Availability of Special Appearances

[Kythana]

Just accept that Arelith is a zoo now

No.

Well, whether you like it or not, that's the truth.

[Spriggan Bride]

5e D&D lets players start with a wild range of races and the most relevant current D&D property is Baldurs Gate 3 which lets you be a Githyanki or Tiefling or Dragonborn. I don’t think 3e D&D is even a frame of reference newer players are going to be familiar with (and even with it, a good drow is probably the most well known character, not someone “traditional”). Many are coming from anime and Final Fantasy and bringing those references too instead of Lord of the Rings which isn’t en vogue right now. I just accept this as where D&D is in 2024…

[AstralUniverse]

Just accept that Arelith is a zoo now

No.

Well, whether you like it or not, that's the truth.

I dont think so. However, if the ratio between 'special' and normal characters was becoming problematic, we can also reduce the percentages to get awards. I bet that would make a lot of folks happy.

[MissEvelyn]

5e D&D lets players start with a wild range of races and the most relevant current D&D property is Baldurs Gate 3 which lets you be a Githyanki or Tiefling or Dragonborn. I don’t think 3e D&D is even a frame of reference newer players are going to be familiar with (and even with it, a good drow is probably the most well known character, not someone “traditional”). Many are coming from anime and Final Fantasy and bringing those references too instead of Lord of the Rings which isn’t en vogue right now. I just accept this as where D&D is in 2024…

That may be where modern D&D is, but we as a 3.X-based server don't have to conform to that. Now that there is a mainstream game for 5th edition D&D, hopefully that will keep those who prefer the lightshow of high-fantasy-anime-like gameplay there, whilst those of us others who enjoy the more grounded fantasy aspect of D&D (especially 2nd and 3rd-x editions) can have a place to call home here.

Of course, it would be ignorant to say that Arelith hasn't evolved beyond D&D - of course it has, as any long-standing homebrew campaign also would. But I certainly echo the sentiment that there is a bit of an identity crisis when it comes to our dear server in today's date. Pick a direction, Arelith?

[RedGiant]

I dont think so. However, if the ratio between 'special' and normal characters was becoming problematic, we can also reduce the percentages to get awards. I bet that would make a lot of folks happy.

This doesn't make me happy. At all.

Playing here since...oh....2008 or so, I've managed to get now 2 major award rolls. I really don't want them any rarer because I will likely be dead or in a nursing home before I get a third. Despite all the talk of speed and the supposed conveyor belt approach to major awards, this is simply not possible for those of us balancing family and careers on top of our favorite past time. Please don't punish those of us who aren't pensioners or college students with this 'fix.'

I also don't think this is an actual solution, because, with several hundred people playing the game at any one time, anything available is eventually ubiquitous. This is most obvious in loot. I would bet a 'blade of elements' or a 'lantanese ring' is a very rare drop, probably on orders less common than a 5% roll, yet look in every 5 shops and there one is.

The original OP suggested some limit. They already do this somewhat for dragons, vampires. and Raksasha. I would prefer this to making Major awards even harder.

I would also prefer GrumpyCat's idea of making more meaningful awards that aren't visually arresting.

But really, I don't think any of this gets after the real problem, which is the social penalty one should pay if they were actually walking around a normative medieval setting with devil or dragon wings sprouting from their back. Even if you are 'good'. the best you should hope for is to be run out of town and relegated to a creepy abandoned keep well-outside the city limits.

In short, Outcast them and/or treat them similar to the way we do the 'good monster' award, where the best you can hope for is to forever be an outsider amongst your own people. This would dramatically cut down on the sparklestars standing in the middle of town unfurled.

Failing any of the rest of these options, as many have suggested, we could just let it be and recognize that DnD culture has moved on. The server, as it is, reflects where a lot of gamers and settings are at.

[The GrumpyCat]

But really, I don't think any of this gets after the real problem, which is the social penalty one should pay if they were actually walking around a normative medieval setting with devil or dragon wings sprouting from their back. Even if you are 'good'. the best you should hope for is to be run out of town and relegated to a creepy abandoned keep well-outside the city limits.

Here is the problem I have with this, and I'm speaking from a personal perspective here.

I want to play on the surface, and I don't neccesarly want to be Killed On Sight. Don't get me wrong, I've played UD, I've played evil PCs even, but honestly playing 'Violent Murder Monster No.194003' is not really what I'm interested in very often. It's not where I've had the most fun.

