Why do three of these have a strength penalty. For medium creatures it's definitely not the norm, and for a dog it doesn't make any sense to me.
The only thing I would say balance wise is that an RP score of 15-20 is a little strong. But if that's how you're making your campaign you can balance it out with stronger enemies. Not every PF animal race has a high RP score, so if you allow PF races like Grippli or Kitsune, they'd need a buff to be equal to the races you've added.
Why do three of these have a strength penalty. For medium creatures it's definitely not the norm, and for a dog it doesn't make any sense to me.
We've gone to the Advanced (4 RP) stats for all of them, and given them the following (for just the races written up), to try to spread out the bonuses and penalties:
Bear-kin ~ +4 Str, -2 Dex, +2 Int/Wis/ChaCat-kin ~ +4 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int/Wis/Cha
Dog-kin ~ +4 Cha, -2 Wis, +2 Str/Dex/Con {Edited}
Rat-kin ~ +4 Con, -2 Str, +2 Int/Wis/Cha
Working with Advanced ability bonuses is powerful, but it's oddly constricting, too. Whichever type of stat you give the +4 to, you have to find a -2 of the same type. (Or vice versa.) For the other type, you get to give a +2 to everything, even if you'd be happy with skipping a bonus on one of the three.
Take Icelandic Sheepdogs -- we know that they're notably agile & hardy, but not especially strong. They're built for watching the farm & barking at intruders, especially wolves, but not being the first to attack. They can work all day without flagging, and are very good at modern agility trials. We also know that they're notably smart, loyal, and friendly. The Icelandic Sheepdog that I'm modeling my dog-kin after aren't especially tasked with moving a whole herd of sheep as much as finding individual sheep and getting them home again. That takes independent decision-making and again, I would think, perceptiveness. In short, when I read through what people say about the breed, the only thing that they didn't praise was their strength! However, actually being weak on strength doesn't seem right either, I agree. So now, after spreading out the strengths & penalties better, they have a +2 bonus on Strength and a -2 penalty to their perceptiveness & Will. Feh!
I do not see a big problem with having armor provide a bonus to stealth and a limited bonus to diplomacy or s bonus in limited situations.
Horn armor,
I will think on this as the Hun's re-curve bow is a very effective weapon but I was watching a show on the History Channel and from their studies it seemed that the bow delaminated in the rain. Which would be a big problem when they moved into Western Europe.
OK, thanks for the vote in favor of a Diplomacy bonus; I'll have to think about it. Given the game I'm forseeing, it's probably better for his Lore Oracle to have the Forest Drake armor, just because it's not possible to, say, talk kobolds or drakes into a peace treaty due to the beautiful... draconic... WHAT ARE YOU WEARING? armor you've got. Animals & hags are going to simply be unmoved. If the game takes off and goes play-by-phone, the oracle may be interested in acquiring armor that's better for diplomatic purposes, and I'll have to decide if it's available.
Same with horn armor -- this place snows and snows and snows. Sounds like it's better to do without, since I can't imagine just pieces of horn being effective as is.
Balance Answer:
This is a common problem that I have seen over the years and often you do not know until you have done some play testing. And unfortunately even if you group does not have issues with it some other group may see something you do not.
What I do:
I often create something new and then test it but tell the players that I might have to change said item/power/ability in the future do to balance reasons. If I am running a short term game it is not a big deal but if the game is meant to last from 8 months to a year it may be a problem.Most often I just go with my gut (and have payed the price when something was way out of wack) and have learned a lot from doing so. ie I think most people learn from making mistakes more then if people just say do not do this, that is unless it is really game destroying.
My case in point, a lot of people do not like large creatures as PC's do to reach but in my game I enforce the size to equipment rules and other RP options so its effect in combat are offset but if you do not enforce the scarcity of equipment, magic items, etc then it is like getting a free special ability.
Well, not free precisely. It does cost 7 RP in the race design...
Thanks for the advice & encouragement, truly. We'll have to see if this is a long-term game or not. I'm sticking with a Medium humanoid shifting to Large animal as what I hope will be a balanced answer for a bear-kin. If he's got weapons & magic stuff, then he's Medium. If he just has claws, well, um, maybe that's not "just," then he's Large. We'll see what our bearbarian decides is better, and go from there. At least this way, the bear shape definitely gets very limited magic items -- whatever druids can keep in Wild Shape.
