Sciamancer's page

OK, so I decided I didn't really like any of the Construct race options I had, so I combined features of a couple of them to come up with my own "Ironborn" (might change the name).

They're in the Document with all the other races, now (at the end). I'd appreciate a special look at that one, since they're pretty heavily homebrewed.

I've decided to add Sylphs and Ifrits, too, but I'll do that later. Adding both of them without modifying their ability scores will definitely slant my races in favor of DEX (if you don't take into account all the Skinwalker variants, anyway), but I think that's probably alright. There really aren't enough core races to get a feel for if such bonuses should be balanced equally (since there are only four core races without a "+2 to any ability score").

I could modify them; I modified Undines' ability scores completely on a whim (to get a slightly different flavor and to provide bonuses I didn't have a lot of). But I think I'll keep em the same. Sylphs and Ifrits both make sense with the bonuses they have, and they also give CHA and INT, which I currently have the least races boosting. And Sylphs will be my only race with a CON penalty, but... nobody likes CON penalties anyway. That each race is well-developed and fun to play is more important, too.

There are some things i do like--and yes, Pathfinder Fighter Needs a rework, it's way too weak. I'll play a Slayer all the way instead of a fighter. Still there are abilities such as "Man at Arms" that i don't like, Also becoming inmmune to certain status is not the way. Solo Tactics is a lovely ability, other thing it would be cool to have is the items feats.

The Battle Dynamo could be more fitting to have a power such as Man-at-Arms and Fearless.

Well, OP did warn you about Fighters get magic powers, especially at high levels. As for status immunities, on the one hand, I kind of agree... like, one of the major shticks of the Paladin is immunity to things. On the other hand, I don't actually mind if at high levels Fear becomes something only effective on the squishy Wizard, lol. And immunity to fear effects still fits the Fighter theme pretty well, I'd say. If it were immunity to disease, then I'd be thinking "now that's just stepping on the Paladin's toes," but fear makes sense, thematically. Cowardly fighters are low-level fighters, and typically don't make it much further.

Selkies are part of the Cerulean Seas setting, and it isn't available unless you have purchased the book or pdf from Alluria. If you don't plan on doing much underwater stuff it might not be worth the $20 for the pdf (my group runs a campaign on an island chain too and we haven't used the book much at all, either).

Yeah. There might be more underwater stuff at higher levels, but we're starting somewhere lvl 1-3 (haven't decided exactly yet). I'll hold off for now. I modified Undines to be always amphibious, added a Grippli alternate with swim instead of climb, and there are the Shark skinwalkers, so I think that should be enough "water people" for PCs to pick from. We'll be sticking to land and ships for most of the fighting for a while.

Sciamancer wrote:

I'm starting to think RP are a bad method of measuring races, honestly, but I'm not sure.

You are far from alone in that belief.

Some 3PP construct races you may not have looked at:

• Forgeborn
  
• Gearforged
  
• Cynean, sort of (you'll have to scroll down to find it)
  
• Ironborn

I have no opinion on how powerful or suitable they may be. I'm sure I missed some.

Thanks! I looked over them. Forgeborn are ok, but they're psionic (boo) and don't have a whole lot of options/support. Ironborn are interesting and highly customizable, and their lore almost perfectly fits what I had in mind, but they're really poorly written. e.g. "Ironborn do not need to sleep and are immune to all sleep-based spells, poisons, and other attacks", but then later Ironborn options give bonuses to saves vs. poison... and it's not clear what "other attacks" means. Gearforged are full constructs (and probably too costly as such by RP...) but I'm probably going to go with them anyway. I like having a full construct race. Plus they have a good level of customizability.

edit: It looks like Gearforged don't have any ability score modifiers, unless I missed something, which is weird, but I suppose "lacks a CON score" is a decent enough benefit for that purpose XP

With a nautical setting I can see Sylphs more easily than Oreads - a huge part of sailing depends on the wind, after all. Ifrits seem far less likely, unless that island is volcanic.

For other 3PP races I could see Cerulean Seas Selkie race. It's more of an underseas campaign, but the Selkie is capable both underwater and on the surface.

