I have allowed a player character to use the race building rules from the ARG, but limit them to a standard (10 pt) race. Since most of the traits you are looking at require an advanced race I would not allow what the player wants to do. A player wanting to play something like a lizard man is fine, but if they want to play a storm giant they are out of luck.
I allow it depending on intent.
If they want a race to depict their visual image of their character and its uncommon parentage, then yes.
If they want a race to absolutely maximise their DPR, then I generally tell them to go away and stop talking to me.
Fortunately, I am blessed in the fact that most of my players only ever fall into the category of the former.
One player is trying to start with Damage Reduction, SR and wings as a level 1, with the Fey subtype. His rationalization is "the ARG says I can make my own race". Other characteristics of the race are that he'd get greater invisibility as an SLA 1/day and advanced statistics to dexterity and all mental stats...
Would this fly in most home games? I don't think I am being too unreasonable here.
I would allow players to make their own Race, but look over it afterwards and see if it's abilities and the Race Point costs are still ok. 10 Race Points are average. If he spent some more, but looks OP he has to tone it down. If he has above 20 you could consider increasing his ECL.
Fey 2RP + SpellResistance 2-3RP + DR5/Silver 3RP + Greater Invisibility 4 RP +4 Flight(assuming he can already use his wings) = 15-16 RP (assuming he has no other stuff like special Stat bonusses)
For Comparison: Aasimar 15RP, Tiefling 13RP, Human 9RP
Now he nitpicked some pretty strong abillities here, which will be game breaking at low levels and can still be useful at high levels.
What I would do:
Flight - give him Vestigial Wings instead of Flight and like Aasimar he can pick a feat later on to allow him to take a feat to really learn to fly like Aasimars can do(http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/racial-feats/angel-wings-aasimar). He might be allowed to take the feat as soon as level 5, since wizards can cast Fly from lvl 5 on.
Spell Resistance - Let him keep it, dwarves and drow can gain SR too. But remeber he needs a Standard action to lower it, if he wants buffs and heals from his friends.
DR 5/Silver - This is really going to help him at low levels and won't do much at high levels(since +3 or better punches through). Talk to him to have him replace it or hit him with spells and energy damage a lot.
Improved Invisibility - Really strong at low levels, but also pretty cool. a nice combat buff and a great scouting tool. If he has sneak attack it will allow him to sneak freely. I'd still let him keep it, since it's only 1/day. I assume he'll want to scout and sneak around with his Fairy dude anyways, therefore it just help his niche(scouting + SA) and won't outshine the other players too much.
In the end it all depends on how strong the other PCs are compared to him. Will he make some of them useless? Will he be much better than the tank with his DR+Invisibility or can they handle themselves against him?
Depends on the players.
I guess I am fortunate that mine are mature enough to balance good v bad without trying to cheese or twist things around.
Otherwise I wouldn't. And honestly I suggest you nip it in the bud and say no.
So what disadvantages has this super race got?
My money is on none...
Yeah, if the player starts touting the idea that If It's In The Book you have to include it, then that's a massive red flag. It means they're looking through the ARG for things they can get away with, not things that seem right for their character.
And I'm pretty sure that section of the ARG very specifically says "YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ALLOW THE FOLLOWING..." (or some poetic variant thereof.)
His rationalization is "the ARG says I can make my own race".
Technically you don't have to allow anything not in the Core Rulebook.
I have allowed a player character to use the race building rules from the ARG, but limit them to a standard (10 pt) race. Since most of the traits you are looking at require an advanced race I would not allow what the player wants to do. A player wanting to play something like a lizard man is fine, but if they want to play a storm giant they are out of luck.My issue with that approach is this. With the RP point system, all they need do is pick 3 point DR, 4 point Advanced stats and 3 point flexible bonus feat. This blows away the average human build. Building a race allows players to min-max a "race" around a specific build, which is essentially cheesed out BS
Anytime you are allowing a player to use optional rules the GM should exercise caution and use his veto power if they think it is unbalanced.
Also flexible feat is worth 4pt not 3, and damage reduction is not allowed for standard races.
I have allowed a player character to use the race building rules from the ARG, but limit them to a standard (10 pt) race. Since most of the traits you are looking at require an advanced race I would not allow what the player wants to do. A player wanting to play something like a lizard man is fine, but if they want to play a storm giant they are out of luck.My issue with that approach is this. With the RP point system, all they need do is pick 3 point DR, 4 point Advanced stats and 3 point flexible bonus feat. This blows away the average human build. Building a race allows players to min-max a "race" around a specific build, which is essentially cheesed out BSAnytime you are allowing a player to use optional rules the GM should exercise caution and use his veto power if they think it is unbalanced.
