Does the fact that a Human makes an awesome Sorcerer due to extra spells, that a Half-Elf makes an amazing summoner due to the extra evolution points, or that a Half-Orc makes a rockin' cool inquisitor due to the bonus to intimidate and monster lore count for something?
My point: Should racial favored class bonuses be bought with RP? If not, what would be a good way of adding these to a race?
y'know, i hadn't considered that. if that was worth a point, and skilled was only 3, humans look a little more in line... and if the ability to pick ANY bonus feat is worth 5 (which i think looks a little more in line considering how flexible that is) skilled could only be worth 2, and that makes a little more sense, right?
You know, alternate favored class bonus falls under optional rules. Adding it in as RP would add in a lot of weird baggage especially if you play with a GM who doesn't use alternate racial favored class bonuses (from now on shall be shortened to ARFCB). Paying RP for ARFCB would also further shoehorn races into specific classes because they get special bonuses to one class but not others to avoid raising the RP for their race. Paying RP for ARFCB is also kick to the player because their race has been weakened to pay for options that they are potentially never going to use.
True, but not every elf is a spellcaster and gets to use Elven magic either.
I have no idea how you'd cost this, but I strongly agree.
Favored Class bonus is a huge source of power in some cases, and races without them will be at a big disadvantage. GMs need a toolbox for coming up with them.
I think as long as there are no overpowered options, it's okay.
Of course, some of them are overpowered. However, I think the solution is simply to cut them down to size.
After all, we can't know how many favoured class options will follow, especially not if we include §PP material.
Should the elves from the core rules have to pay extra RP because a later book introduced a really powerful favoured class options that give elven gunslingers more grit points? If a halfling wilder gets to add +1 to wild surge, does that mean that halflings in games that don't even use psionic rules are now more powerful?
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I know that for myself, when I was rolling up an Oracle for a new game recently, what made me choose Human was not the bonus skill point (minor importance), and it was not the extra feat (very nice certainly, but it was just 1 additional feat over the course of the character's life)... it was the +1 spell known (at -1 max spell level) each level instead of 1 HP or 1 skill point. To judge how significant that is, look at the feat that gives 1 additional spell known at max spell level, or 2 at -1 spell level or less. That bonus spell for being human is therefore worth 1/2 a feat. By the time you reach 12th level, that's 12 bonus spells, the equivalent of 6 additional feats! If you reach 20th (we never do, we always stop somewhere between 12th - 15th) that's 20 spells and the same as 10 additional feats!
That alone is what made me choose Human for my Oracle, and IMO any races built under this system will be inferior to Core races if they don't take something like that into account.
You know, alternate favored class bonus falls under optional rules.
Homebrew race creation also falls under optional rules. So if the GM created the race and added a favored class bonus option to the race, chances are he's a GM who uses that optional rule. ;-)
I don't think favored class bonuses should cost RP.
You might be right. I think they can be powerful enough that it could warrant it, but they're a sort of "freebie" that can be tacked on to a race after creation.
If I were a GM designing a race for my players to use and I knew my players would be interested in those options, I would just design my own using the APG as a baseline.
I suppose that's the best we can do, atm. Would be nice if there was something official, though.
Favored Class bonus is a huge source of power in some cases, and races without them will be at a big disadvantage. GMs need a toolbox for coming up with them.
Agreed. Certainly stronger than any language option. (Oh, those poor Paizo people; we give them so much crap over every little thing.)
I think as long as there are no overpowered options, it's okay.
Can we pay more RP to make them overpowered options? :)
That alone is what made me choose Human for my Oracle, and IMO any races built under this system will be inferior to Core races if they don't take something like that into account.
Exactly, these options rock. It'd be great if Paizo mentioned this somewhere in the Advanced Race Guide. (Hopefully they'll also add Magus, Gunslinger, etc. to the core races.)
But how to go about adding them? How many favored classes should a race have? Any rhyme or reason to which classes you pick? How about the power of the option? What if we want to create options not listed in the APG? I'd like a general guideline for this process, but perhaps just doing some copy/paste from the APG would be the most balanced approach.