Alternate Creature Interpretations (Feel free to add your own additions)

[Xania]

I have a tendency to play and have dwarves act like the ones from Dwarf Fortress. Having the racial boons/banes of slightly crazy, slightly OCD, and slightly alcoholic, but with tendencies to create insanely complex machinery, bloody and strangely strict work-based cultures, and fortresses able to be defended unto infinity from below as well as above. Unless it falls to ruin due to the crazy little b******* and their idiotic schemes/random invading siege mosnters.



I like this, I'm using this. Especially if it turns out the Chitines are what happens to surface elves who get in Lloth's good graces, and the Shunned are what the drow become if they fall out of it even more. But what would come of the Arachnoloths?

I like the added content, it's much better now ^^
For now i only can think in Arachnoloths as drow who became worthy to serve Lolth again in the afterlife.

[jqavins]

Let's see, I've got eusocial goblinoids, lawful good mummies, mind flayers who eat dreams instead of brains, Gigeresque elves, and dire bats who act like pilotfish, among others.

If any of these sound interesting, I can talk about them at length.

I momentarily mixed up pilotfish and remoras. That made me think of bats that attach themselves to dragons and clean the dragons' skins for food.

[Xania]

What i said is absurd, making Arachnoloths from Lolth's favorite driders is easier and more logical.

[Xania]

Also mindflayers swapping places with grimlocks probably is better than with minotaurs.

[Flumphburger]

So tell me more about these dream flayers....

In its usual state, the illithid is literally indescribable. It resides in a realm in which "space" as we understand it doesn't exist, and interacts with the known planes only in that the dreams of other creatures are accessible from it. There are many life forms in this realm, and odd things happen when they wander into our dreams, but illithids are probably the only ones who do so intentionally. The rhyme and reason behind when and where they feed has yet to be understood, but places where the influence of the gods are stronger are much safer for mortal sleepers in general.

Illithid feeding tends to start with one person, and then spread to all sentient beings nearby. The theft of their dreams causing a slowly mounting insanity, that typically ends with mass deaths if uninterrupted. But worse than that is illithid reproduction. It starts with a dream of violation; something being implanted into you. Then, over the coming months, paranoia, psychosis, and constantly expanding amnesia, as the noetic larva consumes your mind. Eventually, the victim falls unconscious, and begins a physical transformation into the octopus-faced humanoid we all know and love; at this point, its mind is able to act as a gateway between the Prime Material and the illithid realm, and others can come through - resuming their Prime Material octopus-faced forms in the process - to protect it during this vulnerable period.

Illithids also sometimes implant their dream-larvae strategically, so that the ceremorphosizing juvenile can act as a portal to send a strike team into the Prime Material. These teams are typically sent to either undermine religious authorities and leave local populations more vulnerable to feeding, cause social upheaval that results in more interesting and emotionally rich dreams, or to sabatoge any sort of magical research that could lead to someone being able to strike back against the illithids. The "mind blast" is a weaponized version of the illithid's feeding method; when used from within the Prime Material, it simply causes psychic chaos within a small area that can induce confusion or unconsciousness. The brainsucking attack is refluffed as a mind meld type thing that causes partial brain death, leaving the victim a vegetable. When it thinks it might be killed, a physically manifested illithid will use plane shift to return to its native realm, from which it cannot return without another larval gateway.

[Sizzlefoot]

Since the mythological gorgons have been described as having tusks and/or snouts, I might make the orcs worship a gorgon goddess or three.

[Clockwork333]

Concept: Beholders, but without the Xenophobia, serving as magical teachers at academies.

Students acting up? ANTI MAGIC FIELD

[Sizzlefoot]

Centaurs, dragons, griffins, sphinxes, and other six-limbed creatures are all related. Centaurs and sphinxes actually have proto-feathers rather than fur.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm considering something like this for mind flayers and aboleths

First you have to understand Leviathan. Leviathan is the oldest singular entity in the Mortal plane, a gestalt consciousness shared between the bodies and minds of the creatures of the vasty deep oceans. Each of these whales, squids, fish, sea serpents, sharks, and most other things are as cells in its body. Leviathan has existed continuously since before the Dawn War when the planes were formed. It considers its entire purpose for existence to be the world's memory. To remember every event of the Mortal plane. It sings to itself in the deep, ancient and terrible songs of events past. All echoing both in sound, in waves of bodies, and in magical and psychic energies.