And if we're saying that, like, these awards don't neccesarly need to be neutral/evil, if we're opening up all unqiue races -even if good aligned to Andunor - is that... good for Andunor? LIke - right now there's a very limited amount of possiblities you can play in Andunor, that can start off as good aligned, as I recall. (Good aligned monster race, Gnaisai, Gloaming, Imaskeri.)

We could shove all good tieflings, Aasimar, Avarial, Half giants, Firbolg, ect down there- but I don't really feel it'd be very good for the environs. I'm not sure how the Underdarkers would feel about that, honestly? And I'm not sure how much fun those players would have either.

The award system (theoretically) exist for two reasons - 1) To allow people to play a limited amount of strange concepts that they usually wouldn't be enabled to. And 2) to encourage people to roll long running characters, to allow fresh concepts room to appear. Now we can of course debate how well the current system is doing that (Not very) but if we keep those as the goals - then it will fail in that second goal. Because as someone who isn't /always/ interested in playing either an Evil Character, or a character who will be very constantly hunted/hated/tortured/mutilated by 90% of the server population, I wouldn't really feel very incentivsed to ever roll a PC. Why? I just get the option of playing something I... probably don't really want to play?

And like, I'm sorry but I looking at the numbers, I'm pretty sure that a lot of other players feel the same way.

[Kythana]

But really, I don't think any of this gets after the real problem, which is the social penalty one should pay if they were actually walking around a normative medieval setting with devil or dragon wings sprouting from their back. Even if you are 'good'. the best you should hope for is to be run out of town and relegated to a creepy abandoned keep well-outside the city limits.

...How exactly does this relate to the problem at all? Just looking at the list of awards we have, from the greater to major category. The following races are either monstrous, or become targeted for exile easily:

• Yuan- Yi (When exposed)
• Ogres
• Minotaurs
• Hags
• Unseelie Fey
• Vampire (When exposed)
• Rakshasa (When exposed)
• Imp
• Fey'ri (When exposed)
• RDD with evil dragon wings

Even if we look at some of the more ambiguous award races, like Kenku, Tieflings, and Gloamings, there isn't really anything you can do to enforce on a player level for these. The public perception is that these races, despite some reputation, are generally permitted. It would be incredibly weird for Kenku or Tiefling players overnight to suddenly be forced to leave all the people that support and like them.

If you think I'm wrong, then go play a character who is prejudiced against tieflings. Watch as nearly everyone calls you out.

Arelith isn't (and maybe never was) a setting where the weird and outlandish is seen with superstition and awe. The average peasant doesn't care about seeing wings or a tail or a 9 foot tall half giant, because this is a pretty frequent occurrence. Planar beings aren't weird. Dragon aren't abnormal. Suddenly and arbitrarily deciding what is and isn't allowed will not work. They're entrenched into the setting now.

This would make even less sense towards Avariel, Aasimar, Giants, Seelie Fey, and Firbolgs. All of which are races that are often contributing in good ways. No sane person would banish an Avariel, or Aasimar after all.

I would also prefer GrumpyCat's idea of making more meaningful awards that aren't visually arresting.

I've seen this thrown around a lot, but what exactly constitutes a more meaningful award? What could be given in exchange for a major that would make it worthwhile to use?

Millions of gold you will eventually grind?

Instant level 30 which saves you maybe a couple weeks at best?

Anything locked behind a major award relating to balance is probably not going to fly. Being able to spend a major award on a bonus feat might make it extremely tempting, or extra skill points, but I don't think that would be very good for balance long term.

If you have any ideas of non visual rewards that you would actually spend a major on then, then please share.

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And ultimately, none of these solve the matter of attrition. Adding new awards non race/class awards is fine on its own, but how do you combat the ever growing hoard of vampire characters clogging up the queue? It's rare that anyone ever presses the delete button, because as you said yourself. You've played for 16 years, and have 2 major awards.

So why would you throw away something you've spent 8 years acquiring? And the more that vaults fill up with award races, the more prevalent they become.

[Diegovog]

I'd like to see anything with wings/horns/tails locked behind major awards and with big mechanical disadvantages. Things like inability to vote in surface settlement elections, own property inside settlements and governments forbidding these races to be taken as city's officials.

