Races and societies in my campaign [Archive] - Wizards Community

Races and societies in my campaign [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Lode
02-28-07, 04:52 PM These are simply observations I've made perusing the PHB while coming up with ideas for my campaign setting. This is what I've concluded about the relationship between the various races and how their societies evolved, but feel free to criticize or mention anything I've overlooked.

Dwarves

Dwarves are pretty much spot on in the PHB. Short, compact miners living inside mountains in a state of constant warfare with orcs and goblinoids is what I'd expect out of dwarves and the PHB delivers. What I don't understand is the +4 dodge bonus against giants. Suddenly the plate armor wearing wearing dwarven paladin is quicker than a halfling and more graceful than any elf when fighting any giant. This doesn't make sense because dwarves rarely if ever fight anything larger than medium-sized. Dwarven warrens, as cramped as they are, is not the optimal environment for 10 ft plus size humanoid. And if the giants make their homes on top of the mountains which the dwarves make their home, that's fine. Dwarves are too busy fighting off the endless orc/goblinoid hordes to be hostile towards people that would make excellent allies, particularly against other topsiders. There's nothing quite like giants wielding fine dwarven-made weapons and armor to let others know that this mountain is taken.

And dwarves are some of the best, if not the best wizards anywhere. The idea of applying order to something as capricious as magic appeals to dwarven sensibilities, and given that their darkvision still allows them to read with no source of illumination they're able to study longer and harder than most other races. And study is hard work, as hard nearly any physical activity. Ask anybody with a graduate degree. Dwarven predilection towards labor intensive activities aside, arcane magic is a force multiplier. The ability to control or lay waste to large numbers of foes is greatly prized among the dwarves, because they are not nearly as numerous as their foes, and magical weapons and armor are just nifty.

Elves

The PHB got the elves wrong. To explain why, let's review elven racial abilities. But first, let's assume that what we're reading is the racial abilities to something other than an elf.

+2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution.
Immunity to magic sleep effects, and a +2 racial saving throw bonus against enchantment spells or effects. ____ only need 4 hours of sleep.
Low-Light Vision
Weapon Proficiency: A ____ receives the Martial Weapon Proficiency feats for the longsword, rapier, longbow (including composite longbow), and shortbow (including composite shortbow) as bonus feats.
+2 racial bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot checks. An ____ who merely passes within 5 feet of a secret or concealed door is entitled to a Search check to notice it as if she were actively looking for it.

What do you see as this particular race's favored class? If you answered Wizard, you're wrong. You see, this is in reality a running joke amongst the designers of the elves. They made it so that the average adult male elf takes hits about as well as a hemophiliac girl scout and gave them a favored class with the lowest hit die while at the same time making gnomes, dwarves, halflings, and humans better wizards. Elves have no racial abilities that give it a wizardly edge over most other races, so wizard as a favored class is straight out the window. Now if you answered the above question with Ranger, or Scout, or Rogue, or some other sneaky class, then you're closer to the mark. Enhanced senses, ability to see in the low illumination, need for only half the amount of sleep as other races, automatic proficiency with bows and a higher ability score to reflect it? Elves were born to be commandos, so that's what they are. Instead of longsword and rapier proficiency, Elven Longknives (light, 1d6, 18-20 slashing, 10ft range increment) are considered martial weapons for them and they lose the ability to automatically search for hidden doors.

Of course, this means that elven history and society took a much different course than what is described in most campaign settings. First, being such avid bleeders, the elves never left the forests. They never established empires built upon obscenely powerful arcane magic and cultivated peace and understanding with all the other "goodly" races. Establishing an empire means that eventually the elves would have to field armies outside the relative safety of the forests against enemies who, unlike elves, don't fall unconscious when a strong wind hits them. So no, this never happened. Rather, elven society is comprised of loosely federated, magnificently built city-states that have never experienced major ups or downs for millenia. As for conquest, the elves don't need it. Every year the forest expands into suitable land at a rate that is not even noticeable to other races. Elven druids make certain of that. The primary purpose is to give the elves more land to utilize for hunting and gathering. An unintended consequence is that this pushes into the lands of other peoples, which then becomes elven land by virtue of elven rangers.

