| Muspellsheimr |
The purpose of this post is to provide an analysis and suggestions to the race building system. It does not (for the most part) address any single ability, over- or under-costed options, etc. Any point values presented are used to illustrate and provide examples, not to be balanced or regarded as final.
Creating a Baseline
Although this has been brought up before (and apparently going to be fixed), I would like to quickly rehash that using a category of races (in this case, the base 7 in the core book), and adjusting the value of certain abilities to shoehorn them into the same total is a bad idea for a variety of reasons. Instead, select a single race to use as a baseline - I would use Human - to measure everything against.
Determine what Racial Point total you want this base race to use, and work from there. Currently, the system is set to use 10 as this base value. Unfortunately, this leaves little room to work with for individual values (assuming you want to avoid fractions or decimals - something I would strongly suggest). Increasing this base to 30 RP gives a much greater range of values we can work with, while remaining small enough to not appear daunting.
Ability Scores
As it stands now, restricting the ability racial modifiers to predetermined categories severely limits the flexibility of the system for no real gain. Having a separate 'advanced ability score bonuses' section is essentially unnecessary. Providing the foundation for building your own arrays would be much more useful. Simply put, have the value of each possible modifier presented, and have the player or GM assign the modifiers as needed, adding the total for the final cost.
To illustrate this, lets setup an outline:
-2 to a fixed ability is worth -8 points
+0 is our baseline, costing 0 points
+2 to a fixed ability costs 8 points
Because a +2 to an ability of your choice is obviously more valuable than a +2 to Intelligence, it should cost more. However, because it is not actually any more powerful, the cost of such versatility needs to be minor. Lets set it at a 25% markup (this can be extended to everything else as well - a chosen feat is worth 25% more than a fixed feat, for example).
+2 to a chosen ability costs 10 points
Next, we examine modifiers of greater values. The value of a +4 to one ability is generally superior to that of +2 to two separate abilities, so it needs to cost more. It is probably not, however, the equivalent to three separate +2's. A +4 modifier is worth 2.5 times that of a +2. This can be extended as far as is needed a +6 is worth 2.5 times that of a +4, etc.
-4 to a fixed ability is worth -20 points
+4 to a fixed ability costs 20 points
+4 to a chosen ability costs 25 points
This also gives us an important limiting factor - you cannot take two +2's to a single ability for a +4, you cannot take a +2 and a +4 to a single ability for a +6. Simply put, they do not stack. This should also apply to the flexible modifiers to prevent munchkinism - a race can have +2 strength, and a +2 chosen, but that chosen cannot also be placed into strength.
Creature Types & Subtypes
Another common complaint I have seen is the creature type prerequisites found on many abilities. These complaints are justified - having these restrictions adds little or nothing to the system, and so should be used sparingly, if at all.
Having said that, one of my complaints is that the selection of subtypes is extremely limited. I would strongly suggest pricing out every type and subtype, as the sum of it's component abilities. If space constraints are an issue, include a page reference to the Beastiary appendix instead of the full description.
Special Abilities & other Racial Features
Similar to my complaint about types & subtypes, this section feels incomplete, at best. Include values for every racial feature of the 'base' races, as well as the key-worded abilities in the Beastiary appendix 3. Be as nondescript as possible (ie +2 [Skill] instead of +2 Perception), and remember the nonlinear price scaling I mentioned before (fast healing 10 is worth more than twice fast healing 5).
This incompleteness not only applies to the abilities listed, but individual abilities themselves. For example, damage reduction is missing b/p/s weapon types and materials (although some of those are listed as entirely separate abilities), and dr /-.
Templates, Power Level, and Point Buy
First, whenever I say 'build points' or BP, I am specifically referring to the attribute points used in point-buy character generation. Also, when I say 'level adjustment', I am speaking of the Beastiary appendix 4 rules of using the monster's CR as 'class levels', and generally assume LA and CR are equivalent.
I have noticed that, while doable, the system doesn't currently support racial templates independently of a base race very well. Just something to look at.
When determining the value of the seven base races and other CR 0 creatures (such as Tiefling), it is essentially unavoidable that they will not all come out the same. Instead, we will have a range of RP, say 25 to 35, that is the equivalent of a +0 LA. This is largely unimportant for players who prefer dice rolling for character creation, as 'close enough' is probably assumed. For those who use point buy, however, relative balance between races is probably going to be more of a concern. Conveniently, pricing out races gives us an excellent way to tie in to point-buy generation, balance out races, and provide an alternative to the level adjustment system all at once (level adjustment generally being a clumsy but 'good enough' balance for more powerful races).
To do so, we simply need to find the RP to BP value conversion. For this, assume that 5 RP is worth 2 build points. Now, lets say that humans are worth 30 RP, while dwarves are worth 35 and halflings are 25. So in a 20 point-buy game, playing a dwarf will 'cost' 2 BP to account for being a stronger race, while halflings are given an additional 2 BP; the dwarf would be built with 18 BP, the human with 20, and the halfling with 22.
This is easily extended to replace a level adjustment system. If 10 RP is worth +1 CR, then instead of increasing the characters effective level / reducing class level, playing a +1 LA race 'costs' 4 build points.
Final Thoughts
At this point, the only thing really preventing this race creation system from also being an advanced monster creation system is the lack of racial hit dice. Increase the range of supported sizes from 'tiny' to 'large' to include all size categories, and tie racial hit dice into the creature types (outsider racial hit dice are 5 RP each, humanoid are 3 RP each) and you have a very versatile and effective system.