Human Stuff

So, human traits.
No skill bonuses, no free feats or talents or whatever. Each race gets their choice of a single attribute modifier; +2 to one of two traits, and then they get two special features. You will notice that, comparably, these racial stats may seem tame compared to what you often see, but that is on purpose.

Humans being larger than most races, and distinctly centralized around commune and politics, humans can choose between +2 STR, or +2 CHA.

Endurance being a key physiological trait, humans already have:
Enduring - whenever humans recover HP, they recover 1 additional HP.

What I want out of this thread: I need one more bonus trait for Humans.

For reference:
Dwaves - +2 CON or WIS, low-light vision, bonuses against being moved against their will.
Elves - +2 to DEX or WIS, they get a minor bonus to their passive perception scores and their imitative, and their daily needs are reduced (food, sleep, etc).
Goblins - +2 STR or DEX, resistance against poisons and diseases and fear.

Goblins are more of the 5'X", skinny-orc variety, vs. the tiny screechy runts. variant.

What system and what are you using as a baseline, if not humans?

There is no baseline race.
Baseline would be no mods with no features I guess.

single bump

How about playing to our temperature/climate/environment resistance? Humans live everywhere from Siberia to the Sahara, in a fantasy setting Humans are far more widespread than other races too.

That's a pretty god idea actually; idk if I'm going to go with innate resist elements, but that's a fair concept.

You could have it as a bonus to FORT saves in XYZ situations. Some sort of caveat.

That's pretty solid
Recover HP, Resist Elements.

Glad to have helped.

Traditionally, Dwarves live underground, Elves live in dark woods/twighlight realms, and goblins live in caves,
Humans could maybe get advantage to perception in "bright light" which to other races would be like non dungeon environments?

Exp boost, since almost all fantasy races are generally longer lived, humans could compensate with the rate they learn.

If its how your setting worked, you could have humans be more resistant to magic
>less wizards
>shorter lives
>more workarounds for things the others take for granted

This idea is perfectly reasonable.

Also I really dislike minor racial differences. I would prefer a system where an elf and a human have extremely different set of capabilities. Using DnD as an example an elf instead instead of getting just +2 dexterity gets +4 dexterity and has their dexterity capped at 24 instead of 20. Likewise a half orc would get +4 strength +2 constitution with strength and constitution being capped at 24 and 22 respectively.

At the moment I'm trying to keep the races flexible, so that they're beneficial to a range of builds or archetypes; vs. picking your race exclusively because of the bonuses it affords you. As such, the ability score modifiers are modest, and the special traits are things that would be useful to basically any build.

Judging by the stats a D&D clone, though possibly not a retro-clone

I'd call it a spinoff.

How often would that come up compared to say, bonuses to initiative or saves against poison and fear?

This is a problem I think Veeky Forums keeps coming back to, probably because there are no good answers or perhaps the framing of the question is wrong.
Humans are written in most settings to be the generic, middle-road, so for them to not be then you have to create a world where they aren't.

If you were to tell a story about the races in your setting, what physical features would characterise them? Not describe the races, but tell the stories of how they live, how they overcome problems.

>in a fantasy setting Humans are far more widespread than other races
But is that so in OP's fantasy setting?
I think it falls through because humans can live in a wide variety of climes compared to animals because we get food based upon our changeable intelligence and culture, instead of instinct, and because we wear clothes. These are things the other races should be able to do as well.

I prefer this. Having wildly divergent races is fun for setting and story, but not for a player who wants to make a certain idea work.

Some friends and I working on an attempt at a 4e redo are oddly enough going the opposite with stats. No race has racial stat bonuses (To let all races be all classes decently) so we are focusing much harder on racial traits to make them feel different.

Stuff like:

>Disciplined Minds: Elves have a breadth of experience and innate discipline that makes them exceptionally resistant to those who would attempt to shake them or assault their minds.
>Elves have Psychic Resistance = 5 +level

With most fear effects also doing psychic damage on top of penalties (As 0 HP is 'Unable to fight' and a bit more context sensitive. It's as much 'Cowering' as an option as 'Lying bleeding on the ground).

What's the racial trait for humans?

I like that. Sometimes I feel like class = race is the way to go, so that they races feel more distinct. Sometimes I feel like the race shouldn't shoehorn you into specific classes, but the race should come with innate advantages and disadvantages that change the playstyle of the class for each race.

So far we're still testing a few options (As each race will get 3-4 traits).

One of them we like so far is that humans get +2 Healing Surges (You spend them to let healing effects heal you/can spend them during rests to recover HP) over other races. A dwarf is tougher than a human but humans have serious endurance and a drive that lets them keep going for a long time.

Another one we like is 'Pick Cold or Fire', gain resistance (Like elves do psychic) to that element.

Skillwise humans are +2 Endurance and +2 Socialise (Socialise a replacement for Streetwise + The Knowledge Skill for dealing with humanoid races like how Nature is used for animals and Religion for divine and such). Humans are enduring and they are spread wide enough that humans have picked up a little about basically every other race in stories. They are a very non-insular race.

The idea is to play to human versatility and width of location without just making them 'The average race'. Instead they are based around being tough enough to adapt to living most places.

Interesting, thanks.

But if humans get +2 to Socialise why does nobody love me? Check mate

Given that your stuff looks like 5e, you could get Ultramodern 5, it has a whole table of human traits, made specifically for an all-human campaign

Probably about as much as poison or fear, unless you're specifically fighting ghosts or assassins or whatever.

I found a particularly effective and intuitive approach from my DM's campaign was making humans the only race with organized religion and the favor of the actual gods. You had elves with their nature based spiritualism and dwarves revering ancestral spirits like idols, but only humans had churches and religious instructions and we'd recognize them because only humans actually courted the favor of the divine powers.

Race = Class has never quite worked right for me.Though I wouldn't hate it if humans were also bound by that.

So you have Fighter, Rogue, Mage for each race, Each with a twist on it. So humans get Clerics for the mage and Elven Fighters/Rogues get some minor spellcasting as Spellswords and Arcane Tricksters etc. Not just 'Here are classes, only humans get them. Here are race classes for other stuff'