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One thing that as always annoyed me about certain campaign settings is the four to six different kinds of elf, dwarf, halfing, whathaveyou. Wanting to do a few subraces for my homebrew, I thought about the trait system Paizo put out.
For each of my subraces, I could do a set of traits and flaws that add to the base race instead of adding a whole new race. I wanted to get your guys' opinion on the matter.
So for example, We'll call the base Elf a high elf. For a wood elf, I'd add the following:
Forest Dweller:
Replace Elven Magic with Forest Dweller.
Wood elves blah blah blah blah get +2 on survival and treat their animal companion, if they have one, as one hit die higher.
I liked subraces for representing different archetypes, including ability modifiers and the like that traits don't do as well. Elves, for example - a bonus to intelligence and penalty to con is shaky to begin with (I don't know of elves ever being sickly, easy to tire or get drunk), even for a more "civilized" elven race. For a more forest-dwelling kind, you might even have them reversed. It's fine if you want to play a homebrew where there are only one kind of dwarves, halflings etc, but in a world with several different cultures and tribes having subraces can be handy. If you can do all that with traits, great - but you may just as well have subraces, and keep traits minor.
Humans, right now, do very well with the free +2 bonus to an ability of your choice, free bonus feat and skill points. Demihumans, however, should have several options. I'd love to hear more ideas of how to best do them.