Guidelines for creating new races

[northbrb]

i was wandering what guidelines should i fallow for making my own player race.

of course humanoid but what should i consider when it comes to both there abilities and to there appearance, i feel like to maintain the standard feeling of the traditional fantasy world the race should not be to weird.

any ideas or suggestions would be helpful.

[LoreKeeper]

I'd start by looking at the massive racial selection available in 3.5 and see what kind of ideas fit your vision. Then use those as basis.

[northbrb]

i want to play a medium sized race, stat wise the human is fine but i have this thing about playing humans, i just dont like the idea of playing in a fantasy world and playing a human that being said i play way to many half orcs, elves are out of the question i just wont do it so i want to make a new race and that is where my problem begins.

[stringburka]

northbrb wrote:

i want to play a medium sized race, stat wise the human is fine but i have this thing about playing humans,

I think I understand the feeling, and my suggestion is that the first thing you should do is come up with a concept for the specific race. Then either slap on the stats of another race and adjust it a little, or build it from down and up.

What is different between this race and humans? What is their origin? Much can be done by altering the origin - check Tiefling and Aasimar, and if you've got 3.5 sources, the Genasi. Putting a little dragon blood in a human can do wonderful things too; I've had a campaign where all humanoid races where decendants of dragons.

Spoiler:

They were similiar to the races now, just that humans, which came from the unpredictable, greedy Red dragons, gained a small amount of fire resistance and where usually chaotic (and more often evil than good, though many were neutral). Elves were descendants of silver, and were so light they could jump several meters up into the air.