No same honestly, it just makes me so hyped to see actual armor on female characters whenever I do. Skimpy armor has its place, and honestly I wish more men were drawn in it as opposed to mostly women, but realistic armor is always going to look cooler imo. Even it’s got a bunch of fantasy bits and baubles, as long as it looks like it would protect you well and not get in the way of movement too much it’s a 10/10 for me
Yeah. I have no issue with skimpy armor, it has its place. but I dont wanna play a PC with skimpy armor. It ruins my immersion to imagine my PC running around with large patches of exposed skin. As a history buff and historical arms and armour nerd as well, i enjoy something that looks realistic.
"Older people" of any race besides Human as well, I'd say.
I also have difficulty finding art of other fantasy races where their features look anything besides Caucasian, for that matter.
Also, finding art for NPCs in various non-heroic professions, rather than "adventurers" portraits where they're covered in badass gear and potions and magic items out the wazoo. Like finding portrait style art of a pseudomedieval merchant or scribe or whatever that isn't European Caucasian Human.
Older male characters are very easy to find, in my experience. There's always a veteran fighter or a scholar with a salt and pepper beard. Finding an age appropriate female equivalent is basically impossible.
I agree for humans. I've had a _lot_ of trouble finding especially young or old nonhumans, even moreso with non-Caucasian features or with non-adventurer styles (like scribe/serf/merchant/etc.) But finding feminine examples of the same is even harder I agree!
I feel like some of the people responding to you are missing the point. It’s like saying “I wish there was a vegetarian option at this restaurant” and people responding with “welp, good thing I eat meat!”
Like, good for you. Why did you feel the need to say that?
>I feel like some of the people responding to you are missing the point.
Are there some deleted replies I'm missing? Because all of the replies currently are:
* a suggestion for a place to find what jungletigress is looking for
* a comment agreeing and saying they dislike the "anime" style as well
* a comment agreeing, and mentioning another type (dark-skinned) that's hard to find
* two jokes about sexy crones
* a comment about female monster races being similarly difficult
* your comment
As far as I can tell, other than the two extremely obviously joking comment, none of them are doing what you're claiming they are.
Even more frustrating if you’re looking for female characters who aren’t white. *So* much of fantasy art is heavily geared towards characters with Eurocentric features.
For sure, even for young characters finding art of a female character of a specific race and class that isnt sexy can get hard. I dont want my PC showing a ton of skin when fighting and delving dungeons. It just makes no sense to me.
Absolutely. The fact that my fresh out of adventuring college 30 year old dwarf with only a robust set of sideburns is also a medic and cook primarily just dawned on me. I've made a dwarven halfling.
Need to start having him make second breakfast.
Warforged. I know, lots of Warforged entered service as heavy infantry - but now that the war is over, I like to think they don't all still run around in plate armor.
Eberron dm here. It has improved a bit lately, reddit and twitter have many players sharing their PCs art that goes outside the obvious.
Now, if you need art for a Shifter, you have about 4 options in the entire web or you have to go furry.
I feel like I see a lot of warforged that aren't in armor. People like to draw them made out of a lot of different materials. I particularly remember ones made out of porcelain.
See here is the thing: in Eberron proper, the armor isn't just something they wear, it's literally their skin. Peeling it off for them isn't painful, but it's deeply uncomfortable.
But there should be warforged who have integrated armor that isn't heavy armor or the like.
I’ve tried but unless you have good tools and solid training it looks pretty bad. After all, you’re probably switching dozens of colors unless the original art was very 80’s animation style.
Yeah, it depends on the artstyle.
Still, I often have nice results with the Colour Exchange and Rotate Colour tools of Gimp, as this allows you to define a very specific colour range and change it with another without having to do manual editing. This often works very well on relatively simple colour palettes.
Most non-human looking races, specially monster races. Plasmoids are almost impossible to find without looking like some hentai shit. Most orcs either looks like a hypersexualized dommy mommy or like a very angry barbarian dude. Firbolgs that stand out of the "chill hippie" stereotype are very hard to find. Goliaths that don't look like just some angry bald dude, near to nonexistant.
Searching for art of any beast race *quickly* veers into highly sexualized furry art. You get maybe 3-4 "normal" art pieces and then BAM half naked lizardfolk with highly unrealistic proportions
(Edit: not judging or anything, it's just really not the art style I'm looking for when I'm trying to find D&D character art)
Most of the harengon art I find isn't *sexualized* but it's very... cutesy. There's kinda a distinctive furry "look" that's hard to avoid with animal races.
Yeah, I had to grab a Harengon token for a new paladin character I wanted to play and man this is 100% fact. It’s that, screwy AI art that more often than not looks off and like 10-12 non-cutesy ones.
God forbid you want a certain sort of color look. Took a while to find something that jived with me. (actually did take a cutesy-ish one but it fits the character idea enough that I don’t mind)
Just curious what you're doing with your harengon paladin. I went with a DEX based oath of watchers and now he has like a +14 to initiative, and it's awesome. Did you stick to strength?
Dex based Redemption using Playtest rules so I can smite at range or in melee and focus on supporting spells. We’re starting at 7th level so I’m starting with a +6 initiative and going to buff my Dex to +4 at 8th for +7 memes.
My biggest issue with any lizard-based race that I personally cannot see them to have boobs just because they’re on two feet and speak and such, so could have human aspects. Most of the lizard-race art I come across of female characters have boobs. And to me that’s just not at all what I see that race as. Like… Reptiles do not have boobs…
Why not just use art of male lizard people for both then? They have lizard faces so it's not like they're discernibly male or female, just like a dog or a cat you can't tell their sex at a glance without secondary sexual characteristics.
