RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Ok, don't know if this had been thought of before...
(Disclaimer, this came to me while listening to Prince of Wolves in my normal idea place*)
There are at least two scenarios that open up options for a specific other PC** and a couple that open up options for all your PCs***
Has there been any thought about opening up races this way as well? To paraphrase text from <redacted>
New Recruits: Your success at impressing <insert race here> inspires some <race> to join the Society. You may designate one newly created PC under your Pathfinder Society number as a new recruit. This additional training allows the new PC to be <race>. You must include a copy of this Chronicle sheet with the new PC’s records, though that PC gains no additional boons, equipment, or wealth from this Chronicle sheet.
Character receiving this boon: – Faction: GM Initials:
Thus a player could have no more than two of <race> preventing Aasimar spam, for example (One as GM credit and maybe one as PC). Just include other language so that the Core character/GM credit can't be applied to a non-Core PC. (at least to start, they can convert like normal PC's later) That way there's no "I got this off a core PC, but rebuilt him into a drow bloodrager..." It could be restricted even further by limiting it to faction specific as well.
I was thinking specifically of races like catfolk/ratfolk/skinwalkers, etc.
Aasimar - A diplomatic mission to Tianjng. Silver Crusade/Soverign Court come to mind.
Half (not full!) Drow - Darklands of course, but maybe a scenario involving an incursion into Jinin as well. Liberty's Edge
Catfolk - Mwangi obviously (maybe a joint mission back to Bloodcove with the aspis involved this season?) Exchange/GrandLodge.
Changelings - (Yes I know, unlikely with the boon in play, but I'm brainstorming) River Kingdoms, Taldor, Andoran, Lands of the Linnorn Kings. Grand Lodge/Darchive/Soverign Court.
Dhampir - Ustalav (duh) but also Tian Xia and Vudra. Grand Lodge/Darchive/Scarab Sages
Fetchlings - Nidal/Absalom Grand Lodge/Liberty's Edge/Exchange/Darchive.
Gilmen - Absalom/River Kingdoms Grand Lodge/Scarab Sages
Hobgoblins - Kaoling/Andoran Soverign Court/Exchange
Ratfolk - Round Mountain/Diguo Dashu/Akiton Grand Lodge/Exchange
Skinwalkers - Darkmoon Vale, Ustalav (hey, this idea came to me while lsitening to PoW after all) and Land of the Linnorm Kings. Exchange (*cough*Sczarni*cough*)/Soverign court.
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I'm not really in favor of this idea, for a couple of reasons. First, it will promote people going through and cherry picking scenarios they want to play. Also, there is the inevitable flood of uncommon and rare races your proposal would create. Third, what would you propose as an alternative to race boons as an additional incentive for GM that help make conventions a thing? With an influx of new races freely available, that would make that a much less attractive incentive for Management.
Also, Drow aren't going to be legal, ever. Not even half or quarter Drow. This is something that a strong stance has been taken on, and I sincerely doubt it is likely to change.
Edit: Partial ninja by JMFK.
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Maybe as a "Full-Season Achievement."
As in, if you have all 26 season 9 chronicles (across all characters), it opens up a race. (Maybe a 'no longer available' race like aasimar or tiefling (or by then, maybe tengu, kitsune, nagaji, wayang), but it shouldn't be something more rare.)
And it shouldn't be easy.
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Also, the only "surge" of races would be those that get a scenario. It's not like the scenario boon would be "pick any race". We'd get more of that race.
True, but I know of many people that would find it pretty distasteful to be hip deep in a pool of catfolk (as an example) in the weeks following the scenario that opens it up. Also, Management would have to be exceedingly cautious on what they would make legal, because once they let the cat out of the bag there would be no way to put it back in. They would have to be comfortable with making the race effectively always available, because if everybody has the ability to make 2-3 of a given race it is pretty much the same as making it always available.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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First I'm not talking about all of the races, nor even all the races listed in the spoilers. I was giving them as examples of where the races could be put in a scenario.
@nosig Good point on replays, but it would be no different than burning a star on <redacted> to get Riddywhipple, or on <redacted> to gain a third trait.
