Race traits are keyed to specific races, which your character must belong to in order to select the trait. You must have the correct race or subtype to select the relevant traits. For example, humans can only select human race traits, but a half-elf who possesses both the human and elf subtypes can select from human, elf, or half-elf race traits. The one exception is the “Any” category, which may be selected by members of any race or heritage.
The Race Traits
Any Race Traits
Adventurous
You are adventurous and eager to explore new and dangerous locales.
Benefit: When shaken, you only take a -1 penalty on your rolls instead of -2.
Auspicious Tattoo
You bear a tattoo depicting one of the totems that favors your tribe with good fortune.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Will saving throws.
Historian
Your parents were scholars of history, whether genealogists of your own family tree, sages on the subject of ancient empires, or simply hobbyists with a deep and abiding love for the past.
Benefit: You gain a +2 trait bonus on Academics checks related to history and genealogies, and Academics is always a class skill for you.
Armad Race Traits
Enduring Defense
You are able to maintain your defensive stance longer than others of your kind.
Benefit: When you use your defensive stance ability, it lasts for 2 additional rounds.
Expert Martial Insight
Your training with martial arts combined with your natural defensive abilities has granted you enlightenment into combining the two techniques.
Benefit: When you activate your defensive stance racial ability, you may immediately regain one expended martial technique as a move action.
Rapid Excavation
You spent much of your childhood playing in the dirt. As a result, you are quick and adept at digging holes.
Benefit: Your gain a +5-ft trait bonus to your burrow speed.
Seeker of Wisdom
Your intense desire to encounter new experiences and acquire deeper wisdom has honed your senses towards discovering the unknown.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Insight and Perception related to truly unknown people, creatures, objects, events, or circumstances. For example, this would apply to noticing an unknown creature stalking you or stumbling across a mysterious artifact in ancient ruins, but it would not apply to being stealthily followed by an individual you know or finding a hidden item you are intentionally looking for.
Athik Race Traits
Energetic Mentality
Your mind is overactive and processes more quickly than others of your kind. You tend to be easily distracted and always brimming with energy, but you are also quite adept at harnessing this mental energy.
Benefit: You gain 1 bonus power point as a trait bonus. In addition, if you possess a psi-like ability from your race, you gain a +1 trait bonus to the manifester level of that psi-like ability. If you possess more than one such ability, you must choose which one gains this bonus.
Natural Supporter
You are adept at lending aid to others, supporting them in their endeavors.
Benefit: Whenever you successfully perform an aid another action, you grant your ally an additional +1 trait bonus on their roll. This bonus is doubled, as normal, when assisting another athik.
Strong Back
You are capable of carrying truly impressive loads with ease.
Benefit: You gain a +4 trait bonus to your effective Strength score for the purpose of determining your carrying capacity.
Telepathic Voice
Your telepathic abilities are more powerful than others of your kind. You are able to make your mental “voice” heard by members of any race, although you gain no ability to hear their mental response.
Benefit: You may use your hive telepathy racial ability to speak to any creature within its range, regardless of race. You must “speak” in a language the creature understands, otherwise it is received as meaningless noise.
Dragonborn Race Traits
Draconic Endurance
Your draconic heritage has given you a particularly durable physique.
Benefit: Your massive damage threshold increases by 4, you gain a +1 bonus on the Fortitude save to resist death by massive damage, and you add 2 to the number of negative hit points you can accrue before dying.
Skill Inheritance
You inherited some of the racial knowledge of your draconic ancestors, gaining proficiency with their racial skills.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus with the skill associated with your draconic heritage.
Tough Scales
Your dragonscale is more resistant to damage than other dragonborn.
Benefit: You gain a +2 trait bonus to the energy resistance granted by your dragonscale racial ability.
Unusual Scale Pattern
When you were born, the colors and patterns of your scales were abnormal for your heritage. You’ve always been a bit of an outsider, often ostracized by others of your kind for appearing like a descendant of a different dragon.
Benefit: Choose a draconic heritage other than your own. Your scale coloration matches that of the chosen heritage. For example, a descendant of a red dragon could choose brass heritage to gain the scale color of a brass dragon. You are frequently assumed to be a descendant of the chosen heritage, and you gain a +4 trait bonus on checks to disguise disguise yourself as a member of the chosen heritage or hide your actual heritage.
Dromite Race Traits
Psychoenergetic Talent
Your natural ability to create rays of energy is heightened, allowing you to fire a weakened version of energy ray as a standard action as long as you maintain psionic focus.
Benefit: You can manifest energy splash as a psi-like ability the damage is the same as the energy type of your energy ray. Your manifester level for this ability is always 1.
Duergar Race Traits
Psychic Buffer
Years of living near creatures that attack your mind has sharpened your defenses; you are skilled at repelling mental assaults.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus to Will saves against Telepathy powers.
