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King of Nowhere
2018-05-28, 05:09 PM
It seems most players assume a campaign world will contain each and every single denizen of the many monster manuals and every one of the dozens upon dozens of playable races. I have strong problems with the assumption.

The thing is that such a campaign world is too crowded. there isn't enough space to fit all the different races, unless every race only had a single mid-sized country and a population of a few millions - which would make it at risk of extinction in case of major wars or disasters. And is there still room for all the obligatory wilderness anyway?
Worse yet is the case of the monsters. There just is not enough space in the world to accomodate all of them. Someone may point out that we know well over a million living species in our world, but most of those are bacteria or fine-sized insects. the animals that could provide a credible threat to even a low level party is exceedingly small, and pretty much all of them have an entry in the monster manual already.
Instead we are supposed to have plenty of gargantuan and colossal sized large predatory animals, and it's not clear what they're eating, as for all their combat power they lack any stealth or speed to ambush and chase a prey. Incidentally, if there are so many big and powerful monsters that only the most powerful adventurers can hope to defeat, how do huanoid communities survive anyway?
And let's not even get started with all the various subspecies of dragons.
Besides, there is also a storytelling problem, best summed by the third sanderson's law of magic: go deep before you go wide. If you keep introducing new monsters and races and stuff every time, the whole world will feel like it lacks cohesion, it is just a bunch of random episodes without any plot or consistence between them. It's more interesting to introduce a smaller amount of elements and explore their connection better before starting with something new.

So, for all of the above, I decided to stongly limit my campaign world. The only humanoid sapient races are the seven core pc races, orcs, goblins and merfolk. add in the ten core varietes of dragons, and that completes the list of sapients. some extraplanar visitor may be possible, but rare and not represented otherwise. Most stuff in monster manual 1 is there, with some exceptions (most notably dinosaurs, as i feel they are too overused), but every other moster ever printed does not exist unless I say otherwise. This approach works better with casual players, who are not interested anyway in learning of dozens upon dozens new monsters and species that will never make a second appearence anyway.

I wanted to hear some other opinions and ways to deal with the whole issue

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-28, 05:12 PM
The reason so many monsters exist is that D&D is a game about having interesting fights against weird monsters. If you run out of interesting things to fight then what else is the system doing for you?

Kami2awa
2018-05-28, 05:19 PM
Absolutely, the world does not have to be a "kitchen sink" fantasy. It can be (and there can be a certain amount of suspension of disbelief as to how there can e.g. be so many apex predators in a small area). But an easy way to world-build is to limit your choice of creatures. For instance, maybe in your world there are no elves - perhaps they never were, or perhaps they went extinct a thousand years before and left lots of interesting ruins and artefacts. Or maybe the first elf has just been found...

Or perhaps your world only has monsters from real-world myths (no beholders, no mind flayers... no orcs). Perhaps your world has no humans - everyone, including the PCs, is a non-human race. Or maybe only one culture's myths are true - the monster manuals certainly include most of Greek mythology somewhere.

Maybe extraplanar creatures can't get to your world, or are exceedingly rare - perhaps it take a HUGE ritual to summon a devil, so the devils are forced to remain outside the world and manipulate from afar via their worshippers. Fortunately, they excel at this, and might not wish it any other way.

Maybe your world has no monsters at all, or, at least, that's what everyone had always told you, until you met one and killed it.

OTOH, perhaps you're in a nexus or Wood Between the Worlds (or Sigil) and there is a good reason why every beast under the suns can be found in your world.

One idea I've seen a few times (in-keeping with myth) is that the monsters of the world are each unique - you didn't kill 1d6 minotaurs, you killed The Minotaur, and became a legend.

Mechalich
2018-05-28, 06:48 PM
One idea I've seen a few times (in-keeping with myth) is that the monsters of the world are each unique - you didn't kill 1d6 minotaurs, you killed The Minotaur, and became a legend.

When doing E6 worldbuilding, I made the determination that any being with a CR of 10+ was a unique entity. I also established that such beings occurred at a ratio of roughly 1 per 1 million (with people being defined as basically anything that lacks racial hit dice). This means that a fairly large quasi-medieval nation would only have a handful of powerful and iconic monsters.

Doing this, and correspondingly banning anything CR 16+ (necessary for E6, and useful generally, since 3.X D&D breaks at ~ lvl 12 anyway), really cuts down on the kitchen sink problem. Monster entries are bloated out by huge numbers of high-CR enemies that really have no need to be in your game as anything more than one-offs.

Nifft
2018-05-28, 08:58 PM
It seems most players assume a campaign world will contain each and every single denizen of the many monster manuals and every one of the dozens upon dozens of playable races. I have strong problems with the assumption.

I've only seen that assumption amongst theory-crafters on forums (like this one).

