I've read plenty of comments, and feed back on how the system works/how it should work, but has anyone played with their Custom Built Race yet?
I know I've yet to- ... 'game day' isn't till Sunday- and even then no ones trying out these new rules. (Maybe if one of the characters die, we could see some Custom Racy goodness, but I'm not about to put my characters head on the chopping block).
Basically, I want to know.. has anyone really PLAYtested this yet? and if so.. how did the game go?
I've read plenty of comments, and feed back on how the system works/how it should work, but has anyone played with their Custom Built Race yet?
I know I've yet to- ... 'game day' isn't till Sunday- and even then no ones trying out these new rules. (Maybe if one of the characters die, we could see some Custom Racy goodness, but I'm not about to put my characters head on the chopping block).
Basically, I want to know.. has anyone really PLAYtested this yet? and if so.. how did the game go?
I'm going to do this in my Saturday Game we will have one human character to play as a control and every one else will either make a race or play one of my pre-built races.
I've been a player in a friend's campaign that takes place in the Breath of Fire Universe, and he had created the races prior to the playtest using similar races from Pathfinder as a guideline. When the playtest came out I did a quick breakdown to check out the RP totals of the various races and they came out right around where I thought they would, though none of the BoF races had problematic traits like Hardy. One thing that this breakdown brought to light to me was that Wolfen and Woren, while coming out at exactly 10 RP, would technically be treated as Advanced races because they both had Scent. This has led me to the conclusion that I think for the most part there shouldn't be a tiered system for the racial abilities, but the total RP should determine what tier a race should be regardless of what abilities they actually have (The stat increase abilities an exception to this, as otherwise people would always want a xenophobic race with a +10 in the stat that they plan on using the most.)
My 2c.
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I'm loving people's build, but as a PFS player cannot actually playtest. Really this will be hard to playtest, as you need people starting a new home-based campaign wanting to modify the world to have specific races available. And those are honestly few; I think anything not intended for PFS play will have far more trouble getting tested.
With all of that said, we can look at the races being made and see they tend to be balanced. Based on my play with Dwarves hardy is something I would want on every race for 1 point, and specific skills are WAY overcosted. But that is just a gut reaction, based on reasons people pick races. I feel dwarf is an overpowered race in the first place; they are the ONLY race I consider in min-max builds that does not have a bonus in their primary attribute. It does seem the designers went TOO far out of their way to justify all base-races as 10 points, realized dwarves would come out high (and half-orca / halflings low), so had to make hardy 1 point to justify everything else dwarves get.
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The playtest will go as follows: People playing well thought out balanced races will play exactly as the established races.
Those min/max'd to hell and back will play just like any other cheese build, with even more options available to maximize stats. The racial build rules, as written, are not just power creep, they are a power explosion.
Either way, it will be up to the GM to know when to tell a player NO.
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The playtest will go as follows: People playing well thought out balanced races will play exactly as the established races.
Those min/max'd to hell and back will play just like any other cheese build, with even more options available to maximize stats. The racial build rules, as written, are not just power creep, they are a power explosion.
Either way, it will be up to the GM to know when to tell a player NO.
I will point out that this is a system for GMs to create races for his or her campaign, not another thing for players to min/max their characters. We are not changing the general rules from “roll your abilities, choose your race, and choose your class” to “roll your abilities, build your race, and choose your class.”
The fact this is an optional rules system to aid GM worldbuilding seems to have been largely lost in this playtest. As is the fact that there are power-level categories for racial abilities and traits, thematic categories for racial abilities with limits to the number you can take in each category based on power level, and prerequisites and limitations on some abilities.
This is not as system that will ever be legal in PFS. It is not a fundamental change to how you make characters. It is an optional tool for GMs. It is not a new build tool for combat optimization monkeys.
I don’t say that in a bad way. I tend to be one of those monkeys too.
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I haven't playtested the rules in a game yet. However, I did take one of my custom races and re-stat it out using the playtest rules. It looked exactly the same and came in at exactly 10 points.
I've been using the race for two years in my campaign and we never thought it was too wimpy/powerful, so at the moment I'm pretty impressed.
I haven't playtested the rules in a game yet. However, I did take one of my custom races and re-stat it out using the playtest rules. It looked exactly the same and came in at exactly 10 points.
I've been using the race for two years in my campaign and we never thought it was too wimpy/powerful, so at the moment I'm pretty impressed.
Sounds like a rather good, albeit unintentional, play test :)
Meanwhile, I apologize for being blind but where is the play test document? Normally I see a link to them right on the first page of the forums but somehow I'm not finding it.
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I haven't playtested the rules in a game yet. However, I did take one of my custom races and re-stat it out using the playtest rules. It looked exactly the same and came in at exactly 10 points.
I've been using the race for two years in my campaign and we never thought it was too wimpy/powerful, so at the moment I'm pretty impressed.
Sounds like a rather good, albeit unintentional, play test :)
Meanwhile, I apologize for being blind but where is the play test document? Normally I see a link to them right on the first page of the forums but somehow I'm not finding it.
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I will point out that this is a system for GMs to create races for his or her campaign, not another thing for players to min/max their characters. We are not changing the general rules from “roll your abilities, choose your race, and choose your class” to “roll your abilities, build your race, and choose your class.”
1. It needs to be clearly labeled as such. If not, every munchkin showing up for a non-PFS game is going to bring a custom race that just happens to perfectly match their characters focus.
2. Any reasonably competent DM can already add in custom races to their home brew worlds, using current races as guidelines or not as they see fit. This can already be done with a far greater degree of versatility and granularity than the presented guidelines allow for.
3. The guidelines, as written, provide zero balance. They merely provide a framework for justifying unbalanced builds. Balanced races have never needed justification; they have always been a staple of new worlds.
Most of my complaints will simply vanish if #1 is prefixed to the rules when published. If clearly labeled as a DM tool to assist with world building and not a character creation tool, most of the issues will be easier to deal with. I can just point to the prefix and say, "these options were never intended for player races."
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@artanthos, by the same argument all adventures are useless since the DM can just make up every adventure right?
The honest truth is that most of us aren't super-creative nor do we have the confidence to just make things up and believe them balanced.
Also the rules do say it. It dosen't matter how big a font Paizo uses the munchkins will ignore it.