Unconventional D&D Races

Same with Tieflings, but start mentioning that and the dragon fanboys and edgebois fall back on parroting their same old "YOU JUST HATE FUN! and "MALE HUMAN FIGHTERS ONLY!" chants of retardation.

I fucking hate this argument.

So by your definition Dragonborn are not a Snowflake race but Lizardmen are?

Your definition is shit. Let the DM decide what Races are aprorpiate for the game, just like every sane group handles this.

I like playing LIzardmen, they are a fantasy staple race yet they arent playable in the majority of games or are replaced with a shittier version of them like Dragonborn.

For some reason they just never make it into any ruleset.
Especialy not oldschool Lawfull Evil Lizardmen.

You're missing the entire point of the argument. The argument was never that Dragonborn was somehow inherently less snowflakey than lizard men. The argument was that people wanting to add more and more races to a game in the absence of any context was a bad thing. If everyone else in the group agrees to play PHB races, you are That Guy for coming to the table with your lizard man.

But then again, this is 4chins, and all logic goes right out the window as soon as someone with a fetish gets butthurt that their special thing isn't treated as super special.

One thing was added into the book by the publishers of the game, one is a piece of homebrew fanfiction. So in a way, yes.

But as said, you missed the entire fucking point of the argument anyway.

My favorite was when a player quit before a campaign even started because I wouldn't let them play a kanebo wielding oni lich samurai, where the kanebo was supposed to be their phylactery. They told me that I "Deeply hurt their feelings" for "Killing their character."

Campaign was starting at level 1. The other four players wanted to all do a lawful good holy crusader/paladin type adventure.

Good times.

My favorite are Elans.

I mean, aberration type?

All of my yes.

SKELETON RACE WHEN?

>tfw everyone else in the party is a weird alien race barely known to humans and every NPC acts like we're all human

>In the abscence of any context
Well there is context to all official but non players handbook races.
On the contrary there is no context to a ton of the players handbook races in a vast sum of settings.
Go be a Dragonborn in Greyhawk, go be a Cleric in Athas.

It all depends on the context of a setting and thus your arbitrary distinction between Players Handbook and non players handbook is nonsense.
>what is volos guide to monsters

You miss the point.
The argument is that if you go beyond PHB races you get into snowflake territory, there are a bunch of official races that arent featured in the players handbook.

Why do you make a distinction between these two?
The distinction is in wether or not they fit the setting, which is how i handle it in my game.
Just because a race is in the handbook doesnt mean its apropriate in a game.
Just because its in volos guide doesnt mean it bloats the roster.

FUCK DAT WHERE'S MY GIANT SPIDER RACE?!

>
wheres my tiny jumping spider race?

>Tone up

I'm currently enjoying playing a Gnoll Barbarian. An always-hungry mercenary who eats his enemies and lets me play around with "pack" dominance dynamics is fun to roleplay.

>Pack dominance
>humping other PCs is roleplaying

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/S1x4kCFv-

Potentially useful link.

>every dingle race is an elf subrace except for humans and argonians
>possibly not even argonians

>every single

monkey people. tell me you wouldn't smoke weed with a sentient monkey

>"MALE HUMAN FIGHTERS ONLY!"

I've run that campaign before. It was good.

That's just a human, user.

>implying i smoke weed
That's already for monkey people

More like trying to bully the Bard into giving me his jerky.

Probably the most fun I've had as a player was playing my farspawn psion/sorcerer hybrid.
Farspawn open up role-play possibilities that other races just don't have. Basically my character was an inter-dimensional drifter that was new to this plane of reality, so he was constantly fascinated by mundane things.
being so far detached from the problems of the world gave me an opportunity to play the very embodiment of a true neutral character, and it was fantastic.
In one situation, my character gave up a large amount of gold in exchange for a mundane local plant because he didn't understand the value of either (he referred to coins as "barter tokens"), and he was very happy to be able to trade with a local

Good: Humans
Ok: Unconvential races
Bad: Neo-Tolkein races

I disagree with this in part.

