Creature Add-ons and Pieces

[EddieBird]

This is stuff I like to use in inventing races and monsters.

1.Only they know for sure:
Males and females are externally identical. There is no gender bias in their culture.

2.THATS your wife?:
Males and females are SO different other races are justified in thinking they are seperate species.

3.Same species different nations:
Usually races are all assigned to a single nation or culture. This simplifies things for the DM but I find it annoying. I like having multiple cultures and countries for each race. Just because two dwarves meet on the road doesn't mean they speak each others language, follow the same gods, like the same food, ect.

4.Albinism and Melanism:
This is for individual creatures rather then whole races. It is especially fun for things like dragons, where skin color normally tells so much about the creatures alignment and abilities. An albino dragon would be white regardless of alignment and breath weapon. A melanistic one would be black. Please keep in mind both color abnormalities are usually very rare.

5.The Fossil Record
Everyone knows about dinosaurs, but there are lots of other bizarre, interesting, and formerly dangerous fossil creatures out there that could be made into monsters, especially for undersea campaigns. Recommendations would include anomalocaris, diplourodon and phorosrhacus

[magic8BALL]

Nice tips.
I've seen 1 done before, in the Expanded Psionics Handbook, forget the name of the race now.
2 looks like heaps of fun: you could have very different racial abilities for males and females, even different favourd classes, bonus feats etc.
I so totally agree with point 3. I hate having to say to my DM "So, there are 4 human nations, 1 elf nation and a dwarf city...?"
Point 4 has now been stolen by me to use as an adventure plot "theres a white dragon terrorising our village! Help!" PC's get there to a genuine Big Red...
Point 5 has missed somthing though... time travel. Why fight giant sea roachs now when you could do it 1.5 billion years ago? Sounds like a fun adventure to me (good luck comming back though...)

[Fizban]

I <3 the Plane of Time :smallbiggrin:

[Mewtarthio]

4.Albinism and Melanism:
This is for individual creatures rather then whole races. It is especially fun for things like dragons, where skin color normally tells so much about the creatures alignment and abilities. An albino dragon would be white regardless of alignment and breath weapon. A melanistic one would be black. Please keep in mind both color abnormalities are usually very rare.

"Alright, Flaming Burst Sword?"
"Check."
"Fire-based spells prepared?"
"Check."
"Wands of Fireball?"
"Check."
"Everyone buffed with Protection from Energy (ice)?
"Check."
"Okay, let's do this!"
"Greetings, foolish travellers! I am the Albino Red Dragon!"


3.Same species different nations:
Usually races are all assigned to a single nation or culture. This simplifies things for the DM but I find it annoying. I like having multiple cultures and countries for each race. Just because two dwarves meet on the road doesn't mean they speak each others language, follow the same gods, like the same food, ect.

Yeah, I was starting to wonder how exactly humans aren't Chaotic. Everyone else has a monolithic culture, but the humans keep bickering with each other and splintering off into all sorts of factions.

[ChaosStorm]

As far as 3 goes there are the subraces of Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Halflings. They just don't tend to come up very much, and most of the books write with the "main" subrace in mind. By their basic nature humans need only one mechanical explanation to describ all the different ethnicities, but the demihumans have varied game mechanic differences that differientiate one culture group from another.

I'm not going to touch on the language thing because I've allready beaten up the language system in my own Second Language Acquisition thread awhile ago... but i do agree with your point.

Could you imagine the trouble for a Melanic Wild Elf coming into a town for the very first time? DROW!!!!!

[EddieBird]

Thanx for the feedback. ^.^

Albanism is rare in the wild but common in domestic creatures. So feel free to have an albino mount or pet provided it was bred in captivity and not strait from the wild.

If you want to do a time campaign its a good idea to find out what actually lived when. A lot of prehistoric creatures get shown together in the media that in real life existed millions of years apart.

[NullAshton]

Wizards actually statted an albino red dragon. It was featured in one of those creature contests I believe.

[EddieBird]

How I used this stuff:

1. I use this mostly in humanoid races that are not mammals. If the race doesn't have milk glands and a uterus, the females are not going to have boobs and an hourglass figure. If a reptilian, amphibian or avian race does have a gender difference, it is in color, size or shape of secondary adornments (horns, crests, longer tails).

2. I had a race where the females were gigantic spider-like creatures and the males were mosquito-sized fliers. These things were so different from one another, the females themselves were not aware the tiny, barely noticable, buzzing things were their own species. The females never knew what caused them to get pregant. When they laid eggs, they assumed the masses of tiny spheres that came with the single big female egg were there as cushioning or something.

3. I got different nations of NPCs as well as PCs. My party was recently out numbered and surrounded by an orc army.. and got "rescued" by the arrival of a rival army from another orc nation.

4. One game I had a melanistic silver dragon working to convince everyone in the countryside (especially the PCs) that it was not an evil black.

5. I am an amature biologist and I like making barely-known or extinct real life forms into monsters. It helps keep the players who own the monster manuels guessing.