What if races leveled up?

Is this like how the Dragonborn and Hellbred races have abilities that progress over levels? Or how Raptorians increase their ability to fly as they gain levels?

If so, I'd give Gnomes a single illusion spell every other level. Half-Orcs would have a weaker-than-barbarian Rage progression. I'm not sure what I'd suggest for other races, as homebrew isn't really my thing.

As an optional module, I have no problem. However, I would not want to see it as the default. I hated it in Savage Species. I think race should give you only biological abilities like special sight, resistances and immunities, natural attacks that characters start with. Everything else should be tied to class, skills and feats if learned. If an increase is due to aging (increased size), x amount of should have to pass in the game world.

So using the elf as an example for 3.5 (4e doesn't have as many racial traits for me to work with), here is a 20 level progression for what the elf racial bonuses might look like if I were to do this.
Level 1: standard racial traits
Level 2: +1 to Spot, Search and Listen
Level 3: +1 to save vs. enchantment
Level 4: Weapon Focus with elven weapon of choice
Level 5: +1 to wizard caster level related effects
Level 6: +1 to Dexterity
Level 7: +1 to Spot, Search and Listen
Level 8: +1 to save vs. enchantment
Level 9: Weapon Focus with elven weapon of choice
Level 10: +1 to wizard caster level related effects
Level 11: +1 to Dexterity
Level 12: +1 to Spot, Search and Listen
Level 13: +1 to save vs. enchantment
Level 14: Weapon Focus with elven weapon of choice
Level 15: +1 to wizard caster level related effects
Level 16: +1 to Dexterity
Level 17: +1 to Spot, Search and Listen
Level 18: +1 to save vs. enchantment
Level 19: Weapon Focus with elven weapon of choice
Level 20: +1 to wizard caster level related effects

I thought about home brewing a D&D version of the latest Gamma World in which one origin would be race and one origin would class.

airwalkrr said:

So using the elf as an example for 3.5 (4e doesn't have as many racial traits for me to work with), here is a 20 level progression for what the elf racial bonuses might look like if I were to do this.
Level 1: standard racial traits
Level 2: +1 to Spot, Search and Listen
Level 3: +1 to save vs. enchantment
Level 4: Weapon Focus with elven weapon of choice
Level 5: +1 to wizard caster level related effects
Level 6: +1 to Dexterity
Level 7: +1 to Spot, Search and Listen
Level 8: +1 to save vs. enchantment
Level 9: Weapon Focus with elven weapon of choice
Level 10: +1 to wizard caster level related effects
Level 11: +1 to Dexterity
Level 12: +1 to Spot, Search and Listen
Level 13: +1 to save vs. enchantment
Level 14: Weapon Focus with elven weapon of choice
Level 15: +1 to wizard caster level related effects
Level 16: +1 to Dexterity
Level 17: +1 to Spot, Search and Listen
Level 18: +1 to save vs. enchantment
Level 19: Weapon Focus with elven weapon of choice
Level 20: +1 to wizard caster level related effects

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, for me that just sort of shows why I dropped the idea. It's dull. It raises balance issues without really adding anything to the game play or changing the way we think about our characters, and pretty much punishes you for not playing an elven wizard. It's a mechanic that ultimately serves no real purpose save to add complexity.

Looking through my elven racial feats, I find things like this:

ARCANE ARCHER [RACIAL]
You can deliver a spell with an arrow.
Prerequisite: Elf or qualifies as elf, base attack bonus +2, ability to cast 1st level arcane spells.
Benefit: After casting any spell with a target of creature and a range of touch, you can touch any missile weapon and imbue it with that spell such that it is discharged whenever it strikes a target. The spell is lost if you cast another spell before discharging it.

BRACHIATION [RACIAL]
You are capable of moving through the trees as easily as if you were on solid ground.
Prerequisite: Elf or qualifies as elf, Str 13, Dex 15, 6 ranks of climb, 6 ranks of jump
Benefit: You may swing or jump through the treetops at your full normal move provided that the trees are at least two size classes larger than you, just as if you had a natural climb speed.
Special: If you are size small, you need only Str 9 to take this feat.

ELFIN BEAUTY [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Elf or qualifies as elf
Benefit: You receive a +1 racial bonus to Charisma, or increase an existing bonus by the same amount..

ELFIN GRACE [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Elf or qualifies as elf
Benefit: You receive a +1 racial bonus to Dexterity, or increase an existing bonus by the same amount..

ELFIN INTELLECT [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Elf or qualifies as elf
Benefit: You receive a +1 racial bonus to Intelligence, or increase an existing bonus by the same amount.

FOREST MAGIC [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Elf or qualifies as elf
Benefit: One per day you may cast one of the following spells as a sorcerer of your character level: Dancing Lights, Entangle, and Pass without Trace.

FORCE ARROWS [ARCANE, RACIAL]
You can strike your foe with a ranged weapon as if making a touch attack.
Prerequisite: Elf or qualifies as elf, Dex 13, Point Blank Shot, Base attack bonus +6, ability to cast 1st level arcane spells, 2nd level arcane spell caster, ability to cast Magic Missile
Benefit: As a free action, you may expend an arcane spell slot of first level or higher. Thereafter you are considered to be holding a spell. While you are holding this spell, whenever you draw a bow you may conjure into being an arrow of force. This arrow is treated as a +1 ghosttouch weapon. It disappears shortly after striking its target. Otherwise, it is treated exactly as a normal magical arrow. For each level of the spell slot you expend, you receive 1 such arrow for each two full caster levels you have. For example, if your caster level is 10th and you expend a 3rd level spell, you receive 15 such arrows – one for each of your next 15 bow attacks.

