Humans not as generalists

> Humans are intended to serve as cattle
> Crafted to do two things: breed quickly and relatively effortlessly, and provide sustenance in large and tasty quantities

That's why there are half-elves, half-dwarves, half-giants, half-dragons, half-goblins, and so on.

An important note is that the entities that bred humans ate spiritual zeal instead of meat. The natural result of this is that humans independently have more deities, crusades, inquisitions and zealots than any other race. Dwarves think humans are just crazy, and elves think humans are just gullible. But it's all about fattening up the calf for slaughter.

The world should be divided between great racial superpowers. The germanic/middle eastern/Indian dwarves. The Celtic-Iberian-Gaelic-Norman elves. The italian-mediterraniean halflings who used to have a huge land Empire built on a legendary military which used it's mastery of logistics, formation and strategy to defeat physically superior enemies. The afro-Carribean-Nubian-Egyptian Orcs. And the strange east asian-SEA dragonborn.

All are menaced by the nomadic Mongolian Slav Jew humans and their fucking horses

Oddly enough, we've been considering making them 'the strong race' (Without them being brutish) and drawing a bit more supernatural into it. Humans and giants are kin and humans have the souls of giants. It means that few other races are capable of bursts of sheer power (Physically or magically) as they are.

The general split we are pondering, theme-wise:

Humans: Power
Elves: Precision
Dwarves: Efficiency

Halflings: pies

>humans
>relatively effortless breeding
I would post the screencap of the fucked up parasitic bond between a feetus and its mother

This, we just think Humans breed easy because of the dying races trope that exists to explain why elves and dwarves don't dominate.

The human pregnancy is horrific and inefficient.

So far, halflings are not one of the core races we are working on. We'll likely end up passing on them.

Part of what we are doing is trying to work out how various races fit into stuff without just being 1:1 versions of how fantasy tends to do them (And without being so different as to be unrecognisable). Especially since we're going more with more '100 years either side of 0 BC' time-wise rather than the usual medieval pastiche.

>humans
>Crafted to do two things: breed quickly
lol

For example, a typical troll is level 6 with STR and CON 23, while a typical human is level 1 with STR and CON 11, and all the core player races are also level 1 with at most +2 or -2 to some stats. The variance between core player races is quite small compared to the variance between all creatures that exist, most of which are clearly superhuman without factoring in experience and equipment.
Oh, your human PC is exceptional and starts the campaign with STR 18? A troll as exceptional as him would have STR 30. And that's just a naturally-occurring, presumably organic life form on the material plane with a humanoid-ish body shape.

Calling bullshit on OP. He has no friends.

OP's friend here, fuck yourself.

Teamwork. Most other species are solitary, but we've learned to work together because we had to. This also allows us to specialize more heavily in a single field, which means we can surpass races like elves who need to be generalists to survive.

Free will. We're not aligned to any of the great cosmic powers, meaning that we interact with them in unusual ways. In D&D terms humans don't have an alignment, and treat their alignment as whichever is most convenient (e.g. a human hero can use evil magic without dying or being corrupted by it).

Typing with your left hand doesn't count OP, no matter how much lipstick you put on it.

War.

Make humans the great war race. I normally make them the only thing that can stop Orc hordes due to their high breeding rate, high strength, and technological skill.

They're certainly not the best fighters, but they are the best Warmongers and having others join with them. Elves are too slow to react and Dwarves too few in number.

If you compare humans to other animals physically, we're actually a pretty hardy species. We're naturally able to survive pretty horrendous injury that would spell death for most animals, and we also have a really robust healing system compared to other mammals

Humans also have some of the best stamina in the animal kingdom, and can live in jusy about any condition on Earth. Basically, we're tanky as fuck

The issue with that is, if humans are good at something everyone else can't be better at that something, making human baseline the 'peak.

If you give humans the best stamina or something, expect the other races to be wheezing puff-bags of 'I can't go on'.

If you make humans the toughest, expect other races to die to a weak breeze, etc.

hyperbole, I know but if humans are 'the greatest' at something the others are worse, nd that'll feel worse because they're worse than our baseline.