Elves have probably integrated magic into their daily lives more completely than anyone else. The reason for this is simple: elves are inherently chaotic beings and trying to get them organized is like herding cats. Public works are hard to do when half the workers decide not to show up one day and the other half are writing poetry or frolicking in the wilderness. So magic is used to pick up the slack. Magewrights, artificers, low level wizards, and even druids are all present in elf society to a degree pretty much unknown to other races. Homunculi tend gardens, invisible servants clean houses and manufacture goods, alarm spells are placed on the perimeter of settlements, etc. Elves by and large don't have archmages in their midst, but they are eminently practical with the magic they do have. This leaves a lot of free time on their hands, so most elves in any given city are out patrolling their forest for interlopers (dangerous beasts, monstrous humanoids, human loggers, etc) or doing some other elfy activities.

One more thing about elves. They get along fine with dwarves. Minor personality conflict aside, neither race wants to conquer the other because they each have something the other wants and are unable to take it by force. As a small example, elves have access to high quality paper for dwarven spellbooks (spellbooks made out of slabs of rock being unwieldy) and dwarves have high quality metals that elves simply don't feel like digging out of the ground themselves. The worst thing elves and dwarves have ever done to each other are trade embargoes.

Gnomes

There's nothing I can say about gnomes what hasn't already been said in K's masterful Races of War (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=681572). Go read it.

Half-elves and Half-orcs

I lump these two together because they share one common trait: they're sterile. All of them. If they were able to breed true then elves and orcs wouldn't be elves and orcs, they'd be another type of human. But they're not, so half-elves and half-orcs can't have children.

Halflings

Halflings are the go-betweens and traders of the races, largely because nobody finds them really threatening. The adults are about the size of the medium races' children, which makes them 'cute' for lack of a better term, and their stuff is made for small humanoids, which makes them not worth killing for their stuff most of the time. You can find halflings in the no-man's land between human countries and and those of nearly every other race, facilitating trade and passing along news in their house carts. This makes them welcome, if closely monitored guests in most lands, since halflings also have the reputation of being spies and information brokers. Of course, these activities could very well make many halflings rich, but if they are then they're not showing it. After all, they're just little guys and it's easy to take stuff from little guys.

Humans

Humans are food for the gods, so the favored class for humans is Cleric. The best answer for why humans are godfodder can be explained from two different perspectives. From the gods' point of view, humans are the perfect source of worship (ie food). Humans are short-lived compared to other races so are always concerned with death and with what happens after. Humans also have the right mix of fecundity, individual excellence, and outright aggressiveness that makes them the most widespread and numerous race in the world. All this means that humans as a whole are easily motivated into doing whatever you want and that they can probably do it. From the human point of view, it would be best to step back for a moment and think about our own world. For the vast majority of history, people the world over have been devout members of one religion or another. Even with no direct, measurable evidence of miraculous events or strange omens, people in general were and are religious. Now imagine that someone comes along claiming to be a representative of a particular faith and proves the power of his god by healing you of your sucking chest wound. Or smiting you with lightning from the sky. Whatever moves you at the moment. Add to this the fact that humans don't have a racial pantheon like the other races and you have everything you need for a perpetual holy war between the disparate human kingdoms. Led by their Cleric-Kings (because the divine right to rule really is the Divine Right to rule) and Paladin-Generals, human armies clash again and again because every soldier on either side fervently believes that the other side wants to convert their loved ones to their own false religion (and they do). In the situation that peace breaks out, war is replaced by aggressive marketing (itinerant clerics of rival faiths offering salvation and Buddy Hextor dolls and such). All other kinds of magic that are deemed competitive with godly power are repressed or subsumed within the state. Persecution of sorcerers, druids, and wizards are commonplace in many lands; in lands friendly to such practitioners of non-godly power they're given the position they're due, which is well below that of the clergy. Because of this, the few human archmages there are in the world do not contribute much to human society or the world at large. All this of course leads other races with more established pantheons to view humanity somewhat askance. Elves make sure that humans know they aren't welcome anywhere near their ancient forests by selective night raids on nearby human settlements that leave these hardy pioneers with a burned house, stolen livestock, and probably some rude, though oddly poetic, taunts carved into his belongings. Likewise, dwarven lands are rife with inexplicable, though oddly predictable, rockslides. Other races do the same thing according to their particular idiom, but for the most part humans don't notice because they're too busy trying to convert and/or kill each other.
Domriso
03-01-07, 09:15 PM You know, i must say that you're take on the races create a world of interesting developments. With all of the races hating the humans it makes more sense that humans travel together and only rarely have other races in their parties.
I completely agree with your portrayl of the elves and the dwarves. Elves are not at all fit to be wizards, though they make good rogues and druids. And dawrves would be great wizards, which could explain the large number of underground magical wells.
As for the halflings, they make much more sense as less adventuring, more pure merchant groups. I like that idea.
But i disagree on the half-orcs and half-elves. In my campaign i made the half-elves and half-orcs bascially create their own races. They share some traits with humans and their respective parentages, but they are their own races. True half-orcs and half-elves are rare in my campaign.
I haven't yet read the gnomes part, but i assume they will be just as good as the rest.