Also flexible feat is worth 4pt not 3, and damage reduction is not allowed for standard races.
Flight isn't either.
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Heck no..I'm the GM, I git ta make stuff, since I have to fit it into my setting!
Don't need no silly half-baked weirdo snowflake races running amok..what will the neighbors think!
Anyway, I may work on a subrace WITH a player's input, but final fiat is the GMs.
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I've let my players create races before, but I'm the one writing up their crunch. I sit down with the player and ask them to describe their race to me. I ask questions like "What would you say is the strongest physical trait of your race? The strongest mental trait? Weakest overall trait? Most unique property they have?" I choose racial traits based on the answers and try to make a race about 10 RP. It's not a hard number because the ARG undervalues and overvalues some traits.
ARG makes it clear that the race building rules are intended as a GM tool/convenience, even to the point of talking about CR encounter calculation and using advanced/monstrous races to populate your game world.
If you truly trust your player and they read the rules carefully, then it's fine to let them make their own race. But be sure to look it over carefully.
My GM lets us create our race. I made it mostly for fluff reasons, though I will admit I did put some "crunchy" aspects (namely exotic weapon proficiencies I found cool but are SOOO expensive otherwise), since he gave more race points than I needed for the base concept.
He even allowed folks to "upgrade" base races (so there was a half-orc for example who took the pyromaniac trait cause he liked fire)
While most of the players have been quite reasonable, there is the occasional one that wants to do something ridiculous (ALL POINTS IN ONE STAT) and they aren't allowed in. I MIGHT allow it one day (with the right group) but I will put a 10 RP max myself. But I will look it over carefully to make sure that they are making it fluffy! And I have no shame in saying "No, that is ridiculous, restart". Gotta put your foot down sometimes.
A disadvantage I would inflict on all ARG built classes is this:
1) You can only have +1 HP or skill point as favored class bonus
2) You cannot access racial feats/traits of other races normally, unless you spend some RP.
The "core" races are actually a lot more powerful that they appear because of these advantages.
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well, that's a slight overstatement... generally speaking, no, although in just the right context why not...
The following rules allow GMs, or even players with GM oversight, to create new races that are balanced and mesh with the core races. (emphasis added)
that's from the opening paragraph of the race builder section of ARG. the races that populate your campaign world are an integral part of your world/campaign design- its something that you should very clearly hold control over (the rules in the book clearly state that new races should be made by the GM or under the GM's direct supervision). not only do new races have the potential to change the feel of your world, poorly designed ones (like ones designed for mechanical optimization with no real concern for how they'd function as a society, or interact with other races) will feel unnatural and out of place; they're terrible for any sense of immersion.
the exception (IMO) is if you're running something exceptionally fantastical, particularly if planar/interplanetary travel is available- if your campaign is set in a locale populated by beings from all over the multi-verse its completely reasonable that bizarre/unnatural races might be present (and in a hyper-fantasy setting like that the extra layer of optimization shouldn't be an issue).
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Nope. Not in a million years. The ARG race-builder is, as mentioned, explicitly a GM tool, not a player one (and IMO, the most poorly designed thing Paizo has ever produced). Hell, race-wise there are explicit statements that non-corebook races are only to be allowed at GM discretion.
And all that leaves aside the fact that you're the GM. If you say it, it goes. Players can argue/discuss things with you, but you have the final say. If you say people can only play Human Wizards because you're running a wizards academy game, then that's the only thing people are allowed to play. Your word is law.
Now, if you do that kind of thing too often in a way your players disapprove of, you'll lose players. So it's best to tread lightly, but anyone who'd leave after the ruling that they can't play their ridiculously overpowered homebrew race isn't someone you want in your game anyway. So lay down the law.
One player is trying to start with Damage Reduction, SR and wings as a level 1, with the Fey subtype. His rationalization is "the ARG says I can make my own race". Other characteristics of the race are that he'd get greater invisibility as an SLA 1/day and advanced statistics to dexterity and all mental stats...
Would this fly in most home games? I don't think I am being too unreasonable here.
Typically the most powerful legal race is the Svirfneblin, Aasimar are extremely powerful as well with the variant options and the table to offer alternatives to the SLA.
With the race builder you could make the Natural Attack GOD with only 14 or so RPs and have 1xBite, 1xGore, 2xTalons, 2xClaws, 1xTail Slap, 1xSlam, and 2xWings.
Which basically makes you the most dangerous thing in the universe at level 1 with your 7x Primary attacks and 3x Secondary attacks. Hell by level 20 you still are more dangerous than a fully geared fighter since all of your attacks make you godly.
Do this:
Tell him that he MUST do the following:
All of his RP must be spread throughout the different options.
