Help! I'm addicted to humans!

[Cygnia]

I've noticed, when it comes to 3.5 games, more often than not when designing a character, I go for human. Not even anything like planetouched or silverbrow. Just run of the mill plain ol' human.

It's those sweet sweet extra skill points and extra feat. Doesn't matter what class, I go for the human.

Now, I have played non-humans. I've even got a gnome Favored Soul of Bahamut that I loved playing -- but that was for a gnome-specific game.

I may have a problem...:smalltongue:

[noob]

try exiled dwarf or that weird halfling with a bonus feat: those are the same thing as humans but with different stats.

[Divine Susuryu]

Customising a character is fun. Humans are more customisable. Pretty basic maths for someone who enjoys fiddling with mechanics.

[Yogibear41]

As long as you are having fun who cares? I more or less play one of three races or some iteration there of.

Human with Fiendish ancestory

Dwarf (some with or without ancestory, have played a few draconic dwarves)

Human Lycanthrope


I did recently branch out to playing a half-demon Orc, but that's basically a rehash of #1.

Never played an elf, never played a halfling, never played a gnome (came close once).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I tend to stay away from anything mundane when I get the chance, because fantasy is so much wider than the "human with or without pointy ears" crap base D&D assumes everyone has to play (and punishes them for not playing).

Heck, my screen name and avatar are from my draconic tanuki (of vastly mixed ancestry) who counted as everything from a Dragonwrought kobold (which he was mechanically) to human (due to Human Heritage). He was the very definition of the Heinz 57 character, given that he was the end result of an illithid breeding experiment to create a powerful psionic being to help them release and devour the elder evil Pandorym. (Luckily, that didn't pan out at all.) Fluff-wise, he was a mix of hundreds of races; it's just that tanuki, dragon, kobold, human (for that sweet, sweet Able Learner access for skillmonkey/manifesting multiclassing), and neraph (via Otherworldly) were highest on the list. Thankfully, we had flaws so I could take a number of 1st level bonus feats to expand my types range.

[Xania]

Mostly barbarian halflings and half orc thieves for me, sometimes a half elf.
I like dwarves but i don't like to be them.

[Segev]

I play a lot of humans for similar reasons. Generally, I need a good character and/or mechanical toy reason to play something non-human. If you want to talk yourself into other races, try considering interesting backgrounds and motivations that are driven by races other than human, and build a character around those. The class will stem from the motivation.

Alternatively, look for mechanical tricks other races offer, and see how they synergize with a class feature or few, and use that as the impetus to play something non-human.

I had a concept for a Drow Nomad that I didn't wind up going with, but he was a drow because I wanted a run-away from an evil land who had stolen something important and gotten stranded in the Planes by the bad people he stole it for, and for some reason "evil land" and "vengeful home full of people" merged with "hard life of a street rat" to give me "drow civilization."

[Venger]

try exiled dwarf or that weird halfling with a bonus feat: those are the same thing as humans but with different stats.

strongheart halfling.

what book is exiled dwarf in? never heard of it

[ExLibrisMortis]

I like azurin for the same reasons. I'd play an Empty Vessel with LA buyoff, too. It's not really a problem; some races are just enable more mechanical fiddling.

[Venger]

if you want to branch out from humans a little, changeling or kalashtar are good for that

[jdizzlean]

on the boards here, human, strongheart halfling, and a few others are goto's for optimizing.

in RL games, i try to go for the more exotic the better approach because being different and standing out is part of what adventuring is all about, plus i tend to think that human is just "boring" to play.

ironically, in my current RL game, everyone is playing a monstrous humanoid of some flavor...and all w/o that being a planned thing

[Segev]

on the boards here, human, strongheart halfling, and a few others are goto's for optimizing.

in RL games, i try to go for the more exotic the better approach because being different and standing out is part of what adventuring is all about, plus i tend to think that human is just "boring" to play.

ironically, in my current RL game, everyone is playing a monstrous humanoid of some flavor...and all w/o that being a planned thing

I think I'm actually playing the only human in the one PF game I'm in right now. Everyone else is something exotic. I think the LEAST exotic other than my PC is a tiefling.

[Divine Susuryu]

on the boards here, human, strongheart halfling, and a few others are goto's for optimizing.

in RL games, i try to go for the more exotic the better approach because being different and standing out is part of what adventuring is all about, plus i tend to think that human is just "boring" to play.

ironically, in my current RL game, everyone is playing a monstrous humanoid of some flavor...and all w/o that being a planned thing

YMMV for standing out in RL games - I'm the only person who has ever played a human in my local group. Closest anyone else has got has been either elf or full-orc.

[weckar]

Human unless I am told I can't. And I have no shame about it.

[MisterKaws]

Try Anthro-octopus and you'll never go back.

[Palanan]

In various games I’ve played humans, elves, halflings, tengu, vanara and a customized dwarven variant.

Once I was forced to play a gnome, but I try not to think about that.

[weckar]

Try Anthro-octopus and you'll never go back.

Never thought I'd see good dating advice on here!

Nobody suspects a thing...

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I wanted to play the ghostly stillborn spawn of Cthulhu at one point (and his ogre-sized half-ogre pixie thrall), but I never got to play in that game. :smallmad:

[King of Nowhere]

as a human, i tend to play humans.
I mean, when I think of a character concept, I don't think of a race. and when I imagine it, it's always a human. it's the default assumptiion of my brain. SO, I play human unless I have a specific reason to play something else.

[noob]

strongheart halfling.

what book is exiled dwarf in? never heard of it

I do not know if it is the real name but it is probably from Dragon Magazine #320

[liquidformat]

First I thought this was going to be a thread about evil character eating humans, I am not sure what I was expecting but was a bit disappointed...

Anyways I probably play halflings the most, though I mix things up quite a bit most resently I have played these in this order: shifters, goliath, half giant, warforgedx3, gnome, goliath, human.

[Crake]

as a human, i tend to play humans.
I mean, when I think of a character concept, I don't think of a race. and when I imagine it, it's always a human. it's the default assumptiion of my brain. SO, I play human unless I have a specific reason to play something else.

I feel much the same way here. For most people, thinking as a human is just the norm, because well, we are humans. Sure there are some people who don't feel the same way, and who just have to play their special snowflake with an odd base race and 30 templates and be the odd one out, but for the most of us, we're happy to play what we are. That's why the phb races are so successful, they're all close enough to human to be relatable.

[tiercel]

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.... nomnomnom it’s true, you really can’t eat just one!

:tongue:

———

I like humans just fine for several reasons:

The feat plus skill points do work well for most builds, of course
I always feel a bit constrained by non-human races (i.e. am I playing a character whose personality is in part defined either by a racial stereotype or by specifically averting a particular racial stereotype)
I like the “everyman” aspect of human, both individually (not genetically engineered via stat bonuses to be the ideal class or multiclass X), but also socially (especially in a nonhuman-heavy party where being The Human is to be the hub/peacemaker between the various racial types)


“The Babylon Project was a dream, given form. Its goal: to prevent another war, by creating a place where humans and aliens can work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call – home away from home – for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers.

Humans and aliens, wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal . . . all alone in the night.

It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace.”

[MisterKaws]

I mostly feel like playing human is boring, although the mechanical benefits are always tempting. When a character concept I'm making needs the human bonuses, I don't mind playing one, but otherwise I'd rather take the less boring approach. I already role-play a human for about sixteen hours a day, don't need any more.

hAvE a Go0d NigHt, FeLl0w hUmaNs!

[denthor]

If your DM let's play skulk human. +10 to hide skill get it at full run as well.

[Xania]

Seems like we non human players are the less common ones after all.

[Crake]

I never understood people who say humans are boring and same-y, when humans are quite literally the most diverse and interesting creatures in the world. From my experience of DMing, if you can't find a way to make a human interesting, then even if you don't play a human, you're probably not going to be making a character that's interesting beyond a shallow level of being a novel race, which will wear off quickly. Obviously, that doesn't apply to everyone who plays a non-human, just the ones who do so under the excuse of "humans are boring".

[Zaq]

A way to break out of the rut is to optimize around something that’s race-locked to something other than human. An unusual dragonmark, or a weird racial feature like the illumian sigils, or a cool PrC that requires a specific race, or even a nifty race-specific feat. Something that you can’t buy with an extra feat and extra skill points. Makes you feel like you’re still optimizing even if you’re giving up a really precious resource.

[MisterKaws]

A way to break out of the rut is to optimize around something that’s race-locked to something other than human. An unusual dragonmark, or a weird racial feature like the illumian sigils, or a cool PrC that requires a specific race, or even a nifty race-specific feat. Something that you can’t buy with an extra feat and extra skill points. Makes you feel like you’re still optimizing even if you’re giving up a really precious resource.

Buonman Truenamer?

Hope I didn't trigger your PTSD...

[Ryton]

A way to break out of the rut is to optimize around something that’s race-locked to something other than human. An unusual dragonmark, or a weird racial feature like the illumian sigils, or a cool PrC that requires a specific race, or even a nifty race-specific feat. Something that you can’t buy with an extra feat and extra skill points. Makes you feel like you’re still optimizing even if you’re giving up a really precious resource.

This is generally where I play. The first character I ever played was a (in hindsight, truly awful) Dwarven Defender that was made for me by the group that introduced me to D&D.
I tend to play humans (though often with a variant of some kind, or perhaps a template), unless something race-specific catches my eye, like Eternal Blade, Skypledged, or somesuch... but definitely not Dwarven Defender.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The first character I ever played was a (in hindsight, truly awful) Dwarven DefenderIsn't "awful dwarven defender" a tautology?

[Zaq]

Isn't "awful dwarven defender" a tautology?

Hey man, dwarven defenders are REALLY effective against immobile, non-magic-using enemies. Such as dwarven defenders.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Hey man, dwarven defenders are REALLY effective against immobile, non-magic-using enemies. Such as dwarven defenders.Imagine two dwarven defenders standing across a short, underground tunnel from each other, each guarding a door to their respective (and mutually hostile) dwarf clans on opposite sides of their mountain.

Each is rooted to the spot, glaring mass murder, neither willing to cross the room to get to the other one because that would leave their respective doors unguarded.

Sadly (and quite ironically), each is absolutely itching to scream "You shall not pass!" at the other, but that would require one of them to actually try to pass, which will never, ever happen.

[Ryton]

Isn't "awful dwarven defender" a tautology?

Indeed, but as it was both my first character, and I didn't make it, I didn't know that. At least, not until a couple sessions before I opted to let the character die so I could make a better character of my own.

The dwarf's only saving grace was impossibly high stats, thanks to a houserule of 3d6, re-roll the lowest (edit: but the re-rolled die can't be lower than the die it is replacing), but if you get 3 6s on the first roll, you just add 4th die. I think he had a base 24 Str and 18 Con before racials and whatnot...

[upho]

I wouldn't have guessed so many people here prefer to play a human. Personally, I think in all 3.x based games I've played in, I've chosen to play a human a grand total of two times; in my first 3.0 game and in my first PF game. Mostly because I feel like:
I tend to stay away from anything mundane when I get the chance, because fantasy is so much wider than the "human with or without pointy ears" crap base D&D assumes everyone has to play (and punishes them for not playing).This. And I very rarely get to play anything other than a human when I get to act on stage or screen anyways, not to mention I seem to be stuck playing this one specific human dude 24/7 in a silly and dramaturgically disastrous LARP I don't even remember signing up for. Think it's called Real LifeTM. :smallamused:

I feel pretty much the same for the other staple fantasy races. If not more, as come to think of it, I actually haven't played a dwarf, elf, half-elf, half-orc or halfling (or gnome) PC I've made myself in any D&D edition past 2.0, including any digital iterations. Probably because one of my pet peeves are these "near-human" staple fantasy races paired with their respective expected traditional stereotypical flavor and mechanical design. It's getting really old and boring IMO.

In 3.5, I think the reason I've only played a human once is also because in all other cases there's been one of the near infinite number of interesting (fluff- as well as crunch-wise) alternatives begging to be explored and/or seeming more appropriate for whatever the setting and my character concept has been. And of course it has helped that I've mostly played games with LA buyoff which started at 3rd level rather than 1st, making the human mechanical benefits a bit less great, relatively speaking. (I believe the last 3.5 PC I played was a Strongheart half-halfling quarterling half-incubus (using homebrew monster class levels) rogue with some pretty serious family issues, and the mechanics of his mixed custom "race" were at least as optimized for the character as those of a human would've been, despite the quite significant additional related investments.)

In PF, I guess the "average" game doesn't offer as many possible PC race combos as the "average" 3.5 game, but the mechanical benefits of the human race also aren't as unique or universally great as in (most) 3.5 games. Notably, everyone in PF get more feats than in 3.5, every race/class combo can choose to get +1 skill point as a favored class bonus, multiclassing is easier by default, and plenty of races offer stat combos, unique special abilities and/or favored class bonuses superior for many classes/builds.

Perhaps more importantly, PF also has plenty of other often more accessible mechanically diversified race options which aren't as dragged down by LA or other major penalties as in 3.5, as seen in for example the many distinct aasimar, DSP catfolk, skinwalker, DSP kitsune and tiefling heritages. The net result is that the PF human is likely still at least mechanically decent for more builds than any other PF race, but it thankfully isn't the clearly best race option nearly as often as in 3.5 games. And for example in a PF game including the races in DSP's Akashic Mysteries (think "improved MoI") or the catfolk in DSP's "Feather and Fur" splat, after the very earliest levels human is practically never the best option for a build based on a full bab class. Might be worth looking into importing some of these PF race options to 3.5 if you're "addicted to humans", as they could at least offer some easy mechanical incentives to combat your addiction.

[Cygnia]

"Brave enough to be borin'..." (http://friendshipisdragons.thecomicseries.com/comics/1198/)

:smallbiggrin:

[MisterKaws]

"Brave enough to be borin'..." (http://friendshipisdragons.thecomicseries.com/comics/1198/)

:smallbiggrin:

Today I learned that there's a My Little Pony RPG comic.

And I thought Pony vs Pony was pushing it.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I wouldn't have guessed so many people here prefer to play a human. Personally, I think in all 3.x based games I've played in, I've chosen to play a human a grand total of two times; in my first 3.0 game and in my first PF game. Mostly because I feel like: This. And I very rarely get to play anything other than a human when I get to act on stage or screen anyways, not to mention I seem to be stuck playing this one specific human dude 24/7 in a silly and dramaturgically disastrous LARP I don't even remember signing up for. Think it's called Real LifeTM. :smallamused:

I feel pretty much the same for the other staple fantasy races. If not more, as come to think of it, I actually haven't played a dwarf, elf, half-elf, half-orc or halfling (or gnome) PC I've made myself in any D&D edition past 2.0, including any digital iterations. Probably because one of my pet peeves are these "near-human" staple fantasy races paired with their respective expected traditional stereotypical flavor and mechanical design. It's getting really old and boring IMO.Everyone I see day-to-day is human. I turn on the TV and what I see is human. I watch a cartoon, where literally anything can happen, and 99% of the time what I see is human. I watch a movie and most of the characters are human. I read a book; most of the characters are human. Even with anime and manga being as crazy bat**** insane as they are, most everyone is human. Sci-fi shenanigans with lots of alien races? HUMAN.

It doesn't matter if they have weird-colored hair or pointy(ish) ears or tumors on their foreheads. I'm tired of humans in the real world. Why would I want them in my fiction and (even moreso) fantasy, when fiction can be anything?

[noob]

Everyone I see day-to-day is human. I turn on the TV and what I see is human. I watch a cartoon, where literally anything can happen, and 99% of the time what I see is human. I watch a movie and most of the characters are human. I read a book; most of the characters are human. Even with anime and manga being as crazy bat**** insane as they are, most everyone is human. Sci-fi shenanigans with lots of alien races? HUMAN.

It doesn't matter if they have weird-colored hair or pointy(ish) ears or tumors on their foreheads. I'm tired of humans in the real world. Why would I want them in my fiction and (even moreso) fantasy, when fiction can be anything?

I agree: we need more stories without characters.
And stories with characters that are not human(like interstellar which is a movie where while the characters are supposed to be biologically human their behaviours are fluctuating randomly from one minute to the other as if they had nothing human)

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I agree: we need more stories without characters.
And stories with characters that are not human(like interstellar which is a movie where while the characters are supposed to be biologically human their behaviours are fluctuating randomly from one minute to the other as if they had nothing human)Yes.

That's exactly what I meant.

:sigh:

[Xania]

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.... nomnomnom it’s true, you really can’t eat just one!

:tongue:

———

I like humans just fine for several reasons:

The feat plus skill points do work well for most builds, of course
I always feel a bit constrained by non-human races (i.e. am I playing a character whose personality is in part defined either by a racial stereotype or by specifically averting a particular racial stereotype)
I like the “everyman” aspect of human, both individually (not genetically engineered via stat bonuses to be the ideal class or multiclass X), but also socially (especially in a nonhuman-heavy party where being The Human is to be the hub/peacemaker between the various racial types)


“The Babylon Project was a dream, given form. Its goal: to prevent another war, by creating a place where humans and aliens can work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call – home away from home – for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers.

Humans and aliens, wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal . . . all alone in the night.

It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace.”


But judging for what i saw, being the only sane ones in the world is the human stereotype.

[noob]

But judging for what i saw, being the only sane ones in the world is the human stereotype.

reciprocally being utterly insane and risking to destroy the very fabric of reality every day is also the human stereotype(look at star trek)

[Xania]

reciprocally being utterly insane and risking to destroy the very fabric of reality every day is also the human stereotype(look at star trek)

Also true, it's more common in settings with technology though.

