I was considering the upcoming revision books for D&D 5E and the likely races/species that may become official for PCs to play. Has anyone had success integrating Dragonborn, Goblins, Tieflings, and/or Warforged into the Greyhawk setting? Were any drawbacks discovered?
None of these (except for Goblins) could predate the current timeline. Right? So, how does one explain the sudden appearance of these new races/species? Do you allow them? I know some PC is gonna ask.
Also, what about the class of Artificer? It doesn't seem right, especially with no gunpowder being allowed.
Sorry if this has been covered already.
Thanks to all for the speculations!
PS: Is anyone else looking forward to the new Vecna: Eve of Ruin title?
I dislike all of these new races, but I've used some in my game now and then, and even allowed one to be played.
Warforged) These are Ebberon only and not allowed. The only way I'd use them is if someone got transformed into a construct or some such.
Dragonborn) These really annoy me, particularly the art depicting female ones with breasts (what? are they mammals?). I did have a few running around Erypt, along with civilized gnolls, when characters in one campaign ventured to the other side of the world, mainly to exoticize the place a bit. No way am I going to let this be a playable race, though.
Tiefling) I allowed this once, but I'd keep these very rare. Given the number of fiends in the Flanaess, I suppose there may be isolated individuals here and there, but nothing like a community of them.
Goblin) I might allow but I don't think anyone's ever wanted to be one. I would bedevil them with prejudice and well-meaning heroes attacking them on sight, of course.
Artificer) I've never used this and can't comment.
I toyed with the idea of Warforged being ancient Baklunish creations, related to the magitech that created things like the Apparatus of Kwalish. Instead of being recently created for a war and then set free, a large group of them was found in storage somewhere, making them present but rare.
I thought Artificers might also work as similar Baklunish magic.
"Dragonborn) These really annoy me, particularly the art depicting female ones with breasts (what? are they mammals?)."
It made more sense when they were originally introduced in the 3.5 book "Races of the Dragon". They were members of other races, transformed by a divine ritual when they pledged themselves to the service of Bahamut. They retained some of the characteristics of their original races, so halfling Dragonborn were short, elf Dragonborn were slender, half-orc Dragonborn were tall and burly, and female Dragonborn had breasts.
While not Canon in Greyhawk, one could reskin all of them to work. Especially if you're already using 5E rules in your game.
Warforged is really just an intelligent golem. Come up with a reason why a Greyhawk wizard would create one (say, to be a personal guardian and/or servant) and away you go.
Tieflings are easy. Iuz has been around for a while, and there have been various fiends here and there all over Oerth. You just reskin them to be tieflings as they originally were - basically human, with some small irregularity of appearance that betrays their bloodline.
Goblins are all over the place and always have been. The reskinning is the possibility that some Goblins might not be chaotic evil. Of course, this also introduces a level of moral ambiguity into the setting the DM might not desire to explore.
Artificers... first off, NO GUNPOWDER. From there, just say anything they do is an outright magical effect without the slightest hint of technology. Temporary effects might be done with potions or powders; 'times per day' effects with wands or rods. The Greyhawk artificier is a creator of magic items, not a steampunk fiction insert.
I seem to have kicked over a bit of a beehive. Sorry if this is the case.
Perhaps I should have focused on the Vecna book and the inclusion of Greyhawk therein. I'm good for any Greyhawk material because I can always sift through it for the best bits. I find the plot to be interesting.
I heard that the Vecna book has a dungeon or something connected to Acererak on the Isle of Serpents. So that sounds interesting, at least.
The Saltmarsh book was good, and I actually appreciated what they were doing with the Tasha in the Feywild book, but there hasn't been a single 5e book I'd call great or a masterpiece. Maybe this one . . . ? One can hope. It sure reminds me quite a bit of Die, Vecna, Die.
Has anyone had success integrating Dragonborn, Goblins, Tieflings, and/or Warforged into the Greyhawk setting? Were any drawbacks discovered?
The closest I've come is a couple of 2e campaigns. In one, iirc, a player wanted to play a full orc, and for reasons I can't recall, I let him. (I think Complete Book of Humanoids had recently been published.) I emphasized human prejudice against this character. In a somewhat later campaign, which I set in Stoneheim, the point was to explore the Pomarj from the inside, so humanoid PCs fit well. Also, in this era of my Greyhawk DMing, I had a couple of NPC "tieflings" (an alu-demon and a cambion).