Dwarf Race Traits
Brewmaster
Your family brought the secrets of dwarven brewing to non-dwarven lands. Though this has given you skill in the brewer’s craft, it’s also earned you distrust among dwarven purists.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Profession (brewer) and Profession (alchemist) checks, but you take a –1 penalty on Persuasion checks made to change the attitude of dwarves who know that your family has shared brewing secrets with non-dwarves.
Goldsniffer
Your keen senses lead you to hidden treasures.
Benefit: You gain a +2 trait bonus on Perception checks related to metals, jewels, and gemstones.
Spirits in the Stone
You have an almost instinctive ability to sense danger and peril in ruined structures.
Benefit: Whenever you’re in ruins, you gain a +2 trait bonus on initiative checks and a +1 trait bonus on saving throws against traps and natural hazards.
Tunnel Fighter
Caves and tunnels are a second home to you.
Benefit: While underground, you receive a +2 trait bonus on initiative checks and a +1 trait bonus on weapon damage rolls for critical hits (this damage is multiplied on a critical hit).
Elan Race Traits
Imperfect Transformation
Your transformation into an Elan did not quite go as planned, resulting in unexpected mutations.
Benefit: Roll 1d10 when to gain this trait. You gain a drawback mutation based on your roll, as shown on the accompanying table. You gain the Mutation Points as normal for a drawback but must spend all of them immediately and may not combine them with MP from other sources.
Roll Drawback MP
Cost1 Critical Weakness -2 2 Festering Sores -2 3 Heat/Cold Susceptibility -1 4 Hideous Visage -2 5 Lethargy -2 6 Light Sensitivity -2 7 Motion Sickness -2 8 Psychic Vulnerability -2 9 Rapid Aging -2 10 Weak Immune System -1
Elf Race Traits
Botanist
You are familiar with beneficial and dangerous plants.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Natural Lore checks to locate or identify plants and on saving throws against the extraordinary abilities of plants.
Fey Trickster
Your fey nature leads you to often play tricks on others, and you have discovered that you have an unusual talent for tricky illusions.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus to your caster level when determining the range, area, and duration of all spells from the illusion school.
Forlorn
Having lived outside of traditional elf society for much or all of your life, you know the world can be cruel, dangerous, and unforgiving of the weak.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Fortitude saving throws.
Warrior of Old
As a child, you put in long hours on combat drills, and though time has made this training a dim memory, you still have a knack for quickly responding to trouble.
Benefit: You gain a +2 trait bonus on initiative checks.
Gnome Race Traits
Animal Friend
You’ve long been a friend to animals, and feel safer when animals are nearby.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Will saving throws as long as an animal (Tiny or larger, must be at least indifferent toward you) is within 30 feet, and Handle Animal is always a class skill for you.
Illusion Obsession
After realizing the great potential of illusions—particularly figments—for use in pranks, you became obsessed with studying their properties and better methods to cast them.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus to your caster level when casting illusions in the figment subschool.
Half-Elf Race Traits
Elven Reflexes
One of your parents was a member of a wild elven tribe, and you’ve inherited a portion of your elven parent’s quick reflexes.
Benefit: You gain a +2 trait bonus on initiative checks.
Failed Apprentice
As a child, your parents sent you to a distant wizard’s tower as an apprentice so that you could learn the arcane arts. Unfortunately, you had no arcane talent whatsoever, though you did learn a great deal about the workings of spells and how to resist them.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on saves against arcane spells.
Voice of Velvet
You have the ability to sing a song and spin a story that captures the hearts of those around you.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Perform (oratory) and Persuasion checks.
Half-Giant Race Traits
A Gentleman and a Scholar
Discussion and Debate
You embrace philosophical discussion and political debate with gusto. The sharing of wisdom, the pursuit of ultimate truth, and the implementation of such truths into the structure of society bring you immense satisfaction.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus to Persuasion and Profession (barrister) checks. This bonus is increased to +2 when actively debating philosophy or politics.
Impressive Physique
Your size and stature are particularly imposing.
Benefit: Your natural physique gives you a +2 trait bonus to Intimidate checks due to your size.
Half-Orc Race Traits
Almost Human
You have enough human features that it’s easy for you to pass for a pure-blooded human.
Benefit: You gain a + 4 trait bonus on Deception checks to disguise yourself as human, and Deception is always a class skill for you.
Brute
You have worked for a crime lord, either as a low-level enforcer or as a guard, and are adept at frightening away people.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Intimidate checks, and Intimidate is always a class skill for you.
Caravan Drover
With your hand on the lash, your caravans always arrive on time.
Benefit: You treat whips as martial weapons, and up to 10 animals and humanoids traveling with you can hustle or make a forced march for 1 hour longer than normal before taking nonlethal damage and becoming fatigued.
Scrapper
A childhood spent scrabbling for every possession and scrap of food has made you fierce and wary.
