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My idea is to allow players to use the Race Builder increase any race under 12 or 13 Race Points into take additional Racial traits, perhaps even allow for them to be increased to the level of Aasimar and Thieflings.
This would be partly to encourage players to consider weaker races such as Kobold, Goblins, and Catfolk. Actually any race under 10 Racial Points, though I am also considering allowing the races to be enhances to match up with higher races.
I would have there be limits, I wouldn't allow a player to stack on the strengths they already have but more offer players to have it so a races weakness are not so pronounced. This helping a player to try different builds and classes that a race wouldn't normally do well at. I could also allow for a player to take alternate traits for their character race as additional traits.
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Should I offer a house rule like this, or at least with a few more conditions?
I would advise against it.
First, I think a lot of people worry about differences between races a bit too much. But obviously not everyone sees it that way.
Second, giving access to the race builder opens up a huge can of worms. You can optimize in absurd ways, and it waters down the identities of each race. If you want to respec the races as the GM, and then give them choices, that would be more reasonable, but to give players that much freedom is a move I wouldn't recommend unless you trust them to make races which are both balanced and coherent.
Third, I think there's better alternatives. One would be to grant bonus race feats, say, 1 for every 4 rp difference. Another would be to allow them to pick an alternate race trait or two without removing the thing it replaces, so that the net RP value increases while still restricting it to the things that race is already supposed to get.
There's very few truly weak races. Kobolds are one -- I allow my Kobold characters to get a free feat from Toughness, Dodge, Kobold Confidence or Improved Initiative.
That being said, I think Aasimar/Tiefling levels are too high. Just don't let those players take the variant heritages without investing a feat like they are meant to.
Why are Goblins and Kobolds on your "Weaker Races" list?! Those are a Munchkin's best friends!!!
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Goblins are actually good. They have insanely high bonuses to the things they do well... Tree-Runner alt racial makes for an amazing finesse monk.
Catfolk have insanely good feats (no penalties for charging, claw pounce) and good modifiers for bards, swashbucklers, etc.
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Why are Goblins and Kobolds on your "Weaker Races" list?! Those are a Munchkin's best friends!!!
Well because they get more penalties then bonuses in many cases and while goblins many have a +4 Dex they also have -2 to both Str and Chr. Really only lending themselves for Dex classes (the two obvious ones being rogue and alchemist), also hurts is a player wants something that requires Str and Chr, worse if both like with a paladin. Now admittingly, they do come up to being 10 race points to they technically balance out with core but I still fill goblins
Kobolds, well they do come up to having only 5 race points compared to the 10-11 of Core races. That should tell you something their relative balance with other races.
Racial traits aren't the only thing that players need to look for when making their characters. Options must be considered too. You say that catfolks are weak... except not when you look at their racial feats, equipment and archetypes.
Same goes with kobolds and goblins.
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I do understand that but I just don't see these classes used as often. I would use them, though I would go for things not often seen such as goblin oracle or a kobold wizard. Or as I heard someone mention on here when talking about the redeemer archetype, mention of a paladin goblin... which the race doesn't lend well to such.
Still thank you all for your thoughts, seems the general consensus is that it is not advised or unnecessary as the races are fine as they are.
Me I would have loved to take the +2 Dodge bonus onto the Vanara
That would put their RP points up to 12.
Well, it sounds like the kinds of things you want to use the races for are basically the opposite of what they generally are, like goblin paladins. I get why, the misfit that stands out so drastically is easier to make conceptually and a lot of it writes itself. But you need the sterotype there and supported as the norm before you can play against it.
I would advise against it.
And I would too and here's why; I had tried this before with a couple of campaigns. Both campaigns started at 1st level and mostly, I was trying to even out race options so that all my players weren't playing dwarves strictly for the mechanical benefits or simply choosing a race for darkvision.
Anyway, it overly complicated things, especially for the two new players at the table, and it did not increase anyone's enjoyment at the table.
I think tieflings are okay. Aasimars are too much because they don't have a racial penalty.
I never recommend giving players race points and letting them go wild. You're better off just making homebrew versions of races you feel are too weak.
Also, goblins and catfolk are actually not bad at all.
I would advise against it.
First, I think a lot of people worry about differences between races a bit too much. But obviously not everyone sees it that way.
