I have no idea what races to use in my setting. Which should I use and why?

I have no idea what races to use in my setting. Which should I use and why?

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Tengu

Because BIRT

Use all the uncommon ones. Idk if you D&D or not but go for a world where there's no humans/traditional elves/dwarves/halfings. make them the grand evil that is invading from a different dimension and tearing reality apart

Only Gnomes, Dragonborn, Tiefling, Tabaxi. Use only supplemental races or ones that people think are unoptimized/redundant

A spread sheet of every 5e race Pick the 7 strangest and go wild.
docs.google.com/document/d/1PhQ933l3svEnqREAYwPKwJOlxPFK5R4s1TwwZ4Xem8Y/edit

The Seeq and Bangaa were criminally underused in FF12. I wish the main cast weren't primarily human with just the bunny chick as the single non-human.

For player races.

Skeksis, Drow, Ratmen, Kobolds, Humans, Kender(For realsies), Elves, UrRu.

I think that this would make a very unique setting in a world where this set of choices being the PC selection.

But Skeksis would be overpowered, and urRu are unplayable as written because they are purely reactionary as a people. I mean, like, even leaving aside that an urRu would never engage in combat, they also just do not act on their own initiative, ever. That's literally their entire schtick, that they're the ultimate pacifists.

The Skeksis, meanwhile, are all about power, backstab, and betrayal. They're Chaotic Evil: The Race. And even after 1,000 years of aging and degradation they were still strong enough to swing swords at stone and leave significant scores in said stone.

The ones that fit your setting.

Humans. Best race.

You should go to the Mirror Universe, son.

COMMON RACES:
>Orc (LG)
A noble barbarian people with strong belief in honor and glory, who prefer to live nomadic lives rather than settle down.

>Drow (LG)
Pushed underground in a great betrayal by the high elves and wood elves, the drow have built a high-magic sustainable society beneath the Earth

>Goblin (NG)
Smaller cousins to hobgoblins and tend to live in the same areas. Mostly just want to get along with other creatures, and have large families.

>Hobgoblin (CG)
Build large fortress-freeholds centered on defending their farming settlements.

UNCOMMON RACES:

>Kobold (CG):
Tricksters and jokesters who love a good laugh and practical, harmless jokes. Kin to dragons, or so they say. They love mining and are intensely curious about outsiders.

>Half-drow (Any Good)
Almost inevitably the product of human raping a drow elf. These poor maligned souls find adjusting to life beneath the surface difficult, and so often become adventurers.

>Half-orc (Any Lawful)
Tend to inherit their orc forebear's tendency towards honor and law, though the human touch can make them turn wicked and conniving.

>Yuan-ti Purebloods (NG)
The least powerful but most common sort of yuan-ti. Often drawn to adventure, and will sometimes hide among humans in order to see if they can be redeemed.

>Aasimar (Any)
Descendants of celestials (a confusing type of monster that often spouts about how "this world doesn't make any sense, drow aren't supposed to be good"). Aasimar are rare and often plagued by a sense that something is wrong, but they can never quite put their finger on what.

As for what would be the standard races:

>Humans (Any):
Violent barbarians, but holy shit are there a lot of them. They are incredibly xenophobic and focused on "purity". While individual humans can be of any alignment, their leaders are often Evil, and humans have a herd mentality.

>Wood elves (LE)
Violent, arboreal, psychopathic Luddites who guard their domain against any intrusion.

>High elves (LE)
Violent, arboreal psychopathic magocrats who seem to be, as a race, devoted to creating huge magical catastrophes

>Dwarves (CE)
They lurk beneath the world and no one can quite shake the feeling that they're trying to literally undermine the planet. There are rumors of a Chaotic Good subrace called "duergar", empowered by the Mind-Salvers, that fight against the dwarves, but none know for sure.

>Half-elves (Any, usually evil)
The product of human and elf (high or wood) mixing - usually a high elf raping a human, since humans and wood elves are xenophobic in the extreme. Usually completely insane since they basically exist to be a high elf slave/test subject race

>Halflings (NE)
Kender, if Kender had no compunction about stabbing people in the back and were absolutely okay with calling what they did stealing.