Throughout the eons, Leviathan has created many new forms to serve its purpose, mainly by changing the bodies of other creatures to suit (because Leviathan is not particularly creative). Some are aquatic--sea elves, triton, sauaghain, kuo-toa, etc. A long-standing goal is to gain agents on the land (a foreign environment to Leviathan). While it does form pacts and make deals with sea-going surface dwellers, it also wants a more "native" form.

And so it conceived of the mind flayer parasite. Originally, this parasite was supposed to simply ride along with a mortal, sharing its consciousness and tapping into its senses in return for some psychic powers. There are still some of these "innocent" parasites out there. But, like cells of a life-form, some cells of Leviathan are malignant. They have twisted the parasites into the larval stage of a mind flayer, a creature that consumes the memories and mind of the host and undergoes cerebromorphosis into the squid-faces we all know and love. The original Elder Brains were supposed to act as relays, passing the accumulated knowledge back to Leviathan; now they act as command and control nodes for the twisted flayers.

Full mind flayers don't need brains--they can feed off the accumulated anima of a living being (including animals), a process that is fatal if unchecked, but debilitating even in small doses. Many find the taste of brains pleasant, and prefer them living at the point of extraction. This external anima is necessary because the connection between host body and parasite is not perfect, so they "leak". It is possible for a cerebromorphosis to go "wrong" and leave a fusion of the host and the parasite. Those that retain portions of the host are either less dependent on this; the ones that are "innocent" just ride along and so can live just fine.
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Aboleth are rogue cells of Leviathan. Not necessarily evil (nothing in my setting is), but cut off from direct access to Leviathan's consciousness. They parasitize on the song and try to subvert it or conquer others. They're one of the forces behind creating mind flayers back in the day, but modern mind flayers aren't bound to them.

Many other monstrosities of similar mien are related to Leviathan in some way, often by way of the Twisted One, a cancerous Leviathan cell-turned Demon Prince of body horror.

[Sizzlefoot]

A gnome is the larval stage of an earth elemental.

[Tvtyrant]

A gnome is the larval stage of an earth elemental.

I thought that was a Mephit.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Svirfneblin are gnomes who have been ritually transformed into elemental creatures of Earth. Similarly, azer are dwarves who have been transformed into creatures of elemental Fire.

Yes, I know that svirfneblin aren't elementals. But I feel they should be, instead of being yet another gnome subrace.

[Sizzlefoot]

Elves have no souls of their own, and must consume those of others to maintain their immortality. Some do this directly, by eating the flesh of sentient beings.

[Xania]

Oh! Drow have no souls after losing their drider form and have to feed on them, once they ate enough they could become a succubus/incubus.

[Squire Doodad]

Proteans, but their only constant feature is a pair of glowing yellow eyes, and they can do a once-per-week modified version of Greater Teleport.
What?
No mock-MitDs?
Aw...

All reptiles that are descended from theropoda (so velociraptors, tyrannosaurids, actual birds, etc, and not just dinosaurs but depending on interpretation also certain lizardfolk esque races) have feathers, meaning that all fire based attacks have a +1 to hit and for damage, unless the creature is specifically fire resistant, in which case that +1 to hit is instead a -1. Also if hit by a sustained wind gust they have a +1 for recovery purposes. Similarly, they can negate a minimum of the first 1d6 of damage by using their feathers to maneuver. This is negated if they are wet or on fire, or if the feathers have been somehow removed. The feathers might not serve any real function and may be strictly vestigial, but they make physics stuff happen (I know some of the fine details but won't bore anyone with them) and so they can fall easier. Sure I doubt most of them have feathers enough to actually do anything, but its a fun little shift and it is interesting to see people summoning water so that a T-Rex falls off a cliff more easily.

[Tvtyrant]

Goblins of Vatmoor

The Goblins of Vatmoor are thankfully fractured and involved in endless inter-tribal wars. If not for this the rest of the continent would have long ago been swept under their flapping, stinking feet.