In real games, I've never seen a player pitch a fit when the DM lays down the PC race palette & monster palette for a given campaign.

Now, I've certainly seen real games in kitchen-sink settings where the setting writers go out of their way to accommodate everything ever published, but even when a DM uses such a setting, the DM often limits the portion of the setting that is relevant.


In my own games, I find that restricted monster palette & PC race palette are good tools for setting a campaign's tone, and thus for communicating expectations.

Kaptin Keen
2018-05-29, 02:02 AM
My homebrew world has even fewer races - elves being functionally extinct, and dwarves being decidedly weird. On the other hand, I lean towards a One-Of-Everything philosophy. Somewhere out there, there's an otyugh, or a shadow, or a ... whatever. Also, hardly anything ever conforms to what you might find in the Monster Manual. Another thing I've done is to keep civilization evenly matched by nature. There are only three major (human) cities, thousands of miles apart, with near-endless wilderness in between. I have plenty of space to explain how orcs, gnolls, centaurs and so on find room to live.

The only exception, btw, is dragons. I loathe dragons with the blazing intensity otherwise only found among the suicidally zealous.

Mordaedil
2018-05-29, 06:51 AM
I think a lot of the problem comes from a modern perspective, where we see the world flooded with over 7 billion people walking around. But just 100 years ago we were fewer than 1½ billion people. 400 years ago we were estimated 500 million. That leaves enough space for 14 other equally large races to reach the same population we have today. If you assume they are less advanced than human-kind, such as the case may be with orcs, goblins and the like, you can probably estimate their total population at 5 million and put them all together and they won't be quite a full race, but you can set aside one of the 14 to their benefit.

When you take this into consideration, the kitchen sink problem is a lot more subdued.

Aetis
2018-05-29, 07:29 AM
It seems most players assume a campaign world will contain each and every single denizen of the many monster manuals and every one of the dozens upon dozens of playable races. I have strong problems with the assumption.

I don't know about that. I've never met a player with that assumption.

Most players ask me about the setting and what kind of races/monsters live there.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-29, 08:03 AM
I don't know about that. I've never met a player with that assumption.

Most players ask me about the setting and what kind of races/monsters live there.

I agree, and I run a heavily custom world.

Although...a world is a very large place as long as you're not looking at modern population densities.

One secondary objective for me was to fit as much as possible from the printed books into the setting. I get around the over-stuffed feeling by strongly limiting numbers.

The main play area is a portion of a continent the size of the USA (roughly). On that continent there are maybe 4-5 million people of playable races. The largest of the main nations is ~200k, of multiple races (I don't do single-race nations). There are maybe another 4-5 million non-playable humanoids out there. Most other monsters are, if not one-offs, present in small numbers. Beholders? Each one is a separate creation of a particular demon prince. Etc. So the total intelligent population of that continent is probably in the 20 million range. To compare to modern populations, that's smaller than Tokyo (37 million).

Since there aren't single-race nations, races are more resilient. Yes, a single nation is weak, but humanity is spread over a bunch of them. Same with (most) of the other races. Some are more concentrated and vulnerable (high elves, dragonborn), and they know it. It's actually a cultural point for them--trying to find/create more of their race.

There are other continents, but I haven't developed them yet.

King of Nowhere
2018-05-29, 08:09 AM
I've only seen that assumption amongst theory-crafters on forums (like this one).

In real games, I've never seen a player pitch a fit when the DM lays down the PC race palette & monster palette for a given campaign.


You comfort me. The way people talk about polimorphing into X, Y and Z to gain strange powers with the implicit assumption that it is unthinkable for said monsters to not exist in the campaign setting has often baffled me.


The reason so many monsters exist is that D&D is a game about having interesting fights against weird monsters. If you run out of interesting things to fight then what else is the system doing for you?

Well, of course after a few years you play you may get tired of goblins and orcs and zombies and want something different. Changing the fauna from one campaign world to another could be a good compromise then. Although very few monsters are all that original; I mean, it doesn't make much difference to fight goblins and orcs or to fight kobolds and bugbears


I think a lot of the problem comes from a modern perspective, where we see the world flooded with over 7 billion people walking around. But just 100 years ago we were fewer than 1½ billion people. 400 years ago we were estimated 500 million. That leaves enough space for 14 other equally large races to reach the same population we have today.

Not really. We achieve that popolation today because we have mechanized intensive agriculture fed by the chemical industry. We consume some 2% of the world energy just to make ammonia that will be converted to fertilizer.

If we assume a medieval technology, then the world has room for 500 million medium-sized humanoids. Many of those races however do not use agriculture, and hunting-gathering could only support a world population of a few millions. Magic could change the equaation a bit, but only in high magic setting it will be relevant enough.

Pelle
2018-05-29, 08:23 AM
I don't know about that. I've never met a player with that assumption.