>Gnomes (NE)
They basically come in two varieties: Mad inventor/industrialist; or illusionist who uses said illusions to trick you into killing the people you love and/or yourself. They play "jokes" that aren't very funny at all. There's a subterranean version that can speak with stones and are the bane of drow, too.

>Dragonborn (CE)
The worst aspects of dragons, in humanoid form. Greedy, acquisitive, and envious.

>Tieflings (Any)
Descendants of fiends (a confusing type of monster that often spends its entire time summoned doubled-over in laughter). Tieflings are rare and often plagued by a sense that something is wrong, but they can never quite put their finger on what.

>Mind Salvers

So good.

Humans (or not, humanless would be funny)
Tuatha
Fir Bolg
Fomorians
Dwarves
Vanir
Jotun and Niefel giants
Norse goblins
Jewish giants (divided into: cavemen, beautiful giants, literally children of fallen angels)
Half-wild babylonian giants
Bat people
People literally made of lava
People with wings
Egyptian lizardmen
Indian monkey men
Japanese goblins
Underground cyclops
Psionic olms
Atlantians
Tritons
Mermen
Fishmen
Minotaurs, centaurs, satyrs and other half-people
Same as above but living underwater and with fish tails
Illithids
Aboleths

Skirt the rules a bit then.

>Skeksis and drow rule the world as the top .01% in fancy palaces.

>Kobolds are mostly slaves for the above but some aren't and they live out in the wasteland.

>Ratmen make up their evil army and they are this setting's orc equivalent.

>Humans, some elves and kender try to live their lives in peace in cities and villages under thethe debautchery and sadism of the ruling classes.

>Elves and Urru inhabit the wastelands and chill out most of the time. Occasionally coming into contact with kobolds.

Mind salvers are neothelids, by the way, not illithids. Cereomorphosis, and eating still-living sapient brains in general, is pretty much incompatible with a Good alignment. Plus in Lords of Madness it was stated that illithids don't NEED to eat brains, per se, it's just that without a regular intake of humanoid brains they start to go insane.

However one could easily argue that they aren't actually "going insane", their minds are just reverting to their natural neothelid state, and the neothelid mind has no idea how to deal with being in a humanoid body.

As originally described in LoM, neothelids are just about as smart as mind flayers but have a fundamentally alien mindset. In Mirror D&D they keep that alien mindset, but they do seem to be generally benevolent. They use their psionic powers to aid the mentally ill, and may have gifted some races with psionics in order to help them combat some as-yet unknown great threat.

Humans and humans only, maybe dorfs and elves if you're feeling adventurous/faggy. Everything else is shit desu

Christ I'm getting bored just looking at this. I'm going to go to sleep now. That's how boring you are, user.

None. Pool's closed.

Wait for your players to pick races and then build around that. Keep the number of big ticket races low so that you can focus more effort on making multidimensional cultures for the few races you end up featuring. Allow for small pockets of more exotic shit so that you always have a bag of tricks to pull from. Because there are so few of any particular exotic race, you can have fun and make their cultures a bit more novel.

Screenshooted, awesome, thank you

Also to OP tho Krombopulos Michael's race. And any other alien races in Rick and Morty

>elves and dwarves are good
>other things are boring

How can you be the opposite of right

PORKS

Let every player who wants to play a nonhuman race create one

Use those

If there are any obviously missing holes or opportunities with just the races your players gave you, add some that fill those.

use sergal, not as a player species but as someone who exists in some shitholes of the world, just for the meme

How do you even describe shit like in the OP picture as a race to players? Seems too weird and gonzo.

...is that dominions

Too many damn races

Rotund anthropomorphic pig-sharks whose skins run a gamut of aquatic themed hues

Depends on what kind of setting you want to run.

Personally, I like D&D's take on Tolkien races and I don't mind adopting and adapting them. I'm aware that makes me boring, and I'm ok with that, so long as my players enjoy them.

If you want to do a setting that feels different, go with some of the suggestions here. Or, take the familiar PC races and adjust them to what's unique about your setting, sort of like what Dark Sun does.

Gromlomite. Although it seems like he is the less common upright standing one without pincers. It seems like Gromflomites have a biological warrior caste for their soldiers.