Unless the difference is as infinitesmal as to not matter.

>Humans
>High breeding rate
Hate this meme desu

Humans get to be the +2Con race with a +1 bonus to another stat and a skill/tool proficiency depending on the region they grew up in.

Please do, I loved that post for science.

Industrialists.

>Elves are just Humans 2.0

Well yeah, that's what Tolkien wanted em to be. Humans but better.

This user.
Right there.
Listen to him.

But humans are better than elves in his works.

>Teamwork.
Seriously. There's a reason we get along so well with dogs. Now, you'd have to come up with an explanation for how dwarves/elves developed a society without those instincts, but that's another issue

FAITH does a cool thing with this where the Blade Runner birdmen have all of humanity in this kind of contractual slavery, and we're used as mercenaries because we're hardy and can survive extreme conditions with less expensive equipment.

Useless with their heads stuck their asses creating this thing called "art". Which could be called amusing if you consider them pouring expensive inks into their ass to fart them over a palette of rawhide. (And by-the-way, they stole the ink from your caravan.)

Humans are fucking zealots. They outlast everything and keep on pushing despite it all. They have ideologies and nations that they value higher than their own life, they have tactics and cooperation, they never stop until their goal is accomplished. Remember, humans are the single most enduring thing in nature, cavemen hunted by simply walking after the prey until it died of exhaustion

>We can read other people's emotions based on their fine facial muscle movement and body posture.

More like we can project our emotions with those things. In my experience, people, normies and otherwise, are shit at picking up on that stuff, but remain convinced that their first impression is always right.

I can deal with humans being the charisma race, but not the wisdom race.

...

...

>humans are faggots

Look at it from the perspective of one of the other in-setting races as "normal".
Usually this means kender without an STR penalty.

Humans can be cattle & beasts of burden

By universal author fiat, or whatever fate is in his work. Not because of anything tangible or statistically verifiable.

Interestingly we aren't as good at this as we'd like to be. I read in studies random people could distinguish a genuine smile from a forced one with only 50% accuracy, but if you know the signs to look for and can examine a photo for a while the accuracy improves drastically.

humans as not exactly generalists, but rather tiny mortal bound god-heads with infinite potential if their will is strong enough. but usually just dumb fuck peasants or greedy corrupt (((nobles))) and (((merchants)))

Tall dwarves mixed with pale orcs. Traders first, but favoring trading in weapons and armor to fuel whatever crusades they might be on at the moment. Refuse to take slights, will fight amongst themselves as readily as fighting anyone else. Tall and strong, but not nearly as smart as they claim to be.

>Breeding quickly
If the "meat" we provide is immaterial, why can't the means of restocking be immaterial as well?

Humans were bred/designed to meet the needs of beings who feed on spiritual zeal, which makes an individual a renewable resource in itself. To take advantage of this, humans were designed to seek out and respond strongly to sources of inspiration. We are unconsciously drawn to things that inspire us, and can find it in the most unexpected places. We grow depressed and restless when we can't find a source of this, and feel driven to relentless seek it.

Other races think we're spacey, creepy, and unpredictable. However, if they spend enough time with us, they, too, find themselves wishing to experience new and deeper things than their stagnant traditions an provide. The beings who feed on us are either surprised or overjoyed with this.

Brief history of humans in a Not! D&D game I'm working on:

1) Humans come and live for like 100 years at the very most compared to most races who can live to be 1000 or older even.

2) Other races laugh and think humans are wierd cause of this.

3) Humans also the only race that can spontaneously arise as undead. Some of them just straight up come back to life from death and become ghouls/vampires/etc

4) This gives rise to humans first civilization, the Necromancer Empire of Zarrahl. Wherein those with the innate gift for necromancy used their gift to subjugate the living and basically feed off them.

5) Some guy whose name is lost to history wound up communing with The Daevas and wound up turning his potential for necromancy into a Holy Power which could cure sickness, heal the wounded and undead just HATED it.

