Getting Rid of Subraces

[Viktyr Gehrig]

In a game stuffed to the gills with dozens of different types of sentient, humanoid creatures, it's hard to keep them all straight and have a niche for each to occupy in your campaign.

It's even harder when fairly normal types of creatures have four or five subraces, which you have to separate even further. They also tend to provide a lot of material for powergamers to abuse-- indeed, subraces seem to ignore the balance guidelines that normal races are built upon.

My solution, so far, is to provide each race with a specific Favored Class the ability to choose from two different classes as Favored, with this decision determining their subtype. While this does still have "subraces", there are far fewer of them, without too significantly hampering their choices.

Elves could choose Wizard or Ranger, with those choosing Ranger being Wood Elves.
Dwarves could choose Fighter or Barbarian, with those choosing Barbarian being Sundered Dwarves, or perhaps Battleragers (who could be part of existing Dwarven communities).
Gnomes could choose Bard or Druid, with those choosing Druid being Forest Gnomes.
Halflings could choose Rogue or... Ranger, perhaps? Ranger Halflings would be Wild Halflings. Or you could offer them Monk, for those Luiren Halflings from the Realms.

If you need further variation for some reason (like Underdark races), there are various templates to help you. I reccomend Fantasy Flight Games' Galactic Races for Dragonstar, as it has a few terrain-based templates.

Night-Adapted is perfect for Underdark races, trading Light-Blindness for Darkvision 60. If your base race already has Darkvision or Low-Light Vision, you could upgrade this to 120. (If Low-Light Vision, the Darkvision replaces it.)

For those who really want to have Avariel, the Winged template from Savage Species is perfect.

 

[Corlon]

personally, I like a lot of the subraces, but you're right about the niche thing, so generally the only types of creatures that enter into my campaign (not really on purpose, but just because it happens this way) are the normal type(duh), the wild type (for wilderness areas), and then the dark type of creatures like drow and such (for an evil feel to some races).

 

[Coredump]

One option is to just keep them all, but give all subraces (or most) the same mechanical bonuses as the base race. Leave the differences to roleplaying.

.

 

[DackBlackhawk]

Subrace Idea

Another Subrace idea is to do them like a monster template, such as underdark, sylvan, tinker, or some other template...

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I like your concept, I've never liked having so many subraces (though I'm a hypocrite for it since my favorite character is a Wood Elf). They always seemed to get in the way. In my campaign I allowed the standard races plus orcs, goblins and kobolds.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I like your concept, I've never liked having so many subraces (though I'm a hypocrite for it since my favorite character is a Wood Elf). They always seemed to get in the way. In my campaign I allowed the standard races plus orcs, goblins and kobolds.

In most of my games, I'll allow people to play anything they please, except the various subraces. (I'll allow them to be a subrace, but they're mechanically identical, except for things like Night-Adapted or other templates.)

I've upgraded the Orc's abilities a little to make it a Core Race, to compensate for how I've House Ruled the Half Orc.

 

[Nightfall]

Kor,

While I personally don't mind subraces, I think the trouble some people have is that they believe monstrous PCs SHOULD always be allowed. I'm not of that mindset but I do understand it. In any case subraces work IF they have their own domain, IMHO.

 

[AeroDm]

Like many of the folks here, I've found that removing the mechanical differences of subraces makes them much more useful. People begin taking races because of the culture rather than the stat mods. I think that offering different favored races is a good idea, doing little for power but just adding another element to certify the difference between the races.

 

[Darklone]

Most subraces I use are balanced to the big races... and I am blessed with players who choose their race due to style reasons (except for one...). Most of them knew what to play before they even knew anything about the rules.

 

[dulsin]

Gnomes could choose Bard or Druid, with those choosing Druid being Forest Gnomes.

Gnomes favored class is Wizard

If you don't want to play with subraces you don't need to. I would be more inclined to throw out all the monster races before getting rid of Wood Elves.