zlefin
2020-12-19, 03:14 PM
A long time ago I did some work designing a race rebuild, with the goal of making races more sensible from an evolutionary perspective (based on what I know, which may be out of date), and to make humans just another race, rather than being special. I never did a writeup, nor fully complete the redesign, but I feel like I should writeup what I do have, in case any are interested, and because I did put a fair bit of thought into it, and the challenges along the way, etc.
other Basic goals not previously mentioned: Try to have the races be passably balanced. Try to get the feel/themes/abilities of races to match the standard ones to the degree I can justify them. Have races preferred terrains be mechanically justified (ie preferred terrains aren't just 'because', they are due to races having a distinct advantage in those terrains); this also explains why one race doesn't just outcompete and take over all the others.
Race stats/abilities are as they were except where specified/added to.
Interbreeding:
One of the basic questions is how to handle the half-X races. Since I don't want humans to be special, the regular half-X races simply don't work, as all of them are implicitly half-human, and there seems no reason for humans to be especially good at mixing with the other races. If half-breeds exist and are fertile, then it creates extensive complications to the system, as it means 3/4 breeds must exist as well, and all manner of other mixes, so why would the races have any unique identity at all? How would abilities for those mixes be determined? As such there are three basic ways to setup the system: Interbreeding is just not possible, period; or interbreeding is possible but very difficult, rarely producing children, and the children also have trouble reproducing, so it never represents a significant population; or interbreeding can occur readily but offspring are always sterile. For now, I simply plan to not design any of the mixed races, and leave it as an open world-building question which interbreeding rule to use.
Universal Characteristics:
For determining these, I've primarily looked at what I know about primates and corvids.
Omnivorous; while any race may have a preference for more specific categories of food, they're all capable of eating a wide variety of things. It seems to be correlated with intelligence.
Tool users; rather obvious in a DnD context, but I'll mention it. Tool use also requires limbs capable of reasonably manipulating tools. It often, though not necessarily, comes with prehensile limbs.
For now, I'm sticking to a standard humanoid model, with all the basics that entails on morphology, though there are some plausible alternate setups (something evolved out of a corvid or octopus)
Use of ranged weapons; while the degree to which they are used varies, the ability to use simple ranged weapons is a substantial advantage, so all of them will be quite good at it (no effect mechanically, because its a default human trait that the system already assumes).
Social structure; all tend to live in groups, though group size may vary by species. Groups are particularly helpful in hunting. Last I knew it was believed that social structures had some positive correlation with intelligence, though I don't know how significant a correlation.
Elves:
They now have a climb speed. Not sure what value is best to give them, I'll probably say 20 ft. As standard for having a climb speed, this means they get a +8 racial bonus on climb checks, and can take 10 even if distracted, and they keep their dodge bonuses to AC while climbing. I'd considered giving them the much weaker brachiation feat instead, but decided to go bold. Also, it'd have meant using a feat from a less open source, whereas a climb speed is all srd material. The presence of a climb speed gives a good justification for elves having a forest preference. In a forest, a climb speed is a significant combat advantage, enabling escape from anyone who cannot climb as proficiently, providing a good way to get a high-ground advantage, and shifting from tree to tree should be possible (not too clear on how the rules interact with that exactly). But on other terrains it does less, and in some places it does nearly nothing. The +dex and -con stay; my justification for it would be that the dex comes from their climbing focused lifestyle, and the -con is because to maintain an effective climb in a creature of this size, they tend to be less meaty, with slightly thinner bones and such.
Other terrains where there is some advantage would be swamp (due to the trees), and mountainous, or cliffs near water. All places where the climb ability is handy, though not as ubiquitous as a forest.
I'm uncertain if they need any bonus to Balance checks to go with it; the rules don't seem to have much that addresses climbing and tree limb sizes, and how often/whether to check for it. It occurs to me that climb may not be a class skill for them; it seems to me like anything with a climb speed should automatically have climb as a class skill, so for now I'll just make climb an always class skill for elves.
Whether the other minor elven abilities exist or not I'm going to ignore; I'd probably cut them for balance reasons, but I doubt it matters that much.
Elves should be able to safely sleep in trees without falling (assuming on appropriately sized branches).
