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| ShadowFrog04-10-08, 11:46 AM | so far I have a setting in mind, histories and what not, but it's all in my head at the moment. Here is one of 3 races native to the world, tell me what you think in terms of gaming viability. Ok, here is the race for the world I'm making, let me know what you think, both on the flavor stuff and the stats/abilities. Next to come are a pair of human breed/variants, but it'll be a while before they're on paper. Campaign World <CW> Grimalkin are one of only 3 native races on <CW>, the other 2 being the Mageborn (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1016344) and Mageblind Humans. They originally came from the southern reaches and were, until the arrival of the "Others", considered not worth the attention of the Mageborn (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1016344). After the Others arrival, and the near simultaneous at the Crimson Towers the Grimalkin have grown as a species, no longer scattered tribes spread and roaming around the forests and jungles. A little known Spirit Shaman brought the tribes together and forged what would be the first and to this day only Grimalkin nation and founded their first true city, Shitar. Partially built, partially grown with help from their new Elven friends from the forests it is situated in. Personality Younger than any of the other races, besides perhaps the Mageblind, the Grimalkin have finally found an identity as a race. Due to their relative youth as a culture many Grimalkin are shy, quiet and long thinking when deal with the other races, however they are open and outspoken among other Grimalkin, and to a lesser extent the few humans that have settled along their border. Physical Description Grimalkin are generally slightly smaller than their human counterparts and are covered in a fine but dense fur ranging all the normal feline colors and patterns. One of the aspects that most other races find difficult to get used to are the Grimalkin's tails. Grimalkin have greater controll of their tails than a normal feline does and they also retain a set of retractable claws on their hands along with sharp teeth. Male Grimalkin stand, on average, 4 to 6 inches taller than their female counterparts. Relations Grimalkin find they have most in common the graceful elves that now border their southern lands, and the "new" humans that arrived with the rest of the "Others". The grace of the elves rivals their own and they share an elongated lifespan, while the humans seems as kindred spirits, and the only race that wholly accepted the Grimalkin. There have even been a few Grimalkin-Human unions, however none have, as yet, resulted in any offspring. While there isn't any animosity between the Dwarfs and the Grimalkin, neither truly understand each other. For the Grimalkin it's unthinkable that anyone would choose to live underground away from the sunlight, while the Dwarfs find it equally odd that anyone would trust their footing in a city built in the trees. The Mageborn (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1016344) and Mageblind still see the Grimalkin as savages and a nuisance to be tolerated and ignored, nothing more. The have at least however acknowledged their sentience, though more from necessity than from any sense of right or compassion. Alignment Grimalkin have a sense of wonder about life and the world around them that tends to sway them away from the path of evil, though possibly not good and corrupt Grimalkin aren't unheard of. They have no particular bent towards Law or Chaos. Lands The Grimalkin nation lay along the southern coast of <Campaign World Continent> and include a range of climates, but is mainly Jungle and forest lands. They only have one true city, built high in the branches of the Thaln Forrest, Shitar Languages Grimalkin speak common, though with an almost guttural tone. They also speak their own language <FRLan> consisting of hisses and purs. Only known among other Grimalkin all Grimalkin share a minor telepathic bond allowing them to send images to one another at will. Stats • +4 Dexterity, -2 Intelligence. • Medium: As Medium creatures, elves have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size. • Grimalkin base land speed is 30 feet. • Low-Light Vision: An Grimalkin can see three times as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. She looses the ability to distinguish color but not detail under these conditions. • +2 racial bonus on Listen, Search and Spot checks and a +4 Bonus on Climb checks • -2 racial negative on Slight of Hand and Swim checks. • Automatic Languages: Common and <FRL>. • Favored Class: Spirit Shaman; Male, Ranger; Female • All Grimalkin start with the Blind Fight feat for free • +1 LA the stats I'm still working on/tweeking. help here is appreicated. EDIT: Made Climb a +4 bonus, +4 dex instead of +2, blind-fight feat for free(Wiskers) and changed female Fav Class to Ranger(Fits better the "huntress" cats than does either Fighter or Monk). |
