TheRabidOgre's page

I have a problem with coming up with character ideas and then having trouble figuring out how to get them to be properly represented by the rules.

Most recently, I came back around to wanting to make a fairy character. At first my plan was to make a sprite from the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, but by the time I got around to this, my idea was less "Tiny (potentially) winged fairy" and more "Small wingless fairy". Now, that's absolutely possible. I just have to pick the Pixie heritage (and the wings are optional feats anyway).

It just feels like a waste to use my Heritage choice on having a more normal size rather than an actually interesting feature (especially when Versatile Heritages are out there).

So I looked around a bit and realized that Pathfinder's gnomes are actually really close to what I wanted right from the Core, they even have some Heritages and Feats that really fit the direction I wanted to go in.

I was almost ready to just play a gnome, but call it a sprite/fairy and change the Traits from Gnome and Humanoid to Fey and Sprite. But then I realized that there actually is already an avenue for this as well. The Fey-Touched gnome Heritage makes you truly a fey and grants you the Fey trait.

Problem solved, right?

Unfortunately, I really, really liked the sound of Chameleon gnome, which is of course mutually exclusive with Fey-Touched gnome.

In the end it's a pretty small thing. I'm sure a lot of tables out there would let me reflavor these things. One time, though, I got called a min-maxer for just wanting to make sure that my character wouldn't be doing something I imagined them to do that technically is a feat somewhere but not one I'd have access to.

Does this ever happen to anyone else?

A discussion on the Shaman thread about whether you can or should put differing cultures under one umbrella, especially when that umbrella is named for one culture and not the others, made me want to make a thread dedicated to that sort of question, because I see it elsewhere in the game (largely in places that were inherited from previous roleplaying games).

For instance, a class that's bothered me for a long time is Monk. Most of the Core Classes are treated as archetypes. Fighter, Rogue, Wizard. These classes are about broad ideas. You're good with weapons, you're sneaky, you have magic.

Monk, however, isn't "unarmed fighter" or even just "martial artist". They are "the Asian class". They may be core now , but the "foreign" baggage from their D&D origins still remains. Perhaps the most direct proof of this is their "Ki Spells". Culturally speaking, I want to know why Ki is specific to Monks, other than because they're "the Asian class." For example, would not a Fighter from Minkai say that they have Ki and manage it carefully in combat?

Ultimately I think the question is: should classes be specific or generic?

Another game might have a Samurai class and infuse a lot of Japanese culture into it. Should a Samurai just be a Fighter instead? Should Fighter still have access to culture-specific concepts, like managing Ki?

Incidentally, the Monk class overall, including the art, has a very stereotypical Shaolin Monk feel to it, but uses the word Ki rather than Qi/Chi. That brings the umbrella question back.

I don't mean for this thread to just be about Monk though. I passed on them earlier because the class concepts are fairly archetypal, but the names can be argued. The word Barbarian originated as a slur and the class is based around taking the slur literally.

I've seen a lot of people dismiss Druid, but they really have nothing to do with their real world counterparts and I've seen that lead to a lot of weird confusion and misrepresentation in the modern day because of how pervasive the fantasy druid is in pop culture. Should the class have more to do with historical druids, should the name be changed?

The Shaman question is an important one, but it's also something I think we should be consistent about.

I don't expect to be playing anytime soon, but I thought others might be interested in the answer.

Is it possible to make a character like Michiru from Brand New Animal?

At first I thought the answer would be yes. The Beastkin heritage from the Lost Omens Ancestry guide handles the everyday element of the character (including a tendency for the hybrid form to be the default).

However, the more I looked, the more I kept running into the same problem: all the animal-themed abilities eventually assume full animal forms.

Druid's Wild Shape is all about becoming an animal. I thought about Barbarian, but when I looked there the higher forms of their animal instinct also have you turn into an animal.

The Beastkin heritage itself isn't much better. While you can obviously skip it, one of the highest feats is a full animal form. The only feat that changes the hybrid form makes it permanently larger rather than giving you more hybrid choices.

Even when I looked at people speculating about a 2E version of a Shifter class people were assuming an ability to change between various full animal forms.

Is there a way to have a varied hybrid shifting character without eventually just turning into the actual animal?

I want to start this off by saying I like the line up of core races. For the most part, they're traditional, and squeezing goblin in there really works with how widespread they've become in many popular settings. Even with half-elves and half-orcs, I appreciate the idea even if there's some obvious controversy about the execution.

I feel a glaring omission though. It's something that other major fantasy roleplaying games don't have either, but it's something that I think they're all missing.

I often see concerns that RPGs aren't RPGs anymore, with references to streamlined or simplified mechanics. I think it might be the wrong way to look at it, though. It's not that certain mechanics aren't falling by the wayside, but it's happening because mechanical balance has taken priority over everything.

I've always been told that tabletop RPGs are superior to video game RPGs because tabletop RPGs are only limited by your imagination. In recent times, however, I feel like it's only been true as a technicality. Rules are becoming more 'balanced' at the cost of flavor, and many popular sanctioned events heavily limit options.

A fairly basic suggestion I have is simply to add one particular core race: Centaur

Why centaur? They're a familiar, classic fantasy race with roots in mythology, that aren't too monstrous, but aren't in a human shape.

Why does the game need that? To symbolize a commitment to what makes fantasy special, a willingness to sometimes make unusual rules for something fantastical as part of the core identity of the game.

I don't mean to say that rules or balance don't matter, but that imagination does. The Kasatha in Starfinder impressed me by being a core race with four arms, and I want to see that idea in Pathfinder as well.

Things like centaurs and merfolk used to be symbolic of fantasy, and I just hate seeing them increasingly marginalized because playable races get the most spotlight, and it's easiest to make rules for another race with one head, two arms, two legs, and otherwise human shape.