6) The Daeva are basically a Pantheon of deities that serve as Aspects of The Sun. One is The Sun as a warrior, one is The Sun as a home provider, one is The Sun as a poet and scholar, etc

7) This Daevidic religion starts to gain popularity as more and more humans start to embrace the faith and this causes the Necromancers to get antsy leading to a huge war that sees the undead empire fallen and in its place the Church of the Daevas founded.

7) The church starts to splinter as various factions within start to disagree on scripture and this leads to a loose confederacy of about 6 human nations. Either way they are the only race that seems to have really taken to this whole "divine" thing.

Basically: Humans are the 'Divine' race of the setting.

humans are not generalists, we have this impression because fantasy settings are built with an humancentric view.

Think about it: an elf wizard makes sense? a dwarf cleric make sense? Maybe in part, what we see it's just what said races can do in an human territory. Maybe the elf "wizard" capabilities are just an adjusted aspect of a broader elven profession like the "sage gardener" or something like that

Here's a thought. Because humans (and let's say orcs as well, at least my personal interpretation) are the ones who are going to throw numbers to solve things. Elves and Dwarves may have a few individuals who are dedicated to solving a task so all the knowledge is centralized to them while humans and orcs have a lot of people who have bits and peices that help make up the sum of that knowledge.

Elves and Dwarves will have a few very powerful and knowledgable magic users while humans and orcs shit out lower tier mages like rabbits in heat and the occasional one with exceptional talent comes along every now and again as a matter of chance.

In a high fantasy setting with lots of races, I usually make humans the strong, hardy race. Maybe not quite as durable as dwarfs but definitely stronger.

In a more low or dark fantasy setting where most non-human races are monstrous in some way, humans are undeniably the weakest but there's a big emphasis on stuff like human heroics and the strength of the human spirit.

Just make them brutal and dangerous. Humans are, after all, a species who has completely dominated their world for thousands of years, burned down continent spanning forests, mined out entire mountains, redirected rivers, turned hundreds of miles of the earth into war torn rubble, and hate fucked almost every living thing in the planet into subservience or extinction. We murder our own kind by the billions over petty disputes and are happy to watch children of our own species starve and die and do nothing to help them because it isn't convienient.

So just portray dwarfs as small, elfs as frail, whatever other races you have as whatever, and paint humans as the biggest, strongest, and most chaoticly destructive people around who everyone else is sort of left in fearful awe over. I mean imagine your an elf living in a tree. Hollow bones and ethereal beauty and all that jazz. A human is descended from apes, he can probalby kill you pretty easily just with his bare hands. They rove around in packs and they ride horses and capture other intelligent beings to use as slaves. That's pretty hardcore.

I like imagining "elf wizard" in the same way as "American English teacher". We have the impression that they're peak elf built up, but what if they're the ones who couldn't elf at all and ended up flaking out to somewhere where fucking 50-year-olds was legal?

People also tend to splash creativity as one of humans traits compare to elves and dwarves who in that case presented as uncreatuve guide-books followers.
So human mages would have wider range of tricks up their sleeves although most of them would lack refinement.

Lol

By the book seems a little off for long-lived races. Maybe more individually set in their ways? Like, human wizard going "hey check this shit out fampai I put elemental ice in my Fireball incantation so I can freeze while I deeps" while elf wizard is "I know perfectly well what Fireball can do, I'm cited in the original research paper. I also know Cone of Cold."
and then the human proceeds to slay several legendary monsters by the Iceball/hit with staff combo before freezing to death sometime that winter after being caught out in a storm, while the elf spends several hundred more years writing papers.

It is actually for a reason. Elves are magical, so how powerful they are is based on how much magic is in the world. As magic fades, they literally grow weaker, which is why the same elves who could solo drgons in the Silmarillion are just femmy hippies by the time Frogo comes along. Then when magic fades entirely, they cease to exist in the world and go off to live in the halls of the dead. Humans are shitty at first, but they are natural, so the fading of magic doesn't change them, and they outlast everything else until they rule what's left.

