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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 5:41AM
#21
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- Forum Guide
- Hero Craftsman Gold Medalist
- Master Dungeon Master
Date Joined:
Jun 23, 2005
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I really don't like the idea of dividing humans by regions because as crazy_monkey and others have said there is just too much potential of describing real-world cultures and doing it insensitively. Every arctic culture I've seen has looked like Inuits or Finns. Every desert culture looks like Arabs, Aztecs, or Bedouins.
I much prefer CarlT's approach that human subraces are magical alterations. Tieflings, Gith, half-elves, half-orcs, mul, skulks, elans, half-giants, etc. Heck, I've made campaign settings in which all the races -- dwarves, elves, halflings, etc. -- are altered humans
Regional dwarves and elves are all right because they are fantasy creatures and we can assume that they are physically and metaphysically altered by the terrain in which they dwell. But humans are not. For humans to stop being akin to real-world humans, there should be a supernatural explanation.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 5:59AM
#22
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Birthright had different human groups and it work fine imo.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 7:24AM
#23
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Human subraces are a very...difficult subject to deal with as humans are real and therefore any attempt to codify subraces in game mechanics can potentially lead to accidental racism.
Depicting fictional cultures in non-mechanical terms is the best compromise, in my opinion and one taken several times in campaign setting books.
Agreed,which is why I suggested it as genericly as possible. Everywhere was "city folk" and "country folk" and there are lots of places (farms by big cities, small towns) where people could choose to be either. It's not ethnicity but theenvironment you were raised.
And it would leave a mechanical gap for other human sub-species if needed depending on the campaign setting. So they could still be human.
Backgrounds
The other go to comment is splitting people into two camps is that it conflicts with backgrounds. Except it totally doesn't.
On paper backgrounds woud work,except in execution there are two problems.
Firstly, backgrounds are very much secondary skills or occuations and seldom where you were raised. They're what you do for a living.
Secondly, backgrounds have to be options usable for all the other races. You can't add a bunch of human-only where-you-were-born human backgrounds
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 7:39AM
#24
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2007
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I have been playing with the idea of human 'sub races'
Human
Base Movement: 30 ft
Size: Medium
+1 to any two ability scores
Base Human
+2 to any ability score
Versitile: select one bonus skill
- this makes it easy to say for your campaign - the humans of the wildlands get a +2 to their Constitution and take the Survival Skill as their bonus skill while the humans of the Great City get a +2 to their Charisma and take Streetwise as thier bonus skill, etc
Half-Elf
+1 to Charisma
Elven Nature: Half-elves gain advantage on saves against the magical sleep and anything that causes the charmed condition.
Two-Worlds: Half-Elves are concidered human and elf for the purposes of requirements or effects based on race
Half-Orc
+1 to Strength
Orcish Tenacity: Once per day, if a half-orc is dropped to 0 hp they immediatly gain 1d8+ constitution modifier temporary hit points, these temporary hit points are lost after 1 minute.
Two-Worlds: Half-Orcs are concidered human and orc for the purposes of requirements or effects based on race
I have not decided if these are balanced compared to the other races yet
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 7:41AM
#25
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Date Joined:
Jun 17, 2003
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My preference is to make a single fill-in-the-blank cultural subrace for humans that DMs can tailor to their settings. This "subrace" would grant Weapon Familiarity, a bonus trained skill, and a bonus language. This leaves it up to the individual DM to be as culturally in/sensitive as they like.
Genuine human subraces would, as others have said, be fantastically altered in some way (planetouched like Tieflings/Aasimar/Deva/Genasi or Aquatic Humans that can breath underwater, Subterranean Humans that have Darkvision, etc).
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 7:50AM
#26
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Date Joined:
Dec 15, 2009
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Just adding my thoughts on this:
- I like Human's defined more by Region or Culture, but otherwise the same Stat-wise.
- I think that half-Human hybrids can be considerd the Human Sub-races and fit very nicely in most settings. Explains Eberron's Khoravar very well, as well as the Tieflings of post-Spellplauge Faerun. CarlT and Wrecans post really sold that for me.
