Races: What they are, what they mean.

So, races. To start I'll clear up some things. For those of you totally new to Pathfinder and tabletops in general, the use of races in this context is something closer to species. It does not mean races as we tend to use them in real life and when the game does talk about other races within the game they tend to use the word ethnicity or ethnicities. I personally prefer just to call them ethnicities, species, or people to avoid the muddy complications that come about when we use the word race and to avoid the inaccuracies that it causes, but, for the interest of this walkthrough, when they talk about "races" in Pathfinder, this is what they mean.

So, in Pathfinder, races are the various species or people that a player can select for their character to be. There are 7 in the Core Rulebook and dozens more throughout various bestiaries and other expansions Paizo has produced. For now, and in this post I'm going to be talking about the 7 that come with the CRB (Core Rulebook) and the ones that come up directly in Sunday Game. Stuff for Sunday Game will as always Be in Red and marked with (Houserules).

So, without further delay, lets do this. 

Dwarf: The tiny, stoic, grumpy bearded ones of the Pathfinder world, dwarves are built as characters of strong convictions and strong constitutions. They are generally hardy, resistant to diseases and poisons and very resistant to magic. They don't move very fast and have personalities that are... stony in the best of times but what they do have is constant. A dwarf never has to slow down unless he is stopped in motion, never has to worry about a poison unless it can melt bones, and isn't deceived unless he's dealing with the devil himself. Combine that with decades of military training and you have one tough little species that is good in a lot of rolls but tends to shine in those that are focused on martial pursuits or wisdom based classes. Building for martial classes (think fighting, combat classes) tends to focus on their good Con, either using it to give you a lot of staying power in a fight or uses it as a buffer to let you focus on pouring those resources into other physical stats and letting that flat +2 give you a solid bump to an otherwise okay Con. This also makes them good full casters, as that bump to Constitution can make your Wizard a bit more survivable than they might otherwise be. That said, they are more difficult to make into characters that are focused on Cha like Bards or Sorcerers, but not impossible. A dwarven bard who tells long Odes of his dwarven forebears is completely buildable and very fun to play, just with that penalty it often means you'll have to either bulk it up more to compensate or be a bit more combat oriented as you lean into some of your other strong racial abilities. Note, that movement speed of theirs is useful, as being unable to be slowed by encumbrance means that throwing on heavy armors or carrying large amounts of loot makes Dwarves the perfect choice if you want to coat yourself in armor or never have to worry about being slowed down by all that treasure you're carrying out for yourself or the party. 

• Dwarves in Oki (Houserules): Dwarves are a rarity in the Southlands of the Great Green Sea or really anywhere south of the Deadlands, to the point that many thought them a myth in these lands, many in fact still do. This all changed 40 years ago, when an Imperial expedition north through the Deadlands to chart their extent ran into a complementary force of Dwarves heading south. Apparently both organizations had been looking to explore the region and just happened upon one another. From what was uncovered, the Dwarves have lived in the lands of Oki for millennia, inhabiting the lands north of the Deadlands often referred to as The Northern Wastes by those merchants from the Burning Sea who have spoken of it. There, the squatfolk have mined and toils in the forbidding mountain ranges and deep below the earth. They even had their own Exiles, with the dwarves of the Mainlands having been marooned in the northern lands in their rare instances of upholding the practice. Their Exiles though are often second class citizens, coalescing in "Exile" Clans that lack the same rights and privileges of the other clanned dwarves. One of these latter clans, The Miggards is in fact the primary clan to head south and head the expedition south that made contact with the Empire, looking to extend its trade contacts into lands more amenable to trade with dwarves from Exiled clans.
  
  These facts make encountering Dwarves south of the Deadlands very rare, and as such an unplayable race until recently. A pilgrimage of dwarves has come south, travelling through the Deadlands in the far north and looking for something in the Great Green Sea. What this is and why are a bit of a secret amid the pilgrims and the outside world, but the point of the matter is they are here, and players may create a dwarf that is from this group. 

Elf: The fairfolk of the Pathfinder world, Elves are often considered intelligent, dexterous, and frail of health. Elves are also known for having fantastically long lives, with the average elf being over a century old before they head out and adventure beyond their conclaves. Elves are great choices for many casting or nimble classes, as their Dex bump lets them be more accurate with weapons and spells at range and their Int bump makes them strong choices for a lot of casting classes that often rely on Int. That said, their penalty to Con makes them difficult to play in general for most players, as it often requires careful play to avoid having that frailty kill your character or a lot of thinking up front on how to allocate your stats to make up for it. That said, Elves can be a fun race to play as just about any class, and challenging oneself to play a dexterous but slight swashbuckler or rogue or a Wizard who's just one stiff breeze and a cough away from bed ridden can be a blast, and building an Elvish barbarian who can somehow tank is really fun with a group of old hats who haven't seen it before. Remember those other abilities you have as well, like low-light vision, which lets you see like a cat in the dark, or that nice smattering of weapon proficiencies you get from centuries of idly learning how to swing a rapier or shoot a bow, they come in handy for the elven wizard looking to add a little punch to his martial defense or the fighter looking to get some distinctive weapon that lets him stand out from the crowd.