| Vharuck04-10-08, 01:22 PM | Let me first say that I love the story. Very nice. While cat people are a racial idea that's been thrown about very often, you made them a race with enough history to flesh out a character, but not too much history to pidgeonhole any character. Good job with that, and I like the well-thought out relations with the other races. The relations were developed with the racial history, not tacked on afterwards. Since I love the fluff, let's hit the crunch. My comments will be in red type. Stats • +2 Wisdom, +2 Dexterity, -2 Intelligence. This is a red flag to me. Two bonuses are, as far as I know, unheard of among LA 0 races. While the penalty does some work to mitigate it, it's still plenty powerful. Since a tail and feline nature backs up the Dexterity bonus, but nothing in their history even mentioned why they would be wiser than humans, I'd drop the Wisdom bonus and keep the Dex bonus and Int penalty. • Medium: As Medium creatures, elves have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size. • <FR> base land speed is 30 feet. • Low-Light Vision: An <FR> can see three times as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. She looses the ability to distinguish color but not detail under these conditions. I had to check to make sure, but Low-Light vision does allow the character to distinguish color. Anatomically it makes sense, since felines see well in the dark because their eyes developed a layer which allows them to let a ray of light pass through their sight organs (rods and cones) twice instead of the human's normal once. • +2 racial bonus on Listen, Search, Spot and Climb checks. If anything, a tail would benefit balance. Consider adding a +2 bonus to Balance, and maybe a +2 bonus to Jump. The good thing about +2 bonuses to physical skills is that they rarely make a race overpowered, as these meager bonuses play only a small part in an uncommon set of situations. • -2 racial negitive on Slight of Hand and Swim checks. Swim could make sense, if you went with the whole "cats hate water" thing. That'd be neat. But why Sleight of Hand? • Automatic Languages: Common and <FRL>. • Favored Class: Spirit Shaman;Male, Fighter/Monk(not sure);Female. I like the gender role implication. I wonder if it has been done before (never seen it in an official source), but it makes sense. |
| ShadowFrog04-10-08, 01:45 PM | Let me first say that I love the story. Very nice. While cat people are a racial idea that's been thrown about very often, you made them a race with enough history to flesh out a character, but not too much history to pidgeonhole any character. Good job with that, and I like the well-thought out relations with the other races. The relations were developed with the racial history, not tacked on afterwards. Since I love the fluff, let's hit the crunch. My comments will be in red type. Ok, let me clarify a couple thing that might be a bit fuzzy in the initial post. • +2 Wisdom, +2 Dexterity, -2 Intelligence. This is a red flag to me. Two bonuses are, as far as I know, unheard of among LA 0 races. While the penalty does some work to mitigate it, it's still plenty powerful. Since a tail and feline nature backs up the Dexterity bonus, but nothing in their history even mentioned why they would be wiser than humans, I'd drop the Wisdom bonus and keep the Dex bonus and Int penalty. The +2 Wis is due to story implications, however not something I have down here yet, it's floating around in the worlds history and what happened to make the race what they are today. I do see the worry about the 2 bonuses with 1 negitive, but I'll get to that below • Low-Light Vision: An <FR> can see three times as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. She looses the ability to distinguish color but not detail under these conditions. I had to check to make sure, but Low-Light vision does allow the character to distinguish color. Anatomically it makes sense, since felines see well in the dark because their eyes developed a layer which allows them to let a ray of light pass through their sight organs (rods and cones) twice instead of the human's normal once. This is why I did this. Some people might not like it, but it seemed to fit to me. I also bumped up the normal double distance of vision that the elves have to triple. Just a benifit of being a race created by magics in the first place(Again, not something spelled out here OR known to the race in the first place :) ) • +2 racial bonus on Listen, Search, Spot and Climb checks. If anything, a tail would benefit balance. Consider adding a +2 bonus to Balance, and maybe a +2 bonus to Jump. The good thing about +2 bonuses to physical skills is that they rarely make a race overpowered, as these meager bonuses play only a small part in an uncommon set of situations. I had origonally planed for them to have a +2 to Jump, but went away from that. while the extra +2's hardly ever make a race overpowered, too many