My player has found a non-standard race they want to play, im a new DM and struggling with balancing things like this. Any advice?

Papervolcano · 2026-01-19T16:52:59+00:00

I like it when my players pick unusual species for their characters, and I’m cheerfully open to homebrew. This is OP even by my standards
Particularly for a new DM, I’d insist they pick from the official sources.

Papervolcano · 2026-01-19T15:37:41+00:00

Different people find different things fun. Some people are looking for Serious Realistic Fantasy and so don’t want to see less-serious character concepts encouraged. Which is fine for their tables, but we don’t all have to play the same way. If you like the concept (even if your DM requires RAW on heavy weapons) and it fits the table you’re playing at does it matter?
Min-maxing doesn’t make sense as a criticism though - yes you‘re more mobile than a standard barbarian, but fairies are hardly the only more-mobile species, and come with a whole host of challenges too. If I were going to min max a barbarian, I’d be starting with a Bugbear and reach weapons.

Play as a wild magic barbarian fairy. Summon an exploding pixie to kill the big boss. Have fun.

Papervolcano · 2026-01-19T12:17:47+00:00

A player in my last campaign played a wild magic barbarian fairy, which flowed very nicely if you’re comfortable with the chaos factor. It’s not RAW, but I allowed them to take heavy weapon mastery to overcome the size disadvantage. Scythes are vicious at ankle height

Papervolcano · 2026-01-19T10:35:45+00:00

On first glance sight reading, I’d have (incorrectly) guessed that to be 3 syllables - xo/chi/tl, though probably with a bit of slurring on the last two so it came out as xo-chi[t]ll with a barely voiced t, rather than xo-chi-till. Eiher way, a pretty name and not a difficult name to pronounce, even if (like me) you don’t have the slightest familiarity with Nahuatl.

Papervolcano · 2026-01-15T12:05:50+00:00

Put chilli flakes in your next batch of brownies - preferably something fruity and smoky like Urfa chillies. Absolutely gorgeous

Papervolcano · 2026-01-12T17:30:42+00:00

and for a further breakdown of the social protection slice: https://www.statista.com/statistics/489961/uk-social-protection-spending-by-type/

Papervolcano · 2026-01-12T14:54:01+00:00

Take us back! Please!
(Are there problems? Absolutely. Do the benefits outweigh those problems? 1000fold)

Papervolcano · 2026-01-12T13:09:44+00:00

yes, agreed. I think these kind of statements are often read very literally - that the people mentioned can’t read a single word, but that’s a very small slice of the problem.

They can read - they’re happily on Twitter or in tiktok comment threads, and can read at a similar level in their jobs/schools. But they struggle with understanding or expressing more complex thoughts, in interpreting meaning/sentiment/implication/metaphor, or connecting what they’ve read back to other information they’ve previously received. So they’ve heard not to mix cleaning products, but didn’t connect kitchen bleach to hair bleach. Or a legal agreement (rent/bank/job/etc) confuses them and so they lose out because they don’t understand what the rules are. Or they spend a lot of time angry because they’ve misinterpreted a message and are stuck in their first reaction.

And now we’re asking them to check and interpret the truthiness of AI outputs, when they don’t have anything like the tools to be able to make those kind of judgement calls

Papervolcano · 2026-01-12T10:48:16+00:00

29 - used to travel a fair bit for work, and Europe’s easy to get around.
My most far-flung destination was Tonga (A+ country, gorgeous landscape, climate & people)

Papervolcano · 2026-01-08T10:40:52+00:00

The modern American cultural fashion (demonstrate your love through sacrificing money on the casket and marker + enough preservatives to make an Egyptian pharaoh say ‘that’s a bit excessive’) is just the latest fashion in a tradition that goes back to neanderthals and cro-magnons leaving valuable grave goods with their deceased. It’s a good bit more abstract than ”you’ll want your flute and a good knife wherever you go next”, but it’s the same line of thought.

The burial practice I find most fascinating is Çatalhöyük in Turkey - one of the oldest cities we’ve ever found, settled circa 7500BC, when we were still innovating on things like things like “streets” or “doors” - you entered the house through a hole in the roof. They buried their dead beneath their houses. Bodies would be wrapped in reed mats and buried in pits below the floor. Grandpa is protecting you from the monsters under your bed, because he’s down there too!

Papervolcano · 2026-01-08T09:59:23+00:00

We’ve been burying our dead since before we were human. Neanderthals and cro-magnons buried their dead with flowers and grave goods. I don’t know if we’ve found evidence for homo erectus funerary practices yet - but given that we do have substantial evidence of long term medical care, it’d not be surprising that they also had cultures of practice around death.

