I'd go with something other than charisma. If they're not as well-liked, give them a penalty to diplomacy, but don't make them less self-confident, imposing, and so on, because of this.
Plus, some of them need some better offset. Yes, I speak especially about earth!
I'd actually go with one mental, one physical, like other races.
Earth: +2 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Dex: Like the rocks they embody, they're hard to move. This inflexibility also makes them slow. (-2 Int would work, too).
FC: Fighter, ClericWater: +2 Str, +2 Cha, -2 Wis: Water is forceful, able to overcome everything with time. It also means that it's fickle, not able to concentrate on anything for long, meaning it's hard for them to notice things or to resist being moved themselves in turn.
FC: Barbarian, BardFire: +2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Cha: Fire is quick and bright, a force of swift destruction but also a symbol for creativity. On the other hand, it is brash, not caring who or what it hurts.
FC: Wizard, RogueAir: +2 Dex, +2 Wis, -2 Str: Air is swift, everywhere, seeing anything, and able to flow around anything, so it's hard to affect it. On the other hand, it's also hard for it to affect things itself.
FC: Ranger, RogueIf only this was L5R, its attributes are aligned to the elements.
I'm down with this. Now, guys, lets make genasi (some whatever you want to call them) a part of pathfinder
I'm down with this. Now, guys, lets make genasi (some whatever you want to call them) a part of pathfinderI'd go with something other than charisma. If they're not as well-liked, give them a penalty to diplomacy, but don't make them less self-confident, imposing, and so on, because of this.
Plus, some of them need some better offset. Yes, I speak especially about earth!
I'd actually go with one mental, one physical, like other races.
Earth: +2 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Dex: Like the rocks they embody, they're hard to move. This inflexibility also makes them slow. (-2 Int would work, too).
FC: Fighter, ClericWater: +2 Str, +2 Cha, -2 Wis: Water is forceful, able to overcome everything with time. It also means that it's fickle, not able to concentrate on anything for long, meaning it's hard for them to notice things or to resist being moved themselves in turn.
FC: Barbarian, BardFire: +2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Cha: Fire is quick and bright, a force of swift destruction but also a symbol for creativity. On the other hand, it is brash, not caring who or what it hurts.
FC: Wizard, RogueAir: +2 Dex, +2 Wis, -2 Str: Air is swift, everywhere, seeing anything, and able to flow around anything, so it's hard to affect it. On the other hand, it's also hard for it to affect things itself.
FC: Ranger, RogueIf only this was L5R, its attributes are aligned to the elements.
Yes first let's find a name, genasi sounds more like a cold than like a player race.
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Not to mention Genasai might not fall under OGL and might be copyright towards WotC, which would indeed suck. For that matter I wonder what races they are allowed to carry over. Goliaths are Eberron, so are they allowed? What about Shifters?
I'd be curious to know exactly how these kinds of things work.
I'd personally like to see fairies as a playable race myself, though flying can sometimes add in the need for a LA
Goliaths are not Eberron, they were introduced in the Races of Stone supplement. I am not sure why aasimir and tieflings are OK, but genasi wouldn't be, but genasi could use a different name anywho
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Non HD races are not an issue -- you can 'unlock' their racial abilities as they advance, much like the githyanki, or savage species handles it. That's not the issue. The major issue is how racial HD and level adjustments interact.
I know that I may be about to open a can of worms here, but one of the good things that came out of 4e was the racial feats that give races their special abilities. So, for example, we could have racial feats that grant the drow spell resistance, or the ability to cast darkness, and then just assume that most npc drow have taken those feats.
I know that I may be about to open a can of worms here, but one of the good things that came out of 4e was the racial feats that give races their special abilities.
They were around long before 4e.
I know that I may be about to open a can of worms here, but one of the good things that came out of 4e was the racial feats that give races their special abilities.
They were around long before 4e.
True but 4e pushed each monster having 'special powers' that make them a unique encounter. In PfRPG, I think we would call them Racial Feats. Stated differently, I have only heard good comments about and I am personally enjoying about all the new 'Racial Feats' in 4e. The Classic Monsters revisited seemed to push life style and back story aspects of monsters. 4e seems to push the mosters fighting differently. I would encourage monster 'customization/racial feats/schtick powers' in PfRPG to make fighting Orcs different than fighting Goblins. However, it might be impractical.
True but 4e pushed each monster having 'special powers' that make them a unique encounter.
I prefer what Paizo does to make each encounter a unique one: They make encounters unique.
And when I'm not running Modules, I do it myself. Don't really need special powers for monsters. Their fluff and behaviour and encounter circumstances derived from that fluff is much preferrable to "AWESOME POWERS!"
The Classic Monsters revisited seemed to push life style and back story aspects of monsters. 4e seems to push the mosters fighting differently.
I think they can fight differently without a new, unique power for each monster. I prefer to pay designers for coming up with great flavour.
