Arcana Evolved--Designing Racial & Evolved Levels

genshou · Sep 16, 2005

In my quest to find a way to tweak every system I can get my hands on to just the way I like it, I have little desire to change things in Arcana Evolved. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," is the old maxim, and I fully believe in that. However, Arcana Evolved does leave me with a bit of a quandary. I don't like the races. I just don't. It's not necessarily that there's anything wrong with them; they just don't seem to fit with my worlds very well (at least, not if they are the only available races). I could use races from D&D, but that leads me to wonder: what to do about racial and evolved levels? Humans are taken care of already (they're one race from AE that I can obviously keep if I'm looking at D&D races). I don't know what to do about other races. What sort of things go into the design of racial and evolved levels? Has anyone made racial or evolved levels for the PHB races? How can I make racial levels that fit with both the ruleset and the race's concept? I need ideas, please

Odhanan · Sep 16, 2005

There was a PDF on Monte's site for D&D races levels. At the time, there were no evolved levels, but this PDF could be use as the base for further design. Try searching in the archives of montecook.com, and if you aren't lucky, try a google search. Let us know how it goes and if nobody came with a precise link by then, I'll see what I can do.

jtone · Sep 16, 2005

Jesse Decker, Andy Collins, and Charles Ryan had made racial levels for the PHB races. The PDF is on Monte's site at http://malhavocpress.com/images/Racial_levels.pdf .

genshou · Sep 16, 2005

jtone said:
Jesse Decker, Andy Collins, and Charles Ryan had made racial levels for the PHB races. The PDF is on Monte's site at http://malhavocpress.com/images/Racial_levels.pdf .

Cool! Posted before I could go find it myself.

I guess now I can see what I think evolved levels should entail for the PHB races. If I need any help designing them (I most likely will), I'll post here

HalWhitewyrm · Sep 16, 2005

Notice that those racial levels came out in Unearthed Arcana as Racial Paragon classes. Is that what AU/AE calls racial levels, paragon class levels? I thought racial levels were primarily to balance out LA races so that they could start at LA +0, take a couple of racial levels and achieve their normal LA +X form. Or is it all the same thing with different names? I don't have AU/AE so I don't know.

Staffan · Sep 16, 2005

It's more like UA's paragon levels than Savage Species' monster levels. There's nothing forcing a AE giant to take three levels of the Giant class, but he can if he wants to be more "giant-y" (such as becoming Large).

Turjan · Sep 17, 2005

jtone said:
Jesse Decker, Andy Collins, and Charles Ryan had made racial levels for the PHB races. The PDF is on Monte's site at http://malhavocpress.com/images/Racial_levels.pdf .

Thanks for the link. I guess that the entry at "Spells per day" or "Special" would be a bit more generous nowadays. For instance, I'd expect the caster levels go up with all of the racial levels.

genshou · Sep 18, 2005

Turjan said:
Thanks for the link. I guess that the entry at "Spells per day" or "Special" would be a bit more generous nowadays. For instance, I'd expect the caster levels go up with all of the racial levels.

Not all racial or evolved levels provide spellcasting increases. Human and loresong faen evolved levels provide 3/3 possible spellcasting level increases; while that number is 0/3 and 0/3 for dracha racial and evolved levels, 1/3 for quickling faen evolved levels, 1/3 and 2/3 for spryte racial and evolved levels, 0/3 and 1/3 for giant, litoria, and sibbecai racial and evolved levels, 2/3 and 3/3 for mojh racial and evolved levels, and 3/3 and 3/3 for verrik racial and evolved levels. Clearly the humans, loresong faen, and verrik get the best spellcasting out of their racial/evolved levels.

Viktyr Gehrig · Sep 18, 2005

Have the Racial Paragons from Unearthed Arcana been put up on that one SRD page yet? (There's a website covering all of the OGC from UA.)

I'm still working on designs for them, myself-- got a good list of psionic racial paragons from the Wizards boards, and I'm tweaking them for my own purposes-- not to mention, I'm trying to make a decent Githyanki and Duergar. (I may start allowing the Duergar as a Dwarf with FG: Fighter/Psion instead of Fighter/Artificer-- then, like Drow, it would require its own Paragon.)

HalWhitewyrm · Sep 18, 2005

The stuff from Unearthed Arcana is already OGC from the book (with some closed exceptions) and will not be added to the SRD.

That said, www.d20srd.org has most, if not all, the OGC material from UA already on their site, which makes it very handy.