Pathfinder: Back to Basics

So, I've been considering this for a while and I've decided to make up some alternate races, feats and even cosmological bits to use with Pathfinder to make the game more interesting for those players that have played it over and over. The first bit I did was to get rid of ALL standard races, even humans, however instead of just making up new ones myself I thought I should ask you lot, you creative little geniuses, for inspiration and ideas. So, what race (or feat, spell or other change) do you think should be put into the (my) game?

Well I think the world comes before creatures, unless of course the world is a blank slate as well. I could just imagine creating a pasty subterranean amphibious humanoid and find out its a desert scenario. 

With how players are introduced, who knows? In the least such a race would introduce their home region into the world, making that part become real. And as it happens, there will be a considerable amount of steppes in the game as it looks right now with some major seas to the south, but this area does not need to be the only one. (we got a regional map, but nothing says there aren't other regions, or even worlds, from which races can come)

My idea, a fantasy world scoured clean of life as we know it.  No diseases, no plants, no animals.  Dragons being nearly more magic than meat cling to existence in this world as ephemeral playthings for the second class citizen constructs, the wood and flesh and living constructs.  The more inanimate constructs, such as the single material or shield and the like constructs as well as construct races such as the Inevitables make up the upper class of the lowest of all recognized sentient life, the solids.  This is a world dominated by living spells. Also, As an independent idea: I have some nifty spread sheet tricks to put 33 domains together semi-randomly across 11 deities with 6 domains each so that each domain is assigned to exactly two deities and no pair of domains is monopolized by a single pair of deities.  That last part is hard to explain... but yay math.   So basically I'm requesting to craft a custom math biased pantheon for this setting.

Yay math indeed. I use it myself for a bit of everything. As for the pantheon, sounds like a curious solution. Where'd you get all those domain, standard ones or ones you wrote up yourself?

There are degrees of scouring as well; it could be that the area can no longer support larger creatures due to lack of water or oxygen etc. The the whole world could be shrank to bugs and the new brutes are field mice, lizards, and such. The remaining living constructs and other things relevant could become the new pantheon.  The whole world could have a post-apocalyptic feel. I guess my reasoning is if you're creating a steppe land, aka typical, how atypical  are you hoping the new races will be? I use tons of reskinning to fit my campaigns all the time and so far this feels like a massive racial reskin. I can see there still being a 'human' in its functionality, but instead of the "jack of a trades" being a run of the mill bi-pedal hairless simian, you can make it a roach in the shrunken post-bug-apocalypse, shrug. 

Hm. I like the post apoc thought there. Actually been discussed before. As for races, nothing says they can't come from elsewhere, one suggestion so far was to make the world empty of civilization and let it sprout during the game as another world gets more and more of a footing there, colonizing and making use of it. As for constructs becoming a pantheon, thank you, never thought of having a machine god in Pathfinder before. Will have to look into that. On the note of the races though, they don't have to be native to the area. They could be from another world, they could be from another region of the same world. They might even be an brand new one, made by a crazy god, hubristic wizard or some other entity prone to doing unwise things. Right now I'm mostly looking for ideas and concepts, if they're interesting I'll fit them into the game world for sure, even if I need to make up new pieces in order for them to fit.

Well ultimately you can fit any race into any world if you word it right. I think it should come down to the PCs in your campaign, after a race or class is generally a personification of some ideal the player has. You have someone is sees himself a a super intellectual arch-type will make his race/class drastically different from a brute player. So I'm thinking you should have your players produce  at least three words to describe the race they would like to be (assuming they can't make it all up themselves) and provide this for you as a guideline to creation. Now, as for the civilization annihilation and subsequent rebuilding there of, i had an idea for the bad guys. With the world in such a weekend state trying to recover and rebuild, a race of intelligent, opportunistic, vulture-esque parasites, whether literal or figuratively, have invaded from another plane, world, planet, whatever. As the PC's attempt to grow a new civ, these creatures at first infiltrate and attempt to manipulate and grow the civ to a thing that would welcome the new overlord. Later after the PCs uncover and stop such a plot the conflict can become more direct, till of course the climactic battle with said overlord.  

Asaram said: Yay math indeed. I use it myself for a bit of everything. As for the pantheon, sounds like a curious solution. Where'd you get all those domain, standard ones or ones you wrote up yourself? Just the standard ones from my pathfinder book.