There are 8 sections that cost points and 1 section that gives points. Tell him that he has 15 points to play with. If he wants extra then he has to take a bunch of weaknesses.
The problem here is that when you allow your players to make their races they are going to inevitably make something specialized in what they want to play. Playing a natural attack melee character? Surely build the race with tons of natural attacks and DR.
Playing a dedicated caster? Build a tiny race that flies and has extreme bonuses to INT and is almost impossible to find.
Your best bet is to build your own races as the DM and offer them in addition for the PCs to choose from.
If your player is using DR 10/Magic then you don't need to worry much since many monster that has DR /magic will punch through it due to its natural attacks being considered magical.
No, no, no, no, and um... no. The races of my campaign world are all made, from the ground up, for my campaign world. A new race appearing out of nowhere would be weird to say the least. Where are they from? What territory do they control? Are they involved in Ar-Corinthian politics? WHY HAVEN'T THEY BEEN MENTIONED BEFORE?
Now, if there was a class creation system, I'd be a lot more likely to let them run with that.
I had plans for a campaign where the PCs were children who were spirited away to the First World by a boogeyman, but ultimately escape him and are transformed into weird, feyish things by the First World. To represent this, I was going to allow the players to build their own races via the Race Building tools and give them bonus RP to buy more abilities as they leveled up (2 points at 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th, and 18th levels). The plot twist was going to be that returning to the Material Plane caused them to turn back into ordinary children (and lose their class levels).
Sadly, no one was interested in that campaign idea. : /
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One player is trying to start with Damage Reduction, SR and wings as a level 1, with the Fey subtype. His rationalization is "the ARG says I can make my own race". Other characteristics of the race are that he'd get greater invisibility as an SLA 1/day and advanced statistics to dexterity and all mental stats...
Would this fly in most home games? I don't think I am being too unreasonable here.
I'd allow them to present me with the idea for consideration, and then consider it on a "will it work for this campaign?" basis (and possibly tweak it here and there if I allow it)
I doubt I'd ever say "feel free to make whatever you want, and I promise to accept it." and that goes for any character concept, not just ARG builds.
However, GMs should always be clear what approach they're taking before a player goes away and invests time in making a character. I always ensure they know to run a one-or-two line concept past me before I say "cool, you can make that".
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To OP,
Your best bet is to take pregenerated races, set a point cap, and let the PCs build slightly upon that. Such as humans with 15 race point buy, but since humans are 9RP, the player would have 6 points to spend to hail from a unique type of human. Ignore this for races in excess of the RP limit. So if you set the cap at 10 then Aasimar (15RP) do not have access to changes with the race builder.
All this said there isn't really a reason to use the race builder. If you [the player] cannot find something in all of the races that already exist then something is wrong.
I had plans for a campaign where the PCs were children who were spirited away to the First World by a boogeyman, but ultimately escape him and are transformed into weird, feyish things by the First World. To represent this, I was going to allow the players to build their own races via the Race Building tools and give them bonus RP to buy more abilities as they leveled up (2 points at 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th, and 18th levels). The plot twist was going to be that returning to the Material Plane caused them to turn back into ordinary children (and lose their class levels).
Sadly, no one was interested in that campaign idea. : /
Have you ever considered White Wolf's Changeling: The Lost? It is essentially built for that specific purpose, but is a D10 ruleset instead of D20, and isn't Pathfinder.
The idea of losing all class levels when returning to the material plane is probably what turned them off, but from an RP perspective this is fantastic. Your grant quest or battle, journeys beyond the lives of man, and then to return to the mortal world and live a life. Of course it would be a life that would be all the more grey. Still, too many players view the end of the campaign as the end of their characters.
One thing I think might be clever would be after the campaign to use the rules of owning things and speeding up the process from weeks to years. You roll out the rest of the character's days, and then he expires. If he wants to get to max-level then that is entirely possible in the downtime rules.
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no
Did I mention no?
i do kind of like the idea of allowing players to take racial options to bring all their races up to the same rp cost... one of my buddies is playing in a campaign like that right now and really enjoying it. there's some built in control there (because the base races already have types that cant be changed and are standard races so they're not eligible for many of the stronger powers). you do still need to check over everything though, and be aware of potential abuses... (one thing to be particularly aware of is the elemental races- they're native outsiders so they qualify for more powers than humanoids and their base point values are like 6-9 maybe so they'll have a ton of points if you let everyone go up to 15).
It depends on the players, but I lean towards yes with these kind of things.
According to the PFSRD, this race is either between 17 and 27 race points, by what you stated in the OP, as well as traits picked from the advanced and monstrous categories.
