I played a Monte Cook variant of D&D 3.5 some years ago called Arcana Evolved. In AE, you could take racial levels for your race, which gave some pretty sweet benefits as well as giving some cultural heritage to your character.
I thought that Compendium Classes could be used for the same in DW. Of course, this will make assumptions about the setting, but DW already embraces a high fantasy meta-setting. Thoughts?
I like it! You could use the racial levels as a source of moves, things to pick instead of usual class moves when leveling up, maybe.
Only problem is that there ain’t no elfs, halflings nor dwarves in Arcana Evolved to draw inspiration from.
It didn’t even need to be a compendium class though, since the first move in the Corresponding compendium class would technically be your Racial Move.
Maybe you could make a pseudo compendium class for each Race/Class combo, emphasizing the differences between Elven Wizards and Human Wizards, for example?
But there are riffs on the idea in the 3.5 book Unearthed Arcana. 🙂
Ah, nice 🙂 As an example of a move, the Elven Ranger might for example be able to choose the following move:
Deepwood Sniper
When you use a bow to attack a monster that is unaware of your presence, they will not detect you, though the survivors will still know someone is there.
Here we go:Â http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/racialParagonClasses.htm
Uh, awesome. I must have a look at this later 🙂
Weren’t there also “swap” levels for some race/class combos in the Races of “X” books? I seem to remember the swap levels for elf wizard and hafling druid being really flavorful.
I don’t know about that. I preferred playing 3.x with core books only.
Found it. they were called racial substitution levels.
Dan Chiavaroli  Ahh, yes. This would in fact be the same then, just a DW variant?
I would love a lvl 5-10 move for the Elven Ranger that allowed him to have a Fey Ally, instead of the Unnatural Ally, meaning that he would have an Fey Creature instead of a monster. I imagined this giving it +2 Cunning instead of +2 ferocity and +1 Instinct.
Another place to borrow ideas from would be 4e D&D. Â Races usually have a racial power they get at level 1, lots of racial feats available that let them do interesting things, racial utility powers, and racial paragon paths. Â Lots of these could probably be translated well to moves.
That’s were I got the fey companion from 🙂 The Ranger can get a Fey Companion if they choose the Eladrin paragon path for Beastmasters
And also the DW Guide – there were a few compendium classes there that highlighted a particular aspect of a race.