Hung Over Review: Magic of Incarnum

[Fuchs]

I think there exists some possibly large set of extremely boring people who only want to play humans. But you shouldn't assume that applies to everyone. There exist tons of people who want to play anything but humans in a fantasy rpg because their defining trait is being boring as shit.

I fail to see why it is a bad thing that I can say "biologically, Steve the Crap-Covered Supreme Sorcerer is boring as shit, so I instead spent all his conceptual space on the shit he actually learned how to do, and maybe he's a Derpian Human from Derpia so that he can have conceptual space from the culture of Derpia, which does not have to explain how his race lives differently due to being tentacle monsters made of glowy energy and can instead worry about socioeconomic structures and its interaction with the other human culture, the Herpians of Herpia".

Well, some people are so limited in their imagination, they think being boring is actually a defining trait of a human RPG character. How that's possible without avoiding to read anything, or watch any movie or series with decent charaterization is difficult to understand, but we just had an example of someone who thinks humans are boring characters, so obviously there are such limited people.

[OgreBattle]

Warhammer 40k has taught me that humans can completely take over the dwarf portfolio of "tough, gruff, suspicious and prays, builds square things and is bald/grows beards" and it will be embraced as Fuckyea Humanity and the stunties can get eaten by space bugs and no one important will miss them.

Even in WHFB, dwarves and the human empire share resources n' technology so both wind up as bearded guys in plate armor with guns.

[Cyberzombie]

Well, some people are so limited in their imagination, they think being boring is actually a defining trait of a human RPG character. How that's possible without avoiding to read anything, or watch any movie or series with decent charaterization is difficult to understand, but we just had an example of someone who thinks humans are boring characters, so obviously there are such limited people.

It's understandable for hack and slash gamers who simply look at the mechanics. If you have one of those DMs who just runs modules and doesn't really care what your characters are, then it makes sense to see people going purely for mechanical differentiation and not caring about a story for their character.

[codeGlaze]

I know several people who like different flavors of races, or being able to alter a core race to make it more of a special snow flake. I'm okay with that.

Those same people (tend) to pick these races for RP reasons. They are my players that love to create a story-bubble for their characters and really get into character generation.
Sometimes we have to work something out so their race doesn't hamstring the class, or role/concept, they had in mind.

Unlike me who will typically pick the best race for the class I want to play. Within limits.
The area that I tend to overlap with my flavor players is when I want to play some ridiculous race/class match up. Such as an orc sorcerer or a halfling barbarian.

That's when I start to get annoyed at the inherent mechanical flaws of races.

I understand why they're there, but it's frustrating that (to a new player, or even general players) there's no easy/obvious way to create a Hulk elf, or glass-cannon orc with out the perception of being juked by the system.

[Prak]

Omegon, that's fine for you, but I only play humans when the game doesn't give me anything else to play, or the other options aren't real options (Glorathan non-human races come with so much fucking baggage that's it's not worth playing them, it's like choosing "uppity black man" as your race for a game set in the 50s. Most people won't trust or like you, and you're predisposed to doing things that will make them want to lynch you). Because I'm a human in real life, and while I, like Hicks, play basically myself with powers, think being human sucks, I prefer to play races I find more interesting. Our one evolutionary advantage is our intelligence, and when you can find that in races which also have other evolutionary advantages, or fuck, just cultural ones (stone cunning, sword and bow proficiency), then why would I choose to be human?

I think there exists some possibly large set of extremely boring people who only want to play humans. But you shouldn't assume that applies to everyone. There exist tons of people who want to play anything but humans in a fantasy rpg because their defining trait is being boring as shit.

I fail to see why it is a bad thing that I can say "biologically, Steve the Crap-Covered Supreme Sorcerer is boring as shit, so I instead spent all his conceptual space on the shit he actually learned how to do, and maybe he's a Derpian Human from Derpia so that he can have conceptual space from the culture of Derpia, which does not have to explain how his race lives differently due to being tentacle monsters made of glowy energy and can instead worry about socioeconomic structures and its interaction with the other human culture, the Herpians of Herpia".

