Standard - Advanced - Monstrous: for traits

[thebwt]

There seems to be a battle of limit philosophy in this document. First you have traits where the limits are only imposed by the RPs you are willing to spend. then in abilities you specify hard limits in the form of ‘advanced only’ or ‘monsterous only’. Those limits are great and keep powerful abilities off the table for most games. This needs to be spread to the rest of the system.

I am operating from the notion that 'standard' means 'could have been in PFRPG'. There isn't a perfect way to say race a is more powerful than race b; however there are a few constants in the PFRPG that we can gauge how similar we are to those races.

The PFRPG has a few hard ceilings in it's races. All humanoid, max speed high 30 and low of 20, medium or small size, +2 to two ability(one phys, one mental) -2 to one ability or floating +2.

Non-core standard races shouldn't be "better... faster... stronger". They should just be a remix. A way to make wood elves, green elves, moon elves, etc.

so then I think types need limiting like so:

types:

standard:
-Humanoid

Advanced:
-Fey
-Monstrous Humanoid
-Outsider (native)
-Plant

Monsterous:
-Construct
-Undead

Mainly this is just to make humanoid the only standard race type available and then separate out those types that have less than 6 ability scores. Not being humanoid is kinda a big deal: all the core races are humanoid, you get immunity to "<verb> person" spells, you get immunity to "mass <verb> person spells".

speeds are mostly okay:

“Base speed” traits seem good, but I feel that anything that gives you a base speed should be here, and things that modify those speeds go in abilities. This could make for interesting speed arrays (20 land, 20 climb), (15 fly, 15 climb, 20 land) and so on. Obviously I’d go with only 30 land for standard.

sizes:

Standard:
-Medium
-Small
Advanced:
-Large
Monsterous:
-Tiny (maybe leave it advanced?)

Ability scores:

Standard:
-Standard Modifiers
-Human Heritage Modifier
Advanced/Monsterous:
-I don't even know... I'm honestly more worried about keeping Stanrd sane atm

The PFRPG gives two variations on stat arrays, we should stick to those variations.

Basically I feel that 'standard' power level should be more restricted to being remixes of the same old same old. I also feel that this document, as is, is confused over standard/advanced. Perhaps the issue is that Power level is simultaneously RP total and attribute qualification, perhaps the two concepts should be decoupled.

[Christina Morris]

This seems to have been the general philosophy that Paizo went into the race builder with. It's impossible to make a race that has claws or hooves if you're trying to make a "standard" race because they classified these abilities as "advanced."

Five or six (on a quick skim of the list) of my homebrew races are a result "advanced" races, because they have something (like claws) that the system doesn't allow otherwise. This creates a problem because, ideally, I want to be able to balance these races against the seven core races.

With the current system, I can't do that because the point values for advanced (and monstrous) abilities are set assuming you're building a race of that type. (This is to allow a construct race, which spends a lot on that type, to still have points left over to spend on abilities, so I get it, in theory).

I want to be able to say my kobolds (who have claws--the horror!) are balanced with core elves, so that I can share them with other DMs, without the fear that they'll not fit into their table properly. For that to be possible, I need to know what claws or +10 base land speed, or flight, and all the other abilities are worth to a race assuming the standard assumption.

[thebwt]

So specify RP total, specify power level. Don't keep the coupled.

Anyone else see my point on restricting ability scores/sizes/types by power level?