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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 3122886" data-attributes="member: 18832">I think the goliaths from Races of Stone have a pretty interesting culture. It's not too strange that it would be difficult for even novice players to get an understanding of how their goliath character would look at the world, but neither is it so shallow that experienced gamers can't find anything interesting to do with the race. Some people find their Powerful Build ability too strong, but I think it works fine if you understand that it's not usable or abusable with the Monkey Grip feat, et cetera.Likewise, despite the general consensus that illumians look silly, I'm happy to admit that I find them interesting enough that I would consider using them in a setting where their presence as a secret offshoot of the human race would be appropriate. I thought their original symbol powers on the website were better, but they're not terrible now.I think changelings and shifters both work pretty well outside of Eberron. Changelings, in particular, are well-suited to very urbanised settings and games which are heavy on the intrigue. Shifters, by way of contrast, work a little better in less-developed settings where their animalistic traits are thematically interesting. Of course, as written each presumes that doppelgangers and lycanthropes (or something similar) both exist in the setting, but it's easy enough to say they're extinct if you don't want to use them yourself, or that the races evolved or were created independently.I'm fond of warforged - their roleplaying potential is excellent - but they have one problem from my perspective (no, it's not mechanical; I think concerns about their balance are overrated). To plausibly include warforged in your campaign, you have to assume that at least some people have the magical knowledge and power necessary to construct a fully-sentient artificial race.I don't have that much to say about the other races you mentioned. The elan are somewhat interesting because they have the same potential as illumians for that "stranger among us" vibe, I suppose. I actually prefer the synads from Dragon Magazine (and later Complete Psionic) to either illumians or elans in this role, because they're more alien but their specific differences from humanity are better-justified.Of course, the kalashtar from Eberron are similar to the synads in the sense of having differently-constructed minds, and can easily fill the "strangers among us" archetype if you drop the Eberron convention that they're relatively-easily recognised as a nonhuman race.Dromites and xeph aren't inherently interesting as written, and neither are the four races from Magic of Incarnum, though at least the dusklings are more than just "funny-looking humans" and the azurin can fit in settings where humans and their closest variants (like aasimar and tieflings) dominate.Raptorans have a good mechanic for giving a race flight without a Level Adjustment, but are culturally dull. In fact, adapting their Hit Dice-based advancement to true flight might solve the problem some have with shifters having to take shifter feats; if, instead, shifters gained additional bonus feats as their Hit Dice increased, it might be better-balanced.All of the environmental races are pretty dull, especially the geographical variants of common races.</blockquote>

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