[upho]

"Brave enough to be borin'..." (http://friendshipisdragons.thecomicseries.com/comics/1198/)

:smallbiggrin:Heh, exactly. When playing an "earth pony" is generally regarded as just as "boring" as playing a human, I'll surely also become brave enough to be boring! :smalltongue:

(Btw, I'd sure consider playing an earth pony if I'd ever get the chance. Sounds great and "special snowflake" enough to keep my inflated and easily offended ego satisfied...)


Today I learned that there's a My Little Pony RPG comic.

And I thought Pony vs Pony was pushing it.The one thing I find most surprising is that the author's game is supposedly based on 4e with lots of homebrew, despite Ponyfinder (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/125583/Ponyfinder--Campaign-Setting) being a thing. And a really great (read: cute and cuddly) thing at that, judging from the reviews I've read.

[Divine Susuryu]

I never understood people who say humans are boring and same-y, when humans are quite literally the most diverse and interesting creatures in the world. From my experience of DMing, if you can't find a way to make a human interesting, then even if you don't play a human, you're probably not going to be making a character that's interesting beyond a shallow level of being a novel race, which will wear off quickly. Obviously, that doesn't apply to everyone who plays a non-human, just the ones who do so under the excuse of "humans are boring".

Worth discussing, I think, although I don't entirely agree. I think one of the biggest things among people who regularly play non-humans is simply that they appeal more, not that they have any specific and pointed dislike of humans. Some may frame this as "humans are boring", but I actually think that's just shorthand for "races that are further from human are appealing because [whatever their actual reasons are]". This might be just my experience - my local area games are a very biased sample.

[pabelfly]

I really like the Favoured Class: Any part of humans, which hasn't been mentioned here. My table plays with multiclassing penalties and human makes dipping a lot easier for complex builds.

[tiercel]

But judging for what i saw, being the only sane ones in the world is the human stereotype.


reciprocally being utterly insane and risking to destroy the very fabric of reality every day is also the human stereotype(look at star trek)

That's the joy of being human, is that EVERYTHING is a human stereotype!

Being the only sane one in the room so that others get along? Human.

Being the most insane one in the room, so that the others have to get along just to survive? Human.

Being the race that demonstrates the value of a short, but intense and driven life, as opposed to having a longer lifespan like many fantasy races or aliens? Human.

Being the race most obsessed with death and attempting to defeat it in increasingly improbable and often Faustian ways? Human.

------

Look, I don't have a problem at all with people playing nonhumans - in fact, I kinda prefer it. While some people here have said "why would I want to play a human when I have to play/be a human every day anyway?", my rejoinder would that in real life we all play humans with (insofar as we know :smallwink:) other humans, and that can be rather a different thing than a human in a world full of elves, talking trees, space elves, sapient magic-wielding cats, time-traveling space elves, anthropomorphic bats, draconic time-traveling space elves, shapechanging beings older than most mortal races' ken, and elves. (Frickin' Baskin-Robbins elves.)

To go back to Babylon 5, it plays on the general stereotypes (human and non) that often play out when humans interact with nonhumans, including religious ones: while each of the major races on Babylon 5 has a demonstration of its dominant religious pantheon, the humans wind up having a long lineup of various belief systems:

"This is Mr. Harris. He's an atheist. Father Cresanti, a Roman Catholic. Mr. Hayakawa, a Zen Buddhist. Mr. Rashid, a Moslem. Mr. Rosenthal, an Orthodox Jew. Running Elk, of the Oglala Sioux faith. Father Papapoulous, a Greek Orthodox. Ogigi-ko, of the Ebo tribe. Machukiak, y Yupik Eskimo. Sawa, of the Jivaro tribe. Isnakuma, a Bantu. Ms. Chang, a Taoist. Mr. Blacksmith, an aborigine. Ms. Yamamoto, a Shinto. Ms. Naijo, a Maori. Mr. Gold, a Hindu. Ms.... "

The advantage and disadvantage of playing a nonhuman is that there are generally dominant racial beliefs or attitudes to either follow or subvert, and following and/or subverting them can be character-defining. The advantage and disadvantage of playing a human is that WE ARE ALL WACKY AAAAAAH (and non-wacky humans are wacky by comparison to all us wacky humans, so we really are all wacky!) -- so the definition of a human character comes entirely separate of "being human."

[Jack_Simth]

Ah, and here I thought the thread would be about a Dusk Giant PC (or something) that's trying to be CG, but keeps backsliding.


To go back to Babylon 5, it plays on the general stereotypes (human and non) that often play out when humans interact with nonhumans, including religious ones: while each of the major races on Babylon 5 has a demonstration of its dominant religious pantheon, the humans wind up having a long lineup of various belief systems
Do note that a big chunk of that playing out in fiction is the "creative load" on the writers. With humans, the writers have a big list of religions they can simply look up, complete with rules, holidays, customs, modes of dress, ceremonies, and so on. With nonhumans, the writers have to make them up whole cloth. As a result, the writers can include roughly ten real-world religions for the same amount of creative effort as one nonhuman religion.

[Segev]

To go back to Babylon 5, it plays on the general stereotypes (human and non) that often play out when humans interact with nonhumans, including religious ones: while each of the major races on Babylon 5 has a demonstration of its dominant religious pantheon, the humans wind up having a long lineup of various belief systems:

"This is Mr. Harris. He's an atheist. Father Cresanti, a Roman Catholic. Mr. Hayakawa, a Zen Buddhist. Mr. Rashid, a Moslem. Mr. Rosenthal, an Orthodox Jew. Running Elk, of the Oglala Sioux faith. Father Papapoulous, a Greek Orthodox. Ogigi-ko, of the Ebo tribe. Machukiak, y Yupik Eskimo. Sawa, of the Jivaro tribe. Isnakuma, a Bantu. Ms. Chang, a Taoist. Mr. Blacksmith, an aborigine. Ms. Yamamoto, a Shinto. Ms. Naijo, a Maori. Mr. Gold, a Hindu. Ms.... "

This is actually one of my least favorite episodes in B5, because it doesn't really mark out humans as special so much as setting designers as lazy. Now, that's not fair; there's an enormous amount of work that goes into this, but it calls out the problem rather than actually making something interesting out of it. Humans don't have a monoculture. Aliens universally do. But the reason aliens have monocultures is because they're all from planets of hats. Some are more nuanced and thoroughly-developed hats with depth sufficiently approaching that of a single small nation on Earth that readers will see them as deep and detailed (in the same sense that we see Aztecs as deep and detailed because we know enough about them to know there's more to know, and the illusion is maintained with aliens that there's more to know even if it hasn't been created). But still, they're monocultures. The Centauri are Colonial Britain-Rome on the downward slope of their power. All of them. The Minbari are high elf mystics, and even their caste-split is a monoculture thing with subcultures that interrelate and depend on each other for definition.

This works just fine as long as humanity's lack of monoculture is downplayed. You can have references to other human cultures besides whichever (usually Western) one is prevalent, but when you make humanity manyvaried (as we genuinely are) but don't do that for any of the aliens, it stands out, and not in an empowering or interesting way. It stands out like holding up a photograph of a sunflower field next to a competently-done but not photorealistic painting of one.

And that's what this episode of B5 does: it calls out the fact that the aliens are each monocultural. And because this isn't a unique thing to B5's setting, but rather just a trope of sci-fi in general, it comes across as highlighting a flaw in the story and setting design rather than as displaying something unique.

[upho]

I never understood people who say humans are boring and same-y, when humans are quite literally the most diverse and interesting creatures in the world.Yes, but at least when it comes to "the most interesting creatures in the world", it's worth noting that you're then assuming a setting very close to our (the so called "real") world and a highly anthropocentric macro perspective. These assumptions are of course often sound and useful when it comes to say designing a fictional setting and describing it for humans in our world, but they're not very relevant from the "in-game" perspective of a specific non-human lead character in a specific story placed in that fictional setting. And that perspective is typically also the far most important for a player.

Or to put in other words, there's absolutely nothing about say the tiefling race which makes it inherently more limited than the human race in terms of how interesting a specific PC may be. And depending on your definition of "interesting", at least from the PoV of the player I find it more plausible that the opposite is true - that non-human races inherently offer a greater potential for an interesting PC than human - because the race-related less anthropocentric perspectives a non-human character may (or arguably must) have are simply not available to a human character.

IME this remains true also in typical D&D fantasy settings where the incredible powers humans may wield also make them in many ways fundamentally different from humans in our world. For example, not even a human who has lived for centuries will be able to share many of the perspectives an elf has which stem from the long life spans members of the elf race has. (And while said human might share those elven perspectives if they came from say some greater society of long-lived humans, they would then also be so different from "normal" humans there would be little reason to regard them as a member of the same race.)

This possibility/requirement of less anthropocentric perspectives exclusive to non-human races is also one of the key reasons why I typically prefer to play non-human PCs, as I simply cannot explore those perspectives through a human PC. I wouldn't be surprised if many other people sharing my preference would say the same.


From my experience of DMing, if you can't find a way to make a human interesting, then even if you don't play a human, you're probably not going to be making a character that's interesting beyond a shallow level of being a novel race, which will wear off quickly.I'd say: "If you can't find a way to make a character of any one race interesting in play beyond the game mechanics, simply playing another race probably won't help."

IOW, race choice is highly unlikely to drastically affect how invested you are in the game, how creative you are or how good your acting skills are, factors which IME are of far greater importance than any PC build considerations when it comes to making an interesting character.


Obviously, that doesn't apply to everyone who plays a non-human, just ones who do so under the excuse of "humans are boring".I believe a person can agree or disagree with that "humans are boring" claim to various degrees largely depending on what the person happens to believe it actually means. I mean, there's quite a difference between the following questions:


"Do you generally find it more boring to play a human PC in D&D than a PC of a more exotic race?"

"Are characters in D&D generally more boring if they're human than they would've been if they'd been a more exotic race?"



Worth discussing, I think, although I don't entirely agree. I think one of the biggest things among people who regularly play non-humans is simply that they appeal more, not that they have any specific and pointed dislike of humans. Some may frame this as "humans are boring", but I actually think that's just shorthand for "races that are further from human are appealing because [whatever their actual reasons are]". This might be just my experience - my local area games are a very biased sample.And this.

[tiercel]

Humans don't have a monoculture. Aliens universally do. But the reason aliens have monocultures is because they're all from planets of hats....

And that's what this episode of B5 does: it calls out the fact that the aliens are each monocultural. And because this isn't a unique thing to B5's setting, but rather just a trope of sci-fi in general, it comes across as highlighting a flaw in the story and setting design rather than as displaying something unique.

My point is that this generally extends to fantasy as well; nonhumans (elves, dwarves, catfolk, draconic whatever, etc.) tend to be from “planets of hats” just as much as Space French or Space Elves. It’s not that hard to imagine that some people don’t necessarily want to play a character defined either by wearing that race’s hat or by defiantly defying that race’s hat *cough*Drizzt*cough* (although, of course, “rebel drow with a heart of gold” is its own PC hat, as OotS and others have pointed out).

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to play a gruff, bearded, axe-slinging, I-have-your-back warrior-type and picking “dwarf” for that character, nor with designing a smooth-shaven, dagger-packing, I-have-father-issues character and picking “rebel dwarf” for with that character, but both characters are informed and shaped by the choice of race. But if one wants to play a character not so defined by choice of race, well yes, Humans Are Not A Monoculture, and this can be (on non-mechanical grounds) a reason to play “boring” humans.

[Xania]

That's the joy of being human, is that EVERYTHING is a human stereotype!

Being the only sane one in the room so that others get along? Human.

Being the most insane one in the room, so that the others have to get along just to survive? Human.

Being the race that demonstrates the value of a short, but intense and driven life, as opposed to having a longer lifespan like many fantasy races or aliens? Human.

Being the race most obsessed with death and attempting to defeat it in increasingly improbable and often Faustian ways? Human.

------

Look, I don't have a problem at all with people playing nonhumans - in fact, I kinda prefer it. While some people here have said "why would I want to play a human when I have to play/be a human every day anyway?", my rejoinder would that in real life we all play humans with (insofar as we know :smallwink:) other humans, and that can be rather a different thing than a human in a world full of elves, talking trees, space elves, sapient magic-wielding cats, time-traveling space elves, anthropomorphic bats, draconic time-traveling space elves, shapechanging beings older than most mortal races' ken, and elves. (Frickin' Baskin-Robbins elves.)

To go back to Babylon 5, it plays on the general stereotypes (human and non) that often play out when humans interact with nonhumans, including religious ones: while each of the major races on Babylon 5 has a demonstration of its dominant religious pantheon, the humans wind up having a long lineup of various belief systems:

"This is Mr. Harris. He's an atheist. Father Cresanti, a Roman Catholic. Mr. Hayakawa, a Zen Buddhist. Mr. Rashid, a Moslem. Mr. Rosenthal, an Orthodox Jew. Running Elk, of the Oglala Sioux faith. Father Papapoulous, a Greek Orthodox. Ogigi-ko, of the Ebo tribe. Machukiak, y Yupik Eskimo. Sawa, of the Jivaro tribe. Isnakuma, a Bantu. Ms. Chang, a Taoist. Mr. Blacksmith, an aborigine. Ms. Yamamoto, a Shinto. Ms. Naijo, a Maori. Mr. Gold, a Hindu. Ms.... "

The advantage and disadvantage of playing a nonhuman is that there are generally dominant racial beliefs or attitudes to either follow or subvert, and following and/or subverting them can be character-defining. The advantage and disadvantage of playing a human is that WE ARE ALL WACKY AAAAAAH (and non-wacky humans are wacky by comparison to all us wacky humans, so we really are all wacky!) -- so the definition of a human character comes entirely separate of "being human."


Understand, i don't wanted to go against nobody either, my point is simply that if the whole "boring humans doing boring human things" is annoying the "humans are the ones free of stereotyped things" is not inferior.

Actually mine are stereotypes in my mind, when i hear "orc" i imagine the ones from Moria, and halflings are supposed to be more than they look.

[Psychoalpha]

I never understood people who say humans are boring and same-y, when humans are quite literally the most diverse and interesting creatures in the world. From my experience of DMing, if you can't find a way to make a human interesting, then even if you don't play a human, you're probably not going to be making a character that's interesting beyond a shallow level of being a novel race, which will wear off quickly. Obviously, that doesn't apply to everyone who plays a non-human, just the ones who do so under the excuse of "humans are boring".

That's pretty obviously not what people mean when they say humans are boring. They're saying (and again, super obvious here) that they feel using the same exact starting point they have in RL is not interesting to them, when compared to the multitude of options that exist in a fantasy world. If I want to play a human, I can literally just walk away from the table and BOOM, fully immersive 'human' experience.

Also... it's a fantasy (or sci-fi, or whatever) world. Unless your DM is super restrictive about who can do what, humans aren't any more capable of being 'diverse and interesting' creatures than anyone else.

Plenty of things that people consider 'boring' can become interesting characters. There is literally a pretty good action drama about an accountant, and I think there's no shortage of people who would think "That's boring." if you suggested they play an accountant in a TT game. Saying "They're an accountant.. BUT THEN!" and making a cool story around it is more than possible, but somebody not wanting to bother when there are so many other options that don't start from a boring place isn't really saying anything about their creativity, just their preferences.

I feel the same way about Fighters as some people feel about Humans. Leaving entirely aside the mechanical issues Fighters suffer from in comparison to almost any other class, the bottom line for me is that they are 'boring': It's engaging in a fantasy world of magic, full of impossible things, in the most mundane way possible. Could I make an interesting Fighter character? Sure, I even have, but it's not what I want to do or where I want to start when coming up with a character to play, and almost ANY other option will seem more interesting to me.

[Divine Susuryu]

There's also the distinction between mechanical distinctiveness and aesthetic distinctiveness. The class you choose accounts for the majority of mechanical distinctiveness in your character - a tiefling barbarian and a human barbarian are much closer together than a human wizard and a human barbarian, even if they look more different aesthetically. I think race is often overvalued in this case, as the differences they provide mechanically usually come out to attribute modifiers and a minor ability or two. Even when you get into the territory of Goliaths or Illumians , class is still usually a bigger differentiator. I can't think of any examples of 0RHD, LA +0 races that are more mechanically unusual than them, but they may well exist, so tell me if I've overlooked them.

Now, given that mechanics are the means by which you interact with the game world, class also has a bigger impact than race on what the character can do. Again, I don't think anyone is going to argue that the approach of a rogue, a fighter and a wizard of the same race to a problem is going to be less different than the approach of a human, an aasimar and a thri-keen of the same class would be. And if someone does think that, then they either must be unfamiliar with or deliberately ignoring large parts of the rules. Your characters options by necessity define their possible approaches.

In fact, feat choices and spell selection have more impact than race does on the mechanical distinctiveness of your character. A character with Power Attack and a character with Point Blank Shot immediately tells you more about what they're doing than if they're one race or another. And a wizard that forbids conjuration and necromancy is going to be a whole different playstyle to one who forbids enchantment and evocation.

For these reasons, I think it's actually pretty silly to say that to play a human is to do something you can do in real life unless you focus exclusively on extremely low powered and low level games. I'm talking "E6 playing exclusively tier 5 or lower on 20 point buy" type low power. Even inside that niche, with certain classes or feats you could still exceed the real-world abilities of even world-class talents, never mind your own personal real-world abilities. Outside of that niche any character you make is going to pretty trivially be able to do things you could never do in real life.

