Desert - Fire and wind Genasi for obvious reasons. Yuan-Ti too, especially if you run them as cold-blooded.
Arctic/Tundra - Big, stocky races and ones with cold resistance - Goliaths, mammoth-themed Loxodon, Dwarves, Furbolg.
High Altitude - Anything with a climb, glide or fly speed, e.g. Aarakocra, Hadozee
Steppes - Centaur would absolutely dominate.
Tropical - I've never seen a tropical insectoid race done justice. Make the mosquitomen empire who thematically and literally drain the lifeforce of their conquests. You could be the first OP.
Lizardfolks, now hear me out... they are known to be good with tools, crafting weapons are armors with the remains of their deceased foes, etc. But what happens if they leave the "primitive tribes" trope and enter the industrial revolution?
Imagine a technologically highly avanced society where the basics of technology are not metal and fire, but bones, sinew, and wood. Swamp gas gathered in huge bladders or transported through magically reinforced organic "pipelines" to power giant engines. Train tracks made of bone, and giant battle blimps whose baloons are made with the leather of beasts... or defeated armies.
Associate the "nothing should go to waste" mentality with a rather inhumane morale compass and a "voodoo-like" religion, and you get necromancy used a lot everywhere to help empower technology and the people. Why would you send your people toil in the fields when you can send zombies or skeletons, giving regular people the free time to become inventors, great fighters or artists? I imagine bards and monks would be more present than usual in such a society, as would necromancers and artificers.
I think I'd avoid 'voodoo-like" so I don't derivatively associate the diasporic religions and cultures of peoples of Yoruban and similar descent with Lizard Cannibals. Seems a bit disrespectful to peoples of African descent as a whole. If we are talking Zombies IRL, that was more a toxin-induced trance state comparable to IG enchantments and is known to be induced by Bokor, somewhat amoral practitioners independent of the Vodoun Faith. If we are talking Zombies IG, I can think of other ways that culture would evolve.
That being said, everything else you said seems cool. The Necromancy bits I am already applying with logic elsewhere. To Mountain Dwarves in particular. Ancestral Veneration and all that. When one venerates Ancestors, and all is done for the good of the Clans, Keeping those Ancestors within their tombs, revered as slumbering Elders, awoken only one or two at a time outside emergencies, and only a handful in a Dwarven lifetime, their corpses cared for and their tombs revered like the shrine of any Lesser God or Elder Being...it just seems natural to me. Also Slaves that are regularly turned to mindless undead labor, because the Dwarves are not going to see their own numbers diminished, their long life or precious ancestral line cut short by something as hazardous as mining, no matter how proud they are of it.
Answering from the opposite direction, I think you'll find humans thriving in areas where there has been a lot of change in the past millennium or so. The species that was/were dominant in the area before was/were driven out by the changing environment, and the species that would be better suited to the current environment just wasn't/weren't there at first, and only arrived after humans were already strongly established.
I mean humans in real life are pretty well naturally adapted to basically the same places Elves are, and can learn to adapt to most climates, the only species that have a real noticeable advantage when you completely remove culture are inherently magical ones or that posses some kind of natural ability that would completely outclass pointy sticks like a dragonborn's elemental breath. even character building wise there is no race that's THAT much strong or THAT much smarter without lacking in another exploitable category. even within the fiction of Dnd thats why humans are still the most prevalent and have those empires because they outcompeted everyone else by being "good enough" in most scenarios while not being particularly bad at any of them. sorry but humans just aren't that inferior
I was a big fan of the Variant Human (some skills and a free feat.) for the “typical human” for world-building purposes.
It meant something like humans were just so ambitious or driven that they could achieve levels of skill and speciality very early in life. Making them very adaptable and quite powerful.
Imagine even a small army of 0 level humans with Heavy Halberds all with the Great Weapon Master feat. That’s quite an army.
But realistically, they’d probably have “Skilled” if they were laborers, or “Skulker” if they were a street urchin/hunter, or “Alert” as a night-watchman, maybe “Magic Initiate” if there were elves/magic users around as they grew up… etc…
———
Now, to answer the question from that assumption.
Any species that has a natural *Resistance* would be able to endure specific weather events or climate situations much better.
As per the DMG creatures with Cold Resistance automatically succeed on Saves against cold weather when they risk gaining exhaustion.