I like having a cadre of maybe 4 or 5 races, but if you're sticking with PHB only then I would honestly prefer the setting just be composed of humans.

Having played those campaigns anytime im not running, it got boring decades ago.

i'll post the custom races from my sandbox campaign

i had a player roll an ogre-kin warlock which was tough as nails. the naked mole rat race came about as a joke cause one of my players really really wanted to be a naked mole rat. he ended up drowning. tremorsense isn't very good at sea.

the campaign had a number of npcs in these races as well.

fish biddies

...

>Dat shroom mang

Snowflake is probably the worst overused word these days and usually detracts from what your trying to say. It's much more sensible to base your argument around lack of versimilitude but then you also have problems with things like dragonborn, tieflings and dark elves. In some cases it makes sense to play a monster race in a monster location. But you also want every published race ever to have a nation in the world.

If you have a party of all humans if they go up against wacky dumb monsters published in recent years it will be no better either.

1d4chan.org/wiki/N'djatwa

Ogre-Elves.

>1d4chan.org/wiki/N'djatwa
Ah, yes, one of the hybrid races nobody ever likes to talk about, right alongside half-dwarves, half-gnomes, and elf-orcs.

Sorry? Was that a request for a 5e conversion? If so, sure, I'll take a whack at it...

N'djatwa
Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Intelligence, +1 Strength
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Vision: Darkvision 60 eet
Fey Ancestry: You have Advantage on saving throws against the Charmed effect and are Immune to Magical Sleep effects.
Powerful Build: You are treated as one size category larger to determine your capacity to Carry, Drag, Lift, Pull, and Push.
Crushing Fists: Your unarmed strikes do 1d4 + Str modifier bludgeoning damage instead of the normal damage. If you have the Martial Arts class feature, you use the higher possible damage dice.
Keen Senses: You have Proficiency in Perception.
Elven Magic: You know one Cantrip of your choice from either the Druid spell list or the Wizard spell list. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability score for it.

Devas, shardminds, goblinoid family

>kanebo wielding oni lich samurai,
That's a pretty cool concept though

You got canon goblinoids in Volo's already, unless you mean more obscure goblinoids like Vrils, Varags and Norkers. Still, I've been trying to get my Shardmind and Deva balanced for ages...

Deva
Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Wisdom, +1 Intelligence
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Vision: Normal
Astral Majesty: You have Advantage on Charisma (Intimidate) and Charisma (Persuasion) checks.
Astral Resistance: You have Resistance to Necrotic Damage and Resistance to Radiant Damage.
Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes: When you complete a long rest, you can grant yourself Proficiency in one Skill, Weapon, Armor or Tool that you do not possess. When you choose your remembered skill, you cannot change this choice until you complete another long rest.

Shardmind
Ability Score Modifiers: +1 Intelligence, +1 Wisdom, +1 Charisma
Size: Medium
Speed: 30 feet
Vision: Normal
Living Construct: You are immune to disease. You not need to eat or drink, although you can ingest materials if desired. You do not sleep in the normal fashion, but enter a waking trance instead; this lasts for 4 hours and during this time, you are fully aware of its surroundings.
Telepathy: You can communicate telepathically with any creatures you are aware of within 30 feet, provided you share a common language. The ability to passively sense the desires and emotions of sapient creatures gives you Advantage on Insight checks.
Crystalline Mind: You are Resistant to Psychic Damage.
Shard Swarm: Once per short rest, when you take damage from a direct enemy attack, you can use your Reaction to nullify the damage and to teleport to a single spot within 15 feet that you can see.

Not gonna lie, I'd unironically play as a dromeosaur - anywhere from JP-style scaly raptors to modern-science-abiding feathered dakotaraptors. Giving lizards a kind of swiftness lizardmen normally don't have.

DnD, especially 3.5, has introduced so many playable races, and so many of them fill niches in settings better than the endless rearranging permutations of the neotolkein classical fantasy races, that I prefer to play with only the non-standards. I'm currently running a not-middle-east to not-far-east game (Derived from ancient arabic mythology, hindu mythology, and african mythologies.)