Really, if you just want your character to look unusual, you think the fluff is cool, you're trying to replicate something you've seen elsewhere, or whatever, just say so. There's nothing wrong with any of that at all. But arguing that it makes your character more mechanically distinctive compared to simply taking another class or is the only way to do something that you can't do in real life is bogus.

[Crake]

Worth discussing, I think, although I don't entirely agree. I think one of the biggest things among people who regularly play non-humans is simply that they appeal more, not that they have any specific and pointed dislike of humans. Some may frame this as "humans are boring", but I actually think that's just shorthand for "races that are further from human are appealing because [whatever their actual reasons are]". This might be just my experience - my local area games are a very biased sample.

While I'm sure that this is the case sometimes, and is what I assumed to be the case when I first heard the phase "I don't want to play a human, humans are boring", my experience down the line has suggested that the sort of person who doesn't elaborate beyond "humans are boring" is the kind of person who can't elaborate beyond "humans are boring" because they have no deeper underlying reason, beyond being unable to make interesting characters, and think that using a non-standard race will make their character more interesting.

These same kinds of people are the sorts of people who get pouty and complain about their character once the novelty wears off, and end up cycling between characters as each one's novelty wears off.

[MisterKaws]

While I'm sure that this is the case sometimes, and is what I assumed to be the case when I first heard the phase "I don't want to play a human, humans are boring", my experience down the line has suggested that the sort of person who doesn't elaborate beyond "humans are boring" is the kind of person who can't elaborate beyond "humans are boring" because they have no deeper underlying reason, beyond being unable to make interesting characters, and think that using a non-standard race will make their character more interesting.

These same kinds of people are the sorts of people who get pouty and complain about their character once the novelty wears off, and end up cycling between characters as each one's novelty wears off.

I was stalking for a bit, too bored to actually start a long discussion about such a simple subject, but this here is something I can counter quickly enough.


There's also the distinction between mechanical distinctiveness and aesthetic distinctiveness. The class you choose accounts for the majority of mechanical distinctiveness in your character - a tiefling barbarian and a human barbarian are much closer together than a human wizard and a human barbarian, even if they look more different aesthetically. I think race is often overvalued in this case, as the differences they provide mechanically usually come out to attribute modifiers and a minor ability or two. Even when you get into the territory of Goliaths or Illumians , class is still usually a bigger differentiator. I can't think of any examples of 0RHD, LA +0 races that are more mechanically unusual than them, but they may well exist, so tell me if I've overlooked them.

The thing with human is: you just get to do human things. All LA +0 races are the same, humans with serial numbers scraped off.

My favorite races are all those who give special and weird abilities. Tibbit? You get to play all day as a magical kitty. Dvati? There's so much fun to be had roleplaying synchronous twins.

And my all-time favorite? Anthro-Octopus. The race has so much weirdness to it you could write a damn handbook for it(I plan to). You get six arms, a rocket propeller, weird contortionist abilities, ink spit, and the list just gets bigger if you go for its bigger cousins.

Humans, in comparison, have a feat. And some skill points, but that's about it. They're just as mechanically interesting as they are fluff-wise. About as interesting as a pile of dirt, that is. You could play any other LA +0 race and play it the same as you would your human, except now you get some abilities instead of your feat. But they're basically humans with minor plastic surgery for different skin tone or longer ears or whatever. They're boring.

[upho]

This is actually one of my least favorite episodes in B5, because it doesn't really mark out humans as special so much as setting designers as lazy. Now, that's not fair; there's an enormous amount of work that goes into this, but it calls out the problem rather than actually making something interesting out of it.

/snip/

This works just fine as long as humanity's lack of monoculture is downplayed. You can have references to other human cultures besides whichever (usually Western) one is prevalent, but when you make humanity manyvaried (as we genuinely are) but don't do that for any of the aliens, it stands out, and not in an empowering or interesting way. It stands out like holding up a photograph of a sunflower field next to a competently-done but not photorealistic painting of one.So much this. (Though my B5-fu happens to be about as extensive as an IMDB page top summary.)

To me, this also risks decreasing a D&D setting's verisimilitude, as very few include any good internally consistent reasons for there being a much greater number and diversity of human cultures IMO.

In the context of a fantasy or sci-fi RPG setting, I believe there are primarily two practically possible ways to mitigate this issue:

1. The designers can give humanity more of a monoculture, as Segev pointed out. Unfortunately, it appears that a vast majority of settings, especially typical D&D settings (like FR, Greyhawk or Golarion), instead have a bunch of human cultures that are basically romanticized versions of our world's cultures. On top of that, the anthropocentric and multicultural humanity aspects of these settings are reflected in much of the core rule books' race related fluff and crunch, increasing the work for a GM who decides to create their own setting which don't include these typical D&D setting aspects. But the GM able and willing to put in the work can create a homebrew setting which pretty much completely avoids the whole issue. The drawback is of course that the setting won't have as many and diverse human cultures.

2. The GM can make non-human NPCs, groups and societies (or tweak those in published materials) whenever feasible in order to increase the diversity and multitude of the respective races' cultures. Likewise, the GM can also encourage the players to make non-human PCs which avoids the racial stereotypes and breaks away from the standard racial monocultures. Changing related mechanics slightly on request, such as removing or altering race prerequisites of PC options the players are interested in, can also help. While this won't bring much change to a setting on a macro level, IME it definitely can change the feel of the parts of the setting which the PCs have a more personal relation to and directly interacts with. And those parts are the most important ones after all, not those in the background or those operating on a macro level. The drawbacks are that the differences between races may become less distinct, and the related published material may become less relevant, reducing its value as an RP and character development aid.


My point is that this generally extends to fantasy as well; nonhumans (elves, dwarves, catfolk, draconic whatever, etc.) tend to be from “planets of hats” just as much as Space French or Space Elves. It’s not that hard to imagine that some people don’t necessarily want to play a character defined either by wearing that race’s hat or by defiantly defying that race’s hat *cough*Drizzt*cough* (although, of course, “rebel drow with a heart of gold” is its own PC hat, as OotS and others have pointed out).AFAICT, Segev completely agreed with your point that the "monoculture non-humans and multiculture humans"-phenomenon extends into fantasy. I believe his point was that this phenomenon is a problem because it mostly just highlights that the setting designers were lazy (or that the task of designing also non-human multicultures for was simply too great to be feasible), and that this problem can be mitigated by downplaying "humanity's lack of monoculture".


There’s nothing wrong with wanting to play a gruff, bearded, axe-slinging, I-have-your-back warrior-type and picking “dwarf” for that character, nor with designing a smooth-shaven, dagger-packing, I-have-father-issues character and picking “rebel dwarf” for with that character, but both characters are informed and shaped by the choice of race. But if one wants to play a character not so defined by choice of race, well yes, Humans Are Not A Monoculture, and this can be (on non-mechanical grounds) a reason to play “boring” humans.I think an important question here is whether a "gruff, bearded, axe-slinging, I-have-your-back warrior-type" is about as likely to be a human as a dwarf.

If the answer leans towards "yes", doesn't that imply the primary uniqueness of the dwarf monoculture is that it's limited to one of the many different possible human cultures? And if the answer leans towards "no", doesn't that instead undermine the claim that the human race stands out as the least character defining?

And even more importantly, is a game setting where that claim is true preferable to a setting in which most races can have about equal influence on a character?

[Zanos]

Everyone I see day-to-day is human. I turn on the TV and what I see is human. I watch a cartoon, where literally anything can happen, and 99% of the time what I see is human. I watch a movie and most of the characters are human. I read a book; most of the characters are human. Even with anime and manga being as crazy bat**** insane as they are, most everyone is human. Sci-fi shenanigans with lots of alien races? HUMAN.

It doesn't matter if they have weird-colored hair or pointy(ish) ears or tumors on their foreheads. I'm tired of humans in the real world. Why would I want them in my fiction and (even moreso) fantasy, when fiction can be anything?
Every person in history who ever did anything interesting was human. Most non-human species in D&D are also loose stereotypes of human cultures throughout history. The number of species alien enough to embody non-human behavior patterns is extremely limited, because (most?) writers are human and anchor non-human behaviors in humans.

"I'm aesthetically bored of humans" is one argument, "human personalities are boring" is ridiculous.


I never understood people who say humans are boring and same-y, when humans are quite literally the most diverse and interesting creatures in the world. From my experience of DMing, if you can't find a way to make a human interesting, then even if you don't play a human, you're probably not going to be making a character that's interesting beyond a shallow level of being a novel race, which will wear off quickly. Obviously, that doesn't apply to everyone who plays a non-human, just the ones who do so under the excuse of "humans are boring".
+1.

Now playing a different race can definitely give you a jump-start on how to differentiate your character, if you think race is the primary thing that makes a character interesting, chances are your character isn't all that interesting.

[MisterKaws]

Every person in history who ever did anything interesting was human. Most non-human species in D&D are also loose stereotypes of human cultures throughout history. The number of species alien enough to embody non-human behavior patterns is extremely limited, because (most?) writers are human and anchor non-human behaviors in humans.

"I'm aesthetically bored of humans" is one argument, "human personalities are boring" is ridiculous.


+1.

Now playing a different race can definitely give you a jump-start on how to differentiate your character, if you think race is the primary thing that makes a character interesting, chances are your character isn't all that interesting.

The whole 'humans are boring' discussion started because of my reply, and I never, once, mentioned human personalities. Personalities are unrelated to race unless you're playing some stereotype.

Humans are aesthetically and mechanically boring. That is, humans(and all other LA +0 races) are just what we are in real life. Mechanically, they don't play different than each other at all, and don't present any benefits aside from minor tidbits. I'd much rather play the more monstrous races over them any day.

[Jay R]

I've noticed, when it comes to 3.5 games, more often than not when designing a character, I go for human. Not even anything like planetouched or silverbrow. Just run of the mill plain ol' human.

It's those sweet sweet extra skill points and extra feat. Doesn't matter what class, I go for the human.

Now, I have played non-humans. I've even got a gnome Favored Soul of Bahamut that I loved playing -- but that was for a gnome-specific game.

I may have a problem...:smalltongue:

You don't have a problem.

This is a game. We play it for fun.

I had a friend who only wanted to play fighters. Fine. He was a great ally, and a great player.

I want to do something new each time. That's fine, too.

Play the PC you want to play, for whatever reason you want to play him or her. And don't let anybody tell you that your preferences are badwrongfun.

[upho]

I never understood people who say humans are boring and same-y, when humans are quite literally the most diverse and interesting creatures in the world.+1.Since you agree with Crake, maybe you could tell me which world he's referring to here; is it our so-called "real" world, the world of a typical D&D setting, or some other world? And maybe you could also help me understand how either alternative makes any sense?

If he's talking about the real world, I really can't see any reason why that would be true also in a fantasy world inhabited by several types of sentient creatures aside from real world human counterparts, many of which are (or have the potential to be) more knowledgeable, long-lived, diverse, technologically developed, civilized and/or physically and intellectually powerful than real world humans as well as said counterparts.

And if he's talking about a typical D&D setting, I really don't see where he gets the "humans are quite literally the most diverse and interesting creatures in the world" from.

What am I missing here?


Every person in history who ever did anything interesting was human. Most non-human species in D&D are also loose stereotypes of human cultures throughout history. The number of species alien enough to embody non-human behavior patterns is extremely limited, because (most?) writers are human and anchor non-human behaviors in humans.Yes, and these are all reasons why playing a member of a sentient species decidedly different from a human can be so interesting. Because doing so convincingly requires that you change your perspectives and forces you to question what actually is inherently human and what isn't.

As a comparison, a lot of people believe they would be unable to act convincingly in the role of something like a paranoid schizophrenic, sadistic torturer or narcissistic serial killer because they're so fundamentally different from these extreme human outliers, and therefore also inherently incapable of making themselves instinctively feel, think and behave as these outliers. As numerous studies and behavioral psychology experiments - not to mention improvisational acting and immersion exercises - have shown, these people are nearly always wrong. The same is IME largely true when it comes to playing a decidedly non-human sentient creature in a fantasy RPG.

In short, I believe there's actually only one important real world human aspect one simply cannot will out of existence, and that is a mind capable of such amazing levels of self-deceit we can literally fool our own bodily reactions, instinctual behaviors and gut feelings even while being aware of what we're doing. Which happens to be the very thing which allows us to pretend to be virtually anything we can dream up provided we can invest enough of our focus and training.


The whole 'humans are boring' discussion started because of my reply, and I never, once, mentioned human personalities. Personalities are unrelated to race unless you're playing some stereotype.Often, but far from always. Significant racial abilities definitely impact personality (though rarely in a uniform way, of course).


Humans are aesthetically and mechanically boring. That is, humans(and all other LA +0 races) are just what we are in real life. Mechanically, they don't play different than each other at all, and don't present any benefits aside from minor tidbits. I'd much rather play the more monstrous races over them any day.Yep. Though I believe some of the near-humans could be far less boring if they came with more interesting and diverse cultures.


You don't have a problem.

This is a game. We play it for fun.

Play the PC you want to play, for whatever reason you want to play him or her. And don't let anybody tell you that your preferences are badwrongfun.While this is all true, it's not particularly relevant AFAICT. I believe the OP was looking for a way to have more fun by not having game details dragging them back to the same race choice over and over.

[tiercel]

If he's talking about the real world, I really can't see any reason why that would be true also in a fantasy world inhabited by several types of sentient creatures aside from real world human counterparts, many of which are (or have the potential to be) more knowledgeable, long-lived, diverse, technologically developed, civilized and/or physically and intellectually powerful than real world humans as well as said counterparts.


This bit I sometimes have a problem with, aka the "elves have a learning disorder" problem -- a first-level elf character vs a first-level human character has relatively little to show for those extra 80-100 years of age. You'd think that even if, yes, most of that time isn't adventurer training per se, there would be a big bonus to either Int or Wis (or Int or Wis based skills) just on the basis of having either a lot more life experience and/or a lot more study. (Yes, OK, game balance, but it still feels unsatisfying from a verisimilitude point of view.)

As for the "advanced elven civilization," I'll just hand that one off to 8-Bit Theater (https://www.nuklearpower.com/2006/04/04/episode-681-of-civilizations/), really. (Again, game balance, since presumably one doesn't want--without a whole lotta extra work, at least--actual sci-fi tech elves with pseudo-medieval-tech humans in the same game, but it does raise the question of elven progress....)

This leads me to problems I have with one common generic elven stereotype: the haughty, self-satisfied, smug-in-sense-of-superiority elf (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter). For game balance reasons, of course elves can't be strictly superior to humans or other races, which gets right up my snoot that this trope still exists in D&D (to the extent that being a "friend to elves" is its own freaking PrC).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

This bit I sometimes have a problem with, aka the "elves have a learning disorder" problem -- a first-level elf character vs a first-level human character has relatively little to show for those extra 80-100 years of age. You'd think that even if, yes, most of that time isn't adventurer training per se, there would be a big bonus to either Int or Wis (or Int or Wis based skills) just on the basis of having either a lot more life experience and/or a lot more study. (Yes, OK, game balance, but it still feels unsatisfying from a verisimilitude point of view.)

As for the "advanced elven civilization," I'll just hand that one off to 8-Bit Theater (https://www.nuklearpower.com/2006/04/04/episode-681-of-civilizations/), really. (Again, game balance, since presumably one doesn't want--without a whole lotta extra work, at least--actual sci-fi tech elves with pseudo-medieval-tech humans in the same game, but it does raise the question of elven progress....)

This leads me to problems I have with one common generic elven stereotype: the haughty, self-satisfied, smug-in-sense-of-superiority elf (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter). For game balance reasons, of course elves can't be strictly superior to humans or other races, which gets right up my snoot that this trope still exists in D&D (to the extent that being a "friend to elves" is its own freaking PrC).Shouldn't elves be in diapers for the first 20 years or so?

So much for "better" if they aren't even potty trained before humans grow to adulthood.

[Crake]

Since you agree with Crake, maybe you could tell me which world he's referring to here; is it our so-called "real" world, the world of a typical D&D setting, or some other world? And maybe you could also help me understand how either alternative makes any sense?

If he's talking about the real world, I really can't see any reason why that would be true also in a fantasy world inhabited by several types of sentient creatures aside from real world human counterparts, many of which are (or have the potential to be) more knowledgeable, long-lived, diverse, technologically developed, civilized and/or physically and intellectually powerful than real world humans as well as said counterparts.

I am indeed talking about the real world, and my point is that humans are plenty interesting, if you can't find a way to make a human character interesting, then the "interesting" part about your non human character will be entirely centered around the fact that they're not human.

This isn't interesting, it's novel, and it won't last very long.

[MisterKaws]

I am indeed talking about the real world, and my point is that humans are plenty interesting, if you can't find a way to make a human character interesting, then the "interesting" part about your non human character will be entirely centered around the fact that they're not human.

This isn't interesting, it's novel, and it won't last very long.

I vehemently disagree there. If you're playing a human, it isn't interesting because it's a human. It's interesting because it is a magician capable of twisting the very fabric of reality, or a worshipper whose faith is so powerful it manifests in tangible form as supernatural effects, or an archer who can shoot from miles away, or a warrior who can stand alone against a thousand man army, or a thief who can steal a dragon's hoard undetected, or anything in-between. Those are interesting character concepts, but they do not relate to race.

