Alternate Creature Interpretations (Feel free to add your own additions)

[Xania]

Uh... What did you think "nubile" meant when you wrote that?

Ooh... It needs to be edited?
I only found this once and used the same term

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...n/NubileSavage

[Comaward]

Reply to opening post.

In my homebrew setting (D&D 5e), chromatic dragons don't have wings, and can't fly. They make up for this with a greater amount of damage resistances.
I also emphasized the elemental nature and influence of the various chromatic dragon species a bit more.

For example:

WYRMLING RED
Breathes fire
Can burrow through earth (kind of like a badger or mole).

YOUNG RED
Breathes molten lava
Pulverizes the earth around itself by its mere presence, creating a cloud of dust around itself whenever it walks. This effect also allows the dragon to essentially "swim" freely through earth, and burrow through nonmagical stone.

ADULT AND ANCIENT RED
Breathes thermonuclear energy
Liquifies the earth around itself by its mere presence, turning the surrounding terrain into molten lava. This effect also allows the dragon to essentially "swim" freely through earth and nonmagical stone.

[Sizzlefoot]

Reply to opening post.

In my homebrew setting (D&D 5e), chromatic dragons don't have wings, and can't fly. They make up for this with a greater amount of damage resistances.
I also emphasized the elemental nature and influence of the various chromatic dragon species a bit more.

For example:

WYRMLING RED
Breathes fire
Can burrow through earth (kind of like a badger or mole).

YOUNG RED
Breathes molten lava
Pulverizes the earth around itself by its mere presence, creating a cloud of dust around itself whenever it walks. This effect also allows the dragon to essentially "swim" freely through earth, and burrow through nonmagical stone.

ADULT AND ANCIENT RED
Breathes thermonuclear energy
Liquifies the earth around itself by its mere presence, turning the surrounding terrain into molten lava. This effect also allows the dragon to essentially "swim" freely through earth and nonmagical stone.

This is really cool. Mind sharing your takes on the other chromatics?

[Comaward]

This is really cool. Mind sharing your takes on the other chromatics?

Sure, but you should know, I pretty much merged Black and Green Dragons together, and simply forgot about Blue Dragons altogether for THREE YEARS while I was creating my setting. I never went back to figuring out the Blue Dragons.

Black/Green Dragons (Black = freshwater, Green = saltwater)
WYRMLING
Aquatic. Cannot survive on land. Beyond that, they're really nothing special.

YOUNG
Breathes acid.
Limited Amphibiousness.
When on land, they can oversaturate the ground around themselves with moisture by their mere presence, turning it into mud.

ADULT AND ANCIENT
Breathes toxic gas. Also works underwater.
Amphibiousness.
Still have their mud-creation ability.
Can create a whirlpool of water around itself, pulling creatures and objects into the center of the vortex for the dragon to eat.

White Dragons - I freely admit I was influenced by the ending of season 7 of GoT, when the White Walkers turned Viserion into a wight back in 2017.
WYRMLING
Breathes a gust of wind (nonmagical bludgeoning) strong enough to knock most medium-sized humanoids over (Strength Saving Throw to remain upright).

YOUNG
Breathes cold.
Icy Intangibility (can pass effortlessly through any object or barrier made of ice)

ADULT AND ANCIENT
Breathes a cloud of electrified snow.
Icy intangibility.
Permanent feather fall.

[Xania]

Having xvarts looking like "blue gray aliens" and being able to make human or elf looking hybrids (actually it's Sizzlefoot's idea) i thought about making them act a little like space invaders, somehow they create said blue human and elves hybrids, beings like gray orcs or duergar are also xvarts hybrids.
Now xvarts can be an alternative serious menace

[Sizzlefoot]

Having xvarts looking like "blue gray aliens" and being able to make human or elf looking hybrids (actually it's Sizzlefoot's idea) i thought about making them act a little like space invaders, somehow they create said blue human and elves hybrids, beings like gray orcs or duergar are also xvarts hybrids.
Now xvarts can be an alternative serious menace

Maybe the xvarts were some ancient alien species who crashed their spacecraft only to have them buried by layers of sediment, and gnomes are the xvarts who escaped to the surface. Also, I really like all of your chromatic dragons, Comaward.