Humans:
These pose a great challenge. Preferred terrain is clear: plains (more like savannah really). Evolutionarily, one of humans major adaptations is for distance running. The legs, as well as the lesser amount of hair and sweat, enable humans to do distance running far better than most animals. Humans can run down many prey animals, because they can keep running for much longer, whereas most animals become too exhausted or overheat. The challenge is that a lot of the games rules are based around humans as a default, and with all the other races sharing many of humans base characteristics; which goes contrary to the goal of ensuring the races have significant functional differences. Since humans have a real-world evolutionary adaptation with a passably clear terrain preference, I don't want to discard it. Humans terrain preference is because its much easier to run down animals on more open terrain, where there's fewer places for an animal to hide and its harder for them to get out of sight. In a forest for instance you'd be much more likely to lose sight of and/or lose the trail of prey. Back to the game rules, the challenge is that the rules for long term running (eg hustle for an hour) do not distinguish between the races, nor do they even have any apparent difference for prey animals. Under RAW, humans just can't run down a large prey mammal (eg deer). Looking up some; I see there's considerable disputes on this persistence hunting method being viable or a significant part of humans evolution, but it makes for an interesting hypothesis and helps give a good reason for terrain preference for humans, so I'll go with it.
This brings us back to the challenge of the rules: since RAW uses human endurance standards for a default, do I change the actual rules for long term movement, or simply give humans a pertinent bonus even if it makes things less realistic?
I had considered giving humans the Endurance and Run feats; but Run is too sprinting oriented, and endurance ends up helping in so many different terrains it doesn't focus.
Other Thoughts:
It occurred to me that the impact of darkvision of some races on a world-building level. The ability to engage in combat, especially warfare, at night and without light sources makes a huge difference. It makes night-time assaults/raids much more dangerous, and much more feasible. The advantage is so large that it may make attacks on fortified locations quite viable in a way that would not exist for a race without such sight.
Halflings:
While it feels like I'm overusing movement modes, the thing that I ultimately settled on for halflings is giving them a burrow speed. I don't want to be too high, so maybe just 5', or maybe 10'; based on a review of the animals with burrow speed, 10' seems best. Modest, but still quite useful. I'm in part inspired by lotr's having hobbits love to live in burrows; and the more general halfling lore which tends to prefer that and mild hills as well. Of particular note here is that as per the standard burrow rules, they can only burrow through dirt and not rock; which means they prefer to be on terrain where there is sufficient dirt or other material weak enough to burrow through. I'm uncertain how human/halfling competition would go; it seems like they'd have a lot of competition for fairly similar niches. I haven't heavily studied burrow rules and anti-burrowing tactics to assess things; but it seems like burrowing is a very strong defense; depending on how hard it is to force people back above ground. I note that halflings low movement speed means they really have to do ambush-hunting against larger prey; as they cannot run down much of anything at all, neither short term nor long term. Or they'd have to focus on eating small things which cannot run that fast (plus of course whatever you can forage). I've considered having them be fairly heavy into eating insects. That's all I've got for halflings.
Dwarves:
I never came up with anything good for them. The standard preference for dwarves is caves; which of course require mountains, or at least hills. Cave ecosystems though have very little going on; and what IS going on is a result of an outside source. Very few things fully live in caves; mostly things shelter in caves and go out to get food elsewhere. Also, lots of stuff likes using caves as shelter; so what would give dwarves a real cave preference/advantage, and why wouldn't they prefer the terrain near the caves rather than caves themselves? Caves are more like something you use when available, but otherwise live without. Also caves really aren't that common. I'm not sure to what extent the 'fantasy' rules for terrain change things, and whether or not to use those. (ie in fantasy, caves seem to be a lot more common than in real life, and there are these complex underground worlds, often with a food base that somehow exists to support a large ecosystem). While dwarves are often shown as doing a lot of mining and expanding of their caves, that leaves a few glaring issues for a project like this: where does all the dirt/rock being excavated go? how would they do it without good tools in the first place? The second mattering since this project is meant to be at least vaguely plausibly from an evolutionary perspective, so early on they wouldn't really have the tools to expand a cave. I also just don't know much about how hard it is to do mining with stone tools.
One possible ability I came up with I call Stone Sleep. It's like a deep hibernation. A dwarf can go up against stone (maybe with their beard?), and enter a deep slumbering state. In that state they derive just enough nourishment to stay alive by drawing energy directly from the stone (or maybe minerals). In that state they do not need air or water. This gives dwarves a mildly useful defensive ability: they can survive a siege somewhat by having their noncombatant go into stone sleep; or by fully sealing the entrances. Also less likely to die in mining accidents, which are a real threat if you live underground.
