So to begin let me say that I've always felt you should be able to tell the difference between an 10th level dwarf fighter and a 10th level human and so on. I feel like this was one idea that started to grow in 4E and so for my homebrew world I developed the following racial traits at various levels and would be interested in some feedback. Are they OP or broken?
Humans
Lv. 1 Human Ingenuity – Humans are known for their adaptability and so once per day any human may make use of any feat so long as they meet all prerequisites.
Lv. 5 Adaptive Learning – A human may choose any one skill listed in the PHB and make it a class skill for him regardless of class, forevermore. They receive an immediate +5 bonus to this skill.
Lv. 10 Bonus Feat – Humans of any class are granted an additional bonus feat upon reaching level 10.
Lv. 15 Ability Boost – Humans are granted a +2 bonus to any single ability score.
HALFLINGS
Lv. 1 Halfling Luck – Due to your innate luckiness, once per day you may force a successful attack against you to be rerolled.
Lv. 5 Athletic Prowess – Your bonus to the climb, jump, and move silently skills increases to +3 Save bonus – your racial save bonuses increase by 1.
Lv. 10 Thrown Mastery – You receive a +2 bonus to hit & damage with all thrown weapons, including slings. This does not stack with the weapon mastery feat.
Lv. 15 Ability Boost – You receive a permanent +2 bonus to your dexterity score.
Half – Elves
Lv. 1 Team Player – Once per day you may grant any single ally within 10’ a bonus standard action. This does not stack with any other haste effects.
Lv. 5 Bonus Feat – You may select one bonus feat that you qualify for.
Lv. 10 Persuasion – Your bonus on all Charisma based skills increases to +5.
Lv. 15 Ability Boost – You receive a +2 bonus to the ability score of your choice.
Half – Orcs
Stats: The racial statistics for half-orcs can be found in the Player’s Handbook, with the following exception.
• +1 save vs. divine spells and effects
Lv. 1 Rage – You may rage once per day as per the Barbarian class ability.
Lv. 5 Monstrous – You receive a +5 bonus to intimidate checks.
Lv. 10 Savage Ancestry – You gain DR 3 vs subdual damage.
Lv. 15 Ability Boost – You gain a +2 bonus to your Str. score
Dwarves
Stats: The following changes have been made from the Player’s Handbook.
Lv. 1 Tough as Stone – Once per day you may ignore the first 10 pts of damage from any single attack that would have put you at or below 0 hit points.
Lv. 5 Improved Stone Cunning – your bonuses to stone cunning increase to +4, you are also able to always determine true North.
Lv. 10 Improved Saves – your racial saves increase by 2.
Lv. 15 Ability Boost – you gain a permanent bonus of +2 to Constitution.
Gnomes
Stats: The following changes have been made from the Player’s Handbook.
Lv. 1 Fey Step – Through a combination of stealth and illusion you may appear to travel instantly up to 15’ once per day.
Lv. 5 Keen Senses – your racial bonus to listen and alchemy increases to +4
Lv. 10 Mirror Image – Once per day you may cast mirror image as a spell like ability with caster level equal to half your level.
Lv. 15 Ability Boost – You receive a permanent bonus of +2 to your Charisma.
Elves
Stats: The following changes have been made from the Player’s Handbook.
Lv. 1
Elves now have Ranger as a favored class
Elven Accuracy – you may reroll one missed melee or ranged attack per day.
Lv. 5 Resist Enchantment- your racial saves vs enchantments increase to +2
Lv. 10 Weapon Focus – you gain the benefits of weapon focus in a single elven racial weapon.
Lv. 15 Ability Boost – you receive a +2 bonus to your dexterity.
Hmm. I don't know, I have always wanted the opposite. I want Race to have absolutely nothing to do with the character mechanically--it should all be just flavor.
In fact, I want a level 1 Human Fighter to look much more like a level 1 Dwarven Fighter than it currently does, never mind at level 10. Race should mean nothing, just like Gender.
For example, in your system, nobody makes a better face than the Half-Elf. So, if I want to be a great face, I have to be a half-elf. I literally cannot equal a Half-Elf as any other race, because they get +5 to all charisma skills. That's garbage--what if I don't like half elves, but I do like being the face?
