Quote Originally Posted by Rowan Arquest View Post
I haven't had time to read all the posts yet so forgive me if I repeat an idea.
I'd rather have an idea repeated than left out - the more feedback I get, the more interesting I can make things.

There are currently an abundance of optios you could take. The dwarf as the Con race makes perfect sense but it also seems that your crunch is subservient to your fluff. Yet you don't have any background on your dwarves. You could make them the main city builders and militant race, which would also fit in with strength. (but not as well as some other races.) Prehaps you can look into some of the non-core races such as warforged, shifter (also for Str), half-giant (could also work for Wis), and many more.

Right now you have many options, and with the backgrounds of your races being the most important, your current priority should be to find the missing niches in the world and it's history. If you find that, the races will probably fall into line.
This is a good point, and one that I had somehow managed to not think of, so here goes some off-the-cuff brainstorming...

We'll start with a short phrase that describes each race, and see what holes that leaves us...
Elves - manipulators of nature
Gnomes - protectors and preservers of nature
Halflings - urban information gatherers
Humans - plains-dwelling nomads who trade (honey and information, in particular)
Shadefolk - huh, so I realized that while I have an idea for how they look, I don't have a good idea (without looking back at notes) what role the shadefolk have in the world... let's see what my notes have... nothing specific as to role, but some things that may push us in the right direction: comfortable in heat/cold, contriving them as the Cha race (more on this below) makes me think they may be diplomats, but I'm not entirely sure.
Dwarves - I haven't come up with anything particularly good here, so my current leaning is to just use the 3.x/4e fluff for them, which is reasonable, but (and perhaps this is just me being petty) I'd rather have something that makes them unique to this world
[Strong Race] - I'm leaning towards Goliaths (as written in RoS); they're used rarely enough (from what I've seen) that I don't feel as strong a need to alter them as I do for Dwarves; but perhaps that's just the fact that I haven't thought about them much talking... I'll come back to Goliaths later.

For the Shadefolk, I just realized that while I initially conceived them to be the Charisma race, there's nothing holding them to that, specifically. And since I'm having issues nailing down Gnomes and Elves in terms of which stat fits best, perhaps moving one of those (Gnomes seem more likely to me) to Charisma would make more sense? Perhaps having Gnomes use Cha, Elves use Int (for some reason the manipulation of nature says Int more strongly than Wis to me), and Shadefolk use Wis would work...

Gnomes are generally well-liked, and campaign amongst other races to help the Gnomes preserve the natural world as it is. This puts them in natural conflict with the Elves, who see the natural world as a resource best utilized through manipulation. They have learned ways to manipulate the trees to form their cities without any (traditional) building of any sort - their buildings, from houses to jails to public buildings, are formed from the alteration of trees to fit the needed purpose. This ability is useful to nearby towns, who can use this type of construction to make long-lasting, elegant buildings [this seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but can probably be made to work fairly simply]. This would leave Shadefolk as the Wis-based race, which... means something Well, if I can figure out how Shadefolk work as the Wis race, I think this may an interesting direction to go with these 3 races.

As for Goliaths... as written (in Races of Stone - http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...040711b&page=5 has some of the info if you don't know them) are mountain-based hunter-gatherer nomads, and I'm a little leery of having 2 nomadic races (why? I'm not sure, to be honest). I like their heavy emphasis on competition, but dislike of war despite being a very strong race. I'm not sure what I'd like to see changed, but I think there's a lot of potential with Goliaths, with only (initially) minor changes to the fluff presented in RoS.

Now, as to the initial point of this: to find the missing niches in the world and it's history. Let's see, we have 2 nature-based races (elves and gnomes), 1 plains-dwelling nomadic race (humans), 1 urban race (halflings), and 3 fairly undefined races (shadefolk, dwarves, and goliaths [or alternate strong race?]). What niches does this leave? Underground, desert, aquatic, mountains, and arctic are the ones that come to mind quickly. I have no problems throwing out aquatic for the primary PC races, since having an aquatic race suggests a dependence on water, which is just awkward for PCs. That leaves:
Underground - I like the idea of having a race that is comfortable underground, even if they don't live underground exclusively - and in fact, I dislike the notion of having a race that lives underground exclusively
Desert - I don't have a problem throwing deserts out as a niche that needs to be filled by a PC race... I don't see it adding a whole lot to the race, and it adds a lot of issues to deal with (dehydration and overheating are the first 2 to come to mind)
Mountains - I could easily see going either way on having a mountain-based race, so I'll leave it in there for now
Arctic - similar to the desert, I don't particularly see what having an arctic-based race adds... so I think I'll toss it aside as a niche to be filled by one of the PC races.

OK, so this may be a fairly biased list (in that it started with only 5 options - 2 inspired by races under consideration and 3 basic extremes of the world), but that leaves me with only 2 environmental niches that could need filling - underground and mountainous. Dwarves and Goliaths fit fairly naturally into these... what happens if we switch them, just for the sake of making them different? Goliaths live in semi-underground fortresses, and Dwarves live on mountains... I'm not really sure where that would leave us, so I'll leave it at that for now.

This hasn't addressed social/functional niches, and that's largely because I'm not entirely sure how to address those... so with that, I'll pose a few questions to the playground:

What non-environmental niches are there? Which need to be filled by a PC race?
What environmental niches (besides Underground, Arctic, Desert, Aquatic, and Mountainous, Urban, Nature, and Plains) are there that could reasonably support race?
What interesting twists could be added to Dwarves or Goliaths to make them unique?
For each race that is focused on one of the mental stats (Int, Wis, Cha), what is a defining feature of that race? In other words, what does a race need to have/be in order for it to make sense as the [Int/Wis/Cha] race?

And now that I've written all that, I realize I haven't posted in a while, so now to make sure I've addressed anything relevant...

When thinking about other potential races, a few that come up regularly (goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, orcs, and warforged, in particular) I have been writing off since I have other ideas for how they will work into the world. The Warforged are a created race, used to supplement various armies. The goblinoids, on the other hand, hold onto a remnant of an ancient empire in a corner of the world often forgotten and ignored. Both of these will come into play in my overarching plotline*, though exactly how they will play in, I'm not quite sure yet. Orcs are inspired by a thread I saw (on these boards, I think... if you know what thread I'm talking about, please point me to it again, since I can't find it), and are risen from the bodies of those who fall in battle - they aren't quite undead (I think), but they're pushing the boundary. There's a lot of weirdness that can be achieved when you decide they don't feel pain and heal quickly, and I'm trying to take advantage of those traits to make them somewhat creepy and bizarre.

*Overarching Plotline (which is somewhat cliched, to be honest) - stop the BBEG from destroying the world, though hopefully I have a few interesting twists for my players that will keep them guessing and give them some difficult decisions [eg, the BBEG's not really a bad guy, just not entirely aware of what he's doing for various reasons]

As to the actual crunch (which I'm just starting to sort of think about), I'm leaning towards having each race get a +2 to the appropriate stat, but having several options for each race after that. For example, have 5 things that each race can choose from, but you can only have 3 of them. Or perhaps have a couple abilities to choose from that vary in both strength and cost (so you can have 1-2 powerful racial features or 4-5 weaker ones). I'm looking at having things that aren't biological features (such as bonuses to AC/attacks against a specific race) be feats.

And now that I've probably put everyone (myself included) to sleep with this post, I'll stop typing, and just finish by saying: Thanks for the responses, and please keep them coming!