Most people are not going to rp too much prejudice IC. It feels bad and it feels like you're breaching the "be nice rule" if you are a settlement leader who wants to limit weird races.

[Ork]

Arelith isn't (and maybe never was) a setting where the weird and outlandish is seen with superstition and awe. The average peasant doesn't care about seeing wings or a tail or a 9 foot tall half giant, because this is a pretty frequent occurrence. Planar beings aren't weird. Dragon aren't abnormal. Suddenly and arbitrarily deciding what is and isn't allowed will not work. They're entrenched into the setting now.

This is so incredibly sad to me. It doesn't surprise me, but it is sad. We use to care about these things and roleplay the nuances of fear, trepidation, and prejudice towards the "unknown". If this quote captures current arelith, we've stripped away the thrill of playing a marginalized race and instead everyone is just a different flavor of human. A human bird. A human giant. A human with wings.

[Aradin]

I'd like to see anything with wings/horns/tails locked behind major awards and with big mechanical disadvantages.

As a preface, I really flip flop on an idea like this being too draconian or not, but...

It's a thought I've had before, that playing a race that is supposed to be rare could come with mechanical disadvantages to incentivize someone picking them for the roleplay alone. To say that they want to play that race so badly that they'll not only spend a greater/major reward to do so, but accept that for the entirety of that character's career they're going to be suboptimal in killing things/not being killed compared to a human or an elf or a halfling.
If you make every special appearance race have worse stats than a human, I think you'd end up with a lot of humans and much more "appropriate" (whatever that means) numbers for special appearance races. Now I can already hear the responses to a statement like that, but let me explain!...

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Let me use the shifter class as an example, because when it comes to playing a character who is visually special, shifter is king. I've played a shifter character for 3 years and their story is about to end. Throughout the entire time, I've often thought about this question: "How do you quantify roleplay value in a race/class/ability/etc.?"
We can all agree that shifter is by far the worst class, mechanically, when it comes to any semblance of combat power. And yet it's so massively powerful in roleplay potential. There's no other class that opens up so many pathways to the amount of stories you can tell as a shifter does. Go anywhere on the isle, be 3 dozen different creatures, live life as an azer or as a lizardfolk or as a manticore. Tell the stories of those creatures. Each one can be a character unto itself. It's bananas to me how much story there is to tell with a shifter, and you can take it in so many directions.
Your spellsword can 1v1 Abazuur effortlessly and dominate PvP battles, and my shifter's illithid form can immediately command the attention of a chamber filled with some of the most powerful and influential player characters in the Underdark. Those are both displays of strength, just in different ways. One is raw mechanical strength, and one is subtler narrative strength. But both should be measured as part of the overall makeup of a character. Meta-wise, we all know any single person in that room could smack the illithid form down in 2 hits, but because a shifter is so rare, and because people know it's application locked, people are so much more willing to buy into a given narrative that a shifter offers under the expectation it'll be interesting. That is a particular type of power than no other class gets.
I have done, frankly, outrageously hostile things while in a shifter form and people have given me the benefit of the doubt virtually every time because they want to see where things go. They've never fought a manticore that can talk back. They've never had an azer hit them with a stream of fire before. They've never had an illithid try to probe their thoughts and suck out their brain. Out of the blue, John Soldier #89 and a talking manticore both hit you for 8 damage. In response, you're going to hit John Soldier back 99% of the time. He's just another bandit. But are you going to hit that manticore back? Well, maybe not. You don't want it to die too fast, because there's something unique and interesting in front of you. Even though you've killed hundreds of NPC manticores before. On a meta level, you know this is something different. And yet unbeknownst to you, John Soldier #89 is ten times the roleplayer that the manticore's player is. But because he looks normal and the manticore doesn't, the manticore gets the chance and John doesn't. John Soldier #89 hitting you with a sword is a mundane bother. A talking manticore hitting you with a tail spike is an event! throws glitter You can take the exact same actions as someone who 'looks normal' and be treated differently. That's a kind of meta power that isn't on your character sheet.

