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Hi!
I am creating a Large player character race that has the following game stats:
+2 STR, +2 CON, -2 DEX
Low Light Vision
Large Size (and all the bonuses and penalties that go with; to include,10' reach and 40' Speed)
Albeit this is just a "rough draft" but all of the Large humanoid races that I have seen in various books have an ECL of at least one. Is this JUST because of the Large size?
Pathfinder does not really use ECL but that is a bit much con, str and reach? To much really if ya ask me. At lest slow him to 30 due to dex and Pathfinder bumps one physical and one mental stat so look into moving one of them
Or, y'know, just keep using ECL. That's at least a +1 ECL, just from the Large size. It may be that there's nothing much else that's necessary, but ECL is frankly the only way to handle things like this short of creating "monstrous levels" a la Savage Species. In which case, it's pretty much the same thing only it can be played from level 1.
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Or just dial it down so it is simply in line with all other races. For example, some larger races gain all the other benefits (and none of the drawbacks) of a larger size but without the greater physical stats and reach. Such as Large size bonus to CMB (+1) but not the size penalty to AC (1). Bonuses to bullrush and overrun. A racial Lunge ability (per the feat) useable 1/Day for example and so on. Lots of ways to do it.
Reach alone would be reason enough for a +1 LA to races as it can lend a lot to combat abilities, if they were a melee class. A caster class, wouldn't be worth it. So LA fails to take this into account. Best to just dial the race down instead of making it a powerful large race of some kind.
Of course you could go racial levels, given your stats go with 1 racial level that gives large size and all benifits pluse one hit die, hmmmm forgot what do giants get for a hit die? In any case no I know of no large size races with out a ECL or racial level.
I don't think its a matter of policy of pathfinder not using ECL or RL, I think its a question of time. In either case ECL and RL levels work about the same as 3.5, except as a rule of thumb I usualy reduce each by one, of course that's beta, I don't have a strong enough feel for final to say for sure, but I'm leaning that way just to make my life that much easier.
TTFN DRE
A little off subject here... But why did Paizo hate level adjustments so much anyway? I for one never found them confusing. In fact I found them a great way to balance things out.
On subject now... The stat adjustments are fine. You might want to give the race the giant subtype for flavor... The reach comes with the territory, but you might want lower their speed to 30 to help balance things out.
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A little off subject here... But why did Paizo hate level adjustments so much anyway? I for one never found them confusing. In fact I found them a great way to balance things out.
LA have always been an issue. From no Hit Dice given (a half-celestial fighter really did miss out on all that HP), to taking on full multiple LA templates via infection (Lycanthropy or Vampirism) suddenly, to +1 LA for a Tiefling and their powers being a bonus at low levels turning into meaning very little at the high levels when the Tiefling Wizard 14 vs Human Wizard 15, making the Tiefling character miss out. Sure there were ways to balance these out with additional rules (Buying off LA with XP, Racial/Template classes and adding hit dice to them) but that didn't fix the issue. Best thing was to simply get rid of it and adjust everything to equivalency and allow classes, PrCs, and feats do their customization job.
Hi!
I am creating a Large player character race that has the following game stats:+2 STR, +2 CON, -2 DEX
Low Light Vision
Large Size (and all the bonuses and penalties that go with; to include,10' reach and 40' Speed)
Albeit this is just a "rough draft" but all of the Large humanoid races that I have seen in various books have an ECL of at least one. Is this JUST because of the Large size?
Yes. Large races generally have at least a +4 strength, higher con modifiers. They also get reach. They get bonuses on what is now CMD. Their bigger weapons do more damage. I am sure there are a few other things I cant remember right now.
I think that
+2 STR, +2 CON, -2 DEX
Large sized
No low light vision
Would be a perfect race with no ECL. You are a Very big human with no skill or feat bonuses. Giving up a feat and a skill point a level is a good trade off for the large size. As large you gain reach and larger attack dice but your AC goes down and it is harder to hit.
Sounds like ECL 0 to me.
The Plane touched get much nicer bonuses and most DMs suggest giving them an exp penalty for starting characters not an ECL shift.
Creative Director
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A little off subject here... But why did Paizo hate level adjustments so much anyway? I for one never found them confusing. In fact I found them a great way to balance things out.
It's not a matter of them being confusing, really. Ok; here goes a nice long-winded post... buckle up! :-)
The game is designed with the assumption that players will be playing human-shaped characters. Dungeons are designed so that they're for Small and Medium creaturs. Magic Items and weapons are sized for them as well. Further, game balance assumes players of races that have a similar amount of power and ability, not only that they're balanced against each other, but that they don't have other abilities like flight or fire breathing or teleportation or lots of attacks or a high natural armor bonus. When we design adventurs and supplements, we design them for a specific level of play, and in so doing know going in what the probable abilites of the PCs is going to be. If it's for 5th level, then we know that flight is not out of the question, but if it's for 3rd level, it probably is save for effects like levitation... so we can put in an encounter that, say, involves lots of jumping over pits without worrying too much that flying characters (or characters with unusually high Acrobatics scores) will bypass the encounter.
