1. Racial Variants

Banned Races

While this should be precious few, some races in Pathfinder just won’t fit the lore of the setting, and an exception would have to be made for the character to be an off-worlder. That said, anything blatantly egregous in balance will be outlined here.

• Ifrit, Oread, Sylph and Undine renamed and rebalanced as genasi. Original races as printed by Paizo are not in-setting.
• Wyrwood barring further amendments.
• Anything else that surfaces in 3pp using Construct as a base race type.

Half-Blood Races

• Half elves and halforcs may choose from their human and their non-human parent’s list of alternate racial traits, if the alternate trait replaces a trait that the halfblood race also has, (for example: trading out elven immunities for dreamspeaker.)
• They may also use either their human or non-human parent’s race as a prerequisite for traits, racial feats and other affects that modify their parent races’ traits.
• This affects some of the racial feats for halfelves and halforcs as follows:
  • Human Spirit: The benefit of this is changed to read “You gain the human’s Skilled racial trait, gaining 1 extra skill point per level. You may alternately gain any other human racial trait that replaces the Skilled racial trait.”
  • Neither Elf nor Human: You cannot take this feat if you’ve taken advantage of using either parent race to qualify for other feats or swap out racial traits.
  • Half-Drow Paragon: Is no longer necessary. If you took the drow-descended package or half-drow alternate trait, you gain the benefits of this feat.

Mixed Blood Races

Races like aasimar, tiefling, genasi etc. that used to be template races in 3e, but are now treated as their own race, are still considered mix blooded for our setting. What this means codally is: like half-elves and half-orcs, you qualify for feats, classes etc. that use your parent race as prerequisite. So if you’re (as most are) a human parented tiefling, for example, you are also human for the purpose of prerequisites, favored class bonuses and etc.

• This means that the Aasimar alternate racial trait Scion of Humanity is superfluous and not an option, as the aasimar already gets the benefits without sacrificing Celestial as a bonus language.
• If you are, by backstory, of a different parentage than human, like elf, you can treat that parented race as a prerequisite.
• This does NOT allow to pick a parentage that is already mix blooded (like halfelf or halforc) and get three sets of prerequisites; you have to pick one half or the other.

You can further customize your character as mixed race by using the Mixed Blood trait from Dreamscarred Press, and the associated Heritage feats from Bloodforge by Dreamscarred Press. Discuss the concept with the GMs.

ECL Races

As Pathfinder RPG does not have the level adjustment mechanic, and to balance out races with significant CL adjustments being player characters, if y0u want to create a PC with a CL adjustment (half-celestial, half-fey, half-fiend, et al). you need to add hit dice (and corresponding character levels) of the race type of your template. These racial hit dice count toward your level cap at level 20.

For example, to make a half-celestial, you will have 3 levels (+3 CL being the maximum CL adjustment for the template) of outsider, before adding in your class levels. Your skill points, class skills, BAB and saves for your racial levels are acquired according to the statistics for outsiders. Add all of the feats, class abilities, ability score adjustments, etc as indicated in the template, then add your class levels up to your starting character level. Spell-likes (if any) will continue to be acquired at the character levels indicated on the template description. The half celestial in this example will have a maximum class level in any combination of 17th, plus their 3 racial hit dice.

There are, optionally, adaptations of the three most common half-bred templates into template classes from the site dragonarmyone.com, which is now defunct but preseved on Wayback Machine:

• Half-Celestial adds racial class levels to the Aasimar.
• Half-Fiend adds racial class levels to the Tiefling.
• Half-Fey adds to any humanoid. The half-fey can take fey heritage feats from the feytouched race writeup.

In order for a PC race to have no racial substitution levels, it has to total 20 race points or under. You can opt to reduce the traits or features of a higher powered race to bring it below this mark if you want to play without racial dice. Discuss it with a GM as to what features you want to cut back.

3pp Races

Races published on d20pfsrd.org are usually fine, better to discuss the concept first, for a way to fit it into the FR setting. In situations where a prior published 3pp race is the same as a later publihed Paizo race, the latter is considered the default, but feel free to bring it up if there could be justification for a variant of the race — for example, there is a 3pp centaur published by Kobold Press that is different from the Paizo stats, but it is also below 20 race points, and could easily reflect a lesser powered PC centaur.