When considering how "balanced" a class like shifter is, when considering how easily accessible special appearance races should be, that kind of narrative power should be taken into account just as much as the fighter's ability to deal more damage. Yes, it's absolutely meta. But if we're taking the meta of min-maxed class builds and edge-case PvP combos into how devs balance races and classes, we should also take into account the inherent narrative strength that special appearance races (and classes that grant special appearances) have.
See, to me, shifter is a balanced class, in its own weird way. It's so weak in its numbers because it's so strong in its strangeness. And I believe that strangeness, that uniqueness, that power to explore a kind of roleplay not available to 99.99% of the server is a kind of mechanical power. But it only has this value because that 99.99% doesn't have the same thing. A talking manticore is only interesting if you haven't seen a dozen this week.

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Take this train of thought of "roleplay power is equal to mechanical power" to races with special appearances. If you start to consider that the more unique something is, the more roleplay power it has, then it can afford to sacrifice numbers on the character sheet in order to justify that roleplay power. To me that's balance. Being visually rare compels a unique kind of roleplay experience, one that gives you a unique advantage if your goal is to roleplay someone interesting. A human has to work hard to stand out; you get it right off the bat by having wings. You are inherently interesting, and it has nothing to do with your roleplaying ability. It's just a straight up advantage when it comes to standing out, having people break the ice with you and interacting with you, and getting special attention that mundane-appearing characters don't get. That's mechanical power, in my eyes!
So when it comes to all the special appearance races wandering around in increasing numbers...well, when you take away the rarity, you take away the interesting.

To make things trickier, I think if the devs are clear about how "rare" a race ought to be on Arelith specifically, an exception should be made. For example, kobolds are visually special but they're common and populous in Faerunian lore. Half-giants aren't, but specifically on Arelith they perhaps not ought to be; they have the whole Jotunhold and a great de facto leader in the character Grymmiirn; that's a race that really ought to have enough active players to form a community around. Those two special appearance races are, to me, as an off-the-cuff example, made better by having a community of their peers in a way that races like kenku aren't.

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I say all the above with some mixed feelings and without firm convictions, since ultimately none of what I said has anything to do with a person's individual roleplaying skills and that's what matters at the end of the day. Feels like I should have a grand wrap-up after writing this much text, but I've got nothing. Hope you enjoyed reading this far if you did!

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Arelith isn't (and maybe never was) a setting where the weird and outlandish is seen with superstition and awe. The average peasant doesn't care about seeing wings or a tail or a 9 foot tall half giant, because this is a pretty frequent occurrence. Planar beings aren't weird. Dragon aren't abnormal. Suddenly and arbitrarily deciding what is and isn't allowed will not work. They're entrenched into the setting now.

This is so incredibly sad to me. It doesn't surprise me, but it is sad. We use to care about these things and roleplay the nuances of fear, trepidation, and prejudice towards the "unknown". If this quote captures current arelith, we've stripped away the thrill of playing a marginalized race and instead everyone is just a different flavor of human. A human bird. A human giant. A human with wings.

I think a part of this is the player count.

When I am playing, the sea of faces are rapidly changing me around me so much that one feels the are the outsider with no grounding of community of normalcy unless you are regularly rping with the same people. How can you make some tiefling feel like an alien when you are already a social outsider yourself? IF you speak up your own suspicians of them, it just draws more attention to you than them and doesn't really afford you any new allies to work with. than as having a server with 30 people and one unique dude versus 300 players and 10 unique dudes. If those unique dudes are quite active, you will encounter more unique dudes (even though the ratio is the same).

[Biolab00]

Player count:

Unique players in past 33 days (accounting for 2 days into January so far): 2100

I'll echo the same statement that it is very much, due to player count.
Even if we're being cautious and just give it a 10% of the player base that has access or already created 'special' races, it's still a sum of over 200 'special' characters for each of the different players that could possibly be logging in, playing them at the moment, split over different time period and possibly more percentage of these 200 during peak hours.

In term of percentage, they do not look scary but the actual numbers are and especially when, they're all within popular cities like Cordor, Guldorand or not city but Skaljard.

Above are just my own analysis and does not contribute to any viable methods to control the numbers.

[AstralUniverse]

This doesn't make me happy. At all.

I was totally sarcastic btw.

[AstralUniverse]

Arelith isn't (and maybe never was) a setting where the weird and outlandish is seen with superstition and awe. The average peasant doesn't care about seeing wings or a tail or a 9 foot tall half giant, because this is a pretty frequent occurrence. Planar beings aren't weird. Dragon aren't abnormal. Suddenly and arbitrarily deciding what is and isn't allowed will not work. They're entrenched into the setting now.

