Playing with Fantasy XXXVIII

• Had been thinking the morlock/gollum people needed to have stone blades attached to cords woven from their own hair, since there's nothing to make weapon hafts out of down there. But then it occurred to me they can use the long limb-bones of their own and other humanoid dead. Still giving them slings made of woven hair though.
  
  Thinking mine will be blind, like grimlocks in D&D, but I think I'll just give them blindsight within the standard hearing distances. Or even just treat them as sighted except colors and other visual stimuli, and visual illusions, mean nothing to them, and they always fail purely visual Perception checks.
  
  Thought the whole race would stat as grimlocks from 3.5, with the little ones trading +4 Strength and +2 Dexterity for +2 Strength and +4 Dexterity. But that's kinda OP relative to goblins or ogres, so I might give them a whole different set of ability adjustments—maybe bonuses to Dexterity and Constitution and penalties to Wisdom?
• I also figured out what the gollums should be: derros. At least in name. But the priests of the other ones, and they just somehow get stunted to halfling size. And give them the spellcasting of alchemists, since goblin priests are inquisitors.
• I was going to have the orc priests be bards. Then I thought of having them be kami mediums, explicitly made divine casters (with verbal and somatic components instead of emotion and thought) the way onmyoji spiritualists are. But thinking about "make them an only four spell-levels class" made me realize I was overthinking.
  
  So, their priests are antipaladins now. My orcs and ogres now have troll regeneration, so they don't need healers nearly as much. And their chiefs are barbarians. Hit dice-wise, an orc barbarian is to an antipaladin as a hobgoblin ranger is to an inquisitor. (Also the orc priests' trump, smite good, is worthless against goblin raids.)
• If your setting needs slang terms (not to say "racial slurs") for elves and goblins, "hob" and "puck" both serve well enough ("hob" is part of hobgoblin because they were traditionally more benevolent than other goblins, and were thus known as "elf-goblins"). I think "puck" is sometimes used that way in at least the English version of the Witcher games. Honestly "troll" and "dwarf" should be viewed as less than complimentary, but I can only get away with that because mine are also ogres and gnomes, respectively—otherwise what would they even be called?
• Turns out, at some point late in 1e, Pathfinder repurposed the aeons as the lawful neutral planeborne (as they were known in my day), I think with psychopomps taking over as the main true-neutral one. Which clinches which one the law-spiders will be. The fact aeons often have multiple limbs doesn't hurt. Thinking I'll call them "norns", since that means "weaver" and…they're spiders.
  
  Also decided, though, that I would have an ethically-neutral race of Outer People, to go with good celestials, evil fiends, morally neutral elementals (stats of divs with some different immunities and minus the specifically evil parts), chaotic nagas (=proteans), and lawful norns (=aeons).
  
  Not sure what to base them on—psychopomps, oni, rakshasas, and asuras all have a case. Or kami, now that nonevil gnomes are dwarves and become inevitables (but "any nonevil") when they die. Also what do they look like? All my others have a look: snakes, spiders, bird wings, bat wings, pterosaur wings. Maybe something with fish? Maybe I make them birds but give them the stats of couatls, which are also treated as an family of creatures in Pathfinder. I had wanted something to base thunderbirds and firebirds on (there are also snowbirds in I think Algonquian mythology).
• Decided my setting doesn't have the threefold dragon-wyvern-drake division, it just has wyverns that stat as drakes but with venom instead of speed surge. And still have the heads of Bungartius and tiny, Carnotaurus-like forearms that they normally tuck under their feathers.
• It occurs to me that, given proteans are immune to acid and aeons to cold, and hellfire plus divine smiting-lightning, I might make fiends immune to fire, celestials to electricity, nagas to acid, and norns to cold, and then they all have a second immunity based on the other part of their alignment—evil nagas immune to fire and acid, lawful celestials immune to lightning and cold, etc.
  
  Of course this screws things up for the elementals, the absurdity of "fire elemental who's immune to cold because he's lawful"; thinking instead they just go with "immune own element, resistant to the two adjacent ones" (not sure about vulnerability to the opposite?). And whatever I decide the ethically neutral guys seem like they should only have the one that goes with their moral alignment (and the true neutral ones be SOL).
  
  Yeah probably gonna just leave the elemental immunities as they are.
• Giving real thought to replacing "Inner People" and "Outer People" in my setting with "mortals" and "immortals". "Immortal", countable noun, having a long history in this game and all. Of course, then that makes me wonder if the gods should be called "powers" instead? But I lean to not. Unless maybe the humans call them "gods" and the elves, dwarves, etc., who are their descendants rather than their adopted children, call them "powers".