undead race options

Some undead race options I stumbled across while googling.

Living dead:

https://daemonsanddeathrays.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/the-living-dead-an-undead-race-for-dd-5th-edition/
Soulbound: http://www.tribality.com/2015/02/23/richs-gameroom-soulbound-bonus-archetypes-college-of-the-banshee-pale-knight/
Awakened undead (1): https://dnd-5e-homebrew.tumblr.com/post/134526127807/awakened-undead-race-by-thesingularanyone
Awakened undead (2): http://walrock-homebrew.blogspot.com/2015/12/race-awakened-undead-third-draft.html
Eleti: http://dragonstarsrd.freehostia.com/races/eleti.htm
Darakhul http://www.dashjperiod.com/tag/undead/
Risen https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/119501/Liber-Vampyr
Restless Soul https://paizo.com/products/btpy8da9/discuss?Restless-Souls
Dødelig https://adventureaweek.com/shop/pathfinder/player/underworld-races-dodelig/?doing_wp_cron=1562490716.5211520195007324218750
Obitu https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/alluria-publishing/obitu/
Promethean, raijin and uzamati: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/128350

Evil, savage humanoids

My cosmology removes Good and Evil in favor of Chaos, Cosmos, Discord and Order. Of those, cosmos is the only allegiance which is not inimical to life as we know it. The evil, savage humanoids in the MM are re-imagined as agents of Chaos.

My setting uses a single pantheon for the entire world rather than race specific pantheons. Humans and demihumans worship the gods (Cosmos), humanoids worship the demons (Chaos). What makes the monstrous humanoids psychologically distinct from humans and demihumans is that they are predisposed by nature/nurture towards serving Chaos. This means that their driving goals are to tear down civilization, pollute nature, and generally cause mayhem and suffering. Their reason for doing this is fairly rational: in hell your status is determined by how evil you are (by comparison, humans are nice to other humans out of a combination of empathy and desire to go to heaven). Since committing atrocities against their own tribe is counterproductive, humanoids generally commit atrocities against outsiders.

What exactly does it mean to be inclined by nature and nurture to serve Chaos? It does not mean they lack free will or have it limited, despite what the MM may say. One of the conceits of my setting is that corruption, the currency of hell, may only be accumulated if the actor is free-willed and knowingly causes harm. (BTW, I am using the corruption mechanic from Mongoose's Book of Hell.) Humans and demihumans all have a conscience and an id. The conscience is a voice in their head that tells them to do the right thing, while the id tells them to pursue self-gratification regardless of the consequences. Humanoids are born with an inverted conscience which urges them to serve Chaos, cause unnecessary suffering, and ultimately destroy reality. This cheats the prerequisite for free will and does not absolve them of responsibility for their actions. Where a human born in a deeply misogynistic, racist culture will turn out completely different if raised in an egalitarian culture, a humanoid raised in human society will constantly struggle with their inverted conscience.

What makes humanoids biologically distinct from humans and demihumans is that they don't really have any kind of childhood. They are generally "born" as adults (or miniature adults) with sufficient knowledge to survive. This saves energy which would otherwise be spend on raising and educating children. In many cases they do not actively reproduce, but generate spontaneously in response to certain stimuli.

The art design for naga

D&D Naga are a lot less colorful than their Hindu inspirations (Addendum 7/11/2017: or even the Naga in Creatures of Rokugan). These are my suggestions to make them look (and maybe act) more interesting.

©2012 Kuroi-kisin

Ecology of the Peryton

The peryton was originally an elaborate practical joke invented by Jorge Luis Borges in his Book of Imaginary Beings. D&D ran with this and turned them into another weird monster. Unfortunately, D&D discarded their tragic and disturbing mythology. I decided to adapt that back in.

Some physical contradictions of typical fantasy settings

I mentioned before that most fantasy campaign settings operate on the conceit that magic and nature are two different things. The fantasy world operates according to modern science while magic is haphazardly tacked on to explain any divergences. This leads to numerous bizarre contradictions which many gamers are painfully oblivious to.

Ecology of the rot grub, slime crawler and carrion moth

© Bioware

Nomenclature: carcass scavenger, carrion moth, catcher-in-filth, corpse creeper, emvika (in Dwarvish), flesh crawler, rot grub, scavenger worm, slime crawler

Description: giant caterpillar, maggot or grub that consumes carrion and incapacitates prey with venomous tentacles or spray, later metamorphoses into a giant moth or beetle

Goblin babies: a false dichotomy

Evil has always confused me as far an alignments go: a society of amoral sociopaths could not function. Dungeon crawling is crime fantasy, the fantasy genre is founded on racism and alignment exists more or less to justify genocide. So why equivocate? Here I present alternatives for those who want to portray "evil" societies in nontraditional fashion, tying into my reinvention of the Evil alignment as the Chaos allegiance. I have reduced the portrayal of savage humanoids to three basic archetypes based on the goblin baby dilemma: no goblin babies, goblin babies must die, and klingon babies.

