Back in the 80's with Mentzers/Holmes D&D (Basic,B/x or BECMI etc) you did not get to choose races and classes as such. All clerics, mages, thieves and wizards were humans while Dwarves/Halfings/Elves were there own classes. Some of the clones have built on this such as ACKs where there are multiple Dwarf and Elf classes available.
Now I am thinking something similar for 5E but more along the lines for powerful races. In 3.5 they used levels adjustments for these races, 4E nerfed them or refluffed other races into them while 2nd ed used a variety of racial penalties, level limits, or xp penalties with vary degrees of success.
For example I will use the HAalf Giant of Athas which in 4E was a refluffed Goliath. One problem I had here was that I did not use races of stone in 3.5 so Goliaths were mostly foreign to me and I liked the old 2E Athasian half giants a lot better. Generally I believe if you are going to play a setting or RPG based on a movie you do not want to stray to far from the original source material so basically 1st ed is the definitive source on Dragonlance, 2E for Darksun, 3rd ed for Eberron and 4E for Nerath, IMHO of course. Some mechancal tweaking is necessary of course but changing a race totally is a bit far out there for my tastes. Now the 2nd ed Half Giantststs
Size Large (10-12' tall)
Ability Mods +4 Strength, +2 Con, -2 Int, -2 Wis, -2 Charisma
Level Limits 16 Fighter, 14 Gladiator, 8 Ranger, 12 Cleric, Psionist Unlimited
Variable Alignment: HG's can change their alignment daily
A half-giant character doubles his Hit Die rolls, no matter what his character class is. Add any bonuses for high Constitution scores after doubling the roll of the die. For example, a halfgiant cleric rolls 1d8 and multiplies the result by 2 to determine his hit points at each level. All personal items, such as clothing, armor, weapons, and food, cost double for halfgiant
characters. Transportation and lodging, when they’re available at all, are also considerably more expensive. Most things aren’t built to support the weight of a half-giant, and even 14 in the cities half-giants tend to camp outside for their own comfort and to avoid causing any damage. Half-giants can live to a maximum age of 220 years.
This is basically the guts of the race from 2nd ed. The core concept of the class I would argue is great size, strength, toughness (bucket of hit points) and decent warrior types. +2 strength in 5E doesn't really cut it IMHO as then a great big half giant is no stronger than a Dwarf, and I do not buy into the reflavoured Goliath arguement. I suppose you could argue one could play an immature half giant. +2 strength and +2 con would make the Half Giant tough but it would not really stand out to much compared to the other races.
My idea is to make the big brute a class all by itself to represent the beatstick and I suppose you could make a psionic and clerical version as well. The half giant could grow into his higher stats I suppose but most classes can do that so maybe it could break the racial cap of 20 and go to 22 or maybe 24 strength at the most. Its unbalanced racial stats of course come at the price of class features when compared to a fighter so the half Giant gets no second wind and the other fighter abilities.
Rough ideas for class abilities. Note not all of this needs to be level 1 of course
Size Large. Can use two handed weapons in 1 hand (lets leave huge weapons out of this)
+4 strength (or +2 with rapid gain in strength score ie level 4 at the latest) The strength boost is a fixed on and cannot be used for other stats or traded for a feat.
+2 con
+2 hit points per hit dice (double the Dwarves bonus, reflects the 2nd ed bucket of hit dice thing), doesn't get 2nd wind though.
1d12 hit dice
Advantage on strength checks
(a) Maybe being able to break the 20 limit on ability scores (for strength) or
(b) A Half Giants strength score is treated as 4 points higher for purposes of saving throws and skill checks
The downsides are these features are part of your class so you can't layer them onto the fighter class for example. The game could also have room for the smaller half Giants where you play an adolescent one and you can reskin a Goliath I suppose.
Now this is just a theory or proof of concept and I think it coud work for various other races like Minotaurs, Ogres, or even Drow if you want to play a ye old powerful one with old school features. A Drow wizard for example might get features similar to a 1st ed Drows abilities at the cost of wizard class abilities outside of the wizards spell pattern and ability to cast spells.
