Make Humanity special challenge

ITT we come up with ways to make humans unique other than them being the "jack of all trades". Maybe all the other races are really tiny or really big, making humans the giants or smallfolk of the setting. Perhaps compared to the other races we're fantastic at magic and so we're the wizardly race. Come up with any ideas you can that you think are interesting and have potential.

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Humanity is the only race capable of necromancy, causing everyone else to be scared of us and triggering theological disputes as to whether humanity is an evil or damned race.

Is this genre specific? Either way..

1. Humans can't actually use magic. They copy the effects of magic via "spells" which are fairly set processes of effect (this does that) where as other races are capable of using actual magic. In understandable terms like in FF8 where A sorceress is the only one capable of magic and the "magic" everyone else uses is para-magic

Humans are far more willing to accept mechanical implants which offends a surprisingly common sensibility of physical purity found in a number of alien species who loath the idea of needlessly and garishly modifing their bodies

Humans are the only species to posess the Freudian death drive.

Thus, everyone else thinks we're a species of complete lunatics.

Something about human psychology has to be unique. Maybe the idea of the collective subconscious is something that only humans have. Humans basically have a knack for coming up with common symbolism. Maybe this translates to elves judge every snake on an individual basis whereas humans not only judge all snakes badly, but also use the snake as a universal symbol for whatever they symbolize.

What if you had races that suddenly took away the ID (elves kinda) or the superego (Orcs, kinda). What if you had a race that didn’t have ego? What if all a race had was a drive to fulfill needs, a drive to cooperate, but no way of balancing the two? Almost like a Sméagol type of thing.

Human psychology is really neat. I’m just scratching the surface of Freud and Jung. Humans are a race that has survived on because of our versatility, rationality and intuition. I agree that most fantasy focuses on the first one, so I might focus on differentiating humans with the latter two.

Humans, unlike most other sapient lifeforms, is a specialist. We divide our actions into roles, much like a hive. The other races would produce generalists who have to have the full knowledge of their traditions, culture, professions and survivability - what kind of an elf doesn't have his own wineyard or forge his own arms? Perhaps the other races are more beastial and natural, not wielding weapons and armor?

In nature, humans are among the best endurance runners. Wolves and dogs are better but sure, gnolls trump humans there.

A weird idea I've been kicking around: what if every other "fantasy" race in a setting had lifespans that topped out at ~30 years, while humans regularly lived a standard (60+) length? It would mean that humanity wouldn't actually be any different than reality, but they'd be special because they live twice as long as everyone else.

here's some ideas...

>humans are the most capable of compassion and empathy of the sentient races in the setting, maybe the only race capable of it.
>humanity is the pet race of the gods, and thus the only race that can use cleric/divine magic.
>humans are the only sentient race lacking a soul, being eternally damned and cursed by the gods, making them invisible to demons, devils, spirits, etc, and rendering them incapable of using arcane or divine magic.
>humans are the only race that introduced firearms to their setting.
>humanity is cursed with a genophage-style race-wide disease that renders 99% of birthday as stillborn, meaning that they only have a a few generations to go before they die out completely.
>humans are the descendents of the elder gods, and possess an affinity for arcane magic, are unable to use divine magic, and are innately insane, being born with voices in their head and constant hallucinations, but learn to suppress these effects, at will, by the time they can walk. they are very few in number, and they are often ostracized by the "higher" races (elves, dwarves, gnomes, drow, etc), but welcomed as shamans, oracles, and mystics by the primitive races (orcs, goblins, tribal/wild elves, catfolk, etc), whether they have actual magic ability or not.
all I've got for now. nice tactical waifu you've got there!

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What about making humans the best at sex
Every race would want to try fucking a human at least once

There's a good science fiction expansion to Warbirds wherein humans are heavy-worlders, and as such are much stronger and faster in action than other races. We were also the ones who introduced space fighters willing to go all Star Wars on enemy capital ships, and pur relative resistance to high-G maneuvers means other races take a penalty to dogfighting and aren't allowed to use the Stunt defensive option that we can.