Whites
Jews
Arabs
Blacks
Asians
Hispanics (Mixed)
Turks
Slavs
Iberians

NG goblins
Natural born merchants and peddlers. Their unabashed friendliness lends to their pursuits of collecting any manner of sundry or esoterica from the world's many scattered cultures. If someone wants it, a goblin is selling it.

sorry gromflomite*

Use podraces.

I like it.

You're welcome. I've been wanting to write up a Mirror Universe D&D for awhile now.

>"Do you know what a Seeq is?"
>"No?"
>"Well, here's a picture of them."
There, you're done. If it's a race from some kind of published work or based on an existing property, there should be more than enough material to give players an idea of what the race is.

I'd honestly have more trouble trying to explain the differences between gnomes and halflings to someone without using pictures than something like in the OP. It doesn't have to be completely accurate anyway, since part of the imagination is filling in the blanks.

For you.

I think user was getting at the fact that you said salvers not slavers

>the dwarves are forced to undergo a procedure every few years wherein the top half of the skull is removed and a magical ointment is rubbed onto their brains

/thread

I'm pretty sure it's a little late for a "/thread"

That was intentional, though. I figure "salver" is a good alternative to "flayer".

Oh I thought you meant slavers but I do like the idea of duergar being dwarves that forced to undergo that procedure to make them good

It's spelled with a C, friend.

...

Shroom people

Any particular reason your dwarveshave nothing to do with Deepspawn?

Dunkleosteus merfolk.

paizo.com/products/btpy9qiw?Remarkable-Races-Submerged-The-Mrawgh

Can't go wrong with Gria.

Literally this, special snowflakes a shit

These guys look like those orks from Rape art.

YES

the ones done by Veeky Forums
mothfolk
cutebolds
leah people

others I don't remember.

>mothfolk
[Layers of White flashbacks intensify]

Charr. Pretty much the only good thing that came out of the trainwreck gw2.

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Scarecrows

9 foot tall, lanky communal insect men, they are mostly barbarians, and spend their lives hunting dragons, eternally trying to destroy them in revenge for their ancient imperialist society which was brought low by dragons looking to get at the vast riches they had gathered.

Poison Dusk Lizardfolk they're hilarious.

I don't know why you're asking though, no one is legit going to help you decide, instead you're just going to get peoples favorite races

>Elf
>Because cute

Also because you can do so much with Elves. Not just have them be the ones you see typically. Especially with all the different types of Elves available like High Elves, Wood Elves, Drow, Dark Elves, etc.. (you can even make your own!)

...

It's never too late user.

psionic potatoes

I don't know what a deepspawn is, at least not without some additional context.

common races: geckopeople, toadfolk, lizardmen, (bearded) dragonborn, frogmin.

uncommon races: chameleinites, turtleans, the croconese, salamen,

monstrous races: gila monster, massive intelligent snakes, smaller and less intelligent snakes.

mythical monsters: pterosaurs

i hope it isn't too late for me to add manacondas to uncommon races.

You shouldn't be making a setting then

no

Pangolin folk

porpos-kin

Monkey people
Rat people
Magical dolls
Swamp clowns

ask/consult your players and go with that broski

Aberration that looks like a great big ball of meat with some mouths on tentacles and eyestalks sticking out of it. Can spit-out clones of anything it has ever eaten.

In the ancient past of Faerun, dwarves tried to fight a mega-huge civil war by using deepspawn to produce armies of cloned dwarves, which they used as expendable solders.

Why half-ass it by keeping drow and elves and stuff. Scrounge up a few more rare and interesting races.

Dump kobolds and kender (you freak) for the podlings. Maybe get some other weird stuff, like turtle people or something.

Dark Souls ensured I will be forever racist against mushroom people after decades of rather liking them.

What, you liked them so much you decided to murder their adorable singing children? Didn't like papa shroom giving you some justice, eh?

I very much avoided fighting them at all, but in their all consuming racism they assaulted me! A lot! Very painfully... over and over... I just wanted to see what was at the bottom of the three... *sob*

human
homarid
rasta elf
soda gnomes and their rivals phosphor goblins
one-eyed darumafolk
lionfolk
seafolk
sealionfolk
pidgey, pidgeotto, pidgeot
hipster kender
semaphore golem

Yinglet.

