Add New Races and Subraces
This component adds Icewind Dale II-style subraces for dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings. Subraces are selected when you generate a character: if you select a race with subraces, you will be offered a menu to select from. There are three dwarven subraces (shield dwarves, gold dwarves, gray dwarves), five elven subraces (moon elves, sun elves, wild elves, wood elves, drow), two gnomish subraces (rock gnomes, deep gnomes), and three halfling subraces (lightfoot, strongheart, ghostwise). The component also adds a new category of races, 'planetouched' (meaning creatures whose ancestry is partly other-planar) which contains six further races: aasimar, tieflings, air genasi, earth genasi, fire genasi, and water genasi. (Planetouched creatures count as human for the purposes of multi-classing and class choices.) And it slightly improves the basic abilities granted to humans and half-orcs.
The powers and weaknesses of these races and subraces are based on a mixture of D&D 2nd and 3rd edition. They're 'balanced' in the sense that I don't think any race you choose will imbalance the wider game. I haven't made that much effort to strictly balance them one against another: a deep gnome, for instance, is probably just better than a rock gnome. A full list of races, subraces, and their powers can be found here.
Ideally, a component like this would also alter in-game dialog options and responses, so that NPCs react to your race/subrace—especially for 'exotic' races like tieflings or gray dwarves. I haven't (yet) done this, though.
Two choices are barred on BG/BG2: you can't play as a drow (because it would break the plot of BG2 chapter 5) and you can't play as an aasimar (because I find a Bhaalspawn aasimar a bit implausible). If you want to ignore the story-based problems with these choices, you can reactivate them using dw_talents.ini; there's no mechanical problem with either.