This is so incredibly sad to me. It doesn't surprise me, but it is sad. We use to care about these things and roleplay the nuances of fear, trepidation, and prejudice towards the "unknown". If this quote captures current arelith, we've stripped away the thrill of playing a marginalized race and instead everyone is just a different flavor of human. A human bird. A human giant. A human with wings.

I agree with Ork so much. If we've become a zoo, it's because of player mentality, not because of the frequency of special looks. We've always had special looks. The 'zoo' culture where nothing you see is special and out of the ordinary is 100% player imposed and unnecessary.

[Algol]

Player culture is heavily influenced by the mechanics and the decisions of the team. For example look at warlocks, their status on surface settlements have been heavily shaped by DM events rather than "organic" roleplay.

If the expected RP is distrust towards tieflings etc. perhaps we need a DM event or something to cement/ normalize the opinion.

[Diegovog]

Player culture is heavily influenced by the mechanics and the decisions of the team. For example look at warlocks, their status on surface settlements have been heavily shaped by DM events rather than "organic" roleplay.

If the expected RP is distrust towards tieflings etc. perhaps we need a DM event or something to cement/ normalize the opinion.

I 100% agree.

Andunor is completely outside normal FR lore, even Skullport is absolutely nothing like Andunor. The city is much more trade-centered and so tame nowadays. This is definitely not a result of less prejudice or culture from a large group of players.

It's mechanics that make a clear point or DMs/Devs driving it, not a group of people trying to rp proper reactions to a race in a nuanced attempt to change culture.

I guarantee a single post from King Edward in the message board about his concern on tieflings and gloamings in Cordor will do much more than the current people reacting weirdness toward these.

[Cthuletta]

If the expected RP is distrust towards tieflings etc. perhaps we need a DM event or something to cement/ normalize the opinion.

Time to sink Eltur- I mean, Arelith, into Avernus for a brief period of time and blame the Tieflings.

All jokes aside, I can see where a lot of the folks in this thread are coming from. The whole 'when everyone is special, no one is' argument. That said, Grumpycat is right when they mention there's no real solution to this that'll make everyone happy. In fact, most of them will upset a good portion of players. I think the best solution I've seen after lurking in this thread and the other about Awards is to make all those special-appearance characters Major awards rather than spattering between the different types, and offering more toys or bloodline flavourings within the lower award tiers. It wouldn't take away from the current 'special appearance' characters, offers more to new characters, and in time the numbers people are concerned with might even out to what they deem to be more lore-friendly or acceptable. What that number might BE, is different for everyone.

I'm clearly biased here as someone who plays a tiefling myself, though I will say when I originally made the character, I expected, even WANTED, a lot more push-back on her race than I actually got. Granted I had more of those interactions when she was brand new, and practically non-existent now that she's generally more well-known with long term characters on the island, but even then the distrust was few and far between compared to what would be considered normal anywhere else in FR. How would I suggest fixing this? ... Well, to be honest, I've no idea, and I'll explain why since I'm notoriously long-winded.
In the grand scheme of things, suddenly distrusting a certain group of people would come at a cost to the one doing so, with others defending the gloaming/tiefling/genasi/whatever else and bringing unwanted attention or conflict to that character. Conflict RP can be a wonderful thing for a story, but when it starts to divide groups of players who want to play with one another, it's easier to just gloss over what's 'normal' and 'accept the little weirdo' because you want to play with others. That's why we're here, after all, to play with people. Exercising prejudice in RP can pretty significantly cut the amount of people you play with down, not just the person with the questionable race, but anyone who gets along with them. Think of the amount of surfacers who befriend drow, or Underdarkers who secretly have tea with the 'good guys'. Sure, it has IC consequences, but it boils down to players wanting to play with one another, since most of us are human behind the screen. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Ultimately, it's a player decision rather than a character one, so it's difficult to find a solution.

[Kythana]

I agree with Ork so much. If we've become a zoo, it's because of player mentality, not because of the frequency of special looks. We've always had special looks. The 'zoo' culture where nothing you see is special and out of the ordinary is 100% player imposed and unnecessary.

Is it?

I'd say the frequency and commonality is what led to the shift in player culture. As well as the addition to more special award appearances, giving a diverse range of weird things to see on a day to day basis.

I'll share my own experiences with this.

