Smathfinder

One more of those sideblogs for pathfinder, dnd, and tabletop stuff. And some fantasy art main blog is: lackofcoolname

[clock-heart-deactivated20251220]

big ass commission of a dungeons and dragons party!!

[whitepeopletwitter]

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

cultural posturing elves with superiority complexes are way out, now we’re doing elves who literally cannot stop adopting other species and imparting elvish wisdom on them

because elves have a very low fertility rate to counterbalance their remarkable longevity, to the point that childbearing elves are lucky if they’re able to get pregnant, say, more than twice a century

but some elves just want to Nurture and they’ve noticed that adoption is a pretty sick deal, and that their human neighbors in particular always seem to have a veritable cornucopia of orphans sitting around in need of shelter and food and loving guidance and someone to teach them the finer points of communing with nature. 

elves reaching out to their human neighbors nervously for guidance because their beautiful adopted human son has decided he wants to get married but he’s only 25, he’s only completed one apprenticeship, he’s so young, is that really normal? are they sure? are they sure sure?

a 400 year old elf eagerly introducing her friends to her younger siblings: a 100 year old elf, 55 year old human, 27 year old tiefling, and 12 year old human. 

elf parents spending centuries proudly maintaining large and convoluted family trees where some of their great grand-kids are older than their most recently adopted children. elves highly prizing sprawling systems of family that span species and culture and share everything they can with each other. 

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

I’m just. I really charmed by the idea of elfin culture having the potential to be remarkably set in its ways, since they lack the relatively quick generational turnover of other species, but instead being almost infinitely open-minded and fluid to accommodate the needs of their many adopted community members. 

even elves who have left home to become professional adventurers aren’t immune to this; no wandering elfin bard or warrior is going to pass up a perfectly good opportunity for adoption. it’s relatively commonplace to run into adventuring parties followed by one or two or five wayward children in tow, on the way to the elf’s parents to deposit those kiddos for safekeeping. the rest of the party are a little confused about whether their elf friend is those kids’ parent now, or if their parents will be considered the parents and that makes the elf in question a big sibling now, or what. the elf shrugs it off. they’re family, what do the specifics matter? 

it’s a fantasy meme that elves will see an orphan sitting around and ask if anyone’s going to adopt them then not wait for an answer.   

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

and they’re all considered elves which means that within like. a generation or two? the word ‘elf’ starts to become more of a broad cultural descriptor than a specific species. there’s an orc on the elfin high council, and at first visiting dignitaries assume that, obviously, she was adopted by elves. but no, actually she was raised by a lovely human/lizardman couple, but both of them come from adopted elf families, which makes them elves by association, and obviously the grandparents would never allow anyone to imply that their cherished granddaughter isn’t an elf just because she happens to be an orc.

after a few centuries of this calling someone an “elf” means “someone somewhere in their family was probably an elf at some point, don’t worry about who it was.” 

[firebirdeternal]

You know what’s more fun than worldbuilding that makes some fantasy races EEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL!!!!? Worldbuilding that gives the different races cultural differences that help explain why there’s a lot of conflict between them:

Goblin culture doesn’t have a concept of “Property”. A stick on the ground and a tool in a locked shed are equally up for grabs if a thing needs doing. They casually take and leave things all over their communities, eat from communal pots, and genuinely Do Not Understand why the Core Races are so Angry and prone to Violence all the time.

Consequently Goblins who live near Core communities develop a reputation as “Thieves” despite not even having a *word* for that. (The closest word they have is more like “Greedy” and it means a person that hides things so nobody else can use them, and it’s a surefire fight-starter to call a Goblin that)

Common Orc Spiritual beliefs hold that a Soul can only grow stronger by overcoming Challenges in life, and see intruding on another person’s Challenge unasked for as not just Rude, but Deeply Harmful. You’re Stealing their chance to Grow. Asking for help is deeply personal and doing so can be both a way to grow closer with them or a too-personal intrusion, depending on your existing relationship with them. An exception is Children, as far as most Orcs are concerned, all Children are fundamentally the responsibility of the Whole Community, regardless of whose child they are, or even if said child is an Orc at *all*.