Most players ask me about the setting and what kind of races/monsters live there.

There are plenty of players on these boards with that assumption. As for in person games, depends on your group. Mine don't.

It is a lot easier for everyone to include all the races of the core rulebook in the setting, and I try to do that. Though I find it hard to make people accept/realize when they are slightly refluffed or have different cultures than presented in the rules. It would be easier to remove the races completely to avoid peoples preconceived views of them.

Cosi
2018-05-29, 08:41 AM
Players very rarely want the setting to contain everything. Generally, they want the setting to contain the particular things they are interested in. And it should do that, because part of getting players to play the game is presenting a setting that they are interested in. You should never tell a player they can't play the character they want because there isn't room in the setting (note that this is different from saying that the character breaks some setting assumption). If someone wants to play a Lizardfolk, you should probably let them unless you have some very compelling reason your setting has no Lizardfolk. "I haven't put down a Lizardfolk country" is not such a reason.

Nifft
2018-05-29, 10:33 AM
It would be easier to remove the races completely to avoid peoples preconceived views of them.

Yes. This is an excellent reason to do exactly that.

Jay R
2018-05-30, 09:54 PM
In the first universe I created, there was a nexus - a portal to other worlds. Within 50 miles of it, you might encounter anything - even Klingons, Vulcans, Kryptonians, moties, fuzzies, or boggies. But further away, you would only encounter races or monsters from classic European legend.

One party once bumped into a Philmont Ranger - who was able to help them find their way.

Tvtyrant
2018-05-30, 11:27 PM
I feel both ways about this. One Piece is basically a D&D campaign, and has the same crazy variety of animals, monsters and races as the D&D sink. So a cohesive world can exist in fiction outside the madness of an actual setting just fine.


On the other hand worlds often benefit from a narrow focus. DarkSun cuts through the normal setting with a large scythe and is better for it.

Pleh
2018-05-31, 05:22 AM
I prefer a Schrodinger's palette. The manuals describe all the monsters that COULD be in the world (and, given monster creation rules, isn't even an exhaustive list), but I lay out in setting information the monsters that are common enough that everyone in the world know about them.

Also, I generally follow Monstrous Population Scaling Inversely with CR, which is to say the higher the CR, the fewer of them exist (AT LEAST within the confines of the material plane; if heroes go wandering into other dimensions, no promises that things won't get a little crazy). It feels natural that having too many high CR creatures would inevitably disrupt the balance of Commoner Populated civilization. So for my games, monsters for parties up to 6th level are probably crawling all over the place like the playable races are. But even these common races aren't EVERYWHERE. They are in some of the biomes that are favorable to them.

Everything else, until stated otherwise, is a myth told to scare children... that could happen to be true.

Pelle
2018-05-31, 06:02 AM
Players very rarely want the setting to contain everything. Generally, they want the setting to contain the particular things they are interested in. And it should do that, because part of getting players to play the game is presenting a setting that they are interested in. You should never tell a player they can't play the character they want because there isn't room in the setting (note that this is different from saying that the character breaks some setting assumption). If someone wants to play a Lizardfolk, you should probably let them unless you have some very compelling reason your setting has no Lizardfolk. "I haven't put down a Lizardfolk country" is not such a reason.

This is a very good attitude to have. Personally though, I find lots of (typically D&D) fantasy elements too cheesy. Having to run something I don't enjoy is not ideal either. Most people have multiple types of characters they would be happy to play anyways. If Lizardfolk aren't available, that means that they can play this other cool character.

King of Nowhere
2018-05-31, 07:43 AM
well, if a player wants to play a lizardfolk, there should be enough empty space on the world to put lizardfolk somewhere. Same for monsters, until you take a decision anything could still be out there. it's just that in most cases the decision will be "no"

Nifft
2018-05-31, 12:24 PM
Also, I generally follow Monstrous Population Scaling Inversely with CR, which is to say the higher the CR, the fewer of them exist (AT LEAST within the confines of the material plane; if heroes go wandering into other dimensions, no promises that things won't get a little crazy).

There goes my idea for terrasque ranching.

Jay R
2018-06-02, 07:45 AM
It's worth pointing out that only what the PCs actually encounter affects the game, and there aren't enough adventures to encounter everything. So no game contains everything.

The world may include flumphs, duckbunnies, flail snails, wolves-in-sheeps-clothing, xorns, mimics, tieflings, lurkers above, and intellect devourers. But if the PCs never see or hear about them, they can't hurt the game.

Pleh
2018-06-02, 09:45 AM
There goes my idea for terrasque ranching.