TLDR. If you design races and classes to balance then out do you think trading class features for more powerful racial features spread out over the levels perhaps sounds appealing?
The whole "race as class" concept evolved from the notion that certain combinations of race and class worked well together and made sense together. Dwarves are fighters, halflings are thieves. The advantage to such a system is that it makes character creation that much faster. The disadvantage is that it limits options.
Back "in the day" I was a big fan of race=class. Through 5E playtest, however, I've wavered from my position. One of my players wanted to run a dwarven wizard, an option not allowed in the older versions of the game. I was hesitant at first because I felt that such a choice "broke" a careful game balance but in play I've found that the dwarven wizard isn't quite as good a wizard as the elf or human, which seems to introduce its own balance into the equation.
Basically, I'm not opposed to race=class and I certanly like the ideas you generated, but I think it might be worth playing some 5E for a while with all options to see how it shakes out.
Not unless the race has something special about it that prevents other races from taking the class.
But yes, a having a pixie 3/wizard 17 would probably be the best way to balance it.
The only race as class I'd like, honestly, is something like playing a dragon. You start as a 1 HD wyrmling with averagish humanoid stats, and by level 20 you're a full on adult/or even old. 20 hit dice, many full on MM dragon powers and damage, etc. Massive ability scores...That'd be awesome, lol.
I do like the idea for really 'weird' races, like half-giant (classic 2e Athesian) or pixie or mind flayer, centaur, etc. I also agree that 4e changed the half giant too much to fit it into 4e. Don't get me wrong, I loved 4e DS, and still run it. But...A part of me missed the 2e athesian half-giant. I don't like class level limits, though. Maybe race as class could be done with MC rules only, by making a weird race with lots of gained advantages a 'half class' or sorts, which then has to be paired with a standard class? I dunno. 2-5 levels of half giant, and then 15-18 levels of fighter? Again, I have no clue how to properly balance that with what I know of 5e. Or, maybe it could be a 5e 'Unearthed Arcana' Hard Cover thing. With the disclaimer that "Hey, stuff in this book will unbalance your game. Proceed with caution." Just as long as we never get those horrible 3e level adjustments. That was bad. Even worse than 4e shoehorning some out there races into weaker versions than they maybe should have been, IMO.
The idea that some races and classes work better than others is a part of the game, no denying that. But, on that side topic, I do wish WotC kept a bit of an early playtest where your race gave you a +1 to an ability, and your class gave you another +1 to an ability. Obviously, these could stack and make for race/class favored builds (dwarf fighter, high elf wizard, halfling rogue, etc.) But it also allowed for odd combos to not be so nerfed. Like a gnome barbarian, or a halfling wizard. I'm still giving thought to house ruling that...
With what I've seen, I'd probably do it like this: Race = +1 to X, Subrace = +1 to Y, and Class = +1 to Z (where Z could equal X or Y, or neither.) So...everyone would wind up with a total of +3, like they now have. But, it wouldn't be +2 and then +1 subrace with no class bonus. For example, elf would be +1 to DEX. High elf would be +1 to INT (Wood elf would get the +1 to WIS.). Wizard would be +1 to INT. So there you have your pretty awesome stereotypical high elf wizard.
A Savage Species type deal would be nifty.
Zardnaar wrote:
Actually the half giant was a terrible race for a pc option. He was too big to fit in inside areas in alot of the darksun mods. And there was nothing balanced about him at all. Sure the goliath didnt make the best half giant but he a much more playable race. I ran a darksun campaign using the adventures in 2nd editon and one of my players started off with a halfgiant. It caused so many problems that he sure didnt end the campaign playing a halfgiant. So they did need some retconning, honestly the 3rd edition halfgiant was probably the best version.
masterfat78 wrote:
@OP:
I'm not a fan of races as classes as the default, but I'll never say racial classes shouldn't be an option.
