Different starting bonuses / penalties for different powered races


Advanced Race Guide Playtest


There are several races with character creation stats that are more powerful than the core races. Yet some people might want to play one of these. I immediately think of Aasimar and Kobolds as the two extremes. So what I want to suggest is to include a mechanic in the ARG to counteract the racial imbalance created when using such races.

Depending on the amount of RP above or below the player race default of 10 such characters should get different bonuses or penalties for character creation.

I don't want to give the any ultimate numbers but for example lets take the value of the human bonus feat as a point of reference. A racial bonus feat costs 4 RP.
So lets say we are dealing with a two races, one that costs 14 RP and another that only amounts to 6 RP.
The one that costs 6 RP gets its difference back as a bonus, for which an extra feat at level 1 would be appropriate if we assume that 4 RP is the appropriate cost for an extra feat.
The 14 RP race would get its difference as a penalty, so a 14 RP Player character would have to skip their first level feat and only receive their first feat (barring any racial or class bonus feats of course) at level 3.

Other such bonuses/penalties appropriate to different RP value differences could affect skillpoints (either a unique change to starting skill points or a change to skillpoints per level), an unnamed bonus or penalty to all attack rolls or one or more saves (not actually influencing the base attack/save bonuses, so as to keep consistency in the classes)
Lastly it should be said that none of these bonuses or penalties can be taken more than once and a character cannot choose to take any penalty of greater value than their RP difference above 10 or bonus greater than their RP difference below 10, and also a character cannot choose to take penalties to trade for other bonuses or vice versa.

These effects should only apply to player characters as they are meant to balance power level between players and not to be seen as part of the racial abilities. NPCs never have get any of these traits.

One more thing: These effects are primarily meant for use with pre-written races primarily and not as a free pass for creating overpowered character races or underpowered ones with lots of extra perks. If making an "unbalanced" race to use with these effects, the choses effects as well as the race build should be carefully checked by the GM as such a thing might warrant very easy exploitation.

Let me know what you think about this idea. :)

Lantern Lodge

most of those higher RP races are being overcharged for thier abilities.

the Aasimaar is paying quite a hefty fee for daylight, which is a rather useless spell in most situations. i would simply ignore this when factoring thier true total.

i would do the same with the suli being charged quadruple what they should for elemental assualt. being able to choose your element doesn't matter when you can only use it once a day. so i would subtract 3 RP for that. and i would remove the darkvision cost since they were intended to not have it by default which balances out thier pool. especially if you use the no penalty version. i would call thier resistances "Janni Resistances" and charge as much as the other 3 packages and place "Must be tied to all 4 elemental planes" as a prerequisite.


I don't mean for any of my examples to be the definitive values for such things, all I mean to do in this thread is suggest such a system, it would of course rely on the racial abilities being given for an appropriate amount of RP.

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