Why do they hate the catfolk races?

[PhoneLobster]

I've said too much on this thread already, but this stuff is just...

The argument against catgirls is that monster mechanics are problematic when used by PCs, fanboys will do awful things with catgirls, and even if you gave them catgirls they wouldn't be happy so it its a moot point anyway.

The first part of which rapidly boiled down to "Fly is soooo uber and Hydras can't hide in a swamp". IE, it was silly.

The second part of which is a blatant lie and an insult to anyone ever who either wants to play a cat girl or wants to support someone who wants to play a cat girl.

You have no basis to repeatedly claim that, but you do because you think impuning the intelligence and nature of this large body of gamers is the keystone of a solid argument against supporting them.

They are strong arguments to just create catgirls for your specific campaign/player rather than making any attempt to make a core race like elves that you expect everyone to use.

No there aren't.

Simple as that. None, zero, zilch.

I'm assuming by "core" you actually mean "in one of those books like the illumithingies" like we are talking about. But hell even if you're off in lala land pretending we mean the 3.75 eddition of the players handbook I don't care.

We have the fricking half orc and half elf right there in the book, they almost certainly have a smaller audience than the cat girl.

Seriously, how many threads do you see around the place (and yes even in the cespit of WOTC) with players struggling to meet their desire to have a playable half orc compared to those struggling to meet their desire to have a playable cat girl? I'm fairly certain cat girl wins.

Not that thats even the argument, the argument is actually cat girl vs illumithingy or elf subrace nine million, and cat girl definitely wins that ones hands down, heck, a hot pink centaur wins that one hands down.

I can think of three ways to make catgirls using existing rules, and I know that none of those will satisfy even 1% of the anime goobers out there, unlike dwarves or elves which make like 95% of DnD players happy as-is.

1) If they are anything like your pixie idea of "halfling wears strap on goth fairy wings" then I suspect these ideas of yours suck. Alot. And its entirely justifiable to believe they would only satisfy some form of ultra minority lunatic fringe element of "anime goobers" (who you just offended with name calling anyway so likely they will now pretend not to be satisfied, the shameless insane bastards).

2) Now I know I'm throwing around some opinions here too, like the above claim that posts around the place expressing desire for playable cat girls outweigh those for playable half orcs. But damn, you have hard numbers like 1% and 95% on your side. Well thats it I guess you win.

3) And I'm amazed how this highly hard to satisfy "anime goober" group can manage to exist side by side with this exceedingly content "DnD player" group. I mean CLEARLY with the numbers you give on satisfaction with races there is like no way these two groups could in any way overlap to any significant extent, if at all. And yet those "anime goobers" keep hanging around D&D games demanding there be a cat girl race in D&D. Man, what total assholes, they aren't even like DnD players or anything. You win the argument, again.

And in brief response to Hanged Man, I thought that idea had been an gone already. In the current context where being effeminate and having pointy ears justifies an entirely mechanically separate race thats just a really sucky way to support a new race. Especially in the extended context of how many more pages of new material wasted on a mechanically separate race of humans with graffiti floating around their heads.

[User3]

1109225588[/unixtime]]Hydras see as well as dwarves. They don't have tremorsense or any natural sensing abilities. Their hide skill sucks. They can't ambush anybody unless the DM gets all "creative" and starts assigning them abilities they don't really have.

Hydra do have a bonus to Listen checks between +6 and +9 though. So even if they can't see you, they can totally hear you coming.

[RandomCasualty]

1109265380[/unixtime]]Easiest way to make Catpeople work? They're humans. Except w/ fur, pointy ears, and funky weird eyes. Take Blindfighting w/ your feat to simulate seeing in the dark. Put your highest ability in Dex. Done.

I've never really understood why you need ability score mods, weird feat and ability combinations, and so on to make a race. D&D is, after all, a RPG. IMO, you can roleplay a catperson without a lot of abilities and mods.

Come on THM, that'd be WAY too logical and balanced. We're talking about cat people here, logic and balance are out the window.