Benefit: You receive a +1 trait bonus on all Intimidate checks made to demoralize opponents and a +1 trait bonus on all Perception checks to avoid being surprised.
Halfling Race Traits
Helpful
You see nothing wrong with letting others achieve greatness so long as the job gets done.
Benefit: Whenever you successfully perform an aid another action, you grant your ally a +4 bonus instead of the normal +2.
Lettered
You can read a smattering of most languages and know enough to make pretty good guesses about the rest.
Benefit: Linguistics is always a class skill for you, and you gain a +1 trait bonus on Linguistics checks made for the purpose of deciphering writing in an unfamiliar language. You never draw a false conclusion if you fail your Linguistics check; instead, you simply realize you cannot make sense of the writing.
Providential Passenger
Those who travel for a living understand that your mere presence could make the difference between success and failure once a journey begins, and this gives you an edge when negotiating your fare or other privileges.
Benefit: Improve the starting attitude that ship captains, caravan leaders, and those with similar sorts of responsibilities have toward you by one step.
Well-Informed
You make it a point to know everyone and to be connected to everything around you. You frequent the best taverns, attend all of the right events, and graciously help anyone who needs it.
Benefits: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Persuasion checks to gather information and on Streetwise checks. One of these skills (of your choice) is always a class skill for you.
Human Race Traits
Glib Barrister
You grew up within a bureaucratic system where law reigns supreme; however, that has never stopped you from creating loopholes in ironclad contracts.
Benefit: You gain a +2 trait bonus on Linguistics checks to create and detect forgeries.
Horse Lord
You grew up horse racing along the plains.
Benefit: You gain a +2 trait bonus on Handle Animal checks related to horses.
Master of the Sudden Strike
You have mastered the deadly fighting arts of your people.
Benefit: When you wield a masterwork version of any sword, you gain a +2 trait bonus on weapon damage rolls against flat-footed opponents during the surprise round (if any). This additional damage is precision damage.
Relic Hunter
From the moment you could walk and talk, the ruins of ancient civilizations have fascinated you. You have made a study of ancient lands and ruins and are familiar with relics and artifacts their inhabitants left behind. Because of this, you have special insight into geography as well as expertise in exploring lost places.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Academics checks, and this skill is always a class skill for you. When examining ruins more than 1,000 years old and objects found within them, this bonus increases to +2. If such ancient item found in these ruins is magical, you gain a +1 trait bonus on skill checks to identify its properties and to activate it.
Shield Bearer
You have survived many battles thanks to your skill with your shield.
Benefit: When performing a shield bash, you deal 1 additional point of damage. Also, once per day on your turn as a free action, you may provide one adjacent ally a +2 trait bonus to his Armor Class. This bonus lasts for 1 round, so long as you and the target remain adjacent to one another. You can only use this ability if you are using a shield. You retain your shield bonus to your armor class when using this ability.
Lantean Race Traits
Empower Orichalcum
Lanteans use orichalcum as a power source and as a receptacle of their own power. You have leaned the trick of using your essence to empower the orichalcum in your weapons.
Benefit: If you take 1 point of essence burn while wielding a weapon that is made primarily of orichalcum, you gain a +2 trait bonus to weapon damage rolls with that weapon for 1 minute.
Open Third Eye
You harness the power of orichalcum, focusing it into your mind and forcing open your third eye to unlock psionic talents.
Bonus: You become naturally psionic and gain 1 power point.
Maenad Race Traits
Inner Peace
Surging Outburst
Your mind surges along with your body, giving you even greater strength.
Benefit: Once per day, when you use your outburst ability, you gain 2 temporary power points. These may be spent as normal, such as to power your outburst. If you do not use these power points, they are lost immediately when your outburst ends.
Moreau Race Traits
Beastheart
You have a close kinship with your animal kind, instinctively understanding their behaviors and learning to communicate with them.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Natural Lore checks with animals of your Animal Kind (and similar animals), and you can use speak with animals as a spell-like ability at will to communicate with them.
Feral Resistance
Your animalistic traits grant you resilience against harm while shifting.
Benefit: You gain a +1 trait bonus to a specific type of saving throws while using your racial wild shift ability, determined by your animal kind. Boar, Carp, and Dog Moreau gain a bonus on Fortitude saving throws. Cat, Hare, and Monkey Moreau gain a bonus on Reflex saving throws. Owl and Tanuki Moreau gain a bonus on Will saving throws.
Frequent Shifting
You are able to assume animal form more often.
Benefit: You gain one additional daily use of your racial wild shift ability.
Mysterious Past
You are a mystery, and you are unwilling to share details of your past.
Benefit: The DC of any skill checks made to discover information about you or your past is increased by 2. The DC is instead increased by 5 for any checks to recall knowledge about you, your deeds, or your past. This increase is considered a trait bonus.