Other Races At the DM’s option, players may choose almost any manner of being as a player character. For example, the Dark Sun® campaign allows players to run half-giant characters, dwarf/human crossbreeds, or feral halflings—all with ability scores ranging from 5 to 20 instead of 3 to 18. If a player has a specific character race from an unusual campaign world that he wishes to use, DMs can simply skip the selection of Racial Abilities and take the character race with all its benefits and hindrances exactly as it appears. Generally, players may not customize these unusual races, and they receive zero character points for selecting a nonstandard race .

For the DM’s convenience, a short list of common humanoid and monstrous character races is provided on page 42 , with standard abilities and hindrances. These creatures appear in The Complete Book of Humanoids and The Monstrous Manual™, and more detailed descriptions of their lifestyles and societies can be found in those books. A player can choose one of these races for his character if the DM agrees, but the character gains no additional character points in this step.

The races described here include: aarakocra, alaghi, bugbear, bullywug, centaur, flind, giff, githzerai, gnoll, goblin, hobgoblin, kobold, lizard man, minotaur, mongrelman, ogre, orc, satyr, swanmay, thrikreen , and wemic.

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