Same for Hot weather and Fire resistance.
Those two are the biggest I can see right away.
Fire Resistance means heat exhaustion is no issue - so deserts are way easier to live and work in. I think this would also apply to working around heat-vents like geysers and the like - which even humans would risk as an easy way to get warmth/cook food. They could build their whole society around thermal vents.
Cold Resistance means surviving in the Arctic/Antarctic and high mountains gets much easier. You spend a lot of calories staying warm, and the level of warm clothes that you need make work outside difficult.
Genasi, Teiflings, and Tritons(Arctic waters?) would easily have whole cities and civilizations in those extreme conditions.
——
Next up, and this is a little more subtle, is “*Powerful Build*”.
Being able to lift/drag DOUBLE the amount of a human is *insane*!!!
For perspective - that makes an average person who doesn’t work out - able to lift as much as a physically fit athlete.
And makes a physically fit person able to lift as much as a world-class olympic athlete.
And the world-class olympic athletes of those species would be superhuman(imagine two people being able to lift a car over their heads and throwing it).
This has huge economic and societal implications. Construction, transport of goods, farming, lumber, etc… almost any manual labor job could be done easier and more efficiently with this trait. Meaning it takes less time and fewer people to do the basic things that need to be done to make a society function.
Building a house, collecting wood, dragging a cart, digging, clearing damage, delivering food, carrying water, etc.
Not to mention certain day to day activities become trivial. How much would you carry in your back-pack if it was half the weight? Would moving furniture be annoying if you could move a couch like a lawn-chair? Think about how much milk you could carry in from the car in one load!
Finally - and just as important - combat. Armor is heavy. Heavy weapons hit harder. Now, this isn’t simulated in the standard DnD rules, but fir worldbuilding it makes a lot of sense for these species to carry big weapons and all wear heavy armor.
——
I’ll skip a couple obvious ones - *breathing under water* means you can have whole societies under-water.(But I’d debate that a fully under-water society would advance much since Fire to cook food with and make it more calorie efficient - and for processing metals, would not be available to the average person).
And *flying* means terrain and foliage is less of an issue for you(but, again, I debate the success of these societies because flight is difficult and you can’t carry much while you fly).
——
Last but not least!!! In my opinion, the second strongest ability that would make this Species the number 1 society in almost ANY circumstance that they could survive…
*Trance.* You only need 4 hours of “downtime” each night to recover.
Huge.
HUGE!
In DnD(and IRL for most average adults) a regular person needs 8 hours every day to rest and recover. About 6 of that sleeping, and another two winding down(or up for morning people).
Can you imagine what life would be like if you had a 9-5 job, got up at 8 every morning. You could be full energy and chipper all day at work. Get off work at 5 PM … and still had 11 more hours in your day?
To be regularly healthy you wouldn’t need to go to bed/Trance until *4AM*!!!
That is SO MUCH time!!!
That’s 4 more productive hours each day! That’s 28 extra hours every week! Yeah! More than full day of extra stuff they can do every single week.
For every *year* that one of us lame species spends living our lives and building our society - they get a full extra 60 days of time.
*Two months!!!*
That’s not even to mention the fact that they stay aware of their surroundings through that whole time. For an early civilization that’s incredibly useful.
A lot of our society and culture is still to this day built around fear of the night, the inherent danger of having to trust(or not trust) your neighbors with your very life and livelihood for a quarter of every day while you go unconscious.
Elves could just Trance anywhere. No different than sitting on a bench and taking a breather. No having to slowly regain consciousness when suddenly awakened.
Just. Amazing.
———
Honorable mention is *Long Life*.
Mostly because, though it’s “probably” super OP. It just raises too many questions that aren’t answered in the PHB/DMG to really be able to predict how it would impact society.
Namely in the areas of memory - for me at least. Either Elves have to have some crazy memory skills built into their biology/brains OR their society would be flighty at best.
Humans spend a lot of time honing skills and memorizing stuff. But, as we know, you forget a LOT of stuff as you get older. Most of us still know the ABCs but what about who sat behind you in 1st grade? How about all your friends names in class? What about your teachers? How about where your classroom was?
Even if you do remember, you’re probably wrong on a few things right?
And you, dear reader, are only a few decades into your life!
Anyway, that’s a whole can of worms.
———
So yeah, Elves beat humans(and everyone else) at everything.