As for enforcing size for magic items, I thought magic armor and such automatically re-sized to fit the wearer in PF? The gnome in my regular game is running around in armor found to fit a human, and I just said, "Oh, that will fit you." Was I wrong?
The only thing I would say balance wise is that an RP score of 15-20 is a little strong. But if that's how you're making your campaign you can balance it out with stronger enemies. Not every PF animal race has a high RP score, so if you allow PF races like Grippli or Kitsune, they'd need a buff to be equal to the races you've added.
In terms of stronger enemies, yes. I want to be able to afford minions, and this will let me do it. But I can't put any existing player race into the game along with these, I know. Grippli might show up as weaker NPCs, though. As an example. I'm definitely creating homebrew for a specific situation, rather than for something that might get published.
I'm trying to calculate APL. I'll have a 5th-level witch back at camp as healer & alchemical/potion concocter. There will be 3 5th-level PCs going out on adventure, built competently with these advanced races, but in one case, played by a novice. (Of course, the other two are being played by Debnor.) I'm tempted to do the math as...
1 @ 5th +1 for race -1 for player ability = 5
1 @ 5th +1 for race = 6
1 @ 5th +1 for race = 6
1 @ 5th +1 for race -3 for accessibility = 3
Sum = 20/4 = APL 5th.
Given that I want the party to face a CR 7 Winter Hag with minions, this is a whole lot better than how it goes without the +1 for race. But is this the right APL?
And Mark, I have not forgotten your warning that at higher party levels, the race adjustment drops out.
Ah! Mark, thank you. No, armor does not shift with you to animal shape, although I suppose I could allow an enchantment for it to do so. You end up looking like a normal animal of that species, although amulets, for instance, might shift and end up as collars. Not an issue at present; no one has one.
You know, I never got suggestions for the RP cost of the animal shape, but since all the races get it (although some to Beast Shape I and some to Beast Shape II), I've ended up simply ignoring the price. So there you go: the unspecified RP price is now reduced!
To summarize, shifting to any animal shape w/ the Change Shape SQ does allow the character to mimic abilities. In other words, shifting to a Grizzly Bear gives you Low-light Vision & Scent if you didn't have them, plus of course the natural attacks and, I assume, the +6 Natural Armor that grizzly bears have in their write-up. But yes, you lose the manufactured weapons & armor you'd had, including any enchantments, and most or all of your other magical gear.
But I'm paying renewed attention to the fact that the SQ does NOT adjust physical abilities. So a wimpy bear-kin with STR 10 shifting to bear shape doesn't get the bear's STR 21, nor the spell's STR +4 adjustment to STR 14 -- they're stuck being a wimpy grizzly bear with STR 10! (Of course, Debnor's bearbarian isn't going to have that problem...)
I'm assuming you keep your own feats & skills, and don't get the bear's, nor the bear's racial bonuses. But it looks tricky to adjudicate: is the bear's +4 to grapple & +4 vs. trip in essence a feat, or is it a result of the physical build & something that the shifted bear would get?
We're going to need a separate character sheet for animal shape, that's for sure.
As for having fun, I hope we do. I've had no time to actually plot this adventure. I knew the start, which we played through last night -- and my sister enjoyed. Her PC was sent to retrieve the Radix (a McGuffin) several weeks before its ceremonial use at the Sunbirth (Yule) festival, and discovered that it had been stolen, and figured out that kobolds were implicated. A party has been formed to go get it back in time.
That there was such a McGuffin, that kobolds had stolen it, and why they did so was all something I'd figured out. I also know who has it now, although I have some mapping to do. I know the kinds of foes they'll face along the way.
The scary part for me as GM is that I have no idea how the party is supposed to find it. I've seen stuff on-line (from links I've found on these boards -- thank you very much) that I'm supposed to have three clues for each step of their search. Well, I don't even have a search mapped out!
