Hey,
I'm looking for advice on balancing custom races. I've been wanting to try several new (to me) things in a tabletop campaign for a while, primarily a Pirate/Nautical world, and a world that completely abandons typical Tolkien races. I've combined these into one, for now, and am currently working on worldbuilding for this custom world.
I decided to go with a Pathfinder system, mainly because I've heard good things about it, I've enjoyed the few games I've played of it, and it has good support for the early firearms (Gunslinger and a few other classes' Archetypes), which is important for the world. A world where Arcane magic, Divine magic, and "advanced" technology (a la the Gunslinger and Alchemist) are about equally common is nice for what I have in mind. I have extensive experience playing D&D 3.5 and 4e, a decent amount of experience DMing both of those, and a little bit of experience playing Pathfinder (and a little bit of experience with several other different systems).
The biggest single part of the worldbuilding so far has been customizing and trying to balance PC races. So far, I have eight made. A few key points here are that the world I am building lacks all the main Tolkien fantasy races (to make a "fresher" setting), that humans do not exist in this world, and that all the PC races are made to be Advanced (built to be approximately 20 RP, give or take).
My main concern I'm posting on the board for is advice on balancing the races. I wasn't sure whether to post this under Advice or Homebrew, so I dropped it under Homebrew since this is heavily Homebrew. The races don't have to be balanced with core races (since they don't exist), but they need to be roughly balanced with each other and not extremely broken at relatively low levels (I'm thinking of starting the party at lvl 2 or 3).
My main balance concerns are:
1. Flight. I want flying races to be available; I have two built now. I've heard flight at low levels is broken, but I want a second opinion before I scrap the idea.
2. Lycans. I've retooled Lycans as a race who gain serious bonuses from transforming, but downsides similar to those of a Barbarian's rage. Balancing "how much is this temporary/situational feature/bonus worth" is tricky.
3. Anything else I might've missed that's just extremely broken as I've written it.
4. Any obvious holes ("there are no good races for ___ class"). I plan on probably making at least one other aquatic race, but I haven't made anything concrete yet.
I've posted the information I have for the races so far in a commentable Google Doc here: http://tinyurl.com/cascaraces
Feel free to make small comments, but do post in this thread, especially with larger/more general comments.
A few notes about what I have so far:
1. Please excuse capitalization issues in headings, as the formatting I'm actually using is all-caps and it copied over to Google docs strangely.
2. The information (basic info, society, alignment and religion, etc.) is in a first draft stage right now. I'll probably go through and clean it up a bit later.
3. The favored class bonuses are incomplete (I'll at least add one for any class/race combo a player is interested in playing on the fly). I have yet to make race-specific traits, feats, etc., which I probably will, since there is so much stuff specific to core races especially that won't be available in this campaign at all. Custom rage-specific prestige classes... are not going to happen for a while, lol. I'll probably allow race-specific stuff on a case-by-case approval basis (taking into account flavor and balance).
4. The RP values given in parentheses are for tracking. Some traits don't have values, because they're counted elsewhere. Some traits have a tilde (~2 RP) to show that this is not a typical trait for creating custom races and I've estimated its value.
Anyway, I'd really appreciate anyone (especially people more experienced with Pathfinder and/or DMing, and especially making Pathfinder homebrew) to look over what I have (mainly the statistics and traits for the races) and tell me what they think.
Instead of inventing your races from nothing, what are your opinions about taking the mechanics of races that already exist and simply changing the flavor associated with them?
For example, you could use the stats of Skinwalkers to represent Lycans (they even have a transformation mechanic baked into the race already), simply replacing all the Golarion fluff with details about where they're located in your setting.
There are also several flying races already. Three are the Strix, the Syrinx, and the Wyvarans. Just take their mechanics and rename them to whatever works best for you.
Your Google Drive URL doesn't work. Regardless, I have the following comments.
1) Lore over mechanics. When homebrewing, the lore should be the selling point of your race, not the mechanics.