Fantastical humanoids

Much like the distinction between beasts and monstrosities, the distinction between humanoids and monstrosities is arbitrary. I suspect this may be due to poor editing but I cannot be sure.

Merfolk are labeled humanoids despite having a tail in place of legs, when the description for the humanoid type specifies humanoids are bipedal. Centaurs are labeled monstrosities rather than humanoids because they are quadrupedal and/or large size, despite being neither unnatural nor malevolent. Yetis are labeled monstrosities rather than giants because... I cannot think of any logic behind that.

Maybe we should have a tag like "Honorary Humanoid: As a PC, you are susceptible to magics and effects that are stipulated for "humanoids" even though, as a species, you are not." Maybe?

Whether a monster looks stupid or not depends largely on execution

A Paizo forum member once posted (while discussing adapting monsters from mythology), "In my opinion if something is stupid, like some depiction of the Tatzlwyrm as a snake with a cat's head, then it needs to be changed."

I cannot believe that anyone who ever cracked open a monster manual would say that with a straight face.

Monsters of (sadly mythtaken) mythology

D&D and its derivatives have a history of taking monsters from mythology, folklore, fairy tales, cryptozoology, urban legends, etc. In the case of mythological monsters, originally singular monsters are expanded into an entire race. In the process, the properties of the original monsters and the (often warped) moral message of the original myth are reversed, twisted or lost entirely.

Earthbound evils

While demons typically arise within the lower planes (and are largely trapped there), some people are so evil that their souls may become demons without ever leaving the material plane. Likewise, some terrestrial spirits may become so corrupt that they are twisted into demons. Some may build fleshy bodies for themselves or reincarnate within family lineages. These earthbound evils are commonly known by names like div, oni, rakshasa, and sahkil depending on the local culture. Pathfinder introduces all of these as new races of demons, but I prefer not to split hairs. The rakshasa and ogre mage in the MM are examples of such demons, but they come in many more varieties (see the PF bestiaries for ideas and then build them using the DMG guidelines).

Why are undead evil? Why does necromancy get such a bad rap?

Why are undead always evil? Necromancy is not evil: it includes healing and resurrection! How many stories portray ghosts or vampires as sympathetic? Zombies and skeletons are supposed to lack the free will necessary for moral judgment in the first place. Making undead inherently evil is redundant when you have fiends. I take a morally grey approach, using other sources to derive alignment rather than undeath itself.

Soul magic

Souls and corpses are not really given much thought in the rules. Do undead have souls? Do celestials or fiends? Do they leave corpses behind? How do they interact with animate dead, magic jar, raise dead, speak with dead, etc?

What is a spirit and how does it differ from a fey or elemental?

My cosmology is built holistically. That means that I take into account how everything fits together, where things come from and where they go, rather than cobbling together a random assortment of fantasy stereotypes and expecting them to play well together. Spiritually is a foundation of my setting, which I will explain in detail.

Planar flora and fauna (using the Fire Plane as an example)

The D&D rules are weird and geocentric. If you tried to run a campaign entirely on the elemental plane of fire, you would run into problems with various spells and class features that target specific types because by the rules as written every living thing on the elemental plane of fire should be typed as an elemental. Inspired by Planescape and The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire, I would suggest a few changes using the elemental plane of fire as an example.

The fey life cycle

Fey have always gotten the short stick in D&D. They aren't well defined, aren't integrated in most settings, and there are very few of them if any. I'm using The Complete Guide to Fey as my primary source in defining fey.

Fantasy space travel primer

At I explained previously, one of the key changes in my cosmology is merging the Ethereal, Astral and Faerie planes. Furthermore, this plane serves a dual role as outer space: space travel may allow travelers to visit other planes as though they were planets or islands on the sea!

The problem of evil

In my campaign setting I replaced "Evil" with "Chaos" a la Warhammer, but it is essentially the same. (Discord and Order are also the nominally evil cosmological factions, but that's largely because of their extreme mindset in trying to benevolently end suffering.) When evil is a cosmological constant, it raises a number of questions. Why is there evil? Who defines it? Why would anyone knowingly serve it if that means eternal damnation? How are so-called evil societies able to function?

Demonic aesthetics

My problem with the demons and devils is that they lack unifying motifs. Each side is a grab bag of random designs and their hierarchies and behavior are more similar than not. I have a few different ideas for explaining why demons look and act the way they do, and making a clearer distinction between demons and devils.