The Gaming Den

Why are they so unpopular?
They are my favourite race. I find ability score changes boring for base races, and so these guys fit perfectly.
They have flying as a thing for freeish.
A pact with air elementals.
Climb boost of ridiculous levels.
Oh, and they like arguing.

Whats not to like?

I do understand that powerwise, they aren't that great, but as far as flavour goes, they are my favourites.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm going to assume that this holds at least somewhat true for others-



Basically, they looked like shit in most of the images in Races of the Wild. There were a few pics by V. Rams, and one or two by S. Woods whose style has more than a passing resemblance to Ron Spencer, but the majority of the images were by S. Belladin or J. Jarvis, and looked really, really shitty.

Agree with Prak. The Pathfinder Stryx on the otherhand are virtually identical and I play the fuck out of them. It's mostly that they look terrible.

"What'll we call this new race we threw together?"

"Well, what does it look like?"

"A raptor."

"Well, there you have it. Let's call it a day."

Yeah, they look like ass and have less tradition behind them than aarakocra. Even the Elemental Planes connection just really highlights how they're typically viewed as a consolation prize for people who are disappointed by the inability to play a winged outsider. They just don't have the cachet to hang with angels, demons or harpies. Also, as pointed above, they're literally a single crossed out "m" away from being the punchline to the "All right, gentleman" meme.

The concept of birdmen I'm pretty much cool with, so just take the art and make them more like literal birdmen, and you're gold.

I know for my part the associated art heavily impacts whether I even much look at game material. I've never read a game book cover to cover, preferring to skim and look for interesting/relevant bits. So when a race is primarily represented by shitty art, I just don't bother. It's the same reason I only recently looked at the WotC warmage class.

I agree with the above mentioned.

But seriously, there art will make or break a campaign setting. Neither Planescape or Dark Sun was very good, they just both have really good art...

Personally, what put me off about Raptorans was that it was a really obvious and pandering attempt to have flying PCs that you could play right out of the gate. Which is fine, but the flight progression was so insipid that it felt insulting.

I mean, this was in addition to their weaksauce attempt at fleshing out the race. I mean, 3rd Edition was already releasing stupid-ass races all of the time such that the only two original races of that edition that I could see being used in a non-game mechanical context are the warforged and dromites. But when you're lamer than the fucking kalashtar, it'd be an act of mercy and [Good] for someone to put your species out of its misery.

The stupid artwork didn't help either. They look exactly like those bird-things in that one ST: Voyager episode.

It's not like D&D doesn't have a fuckload of bird/flying humanoid races already. I just thought the Raptorans were superfluous. They're basically identical to those really shitty flying elves, or Aarakocra. I mean fuck, winged orcs would at least be a little fucking different.

The Races of Foo books (entirely including Races of Eberron) introduce new races whose purpose was to push the limits of what a race did mechanically. Most of the races pretty obviously began life as mechanical concepts and got what flavor they have written back into them at the last minute. And in most cases, that "we need a race to show off this new mechanic I thought of!" design strategy comes shining through to the point of it actually being irritating.

Goliaths, for example, are just there because someone thought of a "large lite" mechanic to try to make a playable character with large sized flavor. Even their name is just "insert large race here." It sets my teeth on edge. It's transparently just fill-in-the-blanks procedural world design, and it's so blatant about it that it makes it hard to take it seriously as roleplaying material.

That being said, the newly introduced races were also showing off mechanics that were tepid and half assed. Worse, they were often attempts at concepts which there was a genuine need for there to be mechanics to express. They just needed... good mechanics, which tended to be quite at odds with what we actually got. I mean, there's clear demand for races that are in some way customizable so that there isn't just a single class/race combo to play them with... but Killoren didn't bring the party. There's clear demand for multiclass synergy effects so that you can kick ass as a dabbler, but the fucking Illumians didn't get that niche filled. There was clear demand for a race that was "big" without sucking or breaking the game, but Goliaths failed to even be playable in most games and also sucked.

The Raptorans were a race that had a power that people freak out about low level characters having, but which is fairly minor at higher levels (Flight). There are a lot of abilities like that. Indeed, you can make a persuasive argument that all abilities are like that (at least with sufficiently specific definitions of low and high level). So there's a lot of demand for a solution to that. And the Raptoran proposed solution was to give lower level versions at lower level and transition to higher level versions of the power at higher level. This is obviously the right answer to the problem. It's the only answer that could possibly work.

And yet... the actual Raptorn power set is bullshit. I don't sign up for a winged race based on flying to not fly. That is fucked. That is a deal breaker, and I am astounded that Skip Williams thought it could be anything else. People take the flying race because they want to fly not because they want to not fly. Do I have to draw you a diagram? Automatic slow fall and a +10 bonus to jump checks is not what I am looking for when I take a race whose shtick is that they fucking have wings and fucking fly. It just isn't. Fuck. Low level flight would have restrictions on it like "you can't attack or cast spells on rounds where you fly" or something. Low level flight isn't "not flying" and it doesn't look anything like "not flying" and that is so fucking obvious that I shouldn't have to even mention it.

So the Raptorans aren't just a shit idea backed up by some shit art. They are those things, but they aren't just that. They are a monumental fuckup. They are someone failing their craft RPG when trying to put together the only thing that could have worked for a great many things. Raptorans are so bad that they are literally the reason we can't have playable Medusas or playable Werewolves. The only way to make those things worked died on the vine and Raptorans were the test balloon for the concept and they sucked. We can't have nice things because Raptorans were poorly written.