Not necessarily. Depending on what you wanted to do with them, you could have a Terrasque farm with just 1 incapacitated Terrasque. Not so great of you wanted a beast of burden, but if you can manage to keep it from waking up, it's a perfectly renewable source for all kinds of primary materials.

upho
2018-06-02, 08:44 PM
Not necessarily. Depending on what you wanted to do with them, you could have a Terrasque farm with just 1 incapacitated Terrasque. Not so great of you wanted a beast of burden, but if you can manage to keep it from waking up, it's a perfectly renewable source for all kinds of primary materials.Heh, exactly my thoughts.

"Nifft's Tarrasque Burgers - World's Only Infinite Eat-All-You-Want Diner" :smallbiggrin:

Pleh
2018-06-03, 10:55 AM
Heh, exactly my thoughts.

"Nifft's Tarrasque Burgers - World's Only Infinite Eat-All-You-Want Diner" :smallbiggrin:

Even infinite food is a limited goal.

Build homes and armor out of bone and hide.

Make weapons from tooth and claw.

Dissolve your city's waste in a self refilling acid pit.

You are what you eat. After generations of a city living on a terrasque dominant diet, the people start acquiring terrasque features, like healing faster than their neighbor cities and their skin hardening into natural armor.

It's an interesting campaign setting that I think would be worth exploring.

King of Nowhere
2018-06-03, 04:54 PM
You are what you eat. After generations of a city living on a terrasque dominant diet, the people start acquiring terrasque features, like healing faster than their neighbor cities and their skin hardening into natural armor.

And having a 3 of intelligence, no opposable thumb, sleeping for months at a time and going on murderous rampages when they don't. why should they only get the best stuff?

Pleh
2018-06-03, 05:30 PM
And having a 3 of intelligence, no opposable thumb, sleeping for months at a time and going on murderous rampages when they don't. why should they only get the best stuff?

Well, they don't get perfect regeneration, just some accelerated healing (probably double natural healing at most), so they don't lose all their Int. They just become a subrace with -2 to Int. It's a tradeoff, but not a complete transformation

Mr Beer
2018-06-03, 07:38 PM
When I see Tarrasque-Blooded as a playable race, I'll know it was this thread that was responsible.

martixy
2018-06-03, 09:43 PM
I actually run a kitchen-sink world.

It's specific "shtick" is that it is a monster-dominated world. I do have humans, but they're more of a footnote. Frankly, I'd just as well remove them (human dominated settings with rampant racism(which is nonsensical in D&D) are a huge personal pet peeve of mine), but again - kitchen sink.

Consistency within such a world is actually easy. I believe you are underestimating the sheer amount of space available to creatures to form unique ecologies. If not, this is fiction - you can always make the world big enough to accommodate everything.

Chaosticket
2018-06-03, 10:49 PM
I thought "kitchen sink" meant you had everything. Science fiction, fantasy, Gothic Horror, mysteries, combat, diplomacy, guns and swords, Orcs and Xenomorphs, Psychics and Shaman and so on.

In a typical medieval fantasy setting most races are very small due to the nature of the settings being way before a billion humanoids exist on the planet. Small tribes rather than cities. It was a major deal back in the day when Orcs had their own permanent Kingdom of Many-Arrows.

One detail that is necessary for growing populations actually is peace. You need people to grow food, have children, and not conscripting farmers for campaigns lasting months or possibly years. Violent races don't have that kind of society so generally speaking their populations are very low.

BlizzardSucks80
2018-06-04, 01:43 AM
I've been running a kitchen sink setting for years now and at times it can feel a bit...heavy. It is especially annoying when my players often choose to play bizarre, off-the-wall type characters that seem cool at first but inevitably disrupt the game.
Many times I have tried to simplify my setting. Taking it down a notch. I've lost count of how many apocalypses have happened. But I've had this setting for years now and there's been quite a few times where I wanted to just ditch it and forget about it because it is an ugly mess, but its my ugly mess and I want to keep it. Hitting the restart button just seems like too little, too late.

Slipperychicken
2018-06-05, 01:26 PM
If your players actually do think that you're dumping every single statted monster and player-race into your world, then just tell them that you aren't. Boom, assumption obliterated.

It's better to see these lists of monsters and player-races as a menu, from which you may choose the most appropriate ones for each part of your game.

JoeJ
2018-06-05, 03:48 PM
If someone wants to play a Lizardfolk, you should probably let them unless you have some very compelling reason your setting has no Lizardfolk. "I haven't put down a Lizardfolk country" is not such a reason.

On the contrary, that is an excellent reason not to allow it unless the player in question is willing to do the work of creating the lizardfolk country and making it fit within the established history, mythology, politics, etc. of the world, including what people in whatever place we're starting typically know/believe about lizardfolk.

Nifft
2018-06-05, 04:15 PM
On the contrary, that is an excellent reason not to allow it unless the player in question is willing to do the work of creating the lizardfolk country and making it fit within the established history, mythology, politics, etc. of the world, including what people in whatever place we're starting typically know/believe about lizardfolk.

