Thread 96734393

how many races is too many?

also is there even a point in having them if they all look the same or just way too simular?
also half races are they even needed? (mostly just half humans lol)

i will say: 10 races is good number, if races are just humans but x dif. then no they're not fucking needed and are just tolkien slop. also half races would be fine if it wasnt just half human half x race all the time.

>>96734393 (OP)
Two.

>>96734393 (OP)
The exact number is arbitrary, but you start hitting the "too many races" point when you start struggling to differentiate the niches additional races fill, either narrative or mechanical.

>>96734397
ur boring af and human only fantasy is fucking gay

>>96734405
also too many when they start having simular stats ig

>>96734393 (OP)
>only the human shows a male and a female of the same race
Why is this? Is "Joe Nittoly" unwilling to face the truth, that the average elf man is a 6'6" chad that makes 99% of human men look like little girls by comparison?

>>96734414
You got it wrong. Nonhumans only come in a single sex and need to breed with humans to continue their lineage.

>>96734393 (OP)
always thought gnomes are pointless

>>96734397
Sadly, geopolitics, anthropology and military history, bear out this observation.

Two races in one place is one too many.

Kobolds > dragonborn

>>96734488
Neither have any places as a playable race, but if you do have to have one degenerate scaly race the dragonborn are a better choice. They're not a retarded meme based on another word for goblin and misinterpreted art.
It's scalemail armor not a scaled hide

>>96734511
I will run games with every single published 3.5 race AND I will be happy.

>>96734518
But I can promise you your players aren't Kevin.

There is no fixed list of races. The players can play as (almost) any sort of being they can imagine.

>>96734393 (OP)
I like four. More than six is usually a waste of time.

>>96734525
Of course they aren't Kevin, their names are completely different.

>>96734405
>either narrative or mechanical
Actually, if we're talking about a game (which we should be, since this is a board for games), only the mechanics matter.

>>96734393 (OP)
>how many races is too many?

Four hundred eighty-six thousand two-hundred nineteen.

Possibly less than that, as well, but if you've climbed that high then you definitely have too many.

>>96734895
Nope only narrative matters.

>>96734895
>>96734914
The mechanics should reflect the narrative. If two races are narratively distinct, they should also be mechanically distinct in order to reflect that.

>>96734973
nah

>>96734397
FPBP
/thread

>>96734511
>It's scalemail armor not a scaled hide
>AD&D1e
Description: The hide of kobolds runs from very dark rusty brown to a rusty black. They have no hair. Their eyes are reddish and their small horns are tan to white. They favor red or orange garb. Kobolds live for up to 135 years.

If 200 or more kobolds are encountered in their lair, there will be the following additional creatures there: 5-20 guards (as bodyguards above), females equal to 50% of the total number, young equal to 10% of the total number, and 30-300 eggs.
>30-300 eggs.
These are lizards/dragons/monotremes. Not dogs.

Also, how do you explain the scales on their faces, hands, feet, lower legs, and such? It cannot be scalemail.

>>96734393 (OP)
>how many races is too many?
When you feel there are too many. There is no hard set number for this, only feels.
>if they all look the same or just way too simular?
Depends on what you feel like is too similar. For me, the "Tolkien" set are very much not similar, even if they are very human-like. But I also include plenty of non-Tolkien races. As it stands now, there are 49 races, along with a ton of subraces and universal subraces.

>>96734895
>since this is a board for games
This is a board for traditional games, thus the /tg/, which includes all the ones that care about narrative AND mechanics. These are both important pillars of the games that are discussed here. So yes, it is both narratively and mechanically important to have distinctions between your races.

>>96735020
The art came first, that was the misreading you fucker. Go back to OD&D.

>>96734867
/thread.

>>96734393 (OP)
Two. They are all going to be played like humans anyway.

Nah.

>>96734883
Hip arms are fucking retarded.

>>96734393 (OP)
Someone explain to me gnomes, what's their purpose?

>>96734393 (OP)
Depends how good the worldbuilding is. Especially when you have one or two races with vast history and culture and then you have one race where it's basically a PC and a small region and town where nearly all the of their race live.