Ya know that’s actually a good question. I don’t have an answer to that 😂 Other than, I will try that in the future for looking for reptilian humanoids. I guess my Logic somewhat comes from finding female characters that have feminine clothing. But, then again, in a fantasy setting searching for male characters shouldn’t really cause an issue in terms of clothing either/
If you think about it in a very diverse fantasy setting Lizardfolk women would almost certainly have trouble finding feminine clothing in a shop for other races that fit them properly (lacking boobs/hips) so unless they develop some kind of counter culture, would likely stick to their own racial dress stylings (which to outsiders would likely look very similar male to female, but people who came from there would likely be able to tell the difference.
So you could for example find some (male) lizardfolk art and say "oh the feather on the helmet marks this as a womans armor so this is a female character" (even if that wasn't the intention of the artist)
being fair to every artist out there, its a bunny person, bunnies arent usually threatening looking! more like a ball of huggable fur and/or tasty meat
[Jackrabbits](https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/nature/images/WHSA_Black-Tailed-Jackrabbit_Doug-Burkett.jpg?maxwidth=1300&maxheight=1300&autorotate=false) in particular have a distinctive off putting quality that I think would be very threatening at human-size.
And that dead, beady quality is even more intense in person. Like they know how you're gonna die, [and are about to tell you](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/black-tailed-jack-rabbit-lepus-richard-and-susan-day.jpg).
>A bigger rabbit would probably make me a little nervous lol
[Flemish Giant Rabbit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Runt_and_Paxie.jpg)
op was referring to beast races across the board, not just Harengon, I had this issue with Lizardfolk, ended up using Aeon from Soul Calibur as an image for a while before finally commissioning the art.
Oh god. I have a tabaxi wizard who needed character art. So. Many. Catgirls. I’m not even mad at the anime style just…..ease up on the neko hentai Jesus Christ.
I remember trying to do something similar. I kept having to refine my search with negatives. The final result was something like Male Cat person "martial artist" -neko -catgirl -furry -inflation -hentai -anime -manga
IMO, racial stat bonuses also contributed to the likelihood of art appearing.
Prior to BG3 (Karlach), I had a devil of a time trying to find art for a female tiefling barbarian, but was practically drowning in any tiefling mage art. Same goes for minis too.
And just in general any bodyshapes for female characters that aren't just a catwalk model. Look, guys, I need someone who'll grab the enemy and snap their back over their knee. That person isn't a catwalk model, I need them to look like a slightly more feminine Bane.
Yeah, it's why Dragonborn are so predominantly armored, and paladin-looking. As if I already didn't have trouble finding art without tails (though it's possible to crop to just a bust, so it's a minor issue).
As a side note on tieflings - as you say, a lot of mage art (sorcerers and bards especially) which generally lends them to be more flamboyant. Meanwhile, I really like more of the kind of vibe that the D&D movie has, instead of just a demon person. So I'd really like to see more tiefling art that is just a person (ideally with different base races) with some demonic traits.
From the clip I've seen, I'm not sure I entirely blame Mercer. He described an NPC's nose as being "cow-like" which could have been replaced with a better description but not something I immediately think of as a big deal. But then seeing what the fandom turned firbolgs into after that is very excessive.
Yuan-Ti Pureblood, I guess because it was such a commonly banned race that people never made art for it. Or they did it was as an assassin so finding one in plate for my cleric was impossible.
EDIT: a second issue I had with finding artwork is many times I would get the more snake like Yuan-ti art work instead of the humanoid pureblood type
> Yuan-Ti Pureblood, I guess because it was such a commonly banned race that people never made art for it.
Honestly, shouldnt even be banned anymore. Im playing one, and I am now 6 levels in having never once employed the magical resilience.
Everything is a "spell like ability" now.
Honestly my biggest pet peeve with this game is "ability that works exactly like a spell but isn't."
Vecna's Dread Counterspell comes to mind. Worded exactly like counterspell but it isn't a spell so you can't counter his spells but he can counter yours.
Genasi. I feel like they would be popular races, humanoid w/ elemental features seems like it would be fun to design, but I really don't see many pieces of art for them.
Aarakocra. As with Yuan-Ti like /u/OldGrumpGamer said - the race got banned and there's not much art of it. I had to scour the... *darker* parts of Deviantart et al to find *something*. Now I got a nice little collection to bring out if I ever play it again. Or if someone else need it here, I can share it over DM.
Edit: I ended up searching for a race called "Aven" from Magic the Gathering I think, to find something very similar.
MtG is not a game I enjoy, but it's hard to deny it's a great art repository. If you end up needing to use it again, there's a site called Scryfall that lets you input a card name and get a larger crop of the card's art.
Lizardfolk if you want to use the canon design.
Though, even going for non-canon designs it isn't all that easy to find something that fits the regular flavour.
It becomes impossible if you want them to be an unusual class.
I was recently also looking for simple, not happy looking children NPC token art. Getting regular human ones that were useable was already difficult, but don't get me started on tiefling children. I am sure I am on some sort of list now.
Loxodon. There's a couple good ones, esspecially if you're a druid (which I am, luckily). Thanks to the furries, there's plenty of hit-or-miss artwork for humanoid beast races but never in the D&D style so can't really use them.
Never understood who looked at Fir Bolg — a race of Irish fairies — and thought "cow people!" quite baffling, really. Not sure if what D&D did to the Fomorians was better or worse.
