There is one more thing to keep in mind: this may not be a demon in a gem. It might be, for example, just a scrying item that's locked in to one particular target - which would certainly explain why the thing's laughed at your threats. Sure, lock the gem in a chest at the bottom of the sea. Whatever. It can go pick it up later if it decides it cares. It could also be just a well-done illusion that the thieves' guild leader used as a prop to support some good bluff checks.
hogarth wrote: A monster’s total Hit Dice, not its ECL, govern its acquisition of feats and ability score increases. And yet, from the same page: Quote: Treat monster Hit Dice the same as character level for determining ability score increases. This only applies to Hit Dice increases, monsters do not gain ability score increases for levels they "already reached" with their racial Hit Dice, since these adjustments are included in their basic ability scores. Personally, I'm with giving out one statadd per four total hit dice, and ignoring the bit about "such adjustments are included" - those base stats are, after all, for ordinary mook level monsters. But that's a houserule, not RAW.
Alternate rules for a low-magic-item setting - i.e. how to go about giving characters the bonuses they need to be effective at their level (resistance to saves, enhancement to stats / weapons / armor) without tying those values to items. I'd love to be able to hand out something interesting, like, say, a cloak of the manta ray, and have PCs actually think about using it instead of just saying "oh, that's not a cloak of resistance, don't want it."
After reading through this, I'd tend to say that the guy basing pricing off the ring of freedom of movement is probably about right - though immunity to possession / domination is a narrower range of effects than freedom of movement, that's balanced somewhat by mind control being worse than just immobility. It's also limited somewhat by the "only works against evil" part (since the Pathfinder protection from evil doesn't block all mind control, just that from evil sources), so call it maybe 30k as a ring, or 60k as a slotless item. In this price bracket, I wouldn't even bother charging for the deflection & resistance bonuses - by the time you can afford this thing, small situational bonuses of those sorts should already be covered by non-stacking items that provide the same benefit all the time. (Seriously, if you're looking at buying a 30-60k item and don't have at least a +2 resistance bonus to saves already...) Alternatively, let's look at when you could get permanent protection from evil without a custom item. As a wizard, you'd need to be using magic circle against evil (to get it up to 10 minutes / level instead of 1), and you'll want a few lesser metamagic rods of extend spell... lessee... 144 ten-minute-blocks in a day... Assume you only want to spend one actual spell slot on this, then the total price in pearls of power & metamagic rods varies from ~141,000gp (at level 5), to ~33,000gp (at level 20). Comparing price to the wealth-by-level table, this becomes reasonable at around level 16, where it would cost ~42,000gp. Though, on the flip side, this does also provide a stronger effect - magic circle against evil having that whole radius of effect thing - and is also inherently already slotless. Conclusion: you can justify a market value price anywhere from maybe as low as 42k, to maybe as high as 80k (or 21k to 40k for a ring slot item - ring chosen deliberately due to the caster level requirement on craft: ring.)
Hm. My thought would be human, with:
If you really want to go with a higher int, then I'd strongly suggest taking the toughness feat (& maybe also great fortitude, though you'll have a fairly good fort save anyway) instead of putting your floating +2 in con; there aren't any feats that will give you +1 to hit & damage, after all. The other thing you can do is drop dex; all it does for you is AC, after all, and with mage armor & shield active you'll still have a decent AC. I don't have any particular advice on feats or how to combine natural attacks w/ monk abilities, though; monk is not a class I've looked at in great detail. Still, sounds like a fun concept; good luck with it!
One thing I had fun with was a game where I gave out custom cursed items - useful, but still definitely cursed. The most amusing example: one of my players was playing (for reasons that will not become clear later) a giant owl sorcerer. Which had issues, most notably with things like fitting through doorways. So he got a golden collar; one minute after putting it on, the wearer transformed into a golden ferret (a very shiny golden ferret - shiny enough to cancel out the size bonus to stealth). One minute after taking it off, the effect wore off. The curse part came in because the clasp was on the back of the collar - where your little ferret paws couldn't reach. And it was warded against cantrips, so no mage-handing it off. After that, there were no more complaints about not being able to fit through doorways. Instead, there were complaints about being a ferret, and plans from other PCs to try and "owl-bomb" their enemies - taking off the collar a minute before combat, and throwing the ferret at someone with such perfect timing that they were hit by a giant owl. This rarely worked, of course, but was highly entertaining none the less.
