In part 5 of the Fire Starters adventure path, there is an NPC that is an ifrit nuar - that is, a nuar with the ifrit racial graft. OK, sure - magical creatures can mate with nearly any other creature. We saw it all the time in Starfinder's predecessors all the way back to 3rd edition D&D.
The main difference here is that those predecessors all had ways for player characters to acquire some half-blooded perks. Half-dragons, half-celestials, half-elementals... all of them were perfectly viable (and a little over-powered) character options.
The issue I have with this is that Starfinder does not have a codified way to splice together exotic PC races such as a half-dragon elf, an ifrit nuar, or a skittermander ghoul.
For the sake of this question, let's stick to the ifrit nuar. How would a player character be built using these elements? Start with the nuar race, add the ifrit template graft on top? Make the character as an ifrit that looks like a nuar? What about ability score adjustments/racial abilities?
I would also be interested in hearing a game developer's take on this.
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Its not actually homebrew.
If player would play an ifrit nuar, it would just be ifrit stats who is flavorwise a nuar.
So its basically same thing as 1e's "you can play gnome tiefling whose only mechanical difference is being small" except its not standard assumption anymore that planar scions are humans and all others are "if gm allows it" variants.
Alien Archive to says this about planar scion player races "Size and Type: Planar scions are often Medium, and all are outsiders with the native subtype."
And flavor says this: "Because of their innate curiosity, humans are more likely to dally with outsiders, and as a consequence, a significant percentage of planar scions living in the Pact Worlds are descended from humans. However, because humans are far less populous than in pre-Gap eras, planar scions descended from other humanoid races are now far more numerous."
Article in general avoids presuming they are all human descended.
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When a bull and a BBQ love each other very much...
Isn't it ?
They even mention that possibility in their question.
Planar Scion traits takes precendence over whatever base race the character might be. For PCs at least.
Going beyond that is homebrew. Sensible homebrew as long as you don't get crazy with it, but still beyond the actual rules (I'd look at the Borai guidelines to modifiy the scions, in that case) .
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This, to me at least, is one of the biggest flaws of having divorced systems in the same game. I really hate that it's catching on. Anything a NPC can do or be, it should be within the realm of possibility for PCs.
I'm reminded of early 4E dragonborn that could fly, but only as NPCs. Precluding my dragonborn character from ever having that as an option sure made my character feel far less heroic.
I believe this is partially why D&D 3.0 - Pathfinder 1.0 was so popular/successful, because the PC/NPC mechanics didn't seem so divorced.
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I have to agree.
I understand it's a balancing act though. Making a gm's prep work easier is great, having people running around with magical NPC powers the PCs can only dream of is not.
As much as they disappointed people who were excepting something very different, I do think the Borais and their Old Talents trait were a step in the right direction - mechanically at least - and Scions could/should have followed a similar logic. Having something to differentiate a bantrid-born aasimar from a baseline human or a scyphozoan one would have been nice.
Still, it is what it is.
And as is, an ifrit is an ifrit is an ifrit no matter what they and their family look like. Nuar, Shirren, boring humans : it's the same.
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This, to me at least, is one of the biggest flaws of having divorced systems in the same game. I really hate that it's catching on. Anything a NPC can do or be, it should be within the realm of possibility for PCs.
I'm reminded of early 4E dragonborn that could fly, but only as NPCs. Precluding my dragonborn character from ever having that as an option sure made my character feel far less heroic.
I believe this is partially why D&D 3.0 - Pathfinder 1.0 was so popular/successful, because the PC/NPC mechanics didn't seem so divorced.
I tend to agree and disagree at the same time.
I agree that anything a NPC can do, a PC should do too (exception of extraordinary abilities and the like, but expensive augmentations should fill that gap anyway)
I disagree that PC/NPC mechanics should be similar. I like that NPCs are basically a simplified way of adding PC abilities to stat blocks without digging through pre-reqs and building them from the ground up.
With this character showing up in a book, I would have liked a blurb about combining planar scion with more unique races than human. In line with the borais, something like: 'At the GM's discretion, a planar scion may replace ____ ability (resistances, or the sort of spell like ability most likely) for an appropriate racial trait from the base race.'
Not how I understood it, but I'll let them clarify.
I read that as more of a "how would one make an Ifrit of Nuar descent" question, which felt to me like "by the books" was implied but I'll give you that my english certainly isn't perfect. And intent can get tricky on written stuff.
How would a player character be built using these elements? Start with the nuar race, add the ifrit template graft on top? Make the character as an ifrit that looks like a nuar? What about ability score adjustments/racial abilities?
Of those, the correct choice rules wise is the second : a regular Ifrit that happens to look like a Nuar.
We can advise on homebrewing if OP is interested in our collective ramblings, as adding some individuality makes sense (and is more fun), but that's the baseline.I tend to assume that people who want to homebrew would say so. Could be wrong.
I'm reminded of early 4E dragonborn that could fly, but only as NPCs. Precluding my dragonborn character from ever having that as an option sure made my character feel far less heroic.
Ran into a very similar issue with Sarcesians, where NPCs can fly twice as fast and stay in the void (CR) times as long as a player. I just homebrewed a custom racial feat, but in the rules, NPCs can just be better than a player ever can be.
I understand that separating the systems makes balancing easier, but that should be things like CR-based statblocks for quick creation, not unique abilities that PCs of the supposedly same race can never get. See how the Drow Magic racial entry works, adding a character build option from a high level NPC class, rather than locking it away - that's closer to what I see as ideal.