NPC Race

[Catsoup]

I am wondering if it is possible take the stats of a monster and turn that monster into a player race. If it is possible can anyone please explain to me or refer me to a place where I can learn how to do this? Thank you.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am wondering if it is possible take the stats of a monster and turn that monster into a player race. If it is possible can anyone please explain to me or refer me to a place where I can learn how to do this? Thank you.

Anything is possible. There are no official rules for it. The back of each Monster Manual actually has NPC racial writups for several races and plenty of games allow PCs to be built using them (though be warned some are not 100% balanced, they may be a bit stronger or weaker than official PC races). Beyond that Dragon has some writeups on additional PC races such as gnolls. Beyond that you're into homebrew territory. If you look at the existing PC races they all follow a fairly set pattern, 2 ability score boosts, usually a racial power, some skill bonuses (generally 2), and then possibly another couple of benefits or traits depending on how potent their racial power is.

 

[Destil]

Some other points:

If the two ability score bonuses both affect the same defense (Str&Con, Dex&Int, Wis&Cha) then they also generally get a misc +1 to another defense to make up for it.

The power is generally an encounter.

There are exceptions. Kalashatar basically get an at-will power (telepathy) in addition to their encounter power. But it's balance by their encounter kind of sucking, and they don't get a +1 the defense bonus despite having +Wis +Cha.

 

[Turtlejay]

Yeah. Balance is the thing that will be rough to do here. If you wanted to just make a race, with the +2 to two stats and two skills, it would be cake to do, but the miscellaneous stuff is what you might have trouble with.

Most racial powers are *about* as powerful as an at-will, but this varies considerably. I'd say it should fall somewhere in between encounter and at-will power, with any other goodies that you choose to give based on how powerful the power is.

Of course, this is a generality, and many races don't get powers, and some get very little but they *still* rock (humans?!).

Jay