This means that Orcs who live near Core neighbors often seem Rude and Standoffish if not outright hostile, because they neither ask for nor offer aid even in times of trouble, and respond to unasked for aid themselves with Anger. There are even rumors that they Steal Children, because if an Orc finds a child lost in the woods they’re pretty much immediately going to start feeding it, and if they can’t find where to bring it back to, or it doesn’t seem to be well cared for, they’re just gonna keep it. 

[antique-scarecrow]

this is so good. someone do dragons & dwarves

[entropyabsolutely]

Dragons are often portrayed as being greedy and hostile towards humanoid creature. Many dragon myths have them Eating people, hoarding gold, and kidnapping princesses. However dragons aren’t as bad as many people think.

1. Hoarding Gold.

Dragons are, in the simplest terms, lizard crows. They take gold because it’s so shiny, and (similarly to goblins) they’re sense of ownership and personal property is a bit skewed. Dragons understand that if there is a cave with a dragon sitting on a pile of gold the gold is that dragons gold and that they shouldn’t take it because it belongs to that dragon. But humans store their gold in banks or vaults. Dragons see this huge pile of gold and think “oh no one is sitting on this gold, guess it’s free to take” and then they go ahead and take it. They don’t think to consider that these humans are attacking it because of gold, it just thinks that these humans are really mean. (All of this stealing of gold business can be fixed by just having a few people sit on your piles of gold so dragons can realize that the gold is already has an owner.)

2. Eating people/hostility

Dragons are literally giant flying lizards. They are literal animals. They are carnivores and scavengers. They will eat your corpse, even if they didn’t kill you themselves. Also, the reason they attack so many people is because they do have a territorial nature (again, giant fucking lizards) and most of the people they attack are people who come into their caves and steal their gold!

3. Kidnapping princesses

Most princesses wear all this beautiful jewelry and gems and, like I said before, dragons are lizard crows. The appearance of shiny stuff in sunlight is to a dragon like a lazer pointer is to a cat. They will steal it, probably not realizing it’s alive until later. However it should be noted that dragons take great pride in their hoard, so they will definitely take care of the princess!

And lastly it should be said that not all dragons do these things! All the old and wise dragons have realized how humanoids work and so they do better with staying out of they way. It’s all the young and dumb dragons who’re unwittingly stealing your gold. Just take your time to politely explain to your local dragon how banks work and you should be good!

Hope that explains dragons and well enough @smallest-feeblest-boggart ! (Sorry that I don’t have anything for dwarves)

[songbird-with-a-blog-deactivate]

I love the concept of someone being payed to sit on a pile of gold in a bank so a dragon doesn’t steal it.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

this is magnificent, please continue the saga

[otherwindow]

A desperate cleric slamming every healing spell so hard to bring someone back to life the ground is forced to grow plants and flowers around the body.

[otherwindow]

Decades later, guarded by a forest of roses and thorns, lies a corpse refusing to rot.

[firebirdeternal]

You know what’s more fun than worldbuilding that makes some fantasy races EEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL!!!!? Worldbuilding that gives the different races cultural differences that help explain why there’s a lot of conflict between them:

Goblin culture doesn’t have a concept of “Property”. A stick on the ground and a tool in a locked shed are equally up for grabs if a thing needs doing. They casually take and leave things all over their communities, eat from communal pots, and genuinely Do Not Understand why the Core Races are so Angry and prone to Violence all the time.

Consequently Goblins who live near Core communities develop a reputation as “Thieves” despite not even having a *word* for that. (The closest word they have is more like “Greedy” and it means a person that hides things so nobody else can use them, and it’s a surefire fight-starter to call a Goblin that)

Common Orc Spiritual beliefs hold that a Soul can only grow stronger by overcoming Challenges in life, and see intruding on another person’s Challenge unasked for as not just Rude, but Deeply Harmful. You’re Stealing their chance to Grow. Asking for help is deeply personal and doing so can be both a way to grow closer with them or a too-personal intrusion, depending on your existing relationship with them. An exception is Children, as far as most Orcs are concerned, all Children are fundamentally the responsibility of the Whole Community, regardless of whose child they are, or even if said child is an Orc at *all*.