2) Races should have abilities appropriate for a 1st level character. This is due to how 3.5e and PF work. In these games, characters gain very little power from their race, gaining nearly all of it from class levels instead.
3) Flight: Following point #2, at-will flight is not a 1st level ability. It's an 8th level ability. It's impossible for any character to otherwise gain the ability to fly for hours per day before level 8 or 9 unless the player munchkins it with some obscure combination of feats and non-core character options. As a result, it's extremely powerful to give any kind of flight as a racial trait. Some GMs don't care, but it does have a big impact on the campaign. All published adventures assume characters can't fly before level 5.
In your nautical pirate campaign, being able to fly is a pretty huge advantage. In naval combat, for example, flight is the difference between being a rampaging killing machine that rains death from above or being the guy stuck manning the wheel of the boat.
4) Lycans: There's already a race of pseudo-werewolves called skinwalkers. It's a pretty cool race. I haven't seen your race yet, but remember: a race should have abilities appropriate for a 1st level character.
5) As a new GM, there's no shame in using an existing race's statistics and re-skinning it as a new race. Maybe with a few alterations here and there. As I said earlier, the lore is the soul of the race.
That's an idea I've been considering. The issue there is that these races aren't necessarily balanced with each other. Skinwalkers, for instance, are 10 RP, whereas Syrinx and Wyvarans are 16 and 17 RP respectively (couldn't find the value for Strix). I'd think that amount of difference would prove significant, balance-wise. Am I wrong?
That said I have been looking at other races for inspiration and to try to help balance things.
edit: the message board seemed to be breaking my long link. Here is a shortened URL (added in OP as well): http://tinyurl.com/cascaraces
edit: @Cyrad: what you're saying makes sense, but the creating custom races guide allows for Advanced and beyond races (and in at least one of my 3.5 games we played with a "free level-adjust 2" clause that allowed for stronger races without losing out on class levels, in exchange for appropriately harder challenges). If Pathfinder is really meant for all races to be not powerful and level-1 available, why do the creating custom races include abilities that are plainly not normal for level 1? I'm trying to understand your reasoning.
Balancing really depends on how powerful you want races to be in general. In addition, it looks like you're not using the race creation guidelines correctly.
From what I understand, the RP mechanics from the advanced race guide are widely considered to be not very well balanced.
Cyrad wrote: Balancing really depends on how powerful you want races to be in general. In addition, it looks like you're not using the race creation guidelines correctly. Of course, for the first point. As for the race creation guidelines, I've fudged quite a bit here and there, but could you please elaborate?
1. Flight. I want flying races to be available; I have two built now. I've heard flight at low levels is broken, but I want a second opinion before I scrap the idea.
The idea that low level flight is broken is a myth; it's certainly strong, but not significantly more so than it is at later levels. The only point I would say it becomes broken is if you design an encounter which requires the PCs to possess flight in order to accomplish or pursue something.
2. Lycans. I've retooled Lycans as a race who gain serious bonuses from transforming, but downsides similar to those of a Barbarian's rage. Balancing "how much is this temporary/situational feature/bonus worth" is tricky.
I second cyrad's suggestion of using skinwalkers. Also not fond of using meta phrases like 'glass cannon' for ability descriptors.
3. Anything else I might've missed that's just extremely broken as I've written it.
Generally speaking I think it's a good idea to focus on one or at most two core abilities for a race; for halflings it'd be luck, for orcs stubbornness and then use those as the basis for their racial kits and personas. What you have here in a lot of instances look overpowered because there are multiple 'core' abilities to their kit, which usually synergize well.
4. Any obvious holes ("there are no good races for ___ class"). I plan on probably making at least one other aquatic race, but I haven't made anything concrete yet.
Well everything looks medium sized (unless I overlooked something), which means there's not a lot of variety for sneaky/strong characters. Also there's a preponderance of dex focused races, which isn't bad but again limits things. Strictly speaking you can make any race work with any class, but optimizing some will mean that the same races get picked over and over again for the class with little to no variation.
