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Aniikinis
2019-12-08, 05:11 PM
So I was musing to myself the other day about human biology and our previous place in the food webs and had an idea, but I'm not sure what the best way to implement it would be. Humans are endurance specialists, our stamina is unheard of anywhere else in the animal kingdom, there's the idea that humans used to hunt animals using pursuit predation, we regenerate from wounds and injuries that would kill almost any other species, and there have been cases where things that should have killed members of our species just... didn't.

So my question is, how exactly would I go into putting this into a human variant race for 3.5 or pathfinder or really any system? I've toyed with the idea of doubling passive healing and giving bonuses against fatigue as well as the ability to march for much longer, but I'm not sure what else since one of those is definitely niche.

Demidos
2019-12-08, 05:20 PM
Dumb Luck -- Humans can reroll one failed save per day. They must take the results of the second roll.

How's that?

It probably depends on what edition you're looking for, and what balance level (e.g. LA +1, +2?). Humans tend to be fairly strong across most editions, so if you don't plan on adding LA you should probably remove some other features to keep them balanced.

Aniikinis
2019-12-08, 05:41 PM
Dumb Luck -- Humans can reroll one failed save per day. They must take the results of the second roll.

How's that?

It probably depends on what edition you're looking for, and what balance level (e.g. LA +1, +2?). Humans tend to be fairly strong across most editions, so if you don't plan on adding LA you should probably remove some other features to keep them balanced.

Mmm, maybe. It's good, and it would fit with some of it.

Yeah, I was planning on stripping the humans of the bonus feat and the highest LA I'd be aiming for would be +2 with +0 or +1 being more favorable. 3.5 would be best since from there I can tweak it to fit other systems and editions easily.

noob
2019-12-08, 05:45 PM
Increase constitution?
Humans are already the low wisdom creatures since most animals have higher wisdom value than humans.
(seriously why do most animals have 12 or 14 wisdom?)

Damon_Tor
2019-12-08, 11:04 PM
Give humans +2 Con, +1 to another score of their choice.
Give them advantage on con saves against non-magic effects.
Give them a special ability that reads "Whenever you would gain a level of exhaustion, make a constitution save with a DC of 10+the number of times you've used this ability in the past 24 hours. If you pass the save, you do not gain a level of exhaustion."

Aniikinis
2019-12-09, 08:30 AM
Increase constitution?
Humans are already the low wisdom creatures since most animals have higher wisdom value than humans.
(seriously why do most animals have 12 or 14 wisdom?)

I was thinking about that. Probably some hand wave excuse like "natural wisdom lol" or "the same reason druids and rangers need wis"


Give humans +2 Con, +1 to another score of their choice.
Give them advantage on con saves against non-magic effects.
Give them a special ability that reads "Whenever you would gain a level of exhaustion, make a constitution save with a DC of 10+the number of times you've used this ability in the past 24 hours. If you pass the save, you do not gain a level of exhaustion."

This could work nicely, throw in a few extra minor buffs to some niche things too and it could possibly be about on par with the base human in some circumstances.

Heavenblade
2019-12-11, 09:43 AM
Give humans +2 Con, +1 to another score of their choice.
Give them advantage on con saves against non-magic effects.
Give them a special ability that reads "Whenever you would gain a level of exhaustion, make a constitution save with a DC of 10+the number of times you've used this ability in the past 24 hours. If you pass the save, you do not gain a level of exhaustion."


workable frenzied berserker ahoy!!

Lemmy
2019-12-11, 06:01 PM
Give them a bonus against fatigue, disease and/or fear... But also a penalty against temptation-based mind control.

noob
2019-12-12, 07:11 AM
Give them a bonus against fatigue, disease and/or fear... But also a penalty against temptation-based mind control.

They already have one relatively to animals due to having lower wisdom.
Most of the humanoids are less good at resisting mind control than animals.

zlefin
2019-12-12, 08:58 AM
This is one of the things I've planned ot put in my alternate races set for 3.5 (that I never wrote up, but that's about half developed). Part of the challenge is that the entire rules for races use humanity as a baseline, for example humans great ability to engage in long distance runs without overheating, as noted by the various long-term movement rules. So all the other races get that too even if they shouldn't be great long-distance runners. The longer-distance movement rules also don't take into account the extent to which most animals simply can't do that kind of sustained running.
So it's hard to properly design humans without first fixing those underlying rules.

LibraryOgre
2019-12-12, 10:15 AM
My AD&D rewrite of humans gives us a +1 to Charisma (we make friends, even with other species) and a +1 to all saves.