Playable Races: Human, Asherati, Changelings, Darfellans, Dromites, Goliaths, Half-Giants (Mechanically, renamed to 'Ogres'), Kobolds, Krynnish Minotaurs, Lizardfolk (Replace swim speed with climb speed and remove ability to hold breath under water), Shifters, Uldra, Xeph, Yuan-Ti (mechanically. Renamed to 'Nagas').

Asherati and Nagas take the place of 'high elves'. The ancient Old Races who have fallen into decline and whose ruins dot the land.

Lizardfolk take the place of 'wild elves', as the strange wilderness-dwellers who dislike 'civilized' life and outsiders trespassing.

Kobolds replace goblins as the 'would-be-civilized-if-they-got-their-heads-out-of-their-asses diminutive savages'

Shifters and Ogres replace 'orcs' as the 'brutal and dangerous wilderness-dwellers and rampaging hordes'

Darfellans and Goliaths replace dwarves as the 'Staunch traditionalists with strong civilizations who have their own problems and want you to sod off out of their inaccessible homes'

Dromites replace halflings as the 'I want to play a diminutive underdog race!' fodder

Uldra replace Gnomes as the shorter, more magical dwarves that nobody takes seriously.

Changelings and Minotaurs replace Half-orcs as the 'I want to play a totally good-aligned and civilized member of the scary savage race!' option.

Xephs replace Half-Elves as the 'I want to play the eternal outsider who gets to piss and moan about not being accepted anywhere' option.

I've actually managed to flesh each of these races out into respectable cultures all their own, with no pre-existing baggage from other media.

...

I want to make a race of three-armed tree men, based slightly on proto-humans like homo hablis or the mythological Ebu Gogo (pic related).

I wanted to see what you guys think of the balance:

+1 Con, +1 Wis.
Skills in Survival and Nature.
30 feet walking speed, 30 feet climbing speed, if 1 arm available.
Third arm allows additional attack, so long as the weapon does 1d4 damage. This attack can't have any modifiers, evene with feats/fighting styles/ magic.
Also allows them to use use ranged weapon + shield.
They start off proficient in all simple weapons and light armour, but if their class grants them martial proficiency or heavier armour proficiency, they don't get access to it unless they take feats specifically for that armour.

That's the jist of it, what do you think?

so wheres the third arm?

Are they asymmetrical? on its back? as a tail? Sprouting from his chest?

I wanna know more.

Asymmetrical, I was thinking just attached to one shoulder under where a regular arm would be. That would mean they're a bit hunch-backed as well. I got the idea from an old CnC clone game called KKND2 Krossfire. It's a grenade throwing unit for a mutant faction.

They would live in tribes in deep forests, sometimes interracting with the outside world for trade and food. They could be used as mercenaries and sailors due to their fighting prowess and climbing abilities.

So far I'm calling them the Skree.

An extra 1d4 attack with absolutely no modifiers sounds useless. Might as wel not allow the extra attack at that point.

>55746258
picture for ants

On one hand i think the idea of asymmetrical sapients is interresting on the other hand i find it a bit on the nose.

Then again asymmetrical crabs exist and they are almost people.

>Kobolds replace goblins as the 'would-be-civilized-if-they-got-their-heads-out-of-their-asses diminutive savages'
Kobolds are so prolific these days I end up in far more games where they already fill that role in some ironic attempt to be original. Fuck these rat lizards, I just want to be a goblin dammit.

THIS but makes a better argument of it.

What does snowflakey mean and why is it bad?

It's actually why I like to make my own settings to house some of the wierder races, gives them a sense of genuine uniqueness and reduces redundancies

I like both but I tend to stress them filling different niches in the ecology and such.

I miss 3.5e Dragonborn.

They were so weird.

That racial writing system seemso ill suited to a blind date species.

This is a good way to handle them.
I like making kobolds cult-like savages, while my goblins are generally well established, albeit a little incompetent and conniving.

>I honestly wish there were LESS playable races to be honest.

