Races give you a SPECIAL PASSIVE and an OVERDRIVE ABILITY.
Humans
Humans spread across the world long ago, developing their cultures and societies in manifold ways. They have no common history in memory: They are people of their countries, with their own traditions and legacies. The common thread between human kingdoms, it is generally said, is a burning ambition. To spread, to discover, to conquer, to rule - to flourish, to prosper, unlike anyone else in the world.
In one world, it is said that the Empire of the Tenmen will last so long as the sun burns. Their gun-toting marines meddle in every little conflict, bringing the greatness of the Tenmen - their impossibly fair legal system, their enlightened governance, their mastery of pharmaceuticals - to every shore. In another, the Ivorans have tamed the engines of the world themselves, crafting massive golden-wire fiends that serve as their transport system, their forge-fires, their queen. Perhaps you will meet humans that rise to these heights in your adventures! Or perhaps you will find humans merely getting by - their impossible instinct to survive burning brightly in the gutters, in the shadows out of the gaze of otherworldly tyrants, in the cracks in the world where poison fog doesn't reach, slowly scheming of a better future.
No matter where you go, though, you will probably find humans. Don't turn your back on them.
Play a human if you want to play a character who's not defined by the archetype of another race, and draws more from their individual culture and history. Or play a human if you want to play a game set in a setting that only has humans in it!
[P] Pep: Gain +2 drive at beginning of battle.
[OD] Overdrive: Double Up: You can perform any Action Ability you know, and ignore any MP costs when doing so.
Hundred
Long ago, the Hundred were created by the ancients, a race of soldier-servitors. Half-beast, half-human, they were created in batches of one-hundred in different styles, to serve different purposes. The Hundred Claws were hulking brutes with stooped gait, of wolf and boar stock — the Hundred Veils, of moth and rabbit, stood with grace and wielded strange magic. And so on, and so forth, legions created only for battle. Their dexterity was intentionally inhibited - their thumbs, almost vestigial - to prevent them from obtaining independence.
Despite their limitations, after the ancients were lost, the Hundred lived on - leaving the wreckage of the war behind to live independently, slowly building their own society, learning what craft and industry their bodies can manage. Hundred clans generally shun the outside world, but those that do wander the world are famed for their strength - though, many fall in with bad company, becoming bandits and mercenaries.
Old world Hundred names were named of their legion and their number - so, Claw One, Veil Forty-Four, Tusk Ten, and so on. Nowadays, Hundred choose their own given names as they come of age, generally choosing names that don't suggest war or ferocity at all ("River", "Glass", "Brother") and take the number of their mother as their family name.
Play a Hundred if you want to feel like Kimahri, or Freya, or Garr - Powerful, solemn, a little tragic.
[P] Roar: When you spend LP in battle, gain MP and Drive equal to the LP you spent.
[OD][T] Overdrive: Ferocity: 80CoS. Deals weapon damage to a single target with +2 additional damage dice, and inflicts Short K-Shatter & Short E-Shatter. M-Launch.
If-ys
In the wild places of the world - its deepest forests, its most remote oases - in the abysses of its canyons, in the caverns of its tallest mountains - dwell the nature spirits, the If-Ys. They are formless, but for what form they adopt. Their pulse is the pulse of the world, invincible, unstoppable. They gaze on the distant affairs of mortals with a playful detachment, playing with the minds and hopes of those that wander in. Sometimes, they grow bored. They build themselves a body, an identity. They descend into the world. They are of it, until they tire of it, at which point they return. An If-Ys creates whatever body pleases them - they often prefer natural themes, but there's no particular need to. They may sculpt themselves from mana as easily as a socialite might build an outfit from a department store. Their identity is of their choice, too - naturally ageless and genderless, an If-ys is no one up until the moment they decide to be someone.
Some If-ys enter the world to play with the fates of mortals. Some, to delight in the thrill of battle, and bonds of camaraderie. To see life as a mortal would. To prevent a terrible fate, that they alone could see. Stories of the If-Ys paint them as dangerous, capricious - they are not often denied hospitality, but seldom welcomed warmly, either.
If-Ys, and another spirits of the land and forest, often choose names with 'y' sounds, and write them with their syllables separated by dashes, like "Tan-y-vull", "Ry-yl-ude", "Kad-y-ba", and so on. If-Ys that don't like that style, of course, don't use it.
Play an If-Ys to feel like Fran, or the Sprite Child - a mystic stranger from the forest.
[P] New Day, New Face: After you take a Full Rest, you may change form, re-choosing any of your class, your learned abilities and your attributes, as it pleases you.
[OD] Overdrive: War-Body: You gain Long Liberation II, Short E-Power II, Short K-Power II, and Short H-Power II. M-Recovery.
