Another take on demi-humans

I hope I can kick off a LotFP campaign in September, so I have been thinking about the demi-human issue. First, I was to replace them with special human classes (something like the ones described here in an other topic), but then realized that twisted demi-humans are much more weird than simple variant human classes. Here is what I have so far:

Dwarves are paragons of a past age, chosen warriors who are summoned by the desperate call of their descendants to revenge their offences (often shortly before their inevitable death). They come from an otherworld unreachable for us [I envision it as something like Valhalla], and do not rest until their vengeance is complete. [I am still not sure if it is unknown what happens to them thereafter, they might simply be stuck here in our mortal world - until they gloriously die again in battle].

It is common knowledge that Fae occasionally abduct infants and take them to their land called Arcadia, and that these infants are usually replaced by one of their own creations: an Elf. These utterly otherworldly beings are made of strange dreams and (natural) materials like wood, stone or leaves [and when they are killed they spectacularly turn into whatever base material they were made of - and their strong emotions and surreal nightmares burst out and infect bystanders' thoughts]. Raised in our mortal world where they obviously do not belong, their unpredictable alien nature drives them away from human civilization, deep into the wilderness where they are close to the magnificence of the wild, and free to practice magic, gift of their fae heritage.

Halflings, living in harsh environments, have learnt how to survive in the wild. They are very suspicious towards outlanders, and usually try to drive them away. They dwell in labyrinthine tunnels under remote hills, and are known to defend their homes ferociously. In their society, power is measured by one's hunting skills - the one who has taken the biggest tooth of a beast shall rule among them [an alternative that occurred to me was "widest variety of foreign coins", but I would rather emphasize their uncivilized, barbaric nature, as I think it is less "halflingish"].

Mechanically none of them requires different treatment than in the rules book; maybe dwarves do not age either. An other important thing is that no more than one-third of the party may play demi-humans, and each of a different race - partly because they are much fewer in numbers than humans, partly because I would like to keep their strangeness and unfamiliarity.

What do you think?

Last edited by YnasMidgard (2011-08-30 07:18:52)