[Dragon_Child]

If it's logical and balanced, why not do it for Elves, Half-Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Half-Orcs, Halflings, Gnomes...

[User3]

I'd way rather that there weren't any races. At all. Or rather, that there were as many races as you wanted and none of them made any difference whatsoever.

How many races do we have or need in Champions? Zero! If people get enough abilities, they don't need a cute "racial package"to give them some more. But the key here is that you need to have enough abilities.

People don't get enough selectable abilities. Humans get one lousy feat, and people honestly expect you to spend upwards of three feats just to be "good at fencing" (Weapon Finesse, Expertise, Improved Disarm just for starters - and we are currently hoping that we get rapier proficiency from some other source, because it aint on that list).

You can't see in the dark, climb well, and track by scent on one bonus feat. You can't even do just that on all your feats (bonus included) until 3rd level. And you still don't have a decent unarmed attack or a keen sense of balance or any of that stuff that Cat Girls are supposed to do.

Yeah, the preferable way to do things would be to hand out enough selectable abilities that people could just have a bunch of cat-like powers and announce that they have it "because they are a catgirl" - but that's not how D&D works. D&D doesn't actually give you selectable abilities very often, and generally demands that you take a pre-made race or class that gives you the powers that you want.

And let me tell you, it doesn't help matters that the closest you are coming to a Class that lets you hit people unarmed, run fast, be fairly perceptive, have good balance, and land on your feet after falls is the Monk.

People can't have Cat Girls because having anything in D&D means making some kind of hack-job special case for it. There are no character construction rules, there aren't even any race construction rules. You just take something off the pile of pre-fabricated objects and lego it on or you shut the hell up. Those are your only options.

When you make a new prefab for Illumians, noone gives a crap. Noone has any preconceived notions about what an Illumian is, because noone cares or wants to play one. Only when it becomes a finished product does anyone want to play one, and only then because the powers they grant happen to allow them to make a character that they wanted to play but otherwise couldn't.

When you make a new pre-fab catgirl, it makes people unhappy. It's actually worse than not making a prefab catgirl, because it is statistically unlikely to match the expectations of what any particular prospective catgirl player wants to play. And yet, once it's made, people will be expected to put whatever you wrote down as their race any time they want to play a catgirl - even if they wanted to play something more like Nuku and less like Pink than the one you wrote up.

Writing Cat Girls is like writing Spellswords. It really screws people who want to play the archetypes which by flavor text should fit into the umbrella - because game mechanically the new writeup is actually very unlikely to match what they wanted.

What you should be able to do is just select a bunch of things you are good at and then explain why you are good at them afterwards - perhaps you are tough because you are a warrior of the steppes - or because you are a dwarf. Or whatever. I don't honestly give a damn. Unfortunately, that's not how D&D works. And so:

1> Telling people that they should use existing race/class combinations to represent things they want to play is unhelpful.

2> Writing up new races to fill broadly desiraable categories like "cat girl"and "fairy" is also unhelpful.

Quite a fvcking catch 22 wouldn't you say? Making racial packages work is like making Prestige Classes work. If soemone wants to play a Cat Girl you should let them do it and you write an entirely new set of Racial Abilities that match the kind of Cat Girl that the specific player wants to play. That's the only way to make it work.

D&D is non-extensible. You can't just use player tools to fill in gaps. There just isn't the customizability to do that. It's also very difficult and pointless to write new material for. But it is Rule Zeroable, and the basic engine is totally visible and accessible to the DM. As the DM you can work with the players to write new content that will allow the PCs to begin as and grow into the kinds of characters they want to play. That's a lot of work, but that's what you get.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Now all up I agree that we'd be better off with more selectable abilities and no fixed race packages. Which we don't have.

This difficulty satsifying pre existing concepts though... well they still wrote up the human, elf, dwarf, gnome and halfling. Breaking with expectations in places. And as much dissatisfaction as there may have been, or may remain, they still actually dared and did it.

So its a pretty poor excuse for not doing it again. Not to say it isn't the actually in practice reasoning for why cat girls remain in limbo, just that like all of them its inconsistent and sucks.

