Race Creation

[Marken4]

Is there a possibility to make a race? I would love making one :) It would be a problem if everyone suddenly decided to make their own race and populate their land with it tho...

[industrygothica]

What did you have in mind?

[MSZ]

Hallo Marken4,

hvurden ga°r det med deg?

If I get you right you want to create a race? So what do you need - some sugestions for that or what?

[Gamerprinter]

What did you have in mind?

Of course he means a race, like elves, dwarves, halflings - but something new.

I am building player character races right now for my Kaidan setting, so I know exactly what he is talking about. However I am too busy on the publication to help here, but when I have some time, I'll give my thoughts.

GP

[Lalaithion]

Start with an adjective or a profession to base the race off of, such as:

Elf - Graceful
Dwarf - Miner
Goblin - Greedy
Gnome - Craftsman

[Korash]

or look at what inspires you....

[Jaxilon]

10k - now that's a good race....

sorry, bad joke, hehe, or is it?

We could call them "Tinkay". A race of small stature, capable of incredible endurance due to their greater lung capacity compared to body size. They are renown messengers as they are small enough to elude patrols and their endurance enables them to keep moving for long periods of time. Why nearly everyone has heard of the human saying "On account of a horseshoe nail the battle was lost"? It would not have been so was there a Tinkay runner nearby. ROFL

Well, anyway...I always find a little humor helps to blow out the cobwebs :)

[Korash]

actually....

you got me thinking there Jax....

like a quickling but not really......

ooo I like :)

[Jaxilon]

See what I mean? hehe, hope you come up with something excellent.

[Gamerprinter]

For the non-human races of Kaidan I am creating Kappa, Hengeyokai and Tengu.

Kappa - the turtle shelled diminuitive goblin of Japanese folklore, the main aspects I touched upon in the creation of my version are: small stature (2 to 2.5 feet tall), natural armor due to shell on back, 2 claw attacks, free unarmed combat feat (despite the claws to comply to feat prerequisites), some Ki powers, weakness in the hollow spot on the top of their heads for sacred water, a special attack maneuver required to spill that water, no combat maneuverability penalty due to size, and a special skill at breaking bones in combat. The Kappa's main feature is a diminuitive monster race that is actually good at physical combat. They are slow on foot (20' speed) but fast in water, Swim (40', but increases with level).

Hengeyokai - animal shapechangers with an especially sylvan affinity, they make good rangers, druids and barbarians. Without Wildshape powers they can shapechange to a specific animal and human form, both considered their other true forms as they cannot disguise themselves to look like a different human. Species including: Badger, Cat, Dog, Hare, Monkey, Raccoon Dog, and Rat forms. They feature a trickster paragon class.

Tengu - bird (crow or owl) forms, not a shapechanger, includes sorcerers, fighters and paladins, with a not-yet-determined paragon class. We're using the basic racial stats for Tengu from Pathfinder Bestiary 1, but changing the subtype from Oni to Yokai (oni are only demons in Kaidan).

While there will be other monster races, the above three are the only ones available to player characters. Each will be published as its own PDF book, and In the Company of Kappa has already been released - available at RPGNow, DriveThruRPG and the Paizo Store.

Humans still comprise the bulk of character races and several classes are exclusive to humans, including Inquisitor (metsuki) as they are members of the Shogunate Secret Police (and thoroughly evil), while most of the animal yokai races above are neutrally aligned (some good, some evil). The empire and shogunate are rather ethnocentric in their beliefs and tolerations.

Its very cool working on new racial traits, optional racial traits, class archetypes, yokai paragon classes, yokai specific religion, feats and weapons, as well as backstory, origin mythos, and each one's view of society and the world.

GP

[cypruss11]

I could create a race....

Full Name: maioribus rutilus muris (greater red mouse)
Name: also called the Amaphus
General Description:
the Amaphus are a race of humanoid/rat-like people with a sleek coat of red fur they have two arms that reach about two feet length each when full grown. The Amaphus stand at about four feet tall. They stand on legs of a length of about two feet each. They have a body length (head to butt) of about two feet. They have blu eyes although a rare chance there may be a green eyed Amaphus born the green will fade into blue by the age of 3. They have 3 claws on each hand and 2 toes on each foot. They have a rat-like snout but it curves upward slightly.