There are a couple of methods, depending on which FF game you're going with. On the easy end, early FF summons are trivially implemented by a PC saying "I'm going to re-name my cone of cold spell to Shiva, and it works by summoning this ice critter that blasts my foes and then vanishes." Mid-range, re-flavor summoning spells, especially the planar ally / planar binding sequences. Pick out something you could summon normally, file off the serial numbers and write a new description for it, and presto. (For example, I once had an NPC wizard use Gate to call up an "avatar of vengeance" - one of the dragon gods in that setting - and it just used the stats for a pit fiend.) Also mid-range is the summoner class; synthesist in particular could be used to replicate FF summons where the summoned creature "replaces" the summoner. At the high end... 3.5 had a spell called "Summon Elemental Monolith" - a conjuration spell so powerful that it required continuous concentration from the caster or it went poof. Something like that could - with some effort - be adapted into an entire sequence of setting-specific summoning spells. This'd require a fair amount of work from the GM, though.
Hm. For that particular wizard, I'd strongly suggest a level of sorcerer, crossblooded elemental(water) and draconic (silver or white). This lets him - at time of casting - convert any other element type to cold damage, and gives him +1 damage per die when casting cold spells. It's a huge boost to versatility - you prepare a fireball with your wizard slots, and then can make it deal fire or cold damage as needed at the time of casting. Or chain lightning, electric or cold. Etc. (Or, if you don't mind light sensitivity, replace draconic with orc - which boosts the damage of all your spells, at the cost of a situational -1 to hit / perception.) It also gives him eschew materials as a bonus feat, which is certainly nothing to sneer at. After that one level, anything else is fair game.
Bob_Loblaw wrote:
Assuming you're using pseudo-gestalt rules for epic advancement, there are a number of good options. 1: take a level of sorcerer with the crossblooded archetype, picking out whichever bloodline arcanas you like the best. (I'm rather partial to the umbral bloodline (wildblooded shadow), as +1 caster level is nice, and dim lighting is easy enough to come by.) 2a: If there's a third level bloodline power you want from one of your bloodlines, progress as sorcerer until level three. (Otherwise, skip this step.)
3: Consider one or more of the following options: Two levels of ranger (guide archetype, archery combat style) - this gives you some good bonuses to ranged touch attacks (Free precise shot feat plus Ranger's Focus for more hit & damage)
One level of cleric - opens up using spell-completion items such as staves for all cleric spells. Or you could use druid instead if you prefer; its spell list isn't quite as good, but it gives you more special abilities that might come in handy. One level of monk - wisdom bonus to AC, plus, say, deflect arrows as a bonus feat. There may be good archetype options, especially if you look at two or three levels, but I'm not actually very familiar with the available options for monks. Two or more levels of paladin - charisma bonus to saves, plus the occasional immunity. Again, look through archetypes; there may be something shiny that I'm not aware of. Magus has some good abilities, and should synergize fairly well with wizard. Similarly, summoner (especially, if allowed, synthesist summoner), could be useful with even just a few levels of it. Oracle. Keep in mind that the powers you get from the oracle curse scale (at a reduced rate) with total character level. Two or more levels of rogue; go for one of the tricks that lets you roll twice on some useful skill (diplomacy or sense motive, perhaps?); if you're usually invisible in combat, the sneak attack will also apply to ray attacks (like quickened scorching ray).
Note the exact wording on movement types - it specifies that the spells can grant such benefits, if they exist on the form - so, for example, if you alter self into a humanoid with a flight speed, you can't actually fly, because the alter self spell doesn't grant a flight speed. Good call on the water breathing, though - you get that for free with a swim speed.
As far as I can tell, it grants the benefits listed in the spell description, plus those listed under generic polymorph rules - i.e. natural attacks, and possibly additional stat adjustments if your starting size was something other than small or medium. (The generic rules do call out natural armor - but one can generalize from other polymorph spells to conclude that, if a polymorph effect grants natural armor, it's specified in the spell description.) Also note that this spell will make you lose "extraordinary and supernatural abilities that depend on your original form (such as keen senses, scent, and darkvision)" - and presumably also low light vision. Also note the 1 minute / level duration - this spell is pure combat buff; unless you've got something like a greater hat of disguise you can pretty much forget about getting any utility uses out of it. ...Which is the one thing I hate about pathfinder polymorph effects; they're not utility spells anymore. Yes, they needed to scale the combat-buff-ness of the things back from 3.x, but why also cripple the duration? Grump.