As much as you can play a human tree-hugger or god worshipper, you could do it as a bat-boy, and even be better at it. As much as you can play a human fighter, a Goliath or other larger races would be just as uselesseffective. As much as you could play a human mage... Okay, I got nothing on this. LA hurts casting a lot. Gloura is a pretty good Bard race, though, even with the LA.

[upho]

I am indeed talking about the real world, and my point is that humans are plenty interesting...Thanks for the clarification. Although I have to say that I still don't quite see the how "humans are quite literally the most diverse and interesting creatures in the world" translates into the above, much less how such a relative claim about humans in the real world matters when comparing humans to other player races in a D&D setting. I mean, saying that humans are the most diverse and interesting creatures in the real world seems to do little but point out something both blatantly obvious and highly irrelevant this context, since in stark contrast to D&D there isn't exactly an abundance of competition from other species in the real world to my knowledge.


...if you can't find a way to make a human character interesting, then the "interesting" part about your non human character will be entirely centered around the fact that they're not human.I absolutely agree with what you're saying here.

But is there anything keeping you from saying exactly the same thing about any other PC race?


This isn't interesting, it's novel, and it won't last very long.Definitely in the kind of scenario I believe you're thinking of, meaning primarily a player who believes having an exotic race will somehow automatically make their PC more interesting in the eyes of the people sharing the same table. (The player's subjective opinion may of course be different though.)

But I can also imagine other scenarios where your above claim could be seen as quite a bit off, if not flat-out wrong. As I wrote in my previous response to this:
Yes, but at least when it comes to "the most interesting creatures in the world", it's worth noting that you're then assuming a setting very close to our (the so called "real") world and a highly anthropocentric macro perspective. These assumptions are of course often sound and useful when it comes to say designing a fictional setting and describing it for humans in our world, but they're not very relevant from the "in-game" perspective of a specific non-human lead character in a specific story placed in that fictional setting. And that perspective is typically also the far most important for a player.

Or to put in other words, there's absolutely nothing about say the tiefling race which makes it inherently more limited than the human race in terms of how interesting a specific PC may be. And depending on your definition of "interesting", at least from the PoV of the player I find it more plausible that the opposite is true - that non-human races inherently offer a greater potential for an interesting PC than human - because the race-related less anthropocentric perspectives a non-human character may (or arguably must) have are simply not available to a human character.

/snip/

This possibility/requirement of less anthropocentric perspectives exclusive to non-human races is also one of the key reasons why I typically prefer to play non-human PCs, as I simply cannot explore those perspectives through a human PC. I wouldn't be surprised if many other people sharing my preference would say the same.

[ThatMoonGuy]

As someone who just plays humans in D&D, I do it because other races often come too charged with their own baggage. If I decide to make a Wizard who's also a dragon born, that dragon born aspect of it is gone be weighing in my character so I either do something with it or its just gonna be bothering me. Doesn't help that by D&D's very definition, humans are the most varied of races. Just having a +2 to two stats and a -2 to others already puts some baggage on your character not in a mechanical sense but in a personality and lore sense be abuse then you're either "typical" of your race by using those stats for something they're good or "atypical" by playing something that doesn't play to its advantages. And that's not even getting into races with more drastic abilities or shapes, like tri-keen, warforged and so on.

To be completely fair, the concept of "race" and how D&D uses is one of those things that always left me a bit uncomfortable in a conceptual level. I understand that a fantasy game kind of has to have fantastical races but there are some unfortunate implications of the way it's handled. And then there's the issue that while humans are enormously varied in terms of their own races and cultures the other races in D&D settings tend to be fairly monolithic. I mean, dwarves are mostly assumed to be those cave dwelling smiths with long beards and so on but ain't nothing genetic on that, right? So why don't different dwarven cultures develop? And why aren't there any variations inside dwarves and relations of some dwarves with others. And I am not talking about deep dwarves or hill dwarves I'm talking about the dwarves of region X or dwarves of region Y or the dwarves with red beards and the ones with black beards and so on and so on. Elves are even worse. Nothing about them and the way they are built in D&D makes any sort of sense.

So, yeah, those things just keep nagging me so whenever I play, I just go human because I don't want my characters genetic make up to be defining them in such a deterministic way. And when I narrate, I build my own settings where those issues are less pronounced and races have a lot of internal variation (and elves are not immortal, thank you very much).

[Jay R]

Shouldn't elves be in diapers for the first 20 years or so?

So much for "better" if they aren't even potty trained before humans grow to adulthood.

My theory is that for their first eighty years of life, elves are interested in sex, games, politics, football, etc., just like we are. They aren't considered really adult until they grow out of that phase.

This also explains their haughtiness towards humans.

[Xania]

My theory is that for their first eighty years of life, elves are interested in sex, games, politics, football, etc., just like we are. They aren't considered really adult until they grow out of that phase.

This also explains their haughtiness towards humans.


Seems plausible, from there they could become just like dwarves until they are over 300.

[MisterKaws]

My theory is that for their first eighty years of life, elves are interested in sex, games, politics, football, etc., just like we are. They aren't considered really adult until they grow out of that phase.

This also explains their haughtiness towards humans.

Yeah, but their growth is also slower than humans, so they're definitely in diapers for about ten years. Afterwards, I guess another fifteen years until puberty hits on their mid-twenties. I guess elven teenagers are called tenagers instead.

[Psychoalpha]

So why don't different dwarven cultures develop?

Think of how slowly human civilizations change, and how often that has to do with the 'old guard' holding power well beyond any reasonable point. Right now in America we have eighty year old men, who basically think the internet is magic, making rules about what to do with it. Think of social, economic, and technological changes and who traditionally drives them when change does occur, and you usually aren't going to find the old guard at the forefront. Those who have more time use that time to solidify their positions, often internally as much as externally, to the point where so many people have a stereotypically racist grandparent who they just wave off because "Gran's from another time, try to ignore her muttering about XYZ." it's a running gag in pop culture fiction.

Now imagine that people lived for centuries, plural, instead of decades (even if it eventually adds up to a single century). Imagine that the more conservative, traditional elements of society DID NOT have to give way to younger generations, and that those younger generations didn't have to think about the good of their children's children in the same way that humans do because that is literally a thousand years from now. Why not keep doing what has worked so far when 'so far' is actually in the memory of living generations who are invested in what they believe is right, instead of looking back on mistakes made by people long dead who don't have a dog in the fight of whether or not their actions are defensible.

To me, it makes plenty of sense that extremely long lived races like Dwarves and Elves would end up as monocultures who lack the diversity of humanity outside of environmental and minor cultural differences (Hill Dwarf vs Mountain Dwarf) or extreme interference by outside forces (Elves vs Drow). Is it a flawless explanation? Of course not, but it's certainly not unreasonable.

It makes less sense with races whose birth rates and age ranges are similar to humans, obviously, though often I just chalk those things up to the interference of divine powers who are invested in a particular monoculture remaining a monoculture. Orcs who try to split off and become technologically savvy democratic socialists probably get bludgeoned to death by orcs at the behest of a high priest who got word from the force he worships, one who wants orcs to remain savage bullies who pay It fealty, that there would be none of that nonsense.

[Tvtyrant]

As someone who just plays humans in D&D, I do it because other races often come too charged with their own baggage. If I decide to make a Wizard who's also a dragon born, that dragon born aspect of it is gone be weighing in my character so I either do something with it or its just gonna be bothering me. Doesn't help that by D&D's very definition, humans are the most varied of races. Just having a +2 to two stats and a -2 to others already puts some baggage on your character not in a mechanical sense but in a personality and lore sense be abuse then you're either "typical" of your race by using those stats for something they're good or "atypical" by playing something that doesn't play to its advantages. And that's not even getting into races with more drastic abilities or shapes, like tri-keen, warforged and so on.

To be completely fair, the concept of "race" and how D&D uses is one of those things that always left me a bit uncomfortable in a conceptual level. I understand that a fantasy game kind of has to have fantastical races but there are some unfortunate implications of the way it's handled. And then there's the issue that while humans are enormously varied in terms of their own races and cultures the other races in D&D settings tend to be fairly monolithic. I mean, dwarves are mostly assumed to be those cave dwelling smiths with long beards and so on but ain't nothing genetic on that, right? So why don't different dwarven cultures develop? And why aren't there any variations inside dwarves and relations of some dwarves with others. And I am not talking about deep dwarves or hill dwarves I'm talking about the dwarves of region X or dwarves of region Y or the dwarves with red beards and the ones with black beards and so on and so on. Elves are even worse. Nothing about them and the way they are built in D&D makes any sort of sense.

So, yeah, those things just keep nagging me so whenever I play, I just go human because I don't want my characters genetic make up to be defining them in such a deterministic way. And when I narrate, I build my own settings where those issues are less pronounced and races have a lot of internal variation (and elves are not immortal, thank you very much).
Basically the game is designed to allow the DM room to make their own cultures, so Dwarves and Elves are broken down into a few archetypes (Drow, mt Dwarves, Hill Dwarves, etc.) After that it is up to you or the particular setting to do more with them.

In one of my settings about floating continents the Dwarves of each continent are very different from each other, as they separated when the continent broke up and have changed to match their particular area. All of them share a burrow speed and physiological features, but the Dwarves that share a continent with Aberrations are deeply into necromancy and the idea of perpetual duty; undead being immune to psionic mind control they guard the living forever from Mind Flayers and other underground aberrations. In the lower continents this is the highest form of blasphemy, and the emphasis on crypt like engraving and fatalistic world view of those Dwarves is considered disturbing.

The lower continent dwarves are into money, trade, and drugs. They act like a mix of ground pirates (coming up to raid for slaves and to loot villages) and to trade the stolen goods to surface people. They pretend there is a large difference between the two groups; there is a trade costume and a pirate costume and as long as they dress in the trade costume they will commit no aggression so people won't just attack them on sight. Some groups only trade, others only pirate, and some focus on purchasing goods from the others and focus on the extraction of food and materials from underground.

[Crake]

Thanks for the clarification. Although I have to say that I still don't quite see the how "humans are quite literally the most diverse and interesting creatures in the world" translates into the above, much less how such a relative claim about humans in the real world matters when comparing humans to other player races in a D&D setting. I mean, saying that humans are the most diverse and interesting creatures in the real world seems to do little but point out something both blatantly obvious and highly irrelevant this context, since in stark contrast to D&D there isn't exactly an abundance of competition from other species in the real world to my knowledge.

I absolutely agree with what you're saying here.

But is there anything keeping you from saying exactly the same thing about any other PC race?

Definitely in the kind of scenario I believe you're thinking of, meaning primarily a player who believes having an exotic race will somehow automatically make their PC more interesting in the eyes of the people sharing the same table. (The player's subjective opinion may of course be different though.)

But I can also imagine other scenarios where your above claim could be seen as quite a bit off, if not flat-out wrong. As I wrote in my previous response to this:

I'd like to doubly make it clear that I'm speaking entirely from my own experience here. I've mentioned it a few times, but from my observation, the people who rationalize not wanting to play humans due to "humans being boring" strongly correlate with the people who's characters end up being novelties, because it's not that humans are boring, it's that their characters are boring.

As I've mentioned a couple of times already, I've no issue with people who want to play something other than human to mix things up, or to fit a character concept that might not really work with a human or similar humanoid race, or hell, even because there's a race with an interesting or unique mechanical benefit that they want to play around with, my qualm is entirely with the people who claim "humans are boring". Humans are decidedly, and demonstrably not boring, a fact that is backed up by my statement that literally all the most interesting people in our history have been... what do you know, human! Note that saying "Humans are boring" and "Other races are more interesting" are not the same statement by the way. The latter is an acceptable statement, the former is a red flag for me as a DM. A small red flag mind you, but a red flag nontheless.

[ThatMoonGuy]

Think of how slowly human civilizations change, and how often that has to do with the 'old guard' holding power well beyond any reasonable point. Right now in America we have eighty year old men, who basically think the internet is magic, making rules about what to do with it. Think of social, economic, and technological changes and who traditionally drives them when change does occur, and you usually aren't going to find the old guard at the forefront. Those who have more time use that time to solidify their positions, often internally as much as externally, to the point where so many people have a stereotypically racist grandparent who they just wave off because "Gran's from another time, try to ignore her muttering about XYZ." it's a running gag in pop culture fiction.

Now imagine that people lived for centuries, plural, instead of decades (even if it eventually adds up to a single century). Imagine that the more conservative, traditional elements of society DID NOT have to give way to younger generations, and that those younger generations didn't have to think about the good of their children's children in the same way that humans do because that is literally a thousand years from now. Why not keep doing what has worked so far when 'so far' is actually in the memory of living generations who are invested in what they believe is right, instead of looking back on mistakes made by people long dead who don't have a dog in the fight of whether or not their actions are defensible.

To me, it makes plenty of sense that extremely long lived races like Dwarves and Elves would end up as monocultures who lack the diversity of humanity outside of environmental and minor cultural differences (Hill Dwarf vs Mountain Dwarf) or extreme interference by outside forces (Elves vs Drow). Is it a flawless explanation? Of course not, but it's certainly not unreasonable.

It makes less sense with races whose birth rates and age ranges are similar to humans, obviously, though often I just chalk those things up to the interference of divine powers who are invested in a particular monoculture remaining a monoculture. Orcs who try to split off and become technologically savvy democratic socialists probably get bludgeoned to death by orcs at the behest of a high priest who got word from the force he worships, one who wants orcs to remain savage bullies who pay It fealty, that there would be none of that nonsense.

Well, the catch is that even if they themselves change slowly, society around them doesn't. If we look at a very conservative country like Tokugawa Japan, they did try to remain unchanging but the west was having none of that so when the XIXth century came things had to change. Sure, the Japanese are not the dwarves and don't live for centuries but you get my point. If the dwarves tried to remain the same for years that would be no good. Let's say they're friends with human kingdom X and them this kingdom is conquered by another who decides to attack them. How would they deal with that? And what about when technology begins to change and things stop favoring the old ways? Things never remain the same and even population changes can be disruptive to their style of life. And that's without getting into populations that get isolated from others.


Basically the game is designed to allow the DM room to make their own cultures, so Dwarves and Elves are broken down into a few archetypes (Drow, mt Dwarves, Hill Dwarves, etc.) After that it is up to you or the particular setting to do more with them.


But the official published settings, which make a lot of the image of the game, don't do much with this. And most of the people I played with follow the campaign setting's guidelines so they have "the elven culture", "the dwarven culture" and so on and so on. I can't help but feel that the way the concept of "races" is used in D&D is a bit detrimental. But then again, this is coming from someone who always tries to play something that's not human but ends up going ack to the ol' reliable simply because most often that's the flavor that doesn't get in the way of my concept.

Oh, and that's a pretty cool setting you made, really.

[tiercel]

Yeah, but their growth is also slower than humans, so they're definitely in diapers for about ten years. Afterwards, I guess another fifteen years until puberty hits on their mid-twenties. I guess elven teenagers are called tenagers instead.

Out of a sense of morbid curiosity, I checked Races of the Wild, which specifically claims (p.13) that elf children “grow almost as swiftly as human children to age 15 or so,” and reach their full adult height and weight by 25, and that not even another elf can tell just by looking whether an elf is 25 or 100. (Sigh.)

It gets better, too. “Elves gain experience, grace, emotional maturity, patience, and wisdom throughout these ageless decades,” which explains why elves at the starting adventuring age (>100 years) start at higher levels with skill bonuses and boosts to Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma (since elves are wiser, smarter, prettier, and more poised than you) EXCEPT WAIT NO THEY DON’T.

I can only assume that flawlessly beautiful elves (who don’t get a Cha boost because of their attitude) *actually* spend ages 25-100 sitting on their elf couches (better than your couch) eating Elf Cheetos (better than your Cheetos) and watching ElfTV (better than your TV), all while not aging or putting on any weight (or even gaining ranks in Knowledge: ElfTV) because BETTER THAN YOU.

Fluff does not live in same world as crunch, because IT’S ELVES.

[Zaq]

D&D is not, and does not try to be, a fully-functional historical simulator. It’s a fantasy adventure game, usually relatively lighthearted, with a strong focus on the conceit of the adventure undertaken by an “adventuring party.” And while it often fails miserably at being balanced, it does genuinely attempt to maintain some semblance of balance between PC-facing options. (Again, yes, I get that it fails at balance in many ways, but that’s not the general intent.)

You’re 100% right that it doesn’t make worldbuilding sense for super-long-lived races to be at the same general tech level as humans, nor for them to be fundamentally the same at first level despite the major age differences. But it doesn’t make game sense for a player to be able to pick a race that’s just straight up a zillion times more advanced or experienced than their human partner-in-adventuring despite being the same level.

If we start with the premise that we want elves/dwarves/etc. to exist as PCs (because Gygax, Tolkien, simple legacy tradition, whatever) and that we want them to have ultra-long lifespans, the fact that we want them to be PCs is going to force game balance to take precedence over worldbuilding concerns. (We can theoretically debate whether this is good or bad, but given that D&D is an adventure game and not trying to be a fully-functional historical simulation of an entire world, I personally have no problem with it.)

This boils down to the same thing as “why does the economy fall apart when considered under any lens other than PCs gaining power-ups,” “how is it even remotely possible for a dungeon ecology to be self-sustaining,” “why the hell are there literally any drow left when they supposedly keep murdering each other all the time,” and many similar questions. Because the D&D world is first and foremost an adventure game with all those other issues as window dressing. The game does try to present a moderate level of self-consistency and verisimilitude, but stuff that doesn’t directly relate to marauding around in dungeons is never given the same level of attention as stuff that does.

