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In all reality, they are probably under balanced is the general idea. They look strong, with two +2's and no -2, a spell like ability, and 3 Resistances, but those abilities are fairly circumstantial. Daylight 1/day, is a free torch 1/day.
The Resistances never improve, and are not the greatest choices of the five options, (electricity is probably the best). Generally overestimated in usefulness and importance.
Darkvision is nice, but other core races get it too.
Resistance to affects that targets Humanoids is botha blessing and a Curse, and after a few levels, mostly a Curse. You can not benefit from good affects, like Enlarge Person, and the affects that are directed at you often do not specify Humanoid the way that they tend to when players use them on monsters.
They however, do not get a lot of really cool and useful abilities that other races do, like Half-Orcs "I'm going to escape death and kill you", or Dwarves "I hate Orcs and Giants" and "I can kill them with my Axe even though I'm a Bard, 'cause I'ma Dwarf".
My thoughts are pretty much what Beckett said. They (so far at least) don't have the support the other races do and are much more limited in options compared to say humans or dwarves as well. I'd allow them at my table personally.
Please note that all the races that have two +2 and one -2 also have a bonus in a physical stat. Physical stats are mechanically better.
Wis+Cha is power-wise a pretty useless combo except for clerics.
But when I do play clerics, I tend to play humans or dwarves, for feats/skillpoints or weapons/survivability.
I give them a -2 to Con, personally, and I think that and the removal of their spell-like abilities makes them in-line with the lowest powerful elemental races. I add one of the optional tiefling racial traits from Council of Thieves #1, celestially themed, instead of the SLA. It's worked for us.
The two tieflings played at the table have had DR 2/Cold Iron and healed from negative and positive energy, which are both fine if not strong, for example.
I give them a -2 to Con, personally, and I think that and the removal of their spell-like abilities makes them in-line with the lowest powerful elemental races. I add one of the optional tiefling racial traits from Council of Thieves #1, celestially themed, instead of the SLA. It's worked for us.
The two tieflings played at the table have had DR 2/Cold Iron and healed from negative and positive energy, which are both fine if not strong, for example.
Note that the elemental races are weaker than the core races and the aasimar and tieflings are meant to be slightly more powerful.
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Both of the races are pretty weak considering the resistances and the sla are next to useless.
Usually disallowed for flavor reasons.:( They are by far my favorate flavor race. I hate Teiflings, but Aasimar are great, and I honestly wish they where a Core race.
I'm glad they're not. For a system that is basically setting-neutral to begin with, having an outsider amongst the base classes forces the presumption that aasimar/tieflings are as much a part of society and civilisation as the other core races as a default.
4e did that with tieflings and eventually the aasimar stand-ins, the devas. You may have seen the fallout over that.
Angel and devilkind are just as ordinary as humans and dwarves and so on. Uh...
That's actually not what being a race in the rulebooks is umbral reaver. All it's saying is that they are playable. That's it.
Then the race section would have to specifically call out that in the default generic setting, they are extraordinarily rare and don't have their own nation or major influence.
Unless you're playing Planescape, in which case the mundane sorts are the minority.
Addendum:
To further explain why I hold this point of view, I try to maintain the possibility of planetouched individuals as something exceedingly rare and never trivial. I abhor the idea of an aasimar that's just 'oh well, grandma was an angel and that's all there is to it.' The way I run things, planetouched are almost invariably tragic products of interplanar conspiracy, cosmic mistakes or insidious experimentation. They never simply are. They are made, not born. I have let players play similar things, but being special is not a freebie. It comes with strife and agony.
I discourage players from playing such unusual characters too often. At most there's only a single one in the party so that it isn't some kind of super-special sparkletown brigade. That individual is presented sufficient incentive not to lord their 'special favour' over the other players, or even over the other characters by their in-character actions. I prefer that players earn their specialness by in-game action, not by tacking a shiny label on their sheet at the start of the game.
For example, one player wanted to play the child of an angel in a low-level, non-planar war campaign. I gave in after persistent insistence but wrote this angelic heritage to be a sinister product of alien magic, using harvested outsider organs, instead of a straightforward magical lineage.
This even applies to a more limited degree to things like sorcerers and other 'oddball' character types. The more special unusualness you start with, the more difficult it will be to overcome the shadows of the past and become worthy of that weirdness.
This is not to say I force the spotlight on those characters. I give equal time to the other party members. However, the 'flavour' of time given tends toward a focus on that background and the impetus for the character to deal with the tremendous negative weight and surmount it.
In a way, picking a 'special' character option provides a source of roleplaying and plot right from the get go, whereas 'normals' must more often forge a path proactively. This is something I strongly encourage as well.
I've been rambling. TL;DR. If you want to be an aasimar in my game, you can't handwave your heritage for free. It costs.
