Not original, but thought it deserved a thread.
If you were a GM and one of your player's wanted to play a 16 RP race while everyone else wanted to play a 10 RP race, would you consider balancing it by having them sacrifice other things? Furthermore, would you allow a player to play an advanced race (20 RP) while everyone else has a 10 RP race?
Things you could trade for more RP:
Points from Point Buy (1 RP per point?)
1st level feat (3 RP?)
Traits (1 RP?)
Also, would you limit it? I suppose all homebrew races would be at the GM's discretion, so you could deny whatever you view as abusing the system. Ideally everyone would play equal races so you wouldn't have to resort to this, but just thought it would be a good backup plan.
Other idea: Rather than penalizing the person with a higher RP race, what kind of bonuses would you give the other players bonuses? Give them extra points, a feat, traits, or extra RP abilities? Maybe make an "Advanced Core Race" template?
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I don't want to rain on the thread, because I think it is a merit worthy thread. I'm just not sure we should erode the boundary between race selection and the rest of character creation. More and varied trade offs seem like a good idea, but they should be trade offs within the race that would be the same for all members of the race, not trade offs with non-race related character features. Like eating away at point buy points 1) doesn't scale with point buy types, and 2) will mean different things for different characters built from the same race, which seems contrary to them being the same race.
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One approach (race ability):
Adaptation Difficulty (-3 RP)
Prerequisites: None
Effect: Unlike most races, you do not gain a feat at first level.
Probably better approach (feat):
Powerful Race
Benefit: You treat your race as having 4 RP less than it actually does for all purposes, including your CR and how you balance against your fellow party members.
Special: You can take this feat multiple times. Its effects stack.
One approach (race ability):
Adaptation Difficulty (-3 RP)
Prerequisites: None
Effect: Unlike most races, you do not gain a feat at first level.Probably better approach (feat):
Powerful Race
Benefit: You treat your race as having 4 RP less than it actually does for all purposes, including your CR and how you balance against your fellow party members.
Special: You can take this feat multiple times. Its effects stack.
Ooh, I like Adaptation Difficulty. It works within the race creation process and unlike Traits and Point Buy, it's universal to all players everywhere.
EDIT: Powerful Race just seems... Odd. It feels like a weird after the fact kind of thing. I guess it would feel more natural if it said something like "This feat can only be taken at 1st level."
EDIT EDIT: And then taking it multiple times? So you'd take it at 3rd level to take a penalty later on? I'd prefer solutions that attempt to "fix the problem" at creation.
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The first one is better for races that are built for players. The second is better for players that want to play something strange that isn't built for players, but don't want to fall behind the party for doing so.
EDIT: I guess what I'm saying is, you don't want to give every monstrous race out there "Adaptation Difficulty", because that makes no sense. It's only good if you want to make something that is normally too powerful (like Undead) into a player race.
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If you were a GM and one of your player's wanted to play a 16 RP race while everyone else wanted to play a 10 RP race, would you consider balancing it by having them sacrifice other things?
Sure. Let's call it twenty bucks.
Between seeing flaw systems used in other games, and even in the playtesting of my own race design system for Pathfinder, I've found flaws to be... flawed. The real problem is that flaws gravitate towards either being mitigated by the player through other build choices or play strategy, or the flaw is so cumbersome that it actually makes the normal flow of play and stories harder to pull off.
That's why I love nWoD's flaw system: You can pick up flaws, and won't get any bonus points for it. Not right away. Instead, if the flaw ever comes up at play and seriously inconveniences the character, you get bonus XP.
Wanna play a character with extreme fear of heights in a campaign that takes places around a small village in the Netherlands? Sure! Your disadvantage will not inconvenience you - but neither will you get anything out of it.
Between seeing flaw systems used in other games, and even in the playtesting of my own race design system for Pathfinder, I've found flaws to be... flawed. The real problem is that flaws gravitate towards either being mitigated by the player through other build choices or play strategy, or the flaw is so cumbersome that it actually makes the normal flow of play and stories harder to pull off.That's why I love nWoD's flaw system: You can pick up flaws, and won't get any bonus points for it. Not right away. Instead, if the flaw ever comes up at play and seriously inconveniences the character, you get bonus XP.
