Finfolk, a homebrew race


Homebrew and House Rules


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For your gaming pleasure, I have created a new race, the finfolk. Just click this Google Docs link and see it for yourself. Here is a visual representation, courtesy google images.

Based loosely on the orkney myths finfolk are a race I've included in my old 3.5 worlds but, unbeknownst to my players, were never actually given their own stats. Now that my oceanless sky pirate campaign is over, I'm planning my eventual return to an old 3.5 setting of mine, and the first item on the agenda is bringing these guys back.

My intent with the finfolk was to make something primarily for NPCs. A race that can provide many new and interesting options for stories and encounters, and which helps create a more interesting world. At the same time, I want them to be balanced to such an extent that I could allow a player to play one, and that a player might actually want to play one despite finfolk being aquatic. Since half the race's features aren't from the race builder, I'm estimating their RP value to be around 11 or 12, for what little that's worth.

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.


Love them!

I see a lot of potential for great RPing, political intrigue with them as an NPC race.

By the way, your Sky Pirate campaign sounds awesome!


You've got a lot of options and lore here. Looks great.


Yeah these are flat out more interesting and playable than gillmen. Nice.


christos gurd wrote:
Yeah these are flat out more interesting and playable than gillmen. Nice.

Thanks. I was rather disappointed with the existing aquatic races. Seas and lakes are one of my favorite things to explore in RPGs because they are so flavorful and atmospheric, as well as being quite alien and full of unique creatures. That there are no amphibious races I would really want to play as in order to explore these environments more is almost sad.

Plus, I have loved orkney myths ever since I first discovered them, so I must admit, the existing lore did give me a lot to work with.

Aeris Fallstar wrote:

Love them!

I see a lot of potential for great RPing, political intrigue with them as an NPC race.

Yeah, I had GMing in mind when I wrote the fluff. I wanted to throw in reasons for random encounters, sidequests, subplots, plot twists and even whole campaigns, in addition to stuff for players. Plus, let's face it, aquatic stuff is often underutilized, so an amphibious race like this can be a great excuse to pull the party into a watery environment.

Quote:
By the way, your Sky Pirate campaign sounds awesome!

It was a blast. It was set in a heavily modified and pathfinderized version of Skies of Arcadia. I will have to grab my old notes and relevant homebrew at some point and post the whole setting.


I like it a lot. I can certainly see a lot of possibilities for PCs and NPCs. I would certainly be interested in playing a party trying to make their way out of a finfolk city. Or perhaps playing a finfolk on the run, disguised as a human.

10/10 would play.

Makeitstop wrote:
It was a blast. It was set in a heavily modified and pathfinderized version of Skies of Arcadia. I will have to grab my old notes and relevant homebrew at some point and post the whole setting.

Sounds cool. I'd certainly be interested.


Thanks for the feedback. I'm actually considering making a sudden trip to a finfolk city the start of my next campaign.

And keep your eyes peeled for that sky pirate setting, I'll post it when I get a chance to organize my notes into something coherent.


Awesome! I can't wait to see the Sky Pirate stuff!


Oh right, I was going to post the sky pirate campaign stuff... Crap.

MASSIVE UPDATE!

On the fluff side, some minor tweaks to the lore, added an intro section, threw in height/weight/age tables, and updated relations with other races to actually include other races.

Mechanically, where do I even begin

Changes

Upped the swim speed from 30 to 40.

Added a line to silverlust giving a perception DC for identifying types of silver.

Allure of the sea now gives the disguise self SLA as a once a day ability in the race trait. Also clarified some of the details about its limitations, and added explicit language saying it gives off no magical aura.

Finhag magic now gets arcane mark, detect magic and touch of fatigue once per day.

Master of the wilds now grants a +1 bonus to the DC of spells targeting animals and magical beasts. Moved speak with animals to the feat chain and put call animal here.

Improved allure of the sea now upgrades the DC of disguise self to scale with level, and grants wave shield once per day.

Removed the skill bonuses from greater allure of the sea, as well as the wall of water spell. In their place, added river whip once a day and control water/alter river for 3 + character level rounds per day.

Improved finhag magic now has a minute per level, single touched creature zone of truth/compulsive liar SLA.

Greater finhag magic no longer gives a bonus against illusions or mind affecting affects, the duration of accursed glare has been nerfed to one round a level, infernal healing has been replaced with dark whispers, and the prerequisites now include being level 5. In exchange, it now gives an at will bestow curse with the following caveats: You can only use it on a creature once per day. You can only have one curse at a time, with new curses replacing old ones. You automatically dispel an existing curse for even attempting to curse a new creature. The curse itself may be permanent, but the effect of the curse has a duration of one round per level. The effect does not occur automatically, instead requiring a full-round action (which provokes) in order to activate the effect, though you can do this as many times as you like, and from any range. Activating the effect gives the cursed creature a new save, which if successful grants immunity to the effect for 1d12 X 10 minutes, but does not actually remove the curse. So in order to use it in combat, you have to go through the usual standard action, touch attack and save, and then a full-round action and another save, presumably provoking attacks of opportunity in the process.

Improved master of the wilds gets speak with animals and loses call animal to the race trait.

Greater master of the wild no longer increases the uses per day of all your existing SLAs. Instead, it upgrades mount to communal mount, and gives you the ability to enter a trance which allows you to ride in an animal's mind, giving it limited direction and perceiving as it does.

Silver blooded has been clarified to include thrown and ranged weapons, but not weapons dropped or handed off.

Improved silver blooded now does 1 point of force damage instead of 2, and only allows you to sense silver traces on enemies who have take physical damage from a silver weapon instead of being hit, and only for an hour instead of a day.

Clarified that using the healing from improved waters of life is a standard action, that greater waters of life uses the additional HP per day from being in water first, and that waters of eternal life stacks with the healing from greater waters of life.

New Stuff

Added three traits.

Added feats for throwing silver coins as a weapon, and for ice magic.

Added a ton of favored class bonuses.


Why the fondness for silver on an aquatic race? It'd be hell to keep it all from tarnishing underwater. Do they have massive sulphur scrubbers or something?


The finfolk of orkney myth were obsessed with silver, to the point that it had an almost compulsive effect on them. I wanted to keep that part of the lore, but make it something that works well in a game.

As far as maintaining the silver goes, they have magic, I assume that works. Plus their cities are mostly full of air for just this sort of reason. I'm sure they store their silver in a safe, dry environment.


Removed the "at least one level below the highest spell level you can cast" restriction from the wizard's favored class bonus since it seemed unnecessary.

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