This is a significantly powerful race. However, that could be fine if all the other players are given the chance to do the same. It will increase the APL, but as long as the players are balanced with each other, you can adjust the challenges to match.
I have allowed a player character to use the race building rules from the ARG, but limit them to a standard (10 pt) race. Since most of the traits you are looking at require an advanced race I would not allow what the player wants to do. A player wanting to play something like a lizard man is fine, but if they want to play a storm giant they are out of luck.My issue with that approach is this. With the RP point system, all they need do is pick 3 point DR, 4 point Advanced stats and 3 point flexible bonus feat. This blows away the average human build. Building a race allows players to min-max a "race" around a specific build, which is essentially cheesed out BS
Nope, Advanced abilities requires the Advanced or higher race tier. Says so right in the book. Can't run it for a standard 10pt race.
The point is that you're COMPLETELY in your right to say no to building a race. If he complains, HE CAN LEAVE.
The ARG race building rules are broken to the point of being near useless to a GM, let alone letting players have unrestricted access. I think it's certainly a cool idea to sit down with your player and work out together a custom race for their character. But I wouldn't use the ARG race building rules as anything more than a very rough guideline.
After playing for decades in a point based system where everything on a character has to be checked for balance, double-checking a character's race that they built is fine by me. I tend to be fairly open to oddball stuff - I like a larger metropolitan city bar to look like the cantina in Star Wars. So I allow it. My players all GM at one point or another in one game or another, so they all understand play balance, and don't turn in monstrosities... unless that is the tome of the campaign.
On a slight tangent, I did play with the notion of a campaign where players can 'evolve' their character race somehow. Like if the world was afflicted with magical radiation after a great magical war that makes its inhabitants' forms malleable. And the most valuable resources are remnants of extinct races to integrate their biology into your own.
Have you ever considered White Wolf's Changeling: The Lost? It is essentially built for that specific purpose, but is a D10 ruleset instead of D20, and isn't Pathfinder.
Nope.
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His rationalization is "the ARG says I can make my own race".Technically you don't have to allow anything not in the Core Rulebook.
You don't have to allow things that are in the Core Rulebook.
You don't have to allow things that are in the Core Rulebook.His rationalization is "the ARG says I can make my own race".Technically you don't have to allow anything not in the Core Rulebook.
"No Wizard!"
take pregenerated races, set a point cap, and let the PCs build slightly upon that.
This is great, because I've always wanted to play a Dhampir that can scrunch their face, Buffy/Angel style. That whole shifting aspect always appealed to me.
"No Wizard!"
That sounds remarkably like certain parts of my homebrew setting
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One player is trying to start with Damage Reduction, SR and wings as a level 1, with the Fey subtype. His rationalization is "the ARG says I can make my own race". Other characteristics of the race are that he'd get greater invisibility as an SLA 1/day and advanced statistics to dexterity and all mental stats...
Would this fly in most home games? I don't think I am being too unreasonable here.
Nope. No. No Way. You obviously can foresee the problems he is bringing to the table.
As the GM, you trump EVERYTHING. I would suggest that you say that for the purpose of a fair and balanced game, all character choices must be approved by you before they can be used in play (especially for that guy).
In our game, I have laid out what content from the Core, APG, UM, and UC are acceptable. Any content beyond that must be approved by me. This allowed me to put the kabosh on two OP builds at the start of the game. The ARG is one book that I am very wary of as power creep is beginning to set in with paizo.
I'm deeply on the NO team.
Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to find a tiefling or aasimar in my campaigns, either.
No, from experience. Munchkins go apesh*t almost literally and create the cheesiest monstrosities ever. "Halflings" with a 50 ft move speed kind of thing. Big things to watch out for aren't even the SLA's or racial stat bonuses, you need to look out for active tactical superiority. A race that can fly is better than a human getting a feat. Darkvision seems mundane until you need it.
It comes down to the same thing as the 3.5 stacking racial templates and buying off the level adjustment, you will see them taking "flaws" that give them negative points so they can pick up more abilities that give them an unfair advantage.
No, from experience. Munchkins go apesh*t almost literally and create the cheesiest monstrosities ever. "Halflings" with a 50 ft move speed kind of thing. Big things to watch out for aren't even the SLA's or racial stat bonuses, you need to look out for active tactical superiority. A race that can fly is better than a human getting a feat. Darkvision seems mundane until you need it.
It comes down to the same thing as the 3.5 stacking racial templates and buying off the level adjustment, you will see them taking "flaws" that give them negative points so they can pick up more abilities that give them an unfair advantage.
Depends on what the party composition will be, you have no right to b**** about flying Fighter/Rogue (other than them getting this a first level) if you have a Wizard (and/or Druid) in the party as well, but feel free to b**** about winged Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer and Wizard.