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Gah, I'd be more than happy to never see a drow or orc PC in Pathfinder.
Bleh.
I agree with the Drow...they fit in Eberron, they don't fit in Golarrion, they're pure evil in Golarion...pure, uncut Golarion evil...
As far as Genasi, teiflings aasimar and others, with the power increase of the base races, there's really no conversion required.
I changed my Warforged for Eberron to be +2 any score, to show that they were crafted by their original purpose. I suppose I could actually hard-code that to add the +2 based upon class, but perhaps not. Of course 95% were created as Fighters.
Monte Cook's Sibeccai are nice but they are Jackals and not Wolves.I just noticed that the Arcana Unearthed races are OGL. That's kind of neat.
I'm not hugely fond of the Dracha, Giants or Litorians, and Verriks are kind of generic-feeling, but the Faen, Mojh and Sibbecai are very cool.
I don't have that book, any good?
Most everything in it is OGL so you could check it out pretty much for free if you look around for it.
Just because they may not be official PCs, does not mean you can't have them in a home game if the GM allows it and is able to adapt the NPCs and monsters. But if the GM say 'NO', don't push it. (This means you!!)
You didn't have to do that....
Sheesh leave me out of this unless I join willingly!We want to establish the baseline first; that means we want to establish the game where players play humans or close-to-human characters. That's the goal of the PF RPG. Our campaign world is the type where we assume players play these races as well.
The ECL and level adjustment mechanic is very likely to get kicked out as well. It's a troublesome mechanic, I think, unless every player is playing an equal LA race, it creates some really awkward lopsided feeling stuff. Especially since I don't think that all monsters SHOULD be designed to be equally viable as PC races; they should be designed to be monsters.
The best way to handle playing non-standard races is to build them that way. I think Savage Species had a few really interesting ideas on how to do so, but I think it didn't go far enough.
THAT said... one of the reasons we upped the power of the base races a bit from 3.5 in PF RPG is to make it so that humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, half-orcs, and half-elves are on par with the current crop of LA +1 races. So that you can run a tiefling or an orc side by side with an elf or a human without balance problems.
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I have now joined in.
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I just noticed that the Arcana Unearthed races are OGL. That's kind of neat.I don't have that book, any good?
The magic system is glorious. The best d20 based magic system I've ever seen, and I'm not even exagerrating. Instead of Metamagic, a caster with a certain spell on his list can cast a 'diminished' version of the spell using a spell slot one lower, or a 'heightened' version of that spell by using a spell slot one higher (which means that each spell has a standard effect, and then a single line description at the end of what happens if you cast it with a higher or lower level slot). There are also Spell Templates you can learn as feats that allow you to enhance all of the spells of a certain type that you cast, usually at some additional cost.
Some of the classes (Witch, Totem-Warrior, Champion) have a half-dozen or more subtypes (Iron Witch, Winter Witch, Bear Totem-Warrior, Hawk Totem-Warrior, Champion of Darkness, Champion of Justice, etc). Others, like the Magister, Greenbond and Warmain are just darn cool, despite not being as variable.
Other classes, like the Oathsworn and Akashic, sound like a role-players delight, but weren't for me. (My one chance to play the game, at a convention, I got stuck with an Akashic in an adventure that was *very* unfriendly to the class. My friend next to be got to play a Magister and did something like 300 pts of damage by converting every single spell-slot he had to heightened or diminished sorcerous blasts. My Akashic had weapons, class abilities and a magic item that didn't affect any of the opponents in the adventure, so I managed to do a total of 3 points of damage in the course of four hours, and in the one chance the character had to make a skill roll (skillmonkey class, based on accessing skills from 'the akashic record'), the MVP Magister was better at that particular skill anyway! It was like an adventure scientifically designed to make the Akashic player hate the game or something!)
Not every one of Monte's ideas bowled me over (see, Akashic), and the idea of Ceremony feats and whatnot did nothing for me (way too many feats with very small utility, IMO), nor did the concept of Rituals (pseudo-magical rites that confer small benefits for, IMO, *way* too expensive costs in feats and cash expenditure), but the races included some imaginative ideas (the Faen, in particular, are just awesome), and seeing races like the Spellscales show up makes me smile, since they end up looking like Monte's Mojh with the serial numbers filed off. The classes includes stuff that appeals to me, and stuff that doesn't, which is probably for the best, as there are core classes I don't care for either, and they're obviously popular with people who are not me.
He also adds a new weapon type ('dire' weapons, all barbed and viciously-designed to do extra damage), and some new armor types for the heavy-armor-wearing Warmain class, which are pretty nifty.
Unlike, say, Relics & Rituals from Sword & Sorcery, which had evocative text in every entry, Arcana Unearthed is so crammed full of rules material that there is scant room for flavor. It's pretty much a variant PHB that you can plug-n-play into any setting, if you want.