I'm reworking the races to be much simpler. Feedback?

[SangoProduction]

My goal was to get rid of the boundless "+1 under very specific condition that will never come up" bs that is 3.5 races. Also, I moved the bonuses from racial stuff to things that can be found in game, so....what do you think? Dwarves might be getting the short end of the stick though. Not really sure what to give them. ALL their traits are the "+1 under very specific condition that will never come up".


Human:
GENERIC - Humans are so commonplace and hard to distinguish, that most write them off. Anyone trying to determine if a human in a group of at least 4 creatures is a threat, or any non-human trying to spot a specific human, takes a -3 to all checks for that purpose, even opposed ones, for that purpose unless there's a good reason to be suspicious, or has intimate knowledge of said human. If the human is intentionally avoiding detection or diverting attention while in a group of at least 4 other humans, the non-human instead take a -10 to the checks.
MULTI-BLOODED - Humans are magically fertile with damned near everything with a recognizable metabolism, and many without one. As such you probably have plenty of non-human blood in you. Humans can count as any other non-human-humanoid when advantageous. The exception is anything that calls out Humans or Humanoid (Humans).

Dwarf:
STONEBOUND - Dwarves are supernaturally connected to the earth, which in itself provides protections. While on top of enough stone or dirt or similar, earthy substance, to hold their weight, a dwarf may not be forcefully moved, tripped, knocked down, or otherwise displaced.
LEGENDARY CRAFTERS - Dwarves a crafters of legend and are abnormally familiar with special crafting materials and methods. As such, the DC for craft checks is not increased for special materials, and the DC for increase the crafting speed is only +6 rather than +10.

Elf:
ELVEN PRECISION - Elves are perfectionists in the grandest sense. While humans may spend 3 years to know the basics of sword fighting, an elf works for 30 years perfecting the smallest part of swordsmanship. Once every 2d6-1 rounds, an elf may roll twice on any skill, or attack roll they made, taking the better roll, so long as they have either at least 3 ranks in that skill or a +3 base attack bonus, respectively.
ETERNAL PATIENCE - Elves, as one of the longest lived races, see the farthest in the future, and can take their time to get things *just* right. Whenever you take 20, gain +10 to the result of the check, and take 10% longer.

Half-Orc:
MONSTROUS - Like many of the things created from humans breeding with things they shouldn't, half-orcs are rather monstrous in appearance. Whenever a half-orc makes an intimidate check, they may either take the better of two rolls, or only spend a swift action to intimidate. If it already only takes a swift action for them to intimidate, then it may be reduced to a free action against all available and desired targets instead.
VICIOUS - Taking the instincts and power of the orc and the cunning of a human, Half-Orcs are extraordinarily potent in combat. Every 3d4+1 rounds, a half-orc may roll twice on either an attack or damage roll, and take the better result + 1/2 of the unmodified roll of the worse result.

Warforged:
LIVING CONSTRUCT - While warforged are similar to the living in many ways, they don't possess a metabolism as living creatures do. Warforged never need sleep, food or water. For the purposes of rest, so long as the Warforged is not performing strenuous activities such as walking or fighting, they are considered to be resting and recover accordingly. They remain fully aware of their surroundings during this time.
HARDY - Being made of tough materials does have its advantages. Every 2d6 rounds a warforged may force an enemy to roll twice on an attack and damage roll against it and take the worse roll(s).
For instance, if the enemy would still hit, even using the worse attack roll, it still takes the worse damage roll.

[eggynack]

Unless I'm missing something seriously valuable about multi-blooded, human seems kinda weak. Does it mean access to ACF's and prestige classes? Cause that's decent, but unless you want two or more of those you can just be the other race. The dwarf thing seems alright, though it depends a bit on how broad the stonebound ability is. If it goes as far as stopping grappling, that's pretty great. Half-orc seems like it gets the best secondary ability, which is monstrous. Not much utility on some classes, but it's sweet on barbarians, which is likely the intent. Offhand, I'm inclined to consider the elf abilities the best, because they get a perfectly fine version of the combat reroll ability, and they also get bonuses to another thing, which is skills. The non-combat bonuses of other classes are kinda incidental. I do like the idea of the half-orc intimidate focused barbarian you stuck in there, with imperious command to make it into a combat thing.

