Revised Races

Races are generally much more powerful here than in regular 3.5 (and even a bit more powerful on average than in Pathfinder or d20r), though they are (at least hopefully) balanced in regards to each other. Racial features still remain a far smaller portion of a character's power than their choice of class, and the overall power level of a particular character shouldn't be too noticeable compared to 3.5 with sources open (especially past the early levels). The main difference is that there are now a lot more racial choices for an optimized character than there were previously, and it's far more defensible to take a race like half-elf or half-orc than before (whereas previously they would only ever be selected in very specialized builds, at least for optimization purposes).  

I've also generally tried to emphasize differences between races so that characters of different races ''feel'' different from each other. This was achieved by giving different races more distinguishing abilities that emphasize certain traits, even as I stripped away the filler abilities that rarely affected gameplay and needlessly wasted player memory space. Presentation-wise, I decided to divide racial features into "primary" and "secondary" categories, with primary being the more powerful and defining aspects of a race, and secondary being the remainder. Each race gets all their primary and secondary abilities by default, so this wouldn't affect anyone who choose to be a normal human or half-orc. However, this allows for templates which trade lesser or greater racial features for those of similar power level, which I go into detail about below.

One of the advantages of having a higher power level on default races is that it allows for a far larger pool of possible races without needing an additional balancing factor (such as level adjustment). Whereas previously it might not be possible to express a race like the drow as LA +0 without stripping away most of what makes it distinct, now it becomes much more feasible. Circumventing level adjustment is very beneficial because of how bad a balancing factor it is; losing levels is so crippling to a character that a race would need to provide a vast amount of power to justify even LA +1. When a distinctive racial feature is powerful enough that it still need something to tip the scales (like the four arms of a Thri-Kreen), I will include an optional racial class for that race to provide the feature (more on that below).

====On Racial Classes====

As I've explained above, level adjustment is a rather poor way to balance a race because of the extraordinary amount of benefits a race must provide to even be worth LA +1. Racial classes are a better method for this type of power offset. They do still offset character power, since taking more levels in classes with progressing features (such as spellcasting and martial adept classes) is usually better than taking levels in racial classes, but they do it to a much smaller degree. I will generally try to make all races function so that they don't need such balancing offsets, but some features make it impossible (like Thri-Kreen's four arms). In those cases, I will use racial class in place of level adjustment as the lesser of two evils.

A racial class is like a base class that is only available to members of that particular race. If a creature of a certain race has a racial class, it can choose to take levels in that class at any time, but it does not have to; it can choose to never take any levels in its racial class, and it can choose to only take a few levels in it and stop. Every racial class level has a minimal character level requirement, so a character may only take that level of the racial class if it is advancing to that character level (for example, if a 1st level half-dragon with one level in its racial class levels up, it cannot take another level in its racial class until it levels up again due to the 3rd level requirement there).

|'''Secondary Features:'''||<u>Able Learner:</u> A human need only spend a single skill point to increase his ranks in a cross-class skill (rather than two).<br><u>Skillful:</u> At 6th level, a human may select any Skill Focus feat and gain it as a bonus feat. He gains another such bonus feat at level 12 and a third one at level 18.

+Dex, +Int or +Cha, -Con

FC: Cleric, dread necromancer, wizard

L: Undercommon and Elven