And I am sure that cat girls, and all race packages, in the current environment are probably best managed on a custom basis. But as long as they are releasing new pre fab race packages it kinda sucks that they aren't any of the ones that there is any demand for.

If they can't release new race packages that there is a demand for they shouldn't bother releasing races at all.

Just move on to spending those resources designing a non pre fab race setup already. It could have its own book.

Not that they wouldn't totally screw that up. Again.

[User3]

PhoneLobster,

Three ways to make catgirls using existing rules:

1. The Lycanthrope rules. Take a cat(of any kind, including Dire). Add to a race. The LA will be like +2 or higher, but in some cases its worth it since DR (silver) will never be penetrated by enemies. This is for that shapeshiftery catgirl who's all human most days(classic anime plot).

2. Savage Species has rules for taking a normal animal and making a Humanoid(or maybe Monstrous Humanoid...I forget) out of it. The LAs are pretty reasonable, but you end more cat than girl. Only for the serious cat-fetish player.

3. Eberron has some kind of LA+0 "bad-touched Were-folk" who's real name escapes me. You can easily be mostly human and have those occasional cat moments.

Those are just the easy one's on the tip of my tongue. Forgotten Realms has a centaur cat race(for the hardcore furry fetish), the Rakasta are out there somewhere, the Rakshasa are perfectly cat people-ish(in a horror vien like the famous movie from the 70s, Cat People) for most people. There's Leonals, Hengeyokai(from Oriental Adventures) there's PrCs like Catlords or Barbarians with Cat totems, or Druids that turn into cats, and enough catty cat-themed crap that you can't swing a dead cat in D20 without hitting a......uh....cat.

Then there is D20 BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth) and a host of third party stuff which is so numerous that I can't even care enough about it to download it illegally.

And if none of satisfies you....then you must create your own catfolk race with your DM and live with the fact that you are both alone and original.

If you can't do that, then I can only say one more thing on the subject:

Grow up.

Stop trolling the board and pretending that you are having a conversation with us and considering our quite reasonable, insightful, and often humorous responses.

I know when I've been baited, so I'm ditching this thread.

[Neeek]

1109296762[/unixtime]]

1. The Lycanthrope rules. Take a cat(of any kind, including Dire). Add to a race. The LA will be like +2 or higher, but in some cases its worth it since DR (silver) will never be penetrated by enemies. This is for that shapeshiftery catgirl who's all human most days(classic anime plot).

Eh. You're talking a +2 or +3 LA plus about 6 racial hit dice here, unless you actually are suggesting the "cat". In which case you get +2(afflicted) or +3(natural) for pretty much nothing at all(-8 Str, +4 Dex while in hybrid or cat form, +2 Wis, +2 Nat armor, and some random sensory abilities, basically).

3. Eberron has some kind of LA+0 "bad-touched Were-folk" who's real name escapes me. You can easily be mostly human and have those occasional cat moments.

Shifter.

Those are just the easy one's on the tip of my tongue. Forgotten Realms has a centaur cat race

Wemics, though I haven't seen the 3.x write for their racial abilities.


My biggest objection to their catpeople race is simple. If they are going to bother doing it at all, why not make it usable. Is that really too much to ask?

[Alansmithee]

1109296757[/unixtime]]Now all up I agree that we'd be better off with more selectable abilities and no fixed race packages. Which we don't have.

This difficulty satsifying pre existing concepts though... well they still wrote up the human, elf, dwarf, gnome and halfling. Breaking with expectations in places. And as much dissatisfaction as there may have been, or may remain, they still actually dared and did it.

So its a pretty poor excuse for not doing it again. Not to say it isn't the actually in practice reasoning for why cat girls remain in limbo, just that like all of them its inconsistent and sucks.

And I am sure that cat girls, and all race packages, in the current environment are probably best managed on a custom basis. But as long as they are releasing new pre fab race packages it kinda sucks that they aren't any of the ones that there is any demand for.