You make a good point with Sylphs. I've been considering putting them in and giving them a flying city of sorts. That opens the door to possible airships at later levels, as very rare cutting-edge technology. Then I'm pushing it awfully close to Eberron, though, with Changelings and pseudo-Warforged XP

If I include Sylphs I'll definitely include Ifrits, but make them rare. I'll have to look at the maps I have for the campaign world and determine if I could reasonably fit in a Volcano X)

Selkies... interesting. I tried looking for them, but it appears Cerulean Seas isn't on d20pfsrd, and I don't have it from the Pathfinder humble bundle I bought a while ago :( ah well. Looking at the non-PC Selkies, though, they sound too similar to changelings to include as PCs. Two shapeshifting PC races and they lose their specialness a bit, you know?

I gotta say, I really dig this fighter! I'm probably going to use it (+ most if not all your other homebrew stuff and class fixes) in an upcoming campaign I'm doing. It's much much more powerful than the typical fighter, but like... an experienced player trying to CharOp would still pick a full spellcaster, so it's not all that concerning.

Naturally the other martial classes likely need a boost as well (but your Monk and Rogue do well enough), and your big list of homebrew gives enough small fixes to other non-full-caster classes (e.g. Ranger) that I suspect it'll about balance out. Love it!

And the Paragon archetype is absolutely ridiculous but I still love it. It'd probably be better off as a separate class entirely or a prestige class, but... laser eyes!

For construct races, look up the Wyrwoods, from Bestiary 4. Being small wooden creatures, rather than iron brutes, might make them fit into a nautical setting far more easily.

Unless you already deemed them too powerful, in which case you might consider reskinning the Android race. Or leave them as is, if you don't mind getting sci-fi in your fantasy (I know I don't).

Thanks for the suggestions, although I've already seen both. Wyrwoods have "Construct" as pretty much their only racial trait, and they're still costing 20 RP according to race-building numbers, which puts them into the top of Advanced tier. Sigh. The highest I currently have are Aasimar, which I nerfed somewhat by making them count as humanoids (although I did this for all the PC races, which nerfed oreads and undines... who were already among the lowest-RP races... oops. Still considering if I need to do more to buff them). I'm starting to think RP are a bad method of measuring races, honestly, but I'm not sure.

Androids are also interesting, but I'd have to pretty heavily refluff them. While my world is more technologically advanced than a typical D&D world, I'm carefully avoiding things like "circuits" for now, and leaving it to "vague unknown weird magitech." I also envisioned them more as artifical soldiers and beasts of burden; I'd probably change the bonuses to +STR and +CON (or maybe keep +INT, but I've already got a lot of +DEX races).

Hmm... I feel like adaptive enchantment leads to a lot more salvaged gear in a campaign, and for a reasonable price at higher levels, which I honestly like, but some may not.

I think that fast adaptation should be a limited temporary thing that functions for the Mongrel Order Knight for free, to be more situationally useful. Even wish isn't 40k. That, and having 4,000 plat vanish out of my bag magically seems a stretch.
Something like 'for a number of rounds equal to twice his hit dice, a Mongrel Order knight may change up to 5 total levels of enchantment on any armor, shield, or weapon he wields while he wields it.'

The rest of the abilities seem fine, though under normal circumstances Gird armor is not useful. Still neat though.

I agree with all of this. Having your main class feature cost a buttload of money is really not fun. If you think about it, there is plenty of precedent for being able to temporarily enchant equipment on the fly.

I point OP to this Greater Arcanist exploit, which can be achieved by arcanists at lvl 11:

Alter Enhancements (Su): An arcanist with this exploit can modify the enhancements placed on a weapon, suit of armor, or shield. The arcanist can use this exploit to change one weapon or armor special ability to another with an equal cost. This ability can only be used to change the item's special abilities, not its enhancement bonus. Using this ability requires the arcanist to touch the item as a full-round action and expend 1 point from her arcane reservoir, and doing so provokes an attack of opportunity. This ability cannot be used on an item in the possession of an unwilling creature. This change lasts for a number of minutes equal to the arcanist's Charisma modifier (minimum 1). The arcanist must have the arcane weapon exploit to select this exploit.

Boom. The minimum entry level for your prestige class here is lvl 8, and it's highly specialized, so I don't think there'd be anything wrong with giving it literally this exact ability, but with a different resource than "arcane resevoir", obviously... perhaps "X times per day" that scales with levels in the class. Feel free to buff it slightly in other ways, to make it better than the arcanist version, since it's the primary class feature of your class here. Make it last longer (also change the stat from Cha to something else, like Int, if desired), make it faster, make it affect multiple things. Probably not all of those at once, but you get the idea, and make it improve at each level.

