For me it’s more about trivializing certain puzzles. Pretty much everything with a chasm gets reduced to “I pick up a rope and fly over there.”. Sometimes, that’s ok, but sometimes I don’t want it to be that simple.

Well, life has gotten a whole lot simpler, since I stopped DMing DnD altogether.

Quite a few people have commented about possible societal models for such a community. So I’ll extend this by adding some thoughts about specific environmental challenges.

One would assume that the conditions in the lower levels are not very nice, so maybe rampant drug usage could be a thing. Some mongrels might be in pain due to the procedure and abuse pain killers. Others may just want to escape reality. Someone has to supply these. Maybe they’re a misguided individual who wants to help their peers, maybe they’re a stone cold profiteer who will make for an amazing miniboss. Who knows?

Another important factor is food. Mushrooms grow in dark places and could make up a lot of the diet of the mongrel folk. Or a former botanist could experiment with plants that grow under these conditions. Maybe there’s even some animal husbandry going on. Or if you want there to be a darker twist, cannibalism is always an option. Maybe it’s even part of their society. Being chosen to be the next meal is a great honor.

Lastly, what do the mongrels do for fun? Do they enjoy pit fights?If so, the players could take the wrong way into the arena room and face a crowd of cheering mongrels and some tough opposing fighters. Are there storytellers who remember some fragments of their human lives? Perhaps even some trash collectors who are willing to sell their strange goods even to outsiders?

I’m like 99% sure it would just make the time feel longer without any benefit of consciousness. Kind of like certain drugs make everything feel like it’s slow motion, but you still don’t get superhuman reflexes from them.

I assumed you meant the entire quoted paragraph including the part about the EU. Therefore my bad.

Nothing. I just live in the EU and am very happy about that fact. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠༼⁠ᴼ⁠ل͜⁠ᴼ⁠༽⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Not for me :)

1. We had a session zero, but some things have changed since then. The biggest change is that we got thrown into the doomed forgotten realms at some point. This caused a lot of in character trauma and may have caused my character to shift more towards a neutral alignment.
2. The clerics player absolutely despises lawful-good clerics in particular. So I’m sure, we’re in for a surprise somewhere down the line.
3. This has probably to do with our DM using a module that is written way darker than their usual style of play.
4. Yes, I will most definitely do that. This post is mainly about finding ways to articulate my point.
5. Oh, the crisis of faith is definitely coming. I’m just afraid it might involve them PVPing the entire party which I really don’t enjoy in a pen and paper group.

I’m like twenty steps ahead of you. My last DnD campaign should end in June. then it’s “bye bye forever DnD” 😎

As others have already said, you’re not required to allow any race in your homebrew setting. Heck, half my settings only allow humans and that’s it (not DnD though).

That being said, if you go for high fantasy, I think elementals (aka genasi) always add quite a bit to the lore and I would add at least one scaly race. Be it Dragonborn, Lizardmen or Naga and maybe a beast race if it fits your world.

But it really depends on the kind of world you want.

That’s just Pass without trace for you. That spell is so poorly balanced, it’s effectively an auto success on group stealth checks. Just a few things to note here when it comes to RAW:

• There are no crit fails on skill checks
• For a group stealth check it doesn’t matter if one party member fails it. It’s still a success.