What should human race in fantasy games be good at if not the usual "average in everything"?
Humans are the slut race
>>735124428Better at everything because they use their ingenuity to make up for their shortcomings
>>735124428They should have little innate bonuses but a higher level cap than other races, emblemizing their desire to always expand and grow.This is how it worked in early D&D
Humans are like cockroaches. They are good at nothing except eating, fornicating, and destroying. They have no sense of artistry. Their buildings are shoddy and haphazard. They are dirty and decadent. Pitiful creatures.
>>735125285t.
The designated Charisma race, or the race that can learn anything new at a faster rate
>>735124428Can eat foods that give other races severe gastrointestinal distress
>>735124428Humans would be the only species that can impregnate the females of every other humanoid species in the setting.
>>735124428I think the fast learning approach is cool. Like more skill points per level in dnd or w/e. But they should start with less intellectual and social attributes to compensate.
Not really a useful thing but in Ishuzoku Reviewers humans are the only species that tan, or at the very least the elf remains pasty-white after a day in the suntanning region. So I now think it'd be really funny if other races find out human skin gets fucking obliterated by merely being outside and think it horrific.
>>735124428Jolly cooperation.
>>735124428Clearly, they should be the overbearing colonizers.
>>735124428War.
>>735124469This anon gets it. Not only better at sex than all other races, high enough sex drive that they want to screw everything that walks and most things that don't
>>735124428EnduranceThrowingCharisma/teamwork perks
I always enjoyed this setting up that we are the most numerous sentient race in the universe>we're a super advanced race of immortal weird gay energy beings>unfortunately we are losing our millenia long war with the lizard people, because they are almost as advanced as us, and there are 50 million of them and only a few thousand of us>there's... 8,000,000,000 of you? on one planet?>oh shit oh fuck want a cure for cancer? we'll hook you up, how about fusion power, hell let's get you guys some ftl engines, anyway about those lizard guys I mentioned...For them it's like finding a species of plankton you can hand AK47s to
I hate the commodification of races. How everything needs to be "balanced" around systems.Elves used to be fucking angels bro. They were physically stronger than humans, they were smarter, they were more noble. That was what Tolkien was going for. You know what humans should be good at? divine intervention. Age of Wonders understood that we only had one good thing going and it was vague potential so gods would step in and unfuck our messes. I want races that are wholly unbalanced, Humans are weaker and dumber but you can interact with human settlements, which are more common. YOu can choose to be a more mythical race and be very gifted but you'll be ostracized for good reason. That's what we should be doing.
>>735126412this guy gets it.
>>735126768they came at a good time. if they came a few hundred years later itd just be billions of indians
>>735126939The Tolkien example is weird because elves were objectively better than us in every way but they still sucked and failed and went extinct
Extreme variation. Human characters have completely random stats assigned at character creation. Other races have far less stat variation.
>>735126939Actually the opposite was the case before Tolkein. According to some people in Norway a long time ago what you are describing as smarter, stronger and more noble were giants. Elves were weaker, shorter, less intelligent and were locked in a gonicidal war with each other. Dwarves were also weak idiots that we just robbed.
>>735127234The elves didn't suck, they fought and won 2 apocalyptic wars and all that were left were the leftover cobblers and mailmen. Sauron and mount doom was like a local pimp and a street gang compared to Morgoth.Anyway they were meant to be a more poetic concept. Like an entire race of Noble Bright chivalrous knights who couldn't fathom or suffer evil. I hate how Elves in 5e are just Californians. At least in TES they're interesting. But races shouldn't be balanced, that's my hot take.
>>735127393>But races shouldn't be balanced, that's my hot take.It's not a hot take but everything needs to be homogenized these days because DEI.
>>735127376Norse is different, your elves are less like Fae and more like Yokai, as far as we know there was no distinction between trolls, elves and ogres. They were all the same mystery meat magic creature.
>>735127449>homogenized these days because DEI.what advanced stage of brainrot do you have to blame dei instead of game balance?
>>735127454There were a massive difference between elves, and trolls and norse didn't have ogres. Trolls were pretty much how they are described in the hobbit.
>>735127650He was making a joke fag
>>735127659Might have to refresh me on how it worked then.
>>735127650Because full elves being better than half-elves is harmful to interracial couples and orcs are apparently analogous with niggers now so having poor charisma is racist. You think Im joking? Look at DND 5E
>>735124428Humans should be cavaliers, the best at fighting on horseback, if that is a mechanic. Humans take easily to horseback and have the most revered knights and other assorted mounted warriors in the world.They should also the "religious" race, a race with a special relationship with the gods or whatever divine forces rule over your fantasy universe. Their priests and holy warriors might even gain the sort of easy relationship with the divine that the magical races have with magic. They may also have some kind of "divine spark" that the magical races lack.On a somewhat opposite note, in a setting where magic is retreating from the world, humans are entirely unaffected by the loss of magic (unlike the magical races) because unlike the magical races that require magic to maintain their reality, humans are "really real."