As for the armor ability? Honestly, it's a high level ability, and pretty situational anyway. I would just let him snap his fingers and have his armor fly onto or off of his body in a single round (somewhere between full-round action and swift action). It's not really overpowered, and it's the only major class feature you're getting at lvl 11.

I'd boost the skill points per level, too. 4+INT. But that's cus I hate 2+INT skill points, lol... seriously, though, since the flavor is you're so good at metalworking/crafting arms and armor, it'd make sense to have more skill points.

I like the flavor on this class (it'd work well retooled for non half-elves, too). But it's really weak as it stands IMO.

Hey ya'll,

I made a thread a little while ago seeking advice on creating custom races for a setting I'm working on, which is a world populated entirely by islands, full of wild areas, international war, merchants, pirates, etc. One of the big things I want to do is have a setting with atypical races, and none of your standard Tolkien races: no elves, no dwarves, no halflings. Originally I was planning on going no humans, although I've since decided to have them as an extreme rarity (most of the other PC races are in some way descended from/originally humans, with original humans being incredibly rare and declining). After getting a lot of good advice, I've basically scrapped the mechanics for the old races and followed a suggestion to take already-built weirder Pathfinder races and adjust them as needed for the setting.

Here's a link to an updated races document.

So far, there are nine PC races: humans, skinwalkers, aasimars, tieflings, ratfolk, oreads, changelings (Eberron style), gripplis, and undines. The document shows the full backstory/fluff for each one, including sections copied from the original source, but currently only includes a changelog when it comes to mechanics, with everything not mentioned remaining the same as in the source given. I'll probably update this to have the full information before I hand it out to my players, but that'll be a task.

I'm looking mainly for feedback on the mechanical changes/additions I've made (are these races, with the changes made, roughly balanced with each other? Are any of the changes glaring problems?), but feedback on the fluff/backstory information present here is also greatly appreciated.

I'm considering adding a few more races, and I'm interested in any apparent holes you think there are (none of these races can do ____!). Ifrits and Sylphs would complete the elemental races, but I'm not sure they have a place in my world. If they do, it'd likely be very small compared to Oreads and Undines.

I'm also strongly considering a small insect-like race (Entobians?) to join the ratfolk in my version of the "underdark", but so far most of the insectoid races I've found have been very poorly developed or not at all what I'm looking for; the Entobians are close, but I'd probably move the CHA bonus because... I cannot give giant bugs a +2 CHA and maintain a good conscience. I can hardly resist giving them -2 CHA, but I already have quite a few races with -2 CHA.

The last race I'd really like to add is some sort of construct, similar to the Warforged: mechanical-like creatures made to serve but (some of whom) have gained sentience. The issue there is that there are no construct or half-construct races available in Pathfinder (that I can find) that aren't really much higher above the races I'm currently using in power level. I'm considering using the Pathfinder Eberron conversion for Warforged from the same guy who did the changelings I'm using as a base, but I'm not so sure.

Thoughts on any of this and what I've done so far?

I have always had an issue with the fact that shields do not protect against touch attacks. The image of a warrior blocking a scorching ray attack with his shield is classic. I created this type of magic armor so that this could happen in a game. I made it a + 3 enchantment so that it can not be stacked with ghost touch. Meaning that this type of enchantment does not allow protection from all types of touch attacks. I feel that limits it enough that it will not become a must have for every warrior. Is it to good, or under-powered? What do you think?

Magic Resistance
Price + 3; Aura moderate necromancy; CL 9th; —
Armor that has this ability protects the wearer from magic based touch attacks. This does not protect from touch attacks that are incorporeal even if the incorporeal status of the attack was granted by a spell.
CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS
Cost + 3
Craft Magic Arms and Armor, lesser astral projection

My initial thought is that you could just refluff a ring of protection as a Shield of Protection. Make it give its usual shield bonus and a deflection bonus with a cost for the magical deflection bonus equal to the cost of an equivalent ring of protection. Hell, you could even just wear the ring of protection on your shield hand, no homebrew needed, and viola, mighty image of shield blocking scorching ray... even if it's actually the ring behind the shield doing the blocking. Deflection bonuses protect from all touch attacks, too. Same flavor, albeit not mechanically "applying a shield bonus to touch AC."

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.

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)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.