Yeah, that's the kind of reference I wouldn't get, since I've only been paying TTRPGs for a year.
Search Posts
It's not so much custom as it is homebrew, in the sense that it was made to work for most creatures, and that I'm publishing it publicly for free once it's finished and playtested. I've got to make a stat block for one of the abilities.
I'm pretty happy today. A few weeks ago in my Kingmaker game, we were given (or at least offered) templates by the GM, except my character, because my GM wasn't able to find something that fit and made sense for my character. He still wanted to give me something, though, so we researched templates for a few days. When we met again to see what each of us had found, we still weren't satisfied, and we both wanted to homebrew something at that point, so we gave ourselves a few more days to brainstorm and meet again. In the end, I only had one idea, but we both preferred my idea over his, so he helped me put it into mechanics, and then I put the template together with a few balance adjustments (with help from long-time GMs). As we didn't know in advance that we were getting templates the first time and that we didn't know what they were ahead of time, and because it was more fun that way, I kept the concept and mechanics of my template secret from the other players until the big reveal. Yesterday, we finally played out the situation where my character gets the template. Now, it took 20 minutes for other players to get (or refuse) their templates, so we were expecting a 20 minutes deviation from the main story. We ended up derailing the game for two hours of pure RP, which meant we didn't have time anymore for what the GM initially planned for the session. Now, I didn't want to derail the game that much, and it was mostly the other players that kept it that long, but as a creator, I can't help but feel proud, because while the way the others were getting their templates was most of the RP around it, it was the way mine worked that caused the biggest uproar, as the others didn't understand what was happening. They spent two hours trying to understand what happened, whether whether it was reversible or not, how it worked, etc. So I'm proud, because I take that as meaning that my template idea and its mechanics are interesting beyond gameplay, and has much RP potential.
Anyway, I'm gonna take notes and I'm gonna test my idea, and I'm gonna adapt if it's not significant enough or if it's too much.
Halflings are not... food...
So, increasing the food requirement makes a lot of sense, and should probably be part of it in any case, but the problem is that I have no idea of how that works, because the only have I've played (and am still playing) doesn't keep track of food, so I can't yet grasp how that affects the game. Also, I don't know what the Mephits are. Tying the healing to a specific damage type wouldn't really make sense, not with the concept. Also, they don't have any innate damage resistance or AC bonus.
The reason I didn’t make it regeneration in the first place is that it would make them impossible to kill unless the enemy had the right type of damage to offset regeneration, at which point it becomes relatively useless. Besides, my race doesn’t really have an affinity or a weakness to any type of energy… The Gathlains’ Arboreal Vitality ability is very similar to Undines’ Hydrated Vitality ability, and is way too low for what it needs to be. To give you an idea of how the regeneration works on my race, they are taking Constitution burn to regenerate their body at a fixed rate, and also recover their burnt CON at a fixed rate. And even then, I’m selling it as better than I made it, since it’s EXTREMELY conditional, requires luck and hits really hard.
Actually, beyond the fact that fast healing is pretty unbalanced, one of the problems I have with it in this case is that it's not really what I wanted anyway for my race, just the best thing I could find for it. The reason it needs to be constant but not too strong is not just because of the mechanical aspect of it, but because of some traits that are directly tied to the race's concept. That's also why I'm trying to balance it without capping the daily healing. The race itself has a racial trait very important to the concept that would be best summed up as an extremely conditional and crippling regeneration. It's the race's big gimmick to add real originality to it, and it's pretty hard to justify without an innate ability to heal from damage. It kinda acts as a prerequisite. Some lore-tied alternate racial traits will completely change the race's dynamic, probably by exchanging one or both of the healing traits. Basically, the short answer is it's complicated because I want to make something balanced and original, so I'm basically tailoring new traits for it. And I'm planning a bunch of races like that, though I don't plan on giving that kind of healing trait to another race.
I'm still pondering it, but so far, I'm thinking of making it 1 HP*level/hour, with an accelerated rate after taking damage of 1 HP/round, adding 1 HP/round every four levels after level 1, maxing out at 5 upon reaching level 17, and with the number of consecutive rounds starting at 2 and and rising by one every 5 levels after level 1, maxing out at 5 upon reaching level 16.
So, I'd already thought about all that. Number of rounds will be limited, capping at 3-5 consecutive rounds once you take damage, and the acceleration will not be triggered by friendly-fire or self-injury.
Having any level of Fast Healing makes one immune to Bleed effects, if I remember correctly. I don't know how big of a factor that is, or will be, but I'm pretty sure that is a thing you need to be aware of when handing out Fast Healing all willy-nilly. RAW it doesn’t stop bleed, since it’s natural healing. RAI it does, though. Two ways I could balance that IMO: 1. Fast Healing only stops bleeding if it heals more than bleeding deals damage.
I’m open to better ideas.
I mean, you wouldn’t drop in the first place, thanks to Ferocity… But also, since you’d start healing per round after getting damaged, you would be stabilized.
I just got an idea. I could make it normally really slow, but make it much faster for a few rounds when the creature gets injured. I could scale the number of rounds and the amount to level without too much trouble. Also, healing wouldn't stack. You get hit on a round you were already healing, you reset the round count. Get hit multiple times in a round? You only trigger the healing once per round.
Since it’s basically really good natural healing, you’d have to assume that the healing ticks at the end of the time increment; when you get injured, you’re healed after your body did its job, not right as it starts to do it.
Because of what it is, I actually need to start with something above zero.
So far, that’s my idea: 1 1 HP/hour
By the way, maybe this will affect how you’d balance the healing, but one of the flaws of the race is that they only get a single chance at life; if they die, they die. To be exact, a miracle, a wish or a divine intervention could bring them back to life, but under some circumstances, even that wouldn’t work. They’re soul is basically destroyed upon death.
I’ve read about it, Melkiador, and I know about how it affects ressource management. Out-of-combat healing is really a concern until you get to level 8, because then it’d be pretty simple to just get some Boots of the Earth at little expense. For in-combat healing, 1HP/round is very strong at low levels, but practically useless at high levels, so I’m hoping to make it hit 1HP/round around level 8, and make it reflect the difficulty curve of the game (so no linear function).
I’m not GMing here, I’m creating a race that I want to be usable be most if not all. It’s part of a much bigger content project, which is why I want to make it generally balanced. Maybe not as balanced as humans, but not too much stronger than that. I want to make it less of a problem for GMs to balance the game, but it needs to be there because of something else at the core of the race’s concept. And half the GMs I personally consulted think that I should make it lower at low levels and make it increase with levels. And I agree with them.
Hmm… My problem really is that it’s too strong at low levels, but is very meh at higher levels. At lower levels, it synergizes with Ferocity in a bad way, and it almost negates the need to buy healing items for the character. At higher levels, though, it becomes less and less significant, in both a good and a bad way. So the point would be to start it off really slow, and have it get better as the character levels-up.
Hello, I'm currently trying to rebalance Fast Healing for a homebrew player race, but it's honestly getting to be quite the headache. I'm thinking to making it scale with level, but I'm not certain of how and to what degrees I want to do that. Any ideas?
I guess that makes sense from a gameplay perspective, although, being the overthinker that I am, I wonder how the body gets un-modified, lore-wise. Also, I'd completely forgotten about poison resistance...
So, I'm playing a level 8 Alchemist, but I've been considering retraining to convert to a Witch. Of course, though, as an Alchemist, I have a few discoveries, notably Vestigial Arms. So here are my questions: If I convert to a Witch, do I lose any of my discoveries? And If I do, does it change depending on the type of discovery? |