• Elves in Oki (Houserules): Though not as rare in numbers as the Dwarves, Elves in the frontier are about as common a sight. Known primarily as The Children of Oberon or the Jungle Elves, the former are an ancient and dying species that is often only found in the major cities of the Empire or in their own secluded villages far away from many of the major threats of the world. Here, many of these near immortals live lives of leisure and opulence, buoyed by centuries of accumulated wealth through magical acumen, long view investments, and generational inheritance. This financial blessing has left many with little need to worry of much beyond their personal interests and though these are often many and varied, their extremely long lives often make them appear idle and indolent to the many short lived races that float around them. Unfortunately, this wealth and magical acumen has done little to help them with their greater issue, the A 'Muladach. Also known as The Mourning, this mysterious ailment affects all Elves and makes it difficult for them to produce offspring. Many elves produce maybe 1 child every 300 years at the best of times, with many families being unable to produce heirs at all. This has lead to the slow (by human standards) but inevitable decline of their people as a whole, and has lead to many looking for some way to reverse this devastating blight upon their people. Because of this, many elves do not travel to many places they believe overly hostile or rugged without good reason or stiff defenses, as a loss to their number means another, potentially irreplaceable loss to their people as a whole. For this reason, the wild untamed lands of the Great Green Sea, with its Dragons, Giants, and mysterious Iron Spirits is not a place that many Elves would travel willingly, lest they look for a quick death on foreign soils.
  
  As for Jungle Elves, their numbers are strangely not effected by this malady, but thanks to their loss to the Exiles during the Wars of Expansion has pushed many of them to the deepest and most secluded territories of Oki, places where the maps are still left blank at the best of times.
  
  Because of this, Elves are currently a nonplayable race for players of Sunday game. 

Gnome: The tiny manic inventors and creators of the Pathfinder world, Gnomes are the true fairfolk of Pathfinder. Direct descendants of the fey, these magical creatures turned mortals now scurry about the mortal world exploring all the experiences life has to offer in an effort to see all that there is and fend off The Bleaching, a magical condition that afflicts all Gnomes and leads to near certain death should a Gnome fail to continue to experience new and unknown sensations. Now, they are a small race which means they cannot carry as much, their weapons do less damage, they are slow, and are cursed with the Str penalty that sits on too many of the Small races, but once you get past all this the Gnomes are great option for players looking to try something new and want something closer to the whimsy of the fey and the option of a lot of other options built into their species that let them approach problems from new and inventive ways. Their good Con makes them strong choices for martial characters if you want to go small and the bump gives them more surviveability for a lot of the other squishier classes that are often having to deal with more fragile health than other classes. The Cha also makes them solid choices for many casting classes like the Bard or Sorcerer and if you go outside of the Core Rulebook they can also make fine Swashbucklers and other Cha based classes as their Con Cha mix makes them synergize well. That said, remember all the special abilities they bring to the table too. Gnomes gain a high defenses against Giants and are apt at resisting illusion spells, spotting hidden things, and performing their own magics regardless of class. With Gnomes, you have the rare opportunity to find a way into the evil baron's lair via a short talk with a local badger, and the power to scare of an angry mob by tricking them into believing a mob of lions is coming with their ghost sound spell-like ability. Combine that with one of the wildest racial weapon lists and you've got one really fun species that will always be unique. Where else can you make a character who wields a chainsaw on a 10ft pole and talk to badgers all before you even pick the class?