Happy Scenario

Player: "Hey this empty swampy area on the map is next to where the PCs are going to travel next, right?"

DM: "Yeah."

Player: "How about my PC is a Lizardfolk from that area?"

DM: "Sure, that'd be cool."


Unhappy Scenario

DM: "... and that's the game so far, the dragons are all evil, kobolds were the early enemy, and yuan-ti are the current threat."

Player: "I wanna be a Lizardfolk."

DM: "No, reptile people are the enemy."

Player: "Yeah that's why, won't it be cool for me to be the only good rebel outcast of my evil race?"

Kelb_Panthera
2018-06-05, 05:06 PM
To the question of how is there enough room for all these creatures; were you aware that the earth is an atypically dense planet? At the risk of killing a few cat-girls, a world with surface gravity comparable to earth would be much larger than earth unless it had a similar metallic core.

I'm not too familiar with the exact figures but a world with a 30% larger diameter would have 70% more surface area.

Bottom line; it's not unreasonable to simply have a larger world to accommodate the extra peoples.



On to monsters; magic is involved in the biology of more than a few of them and if you really try to dig down into some of the harder sciences it very quickly becomes clear that it doesn't work quite the same as reality at some of the more fundamental levels. That aside, earth used to support megafauna that differed from what we have now by quite a bit. A different balance of atmospheric gasses and food web arrangements on that larger planet I suggested above could explain away the variety of higher-level predators in large part with magic to cover the difference.


I'm not saying you have to be a kitchen sink DM, by any stretch. I'm just saying that doing so can be justified. Incidentally, I am such a kitchen sink DM.

JoeJ
2018-06-05, 05:17 PM
happy scenario

player: "hey this empty swampy area on the map is next to where the pcs are going to travel next, right?"

dm: "yeah."

player: "how about my pc is a lizardfolk from that area?"

dm: "sure, that'd be cool."


unhappy scenario

dm: "... And that's the game so far, the dragons are all evil, kobolds were the early enemy, and yuan-ti are the current threat."

player: "i wanna be a lizardfolk."

dm: "no, reptile people are the enemy."

player: "yeah that's why, won't it be cool for me to be the only good rebel outcast of my evil race?"

no!! No scaly drizzts allowed! No drizzts of any kind! Ever!!!

Slipperychicken
2018-06-05, 05:42 PM
On to monsters; magic is involved in the biology of more than a few of them and if you really try to dig down into some of the harder sciences it very quickly becomes clear that it doesn't work quite the same as reality at some of the more fundamental levels. That aside, earth used to support megafauna that differed from what we have now by quite a bit. A different balance of atmospheric gasses and food web arrangements on that larger planet I suggested above could explain away the variety of higher-level predators in large part with magic to cover the difference.

I'm sure that elemental air and soul-energy support much bigger monsters than our world's oxygen will.

Kelb_Panthera
2018-06-05, 06:06 PM
I'm sure that elemental air and soul-energy support much bigger monsters than our world's oxygen will.

Indeed, I suspect so. :smallbiggrin:

Kami2awa
2018-06-08, 04:24 PM
When I see Tarrasque-Blooded as a playable race, I'll know it was this thread that was responsible.

Not necessarily, this has been up for over a decade:

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?261519-D-amp-Dish-The-city-built-around-the-tarrasque

Quertus
2018-06-11, 12:38 AM
To the question of how is there enough room for all these creatures; were you aware that the earth is an atypically dense planet? At the risk of killing a few cat-girls, a world with surface gravity comparable to earth would be much larger than earth unless it had a similar metallic core.

Let's not forget that gravity need not work the way it does in our reality. In 2e D&D, for example, we know, thanks to Spelljammer, that gravity either "is" or "isn't" - even a small sailing ship can produce gravity (of full planet-level strength).

IIRC, there's some crazy epic city in 3e that demonstrates similar principles that gravity just "is".

So my campaign worlds come in quite a diverse range of sizes - from, say, asteroid sized, to, say, the size of the solar system. Because why not?

Now I have the urge to run an infinite-sized planet...


Heh, exactly my thoughts.

"Nifft's Tarrasque Burgers - World's Only Infinite Eat-All-You-Want Diner" :smallbiggrin:

There are so many monsters that can work for all you can eat, but only one (literally) that gives the Illithid Savant what they want.

They'll happily trade you.


When I see Tarrasque-Blooded as a playable race, I'll know it was this thread that was responsible.

You know, I've got a character who, among other goals, was trying to use magic to breed a Tarrasque-Blooded race...


Not necessarily, this has been up for over a decade:

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?261519-D-amp-Dish-The-city-built-around-the-tarrasque

Dang, has it already been done?

upho
2018-06-11, 03:15 PM
There are so many monsters that can work for all you can eat, but only one (literally) that gives the Illithid Savant what they want.