Well, some people are so limited in their imagination, they think being boring is actually a defining trait of a human RPG character. How that's possible without avoiding to read anything, or watch any movie or series with decent charaterization is difficult to understand, but we just had an example of someone who thinks humans are boring characters, so obviously there are such limited people.

I think perhaps one of the reasons that the defining trait of humans being that they're boring is that no one does anything with them. The core D&D book basically says "They're humans, think of modern human culture with old clothes and halflings, dwarves and elves taking the place of France, Germany and Italy for culture theft." The further problem is that few DMs, that I've seen, do anything to fix that, so all humans in the setting are the same, boring, culturally grey blob.

Warhammer 40k has taught me that humans can completely take over the dwarf portfolio of "tough, gruff, suspicious and prays, builds square things and is bald/grows beards" and it will be embraced as Fuckyea Humanity and the stunties can get eaten by space bugs and no one important will miss them.

Even in WHFB, dwarves and the human empire share resources n' technology so both wind up as bearded guys in plate armor with guns.

I think I'd honestly be ok with this. It's fitting for a lot of modern culture's biggest "mythological" figures, and it gives some handholds on the cultural identity of humans in a setting. I've always kind of agreed with the idea that it's absurd for each game world race to have a single uniform culture, but at the same time, giving each race a lot of different cultures is a lot of work, and takes a lot of conceptual space. So if humanity has to have a single cultural identity, I think this would work. Of course Dwarves need to get another (I suggest displaced nomads with a chip on their shoulder towards humanity, but the full realization that an alliance with humanity may be their best chance for continued survival, or perhaps unparalleled crafters of magic), or they need to be jetisoned, which I do think would be a shame, though not necessarily a loss mourned by many.

[Whipstitch]

Unfortunately, humans have tons of other evolutionary advantages over other species, we just take them for granted when we create our imaginary Human+ forehead aliens. Anyway, I personally tend to prefer humans or bad-touched races because more often than not they're specifically called out as not having a big cultural shtick to be pigeon-holed with. I find that handy, given that I rarely find that kind of fluff particularly interesting, and on occasion I've been saddled with the kind of DM who really does care about whether or not my dorf has enough alcohol to get through the working day. That culturally gray blob sometimes beats being press-ganged into the stupid hat and racism squad.

[DSMatticus]

There are infinitely many questions you can ask about a character, and every decision you make during concepting answers a finite number of them in a certain way. When you try to provide "interesting" answers to as many questions as possible, you end up with the stupid OC's people put up on deviantart. There is an actual limit to the amount of interesting you can shove in a character before they explode and stop being interesting at all.

People correctly want to narrow their character's conceptual space down to the things they actually care about and want to use in play, and having a race that promises not to dump unwanted baggage into that conceptual space is super great. And having other races that can meaningfully occupy portions of that conceptual space is also great.

[OgreBattle]

Unfortunately, humans have tons of other evolutionary advantages over other species

Best endurance, able to live in extreme heat or cold, +2 con.



another cool bit of WHFB is that "Humanity benefits from corruption the most". Dwarves and Elves will kick the shit out of a human master swordsman because the dwarf and elf master axemen are near immortal, but then humans who become blood dragon vampire knights are also immortal swordsmen with skills that match or exceed those of elves/dorfs. Same with Chaos Warriors.

Dorf runemasters and Elf mages kick the shit out of human academy wizards, but humans who become Tzeentch sorcerers have powers that match/exceed that of elf archmages and dwarf runemasters.

Necromancy was the school of magic mastered by humans, because the races that live 1,000+ years were never interested in life extension.

*Dark Elves just have a black hat version of High Elf magic, they aren't really 'stronger', just a different flavor.

[Tumbling Down]

FWIW, I think the 3e Dark Sun humans (from Dragon #sometingsomething) were +2 Con, +2 Int.

Well, that, and the feat; which I guess did kind of make them the Master Race (but, y'know, Dragon Magazine).

[Prak]

FWIW, I think the 3e Dark Sun humans (from Dragon #sometingsomething) were +2 Con, +2 Int.

Well, that, and the feat; which I guess did kind of make them the Master Race (but, y'know, Dragon Magazine).

+2 to any two ability scores, +1 LA.