I played a character, roughly a year ago, who purposefully came from a simple background. A previous farmer, with no lore or insight about some of the more outlandish elements of the setting.

The first time he saw an Avariel? Shocking? The first tiefling? Weird. A dragon disciple? That's crazy! A gloaming? Well, you get the idea.

And then he saw another. And another. And another. And eventually, he stopped reacting. Seeing a group of five half giants walking through the streets of Guldorand is normal. And this isn't because the playerbase somehow collectively and arbitrarily decided that it is, but because it is. Because this is something that character had seen at least half a dozen other times.

This is an experience I'm sure many other players have encountered as well. You are fighting an uphill battle if you want to maintain any kind of setting consistency.

And this is a problem that will only continue to grow.

When the next major award race is released, it is going to have 30+ characters on release, and will completely destroy any established rarity that race is supposed to have.

[toftdal]

Okay - I did a little math:

Non-award active characters amount to 4936 out of 5679 or 86.9%. Humans are 2178 (or 38.4%).

Characters with (possibility of) wings are 42 out of 5679 or 0.7% (pixie, fey'ri, avariel, dragon and gloaming - so, not counting RDD).

Is that a zoo? Considering that we have a bit of suspension of disbelief in what the server can handle - Cordor is supposed to have quite a population of mainly humans and a few other base-races scattered in ranging somewhere in the thousands.

Do people with award characters play more than those without? Probably - since that is how you get said award characters.

Could there be confirmation bias? Absolutely. If you've decided Arelith is a zoo - you will notice the winged ones a lot more than you do anything else.

I don't know - I don't find such numbers alarming. (and just to clear that up - yes, I have a lot of winged characters in my vault - 5 in total).

[MissEvelyn]

I'd like to see anything with wings/horns/tails locked behind major awards and with big mechanical disadvantages.

As a preface, I really flip flop on an idea like this being too draconian or not, but...

It's a thought I've had before, that playing a race that is supposed to be rare could come with mechanical disadvantages to incentivize someone picking them for the roleplay alone. To say that they want to play that race so badly that they'll not only spend a greater/major reward to do so, but accept that for the entirety of that character's career they're going to be suboptimal in killing things/not being killed compared to a human or an elf or a halfling.
If you make every special appearance race have worse stats than a human, I think you'd end up with a lot of humans and much more "appropriate" (whatever that means) numbers for special appearance races. Now I can already hear the responses to a statement like that, but let me explain!...

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Let me use the shifter class as an example, because when it comes to playing a character who is visually special, shifter is king. I've played a shifter character for 3 years and their story is about to end. Throughout the entire time, I've often thought about this question: "How do you quantify roleplay value in a race/class/ability/etc.?"
We can all agree that shifter is by far the worst race, mechanically, when it comes to any semblance of combat power. And yet it's so massively powerful in roleplay potential. There's no other class that opens up so many pathways to the amount of stories you can tell as a shifter does. Go anywhere on the isle, be 3 dozen different creatures, live life as an azer or as a lizardfolk or as a manticore. Tell the stories of those creatures. Each one can be a character unto itself. It's bananas to me how much story there is to tell with a shifter, and you can take it in so many directions.
Your spellsword can 1v1 Abazuur effortlessly and dominate PvP battles, and my shifter's illithid form can immediately command the attention of a chamber filled with some of the most powerful and influential player characters in the Underdark. Those are both displays of strength, just in different ways. One is raw mechanical strength, and one is subtler narrative strength. But both should be measured as part of the overall makeup of a character. Meta-wise, we all know any single person in that room could smack the illithid form down in 2 hits, but because a shifter is so rare, and because people know it's application locked, people are so much more willing to buy into a given narrative that a shifter offers under the expectation it'll be interesting. That is a particular type of power than no other class gets.
I have done, frankly, outrageously hostile things while in a shifter form and people have given me the benefit of the doubt virtually every time because they want to see where things go. They've never fought a manticore that can talk back. They've never had an azer hit them with a stream of fire before. They've never had an illithid try to probe their thoughts and suck out their brain. Out of the blue, John Soldier #89 and a talking manticore both hit you for 8 damage. In response, you're going to hit John Soldier back 99% of the time. He's just another bandit. But are you going to hit that manticore back? Well, maybe not. You don't want it to die too fast, because there's something unique and interesting in front of you. Even though you've killed hundreds of NPC manticores before. On a meta level, you know this is something different. And yet unbeknownst to you, John Soldier #89 is ten times the roleplayer that the manticore's player is. But because he looks normal and the manticore doesn't, the manticore gets the chance and John doesn't. John Soldier #89 hitting you with a sword is a mundane bother. A talking manticore hitting you with a tail spike is an event! throws glitter You can take the exact same actions as someone who 'looks normal' and be treated differently. That's a kind of meta power that isn't on your character sheet.