Personal thought:
For my own part I like to see things which make races distinct come in the form of racial spells, equipment, feats, and class archetypes; were I a player looking to join a game with these races I would want to see some development along those lines.
Trekkie90909 wrote:
The idea that low level flight is broken is a myth; it's certainly strong, but not significantly more so than it is at later levels. The only point I would say it becomes broken is if you design an encounter which requires the PCs to possess flight in order to accomplish or pursue something.
Well, glad to hear that the idea it's broken isn't universal. I'll definitely keep that in mind when designing challenges.
Quote: I second cyrad's suggestion of using skinwalkers. Also not fond of using meta phrases like 'glass cannon' for ability descriptors. I'm looking at them, and they do look good (albeit weaker, but that's not a bad thing necessarily). So far the only thing I don't really like is the lack of silver weakness (whether through DR/silver or an outright weakness). Issue there is DR is pretty strong, but slapping a weakness on what's already not a super strong race feels mean XP
Quote: Generally speaking I think it's a good idea to focus on one or at most two core abilities for a race; for halflings it'd be luck, for orcs stubbornness and then use those as the basis for their racial kits and personas. What you have here in a lot of instances look overpowered because there are multiple 'core' abilities to their kit, which usually synergize well. Hm. That's a fair assessment. I intended to make these races stronger than core races but I think the optimizer in me might've gotten out of hand.
Quote: Well everything looks medium sized (unless I overlooked something), which means there's not a lot of variety for sneaky/strong characters. Also there's a preponderance of dex focused races, which isn't bad but again limits things. Strictly speaking you can make any race work with any class, but optimizing some will mean that the same races get picked over and over again for the class with little to no variation. Underfolk and Noctrals are small as written now. I figure two or three small races out of 8 or 9 is about in line with Core. Thanks for pointing out the DEX thing, though.
Quote: For my own part I like to see things which make races distinct come in the form of racial spells, equipment, feats, and class archetypes; were I a player... Huh. I haven't really ever felt racial spells + equipment are a big thing. Feats and class archetypes, sure. The issue with class archetypes is the amount of work to put in for something that is like... very likely not to get picked, even if I run two or three campaigns in this setting XP
Thank you all for your feedback and help! I've got a lot of thinking to do. I might refluff some of the weirder Pathfinder races, maybe with small mechanical adjustments here and there where flavor just doesn't fit. Still pondering.
Sciamancer wrote: edit: @Cyrad: what you're saying makes sense, but the creating custom races guide allows for Advanced and beyond races (and in at least one of my 3.5 games we played with a "free level-adjust 2" clause that allowed for stronger races without losing out on class levels, in exchange for appropriately harder challenges). If Pathfinder is really meant for all races to be not powerful and level-1 available, why do the creating custom races include abilities that are plainly not normal for level 1? I'm trying to understand your reasoning. The race creation guidelines are not limited to creating balanced PC races. They're also used for creating NPC races or creating high powered PC races. That's why many abilities are way powerful compared to standard races. There's very different standards for all types of these races. This is also why the guidelines have a tier system (Standard, Advanced, Monstrous), which is what you seemed to ignore when homebrewing these races of yours.
On top of it, the guidelines are no substitute for good design skill. Though a good starting point, but they're imperfect.
If you want to create races in line with core and featured races, I recommend sticking with races that have about 10 RP and only use Standard traits. Maybe one Advanced trait if you know what you're doing.
Alternatively, you could set the bar yourself. Decide what tier and RP a PC race for your campaign should have and then homebrew your races following that as a base line.
