Sciamancer's page

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?

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.