They'll happily trade you.:smallamused: I'm sure they would.

That is, at least until their hive-brain mastermind decides to set its plan of a hostile takeover of "Nifft's Tarrasque Burgers" in motion. And you can be certain the squid-head Victory Party Committee has long since come to an unanimous decision on the choice of snacks to be served during the ensuing festivities: the grey matter of poor ranch owner Nifft and the many innocent hard-working specialist vivisectionists butchers, tanners, bone-carvers, chefs and waiters in his employ... :smalleek:


You are what you eat. After generations of a city living on a terrasque dominant diet, the people start acquiring terrasque features, like healing faster than their neighbor cities and their skin hardening into natural armor.
When I see Tarrasque-Blooded as a playable race, I'll know it was this thread that was responsible.
You know, I've got a character who, among other goals, was trying to use magic to breed a Tarrasque-Blooded race...

Dang, has it already been done?Not the race AFAICT. So I guess I better get this started before someone else does...

Physical Description: Though the appearance of nifftilims nearly always include a few specific features inherited from one of the many originally distinct humanoid races which have inhabited Tarrasque City for centuries, most features are shared by nifftilims of all heritages. These typically include a large, robust and heavily muscled build, with a short thick neck supporting a large low-set head with wide jaws and heavy brows, all clad in a thick leathery and hairless skin of a striking orange hue. But while these traits may be the most common, the nifftilims' unique supernatural diet may have numerous other visible effects, usually in the form of features with a striking resemblance to those of the magic beast which have fed the nifftilims for generations. For example, most nifftilims grow at least one miniature set of the Tarrasque's many terrifying weapons, usually in the form of large clawed hands or jaws filled with pointed serrated incisors and canines, but sometimes in the form of a forehead adorned with wicked forward-curving horns, or long sharp spikes protruding from the vertebrae of the neck or the end of a long tail.

Society: Tarrasque City!

Relations: Probably hates squid-heads, but who doesn't?

Alignment and Religion: Eh...?

Adventurers: Nifftilims often adventure in order to find out whether other weird magical creatures are as tasty and nutritious as the Tarrasque.

Male Names: Beer, Kami, Kelb, Pleh.

Female Names: Niffta, Panthera, Querta, Upha.

Standard Racial Traits
Ability Score Racial Traits: Nifftilims have strong and sturdy bodies, but not very keen minds and appear strangely beastly. They gain +2 Strength, +2 Constitution, and -2 Intelligence.
Type: Nifftilims are humanoids with the beastblood subtype, and are therefore treated as both humanoids and magic beasts for the purpose of effects and prerequisites.
Size: Nifftilims are Medium creatures and thus receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Speed: Nifftilims have a base speed of 30 feet.
Languages: Nifftilims begin play speaking Common and Aklo. Nifftilims with high intelligence scores can choose from the following: Abyssal, Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, Infernal, and Orc.
Hardened Skin: Nifftilims have thick carapace-like skin, increasing their natural armor bonus by +2.
Immortal Food (Ex): Nifftilims regain hp every hour as though they rested for 8 hours. They also regrow any lost limbs in 1d4 days.
Weapons of the Food: The physical stature of a nifftilim lets him function in many ways as if he were one size category larger. Whenever a nifftilim is subject to a size modifier or special size modifier for an opposed check (such as during grapple checks, bull rush attempts, and trip attempts), the nifftilim is treated as one size larger if doing so is advantageous to him. A nifftilim is also considered to be one size larger when determining whether a creature's special attacks based on size (such as improved grab or swallow whole) can affect him. A nifftilim can use weapons designed for a creature one size larger without penalty. However, his space and reach remain those of a creature of his actual size. The benefits of this racial trait stack with the effects of powers, abilities, and spells that change the subject's size category.
Rush of the Food: Like their food, nifftilims can be surprisingly fast, and gain a 10-foot racial bonus to their speed when using the charge, run, or withdraw actions.
Skills of the Food: Nifftilims gain a +2 racial bonus on Jump checks and Intimidate checks.
Favored Class: Crusader or cleric? A multiclass nifftilim's crusader class does not count when determining whether he takes an experience point penalty (see the XP for Multiclass Characters section, page 60 of the Player's Handbook). Nifftilim society values devotion to their unique source of wealth and produces many deeply religious individuals.

Alternate Racial Traits
The following alternate racial traits may be selected in place of one or more of the standard racial traits above.
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Please help me complete this extremely important work!

Resileaf
2018-06-11, 03:33 PM
As far as I'm concerned, everything in the core book and the first bestiary easily fits in any campaign. Everything in supplementary books is optional and can be allowed or declined at the GM's will.

wumpus
2018-06-11, 04:07 PM
In the first universe I created, there was a nexus - a portal to other worlds. Within 50 miles of it, you might encounter anything - even Klingons, Vulcans, Kryptonians, moties, fuzzies, or boggies. But further away, you would only encounter races or monsters from classic European legend.

