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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DammitVictor" data-source="post: 6437134" data-attributes="member: 6750908">So, I am growing more and more dissatisfied with the handling of non-human races in D&D-- they're not sufficiently different from humans, race has too little effect on character design, racial abilities are a one-time deal at 1st, and so forth. (Ironic, given that 4th and 5th have actually improved upon this compared to AD&D and 3e.) Increasingly, I am thinking that BECMI (and later, Savage Species) had the right idea about this, and that every non-human race should be its own whole character class with special abilities from 1st through 20th level. This would be combined with AD&D/Gestalt multiclassing, so while every Elf is an Elf, you can also be an Elf/Fighter or an Elf/Cleric if you needed to. You could also consolidate this entire subrace business-- which I hate-- into subclasses of the racial classes without requiring the existence of narrowly specialized racial subtypes.Problem is, I'm stuck on the abilities. The Elf is probably easiest, since they're originally a Fighter/Mage. Give them Ranger casting, tune the spell list, and then fill out their other stuff. Gnome isn't hard, either, since it's got a lot of magical abilities to play with. The ones that are killing me are Dwarf and Halfling, because I don't know what sort of toys to give them without making them inferior clones of the Fighter and Rogue.</blockquote>