Edit: also 3 bonus power points and choice of 1st level power, AND ANOTHER 3 POWER POINTS AND A 2ND LEVEL POWER AT 5TH, AND 5 POWER POINTS AND A 3RD LEVEL POWER AT 10TH. Plus the bonus feat, and the bonus skill points. Holy shit.

[Lago PARANOIA]

People correctly want to narrow their character's conceptual space down to the things they actually care about and want to use in play, and having a race that promises not to dump unwanted baggage into that conceptual space is super great. And having other races that can meaningfully occupy portions of that conceptual space is also great.

Well.

A.) From my experience, there are a lot more underbaked characters in TTRPGs than overbaked ones. While, I have seen my share of Wolverines and Billy Teflons, they're vastly outnumbered by the Ted the Generic Guys and El Ravagers. If every gamer who hadn't already from then on decided to make their character non-human and also made it a significant plot point/characterization focus then a lot more games would be enhanced than ruined. Obviously you can't (directly) force a player to play their minotaur with any more difference or detail than a human, but you would be appalled at the number of people who limit the extent of their characterization to 'I waste it with my crossbow!' simply because they don't know any better and need the game to throw them a roleplaying lifeline.

B.) People tend to use human beings as their escapist overstuffed Mary Sue race anyway. Not as much as, say, elves but humans are in the upper strata of 'go-to races for making my Sephiroth clone'.

C.) The Law of Conservation of Detail makes a long background and overly detailed character sheet less problematic in-game than a masturbatory LiveJournal biopic makes it seem. For example, the important details of Batman's life and methods and beliefs since Miller's Dark Knight Returns can still be summed up in a paragraph and still be coherent and evocative. Even so, if you insist on combing his history for meaningful details for the past twenty-five or even five years it quickly becomes unmanageable. But that's okay, because the fact that he settled a dispute between two disaster survivors over ownership of a baby or had his identity figured out by the Riddler doesn't need to come up in every or even any future stories. But it's cool when it comes up at all, as long as he isn't tripping over his dick with too many details in a particular story like Wolverine.

[Starmaker]

Our one evolutionary advantage is our intelligence, and when you can find that in races which also have other evolutionary advantages, or fuck, just cultural ones (stone cunning, sword and bow proficiency), then why would I choose to be human?

Because elves cannot wield greatswords. And there was an even better post about an elven 1st level wizard vs. a lineage of human wizards. I cannot find either one.

[GâtFromKI]

Fully three of the four races presented are literally Star Trek forehead aliens. Skarn are humans with little frills on their arms and back, Rilkan are humans with scaly patches on their wrists and neck, Azurins are humans with bright blue contact lens. That's fucking it. The Duskling is a blue skinned Elf/Goblin crossover. I don't think we needed more kinds of Elf or more kinds of blue Goblin, but there you go. It's an Elf with a Con bonus, if you care. Which you don't.

This problem isn't specific to Magic of incarnum: races in D&D-land are an uninspiring piece of shit.

I mean, look at the CRB, the races are "human", "grumpy human with beard", "effeminate human", "less effeminate human", "small human", "small magic human", and "strong human". If you create a human-only setting with different ethnicities, you can just use the CRB and replace "elf" with "french", "dwarf" with "viking", etc.

The CRB races exist because of tradition; but those races are a pieces of shit, because everything they do can also be done by humans. You can't define a race by "they are graceful and they love trees" because humans can also be graceful and love tree. If you create a new race, it has to be a four-armed three-kreen, a Large giant or a flying whatever, anything except "a human with long hairs and who like beer".

Still, some incompetent game-designers think that elves and dwarves are a good baseline for races, and they create the azurin; then they don't understand why nobody cares about races and they create shitty patches like racial feats.

[Ferret]

Our one evolutionary advantage is our intelligence, and when you can find that in races which also have other evolutionary advantages, or fuck, just cultural ones (stone cunning, sword and bow proficiency), then why would I choose to be human?

Because elves cannot wield greatswords. And there was an even better post about an elven 1st level wizard vs. a lineage of human wizards. I cannot find either one.

Why can't elves wield greatswords?

