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Mercaius]Right now, my question involves a simple 5-square radius light source, suppress at will, centered on the character that I'm debating.

It does free up a player's hand from torches or the like in dark areas, but that seems both mild and situational as an advantage. I added the ability to suppress the light source so the race was still viable as a stealthy character and did not penalize the player.

I think I would count that as a minor. I figure that most adventures happen in places people can see, whether due to the enviroment or the forethought of the players to bring light sources. It's use is overall situational and, as you mentioned, the major advantage is freeing up a hand in dark places. And at a 1 square radius, it doesn't even negate the need for a better lightsource for combat purposes.

Right now, my question involves a simple 5-square radius light source, suppress at will, centered on the character that I'm debating.

It does free up a player's hand from torches or the like in dark areas, but that seems both mild and situational as an advantage. I added the ability to suppress the light source so the race was still viable as a stealthy character and did not penalize the player.[/quote]
I think I would count that as a minor. I figure that most adventures happen in places people can see, whether due to the enviroment or the forethought of the players to bring light sources. It's use is overall situational and, as you mentioned, the major advantage is freeing up a hand in dark places. And at a 1 square radius, it doesn't even negate the need for a better lightsource for combat purposes.

The_Silversword]Karthon Durability: Increase Number of healing Surges by 1

Kinda weak and a bit boring. I would either attach some other secondary, more interesting, effect to Durability or at least up the bonus healing surges to 2.

Karthon Durability: Increase Number of healing Surges by 1[/quote]
Kinda weak and a bit boring. I would either attach some other secondary, more interesting, effect to Durability or at least up the bonus healing surges to 2.

The_Silversword]Knuckle spikes: Karthons have extended claw-like knuckles. Increase unarmed damage to 1d6

Very weaksause. A single die size is not much of an increase, and the attacks are still without a profinecy bonus, so even melee-oriented character wouldn't have much use for them. But as was mentioned above, "natural weapons" really should be a feat.

Knuckle spikes: Karthons have extended claw-like knuckles. Increase unarmed damage to 1d6[/quote]
Very weaksause. A single die size is not much of an increase, and the attacks are still without a profinecy bonus, so even melee-oriented character wouldn't have much use for them. But as was mentioned above, "natural weapons" really should be a feat.

The_Silversword]Racial Power:
Adaptive Defense
Encounter
Immediate Reaction
Trigger: You take damage from a specific damage type
Effect: You gain resist 5 + 1/2 your level against that damage type until the end of the encounter.

...I dont know i like the Adaptive defense being that you have to take damage before you can resist it. I guess that is kinda limiting. I dont know i may change it to a specific damage type and perhaps have racial feats to choose other resistances? Thanx again for the input. This is still very much a work-in-progress.

I'm not so well verse with monster entries, so I don't know how well the ability would work against elemental themed creatures. As is, its potentionally resistance against every elemental type, which is crazy good when it applies, even if you have to get hit first assuming the battle last more than a few rounds. However, it is useless against non-elemental users and is a rather static ability.

Just an idea, but perhaps instead of triggering a reaction when hit by a damage-keyworded attack, you instead make the power more general in nature in both trigger and effect wrote:

ShadowGuard wrote:

Are any of the alternate forms of vision okay for a race to have? For example Blind sight, or Tremor sense?

Both are likely inappropriate on a PC race. If your race can conceptually function without them, then it's best you go with that, and if your race can't conceptually function without them, then it's probably not conceptually appropriate as a PC race anyways. You might be able to get away with including it as an encounter racial powers, granting the special vision until the end of your next turn or something like that, but even then, the range should definitely be very limited.

What about alternate forms of movement like Swim, Climb or Burrow speeds?

Climb and Burrow can be just as bad as fly in many scenarios, so they're to be avoided unless, again, they're being granted only for one move via an encounter racial power. You might even have further problems with Burrow because of how that interacts with dungeon walls, floors, and ceilings. As for a Swim speed, I really can't think of how it could be abused, but it's still difficult to balance because the usefulness of a swim speed is heavily based on campaign style. There will be campaigns when you never make use of that swim speed so you'll be underpowered and campaigns were having a swim speed makes them overpowered. It's really best just to avoid it...

Would it be too powerful to give races a specific superior weapon proficiency feat instead of the normal racial proficiency too make the racial proficiencies worth while?

No, it wouldn't be overpowered, but you still shouldn't do it. That sort of feature is exactly like the Half-Orc Swift Charge; it's awesome for some classes and completely useless to most others, and that's bad design. Even normal racial weapon proficiencies as they are now are not a very well designed idea, but at least now they're mostly equally useless to everybody.

I was also working on an Ooze like race and it would have this Ooze form racial power as major ability. Is this really broken?

Ooze Form
At-will, Polymorph
Minor Action, Personal
Effect: Your body turns into an ooze like form which lasts until the end of your next turn. In this form you move your full speed when squeezing and you do not grant combat advantage or provoke attacks of opportunity attacks while squeezing. In addition all your items sink into your form allowing you to squeeze into spaces as small 1 inch in height. While you are in this form you gain a +2 to defenses against opportunity attacks, but you can’t use any attack powers. You can end this form early as a minor action.
Sustain Minor: The power persists.

My only question is why is this a racial power? It sounds to me like you could easily pull off half of these benefits being just plain old racial features that are always active:

Gelatinous Contortion: When you take a move action to squeeze, you can move up to your speed instead of only up to half your speed. You do not grant combat advantage when you squeeze.

And then turn the rest into a better racial encounter power:

Oozing Shift
Encounter
Move Action Personal
Effect: You can shift up to your speed. During this movement, you ignore difficult terrain, you can move through enemy squares, and all of your items sink into your form such that you can compress your body enough to squeeze through a 1-inch-wide crack, so cracks and other openings that are more than 1 inch wide do not slow you down at all. If you do not end this movement in a square that you could occupy, then you return to the most recent square you moved though that you could occupy.

Putting all of that into an at-will polymorph power is just clumsy and mechanically confusing, and being able to move through spaces so small at-will can prove problematic to the point where your DM will eventually just decide the ne needs to make it useless and from then on all cracks will be half an inch wide. In fact, even being able to do it once per encounter could theoretically be problematic. Remember all the commotion way back at the beginning of 4E when people realize that a normal prison could not hold an Eladrin? Of course, we all later found out that all one needs to prevent that is a blindfold, so that ended okay, but this is a little different...

Also would it be too farfetched to make a Swarm race? It could have a racial power to gain the benefits of the swarm keyword temporarily.

A race that's always a swarm would be overpowered. That's half damage from all melee and ranged attacks, immunity to forced movement due to melee and ranged attacks, never provoke opportunity attack for moving through enemy squares, and of course you can always move through spaces about an inch wide...

Even in the form of an encounter racial power, I don't see how you could pull this off very well. At best, I could see the racial power functioning... almost exactly the same as the ooze power above, actually...



And as a general response to everything you've said... It's really just best if you don't. :P
Seriously, your homebrew races will be cooler if you just make them cool yourself and don't try to rely on mechanical gimmicks like these to make them cool for you. I'm not saying that relying on gimmicks to make your race cool is what you're doing; I'm just saying that a lot of people do that, and this is sort of what it looks like...