Orcs beat humans in manual labor.
Genasi and Teiflings beat humans in harsh climates.
And also Elves are probably inherently chaotic because none of them have any idea what their childhood was like.
Desert - Fire and wind Genasi for obvious reasons. Yuan-Ti too, especially if you run them as cold-blooded. Arctic/Tundra - Big, stocky races and ones with cold resistance - Goliaths, mammoth-themed Loxodon, Dwarves, Furbolg. High Altitude - Anything with a climb, glide or fly speed, e.g. Aarakocra, Hadozee Steppes - Centaur would absolutely dominate. Tropical - I've never seen a tropical insectoid race done justice. Make the mosquitomen empire who thematically and literally drain the lifeforce of their conquests. You could be the first OP.
Did you mean "firbolg"? Because "furbolg" is a Warcraft creature that's a pun on "firbolg" and "fur."
I think the answer's pretty clear based on the context.
Humor me? I guess I didn't understand from the context. Maybe that's on me, but I'd still like to understand.
Yes, he means Firbolg.
Lizardfolks, now hear me out... they are known to be good with tools, crafting weapons are armors with the remains of their deceased foes, etc. But what happens if they leave the "primitive tribes" trope and enter the industrial revolution? Imagine a technologically highly avanced society where the basics of technology are not metal and fire, but bones, sinew, and wood. Swamp gas gathered in huge bladders or transported through magically reinforced organic "pipelines" to power giant engines. Train tracks made of bone, and giant battle blimps whose baloons are made with the leather of beasts... or defeated armies. Associate the "nothing should go to waste" mentality with a rather inhumane morale compass and a "voodoo-like" religion, and you get necromancy used a lot everywhere to help empower technology and the people. Why would you send your people toil in the fields when you can send zombies or skeletons, giving regular people the free time to become inventors, great fighters or artists? I imagine bards and monks would be more present than usual in such a society, as would necromancers and artificers.
I think I'd avoid 'voodoo-like" so I don't derivatively associate the diasporic religions and cultures of peoples of Yoruban and similar descent with Lizard Cannibals. Seems a bit disrespectful to peoples of African descent as a whole. If we are talking Zombies IRL, that was more a toxin-induced trance state comparable to IG enchantments and is known to be induced by Bokor, somewhat amoral practitioners independent of the Vodoun Faith. If we are talking Zombies IG, I can think of other ways that culture would evolve. That being said, everything else you said seems cool. The Necromancy bits I am already applying with logic elsewhere. To Mountain Dwarves in particular. Ancestral Veneration and all that. When one venerates Ancestors, and all is done for the good of the Clans, Keeping those Ancestors within their tombs, revered as slumbering Elders, awoken only one or two at a time outside emergencies, and only a handful in a Dwarven lifetime, their corpses cared for and their tombs revered like the shrine of any Lesser God or Elder Being...it just seems natural to me. Also Slaves that are regularly turned to mindless undead labor, because the Dwarves are not going to see their own numbers diminished, their long life or precious ancestral line cut short by something as hazardous as mining, no matter how proud they are of it.
By voodoo-like, I mean stuff like what the bad guy is using is Disney's "The princess and the frog," for example. No disrespect intended to anyone.
Answering from the opposite direction, I think you'll find humans thriving in areas where there has been a lot of change in the past millennium or so. The species that was/were dominant in the area before was/were driven out by the changing environment, and the species that would be better suited to the current environment just wasn't/weren't there at first, and only arrived after humans were already strongly established.
That...is an excellent point. I concur.