A lot of famous or semi-famous absurdities come from extrapolating out from world elements that only get a few sentences or paragraphs in the text. Which is a perfectly fine way to spend an afternoon, but it’s not reasonable to get hung up on it too much. It’s not intended to model a world that could really exist. It’s intended to give evocative snapshots that spark the reader’s/player’s imagination and make the fantasy roleplay (typically in the context of an adventure) more fun.

Again, yeah, there’s absolutely goofy bits in there. 100%. I agree that elves as a whole are totally ridiculous as presented (for a lot of reasons). But really, it’s not in any way hard to point to the reason why the books were written the way they were.

[Crake]

My theory is that for their first eighty years of life, elves are interested in sex, games, politics, football, etc., just like we are. They aren't considered really adult until they grow out of that phase.

This also explains their haughtiness towards humans.

This is actually directly stated in races of the wild. Elves basically go through a phase between 20-100ish where they go out and dabble in a little bit of everything until they grow out of it and finally settle into a vocation that they're passionate about.


Yeah, but their growth is also slower than humans, so they're definitely in diapers for about ten years. Afterwards, I guess another fifteen years until puberty hits on their mid-twenties. I guess elven teenagers are called tenagers instead.

That's not the case in 3.5. In earlier editions, you'd be correct, but in 3.5 the lore was changed in races of the wild, elves mature at the same rate as humans do.

[ThatMoonGuy]

You’re 100% right that it doesn’t make worldbuilding sense for super-long-lived races to be at the same general tech level as humans, nor for them to be fundamentally the same at first level despite the major age differences. But it doesn’t make game sense for a player to be able to pick a race that’s just straight up a zillion times more advanced or experienced than their human partner-in-adventuring despite being the same level.


That's only sorta true. You could easily make elves begin play with a few extras as long as you gave other races something equivalent. So, all right, Elves are long lived so they have a higher ceiling for their skills and begin play with a bunch of extra skill points and extra Wisdom and Char. That's a bunch but if you give humans a few extra feats at first level (not just one) and gave dwarves some big boosts to some abilities that could balance it out. Those are, obviously, just examples and not really meant to be balanced. I just mean to say that you totally could build a race that's more advanced than some other race in some senses.

I get them not wanting to change the classical races but I can't help but not really buy into it. I'm OK with it existing, mind you, but the thing is that there's no published setting I'm aware of that actually does something different with that base and that is such a shame. Eberron comes close but still isn't quite there.


If we start with the premise that we want elves/dwarves/etc. to exist as PCs (because Gygax, Tolkien, simple legacy tradition, whatever) and that we want them to have ultra-long lifespans, the fact that we want them to be PCs is going to force game balance to take precedence over worldbuilding concerns. (We can theoretically debate whether this is good or bad, but given that D&D is an adventure game and not trying to be a fully-functional historical simulation of an entire world, I personally have no problem with it.)

Again, I don't quite think those things are mutually exclusive. You could have races that are vastly different in game creation but that are still balanced since balance is defined among a certain set of objects and only among them. In GURPS terms, if all characters are built with 50 points or 150 or 300 points they are all balanced no matter what. And if you have that baseline as an assumption you can build the rest (monsters, spells, DCs) around that. So I don't really think there's any reason why elves can't start with something that represent their long lives.



This boils down to the same thing as “why does the economy fall apart when considered under any lens other than PCs gaining power-ups,” “how is it even remotely possible for a dungeon ecology to be self-sustaining,” “why the hell are there literally any drow left when they supposedly keep murdering each other all the time,” and many similar questions. Because the D&D world is first and foremost an adventure game with all those other issues as window dressing. The game does try to present a moderate level of self-consistency and verisimilitude, but stuff that doesn’t directly relate to marauding around in dungeons is never given the same level of attention as stuff that does.

Which is... fine, I think. It's just that it would be a bit finer if there were settings that worked with different assumptions.


A lot of famous or semi-famous absurdities come from extrapolating out from world elements that only get a few sentences or paragraphs in the text. Which is a perfectly fine way to spend an afternoon, but it’s not reasonable to get hung up on it too much. It’s not intended to model a world that could really exist. It’s intended to give evocative snapshots that spark the reader’s/player’s imagination and make the fantasy roleplay (typically in the context of an adventure) more fun.

This part I disagree with. There's no reason that a more realistic world can't be more fun. You can make enormously fantastical settings that are deeply boring or annoying to play in and you can make pretty realistic settings that are quite fun. I, for one, dislike FR. Too much of it is handwaved away and it does not really make up for a kind of feeling that I personally enjoy. The world of Westeros is far more 'realistic' in a sense but I find it more fun than FR because the mechanical aspects of how things interact in it are more appealing to me. Shadowrun and WoD are sort of middle ground and I like them both and The Elder Scrolls, as a setting, is also something I enjoy despite it being far, far more fantastical than Forgotten Realms. So I think getting a bit hung up on it might be kinda worth it, yes.

[MisterKaws]

This is actually directly stated in races of the wild. Elves basically go through a phase between 20-100ish where they go out and dabble in a little bit of everything until they grow out of it and finally settle into a vocation that they're passionate about.



That's not the case in 3.5. In earlier editions, you'd be correct, but in 3.5 the lore was changed in races of the wild, elves mature at the same rate as humans do.

I'm half-sure the Races of Destiny description for Half-Elves directly contradicts this by explicitly mentioning that Half-Elves grow slower than Humans but faster than Elves. I'm gonna check and see if I can find before I get bored again.

EDIT:


Half-elves lead difficult childhoods, regardless of whom they were raised with. A half-elf brought up among humans ages both physically and emotionally slower than his peers. While he may appear to be mature in body, a “teenage” half-elf may still retain the worldview of a much younger child.


If raised among elves, a half-elf often has to cope with the paternalistic attitude or outright condescension that comes from elves who have disdain for the half-elf’s young chronological age.

It's not explicitly, but it sure looks like they're contradicting themselves.

[tiercel]

Because the D&D world is first and foremost an adventure game with all those other issues as window dressing. The game does try to present a moderate level of self-consistency and verisimilitude, but stuff that doesn’t directly relate to marauding around in dungeons is never given the same level of attention as stuff that does.


This is actually directly stated in races of the wild. Elves basically go through a phase between 20-100ish where they go out and dabble in a little bit of everything until they grow out of it and finally settle into a vocation that they're passionate about.

I totally get that elves have to be a viable/comparable PC choice vs other races, and this can mean corners have to be cut, etc, but I’d argue that this is badly done even for player characters. It’s one thing to wave away background fluff that doesn’t have direct impact on dungeon crawling (e.g. “why aren’t elves winning the Space Race to Alpha Centauri while humans are still all ‘you have discovered Agriculture!’?”) and another to ask “what was my 1st level elf PC doing for a backstory possibly longer than all of the rest of the party’s lives combined?”

I find it especially galling because it’s not like the fluff would have been hard to fix: for starters, if elves reach physical maturity at 25, then let elf adventurer starting age be...25. (A human adventurer can start out at 16, for Pete’s sake.). A quick patch on elf civilization is to just not make it be thousands of years older than everyone else’s; either it didn’t start all that long ago, period—elves only appeared around when other races did—or else elves had fey forebears and only recently became elves per se, or there were ancient elf civilizations but they completely disappeared/died out and there is no unbroken line to the current elves starting anew, etc. Quit with all the references to “superior elven beauty” or “superior elven artisanship” when what you are talking about is a bunch of dilettantes who don’t have the skill ranks to back up the fluff, or else establish that elves are most a bunch of mid to high level Experts as they get decades or centuries under their belt (and PCs, being Young and Different, won’t necessarily fit the mold, of course).

For that matter, even with the starting adventuring age cut relatively down to 25, give elves the Jack of All Trades feat, at least, to make them even barely minimally functional dilettantes. (Something like the Bardic Knack ACF would probably be a better fit, but I get it, game balance.)

As given, elf PCs spend ~75 years knocking around doing “a little bit of everything” while learning literally nothing beyond what, basic training with a couple of swords and bows? Pffft. That fails even from even a basic game perspective, never mind worldbuilding. (“To be a real elf, first you have to completely waste an entire human lifetime while being agelessly young-looking, thin, and beautiful, just because you can!”)

[Tvtyrant]

But the official published settings, which make a lot of the image of the game, don't do much with this. And most of the people I played with follow the campaign setting's guidelines so they have "the elven culture", "the dwarven culture" and so on and so on. I can't help but feel that the way the concept of "races" is used in D&D is a bit detrimental. But then again, this is coming from someone who always tries to play something that's not human but ends up going ack to the ol' reliable simply because most often that's the flavor that doesn't get in the way of my concept.

Oh, and that's a pretty cool setting you made, really.

I can see that being an issue. Spelljammer and Dark Sun got away from stereotypes but also stayed fairly mono-cultured. DMs I don't really know why, maybe fear that players will not feel at home in a changed setting?

Thanks :)

[upho]

I'd like to doubly make it clear that I'm speaking entirely from my own experience here. I've mentioned it a few times, but from my observation, the people who rationalize not wanting to play humans due to "humans being boring" strongly correlate with the people who's characters end up being novelties, because it's not that humans are boring, it's that their characters are boring.I got this, and if I had shared your experiences of playing with people having not just boring PCs, but also such frustratingly poor ideas on how to fix that issue, I'd probably also be pointing out that the human race isn't what makes a boring PC boring.


As I've mentioned a couple of times already, I've no issue with people who want to play something other than human to mix things up, or to fit a character concept that might not really work with a human or similar humanoid race, or hell, even because there's a race with an interesting or unique mechanical benefit that they want to play around with, my qualm is entirely with the people who claim "humans are boring".I got this as well. But now that you mention it again, I realize that I have, as far as I've been able to tell and can remember, for the last 30 years or so only played with people you would have no issue with on this matter. And if anything, my experiences are actually the opposite of yours in this regard; players with the greatest tendency to make interesting PCs are also the ones with the greatest tendency to play some exotic non-human, while those who tend to make less interesting PCs are the ones who prefer to play a human or near-human.


Humans are decidedly, and demonstrably not boring, a fact that is backed up by my statement that literally all the most interesting people in our history have been... what do you know, human! I'm pretty sure I understand what you're trying to say here, which I agree with. What I take issue with is the particular argument. The part I've emphasized makes it a pretty horrendous fallacy of incomplete evidence, ignoring the fact that there are no other people in our history. Which perhaps most notably means that the opposite of the emphasized part is equally true. And of course, the opposite would also make the related argument just as much of a fallacy:

"Humans are decidedly, and demonstrably boring, a fact that is backed up by my statement that literally all the most boring people in our history have been... what do you know, human!"

I hope that makes my point more clear.


Note that saying "Humans are boring" and "Other races are more interesting" are not the same statement by the way.Of course not, and please note that I've never claimed otherwise. But if I've unintentionally somehow appeared to have suggested otherwise, I apologize for my lacking eloquence.


I totally get that elves have to be a viable/comparable PC choice vs other races, and this can mean corners have to be cut, etc, but I’d argue that this is badly done even for player characters.Indeed. And this is the very reason I don't have any such long-lived near-human PC races in my homebrew setting. It does include some mechanically quite a bit more powerful PC race options, some of which are also at least superficially and mechanically decidedly less human than D&D elves. And elves actually exist, but they're outsiders much closer to the Ljósálfar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%B6kk%C3%A1lfar_and_Lj%C3%B3s%C3%A1lfar) ("Light-Elves") found in Tolkien's main source of inspiration, and generally don't live on the same plane as the PC races.

[Divine Susuryu]

The part I've emphasized makes it a pretty horrendous fallacy of incomplete evidence, ignoring the fact that there are no other people in our history. Which perhaps most notably means that the opposite of the emphasized part is equally true. And of course, the opposite would also make the related argument just as much of a fallacy:

"Humans are decidedly, and demonstrably boring, a fact that is backed up by my statement that literally all the most boring people in our history have been... what do you know, human!"

I hope that makes my point more clear.


Hate to be that guy, but it isn't fallacious - he provided examples of non-boring humans to disprove the statement "humans are boring". Indeed, an example of one non-boring human disproves "humans are boring", althout it wouldn't disprove the more specific "some humans are boring". Your statement still is fallacious though, as providing examples of boring humans proves that, again, "some humans are boring."

That is, of course, taking "humans are boring" to mean "all humans are boring", but I'd argue that's the most natural interpretation of the phrase, as there's no qualifier to make the word "humans" seem like anything other than referring to the total set of all humans.

[DMwithoutPC's]

I can relate to the issue mentioned here, allthough in the end I do not believe i play more humans then non-humans. I do feel the urge, however, whenever i build characters.

In the end building a character is about hte story I want to tell, and I make my choice of race based on that. However, there is also a matter of optimization, and I am not immune to the lure of +1 feat and +1 skill point. It is fun to add cool options to your character, and be good at many things, or very good at one thing. And Humans make that easier. So always while building, at one point I'll think. "can't I just make them human..."


Also, if i wnat to go for a specific build, human often is preferable to. A lot of the fun of 3.5 is the crazy amount of Character options that there are. And If want to do a specific concept based on a PrC or a combination of feats, humans are often the easiest way to get there.

For humans being boring, or Non-Human characters being less real because you cannot relate. I see where both statements come from. I like the way trying to think from a completely different perspective makes me act creatively, but I also have seen mono-culture characters be less exciting, espcecially from people with less roleplaying experience, who are not sure what to do personality-wise with their character.

In the end I think that issue comes down to personal preference. Do you feel hindered by the baggage of a playing a different race, or challenged by it.


for the OP. If you want to break free of playing humans, try to start thinking of a personality, a story, the culture a character grew up in and how that shaped them, and not about the stats and the build. Or if you then find out you have no desire to play as anything other then human, don't!

[Crake]

I got this, and if I had shared your experiences of playing with people having not just boring PCs, but also such frustratingly poor ideas on how to fix that issue, I'd probably also be pointing out that the human race isn't what makes a boring PC boring.

I got this as well. But now that you mention it again, I realize that I have, as far as I've been able to tell and can remember, for the last 30 years or so only played with people you would have no issue with on this matter. And if anything, my experiences are actually the opposite of yours in this regard; players with the greatest tendency to make interesting PCs are also the ones with the greatest tendency to play some exotic non-human, while those who tend to make less interesting PCs are the ones who prefer to play a human or near-human.

I never actually said that the people who play humans at my table were any more or less interesting, just that the ones who argue that "humans are boring" tend to make boring characters. Plenty of my players make very interesting non-human characters, and some of the most notable PCs in my setting were non-humans.


I'm pretty sure I understand what you're trying to say here, which I agree with. What I take issue with is the particular argument. The part I've emphasized makes it a pretty horrendous fallacy of incomplete evidence, ignoring the fact that there are no other people in our history. Which perhaps most notably means that the opposite of the emphasized part is equally true. And of course, the opposite would also make the related argument just as much of a fallacy:

"Humans are decidedly, and demonstrably boring, a fact that is backed up by my statement that literally all the most boring people in our history have been... what do you know, human!"

I hope that makes my point more clear.

That's not quite true. This is an "All are" vs "Not all are" logical statement. You can have "not all humans are boring" vs "all humans are boring". They are mutually exclusive statements. The complimentary to "not all humans are boring" is "Some humans are boring". But if only some humans are boring, then it's clearly not the fact that they're human that makes them boring, since there are humans who are not boring. If I can prove that at least 1 human isn't boring, then the line that humans are boring is false.


Of course not, and please note that I've never claimed otherwise. But if I've unintentionally somehow appeared to have suggested otherwise, I apologize for my lacking eloquence.

I was more just clarifying in general to make sure we're all on the same page, and to make sure that people weren't assuming I was equating the two statements.

Edit: Oop, looks like someone already brought up the point about all vs not all


Hate to be that guy, but it isn't fallacious - he provided examples of non-boring humans to disprove the statement "humans are boring". Indeed, an example of one non-boring human disproves "humans are boring", althout it wouldn't disprove the more specific "some humans are boring". Your statement still is fallacious though, as providing examples of boring humans proves that, again, "some humans are boring."

That is, of course, taking "humans are boring" to mean "all humans are boring", but I'd argue that's the most natural interpretation of the phrase, as there's no qualifier to make the word "humans" seem like anything other than referring to the total set of all humans.

Well said.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Remember, part of the issue (at least, for me) is that "human" encompasses all the races in the PHB and their offshoots. Elves are basically humans with pointy ears and really large 401k's (and egos). Dwarves are short stocky Scottish humans with beards (and are drunkards living in holes). Gnomes are really short humans with a tendency to make things that explode (intentionally or otherwise).

3e D&D actively pushes this paradigm and actively punishes anyone who goes against it, making non-human characters weak through crappy stats or seriously sucky RHD and LA that nerfs them for being interesting.

If you're not "human," you're a monster, and monsters are there to be murderblender'd, with no shades of grey.

I can't play a minotaur because the Core designers considered me just a bag of XP and loot with horns. I can't play a coatl because XP, loot, and wings. Etc. Even the halfbreeds of the regular races were nerfed hard. Half-elves and half-orcs are both awful compared to their parent races, because apparently the devs considered them to be too "exotic," so no one should play them.

It got at least a little better later in 3.X's run, with monstrous options for players with enough imagination to expand their horizons, but by that point the damage had been done and the process largely continued uninterrupted.

It's extremely annoying.