So basically cockroaches.

Maybe, then again the shorter lived races could also create various branches while the longer lived races are more focused on refining the single one they've been using.

While they may be at the pinnacle of research in how to create a fireball, the human who was learning fireball caught the urge to chase the rabbit as it where when he figured out how to create steam with it and so on and so forth.

I mean we're technically heavy worlders if what I've seen is correct, so we'd probably fucking excel at fighting on other planets with lighter gravity, practically flying across the battlefield just by sprinting.

>humans often can't recognize human fake smiles
Masters of empathy AND deception!

Without Orcs, humans would fill that niche. Imagine African warlords using the child soldiers, Arab warlords using the child soldiers, Mongol hordes, Hitler’s Nazi’s

Humans would be bad guys and would attack Dwarves, Halflings and Elves for resources/territory without Orcs to unite them.

If we're going by how we stack up compared to other things in nature, you'd be looking at something that is specialized for intelligence and endurance with rather terrible speed and agility and a heavy propensity for using powerful crafted items.

So really huamans are just dwarves but not short.

Humans are so magical they do it subconsciously and on a incomprehensible scale.
Humans are bad at conscious magic because most of their magical energy was already used up making Elves and Dwarves real. Magical races and monsters have a lot of magic available because humans are giving them all that magical power through human beliefs.
This is why immortal elves and industrial dwarves haven't taken over the world, or the ubiquitous monsters haven't made humans extinct. Firstly because their behavior is dictated by human belief and secondly because the less humans there are the weaker they get, creating a balance.

I don't know if it's been said, but I like humans being the hardy race. Looking back at our own ancestors, we did shit like predation hunting where we would literally hunt prey by chasing it until it collapsed. We were also largely nomadic, and I saw someone mention food, which is what I was going to mention. We can and will at just about anything, which in your setting could just be a bonus against poison or some shit. We are also incredibly social, which someone mentioned as well. Other races are certainly social, but if they were less nomadic for evolutionary amounts of years compared to humans, they would be less keen on all social interactions. In game terms, races could get a bonus to interacting with their own kin, but humans instead get a smaller bonus for interacting with everyone.

Basically if I were to do my own setting, Humans would be bonus to endurance based activities and social interactions.

There are Australian aboriginals. Which is even worse because they found out about Australia because of yearly massive wildfires. They literally canoed to the place in the ocean that spews massive pillars of smoke every year.

Fucking madmen.

If you want to take the supernatural slant then miniscule amounts of Nephelem ancestors wouldn't be a bad way to go about it. Though I would try to make it distinct from any teilfing/aasimar stuff.

Why is no one focusing on the food thing? Giving humans extremely varied diets to the limited diets of other races would do wonders to explaining why humans are everywhere and other races are limited to certain environments.

This. Short of regrowing limbs humans are one of the most durable high complexity species on the planet.

We are capable of surviving in every climate on the planet, most of them without needing any clothes. We can chase our prey until it literally drops dead from exhaustion. Of all the species on the planet that evolved to be runners we are the only ones that are bipedal, decoupling our running from our breathing.

And we killed off all of our genetic cousins to ensure no one could topple us from being on top of the world.

I think the main issue is other races are basically humans anyways with minor aesthetic and ability modifications. They might tend towards certain mannerisms on average, but they still act within the realm of human behavior, seeing as they're all written by humans. Putting all of humanity into a niche seems weird to me just because from a meta standpoint they're what every other race is based on.

I'm a fan of the Elder Scrolls method of splitting the humans into different groups. It allows for more specified group types without trying to shoehorn humans somewhere.

One of the only HFY stories I actually enjoyed was an alien diplomat being floored by the sheer amount of variety in a human buffet table.

Jesus

I'm fine with humans being the baseline physically, but I think we make up for it by trading. Elves stick to their own kingdoms for centuries at a time. Dwarves care only for gold and ideas that will bring in more of it. Orcs are too short-sighted to build up a major economy, but they're great art improvisation.