Just want to add that overall, these houserules look pretty good to me; I'd be happy to play under them. Though - as pointed out - the races could use some tweaking; maybe replace climb / swim speeds with smaller racial skill bonuses as part of that? Haven't really done a full analysis myself, though I might get to that later... On paladins and smiting: Compare, for example, the guide archetype ranger. I don't think smite-anything is going to be a problem - though I would say that the bypass-any-DR doesn't apply to mindless targets unless your religion considers that type of thing (typically undead) to be inherently evil. (And if you think, say, all constructs are evil - you'd best RP that and be prepared for conflict with the local wizards' guild...)
Total homebrew, but: I'd say that at first level you'd get your tattoo familiar - but it must be a viper. At third level, you get Serpent's Fang (the first level bloodline power) instead of Serpentfriend (the third level bloodline power). And after that it proceeds normally. In other words, follow Cheapy's advice.
Straight-class sorcerer. Rakshasa bloodline. Key feats: Skill Focus: Perception, and the entire Eldritch Heritage sequence for the draconic bloodline. You'll probably want a trait to make perception in-class, just to get the most leverage off of that skill focus. I'd go with some degree of enchantment focus in your spell selection, plus the occasional attack spell like admonishing ray (or maybe just the subdual substitution metamagic feat?) Definitely human; especially if you're trying to cover utility spells, the extra known spells will be vital.
This is actually pretty simple: the demon is evil and can't be trusted. You could deal with it for power, fall, and then just get laughed at instead of actually saving anyone. Further, you are not responsible for the actions of the BBEG; if it's not within your power to stop him, then do what you can to ameliorate the issue; evacuate civilians; start conducting guerrilla warfare against his minions; go on holy quests for ancient relics of your order; that sort of thing. And if your GM has you fall for this choice, then I'd take that as a strong hint that either: 1) This GM is a jerk and you should find a different game, or 2) this GM doesn't understand paladins and you should make a character that doesn't have any sort of alignment or code-of-conduct restrictions.
Anguish wrote:
No, no they're not logical extensions. Compare to wizard/sorcerer, for example. Same base attack, saves, skills... but "doubling up" on known spells, spells per day, and class special abilities - in other words, it looks almost exactly like a sorcerer/sorcerer as described. Since the character would have two separate pools of spells/day, and two separate known spell lists. In fact, the only thing on your list that's an actual logical extension is the cleric/cleric being able to channel twice as often per day - but it would be for the normal amount of healing per channel. However, if you wanted to do this character under slightly more normal gestalt rules, you could use the crossblooded archetype for sorcerer, and (with only minor houserules) spend feat slots to pick up the missing bloodline powers (ala the eldritch heritage sequence). Then set the other half of the gestalt to something else - perhaps wizard if you really want oodles of arcane power.
For that specific bloodline combination - I'd say go for it. Treat the two sorcerer classes as if they were separate in this case - so the character would have two separate known spell lists, spell per day slots, etc. But the arcana would, of course, stack for both as normal. I can't imagine such a character ending up too strong for a gestalt game - and if (s)he ends up too weak, well, then just find a way to give out a metamagic rod of quicken spell or something.
Kolokotroni wrote: Saves will be lower then many gestalt characters that combine classes. True. Kolokotroni wrote: If you gestalt one class with a weak save (say fort) and one with a strong, you end up with a save higher then a normal character with a strong save. So if a character does this, they wont get that nudge up on saves that cross. False. If you gestalt a class with a strong save & a class with a weak save, you end up with exactly a strong save. Gestalt tracks fractions; it has to, or you get nonsensical results (like good save + weak save being somehow stronger than good save + good save).
It'll be a bit stronger than a sorcerer/wizard, due to requiring just charisma instead of int/charisma. There might also be issues with the crossblooded archetype; I'd probably ban that archetype for a sorcerer/sorcerer character. Other than that, well, it's a niche build, and probably overall inferior to something with a bit more breadth to it. Were I a player, I'd seriously consider alternatives like sorcerer/bard or sorcerer/summoner; they'd get much the same double-caster feel, similar overall arcane power, but with a broader set of options.
