Racial Feats Reloaded

[Brix]

Today WoTC announced racial-feats.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080502a

I promoted this on other occasions in the past, and will repeat it again.

I think racial feats (or half feats) would add dramatically to the games fun factor.
* No need for racial paragon levels (3E paragon from UA)
* You can easily modell powerful races by giving them ECL 0 abilities, and the option to get the powerful abilities laters (e.g. drow powers)
* Races become more unique over the time
* Again more things to play with every level

I suggest giving racial levels every other level. As stated above half feats (less powerful than full feats) could also do the trick.
I think Monte Cook discussed half feats somewhere, SKR has a similar system with feat points.

[Rhishisikk]

And Dawnforge used a 'racial feat/racial transformation' sequence to make races interesting. But if you want to make half-feats, at least think of something like 'racial quality' or 'racial trait'. Cause half-feat just doesn't have the same ring as half-elf or half-orc. It sounds like you're gyping the race.

It ALSO allows for all kinds of wonky bloodlines - allow half elves to choose a human or a sylvan racial trait. The problem I see is the potential effect of unbalanced bloodlines; I don't want to see another elf/dwarf ever again, for example. But as soon as you add this system, expect your Half-Celestials and Half-Dragons to be whining about how they're getting dissed by the new system.

I don't have much time to devote to this, but consider giving faster progression to races with lower LA. (Example: At 0LA, your traits come every 2 levels; a half dragon at 3LA gets traits every (2+3) 5 levels.)

OR Races with lower level adjustments get better traits than the races with higher LAs. (Since the higher LAs already got their goodness up front.)

OR All races start with a 0LA template, and the benchmarks of what used to be 1LA, 2LA, 3LA etc, are used to wedge in the traits so that the racial templates we have now are acquired to those stat levels over time.

There are disadvantages to all three of these methods, and there may be others that I haven't considered.

[Brix]

Rhishisikk wrote:

..., at least think of something like 'racial quality' or 'racial trait'. ..

Yeaha. Half-feats don't sound very well, of course.

Rhishisikk wrote:

It ALSO allows for all kinds of wonky bloodlines ...

That's bad. On the other hand you can handle this by limiting half-races to a handfull of basic races, and allow only humans to interbreed with other races (as the most flexible race even with regards to compatibility with other races)

Half Celestials: basic Celetial traits + more Celestial traits OR Human traits over the time
the same for
Half-Demon, Half-Devil, Half-Dragon, Half-Fey, Half-Doppelganger,etc

But that would of course be a seperate book: "The Bastard Book"

Let's start with the basic races.

I think that races wasn't given much love yet beyond some minor improvements, and such a system would suit PRPG well