Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Naderion 03-02-08, 09:40 AM	I'm currently working on how to implement the several people of the world I'm making, and I'm not so sure about if I should make subraces or not. I allready have the backgrounds pretty firm: - Humans arrived in tiny boats from another continent several thousand years ago by following two chains of islands which roughly connect two major continents like in southeast asia or the carribean. They have established roughly five distinc ethnic groups, but two of them arrived seperately from the other and settled in their own remote corners of the main continent. Though human, I decided to not make them exactly real world human, but give them several unique traits like it seems to be the case in many final fantsy settings. - With the exception of aquatic elves, the four elven people are named High Elves, Star Elves, Wood Elves and Dark Elves. Their diffrences are mostly cultural and their skin and hair colors. Only a small minority of the Dark Elves that form the noble cast has the freaky magical abilities of Drow, gained from selective breeding including fairy creatures. They are similar to the Shades in Faerūn in this respect, I think. - There are mountain dwelling Mountain Dwarves, underground living Deep Dwarves, and the Gray Dwarves. As they have a unique history, I'm not really that much into the awsome immunities of Duergars. - Gnomes on the surface are either urban and live in the south, while those in the north prefer small forest villages, but that's the main difference. Gnomes living underground have a distinctly different coloration, but all those svirfneblin abilities make them practically unplayable and that much natural magic doesn't really suit that well with the general "down to earth" appeoach I have. The two possiblities I'm now considering are either using subraces or limit myself to "Backgrounds" similar to those of the Forgotten Realms CS or the DMG2, I belive. With subraces, I would have the opportunity to have a great deal of customization for the different people, but at the same time would end up with about 20 player-races and about the same number of NPC-races, which would also be playable. Cultural Backgrounds would result in a much more limited number of races, which would be good for a setting that is meant to be "more belivable because it doesn't have dozens of sentient races", and less troubling work-wise. But it would also only be practical if these background packages are not to big (maybe 3 or 4 traits), which would result in a lesser degree of customization. I'm currently leanign towards background packages, but still not so sure about how it will dellude the borders of the different people. Could anyone share thoughts or experiences on deciding if to use subraces or not?
Eldritch_Lord 03-02-08, 10:29 PM	I tend to try to use templates or packages applicable to different races, rather than explicitly creating subraces, because it makes creating new races easier and helps cut down on race bloat. In your case specifically: - Humans arrived in tiny boats from another continent several thousand years ago by following two chains of islands which roughly connect two major continents like in southeast asia or the carribean. They have established roughly five distinc ethnic groups, but two of them arrived seperately from the other and settled in their own remote corners of the main continent. Though human, I decided to not make them exactly real world human, but give them several unique traits like it seems to be the case in many final fantsy settings. Subraces or feats could work, depending on the degree of uniqueness; if you tell us the traits that would help narrow it down. - With the exception of aquatic elves, the four elven people are named High Elves, Star Elves, Wood Elves and Dark Elves. Their diffrences are mostly cultural and their skin and hair colors. Only a small minority of the Dark Elves that form the noble cast has the freaky magical abilities of Drow, gained from selective breeding including fairy creatures. They are similar to the Shades in Faerūn in this respect, I think. I'd make the spell-like abilities a regional/racial feat and, depending on the breadth of racial traits, make the other cultures 1-3 regional feats. - There are mountain dwelling Mountain Dwarves, underground living Deep Dwarves, and the Gray Dwarves. As they have a unique history, I'm not really that much into the awsome immunities of Duergars. I don't know if you need any customization here; if the only difference is where they live, and they'd face basically the same conditions/challenges everywhere, I'd say use the same dwarf for all of them. - Gnomes on the surface are either urban and live in the south, while those in the north prefer small forest villages, but that's the main difference. Gnomes living underground have a distinctly different coloration, but all those svirfneblin abilities make them practically unplayable and that much natural magic doesn't really suit that well with the general "down to earth" appeoach I have. I'd separate the urban-rural gnomes with background feats; in regards to the svirfneblin, I suppose you could cut out a bunch of their abilities, but if you don't like the flavor you could just take the PHB gnome and make an underground subrace, maybe a dwarf-gnome cross. With subraces, I would have the opportunity to have a great deal of customization for the different people, but at the same time would end up with about 20 player-races and about the same number of NPC-races, which would also be playable. Cultural Backgrounds would result in a much more limited number of races, which would be good for a setting that is meant to be "more belivable because it doesn't have dozens of sentient races", and less troubling work-wise. But it would also only be practical if these background packages are not to big (maybe 3 or 4 traits), which would result in a lesser degree of customization. You don't really need too much customization for packages; I think 1-3 feats should cut it, as mentioned above. If you give us the abilities you're looking at for each race, we might be able to work them into balanced feats.