So, now that the disturbing flame war that was the CharOp Satyr thread got locked while I was catching up on it and preparing a post, I thought I'd put my (actually constructive) solution in the correct place.
Let's say I have a female Satyr concept in mind, call her Sara the Satyr Skald. I start by asking my DM if he's willing to handwave the Satyr sex restriction, but he's meek and deferential and scared to violate rules, so he tells me that, like it or not, my Satyr is male because the darned text box says so. Okay, cool, I can work with that.
Solution: I play Sara the Satyr Skald anyway, just as I would have. Out of character, if anyone asks, then yeah, I guess she's technically a dude. But she identifies and presents as a female, and I'm playing her as a female. People might be a bit confused, but your average townsperson (outside the Feywild, at least) probably hasn't met too many Satyrs before, anyway. That Wizard with enough Arcana background to know that all Satyrs should be male might give me a sidelong glance, but whatever. In character, if anyone asks her, Sara is a lady, and what that involves physically is no more your business than what female dragonborn do with those lumps on their chests.
Gender has no mechanical influence on anything. If anything, most D&D settings are MORE gender egalitarian than 21st century America, if only to make sure people are free to make those choices without in-game fluff penalties. The little grey box dictates that Sara the Satyr Skald has man parts down there somewhere, but (mythological role of Satyrs aside) if you're in the kind of campaign where your character's genitals come into actual use that needs to be described to the table, house rules are the LEAST of your concerns. Since the dice don't care what my character's biological sex is, and the NPC's are unlikely to care what my character's biological sex is, is there any reason I or my character need to care?
Sure, playing a (basically) transgendered Satyr might be a little bit of an awkward, overly-postmodern fit for your campaign world. But play it up! If it makes your DM feel awkward, it's his (or her) fault for being a curmudgeon about a meaningless rule and forcing you to respond creatively.
Thoughts? Is there any reason the "all Satyrs are male" rule would actually prevent anyone from playing their female Satyr character? Is "male" even a defined game term? Pretty sure it isn't...
(I didn't make it through all 68 pages of the last thread to see what exactly got it locked, but I hope we can avoid whatever those problems were over here. I really would like to have a constructive discussion of this particular aspect.)
Satyrs are the male version of Nymphs, mostly. Hence the whole "they're always male". Frankly they should've just made a "Fey" race and said the males are goat legged and the females are gorgeous.
Please justify this statement. Because as we learned from the thread mentioned by the OP, there are quite a substancial number of people that see absolutely nothing wrong conceptually with a female Satyr. No more than a female Minotaur, a male Medusa, a male Harpy, etc. The only thing that it isn't is consistent with the mythology from which it originated, but neither are any of these other races that I just mentioned, so that doesn't sound like a valid reason. Other explanations that came up based around the concept of the Satyr either just sound sexist, as if women can't also be lustful and so on, or just lack imagination, as though the presence of female Satyrs would need to stop Satyrs from lusting for Nymphs.
Speaking of things that were badly designed, please check out this thread for my Minotaur fix. What have the critics said, you ask? "If any of my players ask to play a Minotaur, I'm definitely offering this as an alternative to the official version." - EmpactWB "If I ever feel like playing a Minotaur I'll know where to look!" - Undrave "WoTC if you are reading this - please take this guy's advice." - Ferol_Debtor_of_Torm "Really full of win. A minotaur that is actually attractive for more than just melee classes." - Cpt_Micha
Also, check out my recent GENASI variant! If you've ever wished that your Fire Genasi could actually set stuff on fire, your Water Genasi could actually swim, or your Wind Genasi could at least glide, then look no further.
Finally, check out my OPTIONS FOR EVERYONE article, an effort to give unique support to the races that WotC keeps forgetting about. Includes new racial feature options for the Changeling, Deva, Githzerai, Gnoll, Gnome, Goliath, Half-Orc, Kalashtar, Minotaur, Shadar-Kai, Thri-Kreen, Warforged and more!
It's not a matter of being consistent with the original mythology. It's a matter of being consistent with the core concept of the creature. Gender isn't central to the concept of the minotaur, medusa, or harpy. For the saytr, however, it's one of the defining characteristics. A female saytr is like a minotaur that doesn't have horns and is half-fish. Sure, if you wanna call it a minotaur in your world, have at it, but it doesn't stay true to the IDEA of a minotaur, as is traditionally held.
I'm a fairly traditional guy, myself. If you want female saytrs in your game? Cool. More power to ya. Fish-man minotaurs? I applaud your pioneering spirit. Sparkly vegetarian vampires? Whatever floats your boat.
But they aren't ever going to be in my game, and you'll do nothing but confuse people by applying those names to things that defy the concepts most central to the titles.
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"Did you know there were no female Satyr before D&D told you so in their new statblock?"
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess we'll get at least a 50% say "There aren't? That's news to me." rating. Probably higher. Far too high to put this restriction in, at any rate.
Epic Dungeon Master
Want to give your players a kingdom of their own? I made a 4e rule system to make it happen!
Satyrs, like centaurs, embodied masculinity for the Ancient Greeks. It is understandable why developpers chose to make them all male.
After that is said, it is all about how people view them in their games.
Personally, I like that designers had the courage to chose fluff for their creation. Kids will learn something about the Ancient Greeks. Kids new to DnD will go through the motions of "fluff is canon" to "fluff is suggestions", like we all did. This helps us be better players and DMs.
Take armors in Gamma world for example. They are devided between light and heavy. +3 or +7 to AC. Cool. Simple. Freedom for players and DMs... If you are familiar with armors. I am familiar with armors today because I was exposed to all the different types of armors the 2e PHB presented to me.
