Creative New Races

[Hobster]

If you have any new races
Ide appreciate it if you would post them
Ive run out of new ideas for my upcoming campaign setting and i only have a few

[MrNexx]

Why do you need more than a few?

[sktarq]

Why do you need the races? Populate a new continent that the PC's are exploring? Invaders? Populate a new plane of existnce? Flip through the MM, MMII, and MMIII and look for homonoid, and monsterous hominoids (preferably with low LA's) and reasonable int....also there are the anthropomorphic races from Savage Species

[Dzauku]

Well I usually approach world population like generating an adventuring party. Think of the key elements of characterization that make your world unique, break them down into singular thematics ( Magical, Tough, Savage, Well Rounded , etc.... ) and then use these themes to generate a specific race around....i.e. Elfkind / magical, Dwarfkind / Tough, Orckind / Savage, Mankind / well rounded.

Past these basics what is the point of anything more? You would do just as well to take these themed races and twist them into less recognizable forms of themselves, or build upon these basic themes in new and interesting ways...You could make a seperate type of elf for each sphere of magical magical power. Thus you have a wide variety of elves to choose from for character generation, and yet you have not diluted the character of Elves as a race. This might be harder to do with other themes, but you get the point.

The problem with overpopulating a world is that it starts to just feel trite and empty. Why bother having ten species of Elves who do not fill unique roles? If you have a Savage Dwraf, what is the real point of a Savage Orc? See what I am getting at?

[Hobster]

totally
<inhale and laughing>

[Dzauku]

??? :-/ Did I make a joke????

[Boomer]

Cyclone puts it best. Read his post below.

[Hobster]

yes and no...

[Cyclone231]

Anything new and unique, someone out there had already done something similar, no matter what we come up with.
Wrong. Now, the correct answer is similar, but distinct. Anything new and unique, some people out there have already done every aspect of it.

The key thing about something new and unique is that it hides these sources and it puts the pieces together well.

What kind of race are we talking about here, anyway? Are we talking "I'm making a campaign and I want it to have only non-core races (excluding humans)"? Is it "I want an 'evil' race for my campaign that isn't orcs or goblins"? Is it "My campaign needs some expansionistic races coming from the north, east and south"? Is it "I just ditched the elves and dwarves, now I need mages and fighters"?

Details and specifics, please.

[laughingfuzzball]

@ EBR:
If you want assitance, you might be more likely to get it if you were more specific about what you needed, and tried not to ostricize those who are mearly trying to be helpful.

[Hobster]

im just talking about shaking the core races up to prevent monotiny, by creating new races

[LeifVignirsson]

Well, that is why there are books like Races of Faerun (marvelous book, by the way) or other products that are in print. If you want to go HUNT for ones, there are multiple places that have races up and ready to be picked (ENWorld comes to mind).

Example, an acquaintence of mine made up White Elves, the "albino version" who were blind up to 90% of the population but had all sorts of wonderful flavor. I used one as an NPC and I loved her to death. She was creepy and spooky without being Drow, which... in my honest opinion... are overplayed.

Are you looking for something like that?

[ghostrunner]

Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed (not WotC's Unearthed Arcana) is a variant player's handbook that has a bunch of new races. They're quite a bit more exotic than the standard PHB fare; while they're all somewhat humanoid, they're certainly not just humans with pointy ears or short legs. I don't own many books in that series, but from what I've seen, they're some of the best-produced 3rd-party books for D&D on the market.

[Chris_Chandler]

You could go here (http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/variantRaces.htm), and take a look at some of the variant races, and also the bloodlines. These are all about just shaking the normal races up a little bit. Other than that, more detail would be helpful. People have given some decent advice, though - We aren't psychic (at least most of us aren't...).

[Darkshot]

I have one that I'll post in a second. (It's not written on the computer yet.)

[Darkshot]

The Ukag

The Ukag are quite a unigue people. They are humanoid, short, about knee high to a human is the height of an average Ukag, with the tallest Ukag going up to a humans waist. They are very skinny and light with adults averaging around 60 lbs. They are covered entirely with fur except for their hands, legs, and face. The colour of their fur is the same as their alignment meaning white fur=good, black fur=black and red fur=neutral.
They are extremely dextrious making them good with any light weapon and one heavy/medium one the polearm which happens to be the favoured weapon of the Ukag along with knuckles.

There's more but the extra stuff is tailored to my world such as control of the weather, having clouds as transportation, having their own island etc etc.

Also I'll give a cookie to whoever guesses my inspiration
HINT- It's an anime.

[Titanium_Dragon]

I made a thread with some new/altered races here, at http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=gaming;action=display;num=1120772652 ;start=0#0. If you're looking for backgrounds and such, well, I didn't include those.

My personal suggestion: come up with a cultural idea. Think of some ethos, myth, or real world culture to base it around, then build the race from it. Stuff that has human or reptilian traits is good if you're trying for different-but-not-too-weird, but if you want weird, I'd look at insects, deep sea fish, strange dinosaurs/birds (an emu race might be interesting... gah! I have to make one now!), or actually, really anything aquatic. Amphibians make for interesting basises as well.