[Sizzlefoot]

The undead aren't all that bad. There is a nation in which the citizens may sign up to have their bodies used for war and/or labor after they die. In return, they are given a sum of money and possibly a plot of land. In major cities, the streets are filled with candles and incense to mask the scent of decay from the guards and laborers.

[Xania]

Maybe the xvarts were some ancient alien species who crashed their spacecraft only to have them buried by layers of sediment, and gnomes are the xvarts who escaped to the surface. Also, I really like all of your chromatic dragons, Comaward.

Could be their origin ^^
Except the deep gnomes, they got lost somewhere and ended as a missing link.

[Sizzlefoot]

Could be their origin ^^
Except the deep gnomes, they got lost somewhere and ended as a missing link.

Deep gnomes could also be gnome-xvart hybrids.

[Xania]

Deep gnomes could also be gnome-xvart hybrids.

True, that's easier

Being partly gnomes they are an exception to what i said of xvarts getting along better than usual with kobolds.

[Xania]

Sharing name with a bug, mites of different sizes will have to be my "kobolds and goblins".
Maybe they also feed on humanoid blood.

[Sizzlefoot]

Ogres wield handheld ballistae and ride triceratops(es?).

[Xania]

That made me think in making varags just a name for a tribe of chasmosaurus riders.
Also, pirate scrags riding plesiosaurus.

[Sizzlefoot]

Orcs, goblins, and trolls can photosynthesize.

[Xania]

Hobgoblins as the oposite of DuctTapeKatar's kobolds, being little and nasty prankers who haunt mines and homes.

[brian 333]

In my first campaign setting I was using AD&D rules, one of which was that elf PCs could not be clerics, but elf NPCs could be.

Armed with my oldest brother's copy of The Silmarillion, I set about explaining the reason why this was so.

The last of those born in the uttermost west were gone, and those who were left were their descendants or were descended from those who had never gone. Thus to them the straight road over the sea was lost.

To give the elves a way to the Undying Land the clerics were created by the gods.

In every elf community of 200 or more when a cleric passes on the oldest female gains her clerical powers. I had a population chart showing the number and levels of clerics based on the number of elves they served. In communities smaller than 200 a lay-cleric who was the oldest female present could serve as a level 0 cleric.

They were charged
with opening the path the spirits of the dead elves must follow to the afterlife. It was then up to the spirit to follow the path on its final adventure.

To perform the ceremony some bit of the elf must be present, so it is common for elves to leave a lock of hair with their mother before they leave home.

[noob]

In my first campaign setting I was using AD&D rules, one of which was that elf PCs could not be clerics, but elf NPCs could be.

Armed with my oldest brother's copy of The Silmarillion, I set about explaining the reason why this was so.

The last of those born in the uttermost west were gone, and those who were left were their descendants or were descended from those who had never gone. Thus to them the straight road over the sea was lost.

To give the elves a way to the Undying Land the clerics were created by the gods.

In every elf community of 200 or more when a cleric passes on the oldest female gains her clerical powers. I had a population chart showing the number and levels of clerics based on the number of elves they served. In communities smaller than 200 a lay-cleric who was the oldest female present could serve as a level 0 cleric.

They were charged
with opening the path the spirits of the dead elves must follow to the afterlife. It was then up to the spirit to follow the path on its final adventure.

To perform the ceremony some bit of the elf must be present, so it is common for elves to leave a lock of hair with their mother before they leave home.

What prevents a player from being a very old elf cleric staying in a church all day?

[brian 333]

Boredom. And a lack of temples.

[jqavins]

What prevents a player from being a very old elf cleric staying in a church all day?

Perhaps the fact that sitting in a temple is not what players generally create PCs to do?

[brian 333]

The idea was that the elves didn't worship in the way other races did. Their clerics served a single purpose, which had more to do with educating the children and consoling the bereaved than with prayers. There were no actual temples in elvish communities, so there wasn't even a place for elves to go to tithe.

Also, there were no male elf clerics at all.

