What if races leveled up?

[airwalkrr]

I am sort of thinking out loud here, but this could possibly apply to any D&D system. What if races leveled up the way classes do alongside classes? For example, maybe your racial traits get stronger as you advance in level. Or maybe favored classes become a default gestalt or hybrid class (all elves might be excellent wizards regardless of the class they choose, all dwarves would be excellent fighters, and humans would be exceptionally diverse). Or what if each race had a suite of bonus feats or abilities you could choose as you leveled up? Let's assume races leveled up as your classes leveled up. What would that look like in your game?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

There was some support for this in 4e with the racial feats, which built on the racial characteristics. I don't see room in Next for it since the number of feats taken is small and an outright level upgrade in race in addition to class could be a bitch to balance in a class system.
Personally I htink it would work better in a point based system.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

This has been present, in various forms, in 3e and 4e. In 3e, this wasn't in the core rules, and I don't know about Pathfinder here.

In 3e, there were various feats, generally not gained as bonus abilities or feats, that you could take.

In 4e, in addition to racial powers, there's usually a feat that enhances said racial power in some way (for instance, Improved Elven Accuracy gives you a bonus on the reroll, there's a dragonborn feat that increases the area of your breath weapon, and there's an eladrin feat that lets you use Fey Step immediately upon being restrained), various items that give similar benefits, and some races even have paragon paths, which is probably the closest to what you're looking for. (There's a "Goliath Thug" paragon path, for half-giants.)

I'm reluctant to mention this idea, since it involves prestige classes, but an "elven paragon" prestige class that replicates the original elf class, and other such prestige classes with racial requirements might be exactly what you're looking for. I don't know if D&DN supports prestige classes at all, but it does support multiclassing, so it's possible, even if you have to homebrew such classes yourself.

 

[airwalkrr]

This could apply to any edition of D&D, also Pathfinder. It wouldn't have to be incredibly powerful though. What if all elves got a bonus to Perception that leveled up as they leveled up. Maybe it starts at +2 or +3 but increases by one point for every two levels. I am just curious what other folks think about an idea like this and what they imagine it would look like.

Imagine an entire setting perhaps based on the idea that all halflings get bonuses to sneaking and picking pockets as they level up, or where all elves can learn at least a little arcane magic, maybe one spell pet three levels. Perhaps gnomes learn an illusion or two every few levels. Humans could choose between a variety of benefits, from small combat bonuses like +1 damage to small skill bonuses or saving throw bonuses. It could be big or small, depending on how important you want the race aspect to be in the setting. I think it might be kind of cool to experience a setting where all members of a certain race are known not only for their base abilities, but also their natural affinity for enhancing those abilities as they level up.

 

[airwalkrr]

This has been present, in various forms, in 3e and 4e. In 3e, this wasn't in the core rules, and I don't know about Pathfinder here.

In 3e, there were various feats, generally not gained as bonus abilities or feats, that you could take.

In 4e, in addition to racial powers, there's usually a feat that enhances said racial power in some way (for instance, Improved Elven Accuracy gives you a bonus on the reroll, there's a dragonborn feat that increases the area of your breath weapon, and there's an eladrin feat that lets you use Fey Step immediately upon being restrained), various items that give similar benefits, and some races even have paragon paths, which is probably the closest to what you're looking for. (There's a "Goliath Thug" paragon path, for half-giants.)

I'm reluctant to mention this idea, since it involves prestige classes, but an "elven paragon" prestige class that replicates the original elf class, and other such prestige classes with racial requirements might be exactly what you're looking for. I don't know if D&DN supports prestige classes at all, but it does support multiclassing, so it's possible, even if you have to homebrew such classes yourself.

This really isn't what I am talking about. Almost everything you mention requires some investment of character building resources to make the character more "elfy" or "dwarfy" or whatever. I am talking about abilities that come with the race as you level up and require no special investment of character building resources to obtain. Halflings just get better at sneaking as they level, not feats required. Elves just get better at magic. Dwarves just get better at fighting. That kind of thing. Be creative. I am not asking what has come before. I am well aware of most of it. I am asking what you think these abilities might look like of they were built in to the system. What would you have them do? Would they be powerful or subtle? Would they enhance existing traits or grant new abilities altogether?

 

[steenan]

I like the idea of leveling races - specifically because it allows for improving racial characteristics without detracting from other aspects of character development. Racial feats in 4e didn't give this effect.

I wouldn't mix favored classes into this. You have class levels anyway. Racial levels should be purely about the racial traits.

Of course, that means that humans would be a problem. In most versions of D&D they have no racial traits to speak of, so there is nothing to improve. Maybe, whoever would design the racial development, would finally give me humans that I would like.

 

[steenan]

double post

 

[Li Shenron]

I think such system should better be optional since it complicates the game a bit. (Actually I've made races completely optional in the 5e playtest game I have run)

But I also like the idea of racial feats, so that you can choose whether to get "more elven" or something else. Of course Feats tend to be seen as optional in 5e, and someone may want race advancement in their game but not feats...

Maybe they could find a design synergy between the 2 options, by making racial advancement happen with a boost every N levels, and design such boosts so that they are all roughly equivalent to a feat. This way the same boosts can be applied as feats, as level-based add-ons, or even both in the same game.

 

[Celebrim]

This really isn't what I am talking about. Almost everything you mention requires some investment of character building resources to make the character more "elfy" or "dwarfy" or whatever. I am talking about abilities that come with the race as you level up and require no special investment of character building resources to obtain. Halflings just get better at sneaking as they level, not feats required. Elves just get better at magic. Dwarves just get better at fighting. That kind of thing. Be creative. I am not asking what has come before. I am well aware of most of it. I am asking what you think these abilities might look like of they were built in to the system. What would you have them do? Would they be powerful or subtle? Would they enhance existing traits or grant new abilities altogether?

I've thought about this a couple of times, but never actually implemented it in my house rules. Essentially, what I was thinking of doing was giving the character Racial Feats at regular intervals just like General Feats. So maybe every 5th level you get a bonus Racial Feat. Alternatively, you could just get the Racial Feats on a fixed schedule making them more like Class powers.

There are a couple of issues that have struck me as I played with the idea:

1) It makes shape changing more complicated.
2) It tends to increase fiddliness and piddliness - ei, lots things to remember, lots of small inconsequential bonuses.
3) It doesn't really give you anything that normal character resources don't. It's basically at that level just power creep. This is especially true if you have fixed schedule, making all members of the race basically the same and sometimes increasingly the same over time.
4) If you have flexibility, the number of options must be large relative to the number of selections or you discourage the player from investing in the options (it's a waste to take a flavorful racial feat early, since you are going to be forced to take them later). So far from my playing around with a universal 'Paragon' class concept, I'm not convinced that this is easy to do in a really interesting way. Balance between races could also be difficult the more we differentiate them.
5) There is a big danger of just reinforcing archetypes here, in that you might as well say, "Elves can only be Wizards", "Halflings can only be Rouges.", "Dwarves can only be fighters." and just do away with race altogether and have racial classes. The problem with synergy is it tends to make anything that isn't synergistic either unattractive or down right unusable because you end up having to balance your game on the expectation of synergy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

See Savage Species and also Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved alternative versions of 3Ed and 3.5Ed.

It works just fine.