I love heritage moves, but I’m drawing a few blanks on the inspiration front. How have you folks used them? What do you do for the traditional races? Human and elf moves for the half-elves? Just use the existing class-based racial moves?
Obligatory J. Walton ?
Here’s the “racial” heritage move list I pass around when running one-shots. I encourage people to take moves from multiple lists for the Planarch Codex, reflecting the diverse heritage of the planes. For longer games, I tend to encourage people to invent moves reflecting their cultural, family, or religious background in addition to one or more racial ones:
Human
• Be underestimated
• Succeed at a foolish stunt
• Pledge your service to a greater power
Dwarf
• Drive them back
• Navigate through stone
• Withstand poison
Elf
• Inflict pain beyond measure
• Pass on divine knowledge
• Use darkness to your advantage
Djinn
• Speak to the flames
• Ritually cleanse yourself or another
• Dream of a place unseen
Ratfolk
• Rip something apart
• Summon the swarm
• Burrow in or through
Crocodilian
• Attack with unexpected savagery
• Escape into the water
• Hold something tightly in your jaws
Doppelganger
• Assume the shape of another
• Use the heritage move of a shape you’ve taken
• Speak or decipher an unfamiliar language
Medusa
• Turn a body part to stone with a glance
• Draw someone’s gaze
• Reveal your hidden terrible beauty
Vampire
• Charm someone
• Track the smell of blood
• Heal your wounds (not those inflicted by wood or silver)
Not exactly traditional, but our current game has an arcanaloth tiefling with:
Tower of Iron Will: Highly resistant to mind-affecting magics.
Devil’s Advocate: Negotiate a fiendishly complex contract.
Cunning Linguist: Make sense of any language.
a warforged/inevitable with:
Implacable Jailer: Prevent a spell or effect that would have freed your target from your power.
Swiss Army Knife: Use a special tool or adaptation, built-in.
Endure: Take it.
and a god-blood with the fairly straightforward:
Move with incredible speed
Act with sudden strength
Shrug off an injury that should have been much worse
Going more traditional, for elves or half-elves:
Songs of Earth and Power: heal or mend something by singing the ancient songs
Elven Grace: walk atop snow, up an olyphant’s trunk, etc
Lore of the Ages: spout lore about something no still-living being could possibly know
Dwarves:
Stout Belly: out-drink any non-dwarf
Stand Your Ground: resist any attempt to move you from where you stand
Kneecapper: Hack and Slash against an opponent whose immense size would otherwise prevent it