As for my assessment of the thing as a whole, it seems alright, but I kinda like the workings of races now. They're a reflection of the system they're in, with as many little widgets and knobs as the other things in the game. It gives the game this feeling of depth. That, yes, you can do this thing that's really useful, but you also get this other thing that's only a little useful, because not everything you get is going to be super important. You mighta also leaned a bit hard on the reroll thing, because you have it three times there with pretty subtle variations. The timing means that they're all basically once an encounter, with twice if you're lucky, and the ability just says you're decently more likely to hit, or you'll deal some more damage when you do. It's an interesting structure, but also a weird one.

[Hal0Badger]

I do not see anything about stats? Are they still the same or no race gets bonuses/penalties to its stats?

In overall, I found this not more simple than the current one, especially with the added cooldowns of the new abilities or weird number mechanic of human's "Generic" ability.

I don't like outright immunities, like the dwarves get in this variant. A static but good bonus would be more realistic and fair towards other races. It is odd that a human, no matter how strong or trained in a trick, like bullrush, cannot even beat a commoner dwarf at all. Heck, not even a giant for that matter.

All in all, I found it lacking and not flexible enough. For example, if I pick half-orc as a race and don't play on intimidation at all, you miss quite a large bonus/cool ability. Same goes for elves for example, they are bound to be a skill monkeys, because that +10 on taking 20 is huge. On equal terms, a elf rogue gets +10 when taking 20 to open a safe. A human, to be able reach that, needs 10 levels more, or have spend on feats like skill-focus etc.

[Gallowglass]

My goal was to get rid of the boundless "+1 under very specific condition that will never come up" bs that is 3.5 races. Also, I moved the bonuses from racial stuff to things that can be found in game, so....what do you think? Dwarves might be getting the short end of the stick though. Not really sure what to give them. ALL their traits are the "+1 under very specific condition that will never come up".


Human:
GENERIC - Humans are so commonplace and hard to distinguish, that most write them off. Anyone trying to determine if a human in a group of at least 4 creatures is a threat, or any non-human trying to spot a specific human, takes a -3 to all checks for that purpose, even opposed ones, for that purpose unless there's a good reason to be suspicious, or has intimate knowledge of said human. If the human is intentionally avoiding detection or diverting attention while in a group of at least 4 other humans, the non-human instead take a -10 to the checks.
MULTI-BLOODED - Humans are magically fertile with damned near everything with a recognizable metabolism, and many without one. As such you probably have plenty of non-human blood in you. Humans can count as any other non-human-humanoid when advantageous. The exception is anything that calls out Humans or Humanoid (Humans).

Dwarf:
STONEBOUND - Dwarves are supernaturally connected to the earth, which in itself provides protections. While on top of enough stone or dirt or similar, earthy substance, to hold their weight, a dwarf may not be forcefully moved, tripped, knocked down, or otherwise displaced.
LEGENDARY CRAFTERS - Dwarves a crafters of legend and are abnormally familiar with special crafting materials and methods. As such, the DC for craft checks is not increased for special materials, and the DC for increase the crafting speed is only +6 rather than +10.

Elf:
ELVEN PRECISION - Elves are perfectionists in the grandest sense. While humans may spend 3 years to know the basics of sword fighting, an elf works for 30 years perfecting the smallest part of swordsmanship. Once every 2d6-1 rounds, an elf may roll twice on any skill, or attack roll they made, taking the better roll, so long as they have either at least 3 ranks in that skill or a +3 base attack bonus, respectively.
ETERNAL PATIENCE - Elves, as one of the longest lived races, see the farthest in the future, and can take their time to get things *just* right. Whenever you take 20, gain +10 to the result of the check, and take 10% longer.

Half-Orc:
MONSTROUS - Like many of the things created from humans breeding with things they shouldn't, half-orcs are rather monstrous in appearance. Whenever a half-orc makes an intimidate check, they may either take the better of two rolls, or only spend a swift action to intimidate. If it already only takes a swift action for them to intimidate, then it may be reduced to a free action against all available and desired targets instead.
VICIOUS - Taking the instincts and power of the orc and the cunning of a human, Half-Orcs are extraordinarily potent in combat. Every 3d4+1 rounds, a half-orc may roll twice on either an attack or damage roll, and take the better result + 1/2 of the unmodified roll of the worse result.

Warforged:
LIVING CONSTRUCT - While warforged are similar to the living in many ways, they don't possess a metabolism as living creatures do. Warforged never need sleep, food or water. For the purposes of rest, so long as the Warforged is not performing strenuous activities such as walking or fighting, they are considered to be resting and recover accordingly. They remain fully aware of their surroundings during this time.
HARDY - Being made of tough materials does have its advantages. Every 2d6 rounds a warforged may force an enemy to roll twice on an attack and damage roll against it and take the worse roll(s).
For instance, if the enemy would still hit, even using the worse attack roll, it still takes the worse damage roll.



