My first custom race (and post!)


Homebrew and House Rules


Hey, I was posting here because I was hoping to get a little feedback on this custom race I put together. They're supposed to be a near human power level, but with stronger strengths and harsher weaknesses. So, uh, yeah!

Iniqi
The Iniqi are an ancient people, children of the forests of a lost land. It is told in their legends that the goddess Ili had wandered the world in search of a place untouched by the evils of her siblings, Hector and Aklae, and, after a thousand years, she found the Goodspring. Ili rested at the Goodspring, and the land glowed with her breath of life. A huge forest emerged, trees stretching up to the sky, and their branches holding all the creatures of the world. But, Aklae and his armies of evil fey found her, eventually. Ili held her ground against Aklae and his forces, but in Aklae’s last act against her, he struck at her heart and left her for dead, retreating wounded to the First Realm. Ili’s blood flowed into the Goodspring, and even as she died the forest bloomed anew with the magic of Ili. The forest was radiant with light, and then it settled like dust. From the dust and waters emerged the Iniqi, whose skin was decorated with the gold of Ili’s blood. There their stories end, for the records have long since vanished. The Goodspring was split in two, and an earthquake shattered the forest. The life began to fade from the land as the water’s drained away, and then one day the forest was gone. The Iniqi had no homeland, and the world they met outside was a hateful one. Crusaders flying the banner of Hector ran down the Iniqi as monsters, and those who survived the wars hid. It was not long before the Iniqi were only known in the stories of crusaders and rumoured, lonely nomads seeking refuge. Their beauty and seeming exoticness has resulted tragically in many being captured and sold into slavery by cruel villains.

Iniqi are
Medium sized
Humanoids
Normal speed
-2 STR
+0 DEX
-4 CON
+4 CHA
+2 INT
+0 WIS

Iniqi are notably quick-witted, and their magical heritage has resulted in impressive beauty among them. However, their physical frailty became apparent outside the gentle forests of the Goodspring, making them rather poor barbarians and brutes. Iniqi are powerful spell-casters, and often favour sorcerers and healing magic users. Among the few concentrated communities of Iniqi, worship of the goddess Ili is the most common religion, but will often take up the regional gods when they're isolated.

Iniqi speak Common and Iniqi and intelligent Iniqi may learn any language.

The descendants of the forest and waters, the Iniqi are naturally averse to fire and cold, suffering 50% extra damage from fire and cold damage. (Vulnerability to fire and cold)

Conversely, their spells Iniqi heal rapidly when submerged in non-stagnant, natural water. (When submerged in non-stagnant, natural water for 1 round, gain fast healing 2 for 1 round, up to 2 + HD hit points healed per day with this ability)

Iniqi innate magic is quite potent, allowing them a powerful spell resistance that increases as they grow older. (Spell Resistance 11 + Level)

Though they are scattered, lonely, and persecuted, the Iniqi are eternally hopeful. (+2 on saving throws against fear and despair effects. Also, once per day, after a natural roll of 1 on a d20 roll, members of this race may reroll and use the second result.)

Once per day, the Iniqi’s natural connection to the arcane allows them to counter a spell cast against them. (1/day cast dispel magic as an immediate action to counterspell.)

Physically: Iniqi are built like small, lithe humans, but their skin is a blue-ish light grey and they possess pointed ears in a similar manner to elves. Softly glowing, golden patterns mark across the whole of their body, most concentrated along their spines and hands. These markings are unique to each Iniqi, though the facial markings of an Iniqi are often very similar across families. Iniqi hair is often styled quite short, and is always between black and dark blue. Iniqi reach maturity around the same time as humans, but their adult and elder period lasts up to five times longer than a human’s. A lucky Iniqi may live to over 400 years, but luck is in short supply among the Iniqi.


IMHO, the thing that gives me pause is the dispel magic ability as part of a race.
Now I am no PF expert in any way but that is a very potent ability that has many uses.

Rapid healing also seems a bit powerful (if near natural flowing water) as it provides a healing "pool" to pull from that is good for quite a few hits.
So this ability can be very useful if around and natural source of flowing water. ie sea, ocean, stream, lake, river and maybe even a sewer in a city. I might say non-magically conjured water so a person could not conjure a good amount of water or summon an water elemental to flow over them.

Like most things I would run tests in my game to see where the problem lie. ie is the race too powerful for spell casters, you say magical heritage as a means to their stats (or maybe that is my miss-conception) but would their stats in the long term reduce their racial chance of survival? ie Fort saves for common disease's and sickness would be lower than humans so the race would need more help. Note I know that PF like most F-RPG in general does not deal with common colds, sickness, disease on a huge scale but when designing races and other story/campaign elements IMHO you need to think outside the rules and what the effect might be in real life if your creation was in existence.
Now, having said that if the society also had some sort of prevalent/pervasive divine magic population to off set the natural weakness in racial fortitude that could make the race viable. The same could be said if the region/area they were from had some magical reason for the reduced Con to not play such a big part in their evolution.
For Example:
The area has a special lake and the streams that flow from it and travel throughout the land (their ruling area) provides the Iniqi, with strength to fight off common diseases and illnesses (provide some bonus for generic disease, sickness and general healing rate increase for things such as broken bones, etc and 1 extra HP healed per level) but when the water passes out of their lands it loses this benefit.