Cyrad wrote: Sciamancer wrote: edit: @Cyrad: what you're saying makes sense, but the creating custom races guide allows for Advanced and beyond races (and in at least one of my 3.5 games we played with a "free level-adjust 2" clause that allowed for stronger races without losing out on class levels, in exchange for appropriately harder challenges). If Pathfinder is really meant for all races to be not powerful and level-1 available, why do the creating custom races include abilities that are plainly not normal for level 1? I'm trying to understand your reasoning. The race creation guidelines are not limited to creating balanced PC races. They're also used for creating NPC races or creating high powered PC races. That's why many abilities are way powerful compared to standard races. There's very different standards for all types of these races. This is also why the guidelines have a tier system (Standard, Advanced, Monstrous), which is what you seemed to ignore when homebrewing these races of yours.
On top of it, the guidelines are no substitute for good design skill. Though a good starting point, but they're imperfect.
If you want to create races in line with core and featured races, I recommend sticking with races that have about 10 RP and only use Standard traits. Maybe one Advanced trait if you know what you're doing.
Alternatively, you could set the bar yourself. Decide what tier and RP a PC race for your campaign should have and then homebrew your races following that as a base line. Oh, yeah, absolutely. As I mentioned in the OP, I wasn't really concerned with these races being in line with core races. I built them to be Advanced, and I stuck mostly with Advanced traits. I think the only Monstrous trait I used was a few at-will spell-like abilities (which were lvl 0 spells, mind you, and so I thought not inappropriate for Advanced races). Although I'm considering now following some of ya'll's advice and bumping it down, using refluffed already-made Pathfinder races.
The main issues there are there are no ~10 RP flyers I can see (which... well, makes sense), and I don't know if there is any race that already exists that fits my conception of the Horned Ones (the light at-will and "mage hand"/very weak telekinesis at-will are big parts of them)
Gliding Wings could work. Would be pretty useful in naval combat. Could leap from the crow's nest and glide over to the enemy ship.
Sciamancer wrote: Huh. I haven't really ever felt racial spells + equipment are a big thing. While it's rarely enforced there are numerous examples of racial or regional spells and equipment which pop up (completely out of place) in most adventuring parties; just think of the number of characters you've seen klar, durable arrows, earthbreakers, wyroot weapons, armor made from darkleaf cloth, paragon surge, rings of ferocious action, daredevil softpaws, web bolt, mudball, snowball, the guarding shield special ability, cap of human guise, or damnation stride on (there are plenty more).
We did a homebrew campaign where the PCs were all allowed to make a 20 RP race. We got a pretty wide array of useful. In general, I think the guideline of +2 CR for the first few levels at 20 RP is pretty accurate, but some abilities break some encounters moreso than others.
The more powerful options are available, the more your characters are going to be situational. In another game I was in, the GM allowed us to use or heavily modify up to +2 worth of templates. I made a character with Dominate at will (modified Vampire template). In the end, we had two characters that basically ruled combat, and I basically ruled interaction encounters, but sucked at combat because the GM had to throw such powerful foes against the two front-liners that I had little chance to even dent them.
In short, more powerful PCs can deal with more powerful threats, but you're going to have less predictable results, and you need to think alot about the encounters themselves vs. the PC abilities. You have to do this a little with core races, but it's magnified quite a bit with custom races in the 20 RP range.
rando1000 wrote: We did a homebrew campaign where the PCs were all allowed to make a 20 RP race.
((snip))
In short, more powerful PCs can deal with more powerful threats, but you're going to have less predictable results, and you need to think alot about the encounters themselves vs. the PC abilities. You have to do this a little with core races, but it's magnified quite a bit with custom races in the 20 RP range.
Thanks for sharing your experience! Your explanation makes sense, and it's honestly something I've sort of felt with ordinary higher-level campaigns (Pathfinder may have balanced 3.5 a bit, after all, but... it's far from balanced. There are pros and cons to that). Higher power levels make bigger gaps. I've decided to redo a lot of what I've done with the races, and focus on trying to refluff existing races with minimal changes, and keeping them in the 10 RP range. I might update this thread or make another when I'm further along with that.
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