|
So lately I just feel that other races just don't stack up to Humans because they have a dangling +2 modifier as well as a bonus feat at first level. I just have a hard time justifying taking any other race. The racial mods aren't always both beneficial to your class, yes there are some like the elf bard, but like the dwarf paladin gets 2 bonuses to 2 relevant stats but the 3rd negative modifier is to charisma which hurts paladins.
I know part of these weaknesses are about roleplaying the character but in terms of min/maxing i just have a hard time justifying playing a race other than human.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Have you considered playing a goblin?
We're pretty awesome.
Believe it or not the whole lack of darkvision helps me alot with that same problem. I like humans, I hate torches!
I never take a human. My GM's like dark places and low light vision or darkvision is very handy. The elven immumities are sometimes very handy.
The +2 against magic from dwarves is also very handy.
I only played a human once, that was when humans were the only ones who could become paladins. I realized that both suck for me. :D
Races with vision bonuses get a major boost if you play with MapTool a lot. Vision and light, vision and light.
Without that, I prefer human if I'm playing for efficiency.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I play for role-playing, but most of the core-races just don't impress me, leaving me with human more often than not, because at least I know I can manage well enough with human, whereas Elves... I can't stand them as a person, something I attribute to a friend who loved elves giving me an unwanted overdose of the pointy eared buggers.
What I enjoy playing the most is non-core races, Gnolls and Lizardfolk. Adds in huge RP potential, especially since both tend to not be liked by the so-called 'civilised races'. Alas, my usual GM rarely allows non-core races, leaving me as a human more often than not.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
|
Fortunately, the Advanced Races Guide expanded a ton on the other races and made them a great deal more attractive to play. The alternate racial traits means you have a great amount of options when building characters.
On top of that, the favored class bonuses are also more attractive when comparing one race to another. And there are the racial feats that make the different races cooler still.
Unfortunately, humans are still the best race for fighters, even more so with a couple of the alternate racial traits and racial feats.
I see that the humans are better to specialize but they do not seem better to me.
So they get a bonus feat.. and.. skill points, what is it that makes them better ? Other races get a bunch of abilities that while not specialized add up to two feats or more. The ability modifiers tend to be a bit weaker, but again not much.
A dwarven paladin suffers with relatively low charisma, it is not that terrible really :
human 15 pt
str 16
dex 10
con 14
int 10
wis 10
cha 14
dwarf 15 pt
str 14
dex 10
con 16
int 10
wis 12
cha 12
So dwarf.. -1 cha modifier, the saves only end up with a -1 on reflex saves at 2nd lvl, a -1/-1 to hit and damage and -2/-1 when smiting, a use of LoH less, also -1 sp per lvl and a move of 20', it also has a feat less.
dwarf
+1 hp/lvl - compensates for less sp
slow and steady - compensates 20' move
hardy - compensates for a feat and the -1 reflex saves
stability, defensive training, darkvision, greed, stone cunning, hatred and weapon familiarity are left to compensate for a -1/-1, less smiting goodness and LoH.
* darkvision, greed and stonecunning imo compensate for the LoH and diminished smiting.
* stability, defensive training, hatred and weapon familiarity will compensate for the -1/-1, weapon familiarity will increase damage by 1 and the rest while not directly optimal can compete with a +1 to hit.
Rough guideline, I'd still be hesitant to pick dwarf since the -1 to hit and damage will hurt for a somewhat random slew of abilities (though they can be modified a bit to fit a particular AP), but more hitpoints is always nice, I'll gladly be a xenophobic dwarf for another +1 vs mind affecting, I can deal with a few less skill points. Without checking I think some archetypes might diminish the sting of charisma loss further, stonelord comes to mind but I'd have to check to be sure.
All in all not a terrible trade, the dwarf will look better if we pick a class that doesn't use charisma.
Honestly, I used to be hesitant about playing non-humans and I thought the feat was all that. But having played a ratfolk barbarian, elf rogues, and half orcs galore, I find that while the feat is nice and opens up options earlier, it isn't as awesome as I once made it out to be. My characters still kicked a lot of ass and were useful with the abilities they had with their race, whether it was the ratfolk scent ability or just something as simple as using an elven curveblade on my rogue. I still had fun and more importantly, was not useless.
