So, thanks to the feedback on the forums about my Centaur, I feel like poking around with the Minotaur. I've liked Minotaurs as a race since 3.0, when I threw the party up against a Minotaur monk and had a lot of fun with it. I'd like to make them more or less playable, and I was a big fan of Savage Species' minotaur class write-up. That's how I was going to approach it, but I've been considering trying something less penalizing to minotaur casters. For example:
* Type: Minotaurs are Monstrous Humanoids
* Size: Minotaurs are medium sized
* +2 STR, +2 DEX, -4 INT, -2 CHA. Minotaurs are strong and agile, but slow witted and insular.
* Speed: 30'.
* Darkvision 60'
* Weapon Proficiency: A minotaur is proficient with the greataxe and treats all weapons with "minotaur" in the name as martial weapons.
* Natural Weapons: Gore (1d6). The minotaur treats its gore attack as a secondary natural weapon.
* Goring Charge: A charging minotaur may make a gore attack as a primary natural weapon.
* Feat Requirement: Upon reaching 7th level, a minotaur must take the Full Size feat (see below).
* Natural Cunning: A minotaur is never lost, and is immune to maze spells and effects.
* Scent: A minotaur has the scent special quality.
Coupled with the minotaur stats, the minotaur would have some racial feats that would allow it to more closely resemble the minotaur of the Monster Manual, or otherwise diversify...
Brilliance of Thal Khet [Racial]
You are smarter than your kin, just like Thal Khet, the great minotaur who brought civilization to your race.
Prerequisites: Minotaur, must be taken at first level
Benefits: You gain a +2 bonus to your Intelligence. This reduces your racial INT penalty to a total of -2.
Normal: Minotaurs suffer a -4 penalty to their Intelligence.
Full Size [Racial]
You have finally matured into a full-sized minotaur.
Prerequisites: Minotaur, 7th level character
Benefit: You gain the Giant Creature template, as per the Pathfinder Bestiary. Your size increases to large, you gain a +4 STR and +4 CON, a -2 DEX, and +3 Natural Armor bonus. Your Gore attack's damage increases to 1d8. You gain the benefits of large size.
Special: A minotaur character must take this feat as his seventh level feat.
Improved Natural Cunning [Racial]
Your natural cunning allows you to avoid surprise attacks.
Prerequisite: Natural Cunning, Character level 3
Benefit: You gain the Uncanny Dodge ability. You are never caught flat-footed.
Special: If you already have Uncanny Dodge from another source, you instead gain Improved Uncanny Dodge, as per the Rogue description.
Minotaur's Powerful Charge [Racial]
Your goring charges are devastatingly powerful.
Prerequisite: Minotaur, STR 16, BAB +1, Powerful Charge (Eberron Campaign Setting)
Benefit: You double the bonus damage dice from the powerful charge feat, but only when attacking with your Gore attack.
So, thoughts?
The general power seems to be balanced. As a gm, I would allow it in my game. Maybe the race could benefit from some skill bonus, like intimidate and perception or sense motive (survival too, after all, he's never lost).
I was thinking about how they don't have the PFRPG's standard skill bonuses. Probably put in a racial +2 on Survival, Knowledge (Dungeoneering), and Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) to represent their affinity with caverns and mazes as well as their tracker nature.
Edit: Actually, when you're tracking with scent, you get a bonus by default, so perhaps a racial bonus to the skill would be a bit of overkill...
Bumping for feedback, and with a slightly revised stat set:
* Size: Minotaurs are medium sized
* +2 STR, +2 DEX, -4 INT, -2 CHA. Minotaurs are strong and agile, but slow witted and insular.
* Speed: 30'.
* Darkvision 60'
* Weapon Proficiency: A minotaur is proficient with the greataxe and treats all weapons with "minotaur" in the name as martial weapons.
* Natural Weapons: Gore (1d6). The minotaur treats its gore attack as a secondary natural weapon.
* Goring Charge: A charging minotaur may make a gore attack as a primary natural weapon.
* Feat Requirement: Upon reaching 7th level, a minotaur must take the Full Size feat (see first post).
* Natural Cunning: A minotaur is never lost, and is immune to maze spells and effects.
* A minotaur receives a +2 Racial bonus on Knowledge (Architecture & Engineering) and Knowledge (Dungeoneering) checks. Minotaurs spend much of their lives in both natural and manufactured mazes, and have an innate understanding of the workings of such constructions and their surrounding environs.
* Scent: A minotaur has the scent special quality. This grants them special benefits when tracking using survival.