I wish every race was payable

>monkey people. tell me you wouldn't smoke weed with a sentient monkey

There is almost this sort of thing at a 3.5 or 3.5 books, they have bats, frogs, monkey,.......

Not an LITERAL sentient monkey as in normal 100% normal monkey that is smart but its there, its closer to minotaur is to a

You can reuse fluff

> Unbodied Ghedan Tarrasqued Erudite, made via True Mind Switch
> unconventional
Tarasques aren't normally sentient.
Creatures with regeneration aren't normally immune to non-Lethal Damage, rationalized away with an incorporeal ethereal form and created via Wish being cast on a Tarrasque body.

With 3.5 its possible to do this

Clone a human various times

Kill some of them them and make a cavaver golem with it

Kill the one of the humans and make a half human half cadaver golem with it

Then use that magic that turn constructors into living beings and use at this cadaver golem half human.

Now breed a human with this mess.

Get the child of this mess make a lycrontrope that is made out of monkey bite him.

I like to do rectroactive world-building, where the players give me their characters then I construct a setting from that.

i did that to a degree, specifically i allowed a player to be a dragonborn but i refluffed them quite heavily to be more like the sarnark in everquest, an artificial race and part of the general story

Even though I hate furries, I like Tibbits

Halflings that turn into tabby cats are cool

Let's see what I can do, then...

Tibbet
Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Dexterity, +1 Charisma
Size: Small
Speed: 25 feet
Vision: Darkvision 60 feet
Claws: You have a Climb speed of 15 feet and can use your claws as natural weapons when making an unarmed strike. A claw attack inflicts 1d4 + Str modifier Slashing damage instead of the normal Bludgeoning damage for an unarmed strike.
Feline Empathy: You can speak to cats and to cat-like monsters as though you were under the effects of a Speak With Animals spell.
Feline Shifter: You are a shapeshifter who can assume the form of a house cat as a bonus action, or revert to your humanoid form as a bonus action. Your cat form follows all of the normal rules for a Druid's Wild Shape, except that you can only take this one form and that neither your current nor your total hit points change when you switch forms.

Divinity: Dragon Commander had a good spin on a skeleton race. They were like religious zealots.

That's adorable, and I love the concept of non bipedal races.

>From classic critters like treants, dryads, pixies, pookas and sphinxes, to monster races like orcs, goblinoids, gnolls and ogres, to more bizarre creatures beside; what are the races outside the mold that you most like, or most wish would come back, or just have fond memories of playing?
Succubi.

Honestly? I'm not sure what you'd do to make those playable beyond taking a tiefling with the Devil's Tongue racial trait (Friends cantrip, Charm Person 1/day, Enthrall 1/day) and a feat to give them the wings trait too.

>Clone a human various times
As far as I'm aware I don't think it's possible to make an actual living clone like that in 3.5.

Eh, having their niches sit too close ends up forcing you to keep them under narrow monocultures to preserve rheir racial identity. What happens if you want cult like goblins or a well established kobold nation? Just for the sake of allowing variety their niches should be broad and have no obvious neighbors, thus I don't think having both races is a good idea

not!arabia guy here. That's why I made most of my nonhuman races regional. My kobolds are found in the south , in Not!Africa. Shifters hardly ever compete with Ogres since Ogres stick to the Not!Polynesian islands and Not!Indian coast. Everything fits an environmental niche, except humans who are the ultimate invasive species and will spread anywhere.

I tend to have Lizardmen, Gnolls, Kobolds, Owlmen, Goblins, and Hobgoblins. I also usually remove Halflings.
I make it clear that if you want to play an unusual race, you have to be a good roleplayer.

I prefer playable races to be 3-4 at the most, and I like humans-only just fine.

Personally, I wish I could figure out how to make lamias, nagas and driders feasible in 5e.

Savage progression where you get bits of the racial template at a time while other players are gaining levels. By the time you hit their CR/ECL, you can start into actual class levels from there. Unless the race has natural casting you're going to be playing as something of a Gish or more of a material/skill based character who uses their natural, racial talents to pick up where those might fall short. IC you can take it as a diminished demon working back from square one after a bad confrontation/summoning, or as a nascent demon whose formation starts out the same as any other human being, just marked by fate or evil or other demons to grow into one of their kind.