>>735124428humans are the baseline we use to distinguish peculiarities of other races which is why they absolutely should be average in everything. would you really want a fantasy game where humans are "tall" because dwarven height is actually the normal?
>>735127650I dunno, it's very clearly ideologically similar to blank-slating the races, you call it balance but I think the motivation for doing it is actually different.
>>735126939Tolkien also went out of his way to say elves were a genetic deadend.
>>735127743Basically elves are kind of like fairies in touhou. They are small, skinny humaoid creatures that are related to the gods and are representative to nature.Trolls were big lumbering, stupid monsters that turn to stone in the sun.
>>735127982Yeah for no good reason other than "the 4th age belongs to Men".Basically Humans got nepo hired to be the stewards of Middle Earth by the author.
>>735127982This is dumb, because again, this isn't some race realism thing, it's about the narrative. Elves were meant to prepare the world for the coming of man, so they were never DESTINED to go anywhere but heaven. They were where humanity was meant to strive for organically.
>>735127234Tolkien's elves weren't actually better than humans in every way. Tolkien explained this. The elves might seem superior to humanity in every way at first glance, but they're a stagnant people who hate change and would see Middle Earth transformed into a place of timeless, unchanging, undying beauty if they possibly could. But Middle Earth is a dynamic world that they are ill suited to, which is why they all will eventually return to Valinor, which is a land created specially for elves and elven nature. Humans are the true inheritors of Middle Earth because Middle Earth is a dynamic land and humanity is a dynamic, ambitious race. All the elven beauty, magic, power and martial prowess ultimately doesn't count for much if it takes you at least two decades to so much as tie your shoelaces, and then only begrudgingly because that's a change.
>>735127982because he's catholic and the elf story a retread of kalevala's final chapter where the pagan hero leaves via boat because christianity arrives to the lands.
>>735128202>Tolkien's elves weren't actually better>they ... would see Middle Earth transformed into a place of timeless, unchanging, undying beautyoh no, that would be terrible
>>735128202Stagnation should always go hand in hand with Elves. Like the Harpers in DND being a pseudo KGB who assassinates anyone attempting to bring about an industrial revolution. Warhammer fantasy was interesting, in that they only use what works, but they also suffer devastating losses in these epic wars that takes centuries to recover from. And a single wizard sending a compulsory trainer to the empire lead to the creation of all their academies. This makes me want to play Age of Wonder again
>>735128202Those are just cultural or societal issues that could feasibly be overcome as evidenced by Arwen marrying Aragorn or Legolas as a whole. It just doesn't happen because Tolkien was a humancentric author.Humans being easily corrupted, short lived, weak magically inept creatures isnt something that could change over a few generations.
>>735128452It is not really even a matter of adapting. Elves literally wither away in Middle-Earth until they inevitably fade more and more into the Unseen World. In Tolkien's metanarrative the fae of Anglo-Germanic folklore was based on human encounters with the elves, maiar and other supernatural creatures who chose to stay behind in Middle-Earth despite fading away.
>>735124428Humans should be adaptive, savage, and short-sighted.They are a race that spawns on your world, twists their own morals to justify killing your kind off 'ethically', consumes all your resources for their own comfort, and dooms all of you to die because they destroyed any way to leave for a new world. They are stupid, obsessed with their own immediate gratification, and amoral hypocrites.
>>735126412Beat me to it.
>>735124428Adaptability, humans can learn and do anything, and even do multiple things at the same time. They're maybe not as smart as the elven wizards and not as strong as orc warriors, but they're better fighters than the elves, better wizards than the orcs, and the only race with spellswords, battlemages, etc...Or another way is that humans are n the sweetspot for longevity vs learning speed, a human will never match a ten thousand year old elf, but they can match a 1000 year old elf in just a few decades, and a human child can't possibly stand up to a goblin of the same age, but in just a few more years a human adult shits all over goblins.So humans can rapidly rebuild after losses, rapidly advance and gain strength in peacetime, pivot and change specializations easily, etc... and other races just can't keep up.If you bring in new stuff to the setting like psionics or alien technology, the humans will always be the first to exploit it and the best for thousands of years until the elves inevitably catch up at take over, at which point humans find a new niche to take over and the cycle repeats.
Seducing anthro women
>>735126768>uplifts a primitive species to help you in your warWhat could possibly go wrong?
>>735124428Rape and murder.
>>735124428The Potential Race. I remember playing a game in which the human option is the meta for the end game. At the beginning, most race has better stats, but every level up gave human just one extra bit of skill to choose from, which stack up when you are level 20 or so, surpassing the other race.
>>735124428they should be the only fantasy race, because all other fantasy races are anthropromorphisized or however you spell that gay word, anyways so human solipsism is better
>>735128202>>735128360I don't think Tolkien ever really said that he thought either was good or bad, just that that's how it was. It always had a bittersweet feeling to it, and I know Tolkien wasn't very fond of industrialization, but that's how it was (and is), so his work reflected that.
