Friday, May 1, 2009

Optimized Characters: PHB1 Racial Traits Character Ideas

After my last post about optimized characters did so well (I broke my visits/day record!), I decided that I would expand on that and give some suggestions of what would be good optimized character to do based on a race's power and features. Here are the races of the first Player's Handbook:


Dragonborn
Dragon breath- A focus on area attacks or a certain element.
Dragonborn fury- Bonuses to attack rolls or bonuses while bloodied
Draconic heritage- Extra self healing.

Dwarf
Cast-Iron Stomach- Strong against poison.
Dwarven resilience- Self healing genius.
Dwarven WP- It's hammer time!
Encumbered speed- The party's pack mule.
Stand your ground- Stay where you are.

Eladrin
Eladrin Education- Skilled character.
Eladrin WP- Backup weapon.
Eladrin Will- Strong willed character.
Fey Step- Teleporter or just a very mobile character.

Elf
Elven WP- Use a bow and arrow!
Group Awareness- Bonuses to teammates.
Wild Step- Difficult terrain master.
Elven Accuracy- Try, try again.

Half-elf
Dilettante- Great for multiclassing characters or just to get an extra encounter attack.
Dual heritage- Get elf and human benefits.
Group Diplomacy- Group benefits, diplomatic group.

Halfling
Bold- Fearless character.
Nimble Reaction- Super dodger.
Second Chance- Super dodger.

Human
Bonus at-will/feat/skill- So many possibilities, can also benefit other character concepts (not other race's concepts though).
Human Defense Bonus- Tough character.

Tiefling
Blood hunt- Blood lusting character.
Fire Resistance- Flame centered or character that plays with fire.
Infernal Wrath- Vengeance, bonus to attacks.



I know that all of this could be thought up by anyone, but what I really wanted was to get your ideas flowing- what did I miss? Are there better ideas out there?

2 comments:

Greg(ory) Senpai said...

Yea, all this is interesting, but if you're going to simply start from a racial perspective, some of those racial traits really need to have more care taken with regard to optimizing them. Some of them have feats, some of them don't. With the new paragon paths for races, its definitely possible to just make an optimized eladrin... which is totally awesome. Teleporty goodness doing about 100 or so damage per round just from teleportations, no damage rolls (saw this on the wizards forums, not sure where though...).

I'd like to see what your take is on the PHBII races as well as some of the magazine ones and what you come up with as the optimized class for these races. It's really interesting seeing the optimized class as being something entirely different then what is listed in the PHB or PHBII

MacGuffen said...

thank you for replying, its good to know that someone is actually enjoying this other than myself.

While some of the ideas are actually implementable, others are quite a stretch. I didn't really think about the magazine races, but now I have to write about them... and possibly compare them to their MM versions. Expect posts about PHB2 and MM (original and magazine versions) races, and one about the wilden playtest.

And maybe its because its at higher levels (I have yet to see a game above 3rd level), but 100 damage per round sounds kinda crazy, but now I have to look for it on the forums.