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In Pathfinder, there are four types of races: standard, advanced, monstrous, and very powerful. My question to those on the forums is, what are some of the ways you deal with the more powerful ones? Besides outright saying no and telling the player to pick something else.
I remember reading back when the tiefling was brought in that you could give them 50% of their XP for half their first level, and then let them gain normal XP for the rest of their career. That's fine, but that's just a temporary XP penalty, which they'll always have as Pathfinder doesn't have a way to gain additional XP for being lower level like D&D 3.5 did.
Back during the inception of E6, the rules were that if you played a race with a level adjustment (or more powerful race), you took less points for stat buy. So 0 LA was 32, +1 was 25, +2 was 18, +3 was 10, and +4 was 0. Later incarnations suggested that for anyone that took an even more powerful race, they'd have to use the established D&D LA rules for buy-off, and/or they could take an NPC level to balance things out.
Most games in Pathfinder never see 25 point buy, but with the above in mind, I was thinking that standard got 20 pts, advanced got 15 pts, monstrous got 10 and had to take an NPC level (minus commoner), and very powerful got 10 plus had to take a level of commoner. What do you guys think? Would that work? It's what I definitely considered for my group, but they ended up all playing standard cost races before I had made my decision.
This is of course assuming that you're playing a series of premade adventures or an adventure path such as Mummy's Mask or Rise of the Runelords. Basically, those state that they're meant for 4 PCs with 15 point buy.
I get that there are those who prefer rolling stats, but with that in mind, if it's a completely homebrew type game, you've probably already got set parameters in place and have limited what you're allowing your players to take in the first place. At least, I'm hoping you are. Be really awkward to run a game with a 41 race point drow noble that rolled 16-18 in every stat. Unless that's what everyone is.
Some suggestions I've already had, including one from Owen Stephens, were:
1) Don't mix races. Only let the players have access to one style (all standard, all advanced, etc).
2) Only allow those that are allowed in the current season of PFS.
3) Allow all races that have been allowed in PFS, including those that require boons.
4) Revise/re-custom higher point races to fit that of the lowest costing race in the group.
5) Revise/re-custom lower point races to fit that of the highest costing race in the group (ie. make the strongest human).
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I use the following system in my homebrew Kingmaker campaign.
Variable Point Buy -
The base ideal is similar to your ideal of more powerful races starting with less point buy.
Each player starts with 35 character points (CP)
After selecting a race, the character deducts from his CP the racial points (RP) cost of the selected race.
The left over CP is the point buy for that character. This is capped at 25 point buy.
*Its capped as some of the elemental races start at 6 rp.
So a Human (10 rp) is:
35 cp - 10 rp = 25 point buy
While an Assimar (15 rp) is:
35 rp - 15 rp = 20 pointbuy
Races like the drow noble (41rp) would be beyond the selection of the players.
This allows for a level of balancing, while still opening up all options for players to choose from.
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Yes, dwarf get 24 point buy. Point for point, they are actually one of the stronger core races. Even if they are less flexible then the human-type races when it comes to the classes they can excel at.
A normal drow (14 rp ) would then be a 21 point buy.
You can lower or rise the base character points as needed to suit your campaign.
The advantage of the Variable Point Buy system is that it allows the inclusion of 3rd party races or even custom races.
Just use the race builder in the Advanced Race Guide to calculate their RP and you can come up with how much point buy is left for that race.
*If you do allow custom races via the race builder, I would strongly suggest you limit some race building options like buying extra ability scores, as it can be very easily abused.
A +2 racial bonus to an ability score is just 4 points...
I feel like the race point system is... not very good. Moreover, any attempt to bring absolute balance via numbers in a system in a game where the core rulebook contains both the wizard and the core rogue is doomed to be ultimately fruitless. What I'm mostly concerned about is people who want to play a particular race because they can get huge stat bonuses, rather than their desire to tell a story about someone like that.
I feel like context matters too, like the Caecaelia is a 23 RP race, which falls into the "monstrous race" category. However, 7 of those RP are devoted to abilities that are absolutely useless out of the water, so in a campaign I'm relatively confident will contain absolutely no swimming, sailing, or boating would I really consider it so much more of a problem than a Wyvaran or an Android? The best thing you get is "can't be tripped" and "you have natural reach on your pair of 1d4 tentacle primary natural attacks".
So I feel like as long as everyone is happy playing whatever they want to play, and they're playing something for the theme or the feel or the concept rather than the numbers, everything will be okay.