As discussed in a different, recent thread regarding Ghosts of Saltmarsh, which I believe Luz started, we discussed how tieflings could fit into post-FtA campaigns, perhaps confused for / passing as half-orcs, and how difficult it would be for such characters—particularly near the battlefronts with Iuz, the Horned Society, and Duke Szeffrin. (I imagine lots of vigilante violence and no relief from most authorities.)
I think the same would apply to goblins, hobgoblins, etc. As the 1e PHB holds, even half-orcs are regularly subjected to prejudice from humans and demi-humans. I know that Paizo / Pathfinder / Golarion holds that goblins and hobgoblins are gaining greater acceptance. I think that Bone March might be the best place for such "acceptance" say in North Province / Kingdom.
Regarding warforged, I like Armitage's idea and will add the Bright Lands as another possible origin place, along with a reemerging Isle of Woe, the Rift Canyon, and/or a certain area of the Barrier Peaks . . .
Skech wrote:
Also, what about the class of Artificer? It doesn't seem right, especially with no gunpowder being allowed.
I've not used this class but am open to its Alchemist subclass and posted in the 5e subforum some ideas regarding how I'm considering introducing smokepowder through a circa CY 600 exploratory fleet from Suhfang. (The thread also suggests that introducing smoke powder could be justified vis-à-vis Murlynd and explains how introducing primitive smoke powder need not completely destabilize one's vision of Greyhawk inasmuch as gunpowder technology evolved over several centuries on Earth.)
I introduced Warforged as being created by an oldtime Suel lich, where the Rakers meet the Griff. Long story short, the humans of that ice locked valley got transformed into Volodni (frost impervious plant men in FR) by a version of Obad-Hai (as a giant tree) that nestled in an evergreen nook, to help them against the lich.
No longer humans, they wouldn't be possessed by the lich, she got pissed, and created the Warforged from the remains of the plant men (Warforged being part wood, stone, and metal). She got the wood from the volodni bodies.
I also used Shifter in the same campaign, but made them like aasimar , one shifter appear sometimes in a family tree, they do not breed true, and were the chosen people of Llerg.
It was a Suel heavy Viking/Frostburn campaign with the Telchur/Vatun rivality.
I probably should have clarified in my post that I stopped with 3.5, so when I saw Artificer, I thought of the Eberron version, which is why I associated it with Baklunish magic. I have no idea what the class can do in later editions
Though I dislike the idea of exotic races being made common in my Greyhawk campaign, I do not like to tell my players, "No." So, if they want to play something exotic, we work out an in-game explanation as to why this particular exotic PC exists and has become an adventurer. I also make sure the player expects their PC to have to deal with serious role-playing consequences for being an exotic race.
Since humanoids in my campaign have no agency - having fixed alignments - a player who wants to play one in a non-evil campaign generally has to decide that their humanoid PC is really a reincarnated human (or demi-human), who was unfortunate enough to be brought back in the body of a humanoid, or some other unique explanation for their PC to be non-evil. They may not simply decide their goblin was picked on in its youth and chose to be 'good'.
As a DM, I've had fun causing such players to fear entering town without being disguised. Many times have such players been chased out of town by an angry mob. Eventually, however, they earn the respect and trust of the people they are helping. Then, they become more of a spectacle - paparazzi following them, children touching them and giggling. Players tend to enjoy that positive attention at first, then they begin to get annoyed at it, and finally, they become resigned to it as it begins to peter out. I take many cues from the way R.A. Salvatore dealt with Drizzt in such situations.
Artificers (or gunslingers) would be a similar problem to address. They would need a very good reason to exist, since there is no gunpowder in my WoG. Myrlynd is pretty much the only exception, so a PC having Myrlynd as a patron diety would work.
I've thought about writing up a "warforged" that would have been a member of the human-turned-construct aristocracy of the "City of the Gods," somehow thawed out of the Sea of Black Ice; granted, they'd awaken to a world quite different from what they'd remember, and I'd imagine there'd be a significant culture and language barrier.
I have played as a tiefling once, but he was originally statted out for the Forgotten Realms before being converted to a homebrew setting I played in; he was fairly basic, being "descended" from Mephistopheles instead of Asmodeus, who was the source of his arcane power (a "dragonblooded" sorcerer, but replace "dragon" with "infernal"). I could probably convert him to Greyhawk without much of a problem (his human ancestry would originally have been Rashemi, so I'd use Rhenee as the alternative).
I seem to have kicked over a bit of a beehive. Sorry if this is the case.
Perhaps I should have focused on the Vecna book and the inclusion of Greyhawk therein. I'm good for any Greyhawk material because I can always sift through it for the best bits. I find the plot to be interesting.
