MongrelWithout a homeland of their own, Mongrel blend into other societies and try their best to adapt.Average Height: As human
Average Weight: As human
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Abilities: +2 to any one ability score chosen at the beginning of each day
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares
Vision: Low Light
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Languages: Common
Skills: +2 Disguise
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Bonus Feat: Any one bonus feat
Emulate Ability: At the beginning of every day, choose a racial power usable on a per encounter basis. For the remainder of the day, you have access to this power as though you were a member of that race.
Imitation: A Mongrel is treated as a member of the race whose power they are emulating. This does not allow you to take feats that require being a member of a given race, however.
Mutable Defense: At the beginning of the day, choose Fortitude, Reflex, or Will. You gain a +1 bonus to that defense. At the end of each Short Rest period, you may change to which defense this applies.
Mongrels have no natural dwelling grounds, mixing freely with all the races of the world. Some prefer the deep homes of the dwarves, while other enjoy the treetop abodes of the elves. Their natural talent for altering themselves comes in handy, helping them to be almost as lithe, almost as clever, and almost as strong as whoever their neighbors happen to be.
Play a Mongrel if you want...
- A race that can be good at a different thing every day
- An adventurer who can adapt his fighting style with ease
- A race with many rogues and wizards. Classes that give the adventurer multiple things to do in and out of battle are very common among Mongrels
Physical Qualities: Their features range from baseline human to vaguely elven to brutally orcish to calmly draconic. Some are tall, some are short. Some are thin, some are wide. Generally, however, they tend to appear like some sort of variation of human.
Playing Mongrels: Playing a Mongrel can be a challenge. They don't have as many bonuses as other races, but their daily choice of bonus points and racial power means that they can prepare for encounters much better than many other characters.
Mongrel Characteristics: Unique, wild, demure, mysterious, odd, excited
Male Names: Stan, Hy'thrael, Keethrax, Llewenhooke, Clyde, Albertus
Female Names: Uunundia, Jill, Hash'kissar, Missy, Alexis
Racial FeatsHeroic TeirToughened Shifting [Mongrel]Prerequisites: Mongrel
Benefit: Your bonus from Mutable Defense increases to +2.
Paragon TeirVersatile Shifting [Mongrel]Prerequisites: Mongrel, Character Level 11
Benefit: You may choose two defense to apply the bonus from Mutable Defense to.
Special: If you took the Toughened Shifting feat, both defenses chosen are increased by +2.
Racial Shifting [Mongrel]Prerequisites: Mongrel, Character Level 11
Benefit: This feat allows you to emulate a Heroic Teir feat every day from the race whose power you are emulating that day. You choose the feat to be emulated at the beginning of each day.
Special: If you choose a feat that modifies an ability you do not possess, the feat is wasted and no benefit is gained.
Thoughts? A bit different than Eberron's Shifters, but I thought it worked quite nicely. Obviously, of course, the +2 to an ability score doesn't stack. It's more like a permanent but temporary +2 bonus to one stat at a time. Some room for expansion would be a paragon path that granted the ability to emulate powers from other classes (like enhanced multiclassing) and the ability to gain a racial feat every day for the race you're emulating.