(Also yes, the more 'sparkly' a character's setup, the more likely I am going to write their plot to bite them in the ass; or even better, bite their loved ones and leave them unscathed and riddled with guilt. Now stop angsting, tear down the gates of heaven and destroy the meddling archon that sought to manipulate mortal affairs 'for the greater good' in front of the very gods themselves!)
This is just one way of playing and it's my preference. At no point do I suggest that it's for everyone. The one thing I do prefer is that supernaturally unusual things like aasimars are kept out of the casual eye of players even if they are available, to discourage a general assumption that they're okay to play without consequence.
Daylights not as good a spell as darkness unless your opponents are using darkness, mechanically their resists are ok but their stats are weak.
With the advent of the blood of angels book in the players companion and the advanced race guide out soon they may get some options that make them more attractive. If the non core races get options as powerful as some of the alternate racial features in the apg and some additional favoured class bonuses they may be more competative. Aasimar may well be the red headed step-child anyway as the elemental races have better stat distribution.
Aasimar with +1/3 smite evil damage as a racial feature would be awesome.
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Actually, I kind of see his/her point. I hated Teiflings in 4E even before it came out. I do like that Aasimar are much less common, which is part of my appeal towards them, and I would like them to remain rare/uncommon.
At the same time, yes, I was more meaning that I wish they where a automatically allowed race, more or less.
Please remember that the entries in the Bestiary that say "...as Characters" are not intended to mean player characters. Rather, it indicates races appropriate for non-player characters. In PF jargon that means baddies who get their power from class levels instead of baseline hit dice.
This is a common misconception. Remember that the Bestiary should, in theory, be off-limits to players. This possibly excludes the summoned monsters and animal companions and familiars, if the GM is generous.
The Advanced Race Guide will have a player-race version of the Aasimar, I believe. Until then, the only races that have any design consideration for balance as player characters are the core book player races.
So no, the Aasimars are not balanced, as a verb. The balancing has not been done, because they are not a player race.
Actually, I kind of see her point. I hated Teiflings in 4E even before it came out. I do like that Aasimar are much less common, which is part of my appeal towards them, and I would like them to remain rare/uncommon.
At the same time, yes, I was more meaning that I wish they where a automatically allowed race, more or less.
Fixt.
Also, I finished editing my post well after more people replied, including you. Take a re-read in case you have further comment.
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Actually, I kind of see her point. I hated Teiflings in 4E even before it came out. I do like that Aasimar are much less common, which is part of my appeal towards them, and I would like them to remain rare/uncommon.
At the same time, yes, I was more meaning that I wish they where a automatically allowed race, more or less.
Fixt.
Also, I finished editing my post well after more people replied, including you. Take a re-read in case you have further comment.
Yes ma'am. I do, but it is going to have to wait a few minutes. Thanks for the heads up. :)
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Usually disallowed for flavor reasons.:( They are by far my favorate flavor race. I hate Teiflings, but Aasimar are great, and I honestly wish they where a Core race.I'm glad they're not. For a system that is basically setting-neutral to begin with, having an outsider amongst the base classes forces the presumption that aasimar/tieflings are as much a part of society and civilisation as the other core races as a default.
4e did that with tieflings and eventually the aasimar stand-ins, the devas. You may have seen the fallout over that.
Angel and devilkind are just as ordinary as humans and dwarves and so on. Uh...
What Wotc did was make make nations of tieflings and aasimars. As isolated individuals, like half orcs or half elves, who happen to be slightly more common among adventurers because they are freaks of nature, they would work well.
And yes, I want that boon for PFS.
Do you have any proof of this, what so ever?
Aasimars are generally (and correctly) considered to be under powered.
Yes. Beyond simply parsing the game term "character", it has been said by rules developers in threads very much like this. I will search the forums for an instance.
When I said that they were not balanced, I did not mean overpowered or underpowered. I meant they were not intended as a player race, and therefore not balanced (verb, past tense) as a player race. Balance is a tricky word that means different things to different people.
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Be very careful — when criticizing the game design — that you aren't taking an overly player-centric view of things. Assuming that "character" means "player" is a common mistake of this type. Another example is the question/complaint: "Who would ever take teamwork feats?!" The answer is NPCs. The game is full of little treats for the player-who-does-the-most-work (GM) and players often misapprehend the purpose of those treats.
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I agree that it should be rare (but when I say that I've meaning both not be something the party runs into often and also rare enough that they are adventures).
One of the aspects I love them for is that they fill the role as "the chosen one" really well. Humans with a special destiny, but not so much helped out by <the fates> to make it easy. With the exception that they are one of the only races with a Wis bonus, I like them purely for fluff reasons.
I don't mind having built in plot hooks. I mean I often hand my DM a proverbial list of possible plot hooks I would like them to develope through the game.
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Do you have any proof of this, what so ever?
Aasimars are generally (and correctly) considered to be under powered.