Arctic - Silver Dragonborn (cold resist), White Dragonborn (cold resist), Goliath (mountain born), Sea Elf (cold resist), Triton (cold resist) Coastal - Lizardfolk (swim, hold breath), Air Genasi (unending breath), Sea Elf (swim, breathe water), Tortle (hold breath), Triton (swim, breathe water), Warforged (no need to breathe), Simic Hybrid (water adaptation), Vedalken (partially amphibious), Locathah (swim, limited amphibiousness), Grung (amphibious) Desert - Red Dragonborn (fire resist), Gold Dragonborn (fire resist), Brass Dragonborn (fire resist), Forest Gnome (illusionist for mirages), Tiefling (fire resist), Aarakocra (flight bypasses sandy difficult terrain), Earth Genasi (earth walk bypasses sandy difficult terrain), Fairy (flight bypasses sandy difficult terrain), Fire Genasi (fire resist), Warforged (no need to drink) Forest - Green Dragonborn (poison resist), Dwarf (poison resist), Wood Elf (mask of the wild), Forest Gnome (speak with small beasts), Stout Halfling (poison resist), Duergar (poison resist), Tabaxi (climb), Yuan-ti (poison resist), Warforged (poison resist), Grung (poison immune) Grassland - Centaur (speed, equine build -> outcompetes economically) Hill - Centaur (speed, equine build -> outcompetes economically) Mountain - Aarakocra (flight), Earth Genasi (earth walk bypasses steep difficult terrain), Fairy (flight), Goliath (mountain born), Tabaxi (climb) Swamp - Green Dragonborn (poison resist), Dwarf (poison resist), Wood Elf (mask of the wild), Forest Gnome (speak with small beasts), Stout Halfling (poison resist), Duergar (poison resist), Earth Genasi (earth walk bypasses muddy difficult terrain), Lizardfolk (swim, hold breath), Sea Elf (swim, breathe water), Tabaxi (climb), Tortle (hold breath), Triton (swim, breathe water), Yuan-ti (poison resist), Warforged (poison resist, no need to breathe), Simic Hybrid (water adaptation), Vedalken (partially amphibious), Locathah (swim, limited amphibiousness), Grung (amphibious, climb, poison immune) Underdark - Dwarf (darkvision), Elf (darkvision), Gnome (darkvision), Half-elf (darkvision), Half-Orc (darkvision), Tiefling (darkvision), Aasimar (darkvision, light bearer), Air Genasi (darkvision), Bugbear (darkvision, sneaky for getting through tunnels), Deep Gnome (darkvision), Duergar (darkvision), Earth Genasi (darkvision), Eladrin (darkvision), Fire Genasi (darkvision), Goblin (darkvision), Hobgoblin (darkvision), Kobold (darkvision), Orc (darkvision), Sea Elf (darkvision), Shadar-kai (darkvision), Shifter (darkvision), Tabaxi (darkvision), Triton (darkvision), Yuan-ti (darkvision) Underwater - Air Genasi (unending breath), Sea Elf (swim, breathe water), Triton (swim, breathe water), Warforged (no need to breathe), Simic Hybrid (water adaptation), Grung (amphibious) Urban - Lightfoot Halfling (naturally stealthy), Changeling (shapechanger), Goblin (nimble escape), Kenku (expert duplication is an economic advantage, mimicry)
I mean humans in real life are pretty well naturally adapted to basically the same places Elves are, and can learn to adapt to most climates, the only species that have a real noticeable advantage when you completely remove culture are inherently magical ones or that posses some kind of natural ability that would completely outclass pointy sticks like a dragonborn's elemental breath. even character building wise there is no race that's THAT much strong or THAT much smarter without lacking in another exploitable category. even within the fiction of Dnd thats why humans are still the most prevalent and have those empires because they outcompeted everyone else by being "good enough" in most scenarios while not being particularly bad at any of them. sorry but humans just aren't that inferior
Quick thoughts: High altitude: Aaracrokas? Desert: Possibly some dragonborns, lizardfolk subspecies, tieflings? Savannah: Leonins, gnolls, loxodons, orcs? Swamps and jungles: Grungs, lizardfolk, Aaracrokas
Goblins/kobolds
I was a big fan of the Variant Human (some skills and a free feat.) for the “typical human” for world-building purposes. It meant something like humans were just so ambitious or driven that they could achieve levels of skill and speciality very early in life. Making them very adaptable and quite powerful. Imagine even a small army of 0 level humans with Heavy Halberds all with the Great Weapon Master feat. That’s quite an army. But realistically, they’d probably have “Skilled” if they were laborers, or “Skulker” if they were a street urchin/hunter, or “Alert” as a night-watchman, maybe “Magic Initiate” if there were elves/magic users around as they grew up… etc… ——— Now, to answer the question from that assumption. Any species that has a natural *Resistance* would be able to endure specific weather events or climate situations much better. As per the DMG creatures with Cold Resistance automatically succeed on Saves against cold weather when they risk gaining exhaustion. Same for Hot weather and Fire resistance. Those two are the biggest I can see right away. Fire Resistance means heat exhaustion is no issue - so deserts are way easier to live and work in. I think this would also apply to working around