You should write more interpretataions of humanoids. Your insights are great and useful.
michaeljpatrick
03-02-07, 10:58 PM First, being such avid bleeders, the elves never left the forests.

Avid Bleeders- I LOLed!
Lode
03-06-07, 01:47 AM Goblinoids and Orcs

The portrayal of goblinoids in most campaign settings as a racial grouping that survives off raiding other, more advanced humanoid cultures is ridiculous. Humanoids raid in order to procure things they don't have, whether due to lack of resources or technical expertise. Goblinoids have no problem with either. Goblinoids as a whole, even goblins, have about the same mental attributes as their human, elven, or dwarven counterparts. This means that concepts like "make your own swag" or "trade your swag for swag you don't have" are not huge mental leaps for goblinoids. Sure, it may not be as fun as skulk through the night, carry off what you can, and burn the rest, but it's a whole hell of a lot safer. And if the bugbears and goblins, due to their more chaotic nature, don't want to go along with the program, their hobgoblin masters would be only too happy to instill discipline or, barring that, mete out punishment. Hobgoblins, even if not as individually powerful as bugbears or as numerous as goblins, are by far more organized and charismatic, being taught as they were from childhood not to breathe through their mouths, unlike their lesser cousins.

Having darkvision, goblinoids possess the most advantage living underground, which they do. Way underground. In my campaign the drow are not the premier Underdark race, largely due to the fact that the dark elves never left the forest, for reasons mentioned earlier. As such, drow city-states are replaced by hobgoblin fortress-cities, populated by goblinoids of all kinds which alternately war and trade with other underground races, particularly dwarves. Goblinoids and dwarves have a barely tolerate/hate relationship. On the one hand both hobgoblins and dwarves, for all their mutual animosity, will generally abide by their agreements. This is good when it comes to trade, since dwarves produce all sorts of high quality goods and hobgoblins have access to resources deep in the Underdark that dwarves do not. Unfortunately, goblins and bugbears are by nature unlawful, and banditry is rife in the areas bordering dwarven kingdoms and between fortress-cities. Because goblins are small, they are slaves to their hobgoblin overlords. Because the individual bugbear is more physically powerful than the individual hobgoblin, they are kept in a state of constant fear, repression, and humiliation. Small wonder goblins and bugbears try to escape their fortress-cities at the first opportunity.