The problem already exists for things like Halflings and slings (which your system exacerbates) or Gnomes and illusion--I hate those races, but I love slings and illusions. You see my problem.
Are these in addition to the normal race items or do they replace them?
Also some of the items on the list appear to be something that would be more at home in a campaign setting as opposed to a rule system.
Why would half-orcs get a bonus vs divine magic? Also are all elves back to nature elves that they all like ranger? This appears to be more of a throw back to races having limited favored classes from 3E.
Overall it is fine if you want to put it in place... but it would basically make the DM's view of what each race should do be pushed to the players in my opinion.
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I like a lot of this. I may pilfer some of it for my home game.
Here's a couple thoughts:
First, replace "Player's Handbook" with "Core Rulebook".
Humans
Lv. 5 Adaptive Learning – A human may choose any one skill listed in the PHB and make it a class skill for him regardless of class, forevermore. They receive an immediate +5 bonus to this skill.
The +5 might be overpowering, unless you plan to replace the +3 class bonus (I know, this came from 4e where there is no class bonus, but consider in Pathfinder that adding just 1 rank to this new skill would set it at +9 already, before applying ability score modifiers, and this human might just dump 5 ranks into the skill, putting it at +13 before ability scores. That's a lot at 5th level.
I would suggest removing the +5 bonus and adding: "In addition, the human gets 3 bonus skill ranks to distribute however he wants" - this still leaves him capped at no more than 5 ranks in any skill, so he cannot bump up one specific skill to inhuman proportions.
HALFLINGS
Lv. 5 Athletic Prowess – Your bonus to the climb, jump, and move silently skills increases to +3 Save bonus – your racial save bonuses increase by 1.
Acrobatics, Climb, and Stealth skills, yes? That's quite a bit, since even the basic halfling doesn't get a bonus on Stealth. Probably OK though. And now he is +3 against Fear and +2 against everything else known to man (or half-man)? That's also very nice, especially compared against the much less impressive level 5 abilities of the other racial changes you propose.
Half – Elves
Lv. 5 Bonus Feat – You may select one bonus feat that you qualify for.Lv. 10 Persuasion – Your bonus on all Charisma based skills increases to +5.
I find it a bit disconcerting that the half-human gets his bonus feat 5 levels before the full human. Seems backward to me.
+5 to ALL CHA-based skills is a lot. A WHOLE lot. I'm not sure you've done the math to see what a +5 modifier does to a d20 roll. Basically, you're granting considerably more than a 90% success to all CHA based skills (assuming the half-elf has invested ranks too) against EVERYONE IN THE WORLD who has invested the same number of ranks. That's a ton. I wouldn't go more than +3 and +2 seems much more appropriate to a d20 system.
And then I would switch the level 5 and level 10 abilities.
Half – Orcs
Stats: The racial statistics for half-orcs can be found in the Player’s Handbook, with the following exception.
• +1 save vs. divine spells and effectsLv. 1 Rage – You may rage once per day as per the Barbarian class ability.
Lv. 5 Monstrous – You receive a +5 bonus to intimidate checks.
Lv. 10 Savage Ancestry – You gain DR 3 vs subdual damage.
Divine magic? I would replace this with saves vs. Fear or Compulsion.
Rage? Many half-orcs won't want or use this at all. Such as my half-orc rogue. Take a look at the Pathfinder "Orc Ferocity" and figure out a way to make it more useful, such as giving them a slight heal effect to get their HP back to a positive value.
Again with the +5. Way TOO overwhelming. Instead, switch it to use STR instead of CHA and give them a +2 Racial bonus on Intimidate.
Subdual damage? Off hand, I cannot think of a single time I've used subdual damage against level 10 players in 30+ years of DMing. Might have been a time or two, but very, very, rare. Maybe change this to reduce all bleeding damage -1 and another -1 for every 3 levels hereafter.
Dwarves
Lv. 10 Improved Saves – your racial saves increase by 2.
That's a lot of saves and +4 total is quite a bit, maybe only increase them by +1 instead.
