a shitty reason to have beastfolk in the setting.
>whatever.
Some of my favorite taboos I like for civilized: Carnivorous/omnivorous beastfolk is the desire to eat other beastfolk.
Drugs that make them revert to a more animal mindset.
Wearing pelts of their kin.
Drinking the milk of another beast/beastfolk.

Divinity OS2 is making me want to steal their lizards for my setting, but that would bring the amount of snobbish asshole races up to 3 and I think at that point it starts to become too much.

So long as they're snobbish assholes in a different way it should be fine.

I'm taking so many liberties from DOS2 at this point that it's not even funny. I need to scrap a few obvious things and add some twists to some others.

do humans behave exactly like monkey people?
no you dont.
Some basic biology yes, Reptile people might be cold blooded (tho they probably arent since beeing cold blooded actually doesnt work well with beeing a senitent, hence why birds arent, but then again its fantasy) and yes they might be carnivorous.

But no that doenst mean that reptile people all need to have their behaviour styled after primititve lizards

is that pic an achivement from OS2?

Yeah OS lizards arent snobbish like elves, they also consider themeselves the masterrace but they do so because they enslave everyone else.
They are a bit like Dunmer but less living in shitty deathtrap of a countrry and more desert empire.

They also have a Dune style House system going simmilar to them.

One of my favorite implementations of the race in vidya, im a sucker for LE races.

For the curious, this is the current list of canonical Veeky Forums beastfolk races as far as I am aware of:

Aarakocra (birds)
Aranea (spiders)
Asaatthi (snakes)
Bariaur (bighorn sheep-taurs)
Beastmen
Bullywugs (toads)
Catfolk
Cayma (caimans)
Centaurs
Chitines (spiders)
Draconians (dragons)
Dragonborn
Dray (dragons)
Giff (hippos)
Gnolls (hyenas)
Grippli (frogs)
Grommam (gorillas)
Gurrash (alligators)
Hadozee (chimapanzees with gliding wings)
Hengeyokai
Hsiao (talking fae scholar owls)
Hutaakans (jackals)
Kenku (crows)
Khenra (jackals)
Kitsunes
Kobolds (dragons)
Lizardfolk
Lupin (canids)
Minotaurs (cattle)
Nagaji (snakes)
Nagpa (vultures)
Phanaton (raccoon/monkey/flying squirrel hybrids)
Pooka (fae animals)
Pterafolk (pterodactyls)
Pterrans (flightless, non-evil pterafolk)
Raavasta (fiendish foxes/jackals)
Rakshasas
Ratfolk
Rougarou (wolves)
Saurials (dinosaurs)
Skaven (rats)
Serpentfolk
Sphinxes
Sutaks (horses)
Taer (ape-men)
Tengu
Tanuki
Thri-kreen (mantids)
Tortles (turtles)
Troglodyte (lizards)
Vanaras (monkeys)
Wallara (lizards)
Wemic (catfolk/lion-taur hybrids)
Xixchil (mantids)
Yuan-ti (snakes)

Oh....my settings has mostly beast races, it's sort of may take of the idea of savage lands....Say I will have first game on Friday, wanna join?

Depends - I like idea of the drow sex slaves and others like it, seeing as one of my players invented idea of gnoll men being sex slaves to females (after I gave gnoll lady that saved the party wrong line to say about her male meat shield....). So smut can be added to lore to make it slightly better... done well.

Abeil (bee folk)
Adaro (shark mermaids)
Bainligor (LE flightless bats that can jump)
Desmodu (LG flightless bat-apes that ride giant bats)
Ettercaps (spiders)
Formians (Ants)
Kuo-toa
Locathah
Loxo (twin-trunked elephants)
Nycter (batfolk that can actually fly)
Omm-wa (manatee/walrus with slightly hand-like flippers)
Psurlon (worms)
Sahuagin

The Rito and Zora from Zelda were pretty good with their own cultures and buildings and shit made around their characteristics.

Aren't troglodites more like toads?

Nope, lizards. Stinky weird degenerate lizards.

...

Penguin.
youtube.com/watch?v=ScA7vDC2u10

I recognize some of those, but not all of them. Can you tell me where the bats, abeil, adaro and omm-was hail from?

...

Ups, my bad, they do have tails - so they do have tails...Well then, I might use them as monsters then.

Bailigor: 2E Complete Monstrous Manual
Omm-wa: 2E Red Steel/Mystara
Desmodu: MM2
Abeil: MM2
Nycter: MM3

In all campaigns I run, Dragonborn are definitely beastfolk, and all different beastfolk species usually live not on the mainland of the main continent. Ex. Dragonborn live on an Island and have a Norse-like tribal culture, while Tigerfolk (I usually come up with a better name) May have a traditional Japanese culture with their own Shoguns and Samurai type things. It really depends but when my river of ideas has run dry, I always know TES has something I could rip off

Oh and Adaro are from Pathfinder.

Man, 5es art is all kinds of whack. Troglodytes are supposed to be skinny weird half starved lizards who skulk around in the darkness of the underdark hunting for sacrifices for their terrible gods.

That...thing...would work better for some kind of fiendish lizardfolk, not a degenerate troglodyte.

I like it actually, together with buff kobolds, I like to make them as stinking sewer dwellers that hunt devil cults because they like taste of cultists - so true chaotic evil.

The kobold art is one of the very few things 5e has done right or even been better than older editions.

I don't know, lots of art in 5e is good (I don't use lore of any race so I don't really mind it), but these troglodites look cool and because this is table top, you can make them into fiendish corrupted cultists of demons (just give there leader warlock levels)