OGL Races as Heritages    

If you like the idea of using heritages in your game instead of race, here are some conversions of Open Game Content races.  These are my versions of the races, but they can be easily modified if you want to put a different spin on them, or focus on a different feature.  Note that there are no "half-races."  If a player wants to have a character of mixed heritage, they may combine any two heritages together.  If they want to play a character who has a magical or supernatural ability, please see some sample birthright rules below.  What about humans, they are not listed here?  I discuss this in more detail below, but essentially, these are heritages, not races.  If you want to play a city dweller, that is a heritage.  If you want to play a forest dweller, then Elven is a heritage available to you, if you live with people who call themselves elves.  Neither makes any judgment on your humanity, or lack thereof, as discussed in more detail below.

Dwarven Heritage Traits

• Languages:  Common and Dwarven
• Underground Dwellers:  low-light vision
• Builders:  +2 Craft, +2 Knowledge (engineering)
• Merchants:  +2 Appraise

Elven Heritage Traits

• Languages:  Common and Elven
• Nocturnal:  low-light vision
• Wilderness Dwellers:  +2 Perception, +2 Knowledge (nature)
• Arcane Magic Users:  +2 Spellcraft

Gnomish Heritage Traits

• Languages:  Common and Gnomish
• Familiar with Illusions:  +2 Will save
• Live in Hiding:  +2 Perception, +2 Stealth 
• Arcane Magic Users:  +2 Spellcraft

Halfling Heritage Traits (note that I still do not like the use of the word Halfling, but unfortunately most other commonly known synonyms are copyrighted).

• Language:  Common and Halfling
• Fearless Explorers:  +1 to all saves
• Mountain and Tree Climbers:  +2 Acrobatics, +2 Climb
• Travelers:  +2 Knowledge (geography)

Orcish Heritage Traits

• Languages:  Common and Orcish
• Wasteland Dwellers:  +2 Fortitude save
• Warriors:  +2 Intimidate
• Animal Tamers:  +2 Handle Animal, +2 Ride  (if inspired by Tolkien, these can refer to Orcs' use of dire wolves as mounts)

Humanity for Everyone (and some notes about size)

If you are using these heritages together with other Pathfinder rules, you may note that they seem under-powered.  This is because, without the use of race (as it is used in D&D), all characters share the essential things that make us human:  free will and agency, intelligence and feelings, adaptability and tradition.

As a result, all characters, regardless of their heritage, gain an additional +2 on any ability score of their choice, and an additional feat at first level.  They do not gain the +1 skill point per level that humans would normally get as a Pathfinder race.  This has the effect of making heritages compatible (roughly) with Pathfinder.  Although first-level characters built using these rules will be slightly more powerful, that advantage will diminish over time, until characters who are around tenth level and higher will be slightly less powerful.  However, at that level, the few skill points lost are unlikely to cause any problems with using Pathfinder adventure products.

The additional feat can, if the player wishes, be used to choose a birthright.  Birthright feats should generally be chosen at first level (unless there is a compelling reason not to).  As described earlier, birthrights are always magical or supernatural in nature.

I also want to add some notes concerning size of characters.  In D&D and in Pathfinder, player characters are generally Medium sized, sometimes Small sized (if playing Gnomes or Halflings, for example), and rarely Large sized.  Size is something that is an ableism problem in D&D.  The concept that little people (in the real world, meaning people born with dwarfism) are more akin to mythological creatures than human beings is a pernicious one.  Fantasy has a sordid history of fetishizing and dehumanizing disability.  How can we avoid that in this case?  Actually, it is not particularly hard.

In Pathfinder, Small size refers to creatures or people that are 2 feet tall to 4 feet tall, Medium refers to creatures or people that are 4 feet to 8 feet tall, and Large refers to creatures or people that are 8 feet to 16 feet tall.  These are fairly large ranges.  As a side note, Peter Dinklage, whose character Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones is one of the rare examples of a human little person in the fantasy genre, is 4 foot 5.  Medium size encompasses most of adult humanity, and there is no reason it cannot be extended to encompass all of it.  Thus, Medium size refers to adult, human sized creatures or people, in all their variation.  Small size or Large size refers to human children (who are Small sized), creatures that are significantly smaller or larger than humans, or humans who are magically or supernaturally smaller or larger due to a birthright.  Size due to a birthright extends, by definition, outside of the range of normal humanity.

