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Maroon
2007-04-06, 03:12 PM
A setting I'm currently brewing up features a lot of unusual and fantastical creatures as playable races. It occured to me that most of them are, at least, LA +1 material. Humans, as they are in the SRD, are not. However, they're still supposed to be the dominant race. So instead of basically adding class levels to human characters at the start of a campaign, I decided to power them up a little.

Human Traits:
Medium: As Medium creatures, humans have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
Human base land speed is 30 feet.
Natural Selection: Human characters roll 5d6, discarding the 2 lowest dice, instead of the normal 4d6, when generating starting abilities. Short lifespans and continual strife leave only the fittest to represent humanity.
1 extra feat at 1st level.
4 extra skill points at 1st level and 1 extra skill point at each additional level.
+1 racial bonus on all saving throws.
Favored Class: Any. When determining whether a multiclass human takes an experience point penalty, his or her highest-level class does not count.
Level adjustment: ?


I'm still not too sure about the LA, though. Any critique is appreciated.

Lemur
2007-04-06, 03:30 PM
My reaction is that humans don't need anything special beyond what the rules normally give them. Why? Because if the races you're adding have appropriate level adjustments for the abilities they have, humans will make up for it by having an equivalent amount of character levels.

On a side note, I'd be interested in seeing what these other races you have in mind are. If they're custom made, perhaps you should post them as well, to see what humans are up against, and to see what the LA's you've given them are.

Humans, with zero level adjustment, will have more freedom and versatility in taking class levels, and the hit dice, skills, spells, and BAB should make up for not having naturally high ability scores.

In affect, my advice is don't power up humans, just give them more class levels at the start of the campaign. I know that goes against your instincts, but I think it would work better.