-Username17

Aryxbez wrote:The concept of birdmen I'm pretty much cool with, so just take the art and make them more like literal birdmen, and you're gold.

Oh, everyone is cool with birdmen. That's why we've had them since before I was born and in every edition since.

Raptorians are where they had a phase in 3e that they got stuck not being able to let you play monsters or anything with cool powers. So they invented shit versions for you to play instead.

D&D already had winged elves, winged minotaurs, winged kobolds, pterodactyl men, bird men, bat men, flying squirrel men, several intelligent birds including spellcasters, werebats, wereravens, and half-dragons, -fiends, and -celestials all mixed with anything else, and a bunch of classes and magic items and mounts that all let anyone fly. I'm sure I'm only scratching the surface there.

Adding a "1st-level compatible" race to get around the terrible monster-race rules that lets you fly just as late as the terrible monster-race-class things is fucking terrible. Lots of people never get past the art, sure, but those who do are not directing anyone's attention back to it either.


Sure, Andrei, flavour, and it's for kitchen-sink fantasy too, but I got past the art, checked the mechanics, and so never even read it. Flavour is good for stuff I want in the game. The name alone is also bad: "-ian" => no.

FrankTrollman wrote: Low level flight would have restrictions on it like "you can't attack or cast spells on rounds where you fly" or something.

-Username17

I've kept them in my heartbreaker, and I skipped on the whole leveling thing and just gave them flight. So, I agree that they are poorly implemented. That completely solves the problem.

Aryxbez wrote:The concept of birdmen I'm pretty much cool with, so just take the art and make them more like literal birdmen, and you're gold.

Except that I liked raptorans mostly because they weren't fully birdmen, so that means that they can still be pretty, and they aren't angels, so they don't have all that baggage that goes with angels.

I liked the way raptorans looked. There was a dive attack prestige class that I remember having pretty good art. The combination of human faces and taloned feet to go with their wings hit the right buttons for me.

That said, I just looked them up again and was surprised by how late they got actual flight. I had really thought they were doing the glide/fly thing by 3rd level and getting better from there. Needing 10HD to be able to fly without caveats is total bullshit.

Well, they are called Raptorans, and raptors are a sort of classification of birds, like, a bald eagle is a raptor, but I kind of thought that they would look like velociraptors. Yet every picture is kind of crummy and shows them looking like a bird, like a really bad run of Hawkman comics.

I think they would have caught on had they actually looked like the go-between step between dinosaurs and birds or just skipped having things like feathers altogether.

They should have looked something like this...

Insomniac wrote:Well, they are called Raptorans, and raptors are a sort of classification of birds, like, a bald eagle is a raptor, but I kind of thought that they would look like velociraptors. Yet every picture is kind of crummy and shows them looking like a bird, like a really bad run of Hawkman comics.

I think they would have caught on had they actually looked like the go-between step between dinosaurs and birds or just skipped having things like feathers altogether.

Nobody tell him.

Looking like an angel is largely in how you dress, Ogre Battle's winged folk tend to have a 'barbarian' look and earth tone feathers.



So we know the solution to flying level 1 characters is restrictions in flight like "standard action to sustain it", falling if you're hit in the air, and so on. So what does it take to make 'large size' at early levels work?

Making a 'large but not large' race like golaith feels really lame when everyone is already familiar with ogres and minotaurs.

What other races 'should be' available to play as?

Seerow wrote:

Insomniac wrote:Well, they are called Raptorans, and raptors are a sort of classification of birds, like, a bald eagle is a raptor, but I kind of thought that they would look like velociraptors. Yet every picture is kind of crummy and shows them looking like a bird, like a really bad run of Hawkman comics.

I think they would have caught on had they actually looked like the go-between step between dinosaurs and birds or just skipped having things like feathers altogether.

Nobody tell him.

In 3E D&D terms, the biggest problem with large characters at low level is how they:
A.) Tend to break the RNG due to size bonuses + being packaged with extra strength.
B.) Tend to completely overshadow non-large martials because of caveat A.

A large whatever that walks in with just a +2 to strength has over a medium character a +5 bonus to trip, grapple, and bullrush, and has anywhere from a +2 to +5 damage bonus depending on their weapon. Their penalty is that stealth checks are a lot harder to make, they can't easily fit into certain areas (which generally isn't a problem, since even low-level dungeons cram in large monsters), their equipment costs slightly more, and they have a penalty to AC.

If you want to have large PCs at low level then you need to temporarily and/or permanently increase the penalties PCs get for being large. Either that or place more of an emphasis on things that favor smaller characters or are size-agnostic.

I don't know what I am wrong about? Is a bald eagle not considered a raptor? I do know that dinosaurs eventually evolved into birds so why not do something transitional like, whats that thing called, archaeopteryx?

I'm not sure but suspect the image you posted is a Draconian, which is an existing race from Dragonlance. But maybe I'm way off.

Insomniac wrote:I don't know what I am wrong about?

Insomniac wrote:but I kind of thought that they would look like velociraptors. Yet every picture is kind of crummy and shows them looking like a bird

Velociraptors were basically death metal turkeys.

Insomniac wrote:I don't know what I am wrong about? Is a bald eagle not considered a raptor? I do know that dinosaurs eventually evolved into birds so why not do something transitional like, whats that thing called, archaeopteryx?

Click the picture.

Even the more Jurassic Park Raptor-size Utahraptor is pretty far from the murder lizard we know and love.