OTOH, I've warned my players that this is a free-form story, that they'll be building it as much as me. (Players always twist stories their own ways, I know that, but usually the GM has more plot!) It's already happening; as we discussed why kobolds might have stolen it, one thing led to another, and I now know that I need a cat-kin clan that would have had a changeling amongst them last year who has run off to become a hag. Not a big write-up, but I need to think about where they are this year (they're nomadic), and how my players can find them for more intel. Hmmm.
And I have a new minion for the BBEG who WILL need a write-up.
I hope this does turn out to be fun!
Metal armor doesn't shift -- that's cool!
But metal weaponry does??? Uh, maybe I won't go there. It's been enough that I've stated that metal armor is above the PCs' pay grade. It's just not available in a general way, due to the economy being what it is.
You can do all sorts of things and the reason why or why not is left to you the creator/GM.
So metal armor does not shift might be changed to prevents shifting.
Metal Weapons do not shift would mean that there would be a lot of non metal or enchanted materials for weapons if used by the shifter's or have a way for them to figure out how to carry such while they were shifting.So you see shifting can be a great ability but if you have the right drawbacks it is not very powerful in the grand scheme of the base PF rule set.
As you said if every PC race has the same ability does it really need to be taken into account? IMHO sometimes it does and sometimes it does not, based on the ability in question and how it would interact with the various CR's of the PC's opponents and how it might effect encounters.
I can see what you're saying -- and thanks. I think I'll see how it goes, and learn a lot. If the game keeps going, I can always adjust. In short, I'll likely come back in a week with a progress report and notes, and then if the game is going to keep going, we can talk again.
Just to let you all know:
My sister has gone home now. The game was a great success!
Not that we accomplished any objectives, mind you. The party set out on Dec. 1 (after translating the local calendar) to recover the McGuffin. They've got to get it back in time for the solstice celebration, and it's taken them about a week to get close to the Frost Drake, who is guarding what they hope is the entrance to the depths of the Frost Maw, which is where they hope to find said McGuffin.
But we did some fighting, and a lot of role-playing, and I managed to keep almost ahead of the party in terms of developing my extemporaneous adventure. The characters all worked, is the main thing. Yes, the races were powerful, and it definitely showed, but I was happy to get the lift in APL when it came to figuring out challenges for the party.
My sister did pick the cat-kin, and I had her climbing a waterfall surfaced with gold first thing, in order to get the McGuffin down for preparations for the ceremony. She fell into RPing without a hitch! (The rat-kin matriarch who sent her left out a bit of intel... The right hint of asperity tinged the respect in her voice when she reported it missing.) She also got to climb (sneakily) a great stone cairn now serving as a Shadow Drake nest, and scout out a cave that (as it turns out) was serving as the den for a pair of Dire Wolverines. She's about to have to scout the way through a trap-filled pass to get to the Maw. Lots of felinesque things to do.
My most stressful decision came in the last session, after one of the dire wolverines knocked the cat-kin unconscious. I froze. Normally, I'll have an intelligent nasty or even a beast ignore an unconscious foe in favor of another who's waving a sharp sword around. Well, unless their personal objective is to drag an unconscious meal away... In any case, they don't go for a kill. But I'd thrown DIRE WOLVERINES at the party. Raging dire wolverines, at that. They're crazed; they don't strategize. Now, my sister was actually quite cheerful despite getting knocked out of the fight. Noooo, she wasn't going to be so cheerful if her beautiful snow leopard PC got killed. Noooo. It took me a minute to figure out motivation for the male wolverine to turn on the bear-kin who was busily slicing up his mate rather than savage the limp figure in his claws. But I did it. Whew!
My sister mentioned after that last session that if her PC had died, that would have been that. As it is...
She's going to play over the phone!
So, thanks to you all, we not only had a great holiday with lots of fun family entertainment, I now have an on-going activity with my sister. Yay! And yes, thank you from the very bottom of my heart.
Mark, I can trust her reports of die rolls. Actually pointing to where on a character sheet she can find what she needs will be harder, of course. But Debnor & I are, I fear, cranky old-fashioned "last decade's tech is modern enough for us" sorts. We don't have video link tech, in short. Or a smart phone. Still, I'm confident we can make this work.