[Crake]

Remember, part of the issue (at least, for me) is that "human" encompasses all the races in the PHB and their offshoots. Elves are basically humans with pointy ears and really large 401k's (and egos). Dwarves are short stocky Scottish humans with beards (and are drunkards living in holes). Gnomes are really short humans with a tendency to make things that explode (intentionally or otherwise).

3e D&D actively pushes this paradigm and actively punishes anyone who goes against it, making non-human characters weak through crappy stats or seriously sucky RHD and LA that nerfs them for being interesting.

If you're not "human," you're a monster, and monsters are there to be murderblender'd, with no shades of grey.

I can't play a minotaur because the Core designers considered me just a bag of XP and loot with horns. I can't play a coatl because XP, loot, and wings. Etc. Even the halfbreeds of the regular races were nerfed hard. Half-elves and half-orcs are both awful compared to their parent races, because apparently the devs considered them to be too "exotic," so no one should play them.

It got at least a little better later in 3.X's run, with monstrous options for players with enough imagination to expand their horizons, but by that point the damage had been done and the process largely continued uninterrupted.

It's extremely annoying.

As a DM who's DMed many monstrous races, the answer is in unearthed arcana, and no, i'm not talking about LA buyoff. Gestalt is the answer to being able to play monstrous races, hands down works the best.

[MisterKaws]

As a DM who's DMed many monstrous races, the answer is in unearthed arcana, and no, i'm not talking about LA buyoff. Gestalt is the answer to being able to play monstrous races, hands down works the best.

I thought so as well. starting the game with a certain specified number of gestalted monstrous levels, isn't it? I had this idea before but would be hard to find a party interested in that high of a level around these parts.

[ShurikVch]

Out of a sense of morbid curiosity, I checked Races of the Wild, which specifically claims (p.13) that elf children “grow almost as swiftly as human children to age 15 or so,” and reach their full adult height and weight by 25, and that not even another elf can tell just by looking whether an elf is 25 or 100. (Sigh.)

It gets better, too. “Elves gain experience, grace, emotional maturity, patience, and wisdom throughout these ageless decades,” which explains why elves at the starting adventuring age (>100 years) start at higher levelsThey don't start at higher levels by the same reason why Human Wizard who studied his craft for 7 years doesn't start adventuring at higher level than another Human Wizard - who studied for just a couple of years.


with skill bonuses+2 on Listen, Search, and Spot; Automatic Search for secret doors; some other bonuses for racial variants...

and boosts to Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma (since elves are wiser, smarter, prettier, and more poised than you) EXCEPT WAIT NO THEY DON’T.Well, Fire, Ghost, and Gray Elves are got +2 Int; Star Elves - +2 Cha; Drow and Umbragen - +2 to both Cha and Int... (Amusingly, nothing for Wis :smallamused:)


I can only assume that flawlessly beautiful elves (who don’t get a Cha boost because of their attitude) *actually* spend ages 25-100 sitting on their elf couches (better than your couch) eating Elf Cheetos (better than your Cheetos) and watching ElfTV (better than your TV), all while not aging or putting on any weight (or even gaining ranks in Knowledge: ElfTV) because BETTER THAN YOU.Guess what?.. (http://michaeldashow.com/portfolio/wandering-monsters/) :smallwink:

In short: elves may grow to physical maturity at 25 years, but their psychoemotional maturity stays that of a child (or, more likely, teenager) for the next 80 years

[Crake]

I thought so as well. starting the game with a certain specified number of gestalted monstrous levels, isn't it? I had this idea before but would be hard to find a party interested in that high of a level around these parts.

Well, I also combine it with savage progressions. So players have the option to gestalt two classes, or to gestalt a class and a savage progression. If a savage progression doesn't exist for the race they want to play, I make one up for them. That way you can start at level 1, 5, or whatever level you want really.

[Segev]

In short: elves may grow to physical maturity at 25 years, but their psychoemotional maturity stays that of a child (or, more likely, teenager) for the next 80 years

This lends credence to the plea for elf adventurer starting age to be 25ish. Adventuring is the elven equivalent of backpacking across Europe to "find yourself." It's also more than a little rebellious, because elves are overprotective of their kids, who they (rightfully, in this interpretation) view as young, inexperienced, and immature. The exposure of teenaged humans to 25-50 year old elves who remain teen-ish in attitude lends credence to the "CG" stereotype, and even the "serious" elves of this age who go out and about take themselves way TOO seriously (in the manner of a 15-year-old who wants to be taken as seriously as a 45-year-old in modern human society), and both have a bit of the "better than YOU because we're ELVEN with TRADITION behind us" attitude carried from their parents but without the life experience to back it up and temper the attitude with reality.

So elves want to keep these physically-grown twerps home and studying dozens of crafts in great detail but very slowly, distracting them and keeping them occupied until they grow up about 90 years later, but they don't always succeed, and thus elven adventurers are the rebellious and juvenile-minded "teens" of their race.


Personally, I like my own take where they age just that slowly, and, yes, are in diapers for years (or, rather, elven parents have been alive long enough that they probably have a prestidigitation "diaper" that is self-cleaning as it's used, and only replace it with soil-able ones when the kid is getting old enough and learned enough meditation to appreciate the lesson in self-cleaning and potty-training, which probably lasts for a few months to a year at most and is considered embarrassing for the kid). Raising a child takes decades, and they achieve physical maturity (At least comparable to a 15-year-old human) at about 105 or 110.

[upho]

Hate to be that guy, butNo please don't hate yourself for being the guy doing me a favor! Thank you for helping me see potential very likely errors in my understanding, reasoning and communication. I've repeatedly proven myself senile enough to be in desperate need of precisely such kindness, and I am bound to prove so yet again in this post, believe me... :smallredface:


it isn't fallacious - he provided examples of non-boring humans to disprove the statement "humans are boring". Indeed, an example of one non-boring human disproves "humans are boring", althout it wouldn't disprove the more specific "some humans are boring".Could you please explain in greater detail how you come to this conclusion? It appears that no matter how hard I try myself, the closest related thing my poor brain is able to tell his statement does is to prove that some humans in our world are less boring/more interesting than others.

Let me try further explaining the two major problems I see with the statement:


1. It says "all the most interesting people" without including a relevant comparison from which this superlative quality derives. Instead, it implies the superlative is exclusively based on a comparison of the most interesting human individuals in our history with the supposedly less interesting ones. I can't see how the value of thing A (the most interesting humans) which is defined by how it compares to the value of B (the least interesting humans) can possibly predict anything about the relative value of A compared to the value of C (halflings), D (dragonborn) or E (aasimar). In other words, the fact that some humans are interesting when compared to others tells me absolutely nothing about whether any or all humans are less interesting than D&D non-humans, and consequently it remains fully possible that humans are indeed boring in such exotic company.


2. The implied actual meaning of "humans are boring" in this context is basically "human PCs are boring in comparison to PCs of other races in D&D", most importantly because without such a relevant comparison to define "boring" in the context, the statement has no meaning. Hence, this is the claim that must be disproved, not some inane claim that all humans are boring regardless of context or whom or what they're compared to. And the statement discussed above certainly has not done so.

Because of these problems, in my eyes the statement basically says (with some poor attempts at witty sarcasm to highlight the absurd results of the problems):


"To everyone's great surprise, it has become evident that all the most interesting people in our history of exclusively human people are actually all human! And because some humans in our history are more interesting than others, the only logical conclusion is that some human PCs in typical D&D worlds must also be interesting when instead to compared to non-human PCs in said worlds. Which in turn means we have finally proven that humans are decidedly and demonstrably not boring as PCs!" :smallamused:


That is, of course, taking "humans are boring" to mean "all humans are boring", but I'd argue that's the most natural interpretation of the phrase, as there's no qualifier to make the word "humans" seem like anything other than referring to the total set of all humans.I think you're missing two things here. First, there are as mentioned above very good reasons for not taking "humans are boring" to mean "all humans are boring" in this context, using the obvious qualifiers heavily implied by the context. Second, believe the kind minimalist logical analysis largely outside of context you seem to suggest here also immediately run into other definition and value issues, such as how you're supposed know what "boring" or "interesting" actually is without comparison and the full context.

[tiercel]

They don't start at higher levels by the same reason why Human Wizard who studied his craft for 7 years doesn't start adventuring at higher level than another Human Wizard - who studied for just a couple of years.

+2 on Listen, Search, and Spot; Automatic Search for secret doors; some other bonuses for racial variants...
Well, Fire, Ghost, and Gray Elves are got +2 Int; Star Elves - +2 Cha; Drow and Umbragen - +2 to both Cha and Int... (Amusingly, nothing for Wis :smallamused:)

There is an arguable difference between “one person earned a magic PhD in 4 years and another person earned it in 8, but they’re both level 1 noob PhDs” and “one person earned their PhD in 4 years and the other earned it in 80” — either that second person did a lot, lot, lot, LOT more (in the PhD or doing a lot of unrelated work experience in the meantime), or we are talking about the worst grad school experience ever (and not the norm for a whole race).

As for elf skill boosts and free-Search, as presented those arguably aren’t learned, they are the result of “keen elven senses” (i.e. better than yours, inherently).

As for ability adjustments then yes, if we are going Baskin-Robbins 64 elf flavors then you can mostly get the stat boosts you want, but generic elves don’t get any mental stat boosts despite RotW’s fluff about general elf society. That there are +Int elven subraces says less about elves as a whole and more about having a ridiculous panoply of elf flavors. (Also, Drow come with LA as well, which is what I would expect from an elf that even somewhat mechanically matched RotW’s fluff.)


Guess what?.. (http://michaeldashow.com/portfolio/wandering-monsters/)

Ha! Counterpoint: 75 years is a long time to do virtually nothing but play D&D, especially given the humans who pursue RPGs while earning a degree and/or holding a job ;)


In short: elves may grow to physical maturity at 25 years, but their psychoemotional maturity stays that of a child (or, more likely, teenager) for the next 80 years


This lends credence to the plea for elf adventurer starting age to be 25ish. Adventuring is the elven equivalent of backpacking across Europe to "find yourself."

Given that the starting human adventurer age is 16, it tells me that you really don’t have to reach psychoemotional maturity before becoming an adventurer. —In point of fact, I would argue that fully reaching maturity would strongly select against becoming an adventurer, since you have to be at least arguably mildly insane to constantly subject yourself to “a lot of freakish monsters who will almost all try to kill me” for the express purpose of killing them first and take their stuff. (Yes, yes, save the villagers, defeat the Dark Lord, get the wastrel prince down out of a tree, but we all know what most adventurers in D&D are really signing up for.)

[upho]

I never actually said that the people who play humans at my table were any more or less interesting, just that the ones who argue that "humans are boring" tend to make boring characters. Plenty of my players make very interesting non-human characters, and some of the most notable PCs in my setting were non-humans.Ah, I see.


That's not quite true. This is an "All are" vs "Not all are" logical statement. You can have "not all humans are boring" vs "all humans are boring". They are mutually exclusive statements. The complimentary to "not all humans are boring" is "Some humans are boring". But if only some humans are boring, then it's clearly not the fact that they're human that makes them boring, since there are humans who are not boring. If I can prove that at least 1 human isn't boring, then the line that humans are boring is false.Your're missing the big point: all your statement actually says is that some humans in our history are more interesting in comparison to others. So what? There's absolutely nothing about that fact which disproves the claim that "humans are boring" in the context in question, or tells us anything about how boring or interesting D&D humans are compared to D&D non-humans.

There's simply zero provable correlation between on the one hand how interesting RL humans may be in the RL context where they're compared to other RL humans, and on the other how interesting D&D humans are in the "adventurer PC"-context where they're compared to D&D non-humans. Please see my reply to Divine Susuryu above for further details.

[Divine Susuryu]

I wrote a lot here but deleted it, because it's actually really simply stated. Myself and Crake are reading "humans are boring" to mean only what it says and nothing more. No implication, no further meaning, just a mundane proposition of "a is b". Upho, correct me if I'm wrong you seem to be reading into it, as opposed to merely reading it. I am entirely confident that is the source of our disagreement. I am also confident that you don't disagree that non-boring humans exist, we don't disagree that some people find other races more interesting.

If someone means "other races are more interesting than humans in D&D", they should say that, not "humans are boring", because those two statements have different meanings.

[MisterKaws]

I wrote a lot here but deleted it, because it's actually really simply stated. Myself and Crake are reading "humans are boring" to mean only what it says and nothing more. No implication, no further meaning, just a mundane proposition of "a is b". Upho, correct me if I'm wrong you seem to be reading into it, as opposed to merely reading it. I am entirely confident that is the source of our disagreement. I am also confident that you don't disagree that non-boring humans exist, we don't disagree that some people find other races more interesting.

If someone means "other races are more interesting than humans in D&D", they should say that, not "humans are boring", because those two statements have different meanings.

My problem with those said Human characters are interesting not by virtue of being human, meaning (human->interesting) is not true. In the case of those said real-life Human characters, are they the most interesting because they're Human, or because Anthro-Octopi still don't exist? What about Anthro-Octopus-Crabs? I'd say real-life Zoidberg would beat most humans in those terms.

[ThatMoonGuy]

My problem with those said Human characters are interesting not by virtue of being human, meaning (human->interesting) is not true. In the case of those said real-life Human characters, are they the most interesting because they're Human, or because Anthro-Octopi still don't exist? What about Anthro-Octopus-Crabs? I'd say real-life Zoidberg would beat most humans in those terms.

Well, Ocapi exist but are they more interesting than, say, cats? Aye-ayes too exist and so does dogs but which one you think is more interesting? Something being weird or exotic does not automatically make it interesting, just... Weird and exotic. Let's say you made House of Cards but instead of having everyone be a human they're all thri-keen and nothing else changed. Would this make House of Cards better? I for one do not think so.

An octobeing wouldn't be more interesting just for being an octopi being. It would be novel but if all that he is is an octopus then once you get used to it, it stops being interesting and can actually get a bit grating.

And humans can be incredibly interesting, not as individuals but as culyurrs. Did you know that there are tribes of humans who, as a rite of passage, shove their hands in a glove of ants whose bites hurt like bullets? And not just once. They do that, like seven times. And if you go into any modern urban city you'll find a huge world of different cultures, subcultures and countercultures that have such deeply divergent social behaviors, beliefs and norms yet live in the same general geographical area. It's fascinating how complex human societies can be.

What makes something interesting is not necessarily its biology and physical attributes but its culture. If you make a race of three armed insectoids and don't put even a single line about their culture and way of life that would be boring. They would be boring. But if you make a culture that's highly complex and perhaps heavily different from ours that would be massively interesting wether it's a culture of living rock beasts or run of the mill homo sapiens sapiens.

Thus my argument is that no race is interesting by virtue of it being a certain race but just by virtue of the cultures they have. You could make the case that a different biology would mean a different way of life but, again, what's interesting is not the biology but how it affects the society built around it.

[MisterKaws]

Well, Ocapi exist but are they more interesting than, say, cats? Aye-ayes too exist and so does dogs but which one you think is more interesting? Something being weird or exotic does not automatically make it interesting, just... Weird and exotic. Let's say you made House of Cards but instead of having everyone be a human they're all thri-keen and nothing else changed. Would this make House of Cards better? I for one do not think so.

An octobeing wouldn't be more interesting just for being an octopi being. It would be novel but if all that he is is an octopus then once you get used to it, it stops being interesting and can actually get a bit grating.

And humans can be incredibly interesting, not as individuals but as culyurrs. Did you know that there are tribes of humans who, as a rite of passage, shove their hands in a glove of ants whose bites hurt like bullets? And not just once. They do that, like seven times. And if you go into any modern urban city you'll find a huge world of different cultures, subcultures and countercultures that have such deeply divergent social behaviors, beliefs and norms yet live in the same general geographical area. It's fascinating how complex human societies can be.

What makes something interesting is not necessarily its biology and physical attributes but its culture. If you make a race of three armed insectoids and don't put even a single line about their culture and way of life that would be boring. They would be boring. But if you make a culture that's highly complex and perhaps heavily different from ours that would be massively interesting wether it's a culture of living rock beasts or run of the mill homo sapiens sapiens.

Thus my argument is that no race is interesting by virtue of it being a certain race but just by virtue of the cultures they have. You could make the case that a different biology would mean a different way of life but, again, what's interesting is not the biology but how it affects the society built around it.

And now you spoke a nice argument.

That said, novelty is what appeals to newcomers to any single race. Intricacy makes them stay. That's two different layers of interest right there. My argument is that humans already have no novelty because of them being overused. Any competent DM could make societies a thousand times more interesting by using a novel race, or a group of novel race.

Imagine if they put the same amount of effort that went into developing human comunities into developing Dvati communities instead. What about a race of tribal tree octopi (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23707416&postcount=73) who made their homes layered all over gigantic trees, similar to Sharn, but more natural? Maybe their houses extend after the forest and into a massive sea-like river. They could have odd crafts which are impossible to make with human limbs, instruments that can only be played with six arms. That seems so much more interesting than generic fantasy town #525300887039.

I also toyed around with an idea of a world where all humans are secretly dominated by Awakened Cats ever since Catgod ascended to divinity after awakening all cats in the material plane. The cats' Handle Human scores are so high, humans can't even notice they are simply being subverted by the feline overlords' mind control. Pet care houses could actually be secret council halls operated by high-ranking cat officers(who have their human pets in the human congress) to govern the cities from the shadows. Cats would manipulate human politics by altering their subconscious to a point where the councilmen in control are always the humans taken as pets by the cat rulers.