This means that Orcs who live near Core neighbors often seem Rude and Standoffish if not outright hostile, because they neither ask for nor offer aid even in times of trouble, and respond to unasked for aid themselves with Anger. There are even rumors that they Steal Children, because if an Orc finds a child lost in the woods they’re pretty much immediately going to start feeding it, and if they can’t find where to bring it back to, or it doesn’t seem to be well cared for, they’re just gonna keep it. 

[crazy-pages]

This. I like this.

[scredgirl]

A neat commission I just finished for @themoonandotherslikeit! It was so fun getting to draw this cold as ice design. 

[deluxeloy]

Theory:

So you know how dwarves have that thing with beards? What if that’s not just a cultural standard or mere coincidence? What if there’s a reason?

See, dwarves like to dig a lot. They build underground homes, and there’s nothing more rewarding to them than digging up some gems or valuable metals. But chipping away at all that rock and disturbing all that earth kicks up a lot of dust and dirt. If you do that every day without proper breathing protection (which Ancient Dwarves probably didn’t have much access to) all those particles are going to build up in your lungs. It’s a phenomenon we see with real miners too; eventually, they develop a host of respiratory-related problems and even lung cancer.

Now, if only dwarves had some sort of natural protection against all that fine dust. If only they had some sort of filter in front of their mouth an nose…

My theory states that, through natural selection, dwarves developed more and more dense facial hair as a defense mechanism.

[mysral]

It should be noted that this interpretation also supports the “female dwarves have beards too” line of thought. It makes very little sense for half the population not to have that intrinsic protection, after all…

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

This world-building has me legit grinning.

I like this one.

[athelind]

This suggests that the micro-structures of dwarf beard hair are a lot more complex than ordinary hair, possibly including skin oils or other compounds with antimicrobial properties.

It also suggests that some of the dwarven durability reflected in their tabletop game Constitution bonuses are because they have built-in HEPA filters.

And that in turn suggests that shaving a dwarf’s beard or causing magical hair loss would have negative health impacts for the individual in question, suddenly breathing unfiltered air for the first time. Asthma, allergies, bronchitis, even pneumonia.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Now that you mention it, I’m imagining each dwarven hair having micro-barbules along the shaft, to form a fine mesh in more than one direction at once.

Also, that their beards may be a microscopic ecosystem with unique species of lice, etc. living within their beards that would feed on the spores and microbes caught within it.

Thus, making their beards ‘self cleaning’ – unlike a man-made HEPA filter, the beards don’t get clogged over time.

[cipheramnesia]

And dwarves love and care and decorate their beards so much because like… it’s not just accessory, it’s a whole face terrarium. Just like anyone else with a plant or a fish, some people want to make it look extra pretty or minimalist or whatever style. Plus of course you may have exotic variations based on environment, because the air and rocks could be different. Touching a dwarf beard or heavens forbid tugging it is like running up to a fish tank in a stranger’s house and tapping the glass - you don’t do that. Dwarven beard care is like gardening and owning a pet rolled into one.

[dungeonmalcontent]

This is the only truth I will accept about dwarven beards now.

[kalfyaarts]

You’re about to go down!

[sifu-kisu]

[prokopetz]

Concept: a Dungeons & Dragons adventure where the players are cast as an elven hunting party, helping their village make preparations for a diplomatic meeting with a human dignitary. Their mission takes them deep into a forest of vast and ancient trees, to bring down one of the colossal beasts that roam there and bring it back for the feast.

After many travails, the party return to their village triumphant, just in time to meet the human dignitary – who proves to be fully twenty times the height of a grown elf. It turns out that the village is in an ordinary forest, and the “colossal beasts” are ordinary animals, and elves in your setting are just really small.

If the players question this, act like you honestly don’t understand why they’re taken aback – everybody knows that elves are small!

[filibusterfrog]

halflings love their new giant children

[dvandom]

“So, Mister…GRAAAAGH Underhill-by-Sackville, is it?” “Indeed.” “You’re an Orc, but you don’t mention any clan….” “Oh, I’m culturally Hobbitish, I was adopted at a very young age.  And I’m very keen on this position you have open at your trading house.” “The guard position?” “Heavens, no.  I barely know which end of a sword goes into the miscreant.  I am a certified accountant, and eager to make my mark in respectable society.”