Gnomes
Stats: The following changes have been made from the Player’s Handbook.Lv. 1 Fey Step – Through a combination of stealth and illusion you may appear to travel instantly up to 15’ once per day.
Lv. 5 Keen Senses – your racial bonus to listen and alchemy increases to +4
Lv. 15 Ability Boost – You receive a permanent bonus of +2 to your Charisma.
Does Fey Step actually move the gnome, or is it an illusion and he remains where he was - the latter is much more useful (usually), but I'd be more clear about whether it is real or illusion.
I think you mean Perception, not "listen".
Not all gnomes value CHA, so I might give them the choice between CON and CHA. Or maybe just both because gnomes kinda suck, mostly.
Elves
Stats: The following changes have been made from the Player’s Handbook.Lv. 1
Elves now have Ranger as a favored classLv. 5 Resist Enchantment- your racial saves vs enchantments increase to +2
Lv. 10 Weapon Focus – you gain the benefits of weapon focus in a single elven racial weapon.
In Pathfinder, every race can choose ANY favored class, so elves already can choose ranger for this. If you're hooked on the idea of woodsy elves, then allow them to count druid and ranger levels as if they are favored classes IN ADDITION to whatever their selected favored class is, so they effectively have 3 favored classes. Still won't help elven wizards and rogues, etc., but it is more fitting for Pathfinder.
Elves are already +2 against enchantments, so you might want to change this to +3 instead.
Weapon focus won't help any level 10 elf. Either they rely on weapons and almost surely have it already, or they're spellcasters and would 100x rather have Spell Focus instead. I would change this as follows:
Lv. 10 Elven Focus - you can take the Weapon Focus feat for free with any elven racial weapon or, if you have it already, then you may take Weapon Specialization even if you do not have any Fighter levels. If you already have Weapon Specialization, you may select any other fighter feat. Alternatively, you may take any Spell Focus feat or, if you have Spell Focus already, you may take Greater Spell Focus. If you have Greater Spell Focus already, you may take any feat appropriate for a spellcaster of your highest spellcrafting class.
I don't like the mechanics pushing someone toward a certain class. A raging half-orc does not do much for a wizard. It is not that I am against distinct races, but I don't want them to be almost useless if you don't take certain classes.
That free +5 for the half elf is too big of a bonus IMO also. Maybe a +2, but not a 5.
Thanks for the feedback all,
Yes these were orginally done for 3.5 and some of it...ie the +1 to divine saves was campaign setting based. Half elves and orcs were not created by the gods so they had less sway in that world.
These would be in addition to the normal racial benefits.
True I hadn't really considered the math behind a +5 bonus and will likely take your advice and make it +2 instead.
As for forcing my view of the races on the players. There is no getting around that sometimes some people are just better at a particular role than others.
If you are 4'9" you can want to be a basketball player all you like but you may have a disadvantage to the 6'7" guy. YOu just have to work harder.
@wraithstrike there is something to be said for playing against type and in order for there to be any true diversity in race/class there must be some inherent benefits for some in one path and some in another otherwise why even choose a race...just say you are a faceless, colorless, humanoid shape that is niether male or female.
As for forcing my view of the races on the players. There is no getting around that sometimes some people are just better at a particular role than others.
I'm having a great deal of difficulty in seeing where you're "forcing your views on the players".
Looks more to me like you're expanding the options available to them, which play upon pre-existing stereotypes built into the game since, well 1974. If you start restricting races to certain classes and limiting the levels they get in other classes, then yeah, that's a problem. If you want to see players being pigeon-holed into roles based on race, take a hard look at 1st and 2nd edition AD&D.
Do I like the options presented? I'm of mixed feelings on it.
My only real suggestions are as follows:
1. Don't narrow the focus too much.
2. While I'm not too familiar with 4th edition, these seem like a form of "racial paragon" features. Perhaps you could go the route Midnight d20 did and construct some heroic path style options, as well, so the players can choose between taking a "paragon path" or a heroic path. A link to a sample of heroic paths (which you'd need to rewrite to follow your progression presented here can be found here.