If a 3pp race entry for a duplicate Pathfinder race has additional feats, traits, etc that it uses the race as a prerequisite, either can be freely used on your PC of the same named race.

Subraces

The mechanics of PFRPG do not give different ability adjustments for subraces (such as Wood Elves vs. Moon Elves, etc). Rather, you can customize your character with racial substitutions as listed in each race’s listings, which trade off one or more of a class’ features for different ones. Build the character with these the way you like, that fits your image of  them based on their culture and backstory.

There are exceptions to this, and they’ll be converted and/or linked below.

Specific Race Variants

Centaur

In order to make them 20 rp or under, so there’s no racial hit dice required, the base centaur has the following modifications:

• Final stat mods are +2 Strength, +2 Constitution, and +2 Wisdom. (-8 rp)
• Do not get darkvision, though they are monstrous humanoids (neither humans nor horses have night vision) (-2 rp)
• Undersized Weapons: Centaurs use weapons meant for a creature one size category smaller (yes, this is a disadvantage), and their natural reach is only 5 feet. (-1 rp)

Final Race Point total: 18 rp

Changelings

To corellate with Forgotten Realms D&D lore instead of Golarion lore, changelings are not the halfbreeds of humanoids and night hags, rather they are produced by the mating of humans and dopplegangers, and like their progenitor posses the (limited) ability to change their shape. The Golarion changeling is removed from the setting. There is already a PF conversion of the 3.5e changeling race here.

There is also a page of changeling exclusive feats here.

Goblins

Goblins can chose any mental stat for their malus, not just charisma.

Half-Elves

Add this as an alternate racial trait:

Half-Avariel: Your elven parent was one of the winged elves called Avariel, and it has left its trace upon you as a pair of small feathered wings; when you fall you can slow your descent by making a DC 15 Acrobatics check to fall safely without taking falling damage, albeit at a rate of 20 feet a round, and you do not land prone at the end of the fall. While falling safely, you can also glide, moving 5 feet laterally every round you descend. This counts as having vestigial wings to qualify for any feats.

Halflings

The Warslinger racial trait works with any sort of sling, including one side of a halfling double-sling; both sides of the double-sling can be reloaded as a move action.

Kobold

• Ability Score Modifiers: Kobolds are fast but weak. They gain +2 Dexterity, –2 Strength, and –2 Constitution.
• Pick one alternate race trait that would otherwise replace Crafty; you gain this trait with no tradeoff, because Craft (trap) and Profession (miner) are worth nothing.

Racial Conversions

Aarakocra: Conversion in Creature Chronicle. They may take Flyby Attack, Hover and Wingover as general feats.

Alicorn: The PF1e adaptation left a little to be desired from the original 3.5e, and so is rebalanced for 20 race points.

Avariel: Conversion in Creature Chronicle. Avariel may take Flyby Attack, Hover and Wingover as general feats. They may take any applicable racial substitution abilities of the elf, as well as elf racial favored class bonuses.

Dullahan: Are fey in Faerun lore, not undead as in Golarion.

Feytouched: Humanoids touched by the Fey Realm akin to other planetouched.

Gith: Anyone tempted to play a Githyanki or Githzerai have adaptations in Creature Chronicle, with the following house overrides:

• Instead of Psychic Sensitivity/Virtuoso (which are garbage) they get the Amateur Kineticist feat.
• For point balance sake, they do not gain Plane Shift as a spell-like ability.
• Githyanki do not gain Telekinesis as a spell-like ability — they can gain that if they so choose with the proper Kineticist element.

Killoren: House adaptation.

Lythari: House adaptation. A Lythari may take any monster feat that is applicable to their wolf form as a general feat, which will only be effective when the Lythari is in wolf form.

Tibbit: House adaptation for the Forgotten Realms race is linked here. A Tibbit may take any monster feat that is applicable to their cat form as a general feat, which will only be effective when the character is in cat form.

Warforged: Adaptation of the Cormyr Dalelands story treatment of the race.