Maxwellian
Maxwellians arrive like falling stars, androids of gold-alloy metal, and perfect synthetic flesh, gleaming in their ivory-white or ebony-black. Some resemble other mortals - betrayed only by the showing of ornate metal-work at their doll-like joints, or the patterns in their eyes, or the gears visible turning in their back. Others resemble the earthly world's golems - massive machines with barrel-chested bodies, often styled as larger-than-life knights. And they have begun arriving only recently. Some say from a distant star. Others whisper that they must be from the far future.
Despite being obviously mechanical, Maxwellians seem to be living things - they grow hungry and waste away if they don't eat, they bleed when they are wounded, they sweat when they're hot. None have died yet, though there have been attempts to capture and dissect one!
Maxwellians emerge from their craters with no memories. They speak well enough, and understand a little of the world, but they're as much of a mystery to themselves as anyone else. They have some things in common - All of them know themselves to either be 'Soldiers' or 'Administrators'. And all have a vague knowledge that they are here for a reason: To fight for something worth fighting for. To accomplish some important task.
Play a Maxwellian to feel like Aigis, 2B, KOS-MOS, or Megaman X: A mysterious mechanical soldier with an unshakable will.
[P] Reserve Power: Activate Overdrives at will instead of automatically. Can stock Drive equal to twice the size of your ordinary gauge. Active Overdrives using the normal drive value rather than increased maximum.
[OD] Overdrive: Missile Barrage: True Strike the entire enemy group for 12 supreme damage. M-Launch.
Dwarves
The dwarves are beings of warm darkness. They live in seclusion, in the Black City over Dark Water - a subterranean city of labyrinthine streets and crowded alleys, of beer and music, of tradition and art. Most are shorter than humans - though some are tall and lanky - and their faces have never been seen by outsiders. Instead, they seem cloaked in their own personal obscurities - faces shadowed but for their eyes (gleaming) and their beards (if they wear them.) To differentiate themselves, they wear ostentatious, colorful clothes, great hats and helmets and masks, layers upon layers of robes and cloaks in myriad patterns. A dwarf has never complained of being too warm.
Though they live lives of carousing luxury, beneath the playfulness of dwarf society thrives one certain truth - all peoples of the world live on borrowed time, and all good fortune is not possessed, but only borrowed. They associate mystic significance to the precious metals and magic crystals they extract from the earth, considering these to be a sort of loan from the world itself, which must be repaid upon the body's burial. Bad luck is associated with those who fall grievously out of sync with what they give and what they take.
In the outside world, dwarves are rarely seen - those that do are those that have traveled far, found their own place in the world. Peddlers with traveling puppet-shows, tinkers, musicians and poets, scholars of magic… and the odd dwarven knight on a revenge-quest.
Play a dwarf to feel like Pokiehl, Watts, or Vivi - mysterious, affable, oddly wise.
[P] Turning Wheel: When you miss with any attack, or hit an elemental resistance, recover 1 LP & 1 MP.
[OD] Overdrive: Eternal Engine: Restore 2d10 MP and 1d6 LP to a single target. M-Recovery.
Alloci Elves
Alloci are elves, of course. They're tall and a willowy sort of muscular. Their ears are pointed, their eyes cold, dead, stern. Their skin is studded, implanted with cold iron — once, this metal was anathema to their kind, dissolving them on contact, but over many generations, it has become their element. The iron elves. Their society was built, designed to meet a cold equation - a struggle against evil, the end of the world. And no matter in what shape they live now, the struggle still marks them.
In one world, they live in fortress-cities on the end of the world, warring against beasts. They eat gruel and drink only icy water, with their gentry and peasantry pleased with illusions that make them taste as meat and wine. In another, their civilization is long vanished - but still, their sword-saints keep hermitages in marshes and in isolated places, stalking the earth, felling vampires and the dead.
The iron that runs through their body grants them an indomitable will and the power to defy magical influence. Those that bear more of it are deadened, cold and cruel, but walk through life with an iron-solid purpose. Among the decadent - and there are Alloci societies that have decadence, too! - the implantation of iron becomes less and less popular.
Play an Alloci Elf to feel like Auron or Estinien - an ice-cold operator, living for the bottom line.
[P] Cursebreaker: Gain +10 Critical and +5 Burst. Anytime you score a Critical or a Burst against an enemy, Suppress the targets Drive by -1.
[OD][S] Overdrive: True Iron: 100CoS. Cleanse all negative statuses from you and your entire party. If any ally is Dazed, undaze them and restore d8+10 HP to them. M-Recovery.
Dantali Elves
Elves - slender, graceful beings, tall with long, pointed ears. Their hair is kept long, and naturally grows in myriad bright colors. The Dantali adorn themselves in flowing garments, in copious jewelry, and have a habit of packing enormous amounts of luggage for every trip. Of course, not all these markers are present when they are in disguise, which is often.