Gnomes:
I didn't ever get much work done on gnomes. Only vague thought is having them be fond of eating/cultivating fungi, and using that to justify their bonuses to illusion magic.
other Basic goals not previously mentioned: Try to have the races be passably balanced. Try to get the feel/themes/abilities of races to match the standard ones to the degree I can justify them. Have races preferred terrains be mechanically justified (ie preferred terrains aren't just 'because', they are due to races having a distinct advantage in those terrains); this also explains why one race doesn't just outcompete and take over all the others.
Race stats/abilities are as they were except where specified/added to.
Interbreeding:
One of the basic questions is how to handle the half-X races. Since I don't want humans to be special, the regular half-X races simply don't work, as all of them are implicitly half-human, and there seems no reason for humans to be especially good at mixing with the other races. If half-breeds exist and are fertile, then it creates extensive complications to the system, as it means 3/4 breeds must exist as well, and all manner of other mixes, so why would the races have any unique identity at all? How would abilities for those mixes be determined? As such there are three basic ways to setup the system: Interbreeding is just not possible, period; or interbreeding is possible but very difficult, rarely producing children, and the children also have trouble reproducing, so it never represents a significant population; or interbreeding can occur readily but offspring are always sterile. For now, I simply plan to not design any of the mixed races, and leave it as an open world-building question which interbreeding rule to use.
Universal Characteristics:
For determining these, I've primarily looked at what I know about primates and corvids.
Omnivorous; while any race may have a preference for more specific categories of food, they're all capable of eating a wide variety of things. It seems to be correlated with intelligence.
Tool users; rather obvious in a DnD context, but I'll mention it. Tool use also requires limbs capable of reasonably manipulating tools. It often, though not necessarily, comes with prehensile limbs.
For now, I'm sticking to a standard humanoid model, with all the basics that entails on morphology, though there are some plausible alternate setups (something evolved out of a corvid or octopus)
Use of ranged weapons; while the degree to which they are used varies, the ability to use simple ranged weapons is a substantial advantage, so all of them will be quite good at it (no effect mechanically, because its a default human trait that the system already assumes).
Social structure; all tend to live in groups, though group size may vary by species. Groups are particularly helpful in hunting. Last I knew it was believed that social structures had some positive correlation with intelligence, though I don't know how significant a correlation.
Elves:
They now have a climb speed. Not sure what value is best to give them, I'll probably say 20 ft. As standard for having a climb speed, this means they get a +8 racial bonus on climb checks, and can take 10 even if distracted, and they keep their dodge bonuses to AC while climbing. I'd considered giving them the much weaker brachiation feat instead, but decided to go bold. Also, it'd have meant using a feat from a less open source, whereas a climb speed is all srd material. The presence of a climb speed gives a good justification for elves having a forest preference. In a forest, a climb speed is a significant combat advantage, enabling escape from anyone who cannot climb as proficiently, providing a good way to get a high-ground advantage, and shifting from tree to tree should be possible (not too clear on how the rules interact with that exactly). But on other terrains it does less, and in some places it does nearly nothing. The +dex and -con stay; my justification for it would be that the dex comes from their climbing focused lifestyle, and the -con is because to maintain an effective climb in a creature of this size, they tend to be less meaty, with slightly thinner bones and such.
Other terrains where there is some advantage would be swamp (due to the trees), and mountainous, or cliffs near water. All places where the climb ability is handy, though not as ubiquitous as a forest.
I'm uncertain if they need any bonus to Balance checks to go with it; the rules don't seem to have much that addresses climbing and tree limb sizes, and how often/whether to check for it. It occurs to me that climb may not be a class skill for them; it seems to me like anything with a climb speed should automatically have climb as a class skill, so for now I'll just make climb an always class skill for elves.
Whether the other minor elven abilities exist or not I'm going to ignore; I'd probably cut them for balance reasons, but I doubt it matters that much.
Elves should be able to safely sleep in trees without falling (assuming on appropriately sized branches).
Humans:
These pose a great challenge. Preferred terrain is clear: plains (more like savannah really). Evolutionarily, one of humans major adaptations is for distance running. The legs, as well as the lesser amount of hair and sweat, enable humans to do distance running far better than most animals. Humans can run down many prey animals, because they can keep running for much longer, whereas most animals become too exhausted or overheat. The challenge is that a lot of the games rules are based around humans as a default, and with all the other races sharing many of humans base characteristics; which goes contrary to the goal of ensuring the races have significant functional differences. Since humans have a real-world evolutionary adaptation with a passably clear terrain preference, I don't want to discard it. Humans terrain preference is because its much easier to run down animals on more open terrain, where there's fewer places for an animal to hide and its harder for them to get out of sight. In a forest for instance you'd be much more likely to lose sight of and/or lose the trail of prey. Back to the game rules, the challenge is that the rules for long term running (eg hustle for an hour) do not distinguish between the races, nor do they even have any apparent difference for prey animals. Under RAW, humans just can't run down a large prey mammal (eg deer). Looking up some; I see there's considerable disputes on this persistence hunting method being viable or a significant part of humans evolution, but it makes for an interesting hypothesis and helps give a good reason for terrain preference for humans, so I'll go with it.
This brings us back to the challenge of the rules: since RAW uses human endurance standards for a default, do I change the actual rules for long term movement, or simply give humans a pertinent bonus even if it makes things less realistic?
I had considered giving humans the Endurance and Run feats; but Run is too sprinting oriented, and endurance ends up helping in so many different terrains it doesn't focus.
Other Thoughts:
It occurred to me that the impact of darkvision of some races on a world-building level. The ability to engage in combat, especially warfare, at night and without light sources makes a huge difference. It makes night-time assaults/raids much more dangerous, and much more feasible. The advantage is so large that it may make attacks on fortified locations quite viable in a way that would not exist for a race without such sight.
Halflings:
While it feels like I'm overusing movement modes, the thing that I ultimately settled on for halflings is giving them a burrow speed. I don't want to be too high, so maybe just 5', or maybe 10'; based on a review of the animals with burrow speed, 10' seems best. Modest, but still quite useful. I'm in part inspired by lotr's having hobbits love to live in burrows; and the more general halfling lore which tends to prefer that and mild hills as well. Of particular note here is that as per the standard burrow rules, they can only burrow through dirt and not rock; which means they prefer to be on terrain where there is sufficient dirt or other material weak enough to burrow through. I'm uncertain how human/halfling competition would go; it seems like they'd have a lot of competition for fairly similar niches. I haven't heavily studied burrow rules and anti-burrowing tactics to assess things; but it seems like burrowing is a very strong defense; depending on how hard it is to force people back above ground. I note that halflings low movement speed means they really have to do ambush-hunting against larger prey; as they cannot run down much of anything at all, neither short term nor long term. Or they'd have to focus on eating small things which cannot run that fast (plus of course whatever you can forage). I've considered having them be fairly heavy into eating insects. That's all I've got for halflings.
Dwarves:
I never came up with anything good for them. The standard preference for dwarves is caves; which of course require mountains, or at least hills. Cave ecosystems though have very little going on; and what IS going on is a result of an outside source. Very few things fully live in caves; mostly things shelter in caves and go out to get food elsewhere. Also, lots of stuff likes using caves as shelter; so what would give dwarves a real cave preference/advantage, and why wouldn't they prefer the terrain near the caves rather than caves themselves? Caves are more like something you use when available, but otherwise live without. Also caves really aren't that common. I'm not sure to what extent the 'fantasy' rules for terrain change things, and whether or not to use those. (ie in fantasy, caves seem to be a lot more common than in real life, and there are these complex underground worlds, often with a food base that somehow exists to support a large ecosystem). While dwarves are often shown as doing a lot of mining and expanding of their caves, that leaves a few glaring issues for a project like this: where does all the dirt/rock being excavated go? how would they do it without good tools in the first place? The second mattering since this project is meant to be at least vaguely plausibly from an evolutionary perspective, so early on they wouldn't really have the tools to expand a cave. I also just don't know much about how hard it is to do mining with stone tools.
One possible ability I came up with I call Stone Sleep. It's like a deep hibernation. A dwarf can go up against stone (maybe with their beard?), and enter a deep slumbering state. In that state they derive just enough nourishment to stay alive by drawing energy directly from the stone (or maybe minerals). In that state they do not need air or water. This gives dwarves a mildly useful defensive ability: they can survive a siege somewhat by having their noncombatant go into stone sleep; or by fully sealing the entrances. Also less likely to die in mining accidents, which are a real threat if you live underground.
Gnomes:
I didn't ever get much work done on gnomes. Only vague thought is having them be fond of eating/cultivating fungi, and using that to justify their bonuses to illusion magic.