>homarid
Lobstah-folk?

>they also just do not act on their own initiative, ever.
this describes a lot of players as well desu

Every third session they're playable.

Er, every four sessions.

Fair enough, didn't know that. I was basically just trying to keep the races as we commonly know them, but flip their alignments.

pangolls

>Swamp clowns
do i wanna know

>not liking mushroom people

i also like them
their feets are delicious

Sylphs, gnomes, salamanders, and undines. Your setting is now based on races of the four classic elements.

>no idea which races to use in my setting

Damn son thats worrying.

That being said:

Use the weird races in low doses. Despite what the Veeky Forums hipsters try to sell you a world where bird people fight intelligent mushroom people and their allied collective intelligence of snails is not interesting.


What I like personally:

I don't like dwarves and I don't want humans as the default option so both of these don't exist.

High Elves: The most developed race. A Magocracy thats imperialist and commited to spreading their blend of Religion and philosophy that worships a pantheon of ascended elf archmages. They are surpremacists and racist but pragmatic enough to work with other races.

Orcs: Not as developed as the High Elves but still in posession of a thriving economy. Their grotesque reproduction rate actually plagues them and leads to overpopulation. This leads to frequent land grabs due to desperation which lead to the perception of Orcs as warmongerers.

Wood Elves: Weird. Biologically they are closely related too High Elves but they are in a parasitic relationship with the sentient spirit oh their forest. The forest uses them as tools to expand and protect himself. Wood Elves are possesed since birth and live in a mockery of a natural forest thats interested in cancerous growth. Wood Elves only have the individuality the forest deems appropriate for their individual task. If a Wood elf is abducted and removed wide enough from the forests influence they might gain their freedom. The resulting person often suffers from PTSD and is lost in a normal civilization.

Goblins: Their preferred habitat is the swamp. Their actually closely related too the Orcs. The key difference is their weaker physique and their lower reproduction rate. They are completely immune to nearly all known kinds of toxins though. Their ancestral homeland is under attack from the forest and the Goblins are in a protracted Guerilla War against the Wood Elves. 1/2

>big people with slim bodies and weird postures, with skin like crocodiles. they live near the rivers and use the simplest of tools, since their claws are already quite deadly and their bodies already suited for hunting.
>small fluffy people, two thirds the size of humans. their hands and sensory organs are the most precise of all, which allows them to both efficiently hunt small, elusive prey and master many delicate tasks. one tribe lives nocturnal as desert-dwellers, the other ones are inhibiting the various niches of other societies
>humans. a variety that lives in the mountains and posesses shorter and sturdier bodies than the average modern human
>semi-amorphous humanoid shadow-creatures that cover themselves in clothes, accessoiries, pelts, bark and other things to reinforce their frail bodies. they are constantly connected to the realm of magic, but break easily in this state. they dont come out often, but they trade knowledge in exchange for things they can reinforce and protect themselves with

The Wood Elves are determined on draining the swamp turning it into even more forest. In this guerilla war the Goblins became famous for their use of poison.

Kobolds: Imposing physique. Even stronger than Orcs. Slave race of the dragons. They were created artificially by the Dragons and thus are plagued by a number of problems. They are highly subjected to mutations so that nearly every Kobold posseses an individual feature. Most times this is something small, but a lot of Kobolds have crippling mutations so that they are often referred to as the deformed race. Due to their unnatural creation they also can't Master Magic.

Their society is organized around the Dragons that have created a theocracy worshipping them as gods.

Some of the Kobolds rebelled though and formed Independent states trying to forge their own identity.


Thats it. I would like to add a 4th more peaceful and trade oriented race but I am just not sure what would fit.

A more peaceful and Integration minded race to tie the whole world together. In General a few more races would be nice.

And ofc a lot of states are multiracial.

I could see a state where the Kobolds are ruled by a few Rogue High Elves instead of dragons for example.

Jerboa-people, dwarves and shrooms.

Pretty sure I got this from the OSR thread.

Underrated post

Dark Souls was very traumatic for me!

...

>soda gnomes and their rivals phosphor goblins

bump

They have Gungan-like tongues and habitats and eat creatures to gain power.

Humans and nothin' but.

Koboloids