Some may argue, "But this would result in halflings using greataxes!  How is that at all realistic?"  My response is: if you want to play a very short person, it is because that is how you want your character to look.  You aren't getting the bonuses for being a small size unless you choose it as a birthright (in which case the normal size penalties and restrictions for weapons apply.)  If your story goal is to play someone small and overlooked, who nonetheless rises to greatness (in the grand Tolkein tradition), you are unlikely to want to play someone swinging around a greataxe.  If, on the other hand, you want to play a character who looks relatively powerless but will, in the blink of an eye, pull out a greataxe and hack your ankles off (in the equally grand Pratchett tradition), and that fits the flavor of the campaign and the stories you want to tell, then by all means, go right ahead!

Sample Birthrights

Birthrights can take the form of feats or special class abilities (such as Bloodlines for sorcerers).  The birthrights listed below are feats.  Most birthright feats are supernatural abilities, unless specified otherwise.

Darkvision:  When in completely darkness only, you can see the area around you (in a 60 foot radius), as if it were fully lit.  This ability functions even in magical darkness.

Dragonspawn:  You are immune to any draconic Fearful Presence ability.

Elemental Resistance:  You gain resistance 5 to one of acid, cold, electricity, or fire.

Large Size:  You are Large size instead of Medium.

Small Size:  You are Small size instead of Medium.

Sorcerous Blood:  You can cast four cantrips or orisons, as if you were a sorcerer of your caster level.  This is a spell-like ability.

Speak with Animals:  You can communicate with a specific type of animal (e.g., bear or crow or frog), as per the spell, as a supernatural ability.

Stonecunning:  You can automatically notice unusual stonework, including secret doors in stone walls, if you are searching for them.  Even if you are not actively searching, merely passing next to such stonework will allow you a Perception check to notice it.

Wakefulness:  You are immune to magical forms of sleep.

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Heritage and Race:  Creating New Rules    

Earlier, I talked about race in Pathfinder and I suggested different ways to break that concept down.  There are a few other issues with the way that Pathfinder (and Dungeons & Dragons) handles race that have less to do with story and more to do with system mechanics (but can be solved in ways that make better story!)  And there is one other elephant in the room that I want to talk about, and that is the concept of racial hatred.

In Dungeons & Dragons, humanity was always the default.  Races that were not human had advantages mainly in how they could multiclass.  Specifically, humans couldn't do it, but certain multiclass combinations were available only to characters of certain races.  This was "balanced" by a number of factors, including level caps for certain classes and experience point requirements for making level.  It was all fairly cludgy and got entirely rewritten when Third Edition came out.

However, some of the concepts from prior games continued to build on each other, until by the time you reach Pathfinder, race plays a huge role in your game and has a ton of game mechanics.

Again, let's use Elves as an example.

Here are the things that choosing an Elf as your character involve, in terms of what you need to keep track of and write down on your character sheet:

• Ability Scores:  Elves gain +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, and -2 Constitution
• Subtype:  Elves have a subtype of Humanoid (Elf) which comes into play very rarely in the game (for situations such as when an opponent has Favored Enemy).
• Languages:  Common and Elven, and then a particular list for bonus languages due to having a high Intelligence.
• Immunity to magical sleep effects.
• +2 bonus to save vs. enchantment spells and effects.
• +2 bonus on Perception.
• +2 caster level check to overcome spell resistance.
• +2 bonus on Spellcraft, only for purposes of identifying magic items.
• Proficiency with longbows, composite longbows, shortbows, composite shortbows, longswords, and rapiers.
• Treat any weapon with the word "elven" in it as a martial weapon.
• Low-light vision
• There are also tables for rolling height, weight, and age (although, to be fair, those things rarely are used in the game at all.)

Some of these things you can write on your character sheet and more or less forget about for the rest of the game (subtype).  Some of them will not come into play unless you are playing a specific class (overcoming spell resistance).  Some of them will be completely useless to you if you are playing certain classes (weapon proficiencies).  Several of them are exceptions to general rules that you must write out on your character sheet if you haven't got them memorized (bonus to save vs. enchantment, bonus to Spellcraft only in one particular situation).  Note that most character sheets will not have room for you to write this in easily.

