| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Dear Ask Paizo,
Long story short, when a friend announced he wanted to run a game, I immediately had, and spoke aloud, the idea of "the ultimate Calistrian Kasatha quad-wielding whips, with a face mask shaped to look like a gagged mouth." We both agreed the race as-is was too powerful, and nerfing some of the race features turned into a full-on new race. Said new race was octopus-themed, and reading the Wikipedia entry on octopodes introduced me to astereognosis, where semi-autonomy of many redundant limbs imposed several cognitive and neuro-muscular caveats.
Bang, I had my nerf.
Astereognostic (-8 RP) Chtapodes have a -2 racial penalty to all Disable Device and Sleight of Hand checks, a -1 racial penalty to Perform: Keyboard, Percussion, String and Wind checks as well as concentration checks; and treat any action to draw an item as one step longer and provokes attacks of opportunity.
Put simply, octopodes (and presumably four-armed humanoids) have difficulty doing fine manipulations they cannot see, and I tried to put that in game-terms.
I'd like some feedback about this race penalty.
Kasatha are intended to be more powerful. They are a 20pt race (or ** in Inner Sea Races).
-8 RP is too much. You can't weight skill penalties the way you would skill bonuses. Also, saying that an action takes "one step longer" is unclear. You understand what that means, but the game does not define actions by length. What happens if this race chooses Quick Draw?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You have to be very conservative with RP penalties because players don't "buy" racial traits. They buy the whole race as a package, meaning, they can simply choose a build that won't penalize them. A smart designer once said, "A disadvantage that is not a disadvantage is worth no points."
I once designed and played a four-armed race for 2 years. A smarter approach to balancing the extra arms is saying that the extra arms do not increase your number of attacks. The arms would still be incredibly useful, but not to the extreme of giving a 1st level character 4 attacks per round. If the player REALLY wants those extra attacks, then offer the ability as a high level feat -- at least 12th level since the extra attacks would be less powerful at that point in the game.
You have to be very conservative with RP penalties because players don't "buy" racial traits. They buy the whole race as a package, meaning, they can simply choose a build that won't penalize them. A smart designer once said, "A disadvantage that is not a disadvantage is worth no points."
I once designed and played a four-armed race for 2 years. A smarter approach to balancing the extra arms is saying that the extra arms do not increase your number of attacks. The arms would still be incredibly useful, but not to the extreme of giving a 1st level character 4 attacks per round. If the player REALLY wants those extra attacks, then offer the ability as a high level feat -- at least 12th level since the extra attacks would be less powerful at that point in the game.
If I implied this was something players would buy, I hadn't meant it. I intend this as something that would come default with a race that has four arms.
From my vantage point, having four arms mechanically seems like it would be incredibly powerful in ways beyond being able to make additional attacks per round. Being able to pick locks or cast somatic spells with one set of hands while the other set wields a shield and a weapon in a locked gauntlet is an example.
I also drafted it in light of the feats Multiweapon Fighting, -Defense, and -Specialist, which are specifically geared for multiarmed characters and can be taken as early as 4th level if a player manages to start with 20 Dex.
What I meant by actions to draw an item as taking "one step longer" is where normally it's a move action to draw a weapon (if you aren't drawing it as a free action as part of a move at +1 BAB) or to retrieve a stored item from a backpack, for this race it's a standard action that provokes. If a character takes the quick draw feat, then it's a move action. I admit I didn't write this through as clearly as I could have. Whether or not free actions can be taken as swift actions without breaking the internal logic is one sticking point I haven't ironed out yet.
What I'm looking for are ideas on how I can write the trait I came up with without having to houserule the Multiarmed racial trait itself. If skill penalties aren't viable, I'm open to other suggestions.
I think the kasatha race would be fine if you just:
1) Remove the extra attacks from multiarms
2) Give them a racial penalty to ability scores (like other standard races)
3) Remove greater defensive training. Getting a free +2 dodge bonus to AC is not only really powerful, but also (in my opinion) rather stupid considering the race already gets a Dex bonus.
If I implied this was something players would buy, I hadn't meant it. I intend this as something that would come default with a race that has four arms.
You did not understand what I meant. I was saying that you can't just balance a race by slapping a trait with a high RP penalty on it. Race design doesn't work that way.
I was making the point that it's bad design to use a racial weakness trait as a clutch to balance an overpowered trait because 99% of racial weakness traits are situational. If the player uses a build where the drawback is irrelevant, then it's not a drawback. A drawback that is little or no hindrance to a character is not a drawback.
What I meant by actions to draw an item as taking "one step longer" is where normally it's a move action to draw a weapon (if you aren't drawing it as a free action as part of a move at +1 BAB) or to retrieve a stored item from a backpack, for this race it's a standard action that provokes. If a character takes the quick draw feat, then it's a move action. I admit I didn't write this through as clearly as I could have. Whether or not free actions can be taken as swift actions without breaking the internal logic is one sticking point I haven't ironed out yet.
As Ciaran Barnes pointed out, we kinda know what you mean. However, you can't be loosey goosey with how you write rules. Especially in this case as not every action type has a "greater or less than" relationship with other action types. You have to be specific. For example, as you mentioned, it raises a question how this penalty would affect drawing weapons while moving. It's a badly written ability.
I shall have to see how this works. We just impose a -2 per arm doing something else. Our group have several races with extras, and tail and legs are easy. This might be our solution.