In 5th edition? Really? I don't think that'd work...

>tell group of 8 players they can use any published 5e race
>end up with 4 variant humans and 4 half elves

>players gravitating towards the most OP choices
It checks out

This.

It means you're trying to be special just to be special, and its bad because it doesnt serve the game and only distracts from trying to roleplay.

This is true, but having shit like tiefling and DB be in PHB players come in with the expectation that they'll get to play Felix Darklighter, Demonic Angel of Waterdeep.

This, people were so fucking terrified of people picking "esoteric" bizarre races they over compensated and made plenty of the base races too good.

I mean even in fucking Pathfinder the strongest races are pretty much Humans, Half-Elves, and Half-Orcs followed by Aasimar, Tieflings, etc.

They were snowflakey as hell but I have a soft spot for 3.5's Illumians - humans infused with truename magic.

Right now I'm playing a sci-fi fantasy starfleet setting though, so kitchen races make sense. I just have the players fluff them however they want and just pick a race from the book, maybe modify it a bit. I have one guy that wanted to play a spider robot so I just took an elf and swapped a couple of things out.

>D&D USED to work on the assumption you'd make up your own world, not tell you to play in the Forgotten Realms.
>but having shit like tiefling and DB be in PHB players come in with the expectation that they'll get to play Felix Darklighter, Demonic Angel of Waterdeep.

Funny enough Forgotten Realms books often started with a section saying "By the way if your characters are from this part of the setting these classes aren't there, these races aren't there, and these kinds of kits/deities aren't common."

But wotc generally seems afraid of saying there should be restrictions on choices.

Then just play OSR shit, ban Tieflings because you have shitty taste, or if you really want to spite your edgelord strawman simply make Tieflings not hated, but pitied. It;s not fun being angsty when you have nothing to be angsty about.

As for Dragonborn, I never understood why people acting like them being included in the PHB is so fucking horrible. I mean, it's baffling to me why would you not just include Lizardmen or something.

Sure. Im fully aware that FR and older stuff in general is more restricting. However, that fix isnt implemented in 5e, which is what people mean when they use the term D&D these days.

>kitchen races
Kitchen sink races, excuse me.

1. I dont play D&D anymore, and Ive already moved on to games that better suit my needs.

2. I kindof agree, but I think they should have more character than just being le'dragonman. I think it would have been cool to have like snake people, or maybe something amphibious. Something with a little more character than 'orc with scales'

Mostly because they never bothered to read either their Ecology article or their mini-PHB sourcebook and so have no idea what they actually are.

They're not half-dragons. They're not "lizardfolk who look sort of dragony". They're dragonborn. They have their own culture, their own history, their own quirks.

Bloody Forgotten Realms reducing them to "stranded aliens" does NOT help, of course...

That's because, since they're only promoting Faerun, they're forced to shoehorn everything in, since they can't just say "go play X if you want to play Y".

Mind you, Faerun has been a pretty kitchen-sinky setting since t least 3rd edition, where they had huge native populations of tieflings, genasi and aasimar - to the point of including freaking demihuman races of planetouched, as well as a thriving population of thri-kreen in the southern regions.

They HAVE more character than "orcs with scales". A lot more. You just need to read the books they actually put that lore out in, because 5e's "lore" for them is shit.

You had me at Ogre Kin

I will never allow these special snowflake races.

What do you have against fun? Isn't the point of fantasy to indulge yourself in the impossible? So long as the player isn't anoying about it why does it matter if they're playing a "special snowflake" race?

For me it's just more fun to play something weird and out there. To challenge myself to get into the head space of a gnoll, a kobold or whatever else. To try to see the game world through a different lense and bring a character to life. It's harder for me to do that when my options are basically 7 different "human but..." races available in the core. I've played them to death, got bored and moved on to weird and wild shit for inspiration to keep honing my role playing skills.