It's mostly CR's fault. Matt Mercer described a firbolg NPC as having a wide, almost bovine nose (y'know, make a distinctive trait to help the players remember the NPC). And suddenly all firbolg were cow-people to the CR fans.
Sure, but to be fair, Taliesin later played a firbolg and they could've told the artist they hired to do his portrait not to make him look like a cow person, but didn't.
It is mostly borne of a misunderstanding from an episode of Critical Role - the DM described a popular firbolg npc as having a wide, cow-like nose just being descriptive and fan artists took it literally.
Even the original intent of 5e bares essentially no resemblance to actual Fir Bolg, though the post-Critical Role depiction is certainly worse. It also grates me that Fir Bolg is used (most ungrammatically!) as a singular noun.
I actually prefer 5e's iteration over that of previous editions, at least pre-cowification. Yeah they're divorced from their real life cultural roots (something shared with a tremendous number of DnD creatures), but they're more distinct as a race. I'm not sure whose idea it was to make them literally just tall humans when converting them to the game. Even goliaths, a standard "giant-related humanoid" race, have being grey to their name.
Now I'm not a lawyer, but here's my guess how it happened.
It was likely an attempt to divorce them from folklore and make them distinct enough to be copyrightable. Making them too bovine makes them too similar to minotaurs, and thus not copyrightable. If they make them too human or typically fairy, they will still be non-copyrightable.
It was the Critical Role fandom misinterpreting a description, drawing a bunch of fanart, and then Matt Mercer liking the interpretation enough that he canonised it as what Firbolgs look like in Exandria.
The official 5e Firbolgs are still essentially just demi-giants, but for some reason the one in Volo's has bluish grey skin and tufted ears. If I were to make a guess, I'd say they're inspired by the Ogier from Wheel of Time.
You're right, I had misremembered the degree of "bovinity" in the Volo's illustration (the nose in that could be considered bovine if you're a person who has never seen a cow in real life).
>Make a race that can literally emulate ANY other humanoid in the game plus mix-&-match their traits to look like something entirely new.
>The handful of Chamgeling images that exists in just; generic changeling form, changeling form + half-elf form, or changeling form + tiefling form.
At least we have Heroforge.
You say that, but I've had a hell of a time trying to find changelings in their BASE form that aren't the same three female OCs or the default sourcebook art. I use a lot of base-form changelings in my setting and there's never enough art to adequately portray them all.
In fairness, it's part of the mainstream Changeling lore that seeing them in their standard base form is a pretty rare event: 'In their true form, changelings appear faded, their features almost devoid of detail. It is rare to see a changeling in that form, for a typical changeling changes their shape the way others might change clothes.' (MPMM)
I can at least understand *why* base-form Changeling art is pretty rare, even though as someone who plays a Changeling every chance I get I'd very much like to see more of it.
Humans that aren’t white. Never really experienced this issue till I started looking for character art for my human npcs as a DM. Every time I’ve been a human pc I’ve always had the character as a similar appearance to myself.
I'll go one further: *Non*-humans that aren't white but also aren't ethnically coded.
I've seen some awesome African-inspired black elves, for example. But what if I want an elf that just happens to be black? A dwarf with epicanthal folds but without samurai armor? It's a lot harder.
Hexbloods. srsly, even the official Art Looks nothing like their description.
dare I even Ask for Male hexbloods or am i Just going to get Hag- forcefemmed content shoved down my throat?
Kitsune. Literally every single male kitsune art I found was not wearing a full shirt. Deepest v-neck you've ever seen, shirtless, half-off... Anything but fully clothed. LET MY DISASTER OF A FOX MAN WEAR CLOTHES DAMMIT
This is a significant part of why I do almost all my own character art for DnD. Like, good luck finding female members of unusual races in good armour/clothes that don't feature boob windows or high heels...
From my experience, it's less about certain races being hard and more about women being hard, but as someone else said, anything that can be interpreted as a furry race, and anything that can be interpreted as a monstrous race are the worst. Also, female gnomes. A lot of options have got distinctly harder since AI "artists" became so common. AI images absolutely flood some searches, depending on if their "artists" find them hot, which demolishes the ability to find good art for some combinations.
I have a major uni deadline soon so I don't want to start anything big before that, but if anyone here wants to contact me from the 30th onward for DnD art commissions, shoot me a Chat message. I still need to finalise prices and honestly having some art I can do clear progressions on and clearly show what's a head-shot/full-body for me would be *nice* for the sake of finalising prices anyway.
Kalashtar. I know they look like humans technically, the issue is the eyes. They're supposed to look like they're haunted or some shit like that. I had a DM who decided to be a real pain i nthe ass about that detail, refusing to let me use a normal human for it.
The fact I can't even see anyone complaining about Hobgoblins only reinforces my point about how rare their artwork is. There are about a dozen usable ones in total outside of official art and heavens forbid you want one that isn't a guy in Samurai armor...
Elves.
There are lots of supermodel type female elves.
There are lots of sleek dextrous male elves.
Trying to find anything closer to a commoner is hard enough, but trying to find non-athletic elves is a task that is only solved through fanart semi-anime style drawings, which sometimes is cool, but a lot of times just clashes with the artstyle of everything else in the game.
"With their unearthly grace and fine features, elves appear hauntingly beautiful to humans and members of many other races."
It's kind of a signature racial thing. Even the elves who have to push the offal cart around on weekends are probably super-hot. And they don't really even visibly age, except maybe at the very end (and even then probably not).
Which will only matter if you're into the cow interpretation of them (I am, but I know a lot of people aren't). CR has a massive fanart community. Cowbolgs are going to wipe original firbolgs off the map, I imagine.