>>96734393 (OP)
Depends on what your prime focus is.
If mechanics are king, then you should stop when you filled every Best In category. When they no longer feel distinct from one another there's no point to them.
If it's narrative, you're gonna want to keep the number small. Figure five at most and they should look similar to each other (the typical formula of humans, elves, dwarfs and halflings can be translated to other species too, like reptilians). You'd need an antagonist race or two though, that way you can get the us vs them narrative immediatelly implanted through a simple visual cue while also having enough wiggle room to have the "overcoming our differences to beat the bad guys" trope.
But if you want it to be casual or with a heavy emphasis on player freedom, sky's the limit. You'd want players to create any kind of freakling they can imagine even if they just find it funny.

>>96735800
The source of all evil in the world.

>>96735694
I wouldn't be throwing no stones if I was you, anon.

>>96734393 (OP)
When looking for ideas for races in your setting, where do you look? Especially if you want to look for more obscure beings or monsters from mythology and folklore?

>>96734393 (OP)
Fantasy races are lame and boring. Fantasy cultures are a better way to achieve the same thing.

>>96738669
France.
>Normans
>Bretons
>Franks
>Basques
>Lutins
>Bisclavrets
>Laboused an Ankou
>Basajaunak

>>96737285
How anti-gnometic of you!

>>96734393 (OP)
The number on its own isn't the factor. Two could be too many, for instance, while twenty could be too few, depending on the game.
It depends on the game, and what purpose each race serves.

>>96735003
ur faucking gay

>>96738864
No real-life ethnicities please.

>>96739206
France isn't a real place. Don't be silly.

>>96739206
Fine.
>Normans
>Bretons
>Franks
>Basques
>Lutins
>Bisclavrets
>Basajaunak

>>96738216
>>96738340
>>96738669
>>96738733
>>96739154
kill yourself bumpfag

>>96734426
Nah, they come in two sexes. However, they do still have to breed with humans.

>>96734393 (OP)
Four or Five is the butter zone.

Every Man
High Man
Stout
Fairy
Cute

You can technically have more but they can't be featured prominently.

Or you can do
Evil Snakemen/Saurians/demons from an ancient primordial age
Humans that are in ascendancy
Elder Race that was brought low like Atlanteans or some kind of perfect man/angel that still li gers in the veins of men/kings
Beastmen race that challenge Humans & threaten to subplant them as civilization crimbles & the savage horde swells
Faeries/Otherworlders who live simple lives but have great sorcery/magic/psychic ability that allows them to hide from the mundane troubles of the world
Giants, who are old rivals of ancient man or the Elder Race but have since been broken & are dying out, they aren't exactly hostile to humans but they hold no love for them. This accounts for Greek Titans, Celtic Formorians, Norse myth etc,

>>96734393 (OP)
>Race of Fantasy
Tieflings and Dragonborn aren't "fantasy," they're D&D. There are some races that belong in any fantasy games, but desu I'm annoyed with these faggy proprietary races infiltrating the list.

>>96734393 (OP)
One. Every other humanoid is a type of monster.

>>96739058
What you call bigotry, I call pattern recgnition.

>>96739623
To be intellectually honest, the fantasy lineage of demonkin and dragonmen is much older than Tiefligns let along Dragonborn. They're just the D&D family of games's specific take on them.

>>96734393 (OP)
if it is intelligent and it works for the intended setting and campaign, it is allowed. So yeah, no such thing as too many races, but at any moment only a handful make sense. Unless you are visiting an intergalactic hub with warpgates to different star systems (or the fantasy equivalent of a city with gates to different worlds/timelines/dimensions).

>>96740042
Didn't Dragonlance come out in 1984? I'd argue that's early enough for draconians to shape some of the public ideas of dragonmen in later RPGs.

>>96740237
That's their first appearance in D&D, but theirs pulp novels going back to the 1800s when dragonmen, and demonkin are even older.

>>96739530
> monogamous and caring cow lady
That's my kind of fantasy

>>96734393 (OP)
All of the races in this pic are humans with different heights. What's the point then?

>>96734393 (OP)
Human, Elf, Half-Elf and Tiefling only. Only freaks play anything else.

>>96740636
What do you have against dwarves, anon?

