Does anyone uses reskinned races?

[Trandir]

The idea is this: you play as a member of a race with the racial traits of another one.

Exemples:
Any race but it's variant human;
A dragonborn druid with the traits of a lizardfolk;
A tiefling ranger with the trais of an elf.


Expressed this way is a bit rough and others limitations would have to be considered on case by case combination of "skin" and base race.

Ex: at character creation if one of the races has darkvision and the others doesn't it would be resonable to exchange a minor trait for it.

[Keltest]

Im not specifically opposed to it, but I do think a certain amount of the flavor of the races are what they can do. Whats the point of playing a dwarf that isn't knowledgeable about stone, or a halfling that isn't supernaturally lucky? Then youre just playing a short fat guy who may or may not have a beard.

Heck, what would the other elves say if you went to frolic in the meadow during the new moon with them, but then it turns out that youre statistically a human and cant see your nose in front of your face?

[Spiritchaser]

Yes, though it’s only come up once.

I had a player who wanted a character who was racially an elf but mechanically an aasimar. The result was an elf with a lot of celestial in his heritage. Mechanically he used aasimar stats, so no trance (because celestial technobabble) or weapon training... no Elven racial feats available either.

It worked fine, everyone got what they wanted. Generally speaking I’d have no problem making a similar call again.

Does it mechanically damage the game? No
Does it intrude on another player’s conceptual space? No
Does it conflict with the lore of the campaign in question ? In this case it didn’t

Then why the hell not?

[RSP]

I’ve seen it in play and generally have no issue with it. The only possible problems that would come up that I can foresee are: a) can they take racial feats, either from their mechanical race or their reskinned race, and b) can racial restrictions like Bladesinger be chosen.

Mind you, I don’t think it breaks anything to allow it, just mentioning what issues I’d foresee possibly coming up like an reskinned Aasimar “Elf” who has the elf-only double bladed scimitar feat.

Though a reskinned Variant Human “Dwarf” that can’t see in the dark is odd.

[Trandir]

Though a reskinned Variant Human “Dwarf” that can’t see in the dark is odd.


Heck, what would the other elves say if you went to frolic in the meadow during the new moon with them, but then it turns out that youre statistically a human and cant see your nose in front of your face?

Ok the darkvision part could be a problem. But if a DM is allowing that much he would probably also allow to renounce to a trait to keep darkvision

For the human exemple you get no extra skill proficiency and instead have 60 ft of darkvision

[Magicspook]

In my homebrew I started with this, but in the end I ended up uncoupling ability score increase and racial features.

In my game, everyone gets:
-3ASI's, 2 of which can be exhanged for a feat
-a racial die (which starts at d4 but increases with level), which can be used for a cool effect once every short rest. The effect depends on the race.

Every race gets:
-a cultural trait, like a proficiency or two, bonus spells, or advantage at certain checks
-a physical trait, like a natural weapon, a special sense or resistance to non-iron weapons (I like my fey old school)
-a way to spend their racial die

This way, none of my players have chosen their race because of some mechanical benefit or to suit some build of theirs; they are actually engaged with the lore of their race.

Edit: also no one gets darkvision cos bleh. One race gets tremorsense though.

[LibraryOgre]

I had someone who is a great fan of playing half-elves also want to play one with a Shadow Mark. I offered her the option of a jury-rigged half-elf alteration, or "Play a shadow-marked elf, call yourself a half-elf, and leave it at that", which is what worked for her.

[CNagy]

A ran a campaign where the homebrew setting only had Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. There were no intelligent monstrous races, either. So I basically reskinned all of the races into one of the three big races. It worked pretty well, actually.

[HappyDaze]

My campaign only has one type of gnome. Mechanically, they are forest gnomes, but they occupy the places that the setting used for rock gnomes. We preferred keeping the innate illusions and animal speech as racial traits over the technology-based ones.

[Mongobear]

Not in the way you describe, but I have done "reskinned" versions of Tabaxi that traded out the cat specific traits for other animals.

Iirc, I made Monkey, Bear, Wolf, Frog, and Goat versions, wash with similar power level scales of racials.

Monkey had a climb speed instead of double speed, and +1 str +2 int

Bear was +1 con +2 str, and advantage on grapple checks, plus double carrying capacity

Wolf was +1 Wis +2 Dex, and had Pack Tactics (free advantage) in melee and Tracking advantage from scent

Frog was +2 Wis +1 Dex and doubled Jump distances, plus amphibious

Goat was +1 Str +2 con, Horns the headbutt, a charge attack as a bonus action, and resistance vs Poison/Condition because they are commonly known to be able to eat everything

[LudicSavant]

I've used the half-orc as a full orc, because I am not fond of the Volo's orc.

[Cheesegear]

The only time I've ever done this is for Warforged. A sentient construct just didn't fit into the setting. So we changed it to be a meatbag that was heavily augmented by magic.

[Nagog]

I am a big fan of reskinning things in 5e. Races are one of the easiest to do so with, as they don't typically influence much of the core gameplay besides a few interactions here and there, and even when they do they aren't gamebreaking unless the DM decides they are.

One example of a character I've done this with is a Totem Barbarian who is mechanically a bugbear, but in canon they're a large tiger tabaxi. The bugbear's stats of Str and Con, combined with reach and ambush ability made much more sense to me for the character and how they function, and the extra ambush damage even helps sell the Tiger bit.



Im not specifically opposed to it, but I do think a certain amount of the flavor of the races are what they can do. Whats the point of playing a dwarf that isn't knowledgeable about stone, or a halfling that isn't supernaturally lucky? Then youre just playing a short fat guy who may or may not have a beard.

The point is for story and plot. For example, playing a Kobold using the stats of a Goblin. Sure I could just play a goblin, but that would throw off the storyline of my character's proclivity for traps and subterfuge, as well as the tendency to enjoy warm spots of sunlight like reptiles tend to do.

[WadeWay33]

I've re-skinned the Simic Hybrid for Out of the Abyss. We changed it so that the character was cursed by the Demegorgon and had more arms, different features, etc. Everyone liked it.

[GlenSmash!]

I once had a Goliath Bear Totem Barbarian refluffed as a Human Werebear. It worked really well.

[Khrysaes]

Ive done 2.

One was a winged tiefling mechanically. But he was an arrakokra.

The other was a warforged mechanically, but a plqnt that had been wood shaped and awakened thematically.