It just seems so much better than another generic fantasy world. At least Eberron does it better by mixing things up, though.

[Divine Susuryu]

My problem with those said Human characters are interesting not by virtue of being human, meaning (human->interesting) is not true.

Imprecise - what you are saying there is "being human does not make you not boring" not "humans are boring". They don't need to be interesting by virtue of being human, they just need to be interesting. I also don't believe that something not being human inherently makes something interesting - look at your stereotypical dwarves, elves, and orcs. Dull as dishwater. There isn't really any single quality that can be associated with interestingness all the time. Everything can be done boringly.

[MisterKaws]

look at your stereotypical dwarves, elves, and orcs. Dull as dishwater.

We've been describing those as 'humans with plastic surgery' since the second page, I think.

[Divine Susuryu]

We've been describing those as 'humans with plastic surgery' since the second page, I think.

You can describe them as such, but they're still distinct from humans in-universe. I suspect the comparison may be a function of blandness rather than a cause of it anyway. They're really just insufficiently differentiated. Might as well take the opportunity to spitball some alternative takes that I think would be interesting. Note that these come with mechanical changes, obviously.

Dwarves that reproduce by being carved out of stone then given life by an underground spring, living in networks of small direct democracies, with the veneration of darkness as the sacred and light as the profane, representing lowness as being good and height as being bad.

Elves and orcs that are the same species, the differentiation being caused in the equivalent of puberty, elves being the social and spiritual types, orcs being the intellectual and physical types, with a mixed technocratic government that appoints one of each type to each position.

Halfling plutocrats that act as creditors for other races, having less of their own society and more of a meta-society made of a network of their banks and guilds throughout the cities, with social rank being determined by how much debt you have paid off.

[ShurikVch]

This lends credence to the plea for elf adventurer starting age to be 25ish. Adventuring is the elven equivalent of backpacking across Europe to "find yourself." It's also more than a little rebellious, because elves are overprotective of their kids, who they (rightfully, in this interpretation) view as young, inexperienced, and immature. The exposure of teenaged humans to 25-50 year old elves who remain teen-ish in attitude lends credence to the "CG" stereotype, and even the "serious" elves of this age who go out and about take themselves way TOO seriously (in the manner of a 15-year-old who wants to be taken as seriously as a 45-year-old in modern human society), and both have a bit of the "better than YOU because we're ELVEN with TRADITION behind us" attitude carried from their parents but without the life experience to back it up and temper the attitude with reality.

So elves want to keep these physically-grown twerps home and studying dozens of crafts in great detail but very slowly, distracting them and keeping them occupied until they grow up about 90 years later, but they don't always succeed, and thus elven adventurers are the rebellious and juvenile-minded "teens" of their race.About the elven "childrern" (visually indistinguishable from adults) adventuring - there is one "slight" problem: no magic!
Because, let's see:
Divine magic? Well, firstly, you should be a faithful follower (which isn't that simple for a child). Then, I hope deities are sensible enough to don't give dangerous toys to a children.
Sorcery? No luck there too: sorcerous abilities are inactive until the maturity (which is - for Elves - 110 years, not 25)
Wizardry? Will you entrust a child with phenomenal cosmic power?



There is an arguable difference between “one person earned a magic PhD in 4 years and another person earned it in 8, but they’re both level 1 noob PhDs” and “one person earned their PhD in 4 years and the other earned it in 80” — either that second person did a lot, lot, lot, LOT more (in the PhD or doing a lot of unrelated work experience in the meantime), or we are talking about the worst grad school experience ever (and not the norm for a whole race).There you're incorrect: Elves don't learning being Wizards for 80 years - by the same reason Humans don't learning being Commoners for 16 years: most of that time they, presumably, do more or less nothing (since Commoner restricts default abilities rather than expands them)
You're a bit right - Elves are kinda slow learners: if Human can master "simple" classes - like Barbarian or Sorcerer - in just a year (if he's good or lucky), Elves spent on it at least 4 years, and learning the most difficult classes may take up to 60 years (still not 80)


As for elf skill boosts and free-Search, as presented those arguably aren’t learned, they are the result of “keen elven senses” (i.e. better than yours, inherently).Well, Desert Elves got +2 on Handle Animal, which is "Trained only" skill.
Again "better than yours"? :smallamused:


(Also, Drow come with LA as well, which is what I would expect from an elf that even somewhat mechanically matched RotW’s fluff.)Well, in the Dark Sun, "standard" Elves are starting with LA +1.
(Although "standard" Elves in the Dark Sun aren't the same as "standard" Elves in the Player's Handbook)
IMHO: game designers made sensible choice between the:
Make Elves so powerful they would be stronger than any other race, so nobody wouldn't play non-Elves;
As above, but provide them with so high LA nobody would play Elves;
Nerf Elves to make them comparable with the other Core races.


Given that the starting human adventurer age is 16, it tells me that you really don’t have to reach psychoemotional maturity before becoming an adventurer.Don't compare our modern standards to different faux-Medieval world.
For example: You know what was marriageable age in the Medieval Europe?
14 years!
It's - for boys.
And without the parental consent!


—In point of fact, I would argue that fully reaching maturity would strongly select against becoming an adventurer, since you have to be at least arguably mildly insane to constantly subject yourself to “a lot of freakish monsters who will almost all try to kill me” for the express purpose of killing them first and take their stuff.You're hilariously underestimating the power of propaganda: when everywhere over the wold songs sung and tales told about the adventures of famous heroes, there wouldn't be any shortage of would-be adventures to replace those heroes when they got old (or perished - probably, in sufficiently heroic fashion).
(Heck, just look at the IRL: how many young people want to become a firefighter, policeman, soldier, airman, spaceman? Or, sometimes, something "less commendable" - like gangster...)
Sometimes, something so simple as "I will become a hero to protect my settlement from wandering monsters" will be enough to start the adventuring career...

[ThatMoonGuy]

p=23707416&postcount=73"]a race of tribal tree octopi[/URL] who made their homes layered all over gigantic trees, similar to Sharn, but more natural? Maybe their houses extend after the forest and into a massive sea-like river. They could have odd crafts which are impossible to make with human limbs, instruments that can only be played with six arms. That seems so much more interesting than generic fantasy town #525300887039.

I also toyed around with an idea of a world where all humans are secretly dominated by Awakened Cats ever since Catgod ascended to divinity after awakening all cats in the material plane. The cats' Handle Human scores are so high, humans can't even notice they are simply being subverted by the feline overlords' mind control. Pet care houses could actually be secret council halls operated by high-ranking cat officers(who have their human pets in the human congress) to govern the cities from the shadows. Cats would manipulate human politics by altering their subconscious to a point where the councilmen in control are always the humans taken as pets by the cat rulers.

It just seems so much better than another generic fantasy world. At least Eberron does it better by mixing things up, though.

I completely agree with you here, in all points, really. When all is said and done I think the issue is always more that most of the published settings, specially those that compose what can be understood as the"image" of D&D (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, etc) tend to be on the less interesting side of things. In a sense, it's a bit like what happens in TES where despite the existence of Morrowind and all its weirdness the image people have of the series nowadays is Skyrim which, while cool, is nowhere near as intriguing as the craziness you get once you start delving on ideas like the Argonian being a hivemind for a race of ancestral trees.

Eberron and Dark Sun are the settings that at least try to do something a bit more interesting with everyone but they're extremely niche and haven't received virtually any support by modern wizards.

I'd really enjoy playing in a setting that had crazy ideas like humans being rules by cat overlords, sky pirate dwarves and elves that are basically divine spirits. You can do a lot with those ideas to develop culture and politics around such out there concepts.

Me and some friends have been working on a setting for our next campaign and we've been pushing hard in that direction after we tried Eberron but couldn't make it work. We have things like a desert that alters the souls and bodies of it's inhabitants to make every being its own, giants born from the sun who are afraid of the night and enclosed spaces because they believe they'll lose their souls if they die away from sunlight, a neoliberal Confederacy of humans states trying to move the world into a democratic and capitalist revolution, a nation of dragonkin who all share the soul of the original Dragon and can be hijacked by the world to fight against threats to life... And then we make those interact. Because the dragonkin are literally born of something that protects the world, many of them see themselves as superior to everyone else and developed an imperialistic and supremacist view of the world, with factions that call for a complete conquest of the whole world and others who just think they should stick to keeping their nation whole, pure and ready to act against danger. They hate the giants because the sun used the burn the world and killed the original dragon and the giants, being born of the solar soul, are chaotic and unruly. Humans are born of the world's desire for life to expand and change and thus are driven toward innovation and revolution, which makes their nations ever fluid but also puts them at constant odds with other, more conservative nations, specially giants who basically refuse technological and magical development.

I like to think that we're doing something cool and that humans, in this context, are interesting both because their origin and because their culture builds upon and helps develop other cultures and nations. There are people they like and would work with and people they hate and would rather have nothing to do with.

If you have humans who are ruled by cats and then have a race who hates mind control this affects how they interact, leads to conflicts wars, negotiations and tension both on an individual and social level. Assume this been happening for centuries and it becomes social norm, leads to policies and cultural assumptions, things that we don't think but humans from such a world would do. Maybe they hate dogs and eat them like we eat chicken or have a natural disposition the incorporate boxes in their architecture. Things like that.

[MisterKaws]

You can describe them as such, but they're still distinct from humans in-universe. I suspect the comparison may be a function of blandness rather than a cause of it anyway. They're really just insufficiently differentiated. Might as well take the opportunity to spitball some alternative takes that I think would be interesting. Note that these come with mechanical changes, obviously.

Dwarves that reproduce by being carved out of stone then given life by an underground spring, living in networks of small direct democracies, with the veneration of darkness as the sacred and light as the profane, representing lowness as being good and height as being bad.

Elves and orcs that are the same species, the differentiation being caused in the equivalent of puberty, elves being the social and spiritual types, orcs being the intellectual and physical types, with a mixed technocratic government that appoints one of each type to each position.

Halfling plutocrats that act as creditors for other races, having less of their own society and more of a meta-society made of a network of their banks and guilds throughout the cities, with social rank being determined by how much debt you have paid off.

Now I kinda want to steal this entire plot. The dwarf thing is actually half-supported by the Dwarf Ancestor so that's even better.

[Jay R]

I just started a teen-aged elf, in a mostly human town. He's shown an interest in a human girl. Another PC asked me if I was serious about her, and I replied, "Oh, she'll be great to be around for awhile, but when I'm ready to settle down in a couple of centuries, I don't think she'll be at her best."

[Mordante]

I'd love to play some weird and exotic race. But most come with level penalties or some other penalties.

besides that it hard so find a good list of playable races. When you google you'll most find homebrew stuff and none of the GM I know will allow anything from Dragon Magazine since they say that everything from that magazine has balance issues. Also no psyonics or any race with spell resistance.

[MisterKaws]

I'd love to play some weird and exotic race. But most come with level penalties or some other penalties.

besides that it hard so find a good list of playable races. When you google you'll most find homebrew stuff and none of the GM I know will allow anything from Dragon Magazine since they say that everything from that magazine has balance issues. Also no psyonics or any race with spell resistance.

Some DMs do feel insecure running monstrous campaigns. But with those who don't, you can have a hell of a ride.

[Mordante]

Some DMs do feel insecure running monstrous campaigns. But with those who don't, you can have a hell of a ride.

That might be true. But the people I play with tend to play a character for years. Currently we are level 16 and some people in the part started their character over a decade ago. I think when we all reach level 18 it's time to put an end to this campaign. If I were to guess the campaign started 15 years ago.

[MisterKaws]

That might be true. But the people I play with tend to play a character for years. Currently we are level 16 and some people in the part started their character over a decade ago. I think when we all reach level 18 it's time to put an end to this campaign. If I were to guess the campaign started 15 years ago.

Damn that's long. Never played any campaign over one year long. People get bored fast.

Our local DMs do tend to copy too much from famous works though.

[upho]

I wrote a lot here but deleted it, because it's actually really simply stated. Myself and Crake are reading "humans are boring" to mean only what it says and nothing more. No implication, no further meaning, just a mundane proposition of "a is b". Upho, correct me if I'm wrong you seem to be reading into it, as opposed to merely reading it. I am entirely confident that is the source of our disagreement. This is indeed the source of our disagreement. However, please note that my "reading into it" isn't some arbitrary vague associations I've dreamed up, but hard facts about the context in which the "humans are boring" statement was made (as described by the game itself as well as Crake when he first mentioned the statement).

In short, the logical error in Crake's statement can be expressed as simply as this: it assumes that the definitions and meanings of the words "human" and "boring" are identical in two different contexts when they are provably and undeniably not.

So while it does of course disprove "humans are boring" in the general context of our world, it doesn't do so in the more specific context in which the claim was originally made.


I am also confident that you don't disagree that non-boring humans exist, we don't disagree that some people find other races more interesting.You're absolutely correct AFAICT.

[Segev]

About the elven "childrern" (visually indistinguishable from adults) adventuring - there is one "slight" problem: no magic!
Because, let's see:
Divine magic? Well, firstly, you should be a faithful follower (which isn't that simple for a child). Then, I hope deities are sensible enough to don't give dangerous toys to a children.
Sorcery? No luck there too: sorcerous abilities are inactive until the maturity (which is - for Elves - 110 years, not 25)
Wizardry? Will you entrust a child with phenomenal cosmic power?

You MIGHT have a case for the divine spellcasters, but you absolutely do not on the subject of sorcery. Sorcery is tied to physical, not mental maturation. If the "teen" elves are indistinguishable from adults, physically, they had their powers showing up in puberty.

And even that's assuming you're not altering things for your campaign; we're already discussing elves adventuring at 25 rather than 120.

Back on the subject of divine spellcasting, we have examples which I will edit out despite being merely a mentioning of actual text in real-world scripture, on the off chance this crosses the line on real-world religion discussion. Suffice it to say: child prophets are something that could absolutely happen in certain inspirational sources for fictional divine magic. Kids also tend to have stronger faith than adults in a lot of cases just based on the fact that they have only faith to go on for a lot of things, and kids believe what they're told by and large. So a god choosing a faithful kid isn't out of the question. Especially if the kid is no less physically capable than a non-kid, considering that both are equally physically mature.

And unless the brain development of an elf is such that they seem like they're developmentally challenged at 25 (to humans who expect something that looks like an adult to be able to think on an adult level), they CAN learn wizardry and certainly roguery and the like at a younger age than is "traditional." It might take exceptional elves to push past the stereotypes and expectations of his culture, but he could do it.

[ShurikVch]

As for elf skill boosts and free-Search, as presented those arguably aren’t learned, they are the result of “keen elven senses” (i.e. better than yours, inherently).Found this:
Elven doors are of particular interest. Traditional elven architecture tries to blend into nature, and as a result external doorways into elven structures are often disguised cleverly in the side of a large tree, as a large stone on the side of a hill, and so on. Elven children quickly become quite well practiced at finding and noticing doors, and this skill follows them into adulthood. Secret doors built by other races often amuse the elves with their crude attempts at disguise.



Back on the subject of divine spellcasting, we have examples in the Bible of God calling prophets who protest, "I am but a child." Whether this was literal (and they were pubescent or pre-) or figurative (the equivalent of a "kid" in college today who is legally an adult but really doesn't live or feel like one yet) is unclear to me, but we have evidence of at least one religious text calling it out that way.Considering the site restrictions about IRL religions, You may be better to mention Jaela Daran (https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Jaela_Daran) (who is young enough to go to Hogwarts as a 1st-year.) So, yes - it's possible; but it's rare exception, not a rule (also, in Eberron)

Kids also tend to have stronger faith than adults in a lot of cases just based on the fact that they have only faith to go on for a lot of things, and kids believe what they're told by and large.Note: Wall of the Faithless is built mostly of children, because they were too young to join any religion... :smallfrown:


And unless the brain development of an elf is such that they seem like they're developmentally challenged at 25 (to humans who expect something that looks like an adult to be able to think on an adult level)Let's quote once again that sidebar from the Races of the Wild:
Table 6–4 of the Player's Handbook suggests that elves don't reach their full physical growth until an age of 110, at a minimum. That's not entirely accurate. The random starting age for elves is simply the age at which many elf adventurers feel ready to leave their forests and roam the world outside for a time. More than a few elves have commenced their adventuring careers at much younger ages.
...
Humans finish their "filling out" and full adult growth by about age 20, but elves take a little longer, rarely reaching their full height and weight before age 25. After that, elves remain virtually timeless, decade after decade. Not even another elf can tell at a glance whether an elf is 25, 50, or 100 years of age. A few minutes' conversation quickly dispels the mystery, of course; elves gain experience, grace, emotional maturity, patience, and wisdom throughout these ageless decades. Even so, some elves are remarkably poised for their age, and some elven romances tell the tale of a grieving elf of 150 years of age discovering life and joy again in new lover of only 25 or 30 who carries himself or herself like an elf of 100.This thing answered most of the questions:
Yes, there are cases when Elves starting their adventuring before the "normal" age
Yes, their mental maturity is usually obvious after a short conversation (but some are "remarkably poised for their age")

they CAN learn wizardryShould I remind about Akar Kessell (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Akar_Kessell), who - despite being apprentice of Morkai the Red (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Morkai) - wasn't able to cast even a simplest spell (until found Crenshinibon (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Crenshinibon))? Wizardry isn't easy or simple!