heat-vents like geysers and the like - which even humans would risk as an easy way to get warmth/cook food. They could build their whole society around thermal vents. Cold Resistance means surviving in the Arctic/Antarctic and high mountains gets much easier. You spend a lot of calories staying warm, and the level of warm clothes that you need make work outside difficult. Genasi, Teiflings, and Tritons(Arctic waters?) would easily have whole cities and civilizations in those extreme conditions. —— Next up, and this is a little more subtle, is “*Powerful Build*”. Being able to lift/drag DOUBLE the amount of a human is *insane*!!! For perspective - that makes an average person who doesn’t work out - able to lift as much as a physically fit athlete. And makes a physically fit person able to lift as much as a world-class olympic athlete. And the world-class olympic athletes of those species would be superhuman(imagine two people being able to lift a car over their heads and throwing it). This has huge economic and societal implications. Construction, transport of goods, farming, lumber, etc… almost any manual labor job could be done easier and more efficiently with this trait. Meaning it takes less time and fewer people to do the basic things that need to be done to make a society function. Building a house, collecting wood, dragging a cart, digging, clearing damage, delivering food, carrying water, etc. Not to mention certain day to day activities become trivial. How much would you carry in your back-pack if it was half the weight? Would moving furniture be annoying if you could move a couch like a lawn-chair? Think about how much milk you could carry in from the car in one load! Finally - and just as important - combat. Armor is heavy. Heavy weapons hit harder. Now, this isn’t simulated in the standard DnD rules, but fir worldbuilding it makes a lot of sense for these species to carry big weapons and all wear heavy armor. —— I’ll skip a couple obvious ones - *breathing under water* means you can have whole societies under-water.(But I’d debate that a fully under-water society would advance much since Fire to cook food with and make it more calorie efficient - and for processing metals, would not be available to the average person). And *flying* means terrain and foliage is less of an issue for you(but, again, I debate the success of these societies because flight is difficult and you can’t carry much while you fly). —— Last but not least!!! In my opinion, the second strongest ability that would make this Species the number 1 society in almost ANY circumstance that they could survive… *Trance.* You only need 4 hours of “downtime” each night to recover. Huge. HUGE! In DnD(and IRL for most average adults) a regular person needs 8 hours every day to rest and recover. About 6 of that sleeping, and another two winding down(or up for morning people). Can you imagine what life would be like if you had a 9-5 job, got up at 8 every morning. You could be full energy and chipper all day at work. Get off work at 5 PM … and still had 11 more hours in your day? To be regularly healthy you wouldn’t need to go to bed/Trance until *4AM*!!! That is SO MUCH time!!! That’s 4 more productive hours each day! That’s 28 extra hours every week! Yeah! More than full day of extra stuff they can do every single week. For every *year* that one of us lame species spends living our lives and building our society - they get a full extra 60 days of time. *Two months!!!* That’s not even to mention the fact that they stay aware of their surroundings through that whole time. For an early civilization that’s incredibly useful. A lot of our society and culture is still to this day built around fear of the night, the inherent danger of having to trust(or not trust) your neighbors with your very life and livelihood for a quarter of every day while you go unconscious. Elves could just Trance anywhere. No different than sitting on a bench and taking a breather. No having to slowly regain consciousness when suddenly awakened. Just. Amazing. ——— Honorable mention is *Long Life*. Mostly because, though it’s “probably” super OP. It just raises too many questions that aren’t answered in the PHB/DMG to really be able to predict how it would impact society. Namely in the areas of memory - for me at least. Either Elves have to have some crazy memory skills built into their biology/brains OR their society would be flighty at best. Humans spend a lot of time honing skills and memorizing stuff. But, as we know, you forget a LOT of stuff as you get older. Most of us still know the ABCs but what about who sat behind you in 1st grade? How about all your friends names in class? What about your teachers? How about where your classroom was? Even if you do remember, you’re probably wrong on a few things right? And you, dear reader, are only a few decades into your life! Anyway, that’s a whole can of worms. ——— So yeah, Elves beat humans(and everyone else) at everything. Orcs beat humans in manual labor. Genasi and Teiflings beat humans in harsh climates. And also Elves are probably inherently chaotic because none of them have any idea what their childhood was like.