Race Creation Pricing!

[Darkholme]

I dont have the time to go into alot of detail on the pricing and examine each ability, like I'd like to, however, I do have a few things to say:

Issue 1: The scale isnt sensitive enough:

The 10-point scale is too small, and not fine grain enough.

I get that they don't want to have fractional costs. My argument there is to increase the number of points you get, and re-price the abilities accordingly.

So instead of a base race being roughly 10 points (because we all know they aren't equal in power, though they are relatively close) Give us more points! I'd say add another 0 to the end for simplicity, but adjusting the scale for humans to be 50 or even 30 points would hugely improve granularity.

Issue 2: Individual Ability prices:

Its a little heavy reading, because its not very well organized, but Here.
Its not perfect, but Upper Krust's Challenging Challenge ratings is the best guide to race and class design I've ever read. Things are well thought out, and well priced. UK pointed out a couple things that he thought were over or under priced after this revision, but they were few. I remember something to do with turn resistance, and that he overpriced iterative attacks past your second attack.

Point is, (while designed with 3.5 in mind) it does a great job of pricing abilities against eachother.

The scale it uses is based on Challenge Ratings, so .42 is .42 of a Challenge Rating. Regardless of the scale, if you look at how things are priced in relation to eachother, you'll see what I mean. It will prove useful to the people critiquing the prices, as well as the people at Paizo who are looking to revise their own prices.

I very much like the basis here, but I'll say up front that I think it could use some fine tuning.

[meatrace]

Personally I wish that the race type (humanoid, fey, etc.) had sub-breakdowns of the granted abilities. Then I know how to balance something that I want to make as fey plus, or not quite undead.

Also, yes, granularity. I know they want race points to feel like point buy points and have that same sort of scale but there are too many issues with it to justify its existence IMO. +1 for putting another 0 on the end.

[Darkholme]

Right: don't give us the price for a "template" that includes multiple parts, give us the prices of all the little things making up the template.

Same goes for any multi-parter, like large size: How much are large weapons worth? How much are the cmb modifiers worth? the penalties(individually)?

Its useful to summmarize some of the common ones, but we need the specifics priced out so we can do it ourselves.

[Darkholme]

So I started a Comparison. Anyone who wants to continue this is welcome to. Post it up here if you do though as youre going, so we can keep advancing it. Its a bit much for me to do it all on my own.

I'm comparing the PF Race Building rules against UK's CCR. I adjusted the scale to match the pf guide that gives a 10pt average, using some rough math at the bottom. If someone wants to get a slightly more precise modifier, be my guest, they will just have to calculate the average price of paizo races under CCR, which shouldnt be that hard. If you plug it into the sheet, itll auto calculate everything based off of that. I'm satisfied that its close at the moment but if someone wants to go from close to exact, then awesome.

If youre curious about the power of 3.5e races though, UK priced the abilities as such

Dwarf:

Dwarf Racial Traits = CR +0.51
Ability Scores (Total +/-0) CR +/-0
Attack Bonus (limited) CR +0.04
Darkvision CR +0.2
Dodge Bonus (limited) CR +0.04
Movement (-10 ft Speed) CR -0.1
Movement Unrestricted by Armor CR +0.05
Poison Save (+2) CR +0.02
Save Bonus vs. Magic (+2) CR +0.1
Skill Bonuses (+6) CR +0.12
Stability CR +0.04

Elf:

Elf Racial Traits = CR +0.36
Ability Scores (Total +/-0) CR +/-0
Low-Light Vision CR +0.1
Save Bonus vs. Enchantment Spells (+2) CR +0.04
Sleep Immunity CR +0.1
Skill Bonuses (+6) CR +0.12

Gnome:

Gnome Racial Traits = CR +0.3625
Ability Scores (Total +/-0) CR +/-0
Attack Bonus (limited) CR +0.04
Dodge Bonus (limited) CR +0.04
Difficulty Class Bonus (to Illusions) CR +0.05
Low-Light Vision CR +0.1
Save Bonus vs. Illusions (+2) CR +0.04
Skill Bonuses (+4) CR +0.08
Small Size (Modified) CR +/-0
Spell-like Abilities CR +0.0125

Half-Elf:

Half-Elf Racial Traits = CR +0.38
Low-Light Vision CR +0.1
Save Bonus vs. Enchantment Spells (+2) CR +0.04
Sleep Immunity CR +0.1
Skill Bonuses (+7) CR +0.14

Half-Orc:

Half-Orc Racial Traits = CR +/-0
Ability Scores (Total -2) CR -0.2
Darkvision CR +0.2

Halfling:

Halfling Racial Traits = CR +0.48
Ability Scores (Total +/-0) CR +/-0
Attack Bonus (limited) CR +0.1
Morale Bonus (+2) (limited) CR +0.02
Save Bonus (+1) CR +0.2
Skill Bonuses (+8) CR +0.16
Small Size (Modified) CR +/-0

Human:

Human Racial Traits = CR +0.3
Bonus Feat CR +0.2
Skill Bonuses (5+) CR +0.1

Again, thats based on what they got in 3.5, but it shows that they're unequal, and those numbers roughly match up with 3.5e play experience for me.
The Extra Ability Scores in PF are worth +.2, so if you added those in (and hope the other pf features even out roughly), you get an average of...
0.5418
so if .5418 is what works out to 10 points in pathfinder (estimation math here, someone feel free to be more precise) Multiply the numbers in excel by 18.45748 to get costs in paizo-scale.

It gives another perspective on how powerful individual abilities are in relation to eachother at least.

It also gives you an idea how much many abilities that arent in the playtest should cost compared to eachother.

I find myself disliking the package model they used. I'd rather be able to pick and choose the individual elements to make whatever I'm trying to make instead of having to adhere to preset packages.

I welcome anyone who wants to add comparisons to LPJs pricing scheme as well. If we have the 3 views on what any given thing is worth in terms of points, it will make it much easier to decide what is reasonable for each one.

Likewise, it will be easier for Paizo to see anywhere their pricing is off.

It would be easier if the Paizo pricing was more transparent. I'm having a hard time figuring out the values of the component parts inside the packages.

[VR]

Just looked at UK's CCR, thanks for posting it. It's very Champions, but I think its better to offer the pure numbers for people to crunch instead of templates. Templates are great for quick creation, and could make a nice chapter, but templates have to be put aside to really create a race from scratch.

I'm totally going to support the Advanced Racial guide because they are finally thinking about such things, but I already making a list of house rules like ignoring prerequisits that involve sub-types. Most of these prerequisites don't even make sense; why can only shadow races take damage in the sun? why can't I make a undead that has that drawback?

They seem to just take templates and break them up into categories and mix them together, making a more eclectic system than what they had before. However, it is better than going off of the monster manual. My husband wanted to create a sand giant, so we were looking in the 3.5 manual, and they had so many traits that had nothing to do with the base race that it was no surprise it was a +4 adjustment.