[Segev]

Note: Wall of the Faithless is built mostly of children, because they were too young to join any religion... :smallfrown:


Which is bizarre, since you'd think they'd be default members of their parents' faiths simply by virtue of knowing nothing else, barring specific choices or experiences or the like on the kids' part. Kids believe things because they have limited reason not to. It leads to strong, but shallow, faith, in general.

And if the gods of the Forgotten Realms are going to have that whole wall of the faithless thing, they really should have infant baptism or whatever is needed to let the kids pay lip service. :smallannoyed: This feels like one of those attempts by authors to be edgy and create artificial tragedy that leads to needless grimdark.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Which is bizarre, since you'd think they'd be default members of their parents' faiths simply by virtue of knowing nothing else, barring specific choices or experiences or the like on the kids' part. Kids believe things because they have limited reason not to. It leads to strong, but shallow, faith, in general.

And if the gods of the Forgotten Realms are going to have that whole wall of the faithless thing, they really should have infant baptism or whatever is needed to let the kids pay lip service. :smallannoyed: This feels like one of those attempts by authors to be edgy and create artificial tragedy that leads to needless grimdark.FR is the Worm (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/) of D&D.

[Segev]

FR is the Worm (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/) of D&D.

NAh; FR got this way through multiple authors. Worm was designed to be what it is by its sole author. Though I actually think there's more text devoted to worm via fanfic than there is to FR via officially-published works and fanfic put together. IT's amazingly popular for fanfic-writing.

Also, FR usually manages to live up to its potential in individual works; Worm had way more potential than it allowed itself to exploit (in the name of the "it always gets worse" writing style of its creator). Still, it's a good story. It just...could have been better.

Also, weirdly, I'm getting way more out of FR while running ToA in the little-used land of Chult than I ever did from its more well-developed sections.

[tiercel]

: Elves don't learning being Wizards for 80 years - by the same reason Humans don't learning being Commoners for 16 years: most of that time they, presumably, do more or less nothing (since Commoner restricts default abilities rather than expands them)
You're a bit right - Elves are kinda slow learners: if Human can master "simple" classes - like Barbarian or Sorcerer - in just a year (if he's good or lucky), Elves spent on it at least 4 years, and learning the most difficult classes may take up to 60 years (still not 80)

Given that elves reach physical and mental maturity at 25 (as per RotW), and the youngest they can be wizards is 120... and can be as old as 170... a “mere” eighty years of wizard PhD was actually hilariously underestimating the elven learning disorder. Is there elven law against treatment for their mental condition for the first century of life?


Well, Desert Elves got +2 on Handle Animal, which is "Trained only" skill.
Again "better than yours"?

OK, you got me: Desert Elves learn more than regular elves. 80 years of “spending most of their lives riding and working with animals” is, however, good for less than Skill Focus (Handle Animal), which means a 16-year-old human who spends most of her life “working with animals” and dedicates her human racial feat to her backstory fluff is actually better, everything else being equal, at handling animals than a 114-year-old elf with the same backstory with nearly a century more “experience.”

I’m still feeling pretty on board with whole “elven learning disability” theory.






Don't compare our modern standards to different faux-Medieval world.
For example: You know what was marriageable age in the Medieval Europe?
14 years!
It's - for boys.
And without the parental consent!

Er, I wasn’t. If I were judging by modern standards, I’d be arguing 16 seems a bit young, but by late medieval (at least plate-mail-and-rapiers-exist era) standards, let’s see:



Around the year 1500, an assistant to the Venetian ambassador to England was struck by the strange attitude to parenting that he had encountered on his travels.
He wrote to his masters in Venice that the English kept their children at home "till the age of seven or nine at the utmost" but then "put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years"....

They were not quite so young as the Venetian author suggests, though. According to Barbara Hanawalt at Ohio State University, the aristocracy did occasionally dispatch their offspring at the age of seven, but most parents waved goodbye to them at about 14....

an apprenticeship...typically lasted seven years, but they could go on for a decade.

I don’t claim this is a Universal Late Medieval truth, but certainly seems to indicate D&D’s low end of human adventurer age being 16 (and as late as 27 for a cleric or wizard) is not unreasonable.



And if the gods of the Forgotten Realms are going to have that whole wall of the faithless thing, they really should have infant baptism or whatever is needed to let the kids pay lip service. :smallannoyed: This feels like one of those attempts by authors to be edgy and create artificial tragedy that leads to needless grimdark.

Ugh, I feel like if playing in an FR game I almost have to know “is the Wall of the Faithless part of this game, and if so, will this campaign be about or be able to be about getting rid of it?” Frankly it seems like an awful thing to exist or to tolerate existing for anyone even vaguely Good.

[Crake]

Which is bizarre, since you'd think they'd be default members of their parents' faiths simply by virtue of knowing nothing else, barring specific choices or experiences or the like on the kids' part. Kids believe things because they have limited reason not to. It leads to strong, but shallow, faith, in general.

And if the gods of the Forgotten Realms are going to have that whole wall of the faithless thing, they really should have infant baptism or whatever is needed to let the kids pay lip service. :smallannoyed: This feels like one of those attempts by authors to be edgy and create artificial tragedy that leads to needless grimdark.

There is a fair bit of precedence already in much folklore of children who lack the ability to commit to either a faith, or a moral requirement being condemned to a hell of some sort, the most prominent one that comes to mind being japanese mythology, where dead children are condemned to an eternity of endless labour.

I also disagree with you that children would default to the parent's faith, because blind faith with no understanding may as well be no faith at all.

[ShurikVch]

Given that elves reach physical and mental maturity at 25 (as per RotW)Well, firstly, it's completely incorrect: the sidebar from the RotW - which I quoted mere 4 posts earlier - says elves reach physical, but not mental maturity at 25. See: they're just a big children (even if some of them are "remarkably poised for their age").
Moreover: the sidebar isn't specific enough about: are Elves really-really physically adult at 25, or just look like adults?

And about the “learning disability”: Elves are far from unique there - nearly all of long-living races in D&D are have longer learning time:



Race
Source
Adulthood
Simple classes
Moderate classes
Complex classes


Adu'ja
Dragon #317
150
+3d10
+5d10
+7d10


Elf

110
+4d6
+6d6
+10d6


Uldra
Frostburn
100
+3d6
+5d6
+8d6


Mephling
Planar Handbook
50
+4d4
+4d6
+6d6


Dwarf

40
+3d6
+5d6
+7d6


Gnome

40
+4d6
+6d6
+9d6


Gruwaar
Dragon #317
40
+2d6
+3d6
+4d6


Centaur
Races of the Wild
30
+2d6
+4d6
+6d6


Grippli
Dragon #324
30
+2d6
+4d6
+6d6


Slyth
Underdark
30
+3d6
+2d6
+4d6


Asherati
Sandstorm
20
+1d4
+1d6
+2d6


Cyclopeans
Dragon #323
20
+2d4
+3d6
+4d6


Deep Imaskari
Underdark
20
+4d6
+6d6
+3d6


Half-Elf

20
+1d6
+2d6
+3d6


Halfling

20
+2d4
+3d6
+4d6


Illumian
Races of Destiny
20
+2d4
+3d6
+4d6


Raptoran
Races of the Wild
20
+1d6
+2d6
+3d6


Shifter
Eberron Campaign Setting
20
+1d6
+1d8
+2d8


Svirfneblin
Underdark
20
+2d4
+3d6
+4d6


Human

15
+1d4
+1d6
+2d6


Hadozee
Stormwrack
13
+1d3
+1d4
+1d6


Grimlock
Underdark
12
+1d4
+1d6
+2d4


Varag
Monster Manual IV
8
+1d3
+1d4
+2d4


Kobold
Races of the Dragon
6
+1d3
+1d4
+2d4


Warforged
Eberron Campaign Setting
0
+1d12
+1d6
+1d4



Despite some outliers, general trend is obvious.

If somebody there have “learning disability”, it's Gnomes: despite achieving adulthood at less than half of Elven age, they take almost as much time to learn their classes. What's up, "every Gnome have ADHD"?

And look at Hadozee: those monkey people are able to become Wizard twice faster than Human - and it's without any Int bonus or anything which improve their learning abilities in any way (fluff o crunch).
Also, Grimlock and Varag: their minimal possible learning time is the same as for Human; but their maximal time to become a Wizard is just ⅔ of Human's. And it's considering the fact Varag have sizable Int penalty (-4), and Grimlock is freaking blind!
Maybe, Humans have “learning disability” too? :smallamused:

[Mordante]

Damn that's long. Never played any campaign over one year long. People get bored fast.

Our local DMs do tend to copy too much from famous works though.

I don't think my DM has contact with any other DM nor will he ever visit forums or the like.

[Divine Susuryu]

Warforged
Eberron Campaign Setting
0
+1d12
+1d6
+1d4




Is this accurate? Does the time required actually go down for Warforged? I had no idea that was a thing.

[ShurikVch]

Is this accurate? Does the time required actually go down for Warforged? I had no idea that was a thing.I checked it - Eberron Campaign Setting, pg. 27: yes, exactly.
Apparently, those "robots" just aren't built for simple classes...

[upho]

I checked it - Eberron Campaign Setting, pg. 27: yes, exactly.
Apparently, those "robots" just aren't built for simple classes...Oh, but they are. Or rather, they were. In detail (same book and page):

"Warforged are created as adults; they have no childhood or adolescence. The first warforged were created only thirty-three years ago, so no warforged character can begin at an age older than that. Warforged did not begin exploring class options such as cleric, monk, or wizard until very recently, so such characters are actually likely to be younger than warforged fighters or rogues."

And (page 22):

"Older warforged tend to be fighters or barbarians. The more recently created warforged, especially those less than five years old, are more inclined to try different class options."

So yeah, fresh out of the creation forge, warforged are of course much like cars or computers in this regard; the more recent their make, the more advanced their design.

This also happens to be one of the many ways in which the race actually differs significantly from the human, and one of the reasons I find them so much more appealing and interesting to play than any of the standard cookie-cutter near-humans. IMO, simply the fact that the average warforged wizard or cleric is a 2.5 years old "toddler" is just awesome!

[jintoya]

I have never once in my 25 years of this game, ever even come close to playing a human.
In many of the games I run, humans are xenophobic, dislike magic and the supernatural.

On the flip-side, I encourage my players to pick something less generic, like a party of wood elves, goblins etc. And help then flesh them out.

In other games, they exist only in history of the land, and are not playable because they waged to many wars and we're wiped out.

[Elkad]

Damn that's long. Never played any campaign over one year long. People get bored fast.

Our local DMs do tend to copy too much from famous works though.

My original group played the same characters from 1980 to 1997 (converting to a 1e/2e hybrid midway through). Then I moved across the country and ruined it all.
Lots of Friday night right through to Sunday afternoon sessions too. I don't want to know how many thousands of hours, though we did spend about a ¼ of the time playing other systems. I think the highest level character at the end was 27th, with the rest clustered around 22nd-24th.

Some of it was modified published stuff, but almost all was original content.

86-90 I was away in the Army. We played a couple sessions when I was home on leave, and picked right back up where we left off when I was home for good.

[Crake]

That might be true. But the people I play with tend to play a character for years. Currently we are level 16 and some people in the part started their character over a decade ago. I think when we all reach level 18 it's time to put an end to this campaign. If I were to guess the campaign started 15 years ago.

I gotta ask, how often do you play? Because for most of the games I run, we get from 1-17ish in about a year, but that's when we play consistently every week. Some games are slower, others end in TPK, but generally the games last about a year before players start hitting those levels where things start to become a bit over the top for my players.

[MisterKaws]

I gotta ask, how often do you play? Because for most of the games I run, we get from 1-17ish in about a year, but that's when we play consistently every week. Some games are slower, others end in TPK, but generally the games last about a year before players start hitting those levels where things start to become a bit over the top for my players.

Doing it weekly, you'd have to do around three encounters worth of XP every session to get from 1 to 12~13 in a year. Your groups are pretty damn fast.

[jintoya]

Doing it weekly, you'd have to do around three encounters worth of XP every session to get from 1 to 12~13 in a year. Your groups are pretty damn fast.

It could also just be a balance choice by the DM, my fiance and I play some games that alternate between us taking turns as players, we run about 40 sessions to get into the 15+ levels areas, then usually wrap up a campaign and retire the character, swap and play another setting.
Levels come fast and progress goes quick, but I've also run ones that took two years to get to level 15 or so.

[MisterKaws]

It could also just be a balance choice by the DM, my fiance and I play some games that alternate between us taking turns as players, we run about 40 sessions to get into the 15+ levels areas, then usually wrap up a campaign and retire the character, swap and play another setting.
Levels come fast and progress goes quick, but I've also run ones that took two years to get to level 15 or so.

Yes, there's that. I meant if you're following the XP rules.

I personally dislike starting at 1, because of the ease with which you get TPKs at that level. And I think most would agree that, while 13 encounters per level is realistic, it's boring as hell.

[jintoya]

Yes, there's that. I meant if you're following the XP rules.

I personally dislike starting at 1, because of the ease with which you get TPKs at that level. And I think most would agree that, while 13 encounters per level is realistic, it's boring as hell.
No arguments here, I prefer the quicker games early and slower as you get more powerful
(By slower, I mean I find that mid-level is the most fun for me, and I don't mind the long gaps between levels as much)

[MisterKaws]

No arguments here, I prefer the quicker games early and slower as you get more powerful
(By slower, I mean I find that mid-level is the most fun for me, and I don't mind the long gaps between levels as much)

Considering the kind of shenanigans that start after around 11-15, that's quite understandable.

[ShurikVch]

Oh, but they are. Or rather, they were. In detail (same book and page):

"Warforged are created as adults; they have no childhood or adolescence. The first warforged were created only thirty-three years ago, so no warforged character can begin at an age older than that. Warforged did not begin exploring class options such as cleric, monk, or wizard until very recently, so such characters are actually likely to be younger than warforged fighters or rogues."

And (page 22):

"Older warforged tend to be fighters or barbarians. The more recently created warforged, especially those less than five years old, are more inclined to try different class options." While true - Fighter is a Favored Class for Warforged - Fighter isn't a "Simple" class; it's "Moderate".

And choosing a class which may take whole 12 years to learn when your whole specie is less than 30 years old sounds like a distilled insanity (considering the class in question isn't a mage in any shape or form).

Also, most of those "Simple" classes - Barbarian, Sorcerer, Wilder - are giving off very chaotic vibes; thus, "robotic", inherently orderly mind of Warforged may have hard time to grasp it.
And the rest of the "Simple" classes...
Rogue: clunky robot is bad at Moving Silently.
Commoner: Warforged were built for war, not for farming.

[goodpeople25]

While true - Fighter is a Favored Class for Warforged - Fighter isn't a "Simple" class; it's "Moderate".

And choosing a class which may take whole 12 years to learn when your whole specie is less than 30 years old sounds like a distilled insanity (considering the class in question isn't a mage in any shape or form).

Also, most of those "Simple" classes - Barbarian, Sorcerer, Wilder - are giving off very chaotic vibes; thus, "robotic", inherently orderly mind of Warforged may have hard time to grasp it.
And the rest of the "Simple" classes...
Rogue: clunky robot is bad at Moving Silently.
Commoner: Warforged were built for war, not for farming.
Or the maximum range of the random starting age doesn't always map exactly to learning time/difficulty. It definitely doesn't seem that that way for warforged.

[MisterKaws]

Or the maximum range of the random starting age doesn't always map exactly to learning time/difficulty. It definitely doesn't seem that that way for warforged.

As said before, Warforged are supposed to have a "built-in" class. The age mapping is to show that only newer models were programmed from the get-go with wizardry and whatnot.

[Bohandas]

I tend to stay away from anything mundane when I get the chance, because fantasy is so much wider than the "human with or without pointy ears" crap base D&D assumes everyone has to play (and punishes them for not playing).

I agree. Nobody actually wants to play humans, the problem is that the game doesn't give you enough skill points of you play a non-boring race.

[Crake]

Doing it weekly, you'd have to do around three encounters worth of XP every session to get from 1 to 12~13 in a year. Your groups are pretty damn fast.

Three CR appropriate encounters are over pretty quick. If you were running a standard module, that would be practically the equivilent of just going through three rooms. More likely 5-8 encounters per session (or 5-8 CR appropriate encounters worth anyway. It might be one or two difficult encounters instead), but then that's evened out by sessions where quite literally no combat happens as they're entirely social/RP sessions, and then travel sessions typically have a couple of random encounters littered about. This is also accelerated by the fact that my group runs a party of three, so they level up faster when pitted against the same encounters.

[Elkad]

Either you run encounters insanely fast, or your sessions are super long.

We typically get through 2 in a 4-5 hour session, and it's 1 more often than it's 3.

At the mid-upper levels it's even worse than that. Just figuring out a Dispel Magic (and recalculating everyone's stats) might take a half-hour.

[Crake]

Either you run encounters insanely fast, or your sessions are super long.

We typically get through 2 in a 4-5 hour session, and it's 1 more often than it's 3.

At the mid-upper levels it's even worse than that. Just figuring out a Dispel Magic (and recalculating everyone's stats) might take a half-hour.

Is that nothing but 2 encounters in a 4-5 hour session? Or typically 2 encounters during a 4-5 hour session with other activities involved? If it's the former, then I'd be more inclined to say that you're playing it slow rather than me playng it fast, assuming that's 2 CR appropriate encounters per session, if it's the latter, then it just sounds like you have less combat oriented games.

I do also typically award story xp for completing non-combat objectives, though they're usually only worth about 1-2 CR equivilent encounters worth of xp.