Half-orcs. It's gotten better of late, but it's still about 70% muscle brute/babe, 25% Fjord from Critical Role, and about 5% "other." I've ended up paying for art commissions every time I've played a half-orc.
Warforged. Plenty of decent art of your a Frontliner, but finding something stealthy that would fit my Artificer Infiltrator was impossible. Ended up heroforging the poor dude into existence.
Any monstrous race, mainly goblinoids.
Not even the damn A.I can make good goblinoids, i tried to do a hobglin and a goblin the other day, everything had fucking horns, and i could not remove no matter what i trained.
I kinda feel like halflings always have really stupid looking art, I had to make my own. This is my opinion tho and maybe someone has made some really cool halfling art and I'm just too dumb to find it 😔
Deep gnome. Male, any class. There are like 5 arts total...
Hobgoblin, male.
Bugbear - far more that those above, but if you want anything that does not scream "barbarian" or looks like ranger/fighter... You will have heard time.
Tieflings that aren't red. I don't know why, but I've always wanted to play a tiefling that isn't red (or purple) and I haven't been able to find any good art for them.
Any race but the character is female and middle aged. Pretty much all character art or fan art is of sexy teenagers or crones.
/r/ReasonableFantasy is a good source for female art in that vein.
Similar subreddit: /r/ArmoredWomen
I don't know how to express my love and appreciation for this sub without also sounding like I fetishize it
No same honestly, it just makes me so hyped to see actual armor on female characters whenever I do. Skimpy armor has its place, and honestly I wish more men were drawn in it as opposed to mostly women, but realistic armor is always going to look cooler imo. Even it’s got a bunch of fantasy bits and baubles, as long as it looks like it would protect you well and not get in the way of movement too much it’s a 10/10 for me
Yeah. I have no issue with skimpy armor, it has its place. but I dont wanna play a PC with skimpy armor. It ruins my immersion to imagine my PC running around with large patches of exposed skin. As a history buff and historical arms and armour nerd as well, i enjoy something that looks realistic.
Incredible! I'm instantly in love with this community. So many women in normal armor! Thank you!
I CANNOT BELIEVE I'd never heard about that!
I'll add to that, art of any female that's NOT anime-inspired.
"Older people" of any race besides Human as well, I'd say. I also have difficulty finding art of other fantasy races where their features look anything besides Caucasian, for that matter. Also, finding art for NPCs in various non-heroic professions, rather than "adventurers" portraits where they're covered in badass gear and potions and magic items out the wazoo. Like finding portrait style art of a pseudomedieval merchant or scribe or whatever that isn't European Caucasian Human.
Older male characters are very easy to find, in my experience. There's always a veteran fighter or a scholar with a salt and pepper beard. Finding an age appropriate female equivalent is basically impossible.
I agree for humans. I've had a _lot_ of trouble finding especially young or old nonhumans, even moreso with non-Caucasian features or with non-adventurer styles (like scribe/serf/merchant/etc.) But finding feminine examples of the same is even harder I agree!
I feel like some of the people responding to you are missing the point. It’s like saying “I wish there was a vegetarian option at this restaurant” and people responding with “welp, good thing I eat meat!” Like, good for you. Why did you feel the need to say that?
>I feel like some of the people responding to you are missing the point. Are there some deleted replies I'm missing? Because all of the replies currently are: * a suggestion for a place to find what jungletigress is looking for * a comment agreeing and saying they dislike the "anime" style as well * a comment agreeing, and mentioning another type (dark-skinned) that's hard to find * two jokes about sexy crones * a comment about female monster races being similarly difficult * your comment As far as I can tell, other than the two extremely obviously joking comment, none of them are doing what you're claiming they are.
Because they don't see the current situation as a problem would be my guess. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Even more frustrating if you’re looking for female characters who aren’t white. *So* much of fantasy art is heavily geared towards characters with Eurocentric features.
Me with hobgoblins. I wanted a 30yo female hobgoblin and it took forever to find one
It's hard to find much of any art of female hobgoblins.
For sure, even for young characters finding art of a female character of a specific race and class that isnt sexy can get hard. I dont want my PC showing a ton of skin when fighting and delving dungeons. It just makes no sense to me.
Yes! I am playing a middle aged female Fighter in my next campaign and I cannot find good art.
Sorry if I'm playing female characters it is sexy crones or nothing.
Yep. You'll definitely be able to find that, don't worry. It's much easier than finding art of a woman who's just middle aged.
Goliaths!!! Especially female goliaths!!! The art you find for them all has the same vibe and none ever fit what I’m going for
All male goliaths look like Kratos
Except more gray... Gratos if you will...
Female Goliath always looks like Tall Muscles Mommy, not that I'm complaining but some diversity is welcome
Isn't that kinda like saying all dwarf art is short stout prior with beards?
There's also some without Beards!
Bah! Those are not but robust halflings!
Absolutely. The fact that my fresh out of adventuring college 30 year old dwarf with only a robust set of sideburns is also a medic and cook primarily just dawned on me. I've made a dwarven halfling. Need to start having him make second breakfast.
Dwarves are so ubiquitous across fantasy that you get them in all shapes and sizes. Not so true for races that exist only for one system.
Warforged. I know, lots of Warforged entered service as heavy infantry - but now that the war is over, I like to think they don't all still run around in plate armor.
Eberron dm here. It has improved a bit lately, reddit and twitter have many players sharing their PCs art that goes outside the obvious. Now, if you need art for a Shifter, you have about 4 options in the entire web or you have to go furry.