I don't really feel like you are meeting the professed goal here.

First, I personally don't find races to be overly complicated as is. They are mostly a bunch of static bonuses that you have to factor at character creation and never think of again as you level. Very few races have complicated bits that factor in over the length of the game the way feats, classes and spells do. So if your goal is to simplify, I think you started with the wrong feature.

Second, I feel like your changes have made them more complicated, not less. You have put in features, such as the elven "once every 2d6-1(???) rounds" skill and attack advantage that will require complicated recordkeeping in combat and, out of combat, basically just amounts to an advantage roll on EVERY skill check the elf will ever make (with a +10 bonus on top of that if they take 20 which they will on every skill they can) All you've done is make Elf the de facto and required race if you want to be a skillmonkey. In combat, what you've effectively done is give the elf an advantage roll on the first attack of every combat. Hmmm... Elves as thieves are an even more obvious choice now. In fact, Elf rogue skillmonkey is now the standard use of Elf in your system.

Third, your goal was to get rid of "those fiddly +1s to things that will never come up" but, with Orcs and dwarves for example, you've reduced their race to a fiddly bonus to ONE game skill. Intimidate and Crafting. What if you want to be a dwarf that doesn't craft? Or an orc that doesn't initimidate? Tough luck. In your system you've effectively reduced the races to charactactures that must be followed to get any advantage out of your racial choice.

Fourth, you really need to clamp down on what you mean by the human ability to "count as any other non-human-humanoid when advantageous". That is super exploitable. The RAWarriors would have a field day with that one. "You take 15 fire damage." "Okay, so I take 5 fire damage." "what? do you have resist energy up?" "No, I'm choosing to count as a ifrit with its 10 fire resistance."

[DirePorkChop]

LEGENDARY CRAFTERS - Dwarves a crafters of legend and are abnormally familiar with special crafting materials and methods. As such, the DC for craft checks is not increased for special materials, and the DC for increase the crafting speed is only +6 rather than +10.

Am I the only one here that thinks dwarves would be amazing artificers with this? Of every change that you suggested, THIS is the thing that I would keep. It can be used by the dwarven wizard, artificer, cleric, (insert any class with crafting capabilities here). The good thing is that it is not limited to one specific class, as the half orc, or elf is. The way that you have it set up, elves will always be a skill monkey, 1/2 orcs will always be scare-barians, and warforged will always be tanky in some way, because the bonuses and benefits are entirely too much to pass up.

Good: The Dwarven crafting ability is stellar, and I would like to see something interesting and unique for the other races, without being entirely OP. Halflings and Gnomes should be fun.

Bad: You have simplified the races slightly (and I use that term loosely, considering all the combat upkeep what with rounds ticking down from abilities), but you simplified them by sticking them in their own custom made pigeonhole. Humans are either 100 percent broken, or 100 percent crap, dependent upon RAW/RAI.

[eggynack]

Am I the only one here that thinks dwarves would be amazing artificers with this?
I don't really see it. Isn't that just for the craft skill, which means mundane items? The craft skill has its moments, but it's not that great.

[TheIronGolem]

I am definitely not a fan of "you can do this every 2d6 rounds", especially when the goal is making things simpler. Cooldown timers work great in video games; in paper games they're just annoying and easy to mess up or cheat. There are better ways to prevent ability spam, including but not limited to:


x/encounter or x/day limits
High action cost compared to less powerful alternatives (perhaps the elven attack option is a full-round action)
Personal resource expenditure (hit points, ability damage, sacrifice a prepared spell, etc)
Situational dependencies that the enemies can manage (like 'only when flanking')

[Zaq]

I am definitely not a fan of "you can do this every 2d6 rounds", especially when the goal is making things simpler. Cooldown timers work great in video games; in paper games they're just annoying and easy to mess up or cheat. There are better ways to prevent ability spam, including but not limited to:


x/encounter or x/day limits
High action cost compared to less powerful alternatives (perhaps the elven attack option is a full-round action)
Personal resource expenditure (hit points, ability damage, sacrifice a prepared spell, etc)
Situational dependencies that the enemies can manage (like 'only when flanking')


Agreed. At a bare minimum, you'd be way better off turning all of the "every XdY rounds" timers into fixed round timers (decent) or straight up encounter powers (much better).

