Parallel Weyard

[Salanewt]

I think it would also be interesting to have people who were clearly oppressed/used as experimental fodder for things like the Lemurians. Redact the eternal water crap and turn it into technology and you could have a race that's the product of heavy experimentation for immortality. That would be sweet.

I can think of a really easy way for that to work with what's already established too; the water exists but some Lemurians want to create a new, easier to use and move technology that either fills the role or does it better. Better test it on other people!

So like, mole people? That would be pretty cool.

Speaking of Psynergy, it is disappointing how few races in the first two games could actually use it.

I'm still under the impression that all it takes is to hit someone with a psy stone, seeing as there are at least three examples of that happening across the first two games as well as the background lore explaining how monsters came to be. It is unclear if bashing something's brains in with a rock grants them magic or just unlocks latent ability, but a case could be made for either one.

Regardless, it is weird how few towns made use of it in some way and the ones that did were either incredibly relevant to the core plot and subplots (e.g. Prox, Lemuria) or had single individuals with few other adepts (Kibombo, Champa), and the only reason I can think of for this is so they could write psynergy as being some mysterious force that is roughly comparable to doing parlour tricks. How else can one explain "do chi from the line" twice in the same cutscene?

[Rolina]

@Kaiba:  Arguably, it's only three. :(  It's kind of why I wish we had more to work with.  The Dwarves could easily be argued to be a subset of human, after all - they aren't too different, after all.  With Elves being dummied out, that kind of minimizes any tolkien races in the world.  Both the Beastmen and Drakes have more prominence, and are different enough to be obviously of different races.  Kinda makes you wish they'd have shoehorned the elves in anyways, so we could have an argument for at least 5. :/

Meanwhile, if we'd have had the Human, Drake, Beastman, Fell, Fey, Mer, and we'll say Avies races, it'd have been a more interesting world to interact with.  That's a solid 7 races right there, each with potential for subraces (maybe some drakes become Wyverns instead of Dragons, maybe some become Wyrms or Serpentine dragons.  Each could be its own subrace).  That adds a hell of a lot to the world, and if they're woven in better so that they're not mono-racial societies, I feel that there could be so much more we could experience in the world.  Maybe each race has its own version of beastform.  Humans could channel the power of class changing items that give them a similar advanced form.  Drakes could use the djinn to become dragons without going mad/exhausting their life energy similar to beastmen.  The Fey could tap into the fundamental forces - Seelee with Solar, Unseelie with Lunar, and Goblinkind with Stellar.  Avies could go for a whole Angel Motif, while the Fell go for the devil Motif.  It opens up a lot of options not only for what we could face, but for what we could do as well.  Imagine if Karis was a drake in Dark Dawn, and could take on a Wyvernform?  What if Himi was one of the Fell race, and could unleash her inner Youkai?  We'd avoid Matt and Sveta being the singular powerhouses they are, and spread the cool stuff across the party.  Hell, Matt could be a powerhouse for more than just "only guy who can use the Sol Blade" at that.

[Thebatwarrior]

Thanks to all the people that replied to this post.  I love the idea of more species in the world