Humans, however will take the millennia old ideas of the Elves and combine them with the knowledge of the dwarves and the ingenuity of the Orcs.

Humans would be the most technologically advanced civilisations and will largely trade with anyone, if it serves their needs.

Problem is : most of the "classic" fantasy races are just derivatives of humans.
You have the graceful and civilized humans; the merry and gluttonous short humans;the Swiss people; the brutish and tribal humans; the hybrid between humans and graceful humans; the lusty humans with horns and goat legs etc. etc.

Every time, I make humans:

>on the surface, they're stupid, reckless, lucky, arrogant, dramatic sons of bitches
>beneath it all, they're terrified, sneaky, sadistic, manipulative, selfish cowards

Someone else working on the same thing here, might as well toss a followup question in to see what people think.

We're considering including the orcs in the game, explicitly as a monster race. Not a player option in any way. They are (for complex setting reasons I won't bore people with) innately murderous, brutal and violent, utterly dedicated to destruction. Not some arbitrary moral classification of evil, but simply ending the life of everything that is not an orc that they can see, and going looking for more if they can't see any.

Would this annoy you or seem like a nice throwback, given how orcs these days are more and more often presented in a more nuanced manner and as player characters?

Not relevant to the thread.

Depends entirely on the tone you're going for.

I mean, fair. But a member of our group had already made one thread based on a discussion of our homebrew stuff, I didn't want to clutter Veeky Forums with a second.

Humans should specialize in seafaring, with trade and exploration as offshoots of that. Humans are the only one of the main fantasy races that's really known for building huge boats. Most depictions of elves wouldn't see then cutting down massive swathes of forest to sail across the ocean. Dwarves as a whole would probably be bad at navigation by the sky from their lives underground, and are often depicted as not liking being on boats at all, preferring firm ground. Halflings might like to travel on boats, but their simple farming communities and laid back lifestyle means they'd have small rafts and dinghys at best.

Humans have the right combination of industry and pragmatism to make them premier sailors, even if their crews might include other races for their individual talents.

I think it works. I'd rather have them as generically evil cannon fodder over attempts to do 'Orc babby, wat do?'

This, with trading and diplomacy and recklessness. Humans are the only race where most of them would sail dangerous waters on wooden vessels and trade/deal with exotic races for profit and pussy.

Elves doesn't care about dwarves gold jewelry, dwarves don't like the hobbits weed, hobbits vomit at elves cuisine.
But humans will wear gold rings, fuck an elf ass and smoke weed after it.

In the case of the dwarves, just increase the clannishness even more.
They only bond with 'family'; even other groups of dwarves get treated with gruff intolerance. Something like that. (I'd say something about 'selfish genes', but I'm not a biologist so have no idea how retarded that would sound.)
Elves, I dunno - something something trees?

....I feel like we're making an argument for Fantasy Star Trek.
Would that be bad? I'm not sure.

Studies of octopi are interesting. Rather than having a single overriding intelligence, the different parts of their body act autonomously.

Humans are garbage at reading body language. Look at how well dogs do it and cry yourself to sleep at your poor genetic skills.

Humans are fucking zerg. Eat anything, live anywhere, drastically change the environment around them and drive all megafauna to extinction wherever they go, and we'll try to make mixed babies with anything we come across.

Humans are the ones that bring about the most change. Because they live shorter lives than the other races they are more in a hurry to get things done.

A role I think that humans could fill is the race that is treated like vermin. The reason for this is that humans have a lot more babies, they are also warmongers and are willing to fight dirty.

>SEA TREK
"Sea: the next frontier.
These are the voyages of the ship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new lands; to seek out new life and new civilisations; to boldly go where no human has gone before." - Captain James T. Kirk

given we're known on earth for our endurance, if I had to give humans a niche, I'd probably say like "bonus HP and resistance to exhaustion", if we're going with a more sci-fi setting, human equipment tends to be much more hardwearing. Not always the most directly durable, a human space ship would be able to cover fifty percent more to twice the distance of most alien vessels and would require less maintenance and all that.