>>96734393 (OP)
Sometimes I wonder whether the humanoid races should be incompatible with producing offspring.
That way they are all classified as different races due to incompatibility otherwise everyone would just consider themselves human or human offshoot.

>>96741108
But anon, they'd be species then, not races.

>>96734393 (OP)
The perfect number of races is X - 1, where the "1" is "humans".

>>96734393 (OP)
Most of my characters are human. It is hard to plan a decent one if it is a different race for me idk why. Getting an extra origin feat is cool anyways.

>>96734393 (OP)
Five works great for me but I also rolled all generic demihumans into „human“
Every race thus has a concrete place in the setting and picking up any race immediately means that the world will respond to you in a certain way

>>96740326
>>96740237
Slavs also have dragon men in their mythology and humanoid demons exist literally in every mythology ever under one name or another

2 races is the ideal.
>Big race
>Small race
That's all you need. If your setting requires it, you can play with the exact specifications. Maybe the small race is dwarf-sized or fairy-sized. Maybe the big race is elf-sized or ogre-sized. You just need two though.

>>96734393 (OP)
3 is optimal. Creates a rock paper scissors dynamic in the setting, more memorable, easier to flesh out. 4-5 is acceptable but pushing it. More than that is automatic fantasyslop and your setting fucking sucks.

Also the only acceptable races are near human Tolkien-esque: elves, halflings, dwarves, celestial types like aasimar with minimal freakshit features, demonic types like tiefling with minimal freakshit features.

>>96735800
To be comfy.

>>96734393 (OP)
I like the races in Divinity Original Sin, standard Tolkien trio of Humans, Elves and Dwarves with some twists, like cannibalism for Elves + cool Lizards that aren't too humanoid like DnD's awful Dragonborn. Add to that Minotaurs or some other furry like cat people or fox people and there's no need for more.

>>96734393 (OP)
As long as you can make up a good reason for why they exist and what it is exactly they can do then there's never too many

>>96734488
>Don't you wanna play the race that has Begging and Crying and Shitting yourself as a racial ability in one of their PC stats

No, I'm gonna play the actual Dragon people race with the breath weapon and the occasional wings, thanks

I think more than a handful is overall too many. A lot of the time, it's usually just humans, and whatever elf equivalent there is plus one more that actually matter anyway, and all the other races are basically just there but have no real impact or importance to the world.

>>96741148
>But anon, they'd be species then, not races.
Good point. The species word never occurred to me. Thank you.

>>96734393 (OP)
>This thread again
At least change the fucking image to make it less obvious

>>96734393 (OP)
fuck off to worldbuilding general.

>>96734393 (OP)
>how many races is too many?
A fool's question. Never enough!

>>96745582
>>96745671
Seething samefag. Posting a screencap won't prove anything since you've proven too retarded to edit your xref data either.

>>96743130
HEY!
WAKE UP BEARDO!!!

Should fairies be Shortstack sized or like, Tinkerbell sized?

>>96748419
I'd go with around a foot tall. Large enough where they're not too easy to overlook, but small enough where they can have a weaker ability to fly and can't really carry much while flying, and the biggest weapon they could use would be a dagger.

Anything bigger and it stops seeming like a fairy and starts to be more like slightly shorter flying elf.

>>96734393 (OP)
Why have races at all?
99% of players don't roleplay their races beside le drunked dorf and le fancy elf which can easily be human characters

... this again?

>>96738669
Look at some of the more obscure Yokai perhaps.

>>96752416
Nobody wants to play a fucking wall, anon.

>>96734397
Do you just hit f5 here all day looking for opportunities to be a faggot?

>>96752887
The Hell am I looking at? Who comes up with shit like this?

>>96755928
>The Hell am I looking at?
A three-eyed, floppy-eared dog that pretends to be a wall.
>Who comes up with shit like this?
The Japanese, anon.

>>96734393 (OP)
I just have 5
Humans, demons, gods, fairy, and beast folk

>>96755977
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurikabe

Nurikabe, look it up. Also if you're not familiar with that one then you are probably missing the knowledge of so many other wild Japanese ghosts.

The Japanese come up with the stupidest ghosts.

>>96756042
Samara lot better than others.