Average lifetime - 32 years
World Record Maximum - 55 years
Age of adulthood - 9 years
(i am using 365 days as a year)

IQ - An Amaphus has the technology of humans in the time of about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8th_millennium_BC they do have written language though. It looks similar to Egyptian Heiroglyphics.

Population - the Amaphus a pretty far spread and live in tribes of 15-50. They are nomadic in a way, They do not travel with the animals but migrate with the weather. Amaphus like medium-cool weather and will move north in the summer and return south in the winter.

Amaphus Religion - Amaphus may have many religions we do not know about but the main religion of the Amaphus is the belief that all the world was created by hundreds of gods, gods of tree, gods of grass, gods of water, gods of arrowheads, gods of sticks. Really everything... The main gods are Apa the god of sky, Dalla the god of meat, Arg the god of tools, and Cagra the god of Fruit. They believe fruit to be the greatest of all the gods gifts and offer meat of the animals they kill to the flames before eating fruit. Fruit, in a way, is as holy as the cross is to a christian. Cagra is obviously the main overuling god of the rest.

ask me if you want more added or even more races... i hope you like it and have a way to use it.

Fruits

Cagra - In looks it could be compared to a pear but with the color of a banana. It does not need a stem because it grows from other Cagra a little like a potato.

Afflama - Inside of an Afflama a large seed can be found. They are about one foot in diameter but the seed takes up about 10 inches of the inside this fruit grows slowly. They look like apples with a rough brown outside and a creamy red inside.

some fruits i thought up... they are probably useless to a world you guys will probably just use ordinary apples and bananas

[Mapleguy555]

Wouldn't it be better to have a template for race creation?

[MarkoDarko]

I think it is a great idea to start with an adverb to create a race. If you want warlike creatures, they're going to be very different from a fragile race. But I'm also a very visual person. For my last D & D race I decided to make a crystalline race. I was stuck on ideas, so I headed over to my local gaming shop and started digging through the custom mini's to get ideas. After I actually created my own race using a sla prototype (http://www.realizeinc.com/) at a local design company.

[Falconer111]

I tend to start with a setting or purpose myself, then go logically from one function to another until I have a basic outline of a race and society. Like so;

Start: I need a sapient race that's physically larger than humans and inhabits tropical islands.

-Large animals tend not to be native to tropical islands, so they have to be from somewhere else...

-but they can't arrive there by ship or anything, because they're too large to transport...

-and whales in tropical waters tend to be intelligent, large, and capable of travelling through water, making them perfect, but they're a bit too big...

-but isolation on islands sometimes leads to physical shrinkage to adapt to less resources...

-which means that they couldn't be able swim huge distances if I wanted them to be a reasonable size...

-so maybe they cannot stay underwater for too long (way smaller lungs) but still do work underwater...

-which means that they might build coastal traps for fish and crabs for food...

-which implies that their fins became crude manipulators as they adapted to living on land, though that says nothing about their flukes...

-which in turn implies that they still have them, making them more comfortable moving in water than on land...

-so their buildings probably would be simply adorned but perhaps complexly engineered, with a balance water to move in and air to breathe...

-and having precisely balance water and air in your building would be a great status symbol...

-which means that engineering, and in turn math and physics, are highly valued in their culture...

-which ultimately means that the race would favor both intelligence and practicality in individuals...

-so that hints at a somewhat meritocratic approach to governance...

-and when factored together with how whales form extended family groups in their pods in real life, you might get competing clans, based on a core family group but adopting promising individuals as full members, and on top having a clan where each member is another clan (a government) that works on similar methods.

I could go on forever, but so far we have a race that probably look like a cross between a whale and a mermaid, live on the coasts of tropical lands, practice aquaculture of various forms, tend towards practicality and judging others based on their merits, and rule themselves through an aristocratic council of some sort; a good outline for a civilization to write about or have others encounter.

The logic in these leaps doesn't have to be especially coherent, direct, or, well, logical (you can always plug the holes later, and the plugging, at least for me, is my favorite part), but they should make a little sense at least. Also, if you happen to like obscure trivia, here's where it shines; being able to link two ideas that do not belong together in nature is the best way to start an in-story conflict.

So, basically extend this for several pages, come up with reasons for anything I missed earlier, and that's how I create races.