I replaced alignment with a system of patron deities - so your detect "evil" will register anyone that is an enemy of your patron. If your patron is, say, a sun god, then all undead will register as evil, as will anyone following a god of undeath. If your patron is the god of undeath, then anything living will register as evil - this may include you, so be careful where you drop that holy word spell... If you don't have a patron, everyone registers as neutral to you (and you register as neutral to, well, most people at least.) Likewise, detect "good" really just detects people whose patron is allied with yours. Poof, no more alignment - but without having to nuke all the alignment-based abilities, classes, etc.
Personally, the spell that's most bothered me for not working as advertised is Foresight. The flavor text describes it as this awesome spell that tells you just how to avoid incoming doom. The mechanics? +2 on AC and reflex saves. Yeah, that's going to be real helpful against that arrow trap you just triggered.
Trinam wrote: If the magic doesn't get contained by the item that's encasing it wholly enough to completely block the aura, wouldn't it also make sense the item's magic is powerful enough to work through anything similarly encasing it? So all I need in order to be immune to magic is a 1 inch thick metal shell? New item: Lead-lined cap! Prevents mind control! Sarcasm aside, if you're going to go with that ruling, then instead:
Sadly, a mere Magic Aura spell won't cut it - it specifies it works on "magic items", and we're dealing with spell effects. But it does show that concealing an aura from stuff that's not identify is a reasonable effect for a first level spell, so I'd expect limited wish's "Produce any other effect whose power level is in line with the above effects" option to do the trick. Best way around batty bat identifying the spell from its effects and breaking things: bury the gem a few feet underground beneath where you'll be flying. That way all batty can break immediately is the now-irrelevant trigger item - and you can easily get the gem back before he finds it. Overall, though, I'd say it looks like there are a few too many inexactly-defined spells involved here for a strict RAW argument to be decisive on who wins. Ask your local GM, I guess, and adjust tactics for houserules as needed.
Have plan. Simple, really. 1: AM BARBARIAN is mighty scourge. Well known. Can get name from like, first level bard in tavern down street. Or contact other plane. Whatever. 2: Put on pointy hat, pick up adamantine +5 staff of shininess. Cast overland flight. Fly around. No invisible; not need fancy defenses. 3: RAGELANCEPOUNCE. Die. Is ok, still part of plan. Suppose could use simulacrum, but less verisimilitude. 4: AM loot body of fallen casty. AM vanish.
5: Rise from dead via clone back at lab (or not, if using simulacrum). 6: Launch all-out assault on batty bat to get staff back.
Pretty sure batty bat not have better method to figure out what happen to AM. Plan may still need some fine-tuning.
Pick any set of classes with the same bad save, and you'll see the same problem, on a larger or smaller scale depending on how many classes and exactly what level they're all at. For example, a rogue/wizard will - by default save calculations - have a fort save that's lower than a single-classed rogue or wizard. (Unless one has a level that's a multiple of three, but needing exactly three levels to not be extra-weakened by multiclassing is, imo, an annoying meta-game mechanic that shouldn't happen.) I do see your point about complication, and it is one of the things I try to take into account when designing my own houserules... but sometimes the simple method just doesn't work for what I'm trying to accomplish.
Hm. For your classes, that method 2 might actually work. The problem I tend to have with that (under more normal 3.x/pathfinder rules) is that it exaggerates the character's saves - making good saves better, and bad saves worse. For example, consider a fighter 2 / barbarian 2 / ranger 2. (Under 3.x/pathfinder rules where fighter just gives fort save)
Compared to a straight fighter 6:
The good save - fort in this case - is massively higher. But the bad save - will - is notably lower. The best solution I ever came up with was essentially your method 3: 1/2 of all your levels with good save, plus 1/3 all your levels with a bad save, plus two if you've got it as a good save ever, round fractions down at the end. I'm not entirely happy with it, but it makes the numbers come out mostly reasonably. Under that rule, the fighter 2 / barbarian 2 / ranger 2 has:
---- For your rules, I'd suggest thinking about un-linking the feats from the classes. If someone actually spends a (non-bonus) feat on, say, Improved Fortitude, then that feels to me like it should mean that they get good fort progression for all of their classes. And then maybe make the Greater save feats require a base save of just +2 or +3 or something like that? Not sure how this would mesh with the rest of your rules, though; I've read through the whole thing (and it's neat!) but I won't claim to have grokked all the ways things interact.