My group just started up PFS a couple of months ago. We had been doing other games including a lot of 4th edition. I normally picked human for the Living game but I looked at other choices when it was opened up. It is the same for PFS. I am mainly looking at humans.
I just made a human that for me the story made sense. If I had a boon for an Undine though would have had a different story and went with that. The story is easy to tweak but I seem to be better overall at coming up with backstories for human characters.
I don't min/max as don't like dumping stats and that might be part of the problem is trying not to feel like I am doing that. I am getting more comfortable with PFS so I might start branching out to other races. Dislike elves but that new ARG elf druid really makes me want to play one.
Have you considered playing a goblin?
We're pretty awesome.
Yur pritty awsum fer beein a sheeld! ORCSES IS DA BESTEST!
|
I prefer non-human races.
Half-Orcs are my go-to race for melee oriented characters. Same goes for Halflings. I like Gnomes as clerics and cha-based casters. I also like to use less common races, such as the Samsarans, Tieflings, Suli, Undine, and Tengu. With the addition of the Stonelord archetype, even Dwarf is on there for a wicked Paladin.
I use humans when I have a concept that would fit best with the race. Otherwise, anything else could work.
Hobgoblins Uber Alles
i think aasimar get no stat penalty?
and the svirfnibbley is just insane in ARG
|
|
Humans are pretty sweet, but there are good reasons to play the other races.
Half-orcs and half-elves both get to put their +2 wherever they want too. Half-orcs get their Ferocity ability (amazing on any class that can heal) and half-elves get various weapon proficiencies plus immunity to sleep.
Dwarves have a whole host of racial bonuses: vs. trip, vs. poison, vs. giants, vs. orcs, etc. They may be situational, but there's a lot of them. Plus they get a ton of weapon proficencies, including the dwarven waraxe which is basically as good as a bastard sword. Sure a human could use his bonus feat on EWP, but the dwarf gets battleaxes, heavy picks, and the DWA-- the human can only get one of those.
Halflings' +2 DEX and Size bonus to hit and AC make it great for any character that cares more about ranged attacks than melee damage. The +2 CHA means they make good arcane casters too.
Gnomes have some great favored class bonuses, and make for incredibly durable paladins. I don't see them winning the DPR Olympics, but they bring a lot to the table.
It used to be humans were "meh," once the level caps were removed from non-human races. Mechanically they were an "underdog" to play, in some ways.
3E changed that, humans came into their own and there was much gnashing of teeth in some quarters. But then over time there were 56 flavors of elves (again), one (or more) for every type of build anyone would want to make, for example. Dwarf variants, ditto (but less talked about), and so on.
PF Core humans came back into their own again; other races are still also mechanically good for individual classes, but what makes humans special is that mechanically they could be good in any class. It doesn't mean they were the only good race for every class - they were just special because, while other races were blue choices in some classes, humans were in all of them.
It meant though, that if you wanted to play an elf, mechanically[ your "optimal choices" of classes to play were constrained, relative to humans. It didn't mean you couldn't play any class you wanted, though.
IMO, having just read it, the ARG starts to return things back again to midlife 3E/most of 2E AD&D: humans are endangered of going back to meh, because now every race has alternate racial ability possibilities that will let them have the flexibility and versatility that were the main (not sole) attraction of being a human (again, from a mechanical standpoint; the only thing that matters for this question, because from an RPing standpoint, the best race is the one you want to play and have fun playing and all of them are equally good and also equally capable of being messed up by poor RPing).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I play a male human expert 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Try new things.
I wake up human. All day I am human. I go to bed human.
But in my dreams am I celebrity gnomish bard who seduces the most beautiful human females I can find (mostly because I am too cheap to pay for food, drink and a room).
Pathfinder is a game of dreams.
I play a male human expert 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Try new things.
NO U!
More seriously: for a lot of people, playing a human anything in PF would be the new thing. So this is a non-answer.
However, it does help support a refutation of OP's original post. Humans really aren't the be all/end all best race evah in PF (or 3.5E, or 3E, &tc).
