Racial Templates

Err, so where are the templates?

Well, I'm newly inspired to make those templates. I would say:

Tiefling: +2 Dex, +2 Int. Resistance fire 5, electricity 5. +2 Bluff, Hide. Low-light vision. Native outsider.
Aasimar: +2 Wis, +2 Cha. Resistance fire 5, cold 5. +2 Diplomacy, Sense Motive. Low-light vision. Native outsider.

Besides trimming it back so it's what I think a +1 LA template ought to look like, I made a few changes, based on my own ideas. First off: Low-light vision. Whatever happened to this trait? These days, everyone has darkvision. I say, neither of these races are subterranean, they just have a bit of otherworldliness. Let them have sharp vision, but not in pitch darkness. Even if outsiders have darkvision by default. Next: I gave both races balanced ability scores. Charisma counts. It's still penalizing when Tieflings lose it and it still helps aasimar when they get it. It's a real ability score, so treat it as one.
Next: resistances. I tweaked them slightly. Though if I were a DM and one of my players was descended from a gelugon or an alkilith or something I'd let him trade out restistances. Lastly: skill bonuses. I think these are fun and are an easy, painless way to shape the character of a race. Aasimar tend to be fair-minded and have a calming presence, giving them an easy way with people, and they often grow up observing and studying those around them--millennia of celestials watching over mortal races rubs off--meaninging that they have insight into the minds of others.
Tieflings, meanwhile, seemed to fit the skill bonuses assigned to them in the Monster Manual.

If people want to have both the "standard" planetouched (i.e. those represented as their own races) as well as template planetouched, it could be explained as simply the effect of being raised among other planetouched in the former, or among generally non-planetouched in the latter. So, a tiefling whose family is human would be templated, but the tiefling offspring of other tiefers would be a standard tiefling.

The thing I was trying to say before is that adding earth genasi racial traits to the racial traits of a LA 0 race like a dwarf or a half-orc does not produce a LA +1 race. The earth genasi racial traits alone are LA +1 and adding them to the traits of another race essentially gives the character something free for nothing. If this worked like the proposed rule suggests, then a "human aasimar" would be LA +1, the same power level as someone who just takes the aasimar race. Obviously, they're not the same power level, as the "human aasimar" gets everything the standard aasimar gets, with the addition of a human's bonus feat, skill points, and favored class flexibility when really they're supposed to represent the same thing: a human planetouched by the power of good.

Based on what people think of these, I'll see what genasi look like when pared down a bit.

The way I see it, the planetouched are already half-outsider half-something not necessarily human. They have none of the human racial traits (extra skill points, feat), just their own (elemental resistance, spell-like abilities).

If you let a dwarf, elf, or halfling keep his racial traits and add those that all planetouched have, then the half-humans get the short end of the stick, don't they?

Personally, I would say that the planetouched as written represent any of the medium size races (combined with an outsider), and just add in smaller and larger variants as required, modifying Strength and Dexterity (and Con?) as detailed in the Monster Manual.