For the situation you've described, I'd play up three things: 1: The dragon's oracular abilities. It knows the Fanglord is out to kill it, and has minions in the area. It knows there's a group of adventurers showing up that might kill it or might save it. It knows random bits of possible future that are wholly irrelevant to the current situation, but may occasionally be distracting to it or others. And it will just keep ranting about whatever happens to come to its attention - whether that's complaining about the fanglord, or wondering why this group of minions is so much tougher than the previous ones, or complaining that the "heroes" it foresaw ought to be here by now, or muttering about the price of silk in some port halfway around the world... 2: The damage the dragon has taken from being exposed to these poisonous vapors. Most importantly, I'd make it blind (or mostly blind) - and obviously so, as well as looking thin and sickly. Give it the blindfight feat, and between that and its natural blindsense, and it should function just fine in combat without its vision (or just upgrade it to have blindsight instead; oracular abilities are a good excuse for that sort of thing anyway). But this gives an explanation for why it thinks the PCs are just more random minions; have the dragon act surprised when they don't die from a single breath weapon attack. When it starts losing, have it just burrow down & not come back up, while telling the PCs that they're fools, the coming heroes will kill them all before the fanglord even gets there... 3: Terrain & mobility. Play up icewalking and the burrow speed. Maybe have it burrow into a wall or ceiling. Never have it hold still for a fighter to full attack; always give it some degree of cover from being halfway burrowed into the ice; that sort of thing.
Actually, I'd disagree. Assuming dimension door or passwall or blink or some other short range transportation effect is the first step, since it's the option that you might be able to do something about if you act fast. Invisibility is second. Teleport, plane shift, shadow walk, etc., are third, because they're the ones that you don't have any viable response for.
My reaction: that was either invisibility or teleportation (or something wonky like merging into the surrounding stone or whatever). Step one: keep the cell locked, set the guards out to searching the surrounding area (in case of short range teleportation). Once they come back and report a failure to find the caster, go get a nice big pile of sawdust, scatter it over the floor of the cell (still without opening said cell) and then start poking around with spears while watching for footprints. Or, you know, just wait a couple of hours to a day or two. He can't stay invisible forever.
Wasn't really getting at anything in particular - merely pointing out the existence of the spell, and that it was thematically very similar to the negative energy you added to the claw attacks. Not overpowered, either, albeit mostly due to the fort save. Though you could probably do some interesting things with a multiclassed sorcerer / monk...
Just an FYI, there is actually a precedent in-game for a negative energy attack that doesn't heal undead: the Chill Touch spell. Which, incidentally, is liable to be a fairly impressive spell with that bloodline arcana...
Darkholme wrote:
Hm. Isn't there a feat that grants 1 evolution point (to the eidolon or to a familiar)? And there's a favored class benefit that grants multiple evolution points over 20 levels - that might make a decent basis for a race that improves as you level (for example, a winged race that can't fly very well / at all at level 1, but gets better at it.) I think the skill bonus for eidolons is underpriced - for things that aren't an eidolon. (For the eidolon itself, with its fixed stats and limits on magic items and such, it's at least somewhat more reasonable.)
The Speaker in Dreams wrote:
Hogwash. By your logic, it's "balanced" for one race to offer Skill Focus: Craft (Basketweaving), while another offers One Feat of Player's Choice. The value of any given feat is not just "+1 feat period". It can't be. And sure, the current system doesn't explicitly tell you "Hey, taking spell penetration as a paladin is probably not that great an idea" - but the idea that all feats are of exactly the same value is ludicrous. Hey, I know! I'll take power attack on my sorcerer! That's just as good as taking spell penetration, right? I mean, +1 feat is +1 feat! Period! So it doesn't matter which one I pick, right? Now, the value of a given feat is rather less clear-cut when you're designing a race, since an individual could be of any class. But there are still some options that are clearly more valuable than others. [edit] Ninjaed by Epic Meepo, who has rather better examples / arguments. [/edit]
The Speaker in Dreams wrote: For me, if Feats stay at 4 RP's of value, then Fortunate better be 12 RP's. That thing is doing the work of no less than 3 feats! You're ignoring the value of flexibility. Which would you rather have: +2 to all saves, or three feats of your choice? Obviously the latter option is far superior. In fact, even *two* feats of your choice is still a vastly stronger option; you can use those two to shore up your weakest saves if that's what you want, or you can use them to improve your offense, or... etc. 4RP is for any feat the player wants to take.