This is really good. Going to use.

>in the beginning, the gods created each of the races that now inhabit the world, blessing them with life and personality
>but these races were twisted and corrupted by the demons in their early days, and the taint of that corruption still exists within them to this day
>the Orcs were corrupted by the demon of war and chaos
>the Dwarves were tainted by the devil of greed and paranoia
>the Elves were twisted by the imp of xenophobia and pride
>and the Humans were embraced by the succubus of lust and infatuation
>to this day, humans are widely known as the best lovers and most charismatic silver tongued flirters among the land
>the Succubus has become an almost motherly figure to the humans, sending her underlings to warm their beds and keep the lonely company
>her rival, the Archangel of love and family, frequently fights with her over their "children", showering the humans with gifts and affection to win their love and approval

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a few ideas

>humans have several "pet" race alliance with several near-sentiant races, maybe psychic links with them

>humans have affinity with the elements, it could be a regional or some kind of specialized training that determines which one

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>humans have several "pet" race alliance with several near-sentiant races, maybe psychic links with them
This gives me an idea
>humans have been blessed with the ability to have sex and reproduce with any living thing
>results are varied, but one of the best things produced from experimentation thus far are a race of human-dog hybrids, with most of the unwavering loyalty of dogs and most of the intelligence of humans retained.

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Uniquely concerned with ties of kinship rather than, say, occupation. Other species are more likely to understand a soldier taking vengeance for a fallen comrade than they are to understand "YOU KILLED MY FATHER!"

Humans aren’t a jack of all trades. Theyre just right there in the middle of the R/K spectrum, making them very resilient

Keep going

Humans are the only race that extensive facial hair, body hair, and sweating, which the other species find mildly disgusting.

>For humanity, instead of good and evil slaughtering each other like with the other races, their unusually large amounts of love, lust, infatuation, and familial loyalty causes them to make love, not war
>Heaven and Hell start to look at humanity with resentment, with Heaven seeing them as a perverted embarrassment to their creation and Hell viewing them as a corruption of the hatred that the demonspawn are meant to embody
>this hatred of humanity only grows stronger upon hearing that humanity has not only bred human-dog hybrids, but that they've even been able to swoon and impregnate angels and demons with hybrid children
>Both the Archangel of love and the Succubus of lust ally with each other to protect their "children" from the hostile zealots of both sides
>humanity, and the many hybrid children they have birthed since their inception, now stand surrounded on all sides by enemies, with only their loving "mothers", the angel and succubus, to help. Can love bloom on the battlefield, or will hatred win out in the end?

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All the other races are now non-existant.

Humans are unusually proud. Dwarves are greedy and elves are lazy, but humans are proud, and constantly risk themselves and everyone else for the sake of increasing their glory and power.

There was never a way to travel faster than the speed of light. But because most interstellar species live imcredibly long lives, the distances between stars seems to them to be not so great. Humans live for such a tiny amount of time on comparison, it's really remarkable they can handle their couple systems with anything like order at all.

The jack-of-all-trades thing is just how we percieve things as humans and because average in D&D terms is based around the average human. To a halfling humans aren't medium sized, they are small. To an orc they aren't normally tempered, they are unemotional.

Humans should be the giant race of the setting

fits right in with the fact that the overwhelming majority of fairy races in folklore tend to be smol

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It would be rather fitting for humans to be the giant race. Generally speaking, in most settings almost all intelligent races are as tall as humans at maximum, and usually they're shorter. Orcs and elves are as tall as humans but not taller, dwarves and halflings are smaller than humans, gnomes and kobolds and goblins are even shorter than them, and pixies and fairies are downright miniature. If we were to view humans through the eyes of most other intelligent species, we would be the giant race, or at least one of the giant races.

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Si-fi:
Humans were one of the very few races to continue fighting each other after the industrial revolution equivalent. We were the only ones to use nukes on ourselves. We were the only ones to use nukes on ourselves and not blast the planet back to the Bronze Age.

