I'm trying to come up with the racial stats, skills, abilities, and complications for Duratok's race, the Kro'Taruk, but I can't find any templates in my books.

Which book should I get to help me with this?

stats would be +10 smell bad, special ability : fidget loudly, and being funny


am i right in assuming that tok smells?

They're a pretty clean people. They tend to scrub off blood and guts with sand. In fact, Duratok doesn't like 'tiny mammals' because of the body odors and excessive oils.

so humans smell bad to Toks but the question is not the blood and guts of your smashed foes but of your milklizards natural odor'Dfunk even earth lizards smell and stuff

If you want examples and precedents to draw from, Champions Beyond is the book to get. It contains descriptions and character-stat templates for literally dozens of alien races in the CU.

This is what everyone's been telling me, but it's not what I'm looking for.

Are you saying there isn't a single resource for this game that talks about creating your own race template, with a large list of traits, abilities, and complications and how many points these are all worth?

just look at the alien stats and see if there is a common pro con number thingy that they all have or are close to and make up your own from there you dont need a template really and i mean toks are what bigger faster stronger and tougher then humans by like 2-3X right? so just work from that

Ah, okay, I see what you're getting at. :)

For that purpose, you'd be best served picking up the HERO System Bestiary. Despite its name it doesn't cover just animal-like creatures, but many more-or-less humanoid races from fantasy and sci-fi. Not only does it include a huge range of examples, it also provides many discreet templates for different types of creatures, with stats, abilities, and complications already costed out, that you can just graft onto a character sheet to customize it to your preference. Those templates, with associated explanations and guidelines, were included to make it easier and faster for individual GMs or players to design their own unique creatures and races.

Racial template creation is described on p. 37 of the HERO System rules. 6th edition, Volume 1, albeit in pretty loose terms.

Basically, pick the powers, complications, and stat bonuses that apply to *all* members of your race, and organize them in the same scheme as you see in other racial templates. If you're designing a race called the Kresghesh and they breathe methane, give them an appropriate Life Support.

Skills are the same: Suppose the Kresghesh are renowned as master architects. You might be tempted to give them KS: Architecture. If, however, a Kresghesh who has been separated from his race would not naturally learn that ability, that ability shouldn't be included in the racjal package. On the other hand, if knowledge of architecture is hard-coded into Kresghesh DNA and known to every member of that species from the moment of their birth, then yes, give it to them.

As for what skills and powers and complications can be included in a Racial Template: all of them. If a power is applicable to every member of the race: claws, enhanced vision, movement type, camoflaged defenses, natural body armor, etc., put it in the Template. There is no list of what's allowable, because everything in the character generation system is allowable. Steve does recommend against putting Psychological Complications into the Template, to avoid all members of the race acting the same.

Hope that helps.

I should add that if you want more realistic and sophisticated sci-fi race design, the Star HERO genre book would be most appropriate. Given your character's nature and precedents, you might also benefit from the templates in the Fantasy HERO genre book. But the Bestiary is designed as a cross-genre sourcebook, and includes beings with stats far beyond what normal non-super beings possess. So if your resources are limited to buying one book, I recommend getting the Bestiary.