MercuryAlloy
2019-12-19, 10:09 AM
Some ideas of alternative way to make human enduring:

1. Extend their exhaustion scale by 1 level – 1st level don't gives you any penalty, 2nd – ability disadvantage, 3rd – speed halved, ect.
2. 1/day humans can take benefits from short rest from 5 min of rest, rather then hour.
3. They need to fail 4 death saves to actually die, but still only 3 to stabilisation.

sengmeng
2019-12-19, 10:24 AM
I'd go with 50% resistance to non-lethal damage if 3.5, and a not too hard save (DC 12ish) to just not get a level of exhaustion whenever they normally would if 5e. If it ain't straight up deadly, we ignore it.

Teaguethebean
2019-12-19, 10:31 AM
If we are redoing the standard human perhaps +1 con +1 to two other stats of your choice. A skill and a tool proficiency and finally a new feature.
Human Durability: Gain proficiency in one saving throw of your choice.

Greywander
2019-12-22, 01:47 AM
This is something I've thought about before. The OP didn't specify a system, so I'll try to give a somewhat system-agnostic answer. I'll also be speaking in terms of humans compared to animals, rather than humans compared to elves or dwarves. Other humanoids may or may not share the same traits as humans.

For humans, they seem to have a number of advantages over animals. Intelligence is the obvious one, but writing up any creature's intelligence, even an animals, would likely be very difficult, so we'll focus on other aspects.


Sweat and Stride. Through a combination of sweating and the efficient design of human legs, humans can run for twice as long before needing to roll a check for endurance. Furthermore, humans may treat hot climates as being one step cooler.

This highlights that humans can run for longer than many other animals, and also that having sweat glands all over our body not only help with running, but also with survival in hot climates. This feature presupposes that rules in some form exist for long distance running and for climates of different temperature.


Arm and Hammer. Humans are extremely dexterous with their hands, allowing them to lift and carry objects using their hands instead of their mouth. They can also use tools and other items with their hands.

In addition, humans can throw much further than any other animal. Humans can throw stones and similar objects accurately out to a distance of 100 feet, and potentially farther albeit with less accuracy.

If we consider a "default" creature, it would probably be one in which it can approximate the dexterity of a human hand, only using its entire anatomy. For example, a dog using both its mouth and forelimbs might be able to manipulate a tool with roughly the same precision (realistically, probably much worse) as a human using only one hand. That humans can use their hands is something that is a huge advantage over most other animals. Many apes would also be able to do this, and cephalopods would have a similar ability.

Something apes can't do well, however, is throw things. This is something that uniquely human.

I feel like the fact that we walk upright probably has some kind of benefit as well, but I'm not quite sure what that would be and how that could be expressed as a racial (special? as in "species"?) trait.

Damon_Tor
2019-12-22, 10:07 AM
I feel like the fact that we walk upright probably has some kind of benefit as well, but I'm not quite sure what that would be and how that could be expressed as a racial (special? as in "species"?) trait.

It contributes to our endurance running in several ways, so to some degree you have it covered already.

There are some other minor benefits: it makes us taller than our body mass would usually allow for, which means we can spot prey and predators somewhat better. Combined with our intelligence and reasonable senses it makes it harder to hide from us.

And simply the fact that it's a very unusual posture means other creatures' adaptations and behaviors are slightly less effective than they should be due to novelty: for example, most predators instinctively go for the neck (canids for the throat, felids for the spine) but a human's neck isn't in an intuitive place, it's up on top, not in the front. This effectively adds another step to kill us, they have to knock us down first before they feel like they can go for the kill. That may not seem like much of an advantage, and against lions or tigers or polar bears it doesn't do much to save us from the totally lopsided fight, but consider smaller predators: a 150 pound deer surrounded by a pack of coyotes is going to lose that fight with the coyotes taking few if any casualties, but a 150 pound human (armed with just a club for the sake of argument) is going to fare much better, and part of that is because the human's neck is out of reach for the coyotes.

So if we were expressing this as a game system:

-Humans make perception checks as if they were one size larger (in this system, size class would have to impose an advantage for this)
-Creatures the same size or smaller than a human have disadvantage when attacking the human's neck as long as the human is not prone (we have to assume anatomy-specific attacks are a thing in this system)

Draconi Redfir
2019-12-22, 10:28 AM
what if we bumped up human base speed to 40ft instead of 30ft? that could help reflect the long-distance walking thing practically in a way that might intrigue people, as worrying about endurance and exhaustion effects that don't often come up doesn't generally go well.

