A brief word on custom Races....

[sharringtonm]

I promised someone I would make a post on this so here goes.
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You want to play a goblin? How about an orc? how about a dragon?
Sure it could be done with a little work in the toolset.

Sounds too easy huh? Yes, there is a catch.

There are no animations for other races in the game except for standing around, walking, running, dying, and fighting.

So your goblin couldn't look around. He couldn't sit down, nor kneel.
Like your armor? With a few notable exceptions, it wouldn't show up on your PC when you equip it.

Now I've heard some guy made all the lizardman animations, which is cool, cause it basicly unlocks that race for PW's, but thats about all thats out there.


I don't want anyone to say "well we don't need those animations and looks" Bull. I speak from experiance. On my last server I played a special race. Trust me when I say its RP HELL always wearing the same clothes, never being able to disguise your looks , or wear a helm or anything. In RPing in a Video Game, looks do make a difference. After all how many people have made sarcastic comments toward my PC's horned Helmet? Does it matter that its a visual part of the armor that I cannot remove? Nope.

So can you see where this would cause endless problems? How could you tell wether that goblins wearing plate mail? or the Dragon has a great axe equipped?

Let's hold out hope that the Lizardman Racial Animations include armor appearances. We might have something then.

NEXT

The ability to install custom races into the server would require the character creator to read our haks before it starts. It doesn't.

Current Obsidian word is it will be fixed in 1.14
They said it would be fixed in 1.07 and 1.10 too. I won't hold my breath.
The only workaround is what's called a Local Module Character Creator, which is more a pain then its worth. It involves having a real live DM check each and ever PC file that goes in the server for exploits. It could be days from when you create your PC (custom race or not) till when you actually get to play it.

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I hope this is a good enough explanation in laymans terms for you Tao,

[Machiavelli]

Sharington speaks sense! The inability to do this stuff is frustrating as a DM, even when I'm only using an NPC that can't do these things for a short time... if it were one of my PCs I'd go crazy!

[MKartMaster]

Yeah! Woo! Mob psychology!

[Leaving Hope]

For the record: If anyone harasses Harrington, I will smite their characters ten-fold.

[Mighty_Draco]

Interesting, it sounds like the community has a lot of work to do if they want custom races to happen. I think I understand why lizardmen are the only mentioned possible race. I'm not complaining, but it would be nice to see custom races in the future when all the hoops have been leaped through.

[Chiangtao]

Uh, all I did was submit a suggestion that Wangx play his goblin Kr't as a special race. Not sure why it prompted this public post. I assume you've had a few requests on this before Sean, but sheesh...

[undeadsteak]

Uh, all I did was submit a suggestion that Wangx play his goblin Kr't as a special race. Not sure why it prompted this public post. I assume you've had a few requests on this before Sean, but sheesh...

I doubt thats the only reason :P.

[Leaving Hope]

Uh, all I did was submit a suggestion that Wangx play his goblin Kr't as a special race. Not sure why it prompted this public post. I assume you've had a few requests on this before Sean, but sheesh...

My post was purely in jest, and though I won't speak for Sean, I don't ever see any harm in asking. As GBX said once months ago, DO ask. The worst we can say is no.

In this case, the answer is no. Not because we don't want to, but because Obsidian hasn't implemented what we need yet, and the alternatives are not acceptable.

[Mighty_Draco]

I don't think he was trying to condescend or anything. I found it a rather informative post. It seems a noteworthy enough thing to merit a post to me.

As for playing goblins, is it possible to create new faces and colors for pre-existing races? A modified gnome with a few stat changes could be turned into a goblin. I'm willing to bet that creating faces, if possible, is a bit difficult and time consuming, so it's more speculation on a community work-around then anything.

[Kangleton]

For the record: If anyone harasses Harrington, I will smite their characters ten-fold.

Harrington sucks. Nyaaaah.

As GBX said once months ago, DO ask. The worst we can say is no.

I've seen worse things said.

[Cadmus Runesmith]

Maybe Kangleton can come back and play as a campfire, or better still write some dialogue for the campfire....

[Machiavelli]

Maybe Kangleton can come back and play as a campfire, or better still write some dialogue for the campfire....

This would save me some time for other things... No, I'm not joking, it really would.

[Jaeram]

I know back when I played on a NWN1 server I thought the idea of the special races were cool, but not having the emotes and visible armor does drive you nuts, at least it did to me. On the other hand, while I don't really like using these special races I would give up those options for my all time favorite race (which those Obsidian bastards left out *ehem*) the Hound Archon.

My advice to anyone who wants to play as a special race, play a wizard heh. You can transform into some. :P