Which would put Fortunate at around 6RP - it can't be worth much more than that, though. Why? Well, if you're trying to make a gish, or an archer, or really any actual build that's focused more on offense than defense, the feat will be of more use to you than the saving throw bonus. For a heavily defense-focused build, Fortunate would be better than the feat, of course. Which all suggests that the two are at least ballpark equivalent in value. Within, oh, maybe 50% or so. wraithstrike wrote: I like this idea. I will look over it again in detail later on. Thanks!
StabbittyDoom wrote:
This actually brings up an interesting notion for some house-rules: What if we break up the existing races into "racial" and "social" packages? You'd need to do some re-jiggering of, well, every race in your setting... but you could build things so that, say, the base races get 8RP of physical abilities (representing their actual race), and then another 6RP of social package (representing how they were brought up). And then you'd have rules that cover things like, a gnoll raised among orcs gaining orcish weapon familiarity, or an elf raised by wolves gaining bonuses to survival at the cost of languages and weapon familiarities, or exactly what does / doesn't change when you get reincarnated... (Apologies for the tangent, but I thought this was worth sharing.)
ciretose wrote: As written, no reasonable player would use the core races for any reason other than flavor purposes. And this is why race design should be explicitly the purview of the GM, not the players. Assuming the players can design their own custom races throws the whole balance off entirely - for example, it makes flexibility worth absolutely zilch - since who's going to pay more for "any feat" than for "the particular feat I want for my personal character"? Trying to look at this system from the point of view of a player will always come back with skewed results and power-gaming issues. But that's not important. Because the point is that this is a setting design tool for use by GMs. ciretose wrote: I want the created races to be less than the core races mechanically, so that they don't become common. And I want to be able to - as a GM - create races that are more or less equal to the core races, so that my players will actually consider using them. Perhaps there's some viable middle-ground here, though: Suppose the race creation section has a side-bar on "Things to watch out for if your players try to use these rules". It could even suggest, as one option, reducing the RP limits for various race categories when dealing with player created races. That would give you your weaker races, while still allowing the rest of us to use the tool for setting design without turning out crippled races that nobody will want to play.
Yeah, the six-armed shiva with claws is... pretty clearly up in the advanced races category. I actually wouldn't even include the dual-wield feat as a must-have part of claws; if you're a catfolk wizard (for an example), you may have never bothered to learn that level of coordination, and trying to full attack with claw / claw would net all the normal penalties of dual-wielding without the feat. The one other thing I did include was a "razor claws" feat (pre-req: claw attacks that function using the dual-wield rules & +1 base attack bonus) that, mechanically, functioned like exotic weapon proficiency. My default claws were 1d4; with the feat, that went up to 1d6 x3. Of course, you also had to spend extra time sharpening your claws (at least until you could get them enchanted)... but, eh, minor details. And it offered a decent option if you wanted to actually use claws as your primary weapon. Again, all that was my house rules. But I still think it makes for a good model on how to add claw attacks to a race in a way that's usable, makes sense, and doesn't cause balance issues.
SPCDRI wrote:
It makes sense if you're designing the race to fit the character. It doesn't make sense if you're just designing the race.In the former case, a flexible bonus feat - that can be whatever the player wants - isn't worth any more than the specific feat you want for your particular character. In the latter case, it very clearly is, because that feat is now whatever the player wants, rather than whatever the GM felt was appropriate for that race. And that's why this should be treated as house rules. Because for a player, it's always going to make sense to build a race with the particular customized bonuses they personally want. For example, suppose I as a GM, design a race that has Endurance and Fleet as bonus feats. Would you, as a player, rather have that race, or the one that has a single bonus feat of your choice? I'd bet that, all else being equal, you'd usually pick the one with the generic bonus feat. This is a totally different dynamic than if you, the player, are making races; that's the only case where there's no advantage to versatility.
Answer: because they dramatically increase the number of attacks available on a full attack to a low level character. And, if you have a high strength character, even a reduced damage die doesn't weaken that enough. My personal house-rule is to use the dual-wielding rules for human-shaped things with claws. Which should be enough to put claws down to 1 or 0 RP; they're worse in combat than dual-wielding daggers, but can't be disarmed or sundered. ...Honestly, I don't expect that to make it into the official rules, though. It makes sense to me, but it's probably too much of a departure from the normal natural weapons rules. Oh, well. The other thing I've done is given bite attacks with 0' reach. Gives all the flavor of "this race should have a bite attack", but with little to none of the mechanical issues of "this race has an extra attack it can use in normal combat." Does combine fairly strongly with spells like enlarge person, though, but that's probably ok.