- I really like the explanation that Elven, Dwarven and other Sub-races are metaphysical adaptions to their environment. I've never liked the prolific tendency to rename and alter the core races for splatbooks, but it makes a lot of sense when looked at in this manner.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 8:54AM
#27
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2007
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Just adding my thoughts on this:
- I like Human's defined more by Region or Culture, but otherwise the same Stat-wise.
- I think that half-Human hybrids can be considerd the Human Sub-races and fit very nicely in most settings. Explains Eberron's Khoravar very well, as well as the Tieflings of post-Spellplauge Faerun. CarlT and Wrecans post really sold that for me.
- I really like the explanation that Elven, Dwarven and other Sub-races are metaphysical adaptions to their environment. I've never liked the prolific tendency to rename and alter the core races for splatbooks, but it makes a lot of sense when looked at in this manner.
I have always thought that humans as a species should be versitile, but individually it varies. That is why I like the idea of humans getting getting +1 to two ability scores, +2 to one, and a bonus skill. In my campaign I would design a whole bunch of regions where humans could come from and define them from there - basically your region would give you your ability score bonuses and bonus skill (i.e. the nomadic horse riders of the plains would get +2 to Wisdom, +1 to Dexterity, +1 to Constitution, and the Animal Handling Skill and the primitive tribesmen of the marsh would get +2 to Constitution, +1 to Dexterity, and +1 to Wisdom and the Survival Skill, while the Seafaring Islanders may get +2 to Dexterity, +1 to COnstitution, and +1 to Charisma and the Professional Lore (Sailor))
Basically humans become this very varied and versitile race but still constrained by the region they come from.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 1:55PM
#28
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humans can't have "sub-races" is beyond me, D&D-speaking.
What the other posters have noted for reasons all still apply in a general sense, but there are human subraces in D&D 3.5.
- Aventi – aquatic sort of human. Stormwrack.
- Aquatic Human – another aquatic sort of human. Unearthed Arcana.
- Sea Kin – semiamphibian human. Races of Destiny.
- Skulk – stealthy human. Races of Destiny.
- Ilumian – magical multiclass-loving human with glowy symbols. Races of Destiny.
- Sharakim – shadow human. Races of Destiny.
- Underfolk – underdark human. Races of Destiny.
- Deep Imaskari – magical underdark human. Underdark.
- Neanderthal – self-explanatory. Frostburn.
That's actually exactly what I thought of when I first read this topic. I'd love to see those guys back. But as for actual human races as subraces... No. That could get really ugly really fast. It'd be better to tie those things into Background so that we could use them for other races as well.
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 2:27PM
#29
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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You can divide humans by region, you just have to do it purely by adaptive features.
Desert humans get fire resistance. Arctic get cold. Forest get poison. Mountain gets lighting. Island humans counter spells. :P
Orzel, Halfelven son of Zel, Mystic Ranger, Bane to Dragons, Death to Undeath, Killer of Abyssals, King of the Wilds.
Constitution Based Class for Next!
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8 months ago ::
Sep 28, 2012 - 3:10PM
#30
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I have always thought that humans as a species should be versitile, but individually it varies. That is why I like the idea of humans getting getting +1 to two ability scores, +2 to one, and a bonus skill. In my campaign I would design a whole bunch of regions where humans could come from and define them from there - basically your region would give you your ability score bonuses and bonus skill (i.e. the nomadic horse riders of the plains would get +2 to Wisdom, +1 to Dexterity, +1 to Constitution, and the Animal Handling Skill and the primitive tribesmen of the marsh would get +2 to Constitution, +1 to Dexterity, and +1 to Wisdom and the Survival Skill, while the Seafaring Islanders may get +2 to Dexterity, +1 to Constitution, and +1 to Charisma and the Professional Lore (Sailor))
Basically humans become this very varied and versitile race but still constrained by the region they come from.
I'm going to have to agree with everything this post says. It's spot on about have versatile humans can be while allowing the DM to individualize humans in each region. You can even have your human players defend where they are from based on their stat increased if you want, or just keep it as a unique case.
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