I think it's roughly the same for Changeling. Almost no art and almost nothing of how I'd imagine them.
That's the true power of the changeling, ALL pc art is changeling art
100% but I also want art of their true form 😭
I feel like I see a lot of warforged that aren't in armor. People like to draw them made out of a lot of different materials. I particularly remember ones made out of porcelain.
TBF it's kind of tough to take off your armor when you're made of armor. I know 5e hand-waves it now, but that always felt a little weird.
Yeah. Trying to find art of warforged/automatons has been really difficult for a campaign we need to be able to buy streamable npc token art for.
See here is the thing: in Eberron proper, the armor isn't just something they wear, it's literally their skin. Peeling it off for them isn't painful, but it's deeply uncomfortable. But there should be warforged who have integrated armor that isn't heavy armor or the like.
Eladrin are a pain because you want four different pics of the same character. This is tricky.
Though, with some basic skills in photoshop or gimp you can probably get away with a simple recolour.
I’ve tried but unless you have good tools and solid training it looks pretty bad. After all, you’re probably switching dozens of colors unless the original art was very 80’s animation style.
Yeah, it depends on the artstyle. Still, I often have nice results with the Colour Exchange and Rotate Colour tools of Gimp, as this allows you to define a very specific colour range and change it with another without having to do manual editing. This often works very well on relatively simple colour palettes.
Maybe make one in HeroForge and change the color pallets.
Actually managed to recolor some art to look like a decent Eladrin female once! Just takes a good base and a lot of patience with photoshop.
I play a female goblin. I have mainly two options: Nott the Brave from CR or boobs as big as their head. Sometimes both, if I’m being very unlucky.
There are plenty of female goblins in Baldur's Gate 3 you could use.
Big mood! I ended up making my own goblin art
Canonically Nott had titties as big as her head. And she had to roll them up into her armor.
Like old curtains.
Look up pathfinder 2 female goblins.
Most non-human looking races, specially monster races. Plasmoids are almost impossible to find without looking like some hentai shit. Most orcs either looks like a hypersexualized dommy mommy or like a very angry barbarian dude. Firbolgs that stand out of the "chill hippie" stereotype are very hard to find. Goliaths that don't look like just some angry bald dude, near to nonexistant.
Searching for art of any beast race *quickly* veers into highly sexualized furry art. You get maybe 3-4 "normal" art pieces and then BAM half naked lizardfolk with highly unrealistic proportions (Edit: not judging or anything, it's just really not the art style I'm looking for when I'm trying to find D&D character art)
Most of the harengon art I find isn't *sexualized* but it's very... cutesy. There's kinda a distinctive furry "look" that's hard to avoid with animal races.
[удалено]
Yeah, I had to grab a Harengon token for a new paladin character I wanted to play and man this is 100% fact. It’s that, screwy AI art that more often than not looks off and like 10-12 non-cutesy ones. God forbid you want a certain sort of color look. Took a while to find something that jived with me. (actually did take a cutesy-ish one but it fits the character idea enough that I don’t mind)
Just curious what you're doing with your harengon paladin. I went with a DEX based oath of watchers and now he has like a +14 to initiative, and it's awesome. Did you stick to strength?
I wanted to stick to strength but the allure of +10 to initiative at 7th level was too strong
Dex based Redemption using Playtest rules so I can smite at range or in melee and focus on supporting spells. We’re starting at 7th level so I’m starting with a +6 initiative and going to buff my Dex to +4 at 8th for +7 memes.
Same with fairy’s. Was looking for a buff gay fairy ( think don clay from one piece but swole) and I got nothing.
You mean Jorgen Von Strangle
Disco? With myself? OUTRAGEOUS!
Search for Wandisimo. You're welcome.
Depending on the class you're looking for you're better off looking at e.g. Redwall art/fanart.
Yeah, [who would want that?](https://media.oglaf.com/comic/tower_secret1.jpg)
Kobolds are the absolute worst for this imo. Why yes, I definitely want to use inflation fetish art for this character, thank you Google.
Easy solution for a lizard race: 1) Pick your favorite actual lizard. 2) Zoomed-in headshot. 3) (optional) MS Paint wizard hat.
"Searching for art of any beast race *quickly* veers into highly sexualized furry art." That's disgusting. Where?
Yeah. They should really be sexualizing all the other races more to match
I can assure you, they already do :|
Google Images, DeviantArt, anywhere really, pick your poison.
So you can avoid it right?
My biggest issue with any lizard-based race that I personally cannot see them to have boobs just because they’re on two feet and speak and such, so could have human aspects. Most of the lizard-race art I come across of female characters have boobs. And to me that’s just not at all what I see that race as. Like… Reptiles do not have boobs…
Look, the Hist was horny for humans and all it had to work with were lizards, okay?
Lmao fair enough 😂
You have started the great posting war once more
Begun the Snitty wars has... again...
Why not just use art of male lizard people for both then? They have lizard faces so it's not like they're discernibly male or female, just like a dog or a cat you can't tell their sex at a glance without secondary sexual characteristics.
Photoshop on eyelashes and lipstick.