So that's one reason. Another has nothing to do with game balance at all. The type of stories we at Paizo enjoy reading and creating and the type of adventures we enjoy running and creating most assume the players are humans. We're fans of Greyhawk and the Forgotten realms, but not so much settings that start to have more unusual races like Eberron or Council of Wyrms. More importantly, our love of the genre is based heavily in fantasy fiction that features human protagonists. Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books, Clark Ashton Smith's tales, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar tales, etc. Even fiction that features prominent non-human characters we like tends to have those non-human characters be relatively humanlike in shape and power, such as China Mieville's Bas Lag stories or Tolkein's work. Campaigns that have what basically amounts to a circus for a party, with a minotaur and an elf and an awakened dire ape and an aranea and a hellcat and a half-fiend mimic, start to feel overly distracting; suddenly the story is no longer about the adventure, but why this strange group of creatures decided to work together and all of the problems they'll have fitting into a single society that accepts all of them at once.
SO! For those two reasons, really, we decided our base campaign setting, the setting that the PRPG rules are designed to support, would be humanocentric. Monsters are designed to be foes PCs fight or allies they befriend, not player character races, and that opens up an IMMENSE amount of freedom for us as regards monster design.
Now, all that said... I'm fully aware that's not the style of play that some players like. I know that there are some players who DO enjoy the wahoo or fun or strangeness of playing non-human races, just as there are players who enjoy playing psionic characters or epic-level characters. The PRPG is an immense book already, and we can't put everything into it. Just as it doesn't currently really support psionic characters or epic-level characters, it doesn't really support non-human characters. ALL of these variant rules systems could and have made for excellent books that expand the rules of the game, and I suspect that some day, we'll be doing rule books that DO expand the PRPG in these ways. Those books will be separate from the core rules though.
Finally, unless you design monsters with the assumption that they'll be used as PC races from the start, applying an ECL and an LA is really rather difficult; the implications of some monster powers makes it tough to balance, especially when you have high HD monsters with relatively few unusual powers, or low HD Monsters with lots of high level stuff. Worse, in my opinion, is the fact that as more and more unbalanced ECL and LA stuff got into the game, there was an implication that they WERE balanced, and that it was okay for PCs to play those classes and even encouraged. It undermined some GMs of the ability to decide what races were in and what ones were out, to a certain extent, "arming" players with actual rules that seemed to indicate that it was okay in some situations to play a dark naga or an otyugh in ANY setting. When a GM says "no," but the rules suggest "yes," you have a recipe for unhappy gamers.
All that said, monsters DO still work on the fundamentally same rules as anything else, and so it's absolutely possible to play monstrous PCs if you want. But whether or not a specific GM wants unusual races played by PCs in his game should be up to the GM, not up to the rules. Removing LA and ECL puts that decision squarely back in the GM's control. Both the PRPG and the Bestiary have sections that give GMs advice on how to handle this, and what happens if players want to play monsters. Furthermore, there's a fair amount of monsters in the Bestairy (such as goblins, lizardfolk, drow, tengus, orcs, tieflings, etc.) that are pretty close in power and shape and society to humans, and who would make EXCELLENT unusual and exotic player races; the PRPG lists those races, and the Bestiary has sections for many of them on how to play those races as PCs. In addition, the concept of using Leadership to attract a monstrous cohort is still a part of the game. There's a list of monsters who would work acceptably as cohorts in the PRPG, and a GM could use this list to grandfather in other monsters. This is more or less the only place the spectre of ECL remains, but in this case the acronym stands for something else: "Effective Cohort Level."
WHEW! Well, that's pretty much all of the reasoning behind our decision to remove ECL and larger races from the game. Again, it wasn't that we felt they were confusing; it's just that the game and Golarion weren't built for it.
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Something to consider if you want to keep them in line with the standard races, all the standard races have a +2 bonus to a physical stat and a +2 bonus to a mental stat.
Also, don't forget that the large size has stat mods of its own, so if the character is already +2 str and -2 dex, then he has a +2 str and -2 dex stat that comes with the size adjustment too.
Thats quite a bruiser.
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Something to consider if you want to keep them in line with the standard races, all the standard races have a +2 bonus to a physical stat and a +2 bonus to a mental stat.
Also, don't forget that the large size has stat mods of its own, so if the character is already +2 str and -2 dex, then he has a +2 str and -2 dex stat that comes with the size adjustment too.
Thats quite a bruiser.
The only advantage that I was going to give the race for being Large is the Reach and 40' Movement (I decided to scratch 40' movement) but give them the usual penalty to AC and all of the other penalties. Stats would be factored in already so no need to add or subtract due to size.
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Thanks for the response James. "The Tome", while very pretty and awesome, is already thick enough without adding pages for Bulette PC's or Spoonbenders. It's so massive that I put it in my backback for added weight when I go stairclimbing. :)
I would think that the upcoming bestiary has lots of notes on playable races, yes? Especially kobolds, right? ;)
Seriously. Please tell me the Truescales are getting some love. :)
Something to consider if you want to keep them in line with the standard races, all the standard races have a +2 bonus to a physical stat and a +2 bonus to a mental stat.
