LA +1 Humans, Elves, Dwarves, etc

[Asmor]

I'm working on a new campaign setting tentativly called "The Tainted Lands." It's inspired by the most recent issue of dragon, which featured a couple articles on magical pollution. Anyways, we've got the typical story of an ancient, magically advanced race which has perished; in this case, it was a globally-spanning race which lived underground, typically known as True Elves. There was a cataclysm called the upheaval which infused the world with abundant magic, but made all the true elves lose their memories. Some of them stayed in the tunnels, being corrupted into drow, others moved to mountains to become dwarves and still others moved to the forests to become "regular" elves. There's all kinds of magical hazards like fire storms, hedge mazes (extra-dimensional spaces in forests inspired by the Lady's mazes from Planescape), acid rain, etc.

Anyways, the people of this land are going to be quite hardy. I want to make the base assumption of LA +1 races (and in so doing move everyone down by one LA, so for example you could play a Tiefling at level 1 with no penalty). So what I need are some LA +1 variants of the base species.

What sort of benefits should I add, especially magical abilities? I'm thinking I might give humans a choice of any 0 level spell, usable at will, 1st level spell usable three times per day, 2nd level spell usable twice a day or 3rd level spell usable once per day (they only get to take one of those options). Does that seem appropriate?

Other races would get more (or maybe just more powerful) spells, but they'd be set in stone. Elves might get, like, Dimension Door usable once per day but only through foliage/trees/etc. They also are unique in that they can see and sense hedge mazes, and in fact many of their cities are built in them. For everyone else, there's no non-magical way to figure out whether you're in a hedge maze or not.

 

[GreatLemur]

That sounds cool. But personally, I'd focus on ramping up the existing racial bonuses rather than throwing in spell-like abilities. Give dwarves +2 Str, +4 Con, -2 Cha, +4 on saves vs. poison and spells, maybe throw in DR 1 or something like that. Give humans an additional feat (or maybe a progression of bonus feats, based on character level?), more skill points, possibly a +2 to an ability score of choice. Ditch half-orcs, and replace them with full orcs that get +4 Str, +2 Con, -2 Int, maybe an Intimidate bonus, maybe that great "Powerful Build" ability from the half-giant that lets 'em use weapons that are one size category larger than they technically are. Stuff like that.

 

[Koewn]

I poked around at that some time ago:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=98733

I didn't end up going as far as modifying the 'demi-humans', as I was aiming at a humanocentric world and was only allowing as far as Half-? as PCs.

Koewn

 

[Asmor]

That sounds cool. But personally, I'd focus on ramping up the existing racial bonuses rather than throwing in spell-like abilities. Give dwarves +2 Str, +4 Con, -2 Cha, +4 on saves vs. poison and spells, maybe throw in DR 1 or something like that. Give humans an additional feat (or maybe a progression of bonus feats, based on character level?), more skill points, possibly a +2 to an ability score of choice. Ditch half-orcs, and replace them with full orcs that get +4 Str, +2 Con, -2 Int, maybe an Intimidate bonus, maybe that great "Powerful Build" ability from the half-giant that lets 'em use weapons that are one size category larger than they technically are. Stuff like that.

While I'm a huge fan of racial ability modifiers, I reall want for every race to have some magical aptitude. It fits in with the setting, where magic suffuses the world. Dwarves mine for arcane alloys with inherent magical properties, vegetables planted in certain areas may have healing properties, etc. Everything, and everyone, is magical to some extent.

 

[saucercrab]

IIRC, Dragon magazine's 3rd Ed. update for Dark Sun had all the standard & psionic races as +1 or +2 LA. Don't remember the specifics, but I think each race had a psi-like ability that got better every 3 or 4 character levels, much how the psionic races do.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm in the same boat as you for a campaign I'm playing, so I dropped in for some ideas...then this simple fix hit me- use the benefits of the Unearthed Arcana Racial Paragon levels to compensate.

Thus, a LA+1 Human would thus have the benefits of a Human with 1 level of Human Paragon, a LA+2 Human would have the benefits of a Human with 2 levels of Human Paragon, etc. And then, you simply don't use the actual racial paragon classes (to prevent stacking of abilities.

This would work for up to 3 levels for most races, and up to 6 for the Half- races.

The only hitch is that some of them have +1 spell level. You could 1) ignore that, 2) give spell like abilities, or 3) give the PC equivalent spellcasting power equal to a level in a single, innate spellcasting class, like sorcerer, favored soul, warmage etc.- dependent upon PC concept.

Another thing you could do is allow players to create their lower LA race PCs with templates (of your approval)- perhaps from a specific short list. Heck, you could even have lists that vary from region to region.

 

[Asmor]

I like your ideas. The racial paragon one is simple and elegant, but I don't think I'll do it just because I'm not especially fond of them. I'll definitely take a look at them for some ideas, though, so thanks for the inspiration!

The template idea I'll definitely use.

On a semi-related note, does anyone know if there's a list of all races in the SRD by level adjustment? Or, heck, even just all LA +1 races?

I was amazed to find that Orc is actually LA +0.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As I recall, there is an extensive list of races listed in Savage Species arranged by LA, including the PC races that had been published at that time. No Eberron, but...

 

[Asmor]

Danke!

 

[Asmor]

I've done a bit of work on the races. I doubt they're balanced, but it's a work in progress.

http://taintedlands.tiddlyspot.com/#Races

Highlights:

* Aasimar: Pretty sure I left them as written, except for updating favored class.

* Dwarves: Gained damage reduction and extra hit points

* Gray Elves: Modified pretty heavily from RAW, gave bigger bonus to intelligence and
limited-range dimension door every 1d12 rounds.

* Halflings: Changed their ability mods, gave them at will reduce person but they need to
wait 1d12 rounds between the ending of it and casting it again. Not sure how balanced this is, as I'm not quite sure just how powerful reduce person is.

* Humans: Essentially hat I suggested above. I'm using some odd favored class rules which make their "any" really good.

* Kobolds: Adjusted their ability modifiers a bit, and give them all two free levels worth of sorcerer spells. Not sure if this is overpowering or not... certainly more powerful than the gray elves, in any case, but playing a caster with a constitution penalty is pretty harsh. I might even take it a step further and give them -1 HP per level.

* Orcs: Adjusted ability modifiers, gave them a free rage once per day or extra use if they're a barbarian, which stacks with the extra use they'd get for having barbarian as a favored class.

* Tieflings: Removed charisma penalty, changed their once-per-day spell to suggestion.

* Wood Elves: Tweaked ability mods, gave them an animal companion as a druid (which will stack with a druid's or ranger's animal companion so they could actually have two).

Decided not to allow half-elves (never liked 'em), half-orcs (replaced by full-blooded orcs) or gnomes (god damn gnomes).