Wanna play a character with extreme fear of heights in a campaign that takes places around a small village in the Netherlands? Sure! Your disadvantage will not inconvenience you - but neither will you get anything out of it.
Wow, that is clever. Actually suffering to gain a benefit. Who'd'a'thunk? :B
...and I chuckled a bit from that one. Having Dutch parents is full of win. (Most of Holland is below sea level, no?)
I don't want to rain on the thread, because I think it is a merit worthy thread. I'm just not sure we should erode the boundary between race selection and the rest of character creation. More and varied trade offs seem like a good idea, but they should be trade offs within the race that would be the same for all members of the race, not trade offs with non-race related character features. Like eating away at point buy points 1) doesn't scale with point buy types, and 2) will mean different things for different characters built from the same race, which seems contrary to them being the same race.
This is a good point that came up in playtesting. The problem that was emerging as people made races is that they started making races that fit certain classes, and so the whole endeavor became one of just extending the optimization process.
I had to keep keep pulling the playtesters back and have them ask the question, "If you were setting up a big campaign that you expected to run for a long time, would you allow your race into it as a PC rac? How would the races abilities shape the world and the play of the campaign?"
I agree entirely that that sort of munchkin-ness is undesired. I guess the situation that came to my head is that everyone in my group wanted to play a normal race while one of of our players wanted to play an actual dragon. Our GM resorted to making her a dragon with an ECL of +5. I don't like this solution; especially since she is cleric. So instead of a 6th level cleric, she's a 1st level cleric, 5th level dragon. I would have much preferred devising a race with less racial features, and possibly fewer traits, feats, and points.
So this isn't for munchkin reasons, but as an easy way for a GM to cater to a (hate to use the term) "roleplayer" who liked the concept.
That's why I love nWoD's flaw system: You can pick up flaws, and won't get any bonus points for it. Not right away. Instead, if the flaw ever comes up at play and seriously inconveniences the character, you get bonus XP.
It was quite refreshing after the oWoD's flaw system that was walking abuse going to happen... Cross that. It was flaw system that walking abuse happening all the time. Like Nosferatu with permanently retracted fangs (woohoo, getting points for being recognizable as a vampire... uh, wait, Nosferatu) and no reflection (yay, I can stalk women from behind when they put on their make up without the mirror breaking from my mere presence).
GURPS with it greatly expanded advantages/disadvantages system specifically stated that each disadvantage has to be actually approved by GM as it is very prone to terrible abuse without oversight (like buying an advantage that counters disdvatange with certain limitations that make the advantage cheaper than disdvantage but won't affect the game.
Ahh OWoD, I remember the days of opening your pages and taking your merit/flaw system firmly in my hands and melting away any semblance of balance. I think my fear with this topic is that people will start boiling down races into "RP". Once that happens you'll have someone say "hey I would like to play X" and the rest of the game instead of saying that could be interesting to have in the party will say "Wait that's 6 RP higher than the rest of us! Give us something to make up for it!". I like the idea of a Point System for designing new races to make a semblance of balance. I just don't want to see it devolve into something that will make playing nonstandard races a "He's playing something awesome gimme something to make up for that!".
For instance in the Zeitgeist AP from En World on of the countries has Minotaurs as active members of society. I want to run this ap eventually, so I decided two things my players could play a Minotaur (large size and all) or they can play a Young Minotaur and have the young template applied making them medium among other things. Out of this scenario I forsee more of them preferring the young as opposed to adult, as being large size makes life difficult.
Not original, but thought it deserved a thread.
If you were a GM and one of your player's wanted to play a 16 RP race while everyone else wanted to play a 10 RP race, would you consider balancing it by having them sacrifice other things? Furthermore, would you allow a player to play an advanced race (20 RP) while everyone else has a 10 RP race?
Things you could trade for more RP:
Points from Point Buy (1 RP per point?)