Almost all races, but exclusively the successful ones, have in built caste systems (Warrior, builder, diplomat, etc.) and are born for a spesific job. Kinda like tau without the 1988 vibe. Humans are blank slates and can be basically anything. Both have advantages (In-built purpose an flexibility) and disadvantages (rigidity and chance for wasted potential.

Fantasy:
humans are almost never born with magical abilities, but the ones that are are to other races mages what firecrackers are to tactical nukes.

>humanity is the pet race of the gods, and thus the only race that can use cleric/divine magic
And the ones who will inherit the earth.

This is almost literally just Diablo lore.

bpitt

>to a halfling they are small
??

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I've never played Diablo, could you give me a quick greentext summary?

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Humans are the only sapient species that creates art and objects that look like them. The concept of a doll is foreign to Elves and Dwarves for example. They are also the only race that therefore suffers from the uncanny valley effect, having trouble dealing with nonhumans that look (ironically) too human.

Do humans really need anything special? Things are usually human biased to begin with.

Best at ranged combat.

Best at tactics. Best at black ops tactics.

No overall innate sense of honor.

Fastest breeding intelligent race.

Fastest at picking up skills.

Best at stealing things from other races.

Chosen race of the gods: best priests, best paladins, best blessings, best divine favor.

Best seafarers, and best merchants and explorers by extenion (also orcs only spread out when led by a warlord, elves stay in their forests and holy lands, dwarves never leave their mountains and caves).

>Best at black ops tactics.
I've never seen this used, but I really want to, it sounds like it has a lot of potential. Especially once Cold War era tier strategies come into play, training Goblin terrorists to fight against their Orc masters, torturing and turning enemy prisoners into sleeper agents, black ops raids in the middle of the night by secret organizations that don't officially exist, and false flag attacks causing massive wars between non-human civilizations, weakening them for the human's purposes.

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>diablo's earth (Sanctuary) was made when a demon and angel fell in love
>the nephalem (super humans) are directly descended of these two, and all humans are descended of ancient nephalem kingdoms
The details cleave a bit closer to what you wrote in terms of us being seen as mistakes and whatnot. What's more, our free will is a thing because the angel and demon demonstrated some degree of free will in creating us.

They are the most empathetic race

They are the most scientific race

Humans were the first race created and got a significant head start on this whole "civilization" thing, and are still generally on the cutting edge of societal complexity and technological advancement (and magical innovation, if that's a thing rather than magic being in a continuous backslide.)

1. Humans are the best seamen, and do not suffer seasickness as harshly as the other races. They have learnt to build the best ships and sew the best sails. They have become the most skilled sailors, navigators, fishermen, shipbuilders, and traders. They may not have the best armies or weapons on land, but their warships are unmatched and their trading fleets are unrivalled.

2. Alchemy is a uniquely human invention. Where dwarves are skilled metallurgists, and elves are masters of magic, humans are instead expert potion makers and alchemists. They invented healing potions while searching for the panacea, can transmute metals without magic, and are obsessed with achieving the their Great Work, the creation of the philosopher's stone.

Assuming DND races:

>Elves cant into black ops, they get stealth, ambush and force recon tactics but they are to mired in their own ways and consider themselves "above" such tactics

>Dwarves cant into blackops because they cant stomach the thought of hiding behind having Goblins or Orcs or Elves or whatever doing a Dwarfs job or being to cowardly to face their enemies openly

>Gnomes sort of get it, its like tricking or pranking people, just with violence and they have been adapting a lot of Human approaches but they just have trouble with the subtlety

>Halflings like the idea of not having to fight an open war or getting others to fight i some far off place rather than next to their homes, but as a culture they lack initiative to seek these opportunities out

>Half-Orcs and Half-Elves are actually good at this sort of thing, if they were brought up by humans, they are often as not orphans, so ripe for an agency to recruit, make good deniable assets and if trained well can "fit in" with their other halfs race