If they can't release new race packages that there is a demand for they shouldn't bother releasing races at all.

Just move on to spending those resources designing a non pre fab race setup already. It could have its own book.

Not that they wouldn't totally screw that up. Again.

You keep assuming that there is this vast army of people who want to play androids with cat-brains in D&D (since everyone seems to mention Nuku Nuku). Despite how much noise they make, furries are not a D&D majority. They don't really fit into the game designers world. And that's relevant because when you buy any WotC D&D books you are buing their setting, which is a mix of Moorcock/Tolkien/Mideval Europe. That's why the SRD is out-if you want cat people and pixies dominating your game, you can do it. But if you want codified rules you better hope some game designer has your vision, or you're out of luck. If they don't think that's relevant to the world they are trying to produce, they don't owe you to stick it in their vision.

[Oberoni]

1109296762[/unixtime]]
Grow up.

Stop trolling the board and pretending that you are having a conversation with us and considering our quite reasonable, insightful, and often humorous responses.

I know when I've been baited, so I'm ditching this thread.

Good. That attack you made is very poor form. I found nothing particularly trollish in Phonelobster's post. You're actually the one that's been slinging insults and making stereotypical generalizations this whole time, so don't try and pull this.

It's possible to exit a conversation in a message board without implying that the people you disagree with are the scum of the earth.

Rare, but possible.

[Josh_Kablack]

Point A> A lot of people who want to play catfolk races are really annoying.

Counterpoint> So are a lot of people who want to play Drow, Gnomes or in the Forgetten Realms, and we have all sorts of crazy rulebooks about those things.

Point B> A lot of people who want to play catfolk races just want to cheese out the stats for a custom race.

Counterpoint> Yeah? So? People who are truly capable of cheese don't need a custom race, and providing an "official" WotC catfolk race would provide an easy out for DMs wanting something close to balanced.

Point C> A number of catfolk-like races exist in the rules already.

Counterpoint> Not 1/10th as many as do elf subraces, and most of the current catfolk races are semi-obscure and/or do not match conceptions of catfolk found in the source material.

Point D> Cats do the devil's work on earth by sucking the breath out of babies, and are not worthy of emulation in any way, shape, or form.

Counterpoint:> We should encourage people to emulate Gygax's DMming style either, but that hasn't stopped module designers.

It's possible to exit a conversation in a message board without implying that the people you disagree with are the scum of the earth.

Yeah, all you have to do is make it explicit.

That said, I'm ditching this thread too, you scum of the earth.

[CalibronXXX]

Well that was hilarious; and I have to ask, am I really the only one who likes Illumians?

I actually have something to add as well! Another possibly balanced 1st level flight ability:

Strenuous Flight: As a Full-round Action you may fly up to thirty feat, you may continue flying a long as you spend a full-round action every round. If you cannot, or choose not to, continue flying while in mid-air you may spend a move action each round to descend 60 ft. per-round until you reach the ground and take no falling damage; if you don't take this move action each round while in the air you fall at normal speed and take full falling damage as per normal.

As far as I can see it lets you actually fly, but will have no combat advantages greater than being able to climb something; unless there're floating platforms in the middle of the area or some such nonsense.

[TarlSS]

Yes, yes you are the only person who liked the Illumians. Those guys just came out of nowhere in all sorts of WTFery. Them and the goliaths. Dragonbloods, Reptilians, elans... Can we please just stop with the goddamn proliferation of the generic one bonus off humanoid races nobody asked for?

The core races and Eberron races (Shifter, Warforged, Kalashtar) are different because they're integral to their basic settings. The other races more or less rate random fodder. Hell, Mind Flayers and Beholders get more page space than Illumians in D&D.

I think the opposition to cat girls extends to the opposition to the proliferation of wild genotypes running amok about the fantasy world. Human history has ONE race and it's plenty interesting enough. the hundreds out there are a little overwhelming and frankly serve as little more than an excuse to minmax.