The Dantali live in secret. Their world is hidden from mortal eyes, long ago shut away to escape some horrid fate. And there they remain, living in splendor and luxury. When they left, they removed all traces of themselves, leaving some plan to work steadily away - over thousands and thousands of years, slowly bringing them back from the edge of the apocalypse that threatened the world. For the most part, they only venture out into the world in order to monitor and rectify these plans.
In one world, the Dantali lived a long life of absolute peace, and noticed too late the winter-horror that threatened to consume their world. They concluded that if they had set their entire society to focus on war and war alone, and they had started 10,000 years ago, they would be able to save the world. So, they hid themselves apart from the time-stream, and concocted a fake religion for their ancestors, convincing them to wage an eternal crusade. The Dantali are often responsible for the Alloci, in ways such as these.
When they are young, all Dantali are implanted with a special living magic spell, the Nova Regulus - this stitches their soul to the very fabric of reality, giving them tremendous command over it. Dantali, it is said - when anything is said about them - possess magic beyond the dreams of mortals, folding together space, creating life from nothing, even traversing time itself. Those that leave Dantali society have this spell removed from them.
Play a Dantali Elf if you want to be a mysterious outsider from an advanced civilization, like Melia or Tidus.
[P] Wizardry: Whenever you Full Rest, you can edit your learned abilities. When you edit an ability, you can change the element it's assigned to, along with its corresponding momentum, with some limitations. Physical attacks can have their momentum freely changed between Rush, Pin and Launch types. Abilities that deal elemental damage can be changed freely between Earth, Fire, Air and Water, with the momentum generated by the ability changing to match. Additionally you assign a specific element and status to Nova Regulus: choose between Long Exhaust, Short Exhaust II, Long Curse, or Short Curse II.
[OD][S] Overdrive: Nova Regulus: 100CoS. Deal 1d6+8 elemental damage to the entire enemy group, and inflict a status. Momentum is the same Element.
Driftin
Driftin are pretty much just humans with animal ears and tails, or other slight trait differences like that - maybe a stretch of scales here or there, or a horn. That's the actual scientific consensus on them. They're a little faster, maybe - their reflexes are a little sharper! - and some, but not all, have finer-tuned senses. However, the chief difference between them and humans is that they have not spread over the entire world.
Driftin villages are few - they live in small enclaves and clans, sharing common traits. Others wander as migrants through the world - circuses and trade caravans are full of them! - living as they please in the day to day, bringing news from distant places to the back countries. Cat-Driftin and Wolf-Driftin and Rabbit-Driftin all bonding with the commonality of being obviously different.
Gossip has given Driftin a reputation as thieves, spendthrifts, drunkards and cheats, but humans have all of those too, don't they? They're probably just like us.
Play a driftin if you want to have few roots in the world, or, you know, have animal ears and a tail. They're cute!
[P] Speed: At the start of battle after turn order is determined, you can Quicken 2 or Slow 2 yourself. Anytime you spend an LP, you can Quicken 1 or Slow 1 yourself.
[OD][T] Overdrive: Spinkick: 80CoS. Deals weapon damage and Slow 3s a single target. The Driftin can then Quicken 3. Scratch 6 on a miss. M-Rush
Familiar
Familiars are small magical beings made from hand-crafted bodies, generally created as assistants to magicians. The method to create a Familiar is complicated, but repeatable. The spell-circle is well published, and the process of drawing down manna from the air to create a new entity is fairly safe. Familiars, then, are everywhere - little scurrying, squeaking things fetching things from the store, taking notes at lectures, carrying loads of baggage three times their size. Familiars can be designed with many appearances, though the current fashion is to make them of stitched, cloth bodies - though the magic transmutes the substance a little, a lot of them look like little fluffy stuffed animals.
As a fairly recent trend, the social status of familiars aren't well decided. They act like people, but they're expected to do their jobs, and people would find it a little unusual for one to, say, be in a position of leadership. They have their own secret societies, too… though they may just be social clubs.
Play a familiar to feel like Homura (the Atelier Shallie one!), or Mog: A cute, fluffy mascot character, with or without a hidden tough side. Also play one if being another character's sidekick sounds fun!
[P] Artificial Body: Increase all out-of-battle HP recovery to the Familiar by +10HP. Increase all out-of-battle MP recovery to the Familiar by +1MP.
[OD][S] Overdrive: Instant Replay: Select one of the Familiar's allies. On that ally's next turn, whichever ability they use during the Action phase takes effect twice rather than once! Don't roll to hit again (use the same rolls), and apply combo effects to the second activation as well. No resource of any kind is spent during the second activation (MP, stacks, etc.). M-Water