Goblins reproduce much more rapidly than other sentient races. They do not raise their children to the same level of maturity in the womb that sentient races do, instead giving birth to tiny blind pinkies in small litters at regular intervals. A Goblin woman usually gives birth to 3-4 pinkies every six months, the pinkies are the size of a finger and are placed in the tribes child rearing shelter. Wild goblins expect a lifetime of child bearing to lead to a few surviors, but in the tribes they now reach adulthood in much higher numbers. The women take turns feeding all of the pups daily throughout their adult lives, rotating so that the children always have food and care. A large hall is central to every Goblin village, built to house the pinkies until they reach 10 pounds. At this time they are moved out into smaller Goblin huts, which are more like stables then like human houses. Goblins cannot stand solitude, they sleep, eat and reproduce surrounded by their kin. A hut might have as many as ten goblins living together while being the size of a horse stall, unbearable conditions for other races but natural for the Goblins.

Goblins are insectivores that have branched into a slightly more omnivourous diet. A goblin tribe raises large numbers of meal worms by collecting or raising offal and vegetation to feed them, and then eats the meal worms. This is more efficient then human farming, allowing any scraps of food gathered to be transformed back into food. Goblins diet is shown in their tiny but razor sharp peg teeth, which gives them a rat like face. Their long tongues aid in the digestion of insects, and also in grooming patterns that make other sentients uncomfortable.

The power of Goblins as a race is remarkable, for despite their small (3 feet and 30 pound) size they are born with a potent weapon. Goblins have a venom gland similar to that of a viper, giving them a venomous bite 1d6 Con damage/1d6 Con damage DC10. The Goblins are immune to this poison, and it has become the center of their military powers. Goblins focus their military endevours on ranged combat when possible, using Worgs and Riding Dogs to maintain range while dousing their opponent's in poisoned arrows. The sight of Goblin archers licking arrow heads before combat can unnerve strong men, as a large volley of such arrows can kill even the strongest of men.

Alongside their dog-archers, Goblins use chariots pulled by ponies or donkeys. The chariotman hits enemies with lassos or nets covered in small poisoned spines, the rope being tied to the hitch they then drag their opponent behind them until they are dead.

When forced into melee combat Goblins are easily killed, being smaller and weaker than other sentient species. The poorer goblin tribes who lack dogs live life on a knife's edge, living in dense woods where their small, none-intrusive settlements don't draw enemy attention. The larger tribes are semi-nomadic, moving between large pre-built villages. Their food supply is often maintained by a Great Pit, a multilayered box of soil and rotting vegetation protected by a roof from predators. These are seeded with garbage and plant materials before the tribe moves on, the great piles of maggots and worms that have amassed there feed the tribe when they return.

Vatmoor itself is a cold, moorish land whose extent isn't fully known. There are five great tribes in the region of Vatmoor that interacts with the known lands, and perhaps hundreds of smaller ones that live in wooded vales along its outskirts. The Goblins from known tribes amount to several million, but as their geographic area is unknown it could be more or less. The soil of Vatmoor is nearly unusable, poor and rocky with little to attract Human or Orc attention. The Goblins therefore have little to fear from outsiders, except in retributive crusades after a tribe or even a tribal alliance invades a nearby area. Their internal battles over water rights and nomadic settlements are enormous, with the largest battle in known history consisting of only Goblins.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I thought of an amazing idea.
gnomes.
tgat are lawful evil
they are basically kobold exterminators.
They live in their vast wallee xity.

[Drakien]

In my setting I have the devils be the victims, their race was largely evil, so the angels conquered them, destroyed their culture and enslaved them to do the jobs they didn't want(guarding evil souls and fighting demons, who are truly horrific) I also had the idea of dragons being earth spirits, they gather hoards that accrete to their skin, dragons all try to create hoards of mostly one treasure type, which changes their skin color as it attaches to them and changes the way magic interfaces with their body(i.e. Different breath weapons) all dragons goal is to eventually fuse with the earth and become one with their hoard, creating magically enriched mineral deposits. Dragons are viewed as aggressive because humanoids dig up these mineral graves for the treasure, which is sacrilege to the dragons at its highest form. Metallic dragons are considered "friendlier" because they love human coin and barter for it to add to their hoard, while chromatic dragons live in the wilds and mine gems.