Yes. Beyond simply parsing the game term "character", it has been said by rules developers in threads very much like this. I will search the forums for an instance.
When I said that they were not balanced, I did not mean overpowered or underpowered. I meant they were not intended as a player race, and therefore not balanced (verb, past tense) as a player race. Balance is a tricky word that means different things to different people.
Actually, :P, Aasimars have been specifically "rebalanced" for PC play. In 3E, Aasimar got All Simple and Martial Weapons Prof, All Armor and All Shield Prof for free as part of their Race. [Native Outsider. Outsiders are concidered Prof in any weapons/Armor listed in their Entry, and all versions beneath it basically.] Paizo specifically changed the Aasimar froma Paladin to a Cleric for that reason.
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Actually, :P, Aasimars have been specifically "rebalanced" for PC play. In 3E, Aasimar got All Simple and Martial Weapons Prof, All Armor and All Shield Prof for free as part of their Race. [Native Outsider. Outsiders are concidered Prof in any weapons/Armor listed in their Entry, and all versions beneath it basically.] Paizo specifically changed the Aasimar froma Paladin to a Cleric for that reason.
I refer you to the link above. All bets are off when using non-player races as player characters. It is not permitted by the RAW, although there is much wordcount offered to GMs who will permit it.
The Aasimar favored class may have been made for NPCs, as I can think of at least one canonical Golarion Aasimar cleric NPC who would benefit.
Guys, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. I've seen this thread for drow, for tieflings, and so on. It's always the same answer.
If you want book-legal monster races, you need to wait for the Advanced Race Guide. The entries in the Bestiary are not intended for player characters.
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This Planescape fan is always sad to <hear anything from a Prime Material perspective>
Going back to the OP -- I do not find it unbalanced for all the reasons the first posters posted. They will probably seem a little powerful at 1st-3rd level with some of the resistances, but soon that will wash out.
But it IS up to your GM since they are not a player race in the core rulebook.
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Nothing's automatically allowed by everyone. You can have a campaign that excludes elves for instance despite their presence in the gaming world.
Right, but elves are allowed "by default" and aasimar are disallowed "by default."
This is because the CR assumptions do not account for monster races.
I really like the Paizo approach, not enshrining monster PC rules but giving GMs enough info to make the call if they want. But there are no enshrined monster PC rules and that's that!
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Only if they make their acrobatics check.
(My appologies if the joke was alredy made)
Are aasimars balanced?Yes.
+1
The resistances are useless at early levels; how often will you see those energies being used? Daylight? Not my first choice for a racial ability. Ever.
I agree that they shouldn't have their own societies and all, because that defeats the purpose of having the rare instance of mortal/celestial mingling.
I am playing a tiefling character in a game, and the only real change was to remove the native outsider type, and instead replace it with 'humanoid (tiefling.' Has worked fairly well.
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I am playing a tiefling character in a game, and the only real change was to remove the native outsider type, and instead replace it with 'humanoid (tiefling.' Has worked fairly well.
If there's any change that should be made to aasimar and tieflings with a concern for balance, it's that.
That's how a number of us have rolled with those races in our games as well.
They can't be ressed, their outsiders=sucks
They are also immune to humanoid-affecting spells, like charm person or dominate person.
For a racial ability, that seems pretty huge.
Native Outsiders, they are fine in that regard.
What player race am I thinking of then?
(no other race really seems as well geared for cleric duty)
Dwarves, humans, half elves, and even half orcs are all, in my humble opinion, better clerics, in that order. The only thing Aasimar bring to the table is extremely low level casting daylight, which can be amazingly handy I admit, take it from someone who has ran a few in 3.5/pathfinder because I enjoyed the flavour.
Aasimars are beloved at my tables it seems. I had five Aasimar characters in three campaigns.
And it's easy to understand why. Their +4/-0 attribute factor is very beneficial to a good number of caster classes, especially to Clerics. They have elemental resistances, which never is a bad thing, they are one of the few humanoid non-ugly, non-small races which have darkvision, their skill bonuses are for two of the most used skills in the game. Their ability to cast Daylight at their character level as caster level is really helpful against the great number of foes who can cast Darkness or Deeper Darkness.
Their "disadvantages" don't come up that often. Not being able to be enlarged/reduced is not a concern that often crops up for casters and off the cuff I cannot think of many other beneficial spells which only affect humanoids. I will probably be corrected quite soon on that account. ^^
Does that mean that they are unbalanced? I don't think so, but it makes them a very attractive choice for players who want to be non-intelligence based casters. It never hurts to be more perceptive and attractive.
Aasimars advantages are waaaaaay overstated. If anything, they are pretty inflexible and very average.
So balanced, to slightly sub-par.
So are there no formal level adjustments in Pathfinder? If not, what do DMs do when they allow a race that has a level adjustment in 3.5?