Well, this mod looks very promising. I can imagine a very bright future for it if can be done right. However, I see that you may be falling into one or two design traps.
First and foremost, while some races like Orcs or Drow have very powerfull advantages/disadvantages that significantly change the way that a player will play the game, others like Aasimar and Genesi are basically just humans stacked with a few boring and meaningless buffs (especially meaningless in the late game). I feel this problem stems from simply having too many races being worked on at once which can lead to problems like certain races being blatently superior to others because of their stats, and races that overlap with eachother and become too samey. I reccomend choosing only a small hadfull of races to work on (at least at first), focusing on making those races divergent enough from each other but powerfull enough in their own right to be significant choices that change the way a player will play the game. Don't be afraid to realy go crazy with the powerlevel and variety of each races abilities/disadvantages. Remember to think outside the box, don't just use powers and abilities that are currently inside the game, things like burning/losing your buffs in the sunlight, ressurection, x2 melee damage, etc. are much more interesting and fun than a +5% to movement speed or darkvision.
As an example, here are some hypothetical changes I feel would make the Genesi more interesting:
The Genesi are a race of humans with elemental ancestry, boasting only modest advantages under normal conditions these peoples undergo a massive shift when in the domain of their element (obviosly, all transformations break when exiting their respective environments):
Water:
Untransformed:
~ 1.5 HP regen per second
~ -5 seconds to potion cooldowns (potion sickness and mana sickness)
~ +15 mana
Transformed:
Trigger = Fully submerged in water (just like Neptune's Shell)
~ Water breathing
~ Unhindered movement
~ Swimming
~ Hunter vision
~ Danger sense
~ Shine (Emits a dim blue light)
(May seem like a lot of buffs, but all these are needed simply so the player can act normaly underwater)
~ +15% magic and summon damage
~ +1 summonable minnion
~ 1.5 HP regen per second becomes 3 per second
~ 30% less damage taken from all sources
~ double tap down (or perhaps create a re-bindable 'Racial Powers' button) to wreath oneself in electrical energy preventing the users movement, dealing contact
damage, absorbing all damage and reflecting %50 of all absorbed attacks back at the attacker (basically, it's like the thing jellyfish do in expert mode).
Long cooldown (5 mins?)
Transformed state would have a jellyfish for a head and a transparent blue sharknado (purely aesthetic) around their bodies.
Wind:
Untransformed:
~ +5% movement speed
~ +10% jump hight
~ +5% melee speed
Transformed:
Trigger = Upon entering the hight range at which floating islands can spawn
~ Free flight (can fly indefinitely, if transformation is broken it cannot be regained for a few seconds, does not eliminate fall damage)
~ +15% movement speed (stacks with previous buff, totaling to 20%)
~ +35% damage taken from all sources
~ Double tap down (or use racial button) to gain the 'Wind Body' buff, acts like the Titanium amor's 'Shadow Dodge' buff but is activated on command.
Short cooldown (25 seconds?)
~ Darkvision
~ Shine (Emits a dull yellow light)
Transformed state would have a transparent body and glowing white eyes.
Earth:
Untransformed:
~ +10 HP
~ +5 Defence
~ +5% mining speed
Transformed:
Trigger = upon entering the Cavern Layer (Transformation breaks when touching water or entering the underworld)
~ +50 HP
~ +20 Defence
~ -50% movement speed
~ Danger sense
~ Spelunker
~ +25% mining speed
~ 25% less damage taken from all sources
~ Double tap down (or use racial button) to petrify all mobs and erase all projectiles within a 10 block radius for 10 seconds (since no petrify graphic exists for non player
mobs, they would just have a dusty grey overlay with stone particals falling off of them, petrification freezes a non player mob in place and prevents them from
moving or attacking, players simply get the pre-existing 'Stoned' debuff, petrified players would still be able to use their racial powers?). Long cooldown (4 mins?)
~ Immune to petrify (obviously)
Transformed state would have a rock for a head and would generate dust at their feet when moving (similar to the Rune Wizard set).
Fire:
Untransformed:
~ +5% damage
~ +3% movement speed
~ Melee attacks inflict 'On Fire!'
Transformed:
Trigger: Upon entering the underworld.
~ x2 damage multiplyer (all damage types)
~ x2 damage taken from all sources
~ Flight (equivalent to demon/angel wings, if player already has wings equiped, flight time is extended by 1.67 seconds)
~ Immunity to lava
~ Hostile mobs (exept bosses and mobs spawned by bosses) will not target or deal contact damage to the player (the player can still be damaged if hit by a hostile mobs
ranged attack, and can still damage hostile mobs themselves)
~ Increased mob spawn rate (equivalent to the water candle debuff)
~ All attacks inflict 'On Fire!'
~ Shine (Emits a bright red light)
~ Double tap down (or use racial button) to send a colossal wave of fire flying forward, dealing massive magic damage and draining all of the users mana (if used at 100
mana, it will take 100 mana, if used at 0 mana, it will take 0 mana) medium cooldown (2 mins?)
~ touching water = instadeath
Transformed state looks constantly on fire and eyes glow orange.
So, here we have a race that under normal conditions isn't too different from a normal human character, but under certain conditions will become extremely powerfull. Good for players that want a boost during certain situations like bosses or mobbing, but don't want to change the casual flow of the game too much.
Second of all, I would highly reccomend considering making seperate player sprites for the different races. Simply squishing or elongating the player model for size difference sounds like it would make a lot of armor models, dye effects, and the player model itself look like compressed/blown up .jpeg garbage. I understand that redrawing every single armor set in the game would be blatently impossable, and that squishing/stretching the player model would work best for debugging/testing/beta purposes, but It would be super weird if someone where playing an Orc, equiped something like the jungle rose, and had their tusks diapear! Making seperate player sprites would make it so at the very least the players body has an unstreached appearence and could be compatable with vanity items without looking wierd. One problem I could see with my proposed solution however is that every hairstyle would most likely have to be eddited and/or new race specific hairstyles would have to be made. Since this would take a lot of work and a looooong time to fix/implement and is a presentation/polish based problem that has no bearing on the actaul game mechanics, I could only suggest these changes for a much farther along version of the mod.
Sorry for the huge wall of text, and keep being awesome!