Lemmy
2019-12-22, 02:31 PM
All vertebrae we know only have 4 limbs.

So the main advantage of walking on two legs is that it leaves our forelimbs free to manipulate tools, allowing us to actually put our intelligence to use.

Greywander
2019-12-22, 05:01 PM
what if we bumped up human base speed to 40ft instead of 30ft? that could help reflect the long-distance walking thing practically in a way that might intrigue people, as worrying about endurance and exhaustion effects that don't often come up doesn't generally go well.
It's the difference of sprinting vs. marathon running. In D&D 5e terms, base speed affects both, so it's not a good option for this.

There's actually a race, I believe in the UK, where someone on foot races against someone on a horse. You might think this sounds unbalanced, and it is, but there have been a few times where the person on foot has won. Usually the hotter days. If the course were longer, we'd probably see the human beat the horse more often as well. Humans aren't especially quick, it's that we can just run basically forever without stopping.


So if we were expressing this as a game system:

-Humans make perception checks as if they were one size larger (in this system, size class would have to impose an advantage for this)
-Creatures the same size or smaller than a human have disadvantage when attacking the human's neck as long as the human is not prone (we have to assume anatomy-specific attacks are a thing in this system)
Good ideas. It is a bit weird to have size correlate to perception ability, but if one were to work out a system where this was the case, counting humans as one size larger would probably work.

As for the neck, what we could do is make humans effectively immune to critical hits. We could say their "weak spot" is at the top of their body, and thus simply out of reach for typical animals. For fellow humans, it would be within reach, and likewise if we get knocked prone, so in those cases humans would be susceptible to crits.

This reminds me of an idea I was playing with and wanted to incorporate into some kind of homebrew RPG system. Rather than the 5 foot increments of D&D 5e, I'd use yards (3 feet) as the basic unit of distance. So a medium sized creature is one that (roughly) fits inside a 3x3x3 foot cube. But then you'd also have modified sizes, so a quadruped, for example, might be medium long, which is two 3-foot cubes one in front of the other. Humans would be medium tall, i.e. two 3-foot cubes stacked on top of each other.

With this system, you could say that humans' perception originates from the top cube (giving them the perceptive ability of a larger creature), and their weak spot is also in the top cube, and thus out of reach. Most animals would also not be medium sized, so while a medium long creature (like a bear or tiger?) could raise themselves onto their hind legs to reach humans' weak spot, for most creatures they would still be out of reach.

Speaking of reach, a lot of animals have very short reach, basically 0, whereas the human arm adds about 2 feet to our reach, which gets even longer when you throw in weapons. An animal has to basically get into grappling range in order to attack you, whereas humans can reach creatures before they get close enough to grapple. In game terms, this means that an animal would probably need to move into the same space as the creature it was attacking, while humans could attack creatures in adjacent spaces without moving into them.

Using the above system, I'd probably give humans +1 yard (i.e. +3 feet) to their reach, compared to an animal. Using a weapon might give even further reach (a dagger probably not, but sword probably another yard). Creatures with a range of 0 yards might need to move into the space of a creature to attack, then pull back to an unoccupied space (unless they grapple). Creatures that are a long size would probably only need to move their front cube into the enemy's space to attack/grapple.

nonsi
2019-12-22, 10:34 PM
we regenerate from wounds and injuries that would kill almost any other species, and there have been cases where things that should have killed members of our species just... didn't.


IMO, this could be best reflected by nixing the bonus feat and bonus skill points and replacing them with +2 to either Con or Cha (hardy or tenacious) and +2 to all saves (too stubborn or just damn lucky).

InvisibleBison
2019-12-22, 10:55 PM
(seriously why do most animals have 12 or 14 wisdom?)

Presumably because lots of animals have better senses than humans, and perception skills are Wisdom-based.

Greywander
2019-12-22, 11:09 PM
Presumably because lots of animals have better senses than humans, and perception skills are Wisdom-based.
Another way of interpreting this is that instinct is related to intuition. Animals have more instinctual behavior than humans, which is represented by a higher initial Wisdom but less ability to increase Wisdom.

Aniikinis
2019-12-23, 03:35 AM
I haven't been on the forums in a bit, so sorry for the whole "no response" thing, but to respond now:


Give them a bonus against fatigue, disease and/or fear... But also a penalty against temptation-based mind control.

Part of that would be covered by giving them a bonus to Con, and I was honestly thinking about giving a penalty to Wis given how humanity is as a whole when it comes to dangerous things.


My AD&D rewrite of humans gives us a +1 to Charisma (we make friends, even with other species) and a +1 to all saves.

