Zaq
2019-08-31, 02:12 PM
I mentioned elsewhere that a killoren (RotW pg. 103) manifesting the aspect of the ancient gets a racial bonus to K: Nature checks equal to their HD. Considering that the killoren is an ECL 0 race and requires no investment of feats, skill points, etc. to get this bonus, that strikes me as one of the largest bonuses you're going to get from your race, especially without investing feats and suchlike.
So that got me thinking: what other playable races (ideally ECL 0, but I'll also accept other races that WotC gives reasonable playable LAs to--anything more than about +2 is really, really pushing it for me) give similarly huge racial bonuses to some skill or another with minimal investment?
Offhand, anything with a climb speed tends to get +8 on Climb checks and anything with a swim speed tends to get +8 on Swim checks, insofar as those skills are still meaningful once you get the movement speed. Low-hanging fruit. Let's keep going.
Of course, being smaller than Medium grants bonuses to Hide checks (often quite nice ones), but that's not really specific to the race. Same with being faster than 30' and getting a bonus to Jump checks. Let's mostly stick to what's tagged as a "racial bonus" as much as we can.
Raptorans and wing-aspect dragonborn get +10 on Jump, which is impressive. If you're willing to invest a feat, there's technically nothing saying that a dragonborn with the wing aspect can't take the Dragon Wings feat (pg. 100 of RotD), which also gives a +10 racial bonus to Jump. Since PHB pg. 171 specifies that racial bonuses stack, this can turn into a +20 with a feat, though I admit that it's a little goofy.
Speaking of Jump, thri-kreen get a whopping +30 to Jump, which may be the biggest we can find out of the box, but they also have RHD and LA, the exact amount of which depends on which thri-kreen you use.
Rilkans get a scaling competence (not racial) bonus to Knowledge checks based on how many soulmelds they have shaped, but it's only 1 per 2 soulmelds, so it's hard to get more than about a +5 even at high levels, and it's not trivial to reach that amount.
There are a few races that get +4 to various things without getting into size mods or movement stuff. Goblins notably get +4 on Ride and Move Silently, whisper gnomes get a +4 on Hide (which, although I said we aren't focusing on size bonuses, is still noticeable simply because it does indeed stack with the size bonus) and Move Silently, and I'm pretty sure those aren't the final examples.
That ought to be enough to get the ball rolling. What other neat big racial bonuses are out there?
So that got me thinking: what other playable races (ideally ECL 0, but I'll also accept other races that WotC gives reasonable playable LAs to--anything more than about +2 is really, really pushing it for me) give similarly huge racial bonuses to some skill or another with minimal investment?
Offhand, anything with a climb speed tends to get +8 on Climb checks and anything with a swim speed tends to get +8 on Swim checks, insofar as those skills are still meaningful once you get the movement speed. Low-hanging fruit. Let's keep going.
Of course, being smaller than Medium grants bonuses to Hide checks (often quite nice ones), but that's not really specific to the race. Same with being faster than 30' and getting a bonus to Jump checks. Let's mostly stick to what's tagged as a "racial bonus" as much as we can.
Raptorans and wing-aspect dragonborn get +10 on Jump, which is impressive. If you're willing to invest a feat, there's technically nothing saying that a dragonborn with the wing aspect can't take the Dragon Wings feat (pg. 100 of RotD), which also gives a +10 racial bonus to Jump. Since PHB pg. 171 specifies that racial bonuses stack, this can turn into a +20 with a feat, though I admit that it's a little goofy.
Speaking of Jump, thri-kreen get a whopping +30 to Jump, which may be the biggest we can find out of the box, but they also have RHD and LA, the exact amount of which depends on which thri-kreen you use.
Rilkans get a scaling competence (not racial) bonus to Knowledge checks based on how many soulmelds they have shaped, but it's only 1 per 2 soulmelds, so it's hard to get more than about a +5 even at high levels, and it's not trivial to reach that amount.
There are a few races that get +4 to various things without getting into size mods or movement stuff. Goblins notably get +4 on Ride and Move Silently, whisper gnomes get a +4 on Hide (which, although I said we aren't focusing on size bonuses, is still noticeable simply because it does indeed stack with the size bonus) and Move Silently, and I'm pretty sure those aren't the final examples.
That ought to be enough to get the ball rolling. What other neat big racial bonuses are out there?