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Jan 11, 2013 -- 12:17PM, Saelorn wrote:

Jan 11, 2013 -- 12:09PM, Mournblade94 wrote:

If this is the case and they can breed, then all orcs, humans, and elves are the same species.

Yeah, that's pretty much the take-away.  The different "races" are all just races of the same species, and fantasy fiction is just incredibly racist.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, in this context. 

And since I'm a rocket scientist rather than a biologist, I will stop analyzing at that point. 

Biologists have to play in the muck.  You guys get to play in the skies and other planets.  Hopefully you will find other muck for us to play in.

All I'm saying is, races should be actual races.  Physically and culturally distinct from one another, to justify different attributes and abilities.  Half-Elf is not a race.  Don't get me wrong here- I'm perfectly happy to allow people to play Half-Elves, but it shouldn't be a core race, because it isn't a race.

Sub-races bother me for different reasons.  Species can adapt to living in different climates, and two members of the same race can be culturally distinct from one another.

But then things get silly when you have High Elves, Wood Elves, Grey Elves, Wild Elves, Desert Elves, Aquatic Elves, Snow Elves, Jungle Elves, Dark Elves...and this is before you get silly with setting-specific variants like Space Elves, Valley Elves, Sun Elves, Athasian Elves...you get the idea.

So you can have all that diversity within one race, but Humans are always Humans.  Why?  Because the only racism allowed in D&D is fantastic racism.

What makes things worse is that developers like to reinforce their own perception of what race X, Y, or Z can be.  Look how long it took us to be able to have Dwarven Wizards, and there's STILL a lot of people who get up in arms about Dwarves and magic.

Maybe we should dispense with "races" altogether, at least as they exist now.  Instead, take +2 to two different stats, maybe a -2 to a third stat, and pick from a short list of "racial traits" and voila, instant whatever race/sub-race/hybrid race/race raised by other race you want.              

Jan 11, 2013 -- 12:09PM, Mournblade94 wrote:

If we have Half orcs, and half elves as classically described than essentially the biological differences between orcs, elves, and humans are negligible.   There are plenty instances in D&D novels and such of Half Elves being biological parents, and there are examples of Half orcs breeding together.  If this is the case and they can breed, then all orcs, humans, and elves are the same species.

It isn't that simple in D&D because of magic. There are also half-demons and demons don't have genes at all, their evolution and breeding doesn't  match Darwinian evolution and doesn't even have to involve biological processes. Elves, depending on the campaign setting and how magical they are may not have genes the way we normally use the word either.

Interesting chart, but I don't think it really works. You have to force some things to get the distribution to fit the chart. Tieflings as an earthy race is odd. A lot of people would argue for fire as the elemental affiniaty instead of earth. Gnome presents it's own set of challenges because it actually wanders quite a bit from setting to setting. I like the idea of Gnomes as being racial obsessive and have a couple of different obsessions. That way you can have the fey gnome, illusionist gnome, trickster gnome, tinker gnome and so on without requiring essentially different races. Drow are too common now to relegate to only Forgotten Realms, they need to fit into your elven category. Warforged really would be a good choice to import into the core if the Next rules are any good, they cover a popular concept that D&D never had before.

For the more exotic races, the core really only needs one variant. Very few games are going to have enough underwater adventuring to need more then one PC aquatic race. Warforged would fall into the same situation, if the mechanics are any good you really only need one construct race, the players can reskin between animated suit of armor and solid construct to suit taste. Undead does probably deserve it's own category, because revenent, vampire, walking dead and ghost are really distinct concepts that I would like to see covered someplace. Otherworldly is it's own entire spectrum, with lots of potentially good races here that can't be neatly cut down to three options.

Jan 11, 2013 -- 1:40PM, JayM wrote:

Tieflings as an earthy race is odd.

I didn't mean earth the element but ratehr earthy as a personality trait.  Halflings, tieflings, and gnomes are all known for being appreciative of physical pleasures.  It's a theme.

Otherworldly is it's own entire spectrum, with lots of potentially good races here that can't be neatly cut down to three options.

It's not exhaustive.  But I've already listed 36 races.  That's already getting mighty close to racial bloat as it is.