Most aliens and other races would find it odd how humans are so obsessed with 'wasting resources; to build things to last than be ready to recycle or modify for future use.

Collective antimagic. The more humans there are, the more mundane the world around them gets. At the very minimum of a particularly weak individual on his own, a human can still use mundane tech without bad shit happening and it's a bit harder for magic to directly affect him compared to other things. Most races can't use things much more advanced than simple tools without dickass spirits fucking it up if they don't ward it, and since they're already using magic to make it not break they usually do some more to make it work better. But then they have to deal with the bullshit that is magic and it can be a real pain for someone who isn't trained in it. Most of the "heroes" you hear about slaying dragons and such are individuals with particularly strong antimagic. They can go 1v1 the biggest, baddest magical beasties on their own and usually win... but get promptly killed by a sharp stick. In high numbers, humans simply existing is hostile to all magical life in an area.

Considering that we have been in war since ever, I think that making us the warlike race is a nice thing

I've played with the food thing. Both straight up and with more of an "HFY" twist. In both versions sentient species co-evolve with a high-nutrition food source. Think ants and aphids; to most other species the idea that the first animal humans domesticated wasn't something they regularly ate is bizarre. The fact that they had tool use before something like the potato, is jaw dropping crazy.

So most other species diet is just 'various ways of eating X' because that's what they evolved to eat, and that's what gives them just about all of their nutrition. An average human meal would seem insanely profligate.

The twist version goes into the psychological implications of not having evolved with a stable food source. Humans are hungry. They will try and eat anything that will not immediately kill them. Many will literally eat themselves to death if given the opportunity. A human deliberately staving itself is unheard of, and signifies a mental illness or a near superhuman commitment to an ideal. If food is scarce enough, they will eat each other, and the idea of it fascinates them. This hunger, this deep down insatiable, rapacious hunger defines them more than they know, and can drive them to things they do not want to admit they are capable of.

My humans fill the roles orcs play in most settings; warlike, competitive, and brutal.

This is quite interesting. I like it.

Humans are lucky. They get rerolls, extra perks and skill points, hands of fate dealt again and again to them. Dumb fucking luck like taking 300 humans to hold a pass and winning against countless numbers of invaders. They eyeball things with artillery and inflict horrible losses on the enemy. A stray arrow finds its way into a fucking arrowslit and offs the enemy general in the throat. Their scouting party gets lost but finds your supply lines and blows up a bridge, fucking over the main army. A race of player characters.

Fighting wars with humans if avoided, for fear of bad luck. You never know when Artillery Johnny from BumfuckNowhere gets his good roll of the dice and accidentally kills your general with a misplaced rocket barrage or Sergeant Jimmy makes a last stand that takes actual weeks to crack. Weird shit happens around them, the stuff of legend for your own folk, is what they can do in war every day. They are religious, but religion has nothing to do with it; they're simply lucky.

Elves are more agile, lithe, precise and noble.
Dwarves are hardier, stronger, shorter and more industrious.
Orcs are bigger and stronger, raiding warriors.
But Man is lucky; finding wells with running water where others found desolation, and treasures where others found ruin. That's why Man is welcomed everywhere, like a dumb cat that brings luck.
Though Halflings are luckier, they don't act in worldly events.

I've always been a fan of humans as innovators.

Elves last so long that they have all the time in the world to learn skills and take their time.

Orcs are so physically powerful that they can rely on brute force.

Dwarves just aren't bothered by things that should be lethal.

Humans HAVE to look for every advantage they can get just to survive, never mind compete with the other races. They always race ahead and make newer and better things. Human smiths are always searching for finer steel and sharper swords. Human merchants puzzled out the first fractional reserve banking just so they had more capital to buy and sell on.

Over time, humans became more and more intelligent as a normal result of selective breeding in a highly competetive environment. Since breeding between races was impossible (Elves, dwarves, orcs, and humans are different species in this setting, think horses and donkeys) these advantages stayed with humankind alone.

This one? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Damned_Trilogy