It depends on what you want to play, and for any class, there are other races that are mechanically approximately as effective as a human would be, if not more.
I like to mix it up -- I've played pretty much all the core races, and had fun with them, except half-orcs. But, yeah, in 2e, almost everyone was an elf, and in 3e, almost everyone was a human, because those races were just that awesome.
Their Vision makes them sometimes hard to play.
I play humans if I'm playing a sorcerer, or a non monk archer.
Otherwise I play half elves, half orcs, dwarves, and some other monster races.
Pathfinder is a game of dreams.My dreams are human dreams.
Like Bugs Bunny, I dream of Jeannie - she's a light-brown hare.
Some monstrous races are interesting (Goblin, Tengu, Tiefling :O!), but yeah I agree when it comes to core races. I usually just go Human to get my feat tree started early/not be so useless at low level. I also really like the Expanded Knowledge option that replaces the bonus feat; a skill focus at 1, 8, and 16 for one feat? Yes please if I'm playing a heavily skill based character and hell yes if I'm starting the character near 8. They also have perhaps the best favored class option for spontaneous caster if your DM allows that sort of thing.
Besides that the only other real core class I like is Halfling, though it's mainly suited to specific classes. Still, +1 hit/AC/saves, plusses to stealth and perception, and +2 to dex :D
I personally play humans because I like imaging what a human would live like in a Fantasy world... though I do like the other races. But I love playing races that are rare or viewed as monsters. Though I really like my groups solution to the orc. We call the base orcs Savage Orcs and the modified orcs we designed pre-ARG Civil Orcs. They call themselves something else. But it actually is in line with the core races based on the ARG playtest.
The min-maxer that tried playing in are group kept on calling them a 'weaker' dwarf though...
|
|
Humans are pretty good as a general class, but if I want to do something cool, I'd go for another race. Thing is, I like humans in Pathfinder (especially on Golarion) much more than in 3.X, since there are plenty if not more RP benefits to playing a human than something else. Still, I like playing characters with superior senses, and having the benefit to more than one stat are helpful. For example, making a ratfolk alchemist is pretty awesome. Alchemists have no use for strength, but dexterity AND intelligence? Paydirt. That extra feat is VERY good, and i do miss it when I don't play humans, but still...
like the dwarf paladin gets 2 bonuses to 2 relevant stats but the 3rd negative modifier is to charisma which hurts paladins.
Paladins don't use Wisdom for anything. I've looked, and there's nothing (except Will saves and perception.) So a Dwarf Paladin is only going to really benefit from the +2 con. Also
If they don't have a Charisma bonus, they don't take negatives
So dwarf.. -1 cha modifier, the saves only end up with a -1 on reflex saves at 2nd lvl, a -1/-1 to hit and damage and -2/-1 when smiting, a use of LoH less, also -1 sp per lvl and a move of 20', it also has a feat less.
In addition, while smite evil is in effect, the paladin gains a deflection bonus equal to her Charisma modifier (if any) to her AC against attacks made by the target of the smite. If the paladin targets a creature that is not evil, the smite is wasted with no effect.
The smite evil effect remains until the target of the smite is dead or the next time the paladin rests and regains her uses of this ability. At 4th level, and at every three levels thereafter, the paladin may smite evil one additional time per day, as indicated on Table: Paladin, to a maximum of seven times per day at 19th level.
Sorry if I came off as a jerk, but I just had to put it out there.
Back to OP, Humans are just that way: They are very versatile. But the other races get nice bonuses as well (Elves make great spell-casters, Half-Orcs can be pretty deadly barbarians, and I believe I have heard several stories about gnome illusionists.)
I have always played human in games I actually play in. They're the easiest for me to get my head wrapped around without comming off as pretentious(or at least that's my own perception anyways lol). And yeah, the feat and skills really make a difference; especially for non-fighter builds where "free" feats are a rarity and classes where your FC bonus is going to HP.
That said I really like the other races more as a GM. From my own perspective, humans are mostly boring and I feel that the other races and how I depict their behavior shapes my world better. If I'm having an Elf talk down to a human party member that means something, for the character and the world. If it's a human it doesn't carry the same weight(unless their royalty or something).