• Gnomes in Oki (Houserules): The great students of Fizzwit, the Gnomes of Oki are one of the few true Pilgrims to Oki rather than Exiles. Brought to Oki by a grand proclamation and greater competition among the gnomes of the mainlands centuries ago, each conclave of the tiny geniuses tasked with building some transport capable of carrying their entire people across the sea. These ships were marvels of engineering, each in its conveyance across the roiling oceans on a one way trip the likes of which no one had ever seen. These great machines dug, shot, and transversed reality to get to the lands they sought today, and all of them landed in the great fertile lands they now inhabit today. This land became the super metropolis that is Tezzit'Nom, where the tiny tinkerers continue to work to this day. Neither scared of the Frontier like the Elves or concentrated on the other side of a deadly wasteland like the Dwarves, the Gnomes are still a tiny minority by most standards of census, and most of their number spend much of their time in or around the great cities and homeland, traversing the rest of the world and returning just as quickly. To that end, too few of them are found this far west into the Sea unless driven by some great excitement or large interesting find. For most, it is an issue of funding, with few having the money to funnel into arduous trip west and more to funnel their finds east and many just suffice with access to what is already shipped back to their home. That said, it would not take much to trigger greater interest in the mysterious finds of the Great Green Sea. 

Half-Elf: The children of elves and humans or half elven pairs, half elves are a solid choice for just about any class or concept. With a flat +2 bump to any stat of your choice, low-light vision, and a free Skill Focus feat, you've got a lot to work with to get your class together and get your preferred skill to a really strong buff or basically turn a skill into a class skill for free. That said, there are a lot of things that both the Elf and Human might do better or have more diversity with, such as the human ability to take any feat or the smattering of weapons proficiencies an elf gets instead of Skill focus, but as a fusion it's not bad, and manages to skirt a lot of the issues that elves suffer from such as the Con penalty.

• Half-Elves in Oki (Houserules): Prolific like no other setting, in Oki Half-elves have become the last scions of many elven lines. Unable to reproduce full blooded elves with any great regularity, many elven families have turned to humanity, producing half-elven children as a way to protect their cultural heritages and hereditary resources from crumbling due to lack of heirs. These half-elves are often the descendants of powerful, influential, or skilled humans from the surrounding territories, looking to build stronger ties with the surrounding human cultures and hopefully add whatever skills they possess to their own lines. This has lead to a plethora of Half-elves in any community that hosts elven enclaves or exists near them, as their half-elven scions continue to work to support their elven ancestors and potentially inherit their estates and resources should they pass. 

Half-Orc: The hybrid of humans & orcs, the Half-Orc is one of the strongest racial options one can select and one of my favorite thematic choices of the base 7. Blessed with a +2 to one stat of their choice like the other human races, 60ft darkvision, orc ferocity, and orc weapon proficiencies, the Half-Orc comes with A LOT of good mechanics out the gate. I've already talked about the power of the stat bump so I will not repeat it, but being able to see in the dark regardless of light level, free weapon proficiencies with axes and orc exotics, AND a free round to act after you hit neg hp makes your Half-Orc character VERY surviveable at start and gives you a lot of toys to play with. Now, making martial characters out of half-orcs is a really easy choice, but thanks to the change to the species for Pathfinder they are also really good spellcasters and other squishy classes. Their ferocity gives you an extra turn of survivability, letting you take your turn to say, cast that spell that saves the party or use that wand to heal yourself of a potentially mortal wound. Combine that with the darkvision and you have a lot of powerful abilities that can overcome some hazards that are constant problems throughout any level of your campaign. Ohh, also, wizards with greataxes or rogue sneak attacks. Build them as anything and you're likely to have a blast, so long as your GM treats you fairly and at least warns you of any external hardships orcs might face in their game. This last part is often the biggest issue with half-orc characters. Orcs tend to be evil in most campaigns, and GM's and past Editions have trained many to think of the half-orcs and their creations events as something that tends to be... not good to say the least. This often means players can end up playing their half-orcs in worlds that just end up wanting to kill them, and though some players might be fine with or enjoy that many do not, especially if they are not told. Ask your GM about this before you get too deep into your half-orc build. That way you can avoid playing a character who is punished for just being alive if that is not what you are looking for.

• Half-Orcs in Oki (Houserules): The perception of Half-Orcs varies a lot depending on where you are in Oki. Within the Imperium, the half-orc masses tend to be viewed in a negative light. Many of the greatest conflict of recent memory have been against the greenskin hordes, both in the west in the Great Green Sea and to the east with the forbidding jungles in the east and this endless conflict has colored many perceptions of the people throughout the Imperium. To many, they are the face of the savage hordes that plagued the newly created empire for too long, and threaten to destroy what has just been made. That said, many exiles are of half-orc descent, and many carry the relation in their blood, making out and out discrimination more complicated than many might expect. On the boarders these sentiments can very wildly. In the Great Green Sea, half-orcs are considered normal citizens like any other, the generations of interbreeding having worked the greenskin genes into almost every family homesteading in the sea of grass. Their animosity is more directed at full blooded orcs, whom still perpetrate the sporadic raid upon many residents regardless of factional alliance. In the Frontier, it is not uncommon to see farmers with greenskin and tusks working the fields, or ruddy orange half-orcs working as travelling merchants in imported imperial finery. But, for those half-orcs more associated with their orcish brethren, the discrimination is much higher. 