How the fvck do you roleplay a dude with a hologram on his head all that different from a dude with scales? Or pointy ears. Or a tail. It all boils down to the same damn thing- they're all different from the predominant cultures and screwed to high hell in a closed society. Your cultures are always some kind of international foodcourt deal with random elements of Judaism/Japanese/your flavor of the month. Gee.

There's just no setting backing for these extras, which is what the Core 5 and Eberron's 3 HAVE. They having entrenched positions in well written settings and aren't going away. God help the poor bastard who creates a setting supporting catgirls, I guess his consolation will be his choice of anime fangirls. (Which may not be much of one, depending on your perspective.)

That said, I don't think catfolk were singled out much any- virtually everything in the "Races" series sucked balls. The environmental series and the Races series were pretty worthless additions to D&D, providing little more than stat and fluff fodder for a setting that was generic as hell to begin with.

Catgirls are very well represented by Eberron's shifters anyway. You can have your ears, tails and fur anyway you like with that race and your flavor of stat bonus.

If you're jonesing for the full on anthro-treatment, than the savage species animal conversion table is not a bad way to go. The real deal is that catgirls were written in a phase of crappy writing shat out the rear ends of WOTC for a few dollars. If the had the fortune of being in something good like Tome of Battle, then maybe they would have been better.

[RandomCasualty]

1172848281[/unixtime]]Yes, yes you are the only person who liked the Illumians. Those guys just came out of nowhere in all sorts of WTFery. Them and the goliaths. Dragonbloods, Reptilians, elans... Can we please just stop with the goddamn proliferation of the generic one bonus off humanoid races nobody asked for?

The core races and Eberron races (Shifter, Warforged, Kalashtar) are different because they're integral to their basic settings. The other races more or less rate random fodder. Hell, Mind Flayers and Beholders get more page space than Illumians in D&D.

Yeah, exactly. If you're making a new race, you should have a setting to go along with it. Otherwise, why the hell bother? It's a pretty dull character when your PC comes from some remote place and has no real notable backstory beyond being some weird ass race. All that does is create another layer of separation between the PC and the storyline. Now the fantasy world is less his world and more some random place he's visiting.

Eberron actually did new races in the right way, because their races are actually part of the world. Which is a good thing.

[Crissa]

Plenty of people have ELF fetishes. Yes, thats right ELF fetishes, they always play elves, they go on and on about how good looking their elf is, they sometimes even want their elf to have sex a bunch. But elf fetishes are OK, and pretty well supported, because elves are in LOTR.

...I've been in a group with elf fetishists and it was the scariest, most misogynistic set of guys playing girls who should be crushed under the weight of their equipment...

And OMG, I didn't bring any nookie on-screen, that's was totally Frank's fault.

Why didn't I know about this thread? o-o

-Crissa

[Draco_Argentum]

Cause its two years old.

[CalibronXXX]

A random Viagra add post brought to the top of the board and I couldn't help but practice a little threadomancy. Any thoughts on whether that little ability I threw out would actually be balanced at ECL 1?

[User3]

While I'm here, I'd like to point out that not all people who like catgirls are furries. Hell, the 'anime goober' club, as K so enlighteningly called them, usually perfer girls with just cat ears and tails. That's usually the extent of it.

That said. Why were you guys even debating with K after the crap he said? It was pretty much like in my opinion.

[Crissa]

1172909637[/unixtime]]Cause its two years old.

I was totally around two years ago.

-Crissa

[Cielingcat]

Maybe you were on vacation or something.

[Josh_Kablack]

Bunnygirls are totally where it's at now.





:tonguesmile:

[MrWaeseL]

What's the appeal of a girl with certain characteristics to make her less girl? Is the reverse (a cat with boobs) appealing as well?

[Cielingcat]

A cat is fine too.

[Crissa]

1173147810[/unixtime]]Is the reverse (a cat with boobs) appealing as well?

You've never seen a depiction of a Sphinx, eh?

Either way, where does adding cat ears and tail make a girl less of a girl?

-Crissa

[MrWaeseL]

Because girls don't have tails and cat ears?