5e Racial Expansion: Racial Templates

[QuietBrowser]

One of the most innovative, if also the most contentious, new ideas that third edition brought into D&D was the concept of race templates. Rather than mandating unique specific racial writeups for half-dragons, half-fiends and all of the other fusions out there. This was an idea that was hugely popular, both for flavor and, let's be honest, for sheer powergaming potential, but the scourge of Level Adjustment meant that such templates... didn't really work out very well, as a general rule of thumb.

But, a new edition is a new chance to get this right. If folks are interested, what I want to pursue here is a way to make racial templates a viable character upgrade for players in D&D 5th edition.

Why? Because, even if they could be sought after just for the sake of muchkinism, the half-fiend or half-dragon or whatever else is also a race with some very broad potential "character hooks" built right into it by virtue of concept. We don't know if WoTC is ever going to release them officially, so where's the harm in trying to make them workable?

The watchword for this project is: "Power At A Fair Price". The big issue with templates is that either you get far too much power, so it becomes foolish not to take them, or else they hinder you so badly that only the most hardcore of RPer is willing to cripple their character by taking them. Balancing game-crunch, making sure there's a legitimate sacrifice for a worthwhile payout, that's the biggest thing about what I want to do.

The big issue beyond that is... how to actually achieve this? What I'm currently leaning towards is the idea of using the 5e prestige class base-rules as a basis, seeing as how "creature classes" were a thing in 3e, but I'd like to discuss how to pull this off, if anyone's interested.

Oh! I thought I should mention that, having read Pathfinder's "Demons Revisited" and seeing how it tweaks the Half-Fiend template for more direct ancestry properties, I'd love to go for a similar option in this process as well. But first things first, yes?

 

[Sunseeker]

I'd suggest a simple, one-level "class". Do it just like how the classes are set up. The gain 2 or more racial skills, from an available list. They gain a monstrous weapon proficiency/attack (claws, stinger, tail slap, etc...) and one monstrous class feature, spider climb, web, breath weapon, etc... as is appropriate to the species they're getting a template from.

I wouldn't suggest anything more than essentially a +1 LA; it's just too much investment in 5E.

 

[QuietBrowser]

Yeah, 5e really does discourage multiclassing and feat tax is an even worse idea than it was in 3e because of how rarely feats are doled out in 5e. I was definitely thinking that "racial classes" shouldn't be much higher than 3 levels, 5 at the upside. If they're beefy enough, then that should fairly balance out the "cost" of multiclassing, do folks agree?

 

[QuietBrowser]

So, I stumbled back across this idea and I was curious; I know from another topic of mine that prestige classes were fairly soundly panned as a revamp-process for 5e, under the not unjustified complaint that PrCs tended to take all the glory away from classes and the 5e classes are crunchier and more satisfying than their 3e counterparts, but do people have the same antipathy towards racial templates? Do folks like the idea of being able to play a half-dragon, half-fae, half-fiend, whatever, or does that just seem more an excuse for munchkining than a way to create more interesting characters?

Heck, maybe the Background mechanic might be a better way to handle being a half-whatever?