[Xania]

Was different for me, there were no elf men druids and there were no elf women clerics, no real explanation beyond it, only being how i interpreted the gelflings.

[Flyingbooks42]

In the setting I'm working on:

• Gnomes and dolphins(which are sapient in the setting) are sort of symbiotic. The gnomes make contraptions that allow the dolphins to walk on land, while the dolphins help the gnomes with their fishing, since, in my setting, the gnomes live on a few small islands.
• Kobolds tend to be engineers and any city which wants any sort of sophisticated sewage or water system will hire kobolds.
• Halflings tend to be militaristic and matriarchial, because after a disaster that happened a few hundred years ago (I'm not going to say what it is, because one of my players might see this), the only Halflings that survived were the sailors. All the other halflings were in their homeland, which got destroyed. Pre-disaster halflings, except the sailors, tended to be more like normal D&D halflings.
• Dwarves and the equivalent of dragonborn live together. In the disaster, all the world's dragons were killed. However, they were powerful enough that, instead of simply dying, they sort of shattered, creating drakes (smaller, non-sapient, animal-like dragons), dragonborn, and kobolds.

[Xania]

Bugbears lurk the cities looking like old beggars or somebody else people try to ignore, their stats remain intact so they enter houses and make citizens disappear.


@Flyingbooks42 Were dolphins always sapient?

[Grim Portent]

Bugbears lurk the cities looking like old beggars or somebody else people try to ignore, their stats remain intact so they enter houses and make citizens disappear.

This I like. Are they supernatural creatures or a mortal race of dangerous vagrants?

[Xania]

I imagined them more like supernatural beings.

[Gideon Falcon]

As mentioned in my thread discussing some specific examples, my Dragons are embodiments of the Lovecraftian elements of the setting, as well as, I suppose, the Post-Lovecraftian elements.

The first Dragons were reactions of Primordial Chaos to this big offensive 'universe' thing suddenly taking up this new thing called 'space' in their not-place and flailing all these 'rules' and 'structures' and 'existences' about in their not-faces. Where they were able to make significant incursions, some not-thing close enough to resembling an individual shapes it into a powerful body and wreaks havoc. Lesser incursions either simply allow them to influence hapless sapients into starting cults or lead to smaller, yet still alien, things.

Good Dragons came about when a powerful Precursor cultist started wrecking things and creating bad dragons across the universe, leading the remaining Precursors to pool their resources to making a counteragent, a kickstart to the universe's immune system, by combining various magic systems and powerful artefacts from countless worlds into a single ritual that created the egg of the first recognizable, classical Dragon- a guardian creature and life-bringer, embodiment of magic, both servant and leader, not with a hoard but a charge of a universal scale; all wrapped in a form approximating the original Dragon whose corpse became the universe through elements of more natural life. A form that, until it can mature, is painfully adorable I mean look at those tiny paws and its wings are feathered they're sho freaking FLUFFY.


The setting is an inter-planetary one, using magic to traverse interstellar space and minor interplanar space due to the six-dimensional shape of the Materium. As such, there are certainly countless races out there, but a surprising number do evolve to humanesque shapes for unknown reasons. The main planets of origin of the characters I've been working with are human-dominated (though not necessarily the exact same 'human' on closer looks). Now, in the first planet setting, you don't have the standard fantasy races. Almost entirely it's just humans, but of course you hear tell of the Fair Folk out in the wild places.

That preamble was to get to the point that the Fae are an interplanetary race that usually doesn't colonize the entire planet and certainly doesn't try to uplift the natives. Further, the colonies don't necessarily keep contact enough to remember their origins on a given planet, so their otherworldly origins may be just as mysterious to them.

The Fae are humanoid with phenotypes that emulate various natural elements as magic shapes their physiology; insect-like pixies, deer-like elves, or the original progenitors, the bat-like vampires. Since the dats of the proto-fae vampires, the fae have had a connection to word magic- names, promises, and so on being a major part of their larger mystical workings, but the long exposure has given them large amounts of inherent magic simply based on their Fae nature.