Also look at stuff like Lords of Madness.

[Rand]

There is a race called the Da'Kor that look like a cross between a human, goat, and a dog. it would stand at about 5-6 inches taller than an halfling and would look to be about the height of a teenage human.He would have (most likely) a bonus to dexterity due to their... dexterity, and a penalty to charisma due to the reputation they have as dangerous things. They might also get a racial bonus to the intimidate skill for the same reason.

[McDeath]

Kegger. The da'kor are from the webcomic Inverloch, as you obviously know. You most likely forgot, but I always like to give credit for the seeds of ideas to the proper people.

And now for something completely different.

;D ;D ;D

*honk honk* I'm a clown!
An evilclown.

[Renrik]

New races... There are so many races out there, the idea of making new ones is almost redundant, still...

you could always adapt the races of other settings and systems. take the Zerg of Starcraft for an example. You don;t even need to remake them much. Just change the history of the species a tiny bit, rename them, and make one or two cosmetic changes, and you've got a classic D&D monster race. You've got a highly adaptable race with specificniches that can be filled by each subspecies. You've got a great invading force already made. What's more, you've got a distict scale of challenges. First send the PCs on an adventure against a lone zergling or three, then on a missio against some zerglings lead by a hydralisk, then against mixed zerglings, hydralisks, and others, and then just move up the scale. A great low-level villain could be an overlord, a mid-level villain could be one of those broodlords that can only be killed with the special energies, and the final apocolyptic battle could be with the Overmind. It'd be a pretty cool monster race.

Or you could just use the old standby of making multiple races out of anthromorphic animals. Say, frogmen, ratmen, catfolk, wolf-folk, or others. The ones I've named are already generally overused, with the exception of the frogmen, but a gang of anthromorphic racoons could make a great challenge when it keeps on stealing the PC's gear in the deep forest.

When making villainous races, take into consideration that it is often useful to play off of people's fears. Most people are at least generally creeped out by insects, spiders, and snakes. A hive-minded race of fanatical and well-adapted monsters is a great way to creep out the PCs, as I have already pointed out above with the Zerg for an example.

You can also play off of cultural unfamiliarity to make a foe creepier. If you have the monstrous race worshipping Greek, Roman, Norse, or Egyptian gods, it's pretty easy for the PCs to make assumptions about the people (though many PCs could still be thrown culturally off-balance by the Egyptian gods, if you play those gods up enough).

Consider, instead using Babylonian, Middle-eastern, African, or Slavic lore.

Celtic lore would work too, except for all the people nowadays who seem to think the celts were all tree-hugging mystical druid-types who danced with "faeries" (spelt Fairies) and used "magick" (spelt magic), which really makes finding genuine celtic lore difficult.

However, you could decide to give the orcs in your campaign a sub-saharan african culture. Canibalistic, body-decorating, fetish-worshipping, tribal orcs could be just the thing to add flair to a campaign. If you run a campaign in which orcs are good, simply omit the canibalism and some of the fetish-worship, and instead add some reverence for nature and crude honor system.

Consider making gnomes have a caste-based, asian-esque society. Replace their illusions with a bonus on elemental spells, and change their religion to include either spirit-worshipping or anscestor-worship, and you're on your way to making a grand new gnomish culture.

A new cultural interpretation can be just as good as a new race.

[Renrik]

The Ukag

The Ukag are quite a unigue people. They are humanoid, short, about knee high to a human is the height of an average Ukag, with the tallest Ukag going up to a humans waist. They are very skinny and light with adults averaging around 60 lbs. They are covered entirely with fur except for their hands, legs, and face. The colour of their fur is the same as their alignment meaning white fur=good, black fur=black and red fur=neutral.
They are extremely dextrious making them good with any light weapon and one heavy/medium one the polearm which happens to be the favoured weapon of the Ukag along with knuckles.

There's more but the extra stuff is tailored to my world such as control of the weather, having clouds as transportation, having their own island etc etc.

Also I'll give a cookie to whoever guesses my inspiration
HINT- It's an anime.

Umm.... Every anime race ever?

[DMgrinder]

Basicly, this si how I go about making new races. I assume they're for PC use, so I'll keep it LA+0.

1 Destoy all elves. They serve no purpose in the DnD world and are overused to the point of infiltration into every splatbook and new campaign, with one of their new subraces.

2 Look to see if you have gotten all the pansy buggers...

3 make a race to fill all the stat bonus requirments, that the old races filled. Make a tough monster to replace dwarves, a strong one to replace orcs, and mix in some races with mental bonuses. the PhB had none and I was dissapointed. Try to come up with a suitable history/explanation of these new races.

4 If you are short of ideas for the race behind the stats, try drawing it. It won't matter if you are good or not, but it helps my creative juices get flowing. (I also draw pictures of elf babies in microwaves).