Orcs are the odd man out in every setting because they are stupid. All hypothalamus, no cerebrum. They lag behind every single other sentient race, and maybe some non-sentient races, in every single aspect of mental ability. It's a wonder they even have a language. This, along with the fact that orcs are a singularly rude and unhygienic people, means they have been pushed into the badlands by every other race that came into contact with them. Underground or above, the best orcs can hope for is to eke out a short, brutish existence and maybe throw a horde or two at neighboring peoples when the population exceeds the ability of the land to sustain it.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Lode 02-28-07, 04:52 PM	These are simply observations I've made perusing the PHB while coming up with ideas for my campaign setting. This is what I've concluded about the relationship between the various races and how their societies evolved, but feel free to criticize or mention anything I've overlooked. Dwarves Dwarves are pretty much spot on in the PHB. Short, compact miners living inside mountains in a state of constant warfare with orcs and goblinoids is what I'd expect out of dwarves and the PHB delivers. What I don't understand is the +4 dodge bonus against giants. Suddenly the plate armor wearing wearing dwarven paladin is quicker than a halfling and more graceful than any elf when fighting any giant. This doesn't make sense because dwarves rarely if ever fight anything larger than medium-sized. Dwarven warrens, as cramped as they are, is not the optimal environment for 10 ft plus size humanoid. And if the giants make their homes on top of the mountains which the dwarves make their home, that's fine. Dwarves are too busy fighting off the endless orc/goblinoid hordes to be hostile towards people that would make excellent allies, particularly against other topsiders. There's nothing quite like giants wielding fine dwarven-made weapons and armor to let others know that this mountain is taken. And dwarves are some of the best, if not the best wizards anywhere. The idea of applying order to something as capricious as magic appeals to dwarven sensibilities, and given that their darkvision still allows them to read with no source of illumination they're able to study longer and harder than most other races. And study is hard work, as hard nearly any physical activity. Ask anybody with a graduate degree. Dwarven predilection towards labor intensive activities aside, arcane magic is a force multiplier. The ability to control or lay waste to large numbers of foes is greatly prized among the dwarves, because they are not nearly as numerous as their foes, and magical weapons and armor are just nifty. Elves The PHB got the elves wrong. To explain why, let's review elven racial abilities. But first, let's assume that what we're reading is the racial abilities to something other than an elf. +2 Dexterity, -2 Constitution. Immunity to magic sleep effects, and a +2 racial saving throw bonus against enchantment spells or effects. ____ only need 4 hours of sleep. Low-Light Vision Weapon Proficiency: A ____ receives the Martial Weapon Proficiency feats for the longsword, rapier, longbow (including composite longbow), and shortbow (including composite shortbow) as bonus feats. +2 racial bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot checks. An ____ who merely passes within 5 feet of a secret or concealed door is entitled to a Search check to notice it as if she were actively looking for it. What do you see as this particular race's favored class? If you answered Wizard, you're wrong. You see, this is in reality a running joke amongst the designers of the elves. They made it so that the average adult male elf takes hits about as well as a hemophiliac girl scout and gave them a favored class with the lowest hit die while at the same time making gnomes, dwarves, halflings, and humans better wizards. Elves have no racial abilities that give it a wizardly edge over most other races, so wizard as a favored class is straight out the window. Now if you answered the above question with Ranger, or Scout, or Rogue, or some other sneaky class, then you're closer to the mark. Enhanced senses, ability to see in the low illumination, need for only half the amount of sleep as other races, automatic proficiency with bows and a higher ability score to reflect it? Elves were born to be commandos, so that's what they are. Instead of longsword and rapier proficiency, Elven Longknives (light, 1d6, 18-20 slashing, 10ft range increment) are considered martial weapons for them and they lose the ability to automatically search for hidden doors. Of course, this means that elven history and society took a much different course than what is described in most campaign settings. First, being such avid bleeders, the elves never left the forests. They never established empires built upon obscenely powerful arcane magic and cultivated peace and understanding with all the other "goodly" races. Establishing an empire means that eventually the elves would have to field armies outside the relative safety of the forests against enemies who, unlike elves, don't fall unconscious when a strong wind hits them. So no, this never happened. Rather, elven society is comprised of loosely federated, magnificently built city-states that