Second, giving access to the race builder opens up a huge can of worms. You can optimize in absurd ways, and it waters down the identities of each race. If you want to respec the races as the GM, and then give them choices, that would be more reasonable, but to give players that much freedom is a move I wouldn't recommend unless you trust them to make races which are both balanced and coherent.
Word. If you really dislike how some of the races are built, 'brew it as the GM and make them more viable.
As others have said, RP aren't everything at ALL - dwarves have the highest RP of the core races, but most of that is soaked up in various conditional modifiers, but that said I consider some races like the kobold unplayable for general conditions. If goblins can have not horrible stat adjusts overall, kobolds should too. (I also typically rebuild orcs, because I like orcs).
Finally, not every combination is going to be remotely good! That's how it's meant to be, and I don't see that as a flaw at all. You can make a goblin paladin or a halfling fighter, it's just sub optimal, which is ok.
If you think is really under power, perhaps just let them take an alternate racial trait without it replacing one of the standard racials. While there are some really good racial traits out there, if you think a race is so underpowered they need a boost, something like this probably won't hurt. It also keeps things getting weird if your players suddenly decide to all be goblins with wings or something.
Try a goblin alchemist. They have so much bonus fire damage if you follow the feat line. Kobolds are kind of weak though. You are going the wrong route. Home-brew your own, give them bonus feats or just limit the ones they can play.
One of my pals has done some homebrew buffs to some races, ex. kobolds get halfling ability scores and don't suffer light sensitivity.
Others just get a bit of something, ex. the elemental races get the fast healing on appropriate energy damage as a bonus (because no one would take it over other options).
One of my pals has done some homebrew buffs to some races, ex. kobolds get halfling ability scores and don't suffer light sensitivity.
Others just get a bit of something, ex. the elemental races get the fast healing on appropriate energy damage as a bonus (because no one would take it over other options).
The undean one is quite useful because it is not energy damage that triggers it, but being submerged in natural water. This is very useful for certain campaigns (PIRATE CAMPAIGNS), but you are right about the others.
Kobolds do have the short end of the stick. I gave them some good feats in AR:6 kobolds to try to make up for it. Still some of my favorite characters. Ekto Wrongsproket the clockwork alchemist is a blast to play.
10 Rp Kobolds
Standard Racial Traits
Ability Score Racial Traits: Kobolds gain -2 Str, +2 Dex, and +2 Int.
Type: Kobolds are humanoids with the reptilian subtype.
Size: Kobolds are Small creatures and thus gain a +1 size bonus to
their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a -1 penalty to their CMB and CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.
Speed: Kobolds have a base speed of 30 feet.
Languages: Kobolds begin play speaking Draconic. Kobolds with high intelligence scores can choose from the following: Common, Elven, Halfling, or Orc
Defense Racial Traits
Natural Armor: Kobolds have a +1 natural armor bonus to their Armor Class.
Feat and Skill Racial Traits
Skill Bonus: Kobolds have a +2 racial bonus on any single Craft trapmaking and Profession mining checks.
Skill Training: Craft Trapmaking and Stealth are always considered class skills for kobolds.
Offense Racial Traits
Weapon Familiarity: Kobolds are proficient with heavy picks and light picks. Any weapon with kobold in the name counts as a Martial weapon.
Senses Racial Traits
Minesight: Kobolds have darkvision 90 feet; however, they are automatically dazzled in bright light and take a -2 penalty on saving throws against effects with the light descriptor.
For the OP: There is the oversized goblin Subrace from the Monster Codex. Medium size, +2 bonus to Strength, a +2 bonus to Dexterity, and a –2 penalty to Charisma. More to your liking?
I have seen a kobold barbarian with the primitive template in play and it looks good.
The number of bonus feats might be a little high but all in all the result is a well working pc.
I have seen a kobold barbarian with the primitive template in play and it looks good.
The number of bonus feats might be a little high but all in all the result is a well working pc.
Great Fortitude, Skill Focus : Perception, and Toughness aren't exactly exciting feats or ones that are used in many feat trees so the feats would be an issue IMO. The Dex + 2, Con +2, Int -4 (minimum 1), Cha -2 is workable I guess as long as you're ok with 1 skill point per level. LOL still has more minuses than bonuses. :P
Primitive template? Where is that from?
Primitive
It's from green ronin.
The natural armor bonus is neat because you can take an alternate racial trait that trades away the kobold's natural armor and still get the +2 from the template.