Halfling: The second and final small race of the Core Rulebook, halflings are your small, furry footed, laid back and lucky species. Basically, they are hobbits by another name, but since their arrival in D&D years ago they've morphed mechanically and become a unique species in their own right. They suffer from A LOT of the same issues that other small races do design wise, low Str, 20ft movement speed, and getting a buff to Cha (giving them only one difference in ability score changes from the Gnome) but they can still be a fun species to play. High Dex makes them great for nearly every class, as good Dex is useful for nearly any character at the mechanical level, and their natural luck bonus to saves gives them a solid leg up in survivablity down the line as it also stacks with just about every buff. The rest of their buffs are situational things like bonuses vs. fear or things many other species get like buffs to Perception, but they are still useful in the right game (the situational) or generally good like the Perception buff. Now, they are not always the best at martial classes, their low speed, small damage, and Str penalty combine to make it difficult to make every class combo work with them, but in the right hands they can be made. That said, if your idea is light and highly mobile, you'll get a lot out of them, and with their small size and the commiserate bonuses to Stealth checks they can make great sneaky characters. All this said, these issues are not a problem for halflings that follow casting classes, where their size doesn't effect their casting abilities and their good Cha and Dex synergize with many casting classes' needs. That said, if you are looking outside of the Core Rulebook, halflings can make amazing Swashbucklers or even Ninjas, their stats pairing really well with those classes needs, and making for some very interesting little melee characters. 

• Halflings in Oki (Houserules): Called the Immortal Allies, Halflings have been considered the allies of all people as far back as anyone can remember. The first people to rally to Aurum's banner as he called for aid stabilizing the Exile people and struck with a wonderlust that few other people possess, the halfling people have made friends and allies amid nearly every culture they encounter. It is due to this natural friendliness that many halflings live lives as traders, diplomats, and teachers using their massive social networks of friends and acquaintances to better themselves and their family through the bonds of friendship and reciprocity. Because of this, halflings can be found almost anywhere people have been and often where they have yet to travel, with the tiny furry footed men & women always looking for the next place to discover. Even those halflings who live in more sedentary lives continue their people's traditions, building friendships and mutually beneficial relationships with their nonhalfling neighbors to create the same communication networks their more mobile cousins enjoy. 

Human: The most understandable and arguably most mundane (*cough*boring*cough*) choice on this list, humanity makes up for this by having some of the best mechanical options of all the choices on the races list. Getting a free feat no strings attached, an extra skill point, and the ability to put their stat bump in any one stat of their choice with no penalty is a powerful suite of tools. To that end, humans are pretty much good choices for any class you pick or idea you can come up with, as the free feat, extra skill rank, and choosable stat bump makes it easy to get your character concept off to a strong start out the gate at 1st. I can say from personal experience how many times I've made a character human just because of these benefits, and found it a godsend and a blast to play. Combine that with the massive depth Paizo has added with actual ethnicities for their various humancentric countries in their home setting and you'll start to see a lot of the interesting diversity one has on offer. 

• Humans in Oki (Houserules): Humanity occupies every section of the map in Oki, from the olive skinned Octavians and pale skinned Grims of the empire to the ruddy tanned bodies of the nomadic tribes of the Great Green Sea, to the dark skinned men of the deep jungles in the east and the great cities of the Imperium, humanity comes in every size, shape, and color one can imagine and lives in every border. Those humans whose ancestors have lived upon Oki since the dawn of time or the great mists of the past are often referred to as the Natives, and occupy an ever shrinking portion of the map as the empire continues to either incorporate or annex their lands into their own. The other half of humanity is the Exiles. The cast offs of a culture known to exist on the continents far across the sea, this hodgepodge of criminals, political dissidents, and others deemed too dangerous to keep at home but not slay and their ancestors account for an ever increasing number of the human population south of the Deadlands, many of which live in their own growing empire known as the Spire Imperium. The opinions on these people vary from interested to downright hostile but few can deny the power, resources, and territory their people have managed to acquire over the last dozen generations. 

Whew, that was long. Hopefully that has helped give everyone a better idea of how these races work mechanically and see some of the greater options you can pull off that one may not have thought of. Next, I cover more races but this time for my Sunday game. Players, enjoy the greater discussion of some of the races you can play, to everyone else, think of this as an opportunity to really see some of the more creative and bizarre choices that one can pick as a species, including some options that you probably never thought of.