The races presented within are more than just a collection of minor attribute bonuses and abilities designed to get a bit more damage out of a longsword. These races are unique, vivid, and bizarre in a balanced and instantly recognizable way. They change the game, and present an excellent, fascinating toolkit for players interested in variety.
With these bizarre races, nobody will forget who you are or what you look like. With these races, suddenly your game is new again.
- BUNNYTAURS: Halfling-rabbit centaurs, quick and alert but gripped by instinctual cowardice.
- KINDERCLOAKS: Plump, hooded shadows crafted from primitive magics that turn to petrified smoke in bright light.
- MERRIEPETALS: Revelrous flowers which exude a certain allure which makes them irresistable – or is it the hallucinogenic spores?
- MISBORN: Gangly psychopomp-touched humans with the ability to talk to the dead and see through planes.
- PAINTERLILIES: Two-dimensional sentient paintings, with the ability to meld onto surfaces.
- SHADOWFRIENDS: Frail fey giants created by a child’s wish, disturbing in form but remarkably kind.
- BLESMOLFOLK: Sluggish, pain-immune mole rats, carving out vast labyrinths and dungeons. Blesmolfolk are divided between four distinct racial castes: industrious workers, crafty warriors, conniving consorts, and willful queens.
Enjoy this one guys!
ReplyDeleteMan, this was a blast to design. The editing work on these seven races (or ten, if you count the different kindercloak castes) was just superb, and I loved fine-tuning what started as little more than a bunch of cool ideas in my head.
ReplyDeleteExotic races can add such a fun element of the unknown to an otherwise ordinary Pathfinder game. Maybe a party is conducting a standard dungeon crawl, only to stumble upon a group of friendly blesmolfolk designing new traps for the area. Maybe the party is livened up by the addition of a little flower bard, or a towering, shadowy alchemist. Maybe it is an encounter with a group of bunnytaurs that drives home that the party has entered an exotic new continent and no longer knows what to expect.
Regardless of how the new races are used, though, I think a little unexpected variety can always improve a campaign. I hope you enjoy!
Whoops! I meant "blesmolfolk castes". See, this is what happens when I don't have Charles Kulick as editor. ;D
DeleteI think the painterlilies got a pretty good fleshing-out without leaving too many glaring questions (at least not ones a GM can't make to suit their own campaign). It's not easy to pull of a two-dimensional creature without making them seem... I guess the word is 'one-dimensional'. These could be fierce assassins, pretending to be a mural on the wall, then just slipping under the doorframe...
ReplyDeleteYou've got a nice spread of fey types and shadowy figures, a planes-touched race, an antique construct humonculous, and then your more naturally-suited bunnytaurs and molerats for fitting into a more standard campaign; easy to drop into a concealed valley or underworld cavern system.