I can't believe the "pack bonds with anything" trait slipped my mind, but yeah that'd make sense.


I'd go with 50% resistance to non-lethal damage if 3.5, and a not too hard save (DC 12ish) to just not get a level of exhaustion whenever they normally would if 5e. If it ain't straight up deadly, we ignore it.

3.5 would be best because then I could easily translate it into other systems given with how familiar I am with the system. I'd like to merge these in a way, give a bonus to resisting fatigue and exhaustion while making non-lethal not really a thing for humans.


If we are redoing the standard human perhaps +1 con +1 to two other stats of your choice. A skill and a tool proficiency and finally a new feature.
Human Durability: Gain proficiency in one saving throw of your choice.

This seems like a good point to start with honestly and leads to them keeping some amount of flexibility.


This is something I've thought about before. The OP didn't specify a system, so I'll try to give a somewhat system-agnostic answer. I'll also be speaking in terms of humans compared to animals, rather than humans compared to elves or dwarves. Other humanoids may or may not share the same traits as humans.

For humans, they seem to have a number of advantages over animals. Intelligence is the obvious one, but writing up any creature's intelligence, even an animals, would likely be very difficult, so we'll focus on other aspects.

I did, actually, specify a system later on in the thread and even gave some ideas for base systems in the OP.

3.5 would be best since from there I can tweak it to fit other systems and editions easily.
Though, the animals take is one I've pored over so often it's not even funny in various angles. The definitions of sapience and sentience are ones that have given me trouble the most, but they don't really have a place in this thread, so I'm stopping that there.



Sweat and Stride. Through a combination of sweating and the efficient design of human legs, humans can run for twice as long before needing to roll a check for endurance. Furthermore, humans may treat hot climates as being one step cooler.

This highlights that humans can run for longer than many other animals, and also that having sweat glands all over our body not only help with running, but also with survival in hot climates. This feature presupposes that rules in some form exist for long distance running and for climates of different temperature.

This is a feature that is by far the main draw for humanity. We never stop moving and are a pain to run away from since we can just track you down again and again until you collapse. I like the climate band modifier as well, it fits into the theme of savannah and steppe runners nicely. 3.5, the system I'll probably use for the start, has an entire book based around hot climates, wastelands, and deserts and as such has rules for endurance checks in hot temperatures that can definitely be used in conjunction with that trait.



Arm and Hammer. Humans are extremely dexterous with their hands, allowing them to lift and carry objects using their hands instead of their mouth. They can also use tools and other items with their hands.

In addition, humans can throw much further than any other animal. Humans can throw stones and similar objects accurately out to a distance of 100 feet, and potentially farther albeit with less accuracy.

If we consider a "default" creature, it would probably be one in which it can approximate the dexterity of a human hand, only using its entire anatomy. For example, a dog using both its mouth and forelimbs might be able to manipulate a tool with roughly the same precision (realistically, probably much worse) as a human using only one hand. That humans can use their hands is something that is a huge advantage over most other animals. Many apes would also be able to do this, and cephalopods would have a similar ability.

Something apes can't do well, however, is throw things. This is something that uniquely human.

I feel like the fact that we walk upright probably has some kind of benefit as well, but I'm not quite sure what that would be and how that could be expressed as a racial (special? as in "species"?) trait.

I'm glad that you brought this up since it's insanely unique and something not found anywhere else in nature. This could easily be noted out as increased range and attack bonus for throwing weapons only as well as the skill and ability to use improvised weapons as such.


what if we bumped up human base speed to 40ft instead of 30ft? that could help reflect the long-distance walking thing practically in a way that might intrigue people, as worrying about endurance and exhaustion effects that don't often come up doesn't generally go well.

That could be a nice side perk, and it would help in most circumstances, but endurance and exhaustion effects aren't the only things that would be dealt with since humans in general just refuse to die or even to lay down and accept defeat. There are insane stories of people taking a tamping spike through the head and not dying, a man getting shot in the head only to think he has a headache, people being flung like ragdolls by tornadoes and not dying, etc. Humans can endure ridiculous trauma, both physical and mental, and still survive and continue to carry on.


IMO, this could be best reflected by nixing the bonus feat and bonus skill points and replacing them with +2 to either Con or Cha (hardy or tenacious) and +2 to all saves (too stubborn or just damn lucky).

Honestly, that was the first idea I had and the one that I'm gonna build most of this off of. Get rid of the feat and the skill points, then maybe give them good amounts of niche bonuses and a few noteworthy traits alongside some ability adjustments and a save bonus.