[Tvtyrant]

Giants of Aten

The Giants of Aten are the remnants of the greatest civilization that ever ruled on the planet. The giants ruled vast cloud-kingdoms which drifted across the skies, drawing tribute from the lifeforms below to feed themselves and focusing their efforts on art, magic and science. Their ability to make clouds solid was developed into the ability to reform clouds into any shape or material type they needed, and their civilizations built tremendous scientific advancements on this. Ships that sailed the skies at impossible speeds, weapons that could spit tiny suns and armor that deflected all attacks. The giants locked up more and more of the world's water into their solid clouds, forming ever more advanced structures as the ground below was slowly lost to drought and ice.
As the world became colder and drier the giants found the tribute they relied upon harder and harder to find. The surface races were dying out just as the giants were reaching heights of population and power, and a new solution was required. If their clouds were blocking light from the surface below and drawing out the world's water to do it, they would simply bring soil on top of the clouds where daylight was plentiful. Tribute became slavery, and the world became ever darker as new layers of clouds were constructed to hold the sky-farms. The giants found the mortals below too fragile to deal with the thin air and icy conditions, and so began to augment their surface slaves with the enslavement of their own kind. The enslaved giants were stripped of their powers, losing the power to shape clouds and becoming more numerous by design.
At last the great kingdoms began to struggle to survive even with the support of slaves and clouds, and turned on each other to acquire more resources. The oceans freezing below, the land already frozen and dark, and the cloud kingdoms began to die in horrible wars. Some of the giants constructed yt larger and more complicated structures and fled the world in them, great cloud ships that they hoped would reach the stars. The majority struggled in an ever more desperate war for survival, and then calamity came to bring them hope.
An unmoored star a mile across passed through the sky, bringing intense heat. The clouds evaporated, unfreezing millenia of locked water and dumping it boiling back to the ground. Continents of lifted soil dropped below, and nearly all of the giants and their slaves perished. A small number were spared by the will of Zola, and began life anew on the surface.

The surviving giants of Aten are the descendants of slave giants, free of the magic-science of the clouds. They live in small enclaves, some seeking the mythical lost Cloud Kingdom Aten, others praying that it is never found. The myths of its fate are many, some say it fled to the stars in the final days before Zola struck, others that it floats above the ocean so far from land it has never been seen. All are certain it exists, and with it the secret of Giant restoration.


Cloud science-magic is simple mechanically. The user shapes a cloud into a form (art or crafting check) and then makes a Wisdom check to change the consistency of the cloud to match the desired material. The rarity of the material decides the difficulty of the check, but most known materials are not ardous. With this ability the Giants were able to make many “modern” scientific advancements, but could only use clouds in these workings. This knowledge is lost, the cloud tablets which housed this knowledge and their users burnt up by Zola.

[Drakien]

Refluffing the races to fit in a sci-fi setting could be fun. So far I have the rylato (use elf stats), pterodactyl-like ne'er-do-wells who first invented modern energy weapons, the chyrzkkli (dragonborn), blue-colored insectoid warriors with the ability to project a blast of psionic power (breath weapon), the stodex (dwarves), muscular, hairless, very broad and stocky humanoids who can sense various types of energy, the kuakuate (gnomes) who are mushroom-people whose "illusions" are brought on by hallucinogens their bodies naturally generate, and the munans (halflings), who resemble intelligent upright 2-3 foot tall mice. I suppose magic would be fluffed as psychic powers. Maybe paladins and clerics serve powerful corporations who give them cybernetic implants which enhance the psionics present in all life forms.

I did this too, although I (obviously) did them differently, I thought of gnomes as an experiment about flesh and blood androids. The deep gnomes were the test, built strong so that they could mine if their intelligence didn't work out right, forest gnomes were what happened when the aela(elves) took over the project, and rock gnomes were built as the newest model when the project got off the ground

[Drakien]

Refluffing the races to fit in a sci-fi setting could be fun. So far I have the rylato (use elf stats), pterodactyl-like ne'er-do-wells who first invented modern energy weapons, the chyrzkkli (dragonborn), blue-colored insectoid warriors with the ability to project a blast of psionic power (breath weapon), the stodex (dwarves), muscular, hairless, very broad and stocky humanoids who can sense various types of energy, the kuakuate (gnomes) who are mushroom-people whose "illusions" are brought on by hallucinogens their bodies naturally generate, and the munans (halflings), who resemble intelligent upright 2-3 foot tall mice. I suppose magic would be fluffed as psychic powers. Maybe paladins and clerics serve powerful corporations who give them cybernetic implants which enhance the psionics present in all life forms.