This is not, however, the end of your decisions regarding race!  There are currently forty alternate racial traits listed in the Pathfinder SRD, each with its own rules, prerequisites, etc., that you may want to use to replace some of the traits you already have.  In fact, you may feel cheated if you don't, since the fighter you are making has no use for three of the traits on the list.  If you haven't chosen a class yet, you may want to examine the favored class options, each of which grants a very specific, but tiny, reward every time you level up in the class you have chosen as "favored" (which could be any class available).  There are also racial archetypes that will change certain class abilities, racial feats that are only available to elves, and racial prestige classes that only elves can aspire to.

I could, if I wanted to, create an "elf" who had the racial traits of creepy, darkvision, fleet footed, and elemental resistance: cold, which would replace every trait above except for the ability score modifiers.  I am now, essentially, playing an entirely different race.

I am all in favor of empowering the player with many different choices when it comes to character creation.  But I am not in favor of drowning players with unnecessary rules and paperwork in order for them to customize their character the way that they want to.  So my question was, how can I keep all of these wonderful options for players, and simplify the rules so that they are more accessible, but still serve the purpose of having distinct heritages in the game?

Tinkering with Heritage

When I am running a game, I generally have a good sense of the cultures that are in the part of the world that is the setting for the game.  As a gamemaster, I might give the players a list of these, where elves look like the write-up that I used in an earlier post:

Elven Heritage Traits

• Languages:  Common and Elven
• Nocturnal:  low-light vision
• Wilderness Dwellers:  +2 Perception, +2 Knowledge (nature)
• Arcane Magic Users:  +2 Spellcraft

It is similar to the list above, except shorter, and with fewer specific rules (for example, the bonus to Spellcraft is not limited by what you are using the skill for.)  I've standardized it by including only one special trait (low-light vision) and three skill bonuses.  Suppose a player is building an elven fighter.  "I want to play an elf," they say, "but I'm never going to use Spellcraft."  "Can I swap that out for something else?"  I might suggest that there are two ways to approach this problem that don't involve just taking the same heritage and changing what it does.

Option One:  Create a different heritage.  If you look at my creepy elf with darkvision above, you can see the potential for a different heritage there.  These elves live underground in cold caverns, spearing fish like Gollum and scuttling away from torchlight.  Allowing a player to create a new heritage is going to make my game world richer and more interesting.  Sharing the world-building will allow players to be more invested in the game.  If it is something that is a problem with the story I have planned, compromise may be necessary, but more often I find that this is a win/win situation.

Option Two:   Have a blended heritage.  Perhaps there is another heritage on the list that has something this player feels fits their character better.  I would allow the player to take both, and choose one special trait and three skill bonuses from the combined list.  Perhaps one parent was from a family of forest elves, but another was from a nomadic horse-riding culture.  The player could take a +2 on Ride from the second heritage, which suits their fighter character better.  In addition, they now have some additional back-story for their character.

Removing Racial Hatred from the Game

It is true that part of having a heritage means dealing with the ugliness of hatred.  My own upbringing, in the deep South, certainly featured a lot of hatred.  It is a heritage that I have had to outgrow and leave behind as a result.  But fantasy roleplaying games, such as D&D and Pathfinder, often try to spin hatred of another race into positive storytelling.  It is clumsily done, generally identifying one race as "evil" and giving another race bonuses when fighting them.  There are several ways that enmity between heritages can come into a story.  Let's consider whether any of these need support from the rules, and how best to accomplish that.

In one example scenario, two individuals meet who come from different cultures.  Neither is in their homeland.  There is a long-standing enmity between their cultures, due to past historical events, and perhaps even current warfare.  No matter how the individuals react, it is going to be good for the story.  If they struggle with this enmity, then seeing that struggle is good story.  If they try rise above their differences, that is good story.  If they decide to rebel against the hatred of their culture, and work to make peace, that is good story.  What is not good story is if the players feel forced to be hateful to each other because the rules push them in that direction.

In another scenario, a person from a foreign culture has entered a place that is unfamiliar, and possible hostile to them.  Here, the struggle can be shown less as one individual vs. another, and more one individual vs. their environment.  Just as other hostile environments are supported in the rules, so can a hostile culture.  For example, the character might have a penalty on all Charisma based rolls while in this place.  The rules present an obstacle to the player, which they must then figure out how to overcome, resulting in an interesting story element.

