The Tavern

Since we have many races that attuned with elements/spell classes like Merfolks with water/ice magic, Gargoyles with earth magic, Tengus with air magic and Nagas with poison magic and all previous attempts of making a fire based race failed, we need a race that is not too fancy to design: Salamanders. Basically they are just Nagas on everything like attrubutes and level bonuses, but Salamanders start with rF+, flame breathing and ability to swim in lava, with positive aptitude in fire magic and negative aptitude in ice magic.
Just having a itch to complete the racial specialist combos, and seeing the failure of Djinns and Lava Orcs I think we need something more practical and not so unique.

SGrunt already floated a version of salamander in an experimental branch that hasn't made it into trunk, and bcadren has floated a few other iterations of the idea. I'm not sure if SGrunt's version is still on CBRO, since they took the experimental branches down for the upcoming tourney, but it doesn't seem to be an active project anymore.

The reason the previous attempts failed, imo, is because "Fire Dude" isn't enough of a hook to design a species around, especially if you're just reskinning an existing race with a fire motif like you've done here jason. I kind of strongly disagree with the idea that "we need a race that is not too fancy to design"; personally, I think the only species that could really get added to the game at this point involve ideas that actually create significant gameplay changes, and a fire theme just won't get over that bar.

Sarnath'ed.
Salamanders could work but the hook shouldn't be "good at fire magic ".

I'm thinking that for a fire-oriented species, a system where you gain "charges" (for a lack of a better word) that you gain passively or for performing X action (killing an enemy, eating a chunk, or whatever seems most appropriate), that gives you passive bonuses to fire magic and resistance to fire, in addition to a couple of other things that could be brainstormed. Upon reaching max "charges", you could receive a certain (probably small) amount of hellfire resistance. The "charges" would be a resource that you could then spend on active race abilities, for example maybe one of the abilities could be similar to ring of flames, except it's not a lingering effect that follows and maybe it could be targeted as well, similar to the way salamander firebrands work. There would obviously be a few such abilities, this would offer a couple of interesting choices to the players (is using this racial ability in this situation worth weakening my passive abilities at this moment in time?).

I don't know, that might be too strong or gimmicky, but it's just an idea, the particulars could be worked out.

EDIT: On second thought, my suggestion sounds more like a god proposal...

I tend to agree that a less fancy race suggestion for fiery dudes would be a bad idea. Sure, the idea of a new race that's similar to any number of pre-existing races appeals to me from the perspective of novelty. But it's really only the novelty of it that appeals to me.

On the subject of novelty, I had an idea for a race about a year back for a Mayfly Race. The idea was a very quick and stealthy race that was loaded with advantages that would allow it to blitz through the early game and, arguably, be at an advantage come the mid-game. The downside would be that the race aged rapidly. As time passed, the race would slowly suffer permanent stat decay until it finally reached stat zero. The idea was that, in order to succeed with this race, one had to be quick about getting to the Orb and out, before their character became unplayably sucky. I never formally suggested it as an idea because, honestly, even I can tell when an idea of mine is that bad.

Anyway, I bring this up because I think it could be reworked into a fiery dude that has a trick to it without being as hideously convoluted as other races. The lore would be that the race (let's call them Salamanders) have a flame within them that gives them power. This power takes the form of strength, speed, proficiency with fire magic, being able to spit fire. However, as time passes, their internal flame dwindles. Their snazzy powers would begin to lose their edge and eventually cease altogether.

The general pitch behind it is that it's easy in the early game, hard in the late game, perfect for newbies to explore the early game with, whilst also allowing for interesting challenge runs for more veteran players. Of course, the counter-pitch is that such a race wouldn't exactly be novel for crawl and, anyway, causing players to become weaker as the game goes on seems counterintuitive. So this isn't really a sincere proposal. It's more just general brainstorming for how a hypothetical fire-based race that could bring more to crawl than just another fiery dude.

I think that any idea that causes a player to permanently weaken without actively choosing to do so is terrible, and even the current "sacrifice X permanently" things seem pretty bad except for Ru.

Another problem with the concept of a race that gets weaker in any fashion over time is that they'd have to be amazing for speedrunning in order to be passably good for the majority of the playerbase, and would be difficult to work around besides "I trivialize early encounters and do nothing interesting late."

If you want to have a species that temporarily gets stronger and then weakens, I think that was Lava orcs. They were more convoluted than they were worth.

Lava Orc never stuck either

Big part of why "fire dude" doesn't work as a race is...well two things. (1) there are a lot of races; so small changes compared to every other race doesn't really exist. and (2) since almost every fire spell is Fire/Conj, 3! Fire is unlikely to outclass 3! Conjurations (Tengu) or 3! Spellcasting, 1 Conj, 1 Fire (Deep Elf)without a lot of Int...

Also "fire aura" both is too powerful early, while wimping out later and overlaps Qazlal. "Fire Dude" and "Ice Dude" are both obvious niches that aren't filled, but I guess given the number of other races we have...they need something more unique than JUST that to fly.

It seems I have to tinker my own fork.
And what's new about the Cherufe and that Plutonian? Haven't heard anything about them for a long time.

Most software projects are never finished, or take far longer than expected to get finished, and if they have a budget, go over budget. It's reasonably safe to assume anything that hasn't updated in a few months is dead; high quality robust features are a considerable amount of work, and many people like me who could end up doing it theoretically, are in practice completely lazy SOB's.