Also, don't forget that the large size has stat mods of its own, so if the character is already +2 str and -2 dex, then he has a +2 str and -2 dex stat that comes with the size adjustment too.
Thats quite a bruiser.
You only get the +2 Str and -2 Dex when the character changes in size. If the race is supposed to have a +4 str, -4 dex, and +2 con it would be laid out in the racial description.
I take it as written +2 str, -2 Dex, and +2 con.
It's not a matter of them being confusing, really. Ok; here goes a nice long-winded post... buckle up! :-)
....snip...
That's what I like the most about your Golarion and RPG designs !!
As I stated earlier, I am scrapping the project due to the nability to create a Large race without an ECL. Seemingly it can't be done.
One of the questions to take into account is also how well the other players deal with a new concept that might be slightly "unbalanced".
Some groups want everyone to have the same power level, while others just want to play their characters and look at a party member who is slightly better than them as being a benefit to the party. (Oh, wow, he has +1 HD and Reach...cool, now we have someone to get stuff off the really high shelves.) I've run a few point based games like GURPS and Mekton where one player will offer to short his character a few points to give another one the points he needs to build the character concept he really wants. ("Ohh, if only I had 3 more points, I wanted to speak Goblin." "Hey, can I give up three of mine? I really don;t need to have rope use. ThE halfling already has it and I can learn it later...")
The other concern, which was hinted at, is balancing adventures. In 3.5, we had a large character in a game I was running. Once he got Great Cleave, his 10' reach and the rediculous 3.5 Attacks of Opportunity rules made him an abusive character in melee. (And people who know me know how much I hate the AOO rules in general.)
Lastly, you have to decide how much the player will exploit the "unbalanced" benefits to their race. I did a game with a half-ogre who put his lowest stats into Con and STR. He wanted to play against type and it was a lot of fun. He was still a powerhouse (rolled well) but none of his stats were over 20...
In other words, you don;t have to scrap it as long as your players can deal with some of the restrictions and common sense too. (And unfortunately, not all can).
When a GM says "no," but the rules suggest "yes," you have a recipe for unhappy gamers.
Absolutely. This is also the problem that arose with the 15 quadrillion base and prestige classes.
When a GM says "no," but the rules suggest "yes," you have a recipe for unhappy gamers.Absolutely. This is also the problem that arose with the 15 quadrillion base and prestige classes.
Except that with a good group of gamers, the GM should be able to simply say "That's unbalanced or inappropriate for my campaign."
Personally, I dislike anyone playing Drow in my campaign. And definitly no Drow Rangers, Drow with two swords, or Drow who resemble ANY of Drzzts backstory...
That being said, I dislike gaming with GMs who ban core classes and races, or the basic world-specific races and classes from the campaign. I was going to join a 3.5 Eberron campaign, but the GM said that we coupld play any of the core or Eberron races and classes except Psionics of any kind, Monks, Barbarians, Druids, Artificers, Warforged, Shifters, and Kalashtar... I can understand not wanting psionics in the game (the 3.5 rules were a little wonky), but banning the rest of it almost makes it non-D&D and is pretty much non-Eberron, to me.
But banning other non-core stuff is perfectly fine and a good player group can work with that. No player "has to" play a particular race or character class. If they will only play if you let them take the uber-class or race from a spalt book, then they really aren;t good roleplayers, or you should at least ask them why they MUST play that type.
And if its a race you want to include for the game, thats different and you can balance the game to fit your desires. (OK, gang, you're all playing Bugbears...have fun. Actually, I love bugbears, ...and lizardmen...not really sure why.)
But as a GM, you should never feel pressured to let players force you to let them take some non-core stuff, and you can even put a restriction on some core stuff if you want. You just have to be fair and let them know from the beginning what you are changing so that someone doesn't get shafted designing a build based on something you banned.
OK, that was long winded, but it's my 2 cp.
Yes, I do understand the hardline approach and am currently trying to wrestle with it, but it's not easy. You don't want to play the bad guy too much. People are playing to have fun and as the DM, their fun, like it or not, is partially your responsibility. I'd say its your #1 responsibility that all others arise from. Striking that balance is hard.
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Yes, I do understand the hardline approach and am currently trying to wrestle with it, but it's not easy. You don't want to play the bad guy too much. People are playing to have fun and as the DM, their fun, like it or not, is partially your responsibility. I'd say its your #1 responsibility that all others arise from. Striking that balance is hard.
That is something that I wrestle with in my group! I have two guys ar are "Roll-Plaers" as opposed to "Role-Playrs". One of them seems to want to "have his cake and eat it too". He is playing an Elven Barbarian (which is odd in and of itself) whose parents left the "fast pace of the Elven life" to live with a human tribe (the only race that has a slower pace than elves are dragons and maybe giants). So he had forgone the elven traditions of wizardry, disciplined fighting, and and wanted to be a barbarian. Last session he announced that he wanted to add a level of wizard for his second level. I had to nip that in the bud! You see I only approve multi-classing if it makes sense. Since there is no wizard in the group and he has shunned the elven life-style how would he have access. I gave a resounding "No!"