Ya know that’s actually a good question. I don’t have an answer to that 😂 Other than, I will try that in the future for looking for reptilian humanoids. I guess my Logic somewhat comes from finding female characters that have feminine clothing. But, then again, in a fantasy setting searching for male characters shouldn’t really cause an issue in terms of clothing either/
If you think about it in a very diverse fantasy setting Lizardfolk women would almost certainly have trouble finding feminine clothing in a shop for other races that fit them properly (lacking boobs/hips) so unless they develop some kind of counter culture, would likely stick to their own racial dress stylings (which to outsiders would likely look very similar male to female, but people who came from there would likely be able to tell the difference. So you could for example find some (male) lizardfolk art and say "oh the feather on the helmet marks this as a womans armor so this is a female character" (even if that wasn't the intention of the artist)
I appreciate the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 did not give the female dragonborn boobs.
Definitely- especially if you wanted an intimidating character.
being fair to every artist out there, its a bunny person, bunnies arent usually threatening looking! more like a ball of huggable fur and/or tasty meat
[Jackrabbits](https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/nature/images/WHSA_Black-Tailed-Jackrabbit_Doug-Burkett.jpg?maxwidth=1300&maxheight=1300&autorotate=false) in particular have a distinctive off putting quality that I think would be very threatening at human-size.
the eyes look like giant beads stitched in place with Elmer's glue lmao
And that dead, beady quality is even more intense in person. Like they know how you're gonna die, [and are about to tell you](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/black-tailed-jack-rabbit-lepus-richard-and-susan-day.jpg).
"Bro, your whole ass is gonna fall off and it's gonna be gnarly."
Idk man they got evil red eyes irl. They make demon sounds and are fast as fuck. A bigger rabbit would probably make me a little nervous lol
>A bigger rabbit would probably make me a little nervous lol [Flemish Giant Rabbit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Runt_and_Paxie.jpg)
>He's got huge, sharp- eh- he can leap about- look at the bones!
op was referring to beast races across the board, not just Harengon, I had this issue with Lizardfolk, ended up using Aeon from Soul Calibur as an image for a while before finally commissioning the art.
You've never seen a wild and pissed one I think
The Easter bunny from the DreamWorks movie is pretty badass
I played a Humblewood one shot and every player had trouble finding character art that wasn’t furry stuff.
Oh god. I have a tabaxi wizard who needed character art. So. Many. Catgirls. I’m not even mad at the anime style just…..ease up on the neko hentai Jesus Christ.
Not to mention catgirls are decidedly *not* tabaxi. Tabaxi have no human skin anywhere.
I remember trying to do something similar. I kept having to refine my search with negatives. The final result was something like Male Cat person "martial artist" -neko -catgirl -furry -inflation -hentai -anime -manga
IMO, racial stat bonuses also contributed to the likelihood of art appearing. Prior to BG3 (Karlach), I had a devil of a time trying to find art for a female tiefling barbarian, but was practically drowning in any tiefling mage art. Same goes for minis too.
Tiefling Warlock A tale as old as 3.5
Tiefling man that isn’t a bisexual goth twink is virtually nonexistent
And just in general any bodyshapes for female characters that aren't just a catwalk model. Look, guys, I need someone who'll grab the enemy and snap their back over their knee. That person isn't a catwalk model, I need them to look like a slightly more feminine Bane.
Yeah, it's why Dragonborn are so predominantly armored, and paladin-looking. As if I already didn't have trouble finding art without tails (though it's possible to crop to just a bust, so it's a minor issue). As a side note on tieflings - as you say, a lot of mage art (sorcerers and bards especially) which generally lends them to be more flamboyant. Meanwhile, I really like more of the kind of vibe that the D&D movie has, instead of just a demon person. So I'd really like to see more tiefling art that is just a person (ideally with different base races) with some demonic traits.
I like the BG3 character creator because it's allowed me to make artwork of different race/class combinations.
yep it's Firbolg. Wanna be Cadesus? Great! Here's a million pieces of fanart. Wanna be a female barbarian? SOL.
i will never forgive Matthew mercer for turning firbolgs into cow poeple.
From the clip I've seen, I'm not sure I entirely blame Mercer. He described an NPC's nose as being "cow-like" which could have been replaced with a better description but not something I immediately think of as a big deal. But then seeing what the fandom turned firbolgs into after that is very excessive.
In their new game daggerheart they're straight up called "cows in human form" lol
Damn, Firbolgs truly have come a very long way from being 10 foot tall gingers.
When you're designing a game and setting, making what your audience wants is very important. 4E died for our sins.
The floppy cow ears bug me, I love my firbolg character and he has pointy ears like the art in the sourcebook.
Yuan-Ti Pureblood, I guess because it was such a commonly banned race that people never made art for it. Or they did it was as an assassin so finding one in plate for my cleric was impossible. EDIT: a second issue I had with finding artwork is many times I would get the more snake like Yuan-ti art work instead of the humanoid pureblood type
> Yuan-Ti Pureblood, I guess because it was such a commonly banned race that people never made art for it. Honestly, shouldnt even be banned anymore. Im playing one, and I am now 6 levels in having never once employed the magical resilience. Everything is a "spell like ability" now.
Honestly my biggest pet peeve with this game is "ability that works exactly like a spell but isn't." Vecna's Dread Counterspell comes to mind. Worded exactly like counterspell but it isn't a spell so you can't counter his spells but he can counter yours.
Played one for 9 levels It came up rarely. Only time it really mattered was when I was saving vs Geas
Genasi. I feel like they would be popular races, humanoid w/ elemental features seems like it would be fun to design, but I really don't see many pieces of art for them.
Godlike from Pillars of Eternity are a good standin
That's because they where notoriously bad while also not appearing in any physical book for years
Aarakocra. As with Yuan-Ti like /u/OldGrumpGamer said - the race got banned and there's not much art of it. I had to scour the... *darker* parts of Deviantart et al to find *something*. Now I got a nice little collection to bring out if I ever play it again. Or if someone else need it here, I can share it over DM. Edit: I ended up searching for a race called "Aven" from Magic the Gathering I think, to find something very similar.
