D&D 5E Turning Aasimar, Tiefling, Warforged, Shifter and similar races into multiclass templates that add onto "base" race instead of being separate race.

[pnewman]

"Warforged Rebuild" just means that after the crash a secret government agency put 6 million dollars worth of parts in you, rebuilding you better, stronger, faster. It fits in some fantasy settings, but not in ones that don't have magic as technology (Eberron) or gothic horror body modification (Ravenloft).

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

That sounds as monster template class: half-golem, planetouched, half-dragon, weretouched...

Maybe the 6th Ed. will add something like the option of "upgrade" (social) background with more (no-combat or magic) feats or the a "monstertouched second background".

 

[Seramus]

I know Pathfinder 2E does something like this. You get to pick your primary race such as Human, and then pick a subrace like Half Elf, Half Orc, Tiefling, or Normal Human From Frozen Bad Place.

 

[CreamCloud0]

If i were to implement template modifiers for some of these species i’d rather most of the features were active from the word go rather than suddenly kicking in at higher levels, if i play a dwarf tiefling i want to be a dwarf tiefling and not a dwarf who spontaneously turned red and grew a tail and horns
As for the actual implementation each species template would have their list of traits, about 8 maybe? You get 3 for free and 6 maximum, beyond the initial 3 you have to start swapping out traits and features from your original race, representing a genetic mutual exclusivity

This came out more as building ‘half races’ rather than ‘X based Y(dwarf based tiefling)’, oh well.

 

[Vaalingrade]

LA was less a balancing mechanism and more a punishment for wanting to play something 'weird' back in the day. And IMO, race levels are just a more annoying 'you have to wait until level 3 to be who your character is' problem with subclasses.

Ths issue is that species abilities just don't hack it vs class abilities. Maybe give everyone a feat at level 1 and make the 'templates' cost a feat?

 

[d24454_modern]

I know Pathfinder 2E does something like this. You get to pick your primary race such as Human, and then pick a subrace like Half Elf, Half Orc, Tiefling, or Normal Human From Frozen Bad Place.

While I love the idea that PF2e did, I don’t like the execution as it oddly felt restrictive. That being said, it could’ve just been that the edition was still new, so they only focused on core races.

While culturally, an elf is unlikely to mate with an orc or a dwarf, I’d still like for it to be mechanically possible.

 

[Jer]

LA was less a balancing mechanism and more a punishment for wanting to play something 'weird' back in the day.

In 3e at least usually it was more because every dev seemed to overvalue Strength as an attribute and really wanted to make sure that if you chose a high Strength race you'd have to earn your way up to it. That system then got applied to every race in the interested of fairness or something. In earlier editions though I think you're right - all sorts of limits on attributes or classes for anything non-human were there to discourage folks from playing anything but a human.

(3e was full of areas in their design where they really, really seemed to think that every extra +1 on your melee to hit was going to break the game. Meanwhile spellcasters had no real limits put on them once they hit a certain level - it was almost like the devs were really, really interested in playtesting the melee combat engine really heavily and not so interested in the rest of the game).

 

[Stormonu]

I think I’d rather go with aasimar, tiefling, half-orc, half-elf* and other “half-human” races being sub races for human. You’d have to move some things around for what qualities apply to the base human race vs. what the subs get, but it would be an interesting way to handle certain races.

I wouldn’t put warforged (as per their race background for Eberron) as a human sub race, but I would like to see Warforged get sub races back, along with some non-eberron versions.

*Half-elf would also then be a sub race for elf as well.

 

[Horwath]

LA was less a balancing mechanism and more a punishment for wanting to play something 'weird' back in the day. And IMO, race levels are just a more annoying 'you have to wait until level 3 to be who your character is' problem with subclasses.

Ths issue is that species abilities just don't hack it vs class abilities. Maybe give everyone a feat at level 1 and make the 'templates' cost a feat?

That is certainly now a good possibility with latest UA that gives bonus feats at levels 1&4.

We could add all racial feats to the "bonus" feat list and add feats that would work as an template.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Necro powers go!

Race as class!

Race as class!