@Jayson As above, not expecting all the races to come screaming out of the gate. Rather, a scenario where, say, Varian Jeggare sends Pathfinders into Ustalav to check up on something might unlock a skinwalker in (hypothetical) season 8. Since the Changelings were the Gencon boon, for example, them being the 'race of the season' would be not until season 9 at the earliest (1 year Gencon exclusive, 1 year other con eligible, then 1 scenario at season 9)
@undeadMitch. You raise some valid points. Maybe I was unclear that I did not mean season 8 should be "Year of the other" I was visualizing a race not a lot of races. (Though you do present a compelling argument for half-drow to be a Gencon boon...) I mean half drow are no worse than goblins... As to cherrypicking, see my reply to Nosig above. Cherrypickers are going to Cherrypick.
General: I was also thinking about the blood of X players guide. a Skinwalker scenario/set for example, would allow a player to use Blood of the Moon for one through three PCs, also maybe showing an uptick in sales.
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Contributor
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Also, the only "surge" of races would be those that get a scenario. It's not like the scenario boon would be "pick any race". We'd get more of that race.True, but I know of many people that would find it pretty distasteful to be hip deep in a pool of catfolk (as an example) in the weeks following the scenario that opens it up. Also, Management would have to be exceedingly cautious on what they would make legal, because once they let the cat out of the bag there would be no way to put it back in. They would have to be comfortable with making the race effectively always available, because if everybody has the ability to make 2-3 of a given race it is pretty much the same as making it always available.
How can everybody make two or three? I thought you needed to GM a lot of scenarios before you got one replay...
And yes, they should - and would - be cautious. I feel like "we'll be up to our necks in catfolk/skinwalkers/androids!" is a bit of a strawman, to be honest. If anything, I see them opening up something like
-aasimar or tiefling, which was once open;
-one of the other Dragon Empire races, such as samsaran, which shouldn't be much rarer than kitsune or wayang;
-an all-new race with previous storyline ties, such as kobolds or ratfolk (who work best in multiples anyway).
And there might be a bit of a surge in the following weeks, but that will happen no matter how the race becomes available. By that standard, there was a surge in aasimar & tieflings at the start of the Worldwound season. ^_^
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Contributor
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heck, I could see something like this...
Picture a set of 2 or 3 scenarios set in the World Wound. The Society encounters a tribe/band/village of Tieflings - say only one or two bloodlines. Maybe Demon-Spawn (Pitborn). The Society "saves" the tribe and get's them out of the World Wound (chance for lots of "redeemer" PCs to get kudos with this). Players can then run one of the "Refugee PCs" - you get the boon to run a Pitborn Tiefling. And it would even make sense to have a number of the suddenly start popping up in PFS games... and they would have a ready made background, that even made sense in the campaign setting.
And yeah, we'd have more Tieflings in the game... (eye-roll - not that I don't have enough of them now...)
This would be great. I like the idea of tying it to a specific heritage, since it makes sense in the storyline (and cuts back on the complaints about tieflings/aasimar fitting any and all builds).
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I like the general idea of this, though I will say if organized play ever opens up any Drow or Drow heritage options I may just stop GMing.
And the replacement GM reward is what?
Yes it would be quite a shame to see all those people who volunteer the bare minimum for conventions just to get a boon stop showing up leaving all the tables to those who volunteer out of desire to grow the community.
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I like the idea of using this only on races that used to be available to everyone. For now, that would be tieflings or aasimar, and they could easily restrict it to one particular bloodline that fits the scenario, as described above. If they go on a two year rotation and make kitsune, wayangs, nagaji, and tengu unavailable after next GenCon, then one of those would be a fitting race boon to be tied to a scenario this way.
I also like the idea of making it multiple scenarios, but I don't like the whole season idea. Maybe just a 3 part series or something like that.
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Already seeing it on many tables... something of a shock when we encounter more than one of them at a table.** spoiler omitted **Now, THAT would be an impressive plot twist. Good special material.
Humanity goes near-extinct, and only a miniscule amount are available. No new ones without a boon.
That surprises me. The last table I ran was halfling/human/human/human/human/half-elf. I've found variations of this to be the norm at my FLGS. Similarly, my own character selection is mostly human with a half-elf mixed in. I have an Aasimar boon, but I haven't used it yet. In fact, when I was at Skalcon, discounting the tables where we played pregens, every table I was at had at least 2 humans.