have never experienced major ups or downs for millenia. As for conquest, the elves don't need it. Every year the forest expands into suitable land at a rate that is not even noticeable to other races. Elven druids make certain of that. The primary purpose is to give the elves more land to utilize for hunting and gathering. An unintended consequence is that this pushes into the lands of other peoples, which then becomes elven land by virtue of elven rangers. Elves have probably integrated magic into their daily lives more completely than anyone else. The reason for this is simple: elves are inherently chaotic beings and trying to get them organized is like herding cats. Public works are hard to do when half the workers decide not to show up one day and the other half are writing poetry or frolicking in the wilderness. So magic is used to pick up the slack. Magewrights, artificers, low level wizards, and even druids are all present in elf society to a degree pretty much unknown to other races. Homunculi tend gardens, invisible servants clean houses and manufacture goods, alarm spells are placed on the perimeter of settlements, etc. Elves by and large don't have archmages in their midst, but they are eminently practical with the magic they do have. This leaves a lot of free time on their hands, so most elves in any given city are out patrolling their forest for interlopers (dangerous beasts, monstrous humanoids, human loggers, etc) or doing some other elfy activities. One more thing about elves. They get along fine with dwarves. Minor personality conflict aside, neither race wants to conquer the other because they each have something the other wants and are unable to take it by force. As a small example, elves have access to high quality paper for dwarven spellbooks (spellbooks made out of slabs of rock being unwieldy) and dwarves have high quality metals that elves simply don't feel like digging out of the ground themselves. The worst thing elves and dwarves have ever done to each other are trade embargoes. Gnomes There's nothing I can say about gnomes what hasn't already been said in K's masterful Races of War (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=681572). Go read it. Half-elves and Half-orcs I lump these two together because they share one common trait: they're sterile. All of them. If they were able to breed true then elves and orcs wouldn't be elves and orcs, they'd be another type of human. But they're not, so half-elves and half-orcs can't have children. Halflings Halflings are the go-betweens and traders of the races, largely because nobody finds them really threatening. The adults are about the size of the medium races' children, which makes them 'cute' for lack of a better term, and their stuff is made for small humanoids, which makes them not worth killing for their stuff most of the time. You can find halflings in the no-man's land between human countries and and those of nearly every other race, facilitating trade and passing along news in their house carts. This makes them welcome, if closely monitored guests in most lands, since halflings also have the reputation of being spies and information brokers. Of course, these activities could very well make many halflings rich, but if they are then they're not showing it. After all, they're just little guys and it's easy to take stuff from little guys. Humans Humans are food for the gods, so the favored class for humans is Cleric. The best answer for why humans are godfodder can be explained from two different perspectives. From the gods' point of view, humans are the perfect source of worship (ie food). Humans are short-lived compared to other races so are always concerned with death and with what happens after. Humans also have the right mix of fecundity, individual excellence, and outright aggressiveness that makes them the most widespread and numerous race in the world. All this means that humans as a whole are easily motivated into doing whatever you want and that they can probably do it. From the human point of view, it would be best to step back for a moment and think about our own world. For the vast majority of history, people the world over have been devout members of one religion or another. Even with no direct, measurable evidence of miraculous events or strange omens, people in general were and are religious. Now imagine that someone comes along claiming to be a representative of a particular faith and proves the power of his god by healing you of your sucking chest wound. Or smiting you with lightning from the sky. Whatever moves you at the moment. Add to this the fact that humans don't have a racial pantheon like the other races and you have everything you need for a perpetual holy war between the disparate human kingdoms. Led by their Cleric-Kings (because the divine right to rule really is the Divine Right to rule) and Paladin-Generals, human armies clash again and again because every soldier on either side fervently believes that the other side wants to convert their loved ones to their own false religion (and they do). In the situation that peace breaks out, war is replaced by aggressive marketing (itinerant clerics of rival faiths offering salvation and Buddy Hextor dolls and such). All other kinds of magic that are deemed competitive with godly power are repressed or subsumed within the