In the final scenario, the gamemaster has designed an adventure where the people of one culture are the villains.  This is certainly a common fantasy trope, but I would argue, it is an over-used one.  In reality, identifying the culture of a villainous individual or organization is rarely sufficient to determine their motivations.  And painting an entire culture as evil has disastrous real-world effects.  It is almost always a better idea to create a villainous organization, perhaps operating within a culture, but not the entirety of it.  The rules can support this by not having any fantasy heritage labeled as "evil" or "thieving" or "bestial" or any of the other real world prejudices that people face, based on their heritage.

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Humans, Humanoids, Halflings, and Half-Orcs    

It is not a secret that Dungeons & Dragons has a race problem.  Going back to its roots in Tolkein's Middle Earth, D&D has kept a few concepts that many fantasy writers believe are essential building blocks of fantasy stories:

• Humans are people that, in most ways, are identical to human beings in our world, in diversity of appearance and culture.
• There exist some races, such as elves, that are based on myths and legends rather than real world history.  Each differs from humanity in substantive ways:  they look different, they tend to act differently, they have a different culture and language, and they may have different physiology and/or magical abilities.  For almost every feature they possess, as a race, they will be slightly superior to humanity.  In the areas where they have lesser abilities, they are often described in idealized ways, a "slim, but delicate physique," for example.
• There exist some races, such as orcs, that are subhuman in nature.  They differ substantially from humanity and from the other mythological races.  In appearance and culture, they are lesser.  In the areas where they have greater abilities, they are often dehumanized, with "bestial strength" and "animal cunning."  In general, they are to be considered the enemies of the players and the villains of the story.
• There are exceptions to these rules, elves who are evil and dwell underground, orcs who are good and civilized, but what makes these characters interesting to the story is that they are exceptions.  They are defined in contrast to the majority of their people, and are not like them.

Almost every iteration of fantasy roleplaying game addresses, in some way, this concept of race in fantasy.  Some excuse it, some attempt to improve upon it, some embrace it.  And there is no "right" approach.  One of my favorite fantasy roleplaying games, Earthdawn, has the idea that every standard fantasy race is interesting and should have a deep and rich culture for the players to work with.  It embraces the tropes created by fantasy stories, but starts from the position that all of the "Name-giver" races share the same qualities that we think of in the real world, when we think of humanity and all its potential.

That said, it is not enough.  As much as I love Earthdawn, it doesn't do what I want, in terms of accessibility.  I want a roleplaying game that does not need to make excuses or compromises, or keep the negative tropes regarding race in the game, simply on the basis of tradition.

Telling a Good Story and Creating Rules that Support It

What are the things that we want from a system of rules that describe the circumstances of a person's birth and parentage?  Birth is an important part of character development.  It's something that is immutable, but for many characters, it is something that they will rebel against or embrace.  That decision will be core to who they are and what story they will follow.  So the first thing that birth does, in a fantasy game, is set your character's baseline.  This is where you start out, which begs the question: where will you go from here?

Birth and parentage can also be important in world building.  Having diverse cultures in a fantasy world makes it feel more realistic.  It allows for new story elements when the players travel to a distant land.  It provides plot ideas for conflicts between cultures, and classes within those cultures.

Finally, birth is another way for the player characters to distinguish themselves.  Dungeons & Dragons, and most other fantasy roleplaying games, are ensemble stories.  There is no single hero and a few minor supporting roles.  Instead, there is a "party" of equals, telling a story together.  Anything that allows characters to be different from each other is useful, in story terms.

However, given these story goals, the word "race" appears to be a poor term.  "Race," as we use it outside of fantasy games, is a very limited concept created as a result of the relatively recent, real world history of colonization and slavery.  Identity is much bigger than race.  All of the story goals above could be equally served by talking about gender, about sexuality, about ability, about class, about nationality, about religion, about tribalism, and about cultural heritage.  In fact, since this is a fantasy world, we could also talk about magical abilities and traditions, or about people who can fly, or see in the dark, or live for a thousand years.

In my house rules, the word "race," defined as broadly as it is in fantasy games, has to go.  So do words that draw from the history of racism, such as "humanoid" and "half-breed" and "mongrel."  In their place, I'd like to talk in my next post about some characteristics of characters that can help us tell good stories:  nature and nurture.


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