Back to the original idea, I do like the notion of having a two-part race boon for specific scenarios.
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At Conception I played at three tables (one of them the module Feast of Ravenmoor)
For The Silver Mount Collection, we had four humans and one 'not sure, they never came out of their armor'.
For The Confirmation, we had a halfling, a tengu, a human, and a kitsune.
For The Feast of Ravenmoor we had two half-orcs, three humans, and an aasimar.
I haven't seen a Human Supremacist sort of table yet, nor have I sat at one without at least one human (that I can recall).
The idea of 'one season, no new humans allowed For No Reason (or for Very Good Reasons)' would be... very interesting.
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Wow...
Last few tables I've been at have all had Darkvision... Except for the one with the halfling.
Mostly Elemental blooded.
The exception is when we've been playing core... And even then, humans are about one per table.
The last table I ran that all had darkvision was a table that was replaying Emerald Spire 1: Tower Ruins. Most of them rebuilt afterwards.
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The majority of the tables I've played at in the last year have had more Kitsune than Humans and fewer Core Race characters than non-core races (whether boon or always available). Personally only 3 of my 10 PFS characters are core (1 Gnome and 2 Humans) and 7 non-core (Aasimar, Tiefling, Wayang, Nagaji, Tengu, (all without boons), and Ifrit and Skinwalker with boons), though my next two GM blobs are set aside for a half-orc and a half-elf, and I play a Dwarf in Giantslayer.
I understand the desire for more races, but don't personally see the need, though I think this suggestion is more interesting than most. That said there are currently 11 available races without a boon (2 more that a number of players still have floating around), 4 elemental boons that are pretty common (and can combine into a fifth), a different set this year that includes both Aasimar and Tiefling (though, they haven't to my knowledge said what the other 2 are). So with no boons 11-13 races to choose from, with only the more common boons you can get up to 18 (maybe 20) races. (GenCon boons (Skinwalker, Changeling, Grippli, Samsaran (reborn or standard), Vishkanya, Ratfolk), Goblins and Dhampirs bring the total to 26 (or 27 depending on how you count the Samsaran), and doesn't include 1 of kind boons like the Android).
I personally thought they might rotate the uncommon races last year and it's certainly a possibility in the future which could introduce more races into the mix.
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I think it'd need to be split over a couple of seasons, at least, PLUS it couldn't be 'vaporware'*
Perhaps in addition some form of service contribution to the Society, as well? (not necessarily GMing, if someone is good at a volunteer task at a convention, etc?)
*coughs, shakes Blizzard for the Dance Studio for WoW!
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An interesting idea, but please, no faction-specific malarkey. It's one thing to see a kinda nice boon sitting there with a line through it because of who your character calls "boss". It's another to leave a table with a potential character idea permanently lost because of a decision made Lord-only-knows how many scenarios ago
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Perhaps in addition some form of service contribution to the Society, as well? (not necessarily GMing, if someone is good at a volunteer task at a convention, etc?)
Volunteers at the cons I've been to also get the GM boon. And depending on your lodge service may be acknowledged in other ways. (I know locally we give out some special dice, occasional boons, or splat books for different things.)
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In Minnesota, we see mostly core races. It's really rare to see boon races at all. Most of the tables I sit at are majority human. I wonder what the regional difference is?
Hmm
Last table I played at, Saturday, was 4 PCs, two Humans, one Kitsune, and one Gnome.
Two Paladins, 1 Cleric/Envoy of Balance, and one Wizard: Thassilonian Specialist: Evoker. Between the Paladins serving as meat shields, and the area effect stuff available to the others, the attacking Fey went down like ten pins. The Envoy player is also really good at riddles...
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Not allowing humans for a season would be a phenomenally bad idea. I know quite a lot of people like other races, but there's also a sizeable portion of people who are more comfortable playing humans than other races.
Also, you'd be trying to explain to (new) players why they can't play a CRB race. Or the race that actually makes their build possible (1st level bonus feat).
As for unlocking races through (series of) scenarios, it sounds interesting to me.