When considering how "balanced" a class like shifter is, when considering how easily accessible special appearance races should be, that kind of narrative power should be taken into account just as much as the fighter's ability to deal more damage. Yes, it's absolutely meta. But if we're taking the meta of min-maxed class builds and edge-case PvP combos into how devs balance races and classes, we should also take into account the inherent narrative strength that special appearance races (and classes that grant special appearances) have.
See, to me, shifter is a balanced class, in its own weird way. It's so weak in its numbers because it's so strong in its strangeness. And I believe that strangeness, that uniqueness, that power to explore a kind of roleplay not available to 99.99% of the server is a kind of mechanical power. But it only has this value because that 99.99% doesn't have the same thing. A talking manticore is only interesting if you haven't seen a dozen this week.

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Take this train of thought of "roleplay power is equal to mechanical power" to races with special appearances. If you start to consider that the more unique something is, the more roleplay power it has, then it can afford to sacrifice numbers on the character sheet in order to justify that roleplay power. To me that's balance. Being visually rare compels a unique kind of roleplay experience, one that gives you a unique advantage if your goal is to roleplay someone interesting. A human has to work hard to stand out; you get it right off the bat by having wings. You are inherently interesting, and it has nothing to do with your roleplaying ability. It's just a straight up advantage when it comes to standing out, having people break the ice with you and interacting with you, and getting special attention that mundane-appearing characters don't get. That's mechanical power, in my eyes!
So when it comes to all the special appearance races wandering around in increasing numbers...well, when you take away the rarity, you take away the interesting.

To make things trickier, I think if the devs are clear about how "rare" a race ought to be on Arelith specifically, an exception should be made. For example, kobolds are visually special but they're common and populous in Faerunian lore. Half-giants aren't, but specifically on Arelith they perhaps not ought to be; they have the whole Jotunhold and a great de facto leader in the character Grymmiirn; that's a race that really ought to have enough active players to form a community around. Those two special appearance races are, to me, as an off-the-cuff example, made better by having a community of their peers in a way that races like kenku aren't.

---

I say all the above with some mixed feelings and without firm convictions, since ultimately none of what I said has anything to do with a person's individual roleplaying skills and that's what matters at the end of the day. Feels like I should have a grand wrap-up after writing this much text, but I've got nothing. Hope you enjoyed reading this far if you did!

This was beautifully written and offers a perspective many of us hadn't considered. Thank you.

[AstralUniverse]

Okay - I did a little math:

Non-award active characters amount to 4936 out of 5679 or 86.9%. Humans are 2178 (or 38.4%).

Characters with (possibility of) wings are 42 out of 5679 or 0.7% (pixie, fey'ri, avariel, dragon and gloaming - so, not counting RDD).

Is that a zoo? Considering that we have a bit of suspension of disbelief in what the server can handle - Cordor is supposed to have quite a population of mainly humans and a few other base-races scattered in ranging somewhere in the thousands.

Do people with award characters play more than those without? Probably - since that is how you get said award characters.

Could there be confirmation bias? Absolutely. If you've decided Arelith is a zoo - you will notice the winged ones a lot more than you do anything else.

I don't know - I don't find such numbers alarming. (and just to clear that up - yes, I have a lot of winged characters in my vault - 5 in total).

I applaud this post. Thank you.

[Iceborn]

Player culture is heavily influenced by the mechanics and the decisions of the team. For example look at warlocks, their status on surface settlements have been heavily shaped by DM events rather than "organic" roleplay.

If the expected RP is distrust towards tieflings etc. perhaps we need a DM event or something to cement/ normalize the opinion.

You can't cement an opinion that is constantly changing with an ephemeral event.

People come and go from the game, new players join with their own ideas, new characters, other characters rotate from their niches in the server and move to other places. That opinion constantly shifts to non-conflict because for many players it is -exhausting- to roleplay conflict all the time - even for me, and I literally feed on conflict like some weird chaos succubus.