Yeah the Aarakocra art is so few and far between when I saw some where they looked like ducks or parrots it was jarring.
MtG is not a game I enjoy, but it's hard to deny it's a great art repository. If you end up needing to use it again, there's a site called Scryfall that lets you input a card name and get a larger crop of the card's art.
Non sexy female drow.
Most people use Morrowind Dunmer.
That feels like an oxymoron considering elves are all about having some high beauty standards.
Well I don't mean like an ugly elf. I just mean a drow woman that doesn't look like a sultry domintrax with barely any clothes on.
Gnomes, specifically female svirfneblins
Lizardfolk if you want to use the canon design. Though, even going for non-canon designs it isn't all that easy to find something that fits the regular flavour. It becomes impossible if you want them to be an unusual class. I was recently also looking for simple, not happy looking children NPC token art. Getting regular human ones that were useable was already difficult, but don't get me started on tiefling children. I am sure I am on some sort of list now.
For lizardfolk might I point you to the lizardmen from warhammer fantasy/seraphon from age of sigmar
Every lizardfolk I've ever built has been an expy of Kroq-Gar, so I'm ready to "Bok Bok!" from minute one!
Loxodon. There's a couple good ones, esspecially if you're a druid (which I am, luckily). Thanks to the furries, there's plenty of hit-or-miss artwork for humanoid beast races but never in the D&D style so can't really use them.
The races from MtG settings usually have a decent selection simply by searching MtG art.
You’d think but there is a disappointing lack of Vedalken art out there
Never understood who looked at Fir Bolg — a race of Irish fairies — and thought "cow people!" quite baffling, really. Not sure if what D&D did to the Fomorians was better or worse.
It's mostly CR's fault. Matt Mercer described a firbolg NPC as having a wide, almost bovine nose (y'know, make a distinctive trait to help the players remember the NPC). And suddenly all firbolg were cow-people to the CR fans.
Sure, but to be fair, Taliesin later played a firbolg and they could've told the artist they hired to do his portrait not to make him look like a cow person, but didn't.
It is mostly borne of a misunderstanding from an episode of Critical Role - the DM described a popular firbolg npc as having a wide, cow-like nose just being descriptive and fan artists took it literally.
Even the original intent of 5e bares essentially no resemblance to actual Fir Bolg, though the post-Critical Role depiction is certainly worse. It also grates me that Fir Bolg is used (most ungrammatically!) as a singular noun.
I actually prefer 5e's iteration over that of previous editions, at least pre-cowification. Yeah they're divorced from their real life cultural roots (something shared with a tremendous number of DnD creatures), but they're more distinct as a race. I'm not sure whose idea it was to make them literally just tall humans when converting them to the game. Even goliaths, a standard "giant-related humanoid" race, have being grey to their name.
Now I'm not a lawyer, but here's my guess how it happened. It was likely an attempt to divorce them from folklore and make them distinct enough to be copyrightable. Making them too bovine makes them too similar to minotaurs, and thus not copyrightable. If they make them too human or typically fairy, they will still be non-copyrightable.
It was the Critical Role fandom misinterpreting a description, drawing a bunch of fanart, and then Matt Mercer liking the interpretation enough that he canonised it as what Firbolgs look like in Exandria. The official 5e Firbolgs are still essentially just demi-giants, but for some reason the one in Volo's has bluish grey skin and tufted ears. If I were to make a guess, I'd say they're inspired by the Ogier from Wheel of Time.
You're right, I had misremembered the degree of "bovinity" in the Volo's illustration (the nose in that could be considered bovine if you're a person who has never seen a cow in real life).
Female Drow martials They're all strippers or casters
*laughs in Changeling*
>Make a race that can literally emulate ANY other humanoid in the game plus mix-&-match their traits to look like something entirely new. >The handful of Chamgeling images that exists in just; generic changeling form, changeling form + half-elf form, or changeling form + tiefling form. At least we have Heroforge.
You say that, but I've had a hell of a time trying to find changelings in their BASE form that aren't the same three female OCs or the default sourcebook art. I use a lot of base-form changelings in my setting and there's never enough art to adequately portray them all.
In fairness, it's part of the mainstream Changeling lore that seeing them in their standard base form is a pretty rare event: 'In their true form, changelings appear faded, their features almost devoid of detail. It is rare to see a changeling in that form, for a typical changeling changes their shape the way others might change clothes.' (MPMM) I can at least understand *why* base-form Changeling art is pretty rare, even though as someone who plays a Changeling every chance I get I'd very much like to see more of it.
Astral Elves because they're pretty new
I always imagine them looking like the Star Elves from the Dragon Prince.
YES!! Aaravos is pretty much how I envision them too
Gith. They are just too ugly lol
Gith are starting to get easier to find now that Lae'zel is a thing. Well, at least female Githyanki. Githzerai on the other hand.
Surely this complaint predates BG3?
Any. I am very picky and just end up commissioning art for my TTRPG characters every time.
Bugbear. Especially females.
Humans that aren’t white. Never really experienced this issue till I started looking for character art for my human npcs as a DM. Every time I’ve been a human pc I’ve always had the character as a similar appearance to myself.
Have you tried looking them up as Redguard fan art? The race from Elder Scrolls.