Personally, I'd suggest just putting in a sidebar on "Sometimes these costs may not be accurate; this is meant as a tool for the GM, not a perfect arbiter of game balance." Then put in a few examples of things GMs need to watch out for, and things GMs might want to allow at reduced price. Like SPCDRI's "roguehuman", that's perfectly built for one class, and is thus likely to be undercosted. Or Mok's permanent nondetection, that the system would overcost (or disallow entirely), but that is not actually likely to unbalance a game. Race design guidelines are neat, and something I for one will greatly appreciate, but I'd expect to see them treated as being, by definition, houserules when actually used. So I can make my version of catfolk, and use it in games I run, but just because I followed the race design rules shouldn't mean I can just assume it'll be legit in someone else's game, even if they're also using the race design rules. (Aside: I do also agree with the original point of the thread: it's more important to make race point costs match up to the utility of the ability than to make all the core races cost exactly 10 points.)
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Then why (assuming your reply was sarcasm) does this archetype exist at all? Either it makes sense for a separatist cleric to exist - in which case pre-existing rules (perhaps with a discussion on the potential social and game-world drawbacks) would have served better than this archetype. Or it makes no sense, in which case it shouldn't have been published.
Sean K Reynolds wrote: "I want to follow a path and gain powers different than 99.99% of the adventuring clerics of my religion" is more than just "different descriptive text." And that sounds like a choice that should be a little mechanically inferior. It's exactly "different descriptive text" - when compared to clerics who follow a philosophy. In fact, it's not even very different descriptive text: Do you follow philosophy X (that's similar to the tenets of god Y) while also paying service to god Y? Or do you follow god Y, but happen to believe that the regular clerics got things a bit wrong and thus hold yourself to the (heretical) philosophy X? Hm. Sounds like the same thing to me. Why should one be weaker than the other? Sean K Reynolds wrote: Wizards ... can justify those differences as flavor. [sarcasm]But, one of the options I presented clearly sounds like a choice that should be a little mechanically inferior![/sarcasm] Why is it "flavor" in one place, and mechanics in another? This leads back to my primary point: The core game rules should not present flavor and mechanics as things where you have to trade one for the other. Declaring that your wizard is self taught should not cost you anything in terms of game mechanics, as long as you're still following the normal rules for wizards. Declaring that your cleric has slightly heretical beliefs should not cost you anything in terms of game mechanics, as long as you're still following the normal rules for clerics. Again, what bothers me is not so much this particular archetype, as the entire philosophy that interesting flavor text compensates for mechanical inferiority; this archetype is merely the most blatant representation of that line of thinking, since it offers absolutely zero mechanical advantage over an option that was already in the rules. Sean K Reynolds wrote: It's a sad day when "you get to pick whatever two domains you want for your cleric and all you have to give up in return is a bonus weapon proficiency your class didn't have before Pathfinder anyway" is an "eat rocks" option. And if that was all the archetype gave up, it would be mechanically equal to an existing option - the philosophy cleric - and nobody would be in this thread complaining about poor game design.
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
Well, let's start with: GâtFromKI wrote:
Or how about: A Man In Black wrote: Well, I'm not going so far as to say it's not unusable as written, especially since it's a small power loss for one of the strongest classes in the game. I'm just baffled as to why it exists, when a discussion of splinter religions and divergent belief in general would serve the same purpose while also being much, much more useful. And these are just a few examples; I'm sure I could come up with more if I actually went back through the whole thread again. My personal issue is with the design philosophy that says it's ok for a basic game option to be mechanically inferior just because it has different descriptive text. I mean, would you think it was ok to publish a self-taught wizard archetype that just removed one spell slot at each level? Yes, that's a more extreme example, but it's the same basic concept: an interesting character idea is rendered mechanically inferior simply because it has a different description than the base class.
Sean K Reynolds wrote:
And just because some people are using it and think it's fine, doesn't mean it wasn't the wrong solution, or that those same people wouldn't think it was fine to have a completely mechanics-free discussion of how to deal with splinter religious groups in a game. The game is bigger than your home game or sense of what should be in the game, too. (If it wasn't, then we'd all be happy here, and this entire thread wouldn't exist.) If you're going to claim that this archetype was the right way to approach the concept of a separatist, then perhaps you should actually address the issues people have brought up?
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