Buildin' some races

[Infinite Monkey@Work]

I'm starting preliminary work on a new incarnation of my campaign (taking a break from DMing, my next campaign will be in an updated version of my old campaign world). I'd like some help / advice building some player races. Note that I am using 3e, as I and my group cannot afford new books.

The creation story I have mapped out goes something like this:

First there were four races of elves. Mountain, sea, air(nomadic, not flying) and desert. They were powerful, and different from from the animals in that they lived for ever. For whatever reason, after a while the god that created them asked them to choose to either stay in their current form or change to a new one. Most of them stayed the same, but some of them chose to be changed. Some of the mountain elves wanted to worship their god even more deeply (the god is the planet they live on), and asked to be changed into a form that could burrow into the gods body. Some of the semi-nomadic desert and highly nomadic air elves combined in a request to be able to explore the skies. The god granted both requests, turning those elves into 'dwarves' and 'gnomes'.

The 'dwarves' are now two seperate sub-races, one 'female' and one 'male' the females are basically the same as standard dwarves, but with more of a crafting bent, and the males are now massive construct-like creatures that excel at mining. New dwarves are basically constructed, rather than born, and while they are technically normal 'organic' beings, they have some construct-like traits.

The 'gnomes' were given abilities with machines and so on, and went on to build flying machines and even floating cities.

The price imposed for these changes was that the new races, while very long lived, would eventually age and die.

Much time passed... After a few millenia, a new evil god-planet showed up in the form of a meteorite that crashed into the planet. Its arrival massively altered the face of the planet. The original god realised that the old-style elves would not be able to survive on the new planet, so altered most of them into two races, the swamp/wood elves and the humans. This change had to happen a lot faster than the first change, and was subject to the corrupting influence of the evil god, so wood elves and humans age a lot faster than the older races (human standard for both of them). Also because of the corrupting influence, the divine powers that the good god had hoped to instill in the new races was either lessened or removed entirely.


The up-shot of all this is that I want to create/find a bunch of races:

Mountain/sea/air/desert elves:
something elemental/genasi like (earth/water/air/fire respectively) but at least cr 2

Dwarves:
the 'female' dwarves are similar to standard, but with more crafting/appraising type abilities, approx cr 1
the 'male' dwarves are Large size, plus whatever else that would make them good miners. also cr 1.
An idea I had for making the dwarves construct-ish (and lowering their cr) would be to make their healing spells incompatible or seperate from the other races. So a either dwarf could heal another dwarf but not an elf, or a cure light wounds(dwarf) spell would be different from a cure light wounds(everyone else) spell.

Gnomes:
like the dwarves, the gnomes are basically standard, with a few extras to make them good mechanic/wizards and cr 1.

wood elves:
These need to be cr 0 or 1. they are adapted for living in swamps infested with evil. I'll probably grab some kind of wood or wild elf from somwhere.

Humans : PHB standard.

So, anyone got any suggestions?

 

[Infinite Monkey@Work]

Just and extra thought:

the first elves could probably just be a blend of genasi and the celestial template. Without having my books in front of me to check, that sounds about right in terms of power and story type stuff.

 

[Infinite Monkey@Work]

Heres an initial cooncept for the 'male' dwarves

+4 str, +2 con, -2 dex, +2 wis, -2 cha. male dwarves are hugely strong and tough, but they are slow movers and their long lives underground have made them deep thinking and wise, but unused to working with the smaller, faster races.

Male dwarves have the giant type, rather than humanoid

Male dwarf base speed is 40 ft.

Male dwarves have +2 to all appraise, craft and profession checks relating to mining and stone working

Male dwarves are of large size. As such they have 10 ft reach, but a -1 penalty to AC and attack rolls.

Total darkvision. Male dwarves can see in the dark just as well as someone else can see in the light. While in the light, however, they are limited to black and white and 60 ft range, as if they were seeing using darkvision.

Stone cunning.

Stone-like. male dwarves bodies are stony and hard. They get +2 vs poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, necromantic effects, ability damage, ability drain, and energy drain. Their AC vs subdual damage attacks and critical confirmation rolls is counted as 2 higher than normal. However, cure wound spells cast on a male dwarf by a non-dwarf count as being one level lower (e.g. cure moderate counts as cure light), as do cure wound spells cast by dwarves on non-dwarves.

nonsexual : dwarves are built, not born, and there is no place for romance in the dwarven mind. They simply do not understand such things, and so they are immune to spells and effect that cause or rely on them.

CR +1 (I hope)

We won't be using favour classes, but flavour text will be added saying that male dwarves that become adventurers tend to be clerics, and quite often multi-class into fighters as they adventure.

Comments?

 

[Infinite Monkey@Work]

And now for a draft 'female' dwarf.

female dwarves are the same as standard PHB dwarves, except:

+2 con, -2 dex, +2 int, -2 cha. Female dwarves are tough and cunning, but like their male counterparts tend to be slow movers and uncertain in the company of the above-ground races.

no stone cunning, no bonuses vs spells, goblins or giants.

Their skill bonuses are:
+2 on all appraise, craft and profession checks to do with metals, gem and making stuff with them. These skills are all class skills.

Expert craftsmen : each time a female dwarf takes a craft item feat, they may take another craft item feat that they qualify for for free, or they may take the skill focus feat on one of their appraise/craft/profession skills for free.

Stone-like. female dwarves bodies are stony and hard. They get +2 vs poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, necromantic effects, ability damage, ability drain, and energy drain. Their AC vs subdual damage attacks and critical confirmation rolls is counted as 2 higher than normal. However, cure wound spells cast on a female dwarf by a non-dwarf count as being one level lower (e.g. cure moderate counts as cure light), as do cure wound spells cast by dwarves on non-dwarves.

nonsexual : dwarves are built, not born, and there is no place for romance in the dwarven mind. They simply do not understand such things, and so they are immune to spells and effect that cause or rely on them.

Not sure what else to add, but I want them to be cr +1