I'm still thinking that, even with the Brilliance of Tal Khet racial feat, up in the first post, their stat bonus/penalty ratio may be too much. I may knock out their Charisma penalty, or decrease their INT penalty to -2 (making the racial feat eliminate it outright). Alternatively, I could add an additional stat bonus, but I think that might go too far.
Not too sure about forcing them to take a specific feat. Other non-LA races aren't forced to spend a feat choice, so it makes them the odd exception.
A simplier idea might be to just give them the powerful build feature.
Not to poke holes, but I typically find any race that has bonuses to both STR and DEX a bit unbalanced, especially in typical races that lean toward fighter types. Also, I'm not sure what you base your concept of minotaurs from, I see them as generally very strong but of typically average dexterity, nothing greater than human norm. Due to these, I'd removed the Dex bonus and rework the mental stats to have less overwhelming negatives. I'd probably switch it to +2 Str, -2 Cha to reflect a general strength above average and a standard surly nature.
As for the 7th level forced feat, I like how it reflects the growth of the creature, but this assumes that PC is a young minotaur moving into his more mature nature. I'm not sure how it would reflect an old minotaur advancing the same level.
The rest I tend to like, simply reflecting one of my favorite races.
Overall, very good write-up. Well-balanced, good on the look-and-feel. I agree that going heavy on the physical and light on the mental base stat mods might be a BIT unwieldy, but I still like the build.
Were I to make suggestions:
Take out the mandatory 7th level feat and replace it to optional. Not all Minotaurs should HAVE to go mature. And in adventuring games, maturity isn't always handled by age or level or any arbitrary thing. (e.g. A 19 year old minotaur has just as much chance of making 7th level in a week as a 25 year old minotaur... having maturity as a function of level, therefore, seems a bit off to my perception)
Add at least one racial skill bonus (as previously suggested in this thread) I'd go with Dungeoneering and/or Survival.
Maybe a racial enemy. Though I'm not sure which race, honestly.
Also, just as a 'fluff' thing, add in a flat bonus to saves vs. Maze
That's my two coppers
The reason for the mandate feat is, quite frankly, I don't want minotaurs to somehow go their entire lives being medium. Minotaurs are large creatures. They should become large at some point in the game, because that's what they are. It's too good to give out at first level, but I feel it needs to be that way. Otherwise, you'll have all the minotaurs' wise elder casters being medium their entire lives, and that just bothers me flat out. Minotaurs are large. They have to become that way. A mandatory feat is at least a better way to go about it than a level adjustment.
The bonus to DEX is entirely because they just are more dexterous. Look at the minotaur in the monster manual. Dex is 10. For a large creature, that's above average. When the minotaur becomes large size and gains the Giant creature template, it takes a penalty to DEX. The initial bonus offsets this and correctly accounts for that. Minotaurs aren't lumbering, clumsy brutes - that's a mistake their foes don't live to make again.
So, in that regard, there is logic behind both. Minotaurs have to become large. It's the natural default. An "elder" minotaur, one who's already reached maturity, would already be large, so this does hedge that out as a possible option unless you're playing a middle-level game to start with, but it's either that or a level adjustment that magically goes away.
Perhaps the Full Size feat should require character level 3, and be a feat that minotaurs have to take by 7th level - they can take it earlier, or postpone it a little. But they're going to become large size - minotaur arcanists can't get away with not doing so.
I'm specifically trying to still replicate the general stats and what-not of the monster manual minotaur, here. These aren't minitaurs from Krynn or 4.0 - they're large creatures. With Pathfinder, monstrous humanoid racial hit dice are rather comparable to warrior hit dice with a better save, so I figured that they don't really need to suck up the racial hit dice inherent to the race by default (that's also one of the biggest problems for caster minotaurs). The level adjustment can be broken down and turned into feats to allow minotaurs to get a little less minotaur-y if they want (by not taking Powerful Charge or Improved Natural Cunning, for example, or by taking Brilliance of Tal Khet, which makes them smarter than the average minotaur).
Taking seven fighter levels as a minotaur, and purchasing Improved Natural Cunning, Full Size, and Minotaur's Powerful Charge, you'd have a minotaur very close to the minotaur straight out of the 3.5 Monster manual - you'd be down 2 points of Strength and 2 points of natural armor, you'd have one extra hit die, and you'd have some extra feats. More or less, it's remarkably even, thanks largely to the Giant Size template. And that's pretty much what I want. But, like I said, I don't want the caster classes just NOT taking Full Size and never actually growing to, well, full size just because they have mechanical advantages for being medium instead.