state. Persecution of sorcerers, druids, and wizards are commonplace in many lands; in lands friendly to such practitioners of non-godly power they're given the position they're due, which is well below that of the clergy. Because of this, the few human archmages there are in the world do not contribute much to human society or the world at large. All this of course leads other races with more established pantheons to view humanity somewhat askance. Elves make sure that humans know they aren't welcome anywhere near their ancient forests by selective night raids on nearby human settlements that leave these hardy pioneers with a burned house, stolen livestock, and probably some rude, though oddly poetic, taunts carved into his belongings. Likewise, dwarven lands are rife with inexplicable, though oddly predictable, rockslides. Other races do the same thing according to their particular idiom, but for the most part humans don't notice because they're too busy trying to convert and/or kill each other.
Domriso 03-01-07, 09:15 PM	You know, i must say that you're take on the races create a world of interesting developments. With all of the races hating the humans it makes more sense that humans travel together and only rarely have other races in their parties. I completely agree with your portrayl of the elves and the dwarves. Elves are not at all fit to be wizards, though they make good rogues and druids. And dawrves would be great wizards, which could explain the large number of underground magical wells. As for the halflings, they make much more sense as less adventuring, more pure merchant groups. I like that idea. But i disagree on the half-orcs and half-elves. In my campaign i made the half-elves and half-orcs bascially create their own races. They share some traits with humans and their respective parentages, but they are their own races. True half-orcs and half-elves are rare in my campaign. I haven't yet read the gnomes part, but i assume they will be just as good as the rest. You should write more interpretataions of humanoids. Your insights are great and useful.
michaeljpatrick 03-02-07, 10:58 PM	First, being such avid bleeders, the elves never left the forests. Avid Bleeders- I LOLed!
Lode 03-06-07, 01:47 AM	Goblinoids and Orcs The portrayal of goblinoids in most campaign settings as a racial grouping that survives off raiding other, more advanced humanoid cultures is ridiculous. Humanoids raid in order to procure things they don't have, whether due to lack of resources or technical expertise. Goblinoids have no problem with either. Goblinoids as a whole, even goblins, have about the same mental attributes as their human, elven, or dwarven counterparts. This means that concepts like "make your own swag" or "trade your swag for swag you don't have" are not huge mental leaps for goblinoids. Sure, it may not be as fun as skulk through the night, carry off what you can, and burn the rest, but it's a whole hell of a lot safer. And if the bugbears and goblins, due to their more chaotic nature, don't want to go along with the program, their hobgoblin masters would be only too happy to instill discipline or, barring that, mete out punishment. Hobgoblins, even if not as individually powerful as bugbears or as numerous as goblins, are by far more organized and charismatic, being taught as they were from childhood not to breathe through their mouths, unlike their lesser cousins. Having darkvision, goblinoids possess the most advantage living underground, which they do. Way underground. In my campaign the drow are not the premier Underdark race, largely due to the fact that the dark elves never left the forest, for reasons mentioned earlier. As such, drow city-states are replaced by hobgoblin fortress-cities, populated by goblinoids of all kinds which alternately war and trade with other underground races, particularly dwarves. Goblinoids and dwarves have a barely tolerate/hate relationship. On the one hand both hobgoblins and dwarves, for all their mutual animosity, will generally abide by their agreements. This is good when it comes to trade, since dwarves produce all sorts of high quality goods and hobgoblins have access to resources deep in the Underdark that dwarves do not. Unfortunately, goblins and bugbears are by nature unlawful, and banditry is rife in the areas bordering dwarven kingdoms and between fortress-cities. Because goblins are small, they are slaves to their hobgoblin overlords. Because the individual bugbear is more physically powerful than the individual hobgoblin, they are kept in a state of constant fear, repression, and humiliation. Small wonder goblins and bugbears try to escape their fortress-cities at the first opportunity. Orcs are the odd man out in every setting because they are stupid. All hypothalamus, no cerebrum. They lag behind every single other sentient race, and maybe some non-sentient races, in every single aspect of mental ability. It's a wonder they even have a language. This, along with the fact that orcs are a singularly rude and unhygienic people, means they have been pushed into the badlands by every other race that came into contact with them. Underground or above, the best orcs can hope for is to eke out a short, brutish existence and maybe throw a horde or two at neighboring peoples when the population exceeds the ability of the land to sustain it.