I hate class-specific feats.

[Crissa]

The problem with making race important is that the benefits need to help all the classes you imagine them using equally.

-Crissa

[kjdavies]

The problem with making race important is that the benefits need to help all the classes you imagine them using equally.

In an older character framework (you can find a version at http://wiki.kjd-imc.org/Class_Framework if you're curious, http://www.kjdavies.org/rpg/rules/class ... ework.html may have something more complete), I tried to handle this by providing 'racial feats' that encouraged certain character types, without trying to jam a race into 'preferred classes' *spit* or comparable mechanism. There is at least one archetype supported, sometimes more than one, but they never get jammed into a single class.

Dwarves are tough and durable and whatnot, and have a history of being great crafters and making magic items, up to artifacts used by the gods. Their racial feats are drawn from armor proficiency (and focus), anything to do with being harder to kill, firearm use (they have the big guns, literally) and item creation (with allowances for noncasters). They make good tanky characters, magesmiths, clerics, and so on.

Elves are uncanny creatures, physically and mentally. They have a fair bit of access to physical adeptness-based abilities (especially to do with movement) and metamagic feats. They tend to make good wizards, rangers, ranged fighters, and rogues, depending on their individual focus.

Half-orcs tend to be hard to kill and have 'anger management issues', and are fairly close to nature. Sure, there may be an unusually high number of Barbarians among them, but they have Rage feats on their racial list. Sure, the ragey wizard might not last too long, but that's probably a Darwin thing. The ragey fighter, ranger, cleric, and druid, OTOH, can have a pretty good time.


Keith