In other words, let us not forget the noobs who start playing DnD and the positive impact fluff has on them. Let us not make everything easy for them. Life isn't like that.
For the saytr, however, [gender is] one of the defining characteristics.
Please justify this, because I do not see it at all. The defining characteristics of a satyr to me are upper half of a human, lower half of a goat, often play flues and other wind instruments, often overly sexual and lustful in nature, related to faugns and nymphs and other fey creatures. Nothing about that suggests to me anything exclusively male. I don't know where people are getting this strong idea anyway that Satyrs must be exclusively male or else totally violate the point of being a satyr, because that's not even the case in all literature and mythology that they make an appearance in. Check it out.
If you want female saytrs in your game? Cool. More power to ya.
Which would be great if we weren't mechanically restricted from creating them. That is the crux of the issue. Not necessarily the default fluff but the mechanical rule that enforces it. To go along with your example, nothing in the mechanics for the Minotaur bar me from playing one that doesn't have horns or from playing one that's half fish. I'm free to reflavor that if I want to. Playing a female Satyr, on the other hand, requires much more drastic measures in house ruling.
Again, because I want to emphasize the point. It's totally fine that we have different conceptualizations of the Satyr, and if you want to adhere to classical mythology and keep Satyrs as exclusively male and Harpies as exclusively female and so on and so forth, then I would not dream of standing in your way. However, I would like the exact same freedom to interpret game elements in the ways that I feel are most relevant to my character and to my gaming group.
Satyrs, like centaurs, embodied masculinity for the Ancient Greeks. It is understandable why developpers chose to make them all male.
Yes, that's exactly why centaurs are currently restricted to being male... Oh wait. But really, those ideas of masculinity are just outdated and sexist now. If anything, I think that this alienates some players.
Personally, I like that designers had the courage to chose fluff for their creation.
That's fine, but there's no reason to force that onto everybody through needless mechanical restrictions. I don't think it unreasonable of me to request that stuff like this with no mechanical impact anyway simply be kept in the fluff where it belongs.
Speaking of things that were badly designed, please check out this thread for my Minotaur fix. What have the critics said, you ask? "If any of my players ask to play a Minotaur, I'm definitely offering this as an alternative to the official version." - EmpactWB "If I ever feel like playing a Minotaur I'll know where to look!" - Undrave "WoTC if you are reading this - please take this guy's advice." - Ferol_Debtor_of_Torm "Really full of win. A minotaur that is actually attractive for more than just melee classes." - Cpt_Micha
Also, check out my recent GENASI variant! If you've ever wished that your Fire Genasi could actually set stuff on fire, your Water Genasi could actually swim, or your Wind Genasi could at least glide, then look no further.
Finally, check out my OPTIONS FOR EVERYONE article, an effort to give unique support to the races that WotC keeps forgetting about. Includes new racial feature options for the Changeling, Deva, Githzerai, Gnoll, Gnome, Goliath, Half-Orc, Kalashtar, Minotaur, Shadar-Kai, Thri-Kreen, Warforged and more!
It's not a matter of being consistent with the original mythology. It's a matter of being consistent with the core concept of the creature. Gender isn't central to the concept of the minotaur, medusa, or harpy. For the saytr, however, it's one of the defining characteristics. A female saytr is like a minotaur that doesn't have horns and is half-fish. Sure, if you wanna call it a minotaur in your world, have at it, but it doesn't stay true to the IDEA of a minotaur, as is traditionally held.
I beg to differ. The core concept of the medusa is that she was a woman so beautiful that she turned the heads of gods away from Aphrodite. It wasn't until a relatively obscure dragon article that the concept of male medusae (called maedar) even entered into D&D. IIRC, the very first mention of the Maedar in a Monster Manual wasn't until 3.x. I'm fairly sure that the first mention of a female Minotaur was also in AD&D 2E when they needed a self-sustaining population of Minotaurs to run an empire (Time of the Dragon, the Taladas boxed set for Dragonlance). Until then, it wasn't necessary to have female Minotaurs (and the fluff of the Dragonlance setting has the Minotaurs being created by the Greygem of Gargath as it passed a tribe of Ogres).
The very definition of Harpy (a shrill woman) is gender charged.
I'm a fairly traditional guy, myself. If you want female saytrs in your game? Cool. More power to ya. Fish-man minotaurs? I applaud your pioneering spirit. Sparkly vegetarian vampires? Whatever floats your boat.
But they aren't ever going to be in my game, and you'll do nothing but confuse people by applying those names to things that defy the concepts most central to the titles.
Depictions of female Satyr have been in art since the Renaissance, so it isn't like the concept is that incongruous. There is nothing wrong with carefree, lusty beast women to go with the carefree, lusty, beast men. Just as there is nothing wrong with having male tree spirits (after all, plants are both male and female).
To the OP:
Rock on with your female Satyr, or your male Hamadryad. the ancient Greeks won't care, and neither should your DM. By creating such a concept, you are adding to his world if he is inclined to be open-minded.
Which would be great if we weren't mechanically restricted from creating them. That is the crux of the issue.
Really? You can't hand-wave that one little sentence away? It has ZERO mechanical effect anyways. It might as well say "All saytrs have brown fingernails." Who cares?
Seriously, I think that's what bugs me the most about people who complain about the saytr thing: you're carrying on about NOTHING. You want female saytrs in your game? LITERALLY NOTHING is stopping you. The writers have one particular take on saytrs, and they decided to write that bit of fluff into the book, but you are by no means required to care.
Ever feel like people on these forums can't possibly understand how wrong they are? Feeling trolled? Don't get mad. Report Post.
