Campaigns With Only Weird Races

[Gnome Alone]

This is a... well, it's probably not intellectual enough to be called a thought experiment, but anyway I've been playing around with this idea lately: suppose we chuck the PHB races down a deep dark well. Sorry, humans, orcs, elves and the various short-folk, ya just don't exist in this world. Now we must needs replace them with... uh, replacements.

Now obviously there are like 247 freaking other races and variants and stuff so it wouldn't be so hard to just go digging around for another race suitable to one's concept, but what I'm interested in boils down to this: which (let's say) 4-6 races do you think would make an interesting, somewhat odd but not too hodgepodge-y wholesale replacement for the PHB standard ones? Say we're playing with a strict DM who limits us only to these, so there might be goblins in the setting, but you can only play as one if they're a designated PC race. It doesn't have to be a straight equivalence trade; e.g. "instead of halflings, kobolds" - but if you prefer to do that, feel free. I just think it'd be fun to see what people come up with.

Much depends on the setting, so feel free to explain the context in which you're imagining our new A-List races. Personally, this idea came about because I kind of want to make a steampunk and airships kind of world - but less like Eberron and more like The Golden Compass and Final Fantasy 4 and/or 6. And so my own choices so far would be:

Illumians - I'd still want to have a race that's basically human. These guys are basically human, but they're made of words. Perfect for the esoteric feel I'd want in my hypothetical setting I'm half-ass imagining here. And they're really flavorful and just plain cool.

Kenku - A full-on "talkin' animal" race is good for the feel-good high-fantasy vibe I was thinking of when I mentioned FFIV. And once Zaq made this one E6 Kenku Marshal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12885554&postcount=33) build heavy on the truespeak and I love everything about that.

Hobgoblins - It might just be because I loved the crap out of the Azure City vs. hobgoblin war, but I love hobgoblins. In my current campaign I made them into a desert-dwelling samurai culture. Huh. Guess I kinda just smooshed the two sides of the "War and XPs" war together. I know I said I wasn't really thinking of Eberron as a touchstone, but I hear it has goblins that are integrated with the other races' civilization, and I like the possibilities inherent in that as well.

I don't have much more, honestly. Maybe Warforged reskinned into some kind of clockwork-man with lots of gears and goggles and such (I may have a very rudimentary idea of steampunk - or it's hard for me to describe the vibe I'm going for.) Maybe Darfellan and mermaids. Maybe mephits. Maybe elementals.

Well, enough of my own selections. I can't be the first to think of doing this; anybody else got any ideas for lineups of their own?

[TheOrangeWizard]

Elves. We're all sick of those boring treehugging hippies, why not replace them? With... some kind of murderous wrath-and-vengeance driven tree-related abomination?
Step One: Get rid of Bahamut. Dragons probably don't make sense in our wacky world anyway.
Step One Point Five: Replace Bahamut with Treeman or equivalent.
Step Two: Replace Bahamut's Dragonborn with Treeman's Disciples, or equivalent.
Step Three: Cower in terror.

[Donny_Green]

as a thought, maybe require a +1 level adjustment race. Then give the +1 adjustment for free, as it's the entire team. And scale up your monsters 1 HD more than you usually do, to keep your boys on their toes.

You can get goliaths and half giants, redcaps.... wow I don't want to go looking at the list but I know there are some really good ones.

[Gnome Alone]

Elves. We're all sick of those boring treehugging hippies, why not replace them? With... some kind of murderous wrath-and-vengeance driven tree-related abomination?
Step One: Get rid of Bahamut. Dragons probably don't make sense in our wacky world anyway.
Step One Point Five: Replace Bahamut with Treeman or equivalent.
Step Two: Replace Bahamut's Dragonborn with Treeman's Disciples, or equivalent.
Step Three: Cower in terror.

I like and may have to steal this.

[DaTamarin]

Goliaths are very cool, and so are http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Fox-folk_(3.5e_Race)

[AuraTwilight]

Everyone plays monsters of atleast LA +1, with LA +1 being reduced to LA +0 and so forth.

[Rosstin]

I designed my best and most favorite campaign around this concept, and it was wildly successful.

There were 5 races: Yuan-Ti, Avorals, Lamia, Azoth, and Northerners. The whole plot was built around the relationships between the 5 races. We had basically a player of each race. We started at around level 7 and we balanced out the templates and everything pretty good.

Man, that campaign was awesome. I'd totally run it again.

[unseenmage]

Hmm. If I had to choose 5 races to design a world around...

Warforged. Because they're awesome.
Necropolitans. Because Warforged need a credible threat.

Grippli. Because they're adorable, and they fill the barbarian halfling niche.

Goblins and Kobolds would probably be my other two. Makes for a world with a lot of hobbit sized adventures but if the monsters all stayed the same maybe it's a slightly more fearsome adventure world for it?

And yeah, all I did was list my favs without putting in any extra thought whatsoever. :smalltongue:

[Metahuman1]

I like and may have to steal this.

Do ya one better. The God of Trees has touched his disciples, removing fear and endowing them with the strength and hardiness of oaks!


Mechanically, apply Loth Touched Template. Boom, done.

[12owlbears]

Neogi the spider people from the Lords of madness. I've always wanted to play one but unfortunately they have a LA of +3 and 5RHD.
Umber Hulks are an other thing I've always wanted to be but again they wouldn't really be a practical choice.

[Petrocorus]

Catfolk from RotW and Tibbit from DragMag can be really interesting.

A canine equivalent in the same setting could be good.