One party once bumped into a Philmont Ranger - who was able to help them find their way.

How did he (she?) identify himself as such? Proper branded boots (available to scouts)? Did the water "say hello [HELLO!]"?

I'd have to say that gripes about builds taking multiple spatbooks* are an issue in balancing optimization. If the build is "optimized for cool" instead of "optimized for power", then I'd suspect that most problems would be considered "metagaming" if advanced by the player (unless the classes exist in game similar to how OOTS players read the rule books, then claiming the class "doesn't exist" is pretty metagamy).

In the case of "known druid animals" (and to a lesser extend ranger animals) you might have to clamp down on things on how in the world the druid found *that* particular animal (think back when dinosaurs had the animal class. Or perhaps the druid wants to know a rare "monster in the darkness").


When doing E6 worldbuilding, I made the determination that any being with a CR of 10+ was a unique entity. I also established that such beings occurred at a ratio of roughly 1 per 1 million (with people being defined as basically anything that lacks racial hit dice). This means that a fairly large quasi-medieval nation would only have a handful of powerful and iconic monsters.

Doing this, and correspondingly banning anything CR 16+ (necessary for E6, and useful generally, since 3.X D&D breaks at ~ lvl 12 anyway), really cuts down on the kitchen sink problem. Monster entries are bloated out by huge numbers of high-CR enemies that really have no need to be in your game as anything more than one-offs.

One thing I liked about 4e was the idea that characters would progress in multiple stages: 1-6 7-16 16-25 or some such. As such, you need only craft your original world as an E6 world. Then you build a E12 (or whatever) around it and railroad your characters to "the big city" far way or some other such thing that introduces the big bad world (but not all the planes, that's the next enlargement).

You could easily not include large parts of the monster manual, at least until hitting "the multiverse" where limited planes almost certainly "include everything".

* I've heard that "official Hasbro/WOTC/whoeverveownsD&Dnow play allows characters to be made with the Players Handbook and one [official] splatbook. This keeps lookups at a minimum, keeps costs sane (while still encouraging buying books), and makes playtesting possible (because each rule doesn't effect every other rule ever published). It might not be a bad thing to encourage in normal play.

Andor13
2018-06-11, 04:30 PM
Unless you're playing in Darksun which has intentionally limited access to other planes, I don't even see a conflict.

You can have an entire world that looks like medieval Detroit with Goblins, and still have your half-centaur/half-dragon/half-illithid/were-lobster Paladin of Disco somewhere out there in the infinity of the planes. He's just not coming here unless the GM says so.

As for Lizardmen, why do they need a nation? Nations are for organizing large projects. They have their swamp, they have their crawdad pots, they have a shrine to Justin Wilson, what more do they need?

Nifft
2018-06-11, 05:47 PM
:smallamused: I'm sure they would.

That is, at least until their hive-brain mastermind decides to set its plan of a hostile takeover of "Nifft's Tarrasque Burgers" in motion. And you can be certain the squid-head Victory Party Committee has long since come to an unanimous decision on the choice of snacks to be served during the ensuing festivities: the grey matter of poor ranch owner Nifft and the many innocent hard-working specialist vivisectionists butchers, tanners, bone-carvers, chefs and waiters in his employ... :smalleek:

Not the race AFAICT. So I guess I better get this started before someone else does...

Physical Description: Though the appearance of nifftlings nearly always include a few specific features inherited from one of the many originally distinct humanoid races which have inhabited Tarrasque City for centuries, most features are shared by nifftlings of all heritages. These typically include a large, robust and heavily muscled build, with a short thick neck supporting a large low-set head with wide jaws and heavy brows, all clad in a thick leathery and hairless skin of a striking orange hue. But while these traits may be the most common, the nifftlings' unique supernatural diet may have numerous other visible effects, usually in the form of features with a striking resemblance to those of the magic beast which have fed the nifftlings for generations. For example, most nifftlings grow at least one miniature set of the Tarrasque's many terrifying weapons, usually in the form of large clawed hands or jaws filled with pointed serrated incisors and canines, but sometimes in the form of a forehead adorned with wicked forward-curving horns, or long sharp spikes protruding from the vertebrae of the neck or the end of a long tail. D.

Society: Tarrasque City!

Relations: Probably hates squid-heads, but who doesn't?

Alignment and Religion: Eh...?

Adventurers: Nifftlings often adventure in order to find out whether other weird magical creatures are as tasty and nutritious as the Tarrasque.

Male Names: Beer, Kami, Kelb, Pleh.

Female Names: Niffta, Panthera, Querta, Upha.