Now, that's all house rules. Some of those are flavorful and some capture flavor, but there are some big big glaring design problems there and not just in the details. First, if we make racial feats, we have to be really careful not to tread on an idea that we would want to make general to characters of many types. Second, there are obvious balance issues. It's hard to make a feat that doesn't become a no brainer for anyone of that race, or else, isn't strictly less interesting than the more powerful general feats that are available. The main interest has to be for the idea in the feat. As you can see from my 'arcane archer' feat, I generally consider that characters in my campaign don't take a prestige class - they become one. But, spending a chargen resource on iffy racial feats isn't so attractive. Thirdly, there aren't that many of them, and there are even fewer if you ignore the ones tied to particular class concepts. I have a lot of feats, many of them homebrew, literally hundreds. But I've never been inspired to make a lot of racial feats, because they are so particularly thorny of problems. So this raises a big problem if your idea is to given everyone some racial resources to spend independent of your other character resources, because really you end up just giving everyone the same thing or more of the same. Once you've established your core idea in the racial core attributes, there isn't a lot of interesting mechanical area left over that you can't explore with normal chargen resources.

Just by way of comparison, here are some of the racial feats for one of my homebrew races, the Orine:

DEATH SHRIEK [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Orine or counts as Orine.
Benefit: You have perfected the death scream of the feared Orine berserkers, and with it terrify your foes. You receive a +4 bonus on intimidate checks to demoralize a foe.

FEATHERED FRIEND [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Orine or counts as Orine.
Benefit: You may add Empathy (Birds) to the class skills of each class you take.

PEACE SKALD [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Orine or counts as Orine, Bardic Music ability, 4 ranks in Perform
Benefit: In addition to your other Bardic Music abilities, you gain the ability to soothe with your music. This as acts exactly as if the Bard had cast the spell calm emotions as a bard of his caster level.

BATTLE SKALD [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Orine or counts as Orine, Bardic Music ability, 4 ranks in Perform
Benefit: In addition to your other Bardic Music abilities, you gain the ability to enrage with your music. This as acts exactly as if the Bard had cast the spell Emotion (Rage) as a bard of his caster level.

ORINE MASS [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Orine or counts as Orine
Benefit: You receive a +1 racial bonus to Constitution, or increase an existing bonus by the same amount..

ORINE HEFT [TRAIT, RACIAL]
Prerequisite: Orine or counts as Orine.
Benefit: You receive a +1 racial bonus to Strength, or increase an existing bonus by the same amount.

Again, there isn't a lot there. Some of it is pretty cool, and some of them might be considered no brainers for certain sorts of Orine characters, but at some level I think the only reason I bother to have racial feats at all is that - even a player never takes them - they help establish very basic ideas about who these people are. Just from the racial feats, you can see the Orine have a kinship with birds, they are powerful and feared warriors, and music is very central to thier culture. The Orine actually look a lot more like humans than your first conception that popped in your mind (though that conception is great, their gods tend to take forms like that), but you actually have a lot to go on here and might have the basic idea of a sort of character you might play. I'm not sure that there is a lot more to be had in exploring race as class unless you really want racial classes, like, the only way to be an elf is have the class 'elf'. But that proves problimatic I think in the long run. As I said, I've played around with creating a 20 level generalized 'Paragon' class (for example, I believe that Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender, is best represented in D&D terms by the idea of this class and is currently not well representable by any class), but so far have been able to push through the major design difficulties. One of the ideas behind adding Paragon to my otherwise very focused exclusive list of permisable classes was precisely to explore the idea I think you are trying to explore and provide a sort of 'jack of all trades class' that could be dipped into usefully regardless of your concept to push the idea of being particularly above and beyond members of your race so that it wouldn't really be a burden to pick up racial flavor if you wanted it. But I haven't got there yet. If I ever do, I'll let you know about what I come up with.

I kind of like the notion that racial feats, even if not highly attractive options for player characters, help accentuate the background and culture of races.

On a tangential note, this reminds me of another idea I once had. Turn all prestige classes into feat chains and not allow prestige classes. I stopped partway through the write-ups though because it got a little tedious. Nevertheless I think it could have worked. My operating principle was that prestige classes (at least the ones players tend to take) are generally better than sticking with one class or even simple multiclassing in and of itself. So if you make prestige classes into five feat chains, you reward focus at the cost of versatility without requiring additional types of classes. I am sure others have tried the same thing.

I don't know if I agree that the idea I suggested above would punish wizards for not being elves. Taking -2 to Con is a significant penalty in a game so heavily dependent upon hit points, especially when your hit dice are usually d4s. But part of the idea is to encourage elf wizards and the classic fighter/wizard archetype from OD&D and Basic so that the caster level hit isn't as big of a penalty if you splash a few fighter levels. Perhaps the bonus would only apply to your maximum hit dice, so as to not be of a benefit to pure wizards, but only multiclassed ones?

I think it would be cool to be able to progress on multiple character fronts at the same time. Perhaps not all of the same power level though, but it'd be nice to see a way to advance racial qualities as well as class.

Savage Species progression sucks FYI.

I'd change the caster level to bonuses to knowledge arcana and spellcraft, perhaps with an aditional bonus to checks related to enchantment. Non casters could definitely still benefit from this, while maintaining the flavour.


Also, I personally like the racial bonus increases over levels because it reflects what perhaps a good goal for this racial-trait advancement should be;- it keeps racial traits meaningful above 4th level and somewhat distinct from the white noise of power creep.

I wonder if its possible to do the same with the negative traits without gimping the character?

On a side note, I really like the idea of the feat chains as replacements to prestige classes as well. I suspect that presitge classes only later came to replace older edition archetype kits. They seem originally a mechanic for story elements and campaign-specific organisations and such.