Newbie Setting Builder Help: Looking for advice on Race construction

I just made a new 4e race....

I give you: the Dretch.

I could have followed the idea of no - stats, but the abilities seemed to be a bit more than the average player race (not that much but enough) and they're supposed to be profoundly stupid. so there it is.
 

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The key is to find areas where you can make up for stat deficiencies with abilities and powers.

I.E. Elves and Dwarves make good fighters. Both get a bonus to Wisdom to use on opportunity attacks and a bonus to the fighter's secondary statistics.

Dwarves can use a healing surge as a swift action. This frees up an action for an attack, and should even out the extra 5% chance of missing each fight (i.e. you get that extra attack to make up for the miss). The other dwarf bonuses are icing on the cake and very fighter friendly.

Elves get a reroll that does much the same, helps them ignore that one miss that you'd statistically expect every fight from the lack of a Str bonus. The extra movement likewise is gravy, putting them where they need to be.
 

Right if you're looking for class balance across all of your choices then what you need to look at, currently, are the attribute bonuses.

So if you do:

Human = +2 any one
Minotaur = Strength +2, Wisdom +2
Lizardfolk = Dexterity +2, Cha +2
Stonefolk = Int +2, Con +2

Fighter: Primary: Human, Minotaur
Secondary: Stonefolk, Lizardfolk with the right racial feats

Cleric: Primary: Human, Minotaur

Warlord: Primary: Minotaur, Stonefolk

Warlock: Primary: Stonefolk, Lizardfolk

Wizard: Primary: Stonefolk, Human

Ranger: Primary: Minotaur, Lizardfolk, Human

Paladin: Primary: Human, Minotaur, Lizardfolk

Rogue: Primary: Human, Lizardfolk
Secondary: Minotaur

If you throw in a fourth race you're in better shape.
 

hmm.

that's a great way to approach it statistically if you want to make sure you have all the classes evenly covered with a really small number of races.

I think a 4th race would throw things off though. whatever you use, if its supposed to be evenly distributed, should be equally divisible by six(6 stats).

so I would go with either 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 races, +human. (there are 5 different sets of 3 setups covering all of the races.

1+2 (str & dex)
1+3 (str & con)
1+4 (str & int)
1+5 (str & wis)
1+6 (str & cha)
2+3 (dex & con)
2+4 (dex & int)
2+5 (dex & wis)
2+6 (dex & cha)
3+4 (con & int)
3+5 (con & wis)
3+6 (con & cha)
4+5 (int & wis)
4+6 (int & cha)
5+6 (wis & cha)

Thats all of the possible combinations involving +2 to 2 different ones.
You could pick any 3 that cover all stats and youd be fairly evenly covered.

You could do it via classes, but that would likely be a whole different ball of wax. The stat based way would cover all of the stats, but depending on which combinations you chose, you would get more of them good at certain classes based on what the classes use.
 

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