Choose available races

From Towers

One way to make this setting feel different than other settings is to change the races commonly available as PCs.

My first instinct is to eliminate gnomes because they're often a bit comical (and thus not what I'm aiming for) and they seem superfluous with dwarves and halflings around. Every world seems to have humans, elves, and dwarves and most have halflings. Do we want all of those? Is it fantasy without them?

What about the humanoid races like kobolds and goblins as PCs? Half-orcs, sure, but full-blooded orcs?

How about humanoid animals types like lion-men or centaurs? Other tauric races like ant-taurs and wemics (lion-taurs) are possibilities. Since nature is a strong thematic element, animal-like races seem like a good fit.

What races should be available as PCs in the Towerlands campaign?

(Put your answers on the discussion page, please)

Well been faced with this one myself. There are players who really want them cute little half-wits roaming about. Personally I think gnomes and halfling as both as bad(or good), comical reliefs but otherwise a little useless(not to mention kender). As for that dilemma. I say replace them little ppl with smaller goblinoids. Make them accepted amongst other races. Working as street cleaners or something. Would create an interesting group within any city.(think about it...living in the sewers etc.)

As for *-taur races. well, some of them tend to be a bit powerful and can be abused. With a proper amount of control, maybe. Personally I've found centaurs and such rarely fit into an adventure party. The size being hindering first of all.

I think you mentioned the ant-taurs having a hive-mind somewhere. That certainly limits them as PCs. But I think most of the *-taur races can be easily fitted into the world and do add a certain flavor. Can already see wemics and ant-taurs as natural enemies. :)

Petja 28 Sep 2004

For little people, I used to have a race of small winged fey called Shee (yeah, a vague pun or at least homonym of "sidhe"). I might bring them back, as they fit well into the natural setting.

I don't mind hindering a party who has a centaur or the like in it and I don't have any problem with limiting racial abilities of -taurs so they're Level Adjustment +0 (with racial levels for those players who are inclined).

I'm not sure I'll do the hive-mind thing for the ant-taurs. They may just be dwarven slaves. The hive-mind ability, if I do it, might be something that PCs have disconnected from but can reconnect to if they want — with some risk involved.

Why would wemics and ant-taurs be natural enemies?

Adam 15:00, 28 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Wemics and ant-taurs. Well I seem to recall wemics mostly living on plains and considering the possible size of ant-taurs they'd need a bigger space to build their colonies/hives/nests and the larger space would quite logically be plains-like areas. So in effect they would be competing for territory. For some reason got the idea into my head of wemic raiders mauling a huge ant nest while the ant-taurs come to their nests defence.(For some reason I think they'd be mostly using spears and tridents etc. for weapons[the ants that is], not sure really as to why but seems to fit the image of them or something)

Well that's logical explanation for it. Other than that, just feels like to me they'd make great natural enemies. Might also be interesting to dig into history of the taurian races. Are they natural? Some horrible experiment gone wrong? Maybe some of them were natural but used in that experiment and as a result a new race was born?(which could explain some animosities).

Envisioning the ant-taur race, I think they might be a bit smaller in size than the others. As I seem to recall, again, most taurian races are Large when it comes to size maybe ant-taurs are Medium? Don't know. Just my two cents.

Petja 06:33, 29 Sep 2004 (EDT)

The wemics are definitely plains creatures. The ant-taurs, being dwarven subjugates, are mountain creatures. I don't know that they'd bump into each other that often.

The ant-taurs are definitely unnatural and probably not fertile. They are the product of a dark dwarven ritual. Remember, the lower body is an ant's; the upper body is a dwarf's. I think ant-taurs are probably Medium-size, because of the dwarven connection.

Adam 13:02, 29 Sep 2004 (EDT)

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