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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6103617" data-attributes="member: 4937">I've thought about this a couple of times, but never actually implemented it in my house rules.&nbsp; Essentially, what I was thinking of doing was giving the character Racial Feats at regular intervals just like General Feats.&nbsp; So maybe every 5th level you get a bonus Racial Feat.&nbsp;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It's basically at that level just power creep.&nbsp; 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).&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Balance between races could also be difficult the more we differentiate them.&nbsp; 5) There is a big danger of just reinforcing archetypes here, in that you might as well say, &quot;Elves can only be Wizards&quot;, &quot;Halflings can only be Rouges.&quot;, &quot;Dwarves can only be fighters.&quot; and just do away with race altogether and have racial classes.&nbsp;&nbsp; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6103617, member: 4937"] 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. [/QUOTE]

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