Sure it still has a penalty overall to stats but those that you have are better suited for martial builds. And the little wannabe dragon fights with his bite from dragonmaw and the two claws from ragepowers.
He is played in a party where every one else is a full caster or full caster/martial multiclass. And the draconic sorc adopted him as her "pet". When Combat starts everyone stands back and casts while the little bugger shreds the enemies after they've been softened up by spells.
/derail
I like kobolds and I'd like to play them more often. For that I'd be willing to try the "more race points" route but I think giving them so many RP that they are even with tieflings might be overkill.
Ifrit, for example only have 6 RP if I remember right but they work ok as they are. with 4 or more additional RP they could come out a little on the strong side. Especially with cherry-picked abilities.
I would suggest to give the "weaker" races no more than half the difference in RP if cherry-picking is allowed.
As is most kobold PCs I've seen or played had the dayraider alternate trait to lose light sensitivity. Via RP you could just buy off the drawback and retain darkvision. One point for that and 1 or 2 for better stats would be totally enough. (forgot whether the next stat option costs 1 or 2 more).
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For the OP: There is the oversized goblin Subrace from the Monster Codex. Medium size, +2 bonus to Strength, a +2 bonus to Dexterity, and a –2 penalty to Charisma. More to your liking?
I feel it is better if goblins say a small race like gnomes, over being made a medium creature like humans and elves. There are other ways of doing a bit of tweaking.
For the OP: There is the oversized goblin Subrace from the Monster Codex. Medium size, +2 bonus to Strength, a +2 bonus to Dexterity, and a –2 penalty to Charisma. More to your liking?I feel it is better if goblins say a small race like gnomes, over being made a medium creature like humans and elves. There are other ways of doing a bit of tweaking.
They may be medium, but they are dwarf-like medium. You can make a small ratfolk than is only 1" shorter than oversized goblin. If you don't like it that's cool, just thought an official goblin upgrade might work better for you than a houseruled upgrade.
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There's very few truly weak races. Kobolds are one -- I allow my Kobold characters to get a free feat from Toughness, Dodge, Kobold Confidence or Improved Initiative.
That being said, I think Aasimar/Tiefling levels are too high. Just don't let those players take the variant heritages without investing a feat like they are meant to.
They are not "meant to" that was something that was done in Bastards of Erebus, but that Paizo decided wasn't necessary any more. Now, if you want to house rule that the Fiendish Heritage feat is still required and also want to create the non-existent Celestial Heritage feat, that's fine. But it's no more "meant to" be that way than humans are meant to get 4 skill points at first level. The rules were changed in later books. I mention 3.5 humans as an example because Council of Thieves was the very first actual PATHFINDER AP, therefore they were still thinking back then with Aasmiar and Tieflings being a lot more powerful than they are now.
As to the overall topic, while I wouldn't necessarily let a player arbitrarily bump up races on their own, I do sometimes allow some tweaking along guidelines. For example, to use aasimar... if say you want to make an aasimar that is born from halflings, then I would allow you to trade your spell-like ability for a halfling race trait. You can be small also, if you wish (but that's not required.) Or in other words, I wouldn't hand players the book and say have at it, you got 3 more points to play with, I would offer some options that I feel are somewhat balanced, and while I know they are not needing to be 'bumped up' I was just using that as an example of how I allow some tweaking... if the aasimar weren't already as powerful as they are, I might even just let you add the halfling jinx for free. I would use the same guidelines as that for other races. As someone said above, I like the choice of bonus feats that he added to Kobolds, and in fact I might steal that idea hehe.
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I am actually going to use the race builder as an alternative way to level characters in one of my non-RP, purely power-gaming Zerg campaign. Like, Starcraft zerg. Things that eat other things to evolve their victims powers over time. Those zerg. They'll be treated like synthesist summoners, sort of. The summoners get to advance in their race, their eidolon gets to transmogrify based on actual level and the two combine to create the individual zerg.
So, Doppelganger Damacy?
OP, I would recommend making the changes yourself if you want to do this. I personally altered several races for my own campaign setting, adding to some and removing a few things from others for flavor. I even have regional "subspecies" based on the lifestyles and environments. But *I* made those changes and they are what they are. I don't have four players coming to me wanting to okay four sets of changes and keeping track of it. You will be better in the long run if you make the changes you want to see.
Overall, I think there is a lot of overemphasis on the numeric values of a race and far less importance placed on the cultural values of that race.