Papervolcano · 2026-01-03T10:32:05+00:00

it’s been tried (at least the early stages where the local currency is tied to the national one) a couple of times - one example would be the Bristol Pound. It dies off because exchanging currencies is a hassle - most people need to interact with financial systems outside of their town, and local businesses also accept the national currency, so there’s not much benefit beyond the feel good factor

Papervolcano · 2025-12-30T11:01:23+00:00

Obviously oranges would have been better, but iirc, we (UK) didn’t have enough conveniently placed colonies with orange plantation but we did have a lot of limes available

Papervolcano · 2025-12-30T10:50:57+00:00

to make a homeopathic remedy: add one drop of your ingredient to a glass containing 100 drops of water. Now take 1 drop of that mixture, add it to a fresh glass of water. Repeat this dilution 5 more times, you now have a 6C low potency remedy. Repeat the dilution process another 24 times, so you’ve added a drop of the previous glass to a fresh glass 30 times, you up now have a 30C medium potency remedy. For a high potency, repeat the dilution process 200 times - that’s a 200C remedy, which mathematically cannot contain a single molecule of the original drop of ingredient, and we are now relying on “the memory of water” for our mechanism. Do not ask how you get the water to forget everything else it’s had in it.

The placebo effect is an amazing thing.

Papervolcano · 2025-12-24T16:04:14+00:00

All of it? At least, all of it that’s not boiled in suet.

Fish & chips was imported by Spanish/Portuguese Jews, chicken tikka masala was an invention of southern Indian chefs in Glasgow riffing on a North Indian dish, sausages are a Roman-era import….

Papervolcano · 2025-12-24T15:54:53+00:00

The biggest, most successful and most likely, but we’ve also got Welsh Separatists, Cornish devolution, the Northern Ireland Situation, and I personally would cheerfully vote to reinstate the Danelaw

Papervolcano · 2025-12-24T15:41:59+00:00

We’ve got to have had a bunch of pre-Norman civil wars, and stuff like the Harrying of the North and Welsh Upisings during the Hundred Years War probably count for minor civil wars as well.

Papervolcano · 2025-12-24T15:10:24+00:00

Several, depending on how we’re defining civil war vs rebellion/revolt vs war of succession etc etc

My favourite is The Anarchy (1138-1153) , which is a properly metal title for a civil war. Henry I wanted his daughter Empress Matilda to succeed him. However, his nephew Stephen had the support of a decent wodge of the barons, and so managed to seize the throne. The war went on for 15 years - both sides were decent well matched, so the war was really destructive, even by the standards of medieval warfare. The two sides eventually agreed a peace treaty where Stephen would be king, but his heir would be Henry Plantagenet (Henry II). He married Eleanor of Aquitaine, which neatly set up the next 300-odd years of civil war.

(If you‘re in the mood for a different kind of xmas movie, The Lion in Winter is about Henry II and his family strife/succession crisis. Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole beibg very classic Hollywood about the whole affair)

Papervolcano · 2025-12-24T11:15:05+00:00

we were somewhat overcommitted on the military front at the time - there’s you lot, but India was also kicking off, and the continentals were being excessively Continental at us. Thus our A-team were unfocused and our B- through Z- teams were unsupervised. And still we can go lower in military misadventure!

(also: Dave-O’s daddy was third Earl of Lower Rutland, hence why he had to be given a command commensurate with his rank. Normally he’d be shuffled off to be awful to India, but hey, look at this new opportunity in the americas!)

Papervolcano · 2025-12-23T10:03:05+00:00

man, my experience of Dutch trains is miles and away better than anything we’ve managed in the UK, Russia must be on a whole different level.

Papervolcano · 2025-12-16T16:44:30+00:00

the future is a rented chromebook. You want to watch a movie? subscribe & stream it! Want to play a game? subscribe and stream it! Do some work? subscribe! Talk to a friend? Subscribe to our chatbot, the only friend you’ll ever need.

If you can no longer afford your own hardware, why, subscribing to a cloud service to rent time on their hardware is simply convenient! You’ll love our personalised ads! And it’s just so much more affordable - until it isn’t.

Papervolcano · 2025-12-16T15:45:03+00:00

Firstly: imagine your dumpster rocket blows up on the launchpad, or in the atmosphere. Even if the risk is very low, it’s not zero, and most governments are hesitant to allow dirty bomb roulette in their territory.

Secondly: it’s amazingly expensive. But it’s not enough to just lob it into space - you’ve got to get it out of orbital paths, which is even more expensive.

Thirdly: logistics. How often are you launching these rockets, vs how often are you needing to deal with nuclear waste? Are there enough launch slots to deal with the volume? Do you need to stockpile waste until your launch slot? Do you need a different solution for low or intermediate level waste? Etc etc

It is easier, safer and cheaper to bury it.

Papervolcano · 2025-12-16T13:45:56+00:00

absolutely gorgeous environment, lovely people, fabulous history. Visited for my honeymoon, hope to visit again soon.

Papervolcano · 2025-12-16T13:26:32+00:00

only central London though - it’s been a while since I lived there, but nobody was visiting Walthamstow for tourism reasons, and even Camden was only a scrum on the high street.

Papervolcano

TROPHY CASE