1st level feat (3 RP?)
Traits (1 RP?)Also, would you limit it? I suppose all homebrew races would be at the GM's discretion, so you could deny whatever you view as abusing the system. Ideally everyone would play equal races so you wouldn't have to resort to this, but just thought it would be a good backup plan.
Other idea: Rather than penalizing the person with a higher RP race, what kind of bonuses would you give the other players bonuses? Give them extra points, a feat, traits, or extra RP abilities? Maybe make an "Advanced Core Race" template?
I don't like to mess with base game mechanics such as feats. I would probably dock them XP. It would also depend on what the extra 6 points were used for. I might not apply any penalties at all. Some of the abilities appear to be overpriced to me.
One method that's been considered in other threads is this:
Start with a high point buy, say 30.
Subtract your race's racial points total from the point buy.
A 10 cost race gets a 20 point buy.
A 13 cost race gets a 17 point buy.
And so on.
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One method that's been considered in other threads is this:
Start with a high point buy, say 30.
Subtract your race's racial points total from the point buy.
A 10 cost race gets a 20 point buy.
A 13 cost race gets a 17 point buy.
And so on.
I think I may be stealing this for my next campaign....
*shifty eyes*
NINJA VANISH *smoke screen*
I like the idea of making RP equal ability score buy points. It might require re-evaluating RP trait value but it need to be done anyway so it won't add much more work than is required.
One method that's been considered in other threads is this:
Start with a high point buy, say 30.
Subtract your race's racial points total from the point buy.
A 10 cost race gets a 20 point buy.
A 13 cost race gets a 17 point buy.
And so on.
Did this in my upcoming version of my game, but didn't THINK it out like you just did. This also allows the creation of a wider range of races. 10 points? How about '0' points? Then you'll have 30 points to blow on Stats!
One method that's been considered in other threads is this:
Start with a high point buy, say 30.
Subtract your race's racial points total from the point buy.
A 10 cost race gets a 20 point buy.
A 13 cost race gets a 17 point buy.
And so on.
I checked this out. It doesn't quite work. The problem is the diminishing returns of the point buy. For example...
20 point buy combined with a standard stat spread:
Str 9
Dex 16
Con 14
Int 20
Wis 8
Cha 5
10 point buy combined with the 4 RP Advanced Modifiers
Str 9
Dex 16
Con 16
Int 20
Wis 8
Cha 5
...yeah. Costs 6 less points, and you get 2 more Con. This is only mildly optimized. Let's try hyper-optimized.
2 point buy combined with 28 RP
Str 8
Dex 12
Con 14
Int 32
Wis 10
Cha 6
Well, I suppose your GM would have to approve your +16 Int Race, but I think you get the idea. Diminishing returns with point buy means they do not perfectly equate as RP.
I don't want to dismiss the idea as a whole, but keep an eye on what you're players do if you let them use this system. O_O
Perhaps a fix like this:
First 19 points you can get as one for one deal: For example, you can get a character with:
11 point buy, 19 RP
or
16 point buy, 14 RP
etc
To get your RP up to 20, (advanced power level) it costs 5 extra RP. For example, you can get a charcter with:
5 point buy, 20 RP
or
3 point buy, 22 RP.
etc.
Still not balanced, but a step in the right direction. Problems really show up when you reach the advanced power level, so make sure there's some kind of entry fee to get there.
Wouldn't it be easier to balance the party by letting the rest of the players play 'mutant' core races? They just get to pick X RPs to add to their starting class to get the uber class they'd love.
I imagine the whole point of this system is to allow normal races and advanced/monstrous races to mix comfortably. If you're going that route you might as well make it a 20 point buy and a 20 RP buy and call it a night. (Which is admittedly a preferable and more balanced route)
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@The Chort: My assumption with these rules is that the GM is making custom races, not that the players get to choose what they want. These rules are not intended to prevent hyper-optimization, because that option should never be in the player's hands. Thus the optimization the players may do is less of a risk using the Point Buy of X - RP.