Zardnaar wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Mephi1234 wrote:
seti wrote:
Races in Dark Sun were not made to be balanced. Practically every race or class could be incredibly powerful in their own way, not necessarily balance with one another, and yet somehow for this setting in particular this worked. Maybe because no matter how powerful your character was, the world had plenty of ways to easily overcome you, making it an incredible game of survival. For example, no matter how strong or powerful you were, the desert could end you just as easily, or an angered Sorcerer-King could easily remind you of how insignificant you were.
That in the original 2e Dark Sun of course.
3e Dark Sun was an "ok" attempt of convertion to 3e but that I found the rules failed to capture the essence of the setting to some degree. 4e Dark Sun I won't even comment on... 
I think a better way to do it might be to have racial subclasses. But even then, it is probably not needed.
Savage Species was a good 3e resource for this type of thing, and even the paragon classes in Unearthed Arcana.
I think this type of thing is a good approach for nonhuman characters that want to accentuate their monstrous nature.
I could see a feat-based way of doing this, or a class-level based way. Alternatively, you could also have racial subclass systems (particularly for the race's former favored classes, such as elf wizard or halfling rogue). This system would be similar to Pathfinder's archetypes.
In my current campaign, instead of a feat or ability score increase, players of nonhuman characters can choose to roll on a random table for monstrous abilities (it's a work-in-progress and not balanced, but it's a relic of my old-school game I was running).
Mephi1234 wrote:
I wonder if Race As Class will show up in the DMG?
mboss77 wrote:
For half-giants specifically I'd keep them to +2 strength but give them a racial feature along the lines of something like:
Heavy Weapon Expertise: When using two handed heavy weapons you increase the dice by 1 level. Dice levels are: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12/2d6, 3d4.
Enlarged Carrying Capacity: Your carrying capacity is double what it would otherwise be.
Smashing Strength: When rolling damage for breaking or sundering an item you reroll all 1s and 2s but must take the recondite result.
These give the feel of greater strength without moving away from the base math balance of the game.
If you were married to the idea of giving Half-Giants +4 strength, I'd give every other race an extra +2 in a stat they don't get a bonus to and then give everyone across the board less points for buying stats.
JohnLynch wrote:
What does +4 strength mean as opposed to +2 strength? It means:
* +5% to hit
* +1 damage
* More carrying capacity
* +1 strength saving throws
* +1 athletics
I forgot +1 to hit so feel free to increase damage die by 2 levels (above 3d4 would be 2d8). I think not having +1 to the odd strength saving throw would hardly be noticed and you could always make half giants proficient in athletics.
What do you lose by not having +4 strength? Is that number really important to you? Or is simulating the effects of having a higher strength good enough?
JohnLynch wrote:
Cool. I don't think your really reading my post at this point but are instead getting hung up on the +2 and stop reading any further. I'd be happy with getting most of the benefits of a higher strength score as racial abilities instead of having a 20 or 22 next to my strength score. But I can see the number next to the score is very important to you. Whatever helps you enjoy the game.
JohnLynch wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Mephi1234 wrote:
Qmark wrote:
I love the idea of racial classes but..
Why to play an angel when you can be a aasimar+ favored soul, or why a dragon when you can be a dragonborn + dragonfire adept, or a vampire when you can be a vyrloka + shadow assasin?
But...
..if there is a module about monster pets with a digimon/pokemon style.. we could bet there will be some rules to add levels of monsters to wizard´s familiars, ranger´s companions, paladin´s mount..
Monster PCs can be interesting but they have got lots of closed doors (options) about multiclassing. A Oni/ogre mage, raskhasa or illithid only can be good PCs for certain classes and not others. It would be like the gnomes, when most of times are rogues, illusionists or bards.
If dragons can be PCs, maybe we want monster classes for all dragons (oriental lungs, gem, planar...) not only metalic and chromatic.
Mike Mearls said on Twitter that if dragons became playable that it'd most likely be done as a racial class. Personally what I'd like to see would be one or two fairly flexible dragon classes, one more focused on "RAWR!" dragonish things, and the other more focused on magical dragonish things and then for each of the main classes a subclass to support being a dragon in that class.
Dragons as PCs is pretty much what I'm most looking forward too and waiting for from 5e. Until then, I'll probably stick with current system that allows such.