No one cares if you "kicked a beehive". That's the whole point of these forums, to discuss the setting we all love! Now, in answer to your questions...
Dragonborn, tieflings, animal-people, warforged and artificers all have no place whatsoever in my Greyhawk. However, there are a few options you might like to consider:
-The Rhennee say they came to the Flanaess from somewhere else through a magical portal. An "exotic" character could just as easily do the same thing. As to where they came from and what they do now, that's entirely up to you and your players!
-The lands beyond the Flanaess have just barely been sketched out in canon. Perhaps your "exotic" character has arrived aboard a sailing ship, traveled overland from the Baklunish lands, or even passed through the Underdark and surfaced in the Flanaess. Any number of strange peoples and "magitech" could exist out there. As other posters have suggested, magical items like the Mighty Servant of Leuk-O and the Apparatus of Kwalish might be the products of such cultures.
-Specifically for warforged, Philidor The Blue is said by the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer to have various strange kinds of magical constructs. Perhaps one of these is a warforged that's become sentient. Or the warforged could be an "automata" from Blackmoor that's either broken free of the Egg of Coot's influence or was in the ancient City of the Gods and has reactivated in the modern era. You and your players would figure out the reasons, of course.
-Specifically for tieflings, Iuz and the Horned Society have been around for decades, while the Great Kingdom has been evil for a century and more. Given the, er, "couplings" between humans and fiends, it's entirely possible that modern descendants of people from those lands could be born with tiefling traits.
-As for artificers, every great scientific achievement was discovered by someone at some point in time. Maybe someone in your campaign, either a player or an NPC, is the one who starts to figure out or rediscovers some key magical principle that allows for that kind of magitech. Maybe magical items like the Appartus and Mighty Servant were some of the most advanced versions of magitech. A rookie artificer obviously wouldn't be able to create something like that, but as they gain more experience and learn more about the principles of magitech, they can eventually build something on that level!
I'm running 2 different groups in Greyhawk (576, so pre-wars)with players of various ages 10-40. We have 2 tieflings, 2 dragonborn, a tabaxi, & a hare-in-gone (!) from the exotic races side of things. One of the humans is an artificer (no gunpowder gimmicks though).
The game runs just fine-the dragonborn are from various "distant and secluded locations" as are the others. I don't really mess around with extreme reactions from the locals with the players who are children. The adult players of exotic races do get a mixed bag of reactions, mostly fear and disbelief. The artificer had a relative who had some outlandish adventures in the barrier peaks region & passed down some interesting devices & arcane knowledge...
Other than some of the PCs, everything & everyone else is good ol Greyhawk. Too easy.
It's fine to add whatever -- GH had demonic crossbreeds like alu fiends forever and Roger Moore's suggestions for the setting in "Part Dragon, All Hero" in Dr206 -- but weigh how much you want to dispense with GH's character and rules.
Greyhawk has long been deemed undeveloped or bare-bones since it has published long before Unearthed Arcana, the Book of Humanoids, Players Option, and all the flare of modern editions.
In reality, Greyhawk has its own thing going on. Dark Sun has mul and thri kreen, DL has tinkers and kender, FR expands to accommodate every new edition, and Greyhawk has remained more focused on classics like half-orcs, gnomes, and, uniquely, five different races of humans.
If your players are bored to death of Oeridians, can't bear to play another mountain dwarf, and have dabbled in GH's unique player races like Skulks, Cyclopskin, and Valley Elves, then bring in the teiflings and dragonborn, slowly, to make it exciting and special.
The other consideration is power creep and bookkeeping. Most of Greyhawk's famous modules and NPC's were developed under 1e or even 0e rules. The rulers of the land come from the core races and abide level limits from the 1e PHB, before even UA. Lenard Lakofka has only one dwarf in the Flanaess able to cast raise dead. The most popular modules aren't balanced for healing surges, perception checks, bladesingers, weapon mastery, or even Zeb Cook's mangling of stoneskin. Whatever the players have, give to the NPC's too.
I allow tieflings but it depends on when I set my campaign. after the Wars I have cambions appear and then 15 years or so afterwards tieflings begin to appear.
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Eventually, however, they earn the respect and trust of the people they are helping. Then, they become more of a spectacle - paparazzi following them, children touching them and giggling. Players tend to enjoy that positive attention at first, then they begin to get annoyed at it, and finally, they become resigned to it as it begins to peter out. I take many cues from the way R.A. Salvatore dealt with Drizzt in such situations.
