Plausible Diversity

[Nifft]

D&D is a very diverse kitchen-sink style of game.

Every damn thing finds its way into D&D, and sometimes you don't need a great excuse to have fun stabbing something new, but sometimes you (as a DM or player) feel an itch to ask how the world got the way that it is, and want to a plausible excuse for the vast variety of vicious villains.

This thread is about good excuses.



1. Environment Shapes Nature

Sounds redundant, right? That's because it's so obvious that a creature's environment and a creature's nature should be intertwined. Elves were the first to discover this, for obvious reasons, but the most reported case was the unfortunate tragedy of the Sewer Dragons.

What's going on? Dragons are a single species. Elves are a single species. The environment in which a nature-attunded creature is born and raised changes the creature's nature. Dragons who hatch and grow up in a forest are green, and don't burn down the forest. Dragons which hatch in a volcano are red, and burn many things. Elves likewise have many "subspecies" which are merely the effects of their native (or adopted) environment.

It may be possible for dragons and elves to change their attunement by spending enough time in a different environment.

Under this setting, Tieflings might just be humans who were born in the Lower Planes, or who were born in a magically cursed environment.




2. You Wear Your Soul

D&D 5e did a cool thing with Gnolls. Instead of just being another generic humanoid monster race, they are now demonically uplifted hyenas.

In a previous setting, I'd gone in basically the opposite direction with that specific creature, and made Gnolls a transformation template which could be applied to human cultists (of the demon Yeenoghu, of course). The template was broken down into a four-level "prestige" class, which emulated humanoid HD and gave stat boosts.

3.5e's Dragonborn of Bahamut were another transformational race, which became dragon-like. Arcana Evolved had the Mojh, a "race" of humans who also turned themselves into dragon-like people. Arcana Evolved also had the Spryte, a diet cola transformational class for their Small race to become Tiny and grow wings (i.e. become a Pixie).

Under this setting, most of the "races" are templates (or paragon classes) which an individual chooses to become. A Tiefling would be a human who made a deal with a Fiend, or who was subject to a family curse, rather than a genetic condition. Dragons might appear metallic when content and full of peace, but turn chromatic when wrathful and full of hate.




Not sure this can be expanded to a 101 list, but hopefully there are some other good ideas out there.

Give me your ideas!

[Steampunkette]

You hit the two big ones, more or less. Nature and Nurture. But I'll take it one further.

You wear your actions.

Ghouls are the undead remains of cannibals. Vampires who, in life, lived off the lives of others as petty tyrants. Revenants who return for revenge on their killers. Morhgs who aren't finished killing even after the noose pulled tight.

Most undead can be described as either a continuation of evil or a response to the evil that existed in their lives.

[Nifft]

Ooo, I like that one. In a universe with objective morality, wearing your actions -- or more specifically, wearing your sins -- seems very much in-theme.



4. Artifice

The race was not transmuted by nature nor nurture. It was created, given deliberate form by some mortal agent(s).

Warforged are a great example of this, but also the 5e Azer, and the Modrons going back to 1e.

Arcana Evolved has Kobolds in this role, kinda: when a Human becomes a Mojh, that person becomes sexless and sterile, but the Mojh can asexually bud off a Kobold every so often.


5. infection

Lycanthropes and Vampires are the central set members in pop cultural terms -- especially Lycanthropes, which can be "born" with the infection (and thus be "natural" were-whatevers rather than "afflicted").

Eberron's Daelkyr Half-Blood race is another example, as they are the result of a symbiote infestation during their mother's pregnancy.

[Steampunkette]

I think Vampires and werewolves represent curses or magical afflictions. As compared to illithid or fungus infection like the yellow musk creeper.

You could also argue that there are straight up magic beings, which aren't created by artifice but simply come into being, like raggamofyn and tatterdemalion.

How would you classify visitors like fae or devils?

[Laughingmanlol]

The discussion of being shaped by morality reminds me of LotR, where the orcs were, iIRC, elves turned to evil and consequently physically altered.

I had a look at Dante's inferno for some ideas about demons varying with their individual sins a while ago, here's what I came up with:
All possess knowledge of the damned, foreknowledge used to corrupt and mislead
Opportunist: Imps in pursuit of an unreachable banner, with flight, tiny limbs, and the ability to infest others.
Carnal: Wraiths, buffeted in an opaque gale. Lacking much substance or visibility, they steal sensation from the living, as stealthy incorporeal skirmishers, but they're slow-moving and easily blown away.
Gluttonous: Dretches, entombed in rotting filth, consuming all in an attempt to fill their expanding gelatinous bellies. Acidic attacks, engulfing, and a size that increases as they consume matter so they can never be satiated.
Hoarders and wasters: Constant conflict between the two types - hoarders are burdened by all their possessions and have sticky skin, while wasters cause anything they hold to crumble away to dust.
Wrathful: fighting without glory, honour or purpose. Combat-focused with blinding poison, dirty tricks and feints.
Sullen ( those who were isolationist/indifferent in life): chanting while drowning under a stinking bog. Underground burrowing spreaders of disease and uncleanliness.
Bestial (abandonners of sentience, sympathy and compassion): pursued and consumed by each other, increasingly large and animalistic, always a bigger fish for others to fear, conscious thought retained but unable to fight their instincts.
Suicide: unable to find oblivion, regrowing and recovering from any wound, though the pain never diminishes, different body to that which they cast off in life, sleepless and immune even to little deaths such as stunning or losing their train of thought. Plantlike, regenerate while in contact with the ground, attack with bladed roots and branches, ropelike vines and poisonous pollen and fruit, while their caustic blood sprays out from wounds.
Defilers: each suffers a scorching desert, on which fire rains down from the sky. Horribly burned and flayed, with patches of sand or glass fragments covering them, while wreathed in flames. Very maneuverable, capable of dissolving into fragments and reforming elsewhere or attacking as a swarm of jagged shards.
Frauds: Lashed with whips, splitting them, and bound with stretching, choking, tangled threads. Capable of swapping their appearance and voice with that of their victims, unable to retake their original form or be truthful. Use the threads to disarm and sunder, whip. Resistant to their bodies being split (slashing damage nonlethal only).
Betrayers: Encased in ice, giving protection at the cost of mobility, becoming faster the more damage they take. A gaze attack causes animosity, serve as commanders to lesser demons.