As for an in-game reasoning for adventuring minotaurs getting big quickly, there's a couple of things - my campaigns usually don't have PCs leveling 10 levels in a week. Most of my campaigns span months or years and never break 10th level, so I'm not terribly concerned on that end. And, for additional rationale, this is something I wrote for the minotaur racial description back when I was using the Savage Species racial level progression instead of considering something like this:
They grow slowly, and reach adolescence at the age of twenty years, at which time they are typically still only 5 1/2 to 6 feet tall. Around this time, their horns begin to grow as well. Over the course of the next few years they grow rapidly, gaining an extra foot and a half of height and their horns become larger and more lethal. For whatever reason, stress and hardship accelerate this growth, and it is not uncommon for adolescent minotaur adventurers to reach their full size within a year.
I think that covers it pretty well. I mean, we accept that elves who don't start adventuring until they're 120 years old can somehow be on a level playing field with a human who just reached maturity last week, so a reverse of that makes plenty of sense too.
The reason for the mandate feat is, quite frankly, I don't want minotaurs to somehow go their entire lives being medium. Minotaurs are large creatures. They should become large at some point in the game, because that's what they are. It's too good to give out at first level, but I feel it needs to be that way. Otherwise, you'll have all the minotaurs' wise elder casters being medium their entire lives, and that just bothers me flat out. Minotaurs are large. They have to become that way. A mandatory feat is at least a better way to go about it than a level adjustment.
The bonus to DEX is entirely because they just are more dexterous. Look at the minotaur in the monster manual. Dex is 10. For a large creature, that's above average. When the minotaur becomes large size and gains the Giant creature template, it takes a penalty to DEX. The initial bonus offsets this and correctly accounts for that. Minotaurs aren't lumbering, clumsy brutes - that's a mistake their foes don't live to make again.
So, in that regard, there is logic behind both. Minotaurs have to become large. It's the natural default. An "elder" minotaur, one who's already reached maturity, would already be large, so this does hedge that out as a possible option unless you're playing a middle-level game to start with, but it's either that or a level adjustment that magically goes away.
It seems there's a considerable amount of background and rules in order to simply allow the minotaurs to grow from medium to large at 7th level. Why not do the opposite and have mature adventuring minotaurs be large already (in your last post I think it stated that they come into proper maturity at age 20) then come into their own as large beings. Something like for the 1st-x levels they are still developing and simply haven't reached their full strength and hardiness. Then at level x they have the option to take a feat called Power of the Minotaur, Rite of Passage, or Might of the Bull, or something that reflects a minotaur realizing his full potential, which is the theme as I understand it.
Using that system you can not only have wise old minotaurs that are still not strong and still have human level dexterity because they never took the feat and you don't end up with low level characters having overblown strength and dexterity scores. The dexterity problem comes only from the Giant Creature Template you're looking at, in 3.5 Minotaurs did not lose any dexterity for being Large, they lose -1 to their AC for it, but not due to dexterity loss. The Giant Creature Template is simply stating that creatures which have that template are larger than their normal species. For instance an alligator that is a very large specimen for it species, or a minotaur which stands head and shoulders above all minotaurs. Something with this template is an outsized version of the standard creature and meant to reflect that with added str, con, hp, and a bit of clumsiness(dex), not to reflect any type large creature. This also allows the Dodge (negating the large creature -1 one) feat to reflect a particularly nimble Minotaur as opposed to the entire race being above normal in dexterity.
The only allusion to a standard large creature dex penalty I can find is this quote from the MM under monster creation: 'In general, the bigger a creature gets, the higher its strength and constitution score and the lower its dexterity. Exceptions abound.' And on table 5-1 of the MM, it shows that a typical large creature will range from 6-17, but does not give an inherent -2 to dex, it's implied, but gives explicit room for exceptions, obviously the minotaur with its non-penalized dexterity falls into this exception.
Hope that helps :)
Large size gives reach, larger weapons, and an increase in CMB and CMD. The latter two items aren't terribly problematic, but large size is absolutely more than a first level character should have. 10' reach (20' with a reach weapon) and you're just giving it all away.
And being large sized always yields a penalty to dex. Enlarge person - +2 STR, -2 DEX. Advancing a size category - +4 STR, -2 DEX. In general, large size = lower dexterity, comparatively speaking.
I do not particularly want large minotaurs out of the gate - it generally necessitates greater stat increases, and it gives out large sized reach at levels that no other character can accomplish anything like it for more than a few rounds a day. It would be an almost de facto melee race, trumping pretty much every other one out of the gate. And it would mean I'd have to transform more of the racial benefits into feats just to try and compensate, which would put a minotaur behind in terms of feats.
I like it. Adding it to my pile of stuff to try out.