homebrew races for homebrew setting 3.5 (Peach)

[lunar2]

dwarf
medium size
20 ft. base speed, but not slowed by encumbrance or armor.
0 ft. burrow speed (full round action to burrow 5 ft.)
-2 Dex, +2 Con
stable: +4 to opposed checks to avoid being bullrushed, tripped, or overrun
+2 profession (miner), +2 craft (any one)

elf
medium size
30 ft. base speed
-2 Str, +2 Int
+2 to caster checks
trained in all knowledge skills, even without ranks
+2 knowledge (all)

goblin
small size
20 ft. base speed
-2 Str, +2 Dex
wild empathy (as druid equal to their character level)
+2 handle animal, ride

human
as PHB

orc
medium size
30 ft. base speed
+4 Str, -2 Int, -2Cha
scent
low light vision
+2 spot, +2 listen

quickling
small size
40 ft. base speed
+2 dex, -2 con
fast attack (Ex): anytime they make an attack or full attack, they can make an extra attack at their highest BAB, but all attacks take a minus 2 penalty until the start of their next round.
+2 jump, +2 tumble


so, as you can see, i was going for a little stronger than the PHB races. i wanted to bring them more in line with humans. i'm worried i may have overshot a bit with some of them, especially dwarves and quicklings. which is why i made quicklings the only race to have a Con penalty. as for dwarves, i can remove stability if they went too far.

i realize elves seem a bit underpowered with their special ability, but they are meant to be almost all casters, which kind of makes up for that.

in this setting, being a goblin is the only way to get wild empathy, so i hope that makes it a little better for them. goblins are the beastmasters of this setting, so i felt wild empathy would be appropriate. if it's not quite enough, i could expand it to cover all non-sentient creatures, not just animals and magical beasts.

[lunar2]

so i'm guessing these are fine, since no one has any comment. thanks, that answers my question.

[ArcturusV]

Actually I'm looking at the Elf and thinking you way overshot "Human" as a standard. It SEEMS you want human as the standard power level.

Considering a lot of optimization guides as is will tell you to go Elf for spellcasters over humans (Due to ACFs, Alternate Levels, etc)... I don't think they really need the help.

But compare:

A human would get one feat, one skill point per level.

An elf gets Free Stat Boost (because the wizard doesn't care about Strength, get a 8 GP mule if you need someone to carry your swag. Not like you got a ton of armor and weapons weighing you down either). +2 in Caster Checks? Eh. not really a factor. Effectively getting 28 skill points (As I seem to recall there being about 14 Knowledges across books when you include PHB, things like OA's Spirits and Shadowlands, Psionics, etc). Holy hell that's a lot. Plus Knowledge Devotion is pretty powerful. Note that their effect of being able to make Untrained checks is already equivalent to a feat (Jack of All Trades). So it's pretty much strictly better than Human for anything other than melee bruiser. Even then Knowledge Devotion on a Cleric based build might still make for a better melee bruiser than human.

Dwarf... Eh. It depends. Really it's power comes down to Burrow and just how swingy that ends up becoming. With action economy buffs in your game (if you hit higher levels, almost a given), it becomes really powerful. In the right sort of game the fact that your dwarf can just barehand his way through dungeon walls every turn is godawful powerful. Try Tomb of Horrors with something like that, lul at bypassing all the deathtraps and kill zones. But in a wilderness campaign? Less useful to the point where it's almost a non-factor, and thus the dwarf would be weaker than otherwise where things like saving throws and AC bonuses against their enemies is more important.

Rest of it is pretty straight forward. Nothing OMG SHOCKING or that leaps to mind. The Quickling thing just keeps making me think of the cracklings from StarCraft... which isn't really bad. but Flurry is typically a pretty bad ability so as their big marquee special... eh. But being able to be a full BaB class with it might make it more workable.

[lunar2]

@elf. wizard isn't one of the available classes in this setting, and all casting is Cha based. i'm using a set of 4 limited list casters for this setting. the +2 to all caster checks is their main ability.

@dwarf. whoops. i forgot to put in that they can't burrow through solid stone or metal (without a dwarf specific PRC, of course). in natural cave dungeons it would still work like you say, but in constructed dungeons, not so much.

@quicklings. yeah, i was thinking with full bab classes in mind. if it's not enough, i can give them the halfling bonus with thrown weapons and slings. nothing says they have to do a melee flurry. also, i wrote it so that they can use it on charges or after moving, as well as on full attacks or even attacks of oppurtunity.