Asking the DMs to intervene every time to enforce how they players should be acting is draining the ocean with a bucket. You need something more permanent, something that can outlive an event and a generation of players. What that may be, I don't know - statues, messages, automatic events that play themselves every now and then. I dread to say mechanics because they could very easily hinder significant roleplay, yet sometimes the mechanics enforce roleplay, rather than the other way around.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

You can't cement an opinion that is constantly changing with an ephemeral event.

People come and go from the game, new players join with their own ideas, new characters, other characters rotate from their niches in the server and move to other places. That opinion constantly shifts to non-conflict because for many players it is -exhausting- to roleplay conflict all the time - even for me, and I literally feed on conflict like some weird chaos succubus.

Asking the DMs to intervene every time to enforce how they players should be acting is draining the ocean with a bucket. You need something more permanent, something that can outlive an event and a generation of players. What that may be, I don't know - statues, messages, automatic events that play themselves every now and then. I dread to say mechanics because they could very easily hinder significant roleplay, yet sometimes the mechanics enforce roleplay, rather than the other way around.

First let me commend you for making a post that takes time to examine the big picture instead of how you personally feel about x, y, or z. If any of these issues that crop up from time to time are ever going to be solved instead of revolving in and out of conversations with no real resolution at its end, this forum needs more of this.

Second, you are also right that one temporary event where a dm say possesses some npc and leads the charge on treating say a tiefling like a mistrusted outsider in say Cordor isn't going to change anything long term. It might inspire a few folks to carry on that tradition going forward, but they will be quickly beaten into submission by verbal assaults from those that conflate real life -where at least most of us know racism is bad- with the game, where some of the races are predisposed to murder and mayhem.

The only real solution, and I mentioned this in the other similar thread going on at the moment too, is to reestablish a standard for the game. At this point, it's not going to be an easy process, but it isn't impossible. And a good start to the path that the admins could do that on their end is by strengthening the setting to be more than just a backdrop to player whims. I've mentioned this before in other contexts over the years, but the sanctity of the setting is by far the most important part to the long-term survival of this game*, because it's the one thing that a player run nwn server can offer that many of the newer, prettier and more fun to play games can't offer.

I also agree that you don't want to lock out outside the box perceptions and concepts, because they can be the root of some of the more interesting characters. But that only remains true if they remain outside the box. Once that line of thinking becomes common place, it not only eliminates its uniqueness that made it interesting, but it also erodes the very thing that I'm at least certain this game relies on most, the setting.

*No, I'm not predicting a mass exodus from the server or saying the game is dying tomorrow. I'm simply saying that more and more those that play this game because of how closely in times past it resembled the dungeons and dragons experience will start to realize that this game is no different than any of the newer mmorpgs as it is now, and will eventually move on to them if arelith doesn't recapture what makes nwn unique. That will exacerbate the current issues for those D&D fans that do remain, because now there are less people like them to play with, until eventually that number is something just above zero. It won't be personal toward anyone; it will just be the realization that any free time one has is better spent doing something fun over hoping to recapture what once was in a game that doesn't seem to be heading in the right direction from their perspective.

[Hazard]

I'm simply saying that more and more those that play this game because of how closely in times past it resembled the dungeons and dragons experience will start to realize that this game is no different than any of the newer mmorpgs as it is now, and will eventually move on to them if arelith doesn't recapture what makes nwn unique. That will exacerbate the current issues for those D&D fans that do remain, because now there are less people like them to play with, until eventually that number is something just above zero. It won't be personal toward anyone; it will just be the realization that any free time one has is better spent doing something fun over hoping to recapture what once was in a game that doesn't seem to be heading in the right direction from their perspective.

This actually describes something I've been feeling.
Not because of 'special appearances', but it's all sort of related depending on what parts people care about most.
What you said is strill true, imo.

[Ad Astra]

I find it funny I've been rolling characters continuously for over a decade and I haven't gotten a 5%. Threads like these always make me scared, because it was my goal back in the day to play a lich or a dragon. Now my only option for cool monster pc seems to be vampire, and I'll be honest, those don't seem very good to play. I'd probably play a fey'ri otherwise, but these threads tend to preamble my endless quest for a 5% becoming less and less driven as options are taken away.