[unseenmage]

A far flung future world could have Warforged, Necropolitans, Hellbred, Mongrelfolk, and Half-Golems.

Basically all the "normal" races have died out and interbred to the point of nonexistence eg Mongrelfolk.

Warforged/Necropolitans remember the world as it was.

Hellbred occasionally surface, their souls freed from some limbo or another for a chance at redemption.

Forgotten cities full of roving zombie-movie-esque bands of Half-Golems litter the landscape.

I'm sure there are other equally appropriate races/monsters for a dystopian future to be overpopulated with.

Perhaps even dystopia up the planes as well, have one or several planes have actually won and have conquered vast swaths of the other planes.

Whether the armies of good or evil win is largely irrelevant, so long as the balance is upset enough that the planar cosmology has slowed or stopped turning and an existential rot has claimed it.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Replace Elves with the Killoren (RotW).

Mainly because I love them.

[Fouredged Sword]

I have a setting bouncing around my head where the four central races are Gatortaurs (modified to LA 1), Raptorians (boosted to LA 1), Cat Folk, and a homebrew insect people.

It always seemed a cool idea to have a humanless setting.

[Gemini476]

Let's see, what are there for weird LA+0 races...

Hengeyokai are pretty neat. Shapeshifting! Yay!
Hairy Spiders are a must, if only because they're LA+0 Vermin. You might need to add some Int-boosting templates, though.
Illumians because I like Illumians.
Anthropomorphic Bats are neat-o and have flight at level one.
Boummans are just wonderful in every single way.
Elan are neat and immortal.

So here's what we have: forests and caves filled with sentient spiders (Skitterhaunt Sentry Ooze, perhaps?), anthropomorphic bats living in cities carved into cavern walls, hengeyokai are animals who can turn into humans rather than humans who turn into animals, and Elans and Illumians are both transcendent from Humanity - be it through psionic immortality or the Ritual of Words Made Flesh.

Boummans have monasteries in various high, unreachable mountains.

Four of those races are pretty human-like, I suppose, but I feel like the Illumians and Elans have enough differences to set them apart. Oh, and Hengeyokai and Boummans have their own quirks.

[Petrocorus]

are Gatortaurs

Where are those from?


It always seemed a cool idea to have a humanless setting.
I was really thinking about making a setting with only anthropomorphic animals like in some comics i like:
De cape et de crocs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_cape_et_de_crocs)
Blacksad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacksad).
I don't believe they have been translated in English though.
I don't think i would use the rules from savage species however, they seem cheesy. Probably homebrew them.

I already had homebrew my own felinefolk.

[Fouredged Sword]

Where are those from?

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lizardfolk.htm
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/crocodile.htm
http://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/tauric.shtml

I removed lots of stuff and decreased the bonuses until it fit with an LA 1 race.

[zilonox]

A far flung future world could have Warforged, Necropolitans, Hellbred, Mongrelfolk, and Half-Golems.

Basically all the "normal" races have died out and interbred to the point of nonexistence eg Mongrelfolk.

Warforged/Necropolitans remember the world as it was.

Hellbred occasionally surface, their souls freed from some limbo or another for a chance at redemption.

Forgotten cities full of roving zombie-movie-esque bands of Half-Golems litter the landscape.

A very solid reason for a varied selection of races. Me likey! I may just have to steal this for my next campaign. :smallsmile:

[Gnome Alone]

Do ya one better. The God of Trees has touched his disciples, removing fear and endowing them with the strength and hardiness of oaks!

Mechanically, apply Loth Touched Template. Boom, done.

Lolth-Touched Woodland Psycho-Killers: The Elves We Don't Hate.


A very solid reason for a varied selection of races. Me likey! I may just have to steal this for my next campaign. :smallsmile:

Yeah, that is a really good one, especially this part:



Warforged/Necropolitans remember the world as it was.

So much potential there.

Ha, one could even set the distant past of that world as the near-future of ours. Necropolitans still muttering to themselves about how they're not goths, goddammit.

[EugeneVoid]

Try to fit Kenders in

[ZamielVanWeber]

These feels like it would be a great time to indulge in my love of anthropomorphic animals.

[unseenmage]

A very solid reason for a varied selection of races. Me likey! I may just have to steal this for my next campaign. :smallsmile:

...
Yeah, that is a really good one, especially this part:

So much potential there.

Ha, one could even set the distant past of that world as the near-future of ours. Necropolitans still muttering to themselves about how they're not goths, goddammit.

Glad you guys like it. Honestly it got my creative juices flowing too. I got to thinking and realized that the whole idea was spawned from an old DMPC I had when I first started DMing (like 10 years ago).

Was a Constructs obsessed Sorcerer who made himself a Half Golem, watched the world die around him with his immortal Gargoyle friend and his functionally immortal Druid wife.

Was one of those legacy games. We'd play off and on and whenever a playgroup would disperse I'd fast forward the timeline a few hundred years.

[Gnorman]

Because I love the so-called "monster races" and the concept of a fantasy axis of evil (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasyAxisOfEvil) (warning: link leads to TV Tropes):

Tiefling (Humanoid)
Orc (Savage)
Goblin (Crafty)
Necropolitan (Eldritch)
Changeling (Fallen)

Sets up an interesting world full of conniving shapeshifters, ancient wizards, demon cultists, raging hordes, and explosive mad scientists.

[Palanan]

I confess I like the hybsils, which are sort of fawn-sized quasi-centaurs from Monsters of Faerûn.

Also, quaggoths. Surface-living quaggoths.

:smallbiggrin: