[4e] Campaign Races

[drawingfreak]

So, I have been pondering the creation of my own continuing campaign world. I hear and read stories of DMs who have these worlds that span over editions and I want in on that starting now.

Thusly, I am contemplating what needs to be in this world, first of all being the races that shall populate the world.

What races are awesome and which are not? What makes them worthy of existing in my game? Debate, Interwebs! DEBATE!

[[I've decided, for story reasons in the first game, that the following races are safe from my DM wrath: Humans, Elves, Orcs]]

[akma]

Personelly I have a strong dislike towards elves. Also, halflings always seemed like short men to me.

And we need more information then that. How does your world look like? Does it have any theme? Is it generic or non generic?

[NotScaryBats]

Many campaign settings modify the races to fit them, for example, Dark Sun has Dragonborn as wizard-created where vanilla 4e has them as descendants of an ancient civilization. Consider doing that for the races you like.

As for me, some races I thought were kind of lame / really hard to imagine in a party include Wilden and Shardminds. They are soooo incredibly alien that I can't really imagine one running around.

Just my opinion.

[ghost_warlock]

I'm running a Dark Sun game right now, so the list of playable races is fairly restricted. Mostly just PHB1 races, plus a few others.

Before the Dark Sun game, I was planning a homebrew campaign which I originally intended to be human-only. My co-DM convinced me to allow tiefling, however, and I eventually decided to also allow re-fluffed half-orc.

[Asklepian]

In my latest campaign, where I was trying for a very cosmopolitan feel in a steampunkish world, I went to the opposite extreme and allowed all of the races from any of the books, with some refluffing on several of them to help them fit in the grand scheme of things.

Just speaking personally, though, I've always had a soft spot for gnolls and githyanki.

[Kurald Galain]

I agree with the general principle that a campaign world really does not need 20+ different intelligent humanoid-ish races, especially not if half of them are descendents of an ancient fallen empire. And yes, I realize the irony of my forum name here.

I rather like gnomes, myself, as well as lizardmen (who are not all that different from dragonborn, really, except that I like the name better). I rather do not like tieflings, nor having fifteen different kinds of elf, nor sentient plants or sentient crystals. Especially not if they're human-shaped for no discernible reason, and all have the Most Common Superpower.

[dsmiles]

Let me give you the run-down on what I'm currently using:

Dragonborn - Rulers of the budding Beastman Empire' (That's right, my world is not human-dominated.)
Wolfen - Super soldiers and generals of the Beastman Empire
Ferrire (feline race) - Mystics, priests, and wizards of the Beastman Empire.
Minotaur - Commoners and general purpose soldiers of the Beastman Empire.
Elves - Near-feral forest-dwelling xenophobes. Mostly barbaric and follow a Druidic religious tradition.
Dwarves - Technological masters, who live deep in their mines (with scottish accents, of course ).
Humans - Heirs to an empire that fell just two generations ago. The pain is still fresh in their hearts and minds. Feudal Japanese-based society with a little bit of other Asian cultures thrown in for flavor.
Orcs - Plains-dwelling nomadic hunters. Probably more 'civilized' than the Elves, speaking in broad terms.
Goblins - Masters of steampunkery and haphazard technology. (Much like 40Ks Orks). They intuitively build machines that somehow work. They live on the fringes of both Beastman and Human societies, not really accepted into either, but useful enough that they're allowed to stick around.

EDIT: I forgot:
Half-Elves - Meh. Half-Elves are just...half-elf.

[ghost_warlock]

I agree with the general principle that a campaign world really does not need 20+ different intelligent humanoid-ish races, especially not if half of them are descendents of an ancient fallen empire. And yes, I realize the irony of my forum name here.

I rather like gnomes, myself, as well as lizardmen (who are not all that different from dragonborn, really, except that I like the name better). I rather do not like tieflings, nor having fifteen different kinds of elf, nor sentient plants or sentient crystals. Especially not if they're human-shaped for no discernible reason, and all have the Most Common Superpower.

Personally, I'm inclined in favor of a plant or fungal race, though I'm not sure I particularly like the implementation in the case of wilden. They just seem rather lackluster. I'd be anxious to play a mi-go-like race, however.

As for humanoid shape, well, it makes sense to be bipedal with opposable thumbs in order to make effective use of tools; which, it could be argued, is a major milestone in the progress towards higher forms of intelligence. I'd much more readily accept that a humanoid plant/crystal is sentient than one that's amorphous or some other defined shape.

[FelixG]

First what you want to do is give Gnomes the boot, make Kobolds a main race, they deserve it after all the hate :P

Also warforged: Constructs rock

[drawingfreak]

Let me give you the run-down on what I'm currently using:

Dragonborn - Rulers of the budding Beastman Empire' (That's right, my world is not human-dominated.)
Wolfen - Super soldiers and generals of the Beastman Empire
Ferrire (feline race) - Mystics, priests, and wizards of the Beastman Empire.
Minotaur - Commoners and general purpose soldiers of the Beastman Empire.
Elves - Near-feral forest-dwelling xenophobes. Mostly barbaric and follow a Druidic religious tradition.
Dwarves - Technological masters, who live deep in their mines (with scottish accents, of course ).
Humans - Heirs to an empire that fell just two generations ago. The pain is still fresh in their hearts and minds. Feudal Japanese-based society with a little bit of other Asian cultures thrown in for flavor.
Orcs - Plains-dwelling nomadic hunters. Probably more 'civilized' than the Elves, speaking in broad terms.
Goblins - Masters of steampunkery and haphazard technology. (Much like 40Ks Orks). They intuitively build machines that somehow work. They live on the fringes of both Beastman and Human societies, not really accepted into either, but useful enough that they're allowed to stick around.

EDIT: I forgot:
Half-Elves - Meh. Half-Elves are just...half-elf.

That actually sounds really F-N sweet. PM me details?

[Zen Master]

Well - the dragonborn make my want to slit my own throat. Otherwise, fantasy races are fantasy races. Some are misunderstodd (there are people who think elves are good), some are perfect (dwarves with scottish accents, beards and axes), and some are just ... rather boring, but kinda necessary (humans).

I kinda like what I consider the Star Wars approach: That all races are reasonably accepted - at least in wretched hives of scum and villany. So you get to trade with orcs, hobgoblins and elves - and they will have ogre or troll bodyguards, or something along those lines.

Of course, in Tir Lumien (towers of light?!), the more wicked races might be shunned. You can always expect a bit of racism of those who deem themselves 'good'.

[dsmiles]

That actually sounds really F-N sweet. PM me details?

You'll have to wait 'till later, I'm at work and don't have access to my documents. But I can say that I'm using the Iron Kingdoms classes and stuff from BodgedTogether.com. Just not the races. The races are primarily my own.

[Yora]

When creating settings, I think the best way to pick races is to first chose roles for them, which you want to be filled. If you want a lot of sentient humanoid races like Eberron or Star Wars, this isn't really much of a concern. Just throw them in and you're fine.
But if you want to limit yourself to a more managable number, like five or six, it's a good idea to think of their role in the world first.

In my setting (though not 4e) I have:
Elves as the imperial race. They have a number of big cities and large armies to make war with each other.
Humans are the barbarian race. They live at the borders of the elven city states and often work as mercenaries or trade with goods from the wilderness.
Gnomes are the mountain race. They blend dwarven and halfling characteristics and live in burried villages in the hills and forests, but also run a large number of small scale mining opperation and are responsible for most of the worlds steel production.
Lizardfolk are the old imperial and monster race. They rarely mix with the other races and have large and powerful kingdoms in the jungles to the south of the central lands. Sometimes they travel as really expensive mercenaries and are tall and strong.
Kaas are the savage monster race. Slightly animal-like humanoids known for their strength and combat power, but not very numerous and living mostly in isolated locations like mountains. They are somewhat like sane orcs or half-orc tribes,

[Kaje]

Warforged are sweet. If you don't like the standard "recently created as soldiers or workers" concept, then you can make them the gods' prototypes for mankind or something.

[Dust]

Look up the Shadar-Kai. Preferably in the Dragon magazine that did an article on them. Don't look at it, gloss over it and go 'oh, they're emo dark elves.' Really read about the race and how they live in a heiarchy built upon personal glory and badassitude. how they attempt to live a live full of emotional and physical extremes, pushing themselves to the absolute limit because if they don't, they fade away and get sucked into the Shadowfell.

Then look at elves.

Might I suggest a major race replacement? It's worked wondered for my group.

[TheEmerged]

For my campaign world, I've specifically disallowed the Shardmind and Warforged as being inappropriate to the world's flavor. The Deva and Kalashtar (spelling?) are defined as "available, but rare" within the world. The Deva have been refluffed to be more elemental in nature.

Several races have been renamed due to my prejudice about "half" races. So half-elves are called Varsidians ("Far Side people") and hobbits are known as such instead of that halfling nonsense The also affects the half-orcs, which I've lumped with the wilden, goliath, and genasi as The Entradia (a "family" of races instead of a racial tribe).

The Tiefling I refluffed substantially to be the Qax, the competing barbarian race to the Entradia. The Qax get the Tiefling racial but their own attribute/skill bonuses.

The other prejudice that affects my campaign world is my distaste for the Noble Savage stereotype. So no orcs, minotaurs, trolls, and the like.

I've arranged the standard racial groups into 'quartets' if you will. Generally this works out as the 'baseline' version, a specialized version, an evil version, and a "horror-touched" version.

Fey: Elves (baseline), Eladrin (specialized), Drow (evil), Shadar-Kai (horror-touched).

Dwarves: Dwarves (baseline), Mern (specialized*), Derro (evil), and Morlock (horror-touched)

Human: Human (baseline), Qax (specialized), Kalasthar (psionic), and Gith.

Goblins: Goblins (baseline), Hobgolins, Binqi ("blues", the psionic subrace), and Gnolls (horror-touched). Bugbears are considered goblinoids too but aren't available as a player race.

Lizard: Dragonborn, Kobolds, Thdkd (psionic), Yuan-ti (horror-touched).

There are a number of races that don't figure into this pattern, obviously.

*

Spoiler

Show

Mern started as a joke I started taking seriously. You might call them Sea Dwarves, complete with blue skin. They have Canadian accents instead of Scottish, are lumberjacks & shipwrights instead of miners & smiths, and talk about The Sea the way you'd expect an elf to talk about Mother Nature.

[PacifistOgre]

The other prejudice that affects my campaign world is my distaste for the Noble Savage stereotype. So no orcs, minotaurs, trolls, and the like.

That's definitely a pretty tired stereotype, though I think minotaurs are pretty easily salvaged. Change their +2 Nature to +2 History or maybe +2 Dungeoneering, give 'em low-light or darkvision, and they can be pretty awesomely refluffed to an underground kingdom of cultured warriors and scholarly historians and sometimes both at once. Those labyrinths they love so much aren't going to build themselves!

I intend to replace dwarves with them, personally. Yet Another Drunk Scottish Stereotype got old for me years ago.

[Oracle_Hunter]

My latest campaign setting was designed to explicitly include every PC race available in a published 4E book. I had to re-work the fluff for many of the races, but I'm pretty happy how it's going.

So you can have anywhere from every race to a couple of races; just remember to have a space in the world for every sentient race you include!

...so, what exactly do you want in your world? The first place to start isn't "what races" but "what is my world's theme." Once you have that, you can move onto races

[cdrcjsn]

I think if someone is creating their own setting, it doesn't really matter if you have a place for every race ever mentioned in various setting books.

Even if a player wants to play one of the "non-standard" races in the setting composed entirely of humans for example, there's various methods you can use to introduce that character (exotic character from a remote part of the world/plane/planet, magical aberration, etc.)

I'd say create an interesting setting first and don't worry about trying to include everything.

As for specific races I like to feature, I have a soft spot for Humans. :)
Somehow, they seem to get left out of a lot of adventuring groups...

[dsmiles]

As for specific races I like to feature, I have a soft spot for Humans. :)
Somehow, they seem to get left out of a lot of adventuring groups...

That'd be Goblins for me. Techno-goblins, specifically.

[DragonBaneDM]

I don't like dealing with races who are difficult to roleplay.

What I mean by that is they lack major humanoid fears or emotions.

Shardmind, Warforged, Deva, and Wilden all fit in here, though I have to admit to being fond of Warforged, it's hard to really do anything interesting with these guys.

They don't fear death, rage, pity, originally come with empathy, and they certainly don't get happy or it would ruin the fact that the person playing them picked them to be the "quiet sulking alien in the corner" trope.

Also, these races really don't have a culture, which makes them poor NPCs to represent the nations of your campaign.

[ShaggyMarco]

In my most recent setting, I have done a couple of really obvious, standard things, but some pretty creative and interesting things too. I will share some of my favorite interesting twists:

Deva: these are people who, form a pretty young age, travel to the Ivory Tower. In the Ivory Tower, the applicants are trained, they study, and if found worthy, they are eventually inducted into the Order of the Ivory Tower, a magical induction which severs their ties to their old race and firmly roots their mind into the shared memory of the Tower. They are then given the chance to stay at the tower and devote themselves to study, thereby growing the net knowledge of all Deva (npcs) or they travel out into the world to do great things, putting the racial knowledge to work and adding experiential knowledge to the store. They are kind of like mystical versions of the Maesters from G.R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Warforged: One of the things Deva have figured out how to do is bind the souls of dead members of their number to constructs. Unfortunately, this cuts that soul of from the collective memory, but on the plus-side, it provides some very hearty bodyguards to accompany the Deva on their journeys and protect the knowledge of the Deva. Some decide to leave the service of the Tower and travel the world alone.

Dwarves: Minor, really, but my dwarves live on TOP of the mountains, in the highlands, rather than beneath them. They are very close to nature, place spirits, and their own ancestors, making them favor the Primal Power source, though they tend to also be gifted martial characters. Yes, they have Scottish accents.

[akma]

Here are a bit of the changes I made to standard races (3e):
Elves: Originally a tribe of humans, and their leader tried to make them immortal - and failed, but managed to increase their lifespan and change them.
Half-elves: Since elves are basically humans with magical energy, when humans and elves breed the outcome is always elf. So half elves don`t exist.
Orcs: Most of them are part of the biggest army composed of humanoids in creation, they participate in wars in the plane of war. The families of the orcs take care of logistics. They think they fight for justice or some similiar noble cause. Some of them are in small tribes or part of bigger kingdoms in the normal plane.
Gnomes: They will eithar be the slaves of a race of giants or part of the army in which orcs serve, or both. Haven`t decided yet, and I never liked gnomes too.
Halflings: Haven`t fitted them properly yet into my setting, but there will be tribes of halflings that try to shrink themselves as much as possible, so I might do that they are originally humans who shrunk themselves.

[Katana_Geldar]

.
Half-elves: Since elves are basically humans with magical energy, when humans and elves breed the outcome is always elf. So half elves don`t exist.

Don't do this in 4E, half-elves are one of the best races to play.

[PacifistOgre]

I don't like dealing with races who are difficult to roleplay.

What I mean by that is they lack major humanoid fears or emotions.

Shardmind, Warforged, Deva, and Wilden

They don't fear death, rage, pity, originally come with empathy, and they certainly don't get happy or it would ruin the fact that the person playing them picked them to be the "quiet sulking alien in the corner" trope.

Only if you yourself lack imagination and your players are terrible, since the PHB2 and PHB3 say absolutely nothing of the sort that would force you to play them that way. Wilden are a little naive and have some pronoun confusion due to different cultural views, shardminds can be logical/naive/curious, but anything past that point is basically you complaining because you don't like your own head-canon for the species.

If your players all Do It Badly anyway when allowed to play those races you may as well just ban the options and save everyone the frustration, though.

[Tiki Snakes]

I'd say if you plan to keep the same setting across many campaigns, and even editions, plan for the start to leave it flexible. After all, not only is it going to be used by the varied and likely weird bunch of people who you may currently count as players, but possibly by weirder and even more varied people you have yet to meet.

They're going to have their own opinions on what they might enjoy playing, and having the room built in from the start for unusual creatures, mutants, one-offs or strangers from distant worlds, (whatever) will save on difficult decisions later on reguarding Sacred Cows. The easy way is to leave space in your own mind for alternate prime material planes, however difficult. In an infinate multiverse, you have infinate wiggle room, after all, and can make the major races of your setting as non-conventional as you like, (With the grand Dragon-ruled/Aided Kobold Empire vying for position with the Eternal Republic of the Yuan-ti and their protectorates, perhaps.)

[CarpeGuitarrem]

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campai...ae/wikis/races

When I made up the world for my campaign, I wanted to streamline and simplify races. I thought there weren't enough humans. My solution: make most of the "weird" races into brands of human, with magical ability. Regular humans became the BA Normals of this world.

I think it turned out pretty well.

[Katana_Geldar]

You may also wish to involve your players, my group have collaborative created a campaign world that keeps evolving to our needs.

[dsmiles]

That actually sounds really F-N sweet. PM me details?

Done, and done.

[Meta]

Only if you yourself lack imagination and your players are terrible, since the PHB2 and PHB3 say absolutely nothing of the sort that would force you to play them that way. Wilden are a little naive and have some pronoun confusion due to different cultural views, shardminds can be logical/naive/curious, but anything past that point is basically you complaining because you don't like your own head-canon for the species.

If your players all Do It Badly anyway when allowed to play those races you may as well just ban the options and save everyone the frustration, though.

I believe he's trying to say that because of some of their more alien motivations (the shardmind that wish to wipe out their own species jump to mind) that the races have a tendency to suffer from blue and orange morality.

Nowhere does he say that these races can't be played right, but it's not a large logical jump that a hypothetical, real-life shardmind that lives among nothing but shardminds would roleplay a shardmind better than a human.