Hey, something I just realized about races!

[mhacdebhandia]

White Wolf has really mastered the art of the narrowly focused splatbook, with (I think) 10 possible main splats for each of their nWoD games before moving into NPC groups. (Even Vampire has only gone through one set of splats so far, and hasn't started on the second.)

To be more precise:

Vampire: The Requiem's five Covenants have each been covered in a splatbook at this point, but the first Clan splatbook (Ventrue) isn't due out until early 2008.

Werewolf: The Forsaken's five Auspices and five Tribes won't be getting individual splatbooks. There's a Tribes of the Moon book due out at some point, I think.

Mage: The Awakening's five Orders are slowly being covered (only Guardians of the Veil and Free Council have been released at this point), but there was a single book for the five Paths (Tome of the Watchtowers).

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I think we'll be seeing:

1) A few racial abilities + modifiers
2) Scalable racial abilities that progress with character level.
3) Racial Talents & Feats (ie, "must be a 7th level elf"), allowing a character to choose between focusing on his class, or his race.
4) Racial Substitution Levels.

I think, from what I've read, that racial substitution levels are right out.

If one looks to SW Saga, one sees that races have a far more flexible way to influence character development. Simply assign to each race a talent tree or two, and allow characters to take these talents whenever they have access to a talent (like the Force Sensitive feat in SWSE). This allows dwarf fighters to be more dwarfy or more fightery (of the type they pick) depending on the wish of the player without the clunkiness of substituting a specific level at a specific point. The talent mechanic, with prerequisite talents, should be enough to control the balance.

I also think, however, that there will be an additional mechanic that simply ties with character level. Something like every dwarf of 10th level gets a +2 to Con, and every dwarf of 20th level gets a +2 to natural armor, every tiefling of 5th level gets an innate darkness spell, and so on.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Mage: The Awakening's five Orders are slowly being covered (only Guardians of the Veil and Free Council have been released at this point), but there was a single book for the five Paths (Tome of the Watchtowers).

Mysterium (the coolest order by far) has a book imminent.