In general, though, I think you need to ask yourself first and foremost what your real goal is in undertaking this endeavor. Are you going to give this treatment to every race? Are the only playable races in your game the ones you've listed here (plus maybe a few others if you keep going)? Are races that you haven't applied this treatment to going to be nonplayable (i.e., they exist in the world but cannot be chosen by players), removed from the world (i.e., they simply don't exist at all in-game), or left alone (meaning that players would just use WotC's RAW for other races)? Is this for an actual game, a theoretical project, a thought experiment, a larger system rewrite, or something else entirely?

If it's for an actual game, you might consider asking players what races they're interested in playing (and ideally why those races interest them), and then you can balance your race rewrites for the actual needs of the campaign. That has the advantage of not doing more work than necessary (you aren't tweaking dwarves if no one cares about dwarves) but still not restricting player choice (if a player really wants to be an illumian, it wouldn't be a problem that you haven't tweaked illumians ahead of time). Half the point of playing 3.X instead of a different system is that there are a million options to choose from, so if you're restricting players to only picking from a very small number of races, I can see that causing a little bit of friction. I'm not saying that I'd angrily storm away from a game in which the GM restricted racial choices, but I am saying that I'd really want there to be a reason behind it that I could personally relate to.

If it's for a broader system rewrite, I guess you'll just have to decide how far you want to go. It seems weird to me to include warforged but not gnomes, for instance, but I guess that what really matters is consistency.

Let's answer that first question first, though. What's your overall goal here? Not just "simplifying matters," but simplifying matters for what purpose and in what context?

[SangoProduction]

Thanks for the feedback. And yeah. I looked at the Humans again. That seems really silly. I don't know what I was thinking when I came up with the Generic thing...

I'll take all the feedback in to account, and adjust from there. Again, thanks.

[icefractal]

I'm assuming your goal is to make race choice less of an important factor? Because, for instance, Generic and Multi-Blooded (assuming you just count as X, not get the abilities of X) are minor and trivial compared to an extra feat/skills, and the same applies to the other abilities if they're replacing the stat mods. I'm not saying that's a bad goal though.

With that in mind, some ideas:

Human:
Generic - +10 to Disguise/Bluff to appear as any general type (farmer, soldier, noble, etc; not a specific person)

Dwarf:
Legendary Crafter - Your crafting speed is multiplied by your level. Ex: A 10th level Dwarf crafts at 10x speed.
Mundane crafting is already veeery slow compared to magic. You can boost it a lot and still be balanced.

Elf:
Eternal Patience - You can "take 30"; it takes 30x the time and counts as if you rolled a 30.

[SangoProduction]

I'm assuming your goal is to make race choice less of an important factor? Because, for instance, Generic and Multi-Blooded (assuming you just count as X, not get the abilities of X) are minor and trivial compared to an extra feat/skills, and the same applies to the other abilities if they're replacing the stat mods. I'm not saying that's a bad goal though.

With that in mind, some ideas:

Human:
Generic - +10 to Disguise/Bluff to appear as any general type (farmer, soldier, noble, etc; not a specific person)

Dwarf:
Legendary Crafter - Your crafting speed is multiplied by your level. Ex: A 10th level Dwarf crafts at 10x speed.
Mundane crafting is already veeery slow compared to magic. You can boost it a lot and still be balanced.

Elf:
Eternal Patience - You can "take 30"; it takes 30x the time and counts as if you rolled a 30.

....That was definitely the original idea. Then I put in a more and more powerful cool down based ability and then I went back and. Oh god it's a mess. Thanks for the suggestions.

Jesus. And this is what happens when you don't have a drawn out design plan! Anyway, thanks.

[SangoProduction]

To answer why I was ...originally.... simplifying the races is because a lot of the races were fiddly and forgettable, and nothing compares to a free feat, unless you're getting a stat bump in a spell-casting stat, and even then it needs good racials. Also, because I wanted to offer those actual power things through other methods than racial selection.
As for why there are no other races...for my particular setting, they've been wiped out in a catastrophe, but as for why they aren't here is because I haven't come up with them yet.

So, Here's my actually simplified versions. Thank you guys again so much for your feedback. I can not tell you how much I appreciate it.