The Fae are also the aftermath- the proto-Fae were pawns in the Precursor events that spawned Dragons throughout the world, and their ancestral home at Hy-Brasil on the world of Avalon was besieged by a conceptual Dragon, an infectious fungal idea that used words as its spores and would cause fungus-like growths as its influence on a carrier increased. While there were survivors, their race was still tainted by a watered-down version of the deadly idea, a taint that skewed their understanding of right and wrong- fickleness was ubiquitous, equal or disproportionate retribution was taken seriously, and other more localized expressions- like a sect that judged one's moral worth based on physical beauty, because how could a bad person be so pretty?


A much less extensive reinterpretation is the Krutzyatz- that's the Thri-Kreen with the serial numbers filed off. I put more thought into how their physiology actually works, and a bit into their society (which I admit is a bit of a 'planet of hats' interpretation, but I love them and I'm sticking with it. The harsh clicks, buzzes, and hisses of their language manage to make it surprisingly similar to Russian, and they speak with thick Russian accents with poor grammer because they honestly don't care to get the details right- "Do you know vhat said? Zen vhat iz problem?"

They are known for a refreshingly practical philosophy and charming sociality like if Gypsies took up basic engineering instead of pickpocketing. Mainly for the purpose of justifying an anachronistic joke with a one-off gag and a few brick joke refernces, they also are known for having developed the rotary fan surprisingly early in their race's history- it's pedal powered, and a life saver in the dry season.

Such examples of their philosophical gems:
On asking an outside source for help: "Ve are proud varriors! But, is ze saying, 'Pride not vorth crap vhen crap hit fan'"
On Phoebe's argument: "Ssso... you are ze saying zat if doing good sing make you happy... You are bad person? ...Vhat?"
(this setting is for a webcomic) On incessant reader requests for more 'fanservice': "Have found problem! Are not pedaling hard enough!"

As to their physiology, their skeletons are not strictly speaking exoskeletons- rather, they are a compound structure of stronger internal supports and more flexible external casing connected by cartiliginous 'crumple zones' that weave around the muscles and ligaments, which are much more robust than those found in real-world insects to keep up with the increased size. Rather than relying purely on drafts over spiricules, the respiratory system has developed a number of small pseudo-lungs connected to nostril-like spiricules along the back of the torso- this adds to the tendency for loose garmenture for the same reason humans like to avoid mouth-covering masks when we can.
While respiration is mainly through the torso spiricules, air can be forced through the throat for communication, which their complex mouthparts have been seen to be capable of producing recognizable human speech with practice. Attempting to strangle them by grasping the neck, however, will lead only to them giving odd looks and asking if this is a special variant of hug.

Their abdoments are much smaller proportionally than those of most insects, mainly to facilitate the upright stature that most sapient species develop. This also leads their wings being largely vestigial, simply being used for music like crickets. Other musical instruments specific to Krutzyatz culture is a sort of relative of the bagpipe, as fully sustained breathing for wind or brass instruments is difficult for them, and an especially complex stringed instrument that allows full advantage of the additional hands and fingers.

[Grim Portent]

I imagined them more like supernatural beings.

I like that, reminds me of various evil spirits from folklore that existed to scare people away from places or discourage certain behaviours. I might have to steal that idea for my own use.

[Xania]

I like that, reminds me of various evil spirits from folklore that existed to scare people away from places or discourage certain behaviours. I might have to steal that idea for my own use.

Thanks, if i can think in something for them, goblinoids will be supernatural orcs instead of similar creatures.

[Grim Portent]

Thanks, if i can think in something for them, goblinoids will be supernatural orcs instead of similar creatures.

Easiest option for goblins would probably be to make them malicious shapeshifting trickster spirits. Leading travellers astray, attacking the lost, harassing livestock and so forth. Still more of a nuisance than anything to the prepared, but something a bit different from just being primitive bandits.

[brian 333]

Goblins steal babies then bargain for their return. Sometimes they trade a goblin-child for the baby instead, with a glamor that makes the baby look like the stolen one.

The changeling baby grows up with magical powers of charm and illusion, and usually becomes cruel and spiteful. They relish destroying families and even towns via gossip, insinuations, and false witness.