[firebirdeternal]

I want to read about the Halfling who was responsible for Recent Events, personally.

[filibusterfrog]

if you must know, her name is Tabitha Smallburrow and over a handful of years she adopted 3 orcs, 2 tieflings, 7 tabaxi (had mistaken them for a litter of kittens when they were put up for adoption in the neighboring city) and finally one very unwilling and fully grown dwarf

[promethiae]

“One very unwilling and fully grown dwarf”

I’m

[maglor-still-lives]

I can’t decide what’s better: elves being a tricked-out version of humans, or the races having similar appearances but completely different physiologies.

[maglor-still-lives]

An elf goes to a human hospital and the doctors are like holy fuck. You broke our blood typing machine.

[maglor-still-lives]

“Sir, the results are in, and technically you are a fungus.”

[explorerrowan]

Elves evolving from either a cat-like species or a squirrel-like species makes the most sense to me. Everything about them suggests that, like humans coming from apes, elves also came from arboreal roots. But unlike proto-humans, which were diurnal persistence hunters, elves’ ancestors are likely nocturnal, agility focused, and also not at the top of their food chain. While probably omnivorous, their larger, wide-set eyes and larger ears suggest that they had to have a greater awareness of predators than humans. (Which does give me the extremely satisfying mental image of long elf ears twitching and turning like cat ears at the slightest sound.) Their ability to basically not sleep also suggests a heritage of needing to be constantly alert to danger. The longer life span and lower birth rate might also be indicative of it being much riskier to stop and reproduce more frequently, requiring an extremely well-defended home before young proto-elves were worth the risk to the group.

Point is, there’s decent evidence to suggest that the most elves have in common with humans is that they’re mammals, and otherwise evolved from completely different types of creatures suited to a wildly different ecological niche. You couldn’t get a blood transfusion from an elf anymore than you could from a raccoon. The fact that elf-human hybrids exist probably has more to do with wonky magic shit than anything biological.

[redshiftsinger]

My personal favorite fantasy-world theory is the one where, ok, every race has it’s THING right? Like every race has its own variety of innate magic. Elves have moon magic, dwarves have metal magic, gnomes have rock magic, dryads have tree magic, mermaids have water magic… except then there’s humans. Who have no magic innate to their race. Sure they can learn some and become sorcerers or witches or whatever, but they’re not just BORN with it like all the other races are.   But the one thing everyone somehow ignores is that you pretty much never see an elf/dwarf hybrid running around. You see half-elves, you see half-dwarves, half-orcs, half-dragons, etc, sure, but what’s the other half? The other half is always human. To the point that if you ever did see an elf/dwarf hybrid, you’d have to wonder if at least one of their parents was already half-human. 

Humans are the one race with the ability to interbreed with all the others. Human magic is sex magic. 

[melissasasina]

So...

In a D&D facebook group I’m part of, someone shared a great post from Reddit…

…and I seriously couldn’t resist drawing this…

This was fun. ^_^

[vorchagirl]

Call of Cthulhu by Dicey Dungeons

[bardmau5]

[nscosplay]

Hello there, Its not very often I try to plug myself in this fashion, but I’m going to need some help in covering some veterinary bills. Last thursday, I found a small tumor on my cats tail. While I’m still waiting for pathology tests, the vet thinks its Melanoma, due to its black color in nature.

Doing research online, costs are looking at 300 to $700 total, depending on if its going to have to be skin grafted off if malignant, or lazered off if benign.

Right now I don’t want to make a gofundme, because my cat is my responsibility, and I’m more than willing to work for him. But looking at the difference in cost of surgeries, I feel like the rug got pulled out from under me.

If you’re able to support, I have an etsy store with fan made merch. Any orders over $30 are able to take an additional 20% off to help out with shipping. (code is CONCRUNCH. Made it originally for Katsucon)

https://www.etsy.com/shop/NSCosplay739?ref=seller-platform-mcnav I’m also able to do small based commissions right now (embroidery only)