Human:
GENERIC - Humans are so commonplace and hard to distinguish, that most write them off. +10 to Disguise/Bluff for general disguises (farmer, soldier, noble, etc; not a specific person)
FERTILE - Humans are magically fertile with damned near everything with a recognizable metabolism, and many without one. The offspring often look more like a human than the non-human counterpart, and carry this trait for 3 non-human generations.

Dwarf:
STONEBOUND - Dwarves are supernaturally connected to the earth, which in itself provides protections. While on top of enough stone or dirt or similar, earthy substance, to hold their weight, a dwarf may not be forcefully moved, tripped or knocked down.
LEGENDARY CRAFTERS - Dwarves are crafters of legend and are abnormally familiar with special crafting materials and methods. As such, the DC for craft checks is not increased for special materials, and Dwarves can either increase the gold value of the item you craft by [some number], or your crafting speed is multiplied by you level.
Does not affect magical crafting.

Elf:
ETERNAL PATIENCE - Elves, as one of the longest lived races, see the farthest in the future, and can take their time to get things *just* right. Elves may take 30 in any instance they would be able to take 20, acting as though they rolled a 30 for their check but they take 25 times as long as normal.

Half-Orc:
MONSTROUS - Like many of the things created from humans breeding with things they shouldn't, half-orcs are rather monstrous in appearance and often attitude. Intimidate is always a class skill, and once per day per character level, you may intimidate as a swift action..

Warforged:
LIVING CONSTRUCT - While warforged are similar to the living in many ways, they don't possess a metabolism as living creatures do. Warforged never need sleep, food or water. For the purposes of rest, so long as the Warforged is not performing strenuous activities such as walking or fighting, they are considered to be resting and recover accordingly. They remain fully aware of their surroundings.

[icefractal]

These are fairly elegant, but maybe not so balanced. Some thoughts:

Human: Fertile is not generally a thing that affects PCs, so for practical purposes Humans just have the Generic trait. Which is ok, but compares poorly to -

Dwarf: Two good traits; Legendary Crafter may come up more in some campaigns than others, but Stonebound is always cool.

Elf: Not too flashy, but it's arguably the most potent trait. For certain tasks, Elves are just going to be the best at them, period.

Half-Orc: Not a fan. The two ranks either do hardly anything (if they don't break cap) or are a fairly small bonus if they do break cap (plus the possibility of some weird exploit). Intimidate as a swift action was much better.

Warforged: Pretty cool, I like it. Maybe even allow them to count as resting when walking slowly (half speed or less); that would really underscore their alien nature.

[SangoProduction]

These are fairly elegant, but maybe not so balanced. Some thoughts:

Human: Fertile is not generally a thing that affects PCs, so for practical purposes Humans just have the Generic trait. Which is ok, but compares poorly to -

Dwarf: Two good traits; Legendary Crafter may come up more in some campaigns than others, but Stonebound is always cool.

Elf: Not too flashy, but it's arguably the most potent trait. For certain tasks, Elves are just going to be the best at them, period.

Half-Orc: Not a fan. The two ranks either do hardly anything (if they don't break cap) or are a fairly small bonus if they do break cap (plus the possibility of some weird exploit). Intimidate as a swift action was much better.

Warforged: Pretty cool, I like it. Maybe even allow them to count as resting when walking slowly (half speed or less); that would really underscore their alien nature.

Yeah, the Fertile was intentionally not too useful. They are supposed to have 1 useful trait, really. I left Legendary Crafter in with the Dwarf because it just fits the mystique. And I changed from ranks to swift actions per day per level, because I do agree. I'll consider the warforged thing if more people say it's a good idea.

[Gildedragon]

So I'm looking at this and... Well why half orc and not full orc
A modular race design like this would let one make half-any-pc-race

With two traits per race (one greater the other lesser) one could go: a (standard) half orc is the human greater trait with the orcish lesser; or could be an orcish half human (orc greater human lesser); or a half elf half orc...
Or a half dwarf half gnome...

Ability scores/skills/feats ought be split between the traits. So a half human can take the bonus skillpoints or the bonus feat in addition to whatever else that's tied to...

[SangoProduction]

So I'm looking at this and... Well why half orc and not full orc
A modular race design like this would let one make half-any-pc-race

With two traits per race (one greater the other lesser) one could go: a (standard) half orc is the human greater trait with the orcish lesser; or could be an orcish half human (orc greater human lesser); or a half elf half orc...
Or a half dwarf half gnome...

Ability scores/skills/feats ought be split between the traits. So a half human can take the bonus skillpoints or the bonus feat in addition to whatever else that's tied to...

That's a cool little idea.