I recently saw a thread about plant type races and thought to myself, "Hey, why don't I make that plant alien I made up with the ARG's race builder?". I quickly ran into some hurdles, however, and had to come up with some custom options. Problem is, I don't know how much they should cost. If anyone could leave some helpful suggestions, that would be much appreciated.
Magical Racial Trait:
Telepathy (? rp): You can communicate telepathically with any creatures within 100’ that have a language (as per the universal monster ability).
Weakness Racial Traits:
Almost Humanoid (? rp): You do not possess any of the immunities afforded by the plant type.
Voiceless (? rp): You cannot speak aloud, relying on your telepathy to communicate. You cannot perform any action that requires a somatic component.
dot.
Really, the ARG point system has a wealth of failed assumptions and serious philosophical errors. Any discussion should hopefully help.
Unfortunately it's not on the prd yet, but the Astomoi race from Bestiary 5 has this ability (with no RP value given)
Telepathic Senses (Ex) Astomoi can’t speak or see, but can mentally sense the area within 60 feet, as per darkvision, and can speak telepathically. An astomoi can’t see anything beyond 60 feet. An astomoi must provide thought components for spells that normally require verbal components. It can use language-dependent abilities with its telepathy, but not abilities that depend on audible components.
It's not quite what you're looking for, but it's a way of dealing with it.
The race also has an ability that lets it 'eat' and 'drink' without a mouth (RP ?), scent (RP 4), specialised ability scores (1 RP) and a slight weakness to disease and inhaled poisons (-1 RP?). Assuming the sort of standard RP value of 9ish for a PC race, it's probably around 4 RP for its telepathy, and should be about the same for your version.
All that said, my best guesses for rp values:
Telepathy: 4 rp--based on the values for traits like scent. I'd also restrict it to monstrous point buys.
'Almost Humanoid' (maybe something like crossblooded, or half-plant?) -- I'd look at the construct/half-construct and undead/half-undead racial types as a guideline.
Voiceless: Note that creatures without the ability to form somatic spell components learn to cast spells without them (essentially all their spells get the still-spell feat for free), so this is very powerful. Also, Somatic components are physical movements whereas Vocal components require speech--the name of the ability is misleading.
1) Thanks.
2) That's kinda what I was going for.3) Whoopsie. I meant vocal. Sorry.
ARG race builder has flaws, but it does do two things well:
1) It helps show when your race has too high of a scope. If your race has a high RP value, that indicates it may simply have too many abilities.
2) Tier system does a decent job of showing what's appropriate for a PC race and what's too powerful. PC races generally only have standard traits with the occasional well chosen advanced trait.
With this in mind, I'd probably make Telepathy a 4-5 RP advanced trait.
A better alternative to Almost Humanoid is a half-plant. I homebrewed stats for one, but I can't seem to find it!
I'd give Voiceless -1 RP. Most drawbacks can't really have a high RP reduction because they're often situational and it's highly subject to the player's build. For example, a drawback that cripples a race's ability to cast spells is irrelevant if the player uses that race as a non-spellcaster.
A better approach to drawbacks is baking them directly into another trait in order to give it a little more power budget. The android's Constructed is a great example of this. Contructed gives you a ton of bonuses and immunity to fatigue and exhaustion. However, it also makes you immune to morale bonuses, which are the most common party buffs in the game. This also prevents the player from abusing the fatigue immunity to play a barbarian.
ARG race builder has flaws, but it does do two things well:
1) It helps show when your race has too high of a scope. If your race has a high RP value, that indicates it may simply have too many abilities.
2) Tier system does a decent job of showing what's appropriate for a PC race and what's too powerful. PC races generally only have standard traits with the occasional well chosen advanced trait.With this in mind, I'd probably make Telepathy a 4-5 RP advanced trait.
A better alternative to Almost Humanoid is a half-plant. I homebrewed stats for one, but I can't seem to find it!
I'd give Voiceless -1 RP. Most drawbacks can't really have a high RP reduction because they're often situational and it's highly subject to the player's build. For example, a drawback that cripples a race's ability to cast spells is irrelevant if the player uses that race as a non-spellcaster.
A better approach to drawbacks is baking them directly into another trait in order to give it a little more power budget. The android's Constructed is a great example of this. Contructed gives you a ton of bonuses and immunity to fatigue and exhaustion. However, it also makes you immune to morale bonuses, which are the most common party buffs in the game. This also prevents the player from abusing the fatigue immunity to play a barbarian.
To be fair, Voiceless also means they can't use anything that requires a spoken command word.
I thought about making a half-plant subtype, but I felt that the term simply didn't work. The race in question is not a mix of plant and humanoid, it's a plant that's evolved to have some humanoid-esque traits (like a central nervous system).
That's not to say I wouldn't like to see your half-plant stats should you find them. I'm sure it could give me some ideas.