Interestingly, my halflings(the endine) were also mouse folk

[Xania]

My micefolk were unoriginal, being basically jawas. They looked different under their hoods though.

[Sizzlefoot]

I thought of giving goblins blue skin, similar to certain primates.

[Sizzlefoot]

Interestingly, my halflings(the endine) were also mouse folk

Just seems fitting, doesn't it?

[Xania]

It's a 70s style pulp prehistoric setting wich could be created or not, with Frazetta men, giant spiders, human-eater plants, innacurate dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals and everything.
Obviously none or very few of the names are used inside the setting,

Humans unsurprising are just somewhat realistic prehistoric humans, while halflings are the nubile savage type humans like those seen in the movies (they are tall here) and dwarves look just like most people imagine when they hear "caveman".
Elves and gnomes are feared otherworldly entities, they create zombies and are thought to be the licantrophes.

[Sizzlefoot]

Grippli are the "polywog" stage between froghemoths and....some sort of mutant tentacle tadpole.

[Shocksrivers]

I use Gnomes as a magical servant race of the "first races", elves and others (depending on the setting, usually Warhammerish Lizardmen or Rakshasa). They learned their magics, and kept their knowledge after the disaster that reshaped the world for the less-magical races (men, orcs, etc.) They were nimble, smart but non-threatening. Gnomes used their innate magical abilities to be subtle, unnoticed servants. In one setting we had Gnomes who could use minor shapeshifting to change their appearance to suit their mood. After the fall of the first races, the Gnomes spread in a diaspora, but noticed that they could combine the knowledge and magics of the first races, to become a major power.

We had goblins in a similar situation, but during reign of the less magical races. They build magical universities, free of rules and taxes, in other peoples countries. Having a university is a mayor boon for a country, as it provides high-level magics. Goblins that don't live in the universities, usually live as majordomus in the houses of other peoples nobility.

[Xania]

A grell as a life state of the illithid, maybe not every illithid has to pass towards it.
Or a carrion crawler-like being as a grown up larva of an illithid.

[Sam113097]

I have gnomes as the result of an experiment by ancient mages that were trying to "fix" goblins:

"Most people on Allu believe that goblins were a failed attempt by the gods to create another mortal race, some sort of unsuccessful rough draft. They are semi-sentient but are soulless, monstrous, and devoid of any sort of empathy. Mages of the ancient Luz civilization took it upon themselves to try to “repair” these monsters and create the mortal race that they believed the gods had intended goblins to be. Using the Solstone Islands as the site of their magical experiments, and after generations of trial and error and numberless dead goblin test subjects, the Mages of Luz finally managed to etch runes into their very beings. The result was a highly intelligent, magically-gifted race of rational, goblin-like beings that came to be called gnomes, which the Luz began to use as servants. When the inhabitants of Luz disappeared unexpectedly, the gnomes were left behind to build their own civilization atop the ruins of their creators’. The most distinctive feature of the gnomes' physical appearance is the complex web of runes that runs across their bodies in bright blue lines, the result of centuries of magical experimentation on them. These runes are a product of the deep blue most of the time; they glow an electric hue when gnomes use magic. Aside from the runes, they look like more civilized goblins, though they have much more human-like faces. They stand about three and a half feet tall, on average, and their skin ranges in color from pale orange to deep red. They have three clawed digits on their hands and feet, broad noses, and are completely hairless. Their large, pointed ears are quite sensitive, and they have much better hearing and night vision than humans."

[Xuc Xac]

Humans unsurprising are just somewhat realistic prehistoric humans, while halflings are the nubile savage type humans like those seen in the movies (they are tall here) and dwarves look just like most people imagine when they hear "caveman".

Uh... What did you think "nubile" meant when you wrote that?