The one thing the RP system does not account for is that Dwarves, Elves, Humans, and Halflings have a whole lot of support in the form of feats, traits, spells, favored class bonuses, and other mechanical gewgaws that the more uncommon races don't have. I feel that things like a human Warpriest getting 1/6 of a feat/level, a human sorcerer learning an extra spell/level, or an elf Occultist getting 50% more Mental Focus are going to matter a lot more in the long run than most of the bonuses you'd get from being an uncommon race but these aren't reflected in the RP values.
So things I would consider banning outright are:
- Stat bonuses that include a +4 or have more than a +4 net.
- Large races
- Extra arms
- Any sort of movement options that are going to be a serious advantage.
I might deal with the "Drow Noble Problem" by requiring anybody who wants that class to take the entire "Drow Nobility" feat chain at 1st, 5th, and 9th level. It feels like "I want to play a Drow" can be accomplished with a 11 point race rather than a 41 point race.
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I might deal with the "Drow Noble Problem" by requiring anybody who wants that class to take the entire "Drow Nobility" feat chain at 1st, 5th, and 9th level. It feels like "I want to play a Drow" can be accomplished with a 11 point race rather than a 41 point race.
I don’t know about 11 RP, but definitely 14.
And it’s definitely fair to bring up races that are at a complete disadvantage for the campaign.
What I’m having trouble with regarding the newer races is that their base forms are vastly inferior to their monster forms. And yes, I realize they can’t hold a candle to their bestiary versions, but at least make them competent by comparison. The new aquatic books had me breathing flames. All the races had massive penalties that their monster version never had or had a different weakness. That’d be like giving the dhampir a -2 Cha instead of Con. Makes no sense. But that’s a topic for another discussion altogether.
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I might deal with the "Drow Noble Problem" by requiring anybody who wants that class to take the entire "Drow Nobility" feat chain at 1st, 5th, and 9th level. It feels like "I want to play a Drow" can be accomplished with a 11 point race rather than a 41 point race.I don’t know about 11 RP, but definitely 14.
And it’s definitely fair to bring up races that are at a complete disadvantage for the campaign.
What I’m having trouble with regarding the newer races is that their base forms are vastly inferior to their monster forms. And yes, I realize they can’t hold a candle to their bestiary versions, but at least make them competent by comparison. The new aquatic books had me breathing flames. All the races had massive penalties that their monster version never had or had a different weakness. That’d be like giving the dhampir a -2 Cha instead of Con. Makes no sense. But that’s a topic for another discussion altogether.
When making a 0cr "race", monsters often have to be water down to fit the race features budget.
You will often need to tweak what races you allow for a campaign.
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When making a 0cr "race", monsters often have to be water down to fit the race features budget..
Oh, trust me I’m quite aware of that. It’s just that one does not need to make them unnecessarily weaker. If your race is 9 RP because you went +2 Str, -2 Con, +2 Wis when the original monster has +6 Str, +2 Dex, +4 Wis, +8 Cha, you could have just as easily made it 11 RP instead and not had the -2 Con. And why does it have +2 Wis when the original’s Cha was higher? But again, a topic for another time. I’m already going off on a tangent on my own thread, and remembering it is only making me frustrated again.
I get that you’ll need to tweak things, but it’d still be nice to come to general middle ground for my players, and others. I know one of my players was really bummed he couldn’t be a drow because the GM at the time limited us to only 9 RP and lower races. Nothing was allowed to be more powerful than a human. I’d like to not go through the same ordeal or have hurt feelings at the table. That said, I don’t want anyone to be overpowered and dwarfing others by comparison.
The Race point system is pretty terrible. At first they tried to say all core races are 10's by arbitrarily assigning points to say they are 10. But after complaints they adjusted them so that there was some variants.
Do not use the race point system. It has been proven to not be accurate more than once. You can use lower points, and get a powerful race if you know how to stack things. You can also create something that cost a lot of points, but isn't really significantly better than a core race.
In other words you should rely on your understanding of the game to know what to allow. If you don't feel comfortable then I would suggest posting to the forums, and also including your the table's style of play because that is also factor in how good something is.
LA in 3.5 was also no accurate. Some monsters also lost their advantage at earlier times than others. Which means that as an example you can have 2 LA+2 monsters and one might have special abilities that remain relevant longer. That is because monsters are balanced around being used for one combat, but PC powers are based around an entire adventuring day.
For the most part the featured and uncommon races should be ok in most games. I've used them without any problems. The ones that might cause the most trouble are the ones that are able to fly at low levels. Some can't fly without an investment in feats. I don't think an of them can fly at level 1 without using a feat other than the Strix.
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I don't think an of them can fly at level 1 without using a feat other than the Strix.
Gathlains are another one, they even have an alternate racial trait to have a fly speed of 40' (average) (in exchange for a 20' ground speed.)