Standard Racial Traits
Ability Score Racial Traits: Nifftlings have strong and sturdy bodies, but not very keen minds and appear strangely beastly. They gain +2 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, and –2 Charisma.
Type: Nifftlings are humanoids with the beastblood subtype, and are therefore treated as both humanoids and magic beasts for the purpose of effects and prerequisites.
Size: Nifftlings are Medium creatures and thus receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Speed: Nifftlings have a base speed of 30 feet.
Languages: Nifftlings begin play speaking Common and Aklo. Nifftlings with high intelligence scores can choose from the following: Abyssal, Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, Infernal, and Orc.
Hardened Skin: Nifftlings have thick carapace-like skin, increasing their natural armor bonus by +2.
Immortal Food (Ex): Nifftlings regain hp every hour as though they rested for 8 hours. They also regrow any lost limbs in 1d4 days.
Weapons of the Food: Nifftlings gain one of the following natural attacks of their choice: a primary bite, pair of claws or gore attack, or a tail with a secondary tail slap attack.
Powerful Build: The physical stature of nifftlings lets them function in many ways as if they were one size category larger. Whenever a nifftling is subject to a size modifier or special size modifier for a Combat Maneuver Bonus or Combat Maneuver Defense (such as during grapple checks, bull rush attempts, and trip attempts), the half-giant is treated as one size larger if doing so is advantageous to him. A half-giant is also considered to be one size larger when determining whether a creature’s special attacks based on size (such as grab or swallow whole) can affect him. A nifftling can use weapons designed for a creature one size larger without penalty. However, his space and reach remain those of a creature of his actual size. The benefts of this racial trait stack with the effects of powers, abilities, and spells that change the subject’s size category.
Rush of the Food: Like their food, Nifftlings can be surprisingly fast, and gain a 10-foot racial bonus to their speed when using the charge, run, or withdraw actions.
Skills of the Food: Nifftlings gain a +2 racial bonus on Jump checks and Intimidate checks.

Alternate Racial Traits
The following alternate racial traits may be selected in place of one or more of the standard racial traits above.
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Please help me complete this extremely important work!

This work is indeed extremely important.

Suggestions on race name: Nifftilim, a sub-type of Nephilim.

The ranch / BBQ house / mercenary company known as Nifft's will feature advertisements like:
- "Dirty feeds, done dirt cheap."
- "All requests considered, no questions Terrasqued."

Quertus
2018-06-11, 05:49 PM
Powerful Build: The physical stature of nifftlings lets them function in many ways as if they were one size category larger. Whenever a nifftling is subject to a size modifier or special size modifier for a Combat Maneuver Bonus or Combat Maneuver Defense (such as during grapple checks, bull rush attempts, and trip attempts), the half-giant is treated as one size larger if doing so is advantageous to him. A half-giant is also considered to be one size larger when determining whether a creature’s special attacks based on size (such as grab or swallow whole) can affect him. A nifftling can use weapons designed for a creature one size larger without penalty. However, his space and reach remain those of a creature of his actual size. The benefts of this racial trait stack with the effects of powers, abilities, and spells that change the subject’s size category.

Please help me complete this extremely important work!

Hilarious! I especially love their version of regeneration, and their names.

See above for my help.

upho
2018-06-13, 08:37 PM
OK, this is becoming OT and might even belong in a thread of its own in Homebrew, but I can't seem to stop myself... :smallredface:


This work is indeed extremely important.

Suggestions on race name: Nifftilim, a sub-type of Nephilim.Ha ha! Yes of course! "Sons of the Great Beast" or something along those lines...


The ranch / BBQ house / mercenary company known as Nifft's will feature advertisements like:
- "Dirty feeds, done dirt cheap."
- "All requests considered, no questions Terrasqued."Total ROFL!

Seriously, you need to write a background description for these guys, including past and present slogans of Nifft's ranch/BBQ/merc company. And Pleh should do a piece on their current society and the possible "Tarrasque City". I imagined nifftilims having some kind of Tarrasque religion where they thank the great beast for all their fortunes. There probably should be actual divine power connected to the faith, including spells and domains, so I added Crusader and Cleric as possible favored classes and removed the Cha penalty.


Hilarious! I especially love their version of regeneration, and their names.

See above for my help.Thanks! Though I have to admit I simply stole the regen trait from the PF "half-troll" Grendle (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/dreamscarred-press/grendle/), (from Bloodforge, published by Dreamscarred Press). And yeah, who wouldn't want to play a brave nifftilim adventurer named Niffta, Querta or Upha? Those are beautiful names, perfect for the great heroines of future legends! :smallbiggrin:

I've removed the Cha penalty, changed the race's name to nifftilim, and changed the Powerful Build trait to the 3.5 goliath version and hopefully swapped all mentions of "goliath" to "nifftilim" in the description.