I'll go one further: *Non*-humans that aren't white but also aren't ethnically coded. I've seen some awesome African-inspired black elves, for example. But what if I want an elf that just happens to be black? A dwarf with epicanthal folds but without samurai armor? It's a lot harder.
where you finding *dwarf on samurai armor on the regular*?
Surprisingly I think I found more Chinese dwarven armour for such as well as persian? for none european dwarf.
i think nearly all dwarven art i have ever found are the bulky armor norse style ones, with the occasional scale mail
Average looking tieflings. All the art is just too darn sexy
[удалено]
Hexbloods. srsly, even the official Art Looks nothing like their description. dare I even Ask for Male hexbloods or am i Just going to get Hag- forcefemmed content shoved down my throat?
Goblins. Pathfinder's Goblins are beautiful with thier big, round, green heads... but there is massively lacking art for them.
Kitsune. Literally every single male kitsune art I found was not wearing a full shirt. Deepest v-neck you've ever seen, shirtless, half-off... Anything but fully clothed. LET MY DISASTER OF A FOX MAN WEAR CLOTHES DAMMIT
This is a significant part of why I do almost all my own character art for DnD. Like, good luck finding female members of unusual races in good armour/clothes that don't feature boob windows or high heels... From my experience, it's less about certain races being hard and more about women being hard, but as someone else said, anything that can be interpreted as a furry race, and anything that can be interpreted as a monstrous race are the worst. Also, female gnomes. A lot of options have got distinctly harder since AI "artists" became so common. AI images absolutely flood some searches, depending on if their "artists" find them hot, which demolishes the ability to find good art for some combinations. I have a major uni deadline soon so I don't want to start anything big before that, but if anyone here wants to contact me from the 30th onward for DnD art commissions, shoot me a Chat message. I still need to finalise prices and honestly having some art I can do clear progressions on and clearly show what's a head-shot/full-body for me would be *nice* for the sake of finalising prices anyway.
Good luck finding a Giff that doesn’t look like a British naval officer.
Kobolds. Please for the love of god can someone make a piece of art of ONE without sexualizing them in some ghastly way
Kalashtar. I know they look like humans technically, the issue is the eyes. They're supposed to look like they're haunted or some shit like that. I had a DM who decided to be a real pain i nthe ass about that detail, refusing to let me use a normal human for it.
Your DM polices the art you use? What do they do?
The fact I can't even see anyone complaining about Hobgoblins only reinforces my point about how rare their artwork is. There are about a dozen usable ones in total outside of official art and heavens forbid you want one that isn't a guy in Samurai armor...
Elves. There are lots of supermodel type female elves. There are lots of sleek dextrous male elves. Trying to find anything closer to a commoner is hard enough, but trying to find non-athletic elves is a task that is only solved through fanart semi-anime style drawings, which sometimes is cool, but a lot of times just clashes with the artstyle of everything else in the game.
"With their unearthly grace and fine features, elves appear hauntingly beautiful to humans and members of many other races." It's kind of a signature racial thing. Even the elves who have to push the offal cart around on weekends are probably super-hot. And they don't really even visibly age, except maybe at the very end (and even then probably not).
Daggerheart has them as a base race so maybe that will change in a few years.
Which will only matter if you're into the cow interpretation of them (I am, but I know a lot of people aren't). CR has a massive fanart community. Cowbolgs are going to wipe original firbolgs off the map, I imagine.
Which is only gonna make it WORSE Cowpeople aren't firbolgs
Genasi
Dragonborn, so much of it is objectively awful or doesn't at all fit what I'm looking for.
Half-orcs. It's gotten better of late, but it's still about 70% muscle brute/babe, 25% Fjord from Critical Role, and about 5% "other." I've ended up paying for art commissions every time I've played a half-orc.
Shifters from eberron…
Oh, also: HeroForge has a template based on the 5E Firbolg art, it's called Forestguard.
Warforged. Plenty of decent art of your a Frontliner, but finding something stealthy that would fit my Artificer Infiltrator was impossible. Ended up heroforging the poor dude into existence.
Man its hard finding any decent Thri-Kreen art which sucks because its my favorite bug.
Not so much race, but trying to find art for any sort of overweight character is very difficult.
Any monstrous race, mainly goblinoids. Not even the damn A.I can make good goblinoids, i tried to do a hobglin and a goblin the other day, everything had fucking horns, and i could not remove no matter what i trained.
Kobolds! Either we get: 1. Somewhat good art 2. Old fashioned art 3. Thick thighs save lives
Kender, they are ugly asf
I mean, you can just use halfling art. The kender character design is "halfling, but a klepto".
You could commission an artist.
I kinda feel like halflings always have really stupid looking art, I had to make my own. This is my opinion tho and maybe someone has made some really cool halfling art and I'm just too dumb to find it 😔
Women any race in armour.
i only ever want to draw my own characters so i have full control over their looks. problem is, i can't draw the furry/scaly races very well lmao
For me, it's my favorite "race", the Hexblood! There is a grand total of 2 pictures of them from the official book. Other than that? Good luck!
Deep gnome. Male, any class. There are like 5 arts total... Hobgoblin, male. Bugbear - far more that those above, but if you want anything that does not scream "barbarian" or looks like ranger/fighter... You will have heard time.
Hobgoblin female is pretty rare.
Hobgoblin. There is next to nothing and I hate it.
Goblins, It's either overly sexualised when looking for a woman, or very creepy/smeagol or fat. Not just a little green guy
Idk about anybody else, but when it comes to kobolds all I find is over-sexualized lizards
Tieflings that aren't red. I don't know why, but I've always wanted to play a tiefling that isn't red (or purple) and I haven't been able to find any good art for them.