Also, I'd love to read the Elf vs. line of human wizards discussion - anything more you can provide that might help me dig it up?

[Maxus]

Prak's wrong. The human evolution advantage is both intelligence and toughness. Check this out:

It makes a certain sense. By being not as strong as a bunch of things, the humans who survived to reproduce were the ones who could get back up after being mauled, or falling out of a tree, or so on, and keep on trucking.

A link in case the pic doesn't work. http://www.likealaugh.org/laugh.php?laugh=20189

[Prak]

And if game mechanics supported that, then I'd be down to play humans. The problem is that in most games Orcs and Dwarves are better humans than humans. I'm really not sure where to begin creating an evolutionarily accurate human race for D&D. I'd love to play the human described in that image, but D&D is full of things against which that doesn't mean shit because the way mechanics work they're better at it than we are.

[OgreBattle]

I'd like to introduce a D&D race called Double-humans

They get a stat penalty (of their choice) but in turn get three bonus feats and more bonus skillpoints, mature at age 10 and live up to age 40, and are known as an energetic race that is comfortable in any environment and makes a big impact wherever they go, making long lived humans with their monolithic culture a bit uncomfortable.

They are very hairy or not hairy at all, short or tall, fat or thin, and can take bonus feats from any other race because they are so adoptable and half doublehumans can breed from any pairing.

[Korwin]

This reminds me of this book. (+ follow ups)

[TheFlatline]

Fully three of the four races presented are literally Star Trek forehead aliens. Skarn are humans with little frills on their arms and back, Rilkan are humans with scaly patches on their wrists and neck, Azurins are humans with bright blue contact lens. That's fucking it. The Duskling is a blue skinned Elf/Goblin crossover. I don't think we needed more kinds of Elf or more kinds of blue Goblin, but there you go. It's an Elf with a Con bonus, if you care. Which you don't.

This problem isn't specific to Magic of incarnum: races in D&D-land are an uninspiring piece of shit.

I mean, look at the CRB, the races are "human", "grumpy human with beard", "effeminate human", "less effeminate human", "small human", "small magic human", and "strong human". If you create a human-only setting with different ethnicities, you can just use the CRB and replace "elf" with "french", "dwarf" with "viking", etc.

The CRB races exist because of tradition; but those races are a pieces of shit, because everything they do can also be done by humans. You can't define a race by "they are graceful and they love trees" because humans can also be graceful and love tree. If you create a new race, it has to be a four-armed three-kreen, a Large giant or a flying whatever, anything except "a human with long hairs and who like beer".

Still, some incompetent game-designers think that elves and dwarves are a good baseline for races, and they create the azurin; then they don't understand why nobody cares about races and they create shitty patches like racial feats.

While I get where you're coming from, most of the classic D&D races are derived directly from Tolkien, who ripped them off from human myth. Vanilla D&D is still sort of Earth proto-myth.

Which also includes why we have the idea that fighters should become epic badasses (legend is full of them) but not go blatantly into the supernatural anime-style level of powerup (legend peters out at like level 5).

[TheFlatline]

This reminds me of this book. (+ follow ups)

Quite a bit of *really* hard sci-fi tends to view humanity as pretty dangerous at large in the galaxy.

Hell, even Mass Effect approached this. We were the youngins in the galaxy, and over the short term we had trouble up against the Taurens and the Krogan, but it was generally assumed that given time we'd end up being one of the biggest "threats" in the galaxy.

[Ravengm]

Oh, man. I actually own an honest-to-goodness hard copy of Magic of Blue. I even played a character that used the book once. In my defense, it was a joke character that shoved snakes down his pants in order to heal himself, but it still totally used soulmelds.

Come to think of it, I own each of the "We're Totally Not Testing For 4E" series of books. I've played something from each of them, except the Truenamer. I'm ashamed to own the book that hosts that class.

I'm just glad I've never owned Weapons of Legacy. That would be a true tragedy.

[Longes]

Hey, Frank! Remember saying that no one plays Incarnum campaigns? Well...

[PoliteNewb]

I don't think Frank meant that literally; obviously some people will play anything.

One swallow doesn't make a summer, etc etc.