MDC


one per day counterspell is not really that overpowering ya it can save your hide on some days but on others it can be totally useless(if it was an at will ability i would say to over the top but as is its meh) i would look over their ability scores tho make it either +2 int +2 cha -2 con or +4 cha -2 str,-2 dex,-2 con like how orcs are, being vulnerable to 2 types of damage is crippleing and the fake fast healing mechanic as a whole is really lack luster, the flavor of the race seems good but keep inmind spell resistance may be a buff but it can also be a curse


To Mark Carlson's comment, I should probably make some of this stuff more clear. The healing in water ability is slightly modified from the custom race creation traits, but I thought it should scale because it originally was 2 hp per day healed this way. You make a good point, also, it should have to be natural, non-contained water that hasn't been magically conjured. Dispel magic when used as a counterspell requires a roll based on spellcraft in order to succeed, and I was thinking Iniqi should only be able to use it for the counterspell function against spells cast that turn.
The source of the weak constitution and vulnerability I was thinking was that the Goodspring was sorta like a garden of eden for them, without much physical hardship, but because of that they developed a really good defence and control of magic. I hadn't thought of the idea that maybe they had a tradition of healers, that works really well.
Lady-J, what did you mean by SR is a buff but also a curse?


I would never play this race, based on -4 Con alone. For the purpose of making a race physically frail, a -2 is sufficient. The double vulnerability is pretty brutal too. The limitation on fast healing is clever though. Rather than spell resistance, I think a bonus on saving throws against magic would suffice. Although giving them a spell once per day isn't the end of the world, I dont think 3rd level spells should be in the hand of 1st level characters.


1-A + or - 2 is a good brake when designing a race, going beyond that is risky as a playable race. It can both pigeonhole a race as a casualty waiting to happen or an overpowered Mary Sue. In this case, a Cha caster that is a glass cannon.

2-Two vulnerabilities that are far too common is a bad idea. As it is, they would find any but the most controlled place dangerous. A save mod would work better. That with the fear and reroll looks problematic. Doesn't fit with the luck mentioned.

3-regeneration in water would lead one to expect a more wet focused race.

4-Dispel magic is more powerful than a starting PC should be allowed. If it is that important to your ideal, perhaps allowing it as a racial spell, either gained automatically at the spell's level or even a level early. A number of races have powers that come with levels. That might be a solution.

I would like to see you 'final' run, the race seems too mono, yet scattered, but that can be fixed. As it is, they are Cha casters with a weak second going to Int based classes. Perhaps a Bard if they're less isolated.


My biggest issue is that it changes so many different things. Most the base races change or add about the same number of things. IE: 2 positive and 1 negative ability score modifiers with 1 feat like ability. All the penalties may make a by RAW balanced race but typically it leads to players optimizing around the weaknesses to abuse the extra strengths. Not arguing orc is an unfair race but it does make a very strong fighter because they can literally ignore all of the racial penalties that make them a balanced race.

I would drop the str penalty. Casters do not care about strength in most any case. Might add back on a penalty to CMD if you wanted to make them grapple vulnerable

-4 con is brutal. Lowering it and the cha bonus by 2 would make them feel less glass cannon. Also I might drop the cold vulnerability to help them keep them alive

Spell res and the dispel magic ability seem a bit redundant. Honestly I prefer a flat bonus to saving throws against spells to either of these mechanics. SR is often considered bad on PCs as it blocks beneficial spells from allies pretty well(typicality=CL) while fails to block most important enemy spells consistently(typically HD<CL).


the reason why spell resistance can be a curse is it can screw you over espesially at low levels and espesially if the person with spell resistance doesnt know how to use it properly

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

The description tells about their origins but barely touches on what iniqi are like. What's their culture? What do they value? What personality quirks do they tend to have? How does someone roleplay as a n iniqi? These are the most important aspects of designing a race.

I pretty much dislike all of their class features except the healing one (very smart of you to cap the healing based on HD). They have whacky ability scores (most races should have +2 to a physical score, +2 to a mental score, and -2 to another score). I'm not crazy about just tossing reroll effects on a race as they're very powerful while giving very little flavor. It feels strange they have spell resistance when they come off as a magical race. And an immediate action dispel magic feels way too powerful to put on a race.


Alright, thanks for the suggestions thus far. I'm going to tinker with them some more and see how I can implement this advice. Let's see how this works out! :D


I've made a new thread for the updated version:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2u62m?Updated-Custom-Race

Thanks for your suggestions! ^-^

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

You could have just put it in this thread. Also, your new thread is on the wrong forum.

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