would be IMO a bit takcy...might think about it though. • -2 racial negitive on Slight of Hand and Swim checks. Swim could make sense, if you went with the whole "cats hate water" thing. That'd be neat. But why Sleight of Hand? Nail meet Head on the swim...can'tjust don't like water...at least not any cats I know. As to the Slight of Hand, it goes to the retractable claws. They make their hands a bit hard to deal with in situations like that, just a bit cumbersome • Favored Class: Spirit Shaman;Male, Fighter/Monk(not sure);Female. I like the gender role implication. I wonder if it has been done before (never seen it in an official source), but it makes sense. Only place I've actually seen this was in NWN with the Drow. Males hade a FC of Fighter while the Females had a FC of Cleric. From another board I post, here is my reasoning behind doing a split FC on gender for this one Well, on the different gender different fav class it goes a bit to flavor and a bit of real world bleed over. RL large cats (lions, panthers, ect...) the male is more of the pack leader with a lot/some of females that do the actual hunting. That's what I was looking at when I built this class from a flavor standpoint. The males are in most cases the leaders, both spiritual and social while the females are hunters, protectors. You may want to shoot me for this, and so be it, but I got the idea from the implimentation of the Drow in NWN (Male fav class is fighter, Female is cleric) One note on the stats, I am willing to go as high as a +1LA on this, but I'd like to keep the stats unless there's no way to ballance with them in. One other thing of note about the world. There are no half-breed races. The magic of the world allows them to be born, but 99% of those born are stillborn, and the rest die in their sleep within the first week, unless they live in an antimagic feild... Thanks for the response! Also, I'm taking suggestions on names of the race...nothing is really jumping out at me |
| ciaran04-10-08, 10:09 PM | I thought male Drow had Wizard as their favored class. I'd drop the +2 search and replace with +2 balance or jump, as suggested by Vharuck. If you look at many of the much-loved races, they have unique racial features (+1 to saves, stonecunning, spell like abilities, etc). I see none here. Although not unique, perhaps using Dex for Jump and Climb checks would be suitable. They also have unique abilities with little effect on play, but are rich in flavor: weapon proficiencies, bonus on craft skills, or aptitude with thrown weapons. Its tough to make good races. |
| ShadowFrog04-10-08, 10:25 PM | The initial build had them having a built in Slowfall 10, but I got informed from some friends it was unballanced with that in there, so out it went. One thing that I can't believe I missed was that their minor telepathic abilities in the stat block area. |
| sonofzeal04-10-08, 11:59 PM | One note on the stats, I am willing to go as high as a +1LA on this, but I'd like to keep the stats unless there's no way to ballance with them in. Ah, for LA +1 you can do all sorts of thing. Rule of thumb is to have a total no more than a +6 overall (see Catfolk's +4 Dex / +2 Cha). So... +4 Dex / +4 Wis / -2 Int should technically be within reason, except that it's just TOO good for classes that get Wis to AC (especially Swordsage), so I'd keep one of the two at a +2. You could also probably boost some of those +2 skill bonuses up to +4's. Maybe... +4 Balance/Climb, +2 Spot/Listen, drop Search? You can probably fit a Scent trait in under LA +1 too. For LA +0 you just need to add one more penalty in there. Con maybe? |
| ShadowFrog04-11-08, 09:31 AM | Ah, for LA +1 you can do all sorts of thing. Rule of thumb is to have a total no more than a +6 overall (see Catfolk's +4 Dex / +2 Cha). So... +4 Dex / +4 Wis / -2 Int should technically be within reason, except that it's just TOO good for classes that get Wis to AC (especially Swordsage), so I'd keep one of the two at a +2. You could also probably boost some of those +2 skill bonuses up to +4's. Maybe... +4 Balance/Climb, +2 Spot/Listen, drop Search? You can probably fit a Scent trait in under LA +1 too. For LA +0 you just need to add one more penalty in there. Con maybe? Actually if I ended up with a 2nd I'd want to use Cha as the neg...but being as their favored class would get killed like that(SS use Cha as a casting stat). I might just go +1 LA, leave the stats alone and give a couple interesting tweeks to the racial abilities, free feats or something |
| ShadowFrog04-12-08, 10:14 PM | So does it look good like this, or am I still smoking the good stuff? |
| Neutronium_Dragon04-12-08, 10:50 PM | It looks very weak for +1 LA. Reduce Dex to +2, drop the two skill penalties (just because you don't like something doesn't make you bad at it, and creatures with stranger shaped hands than that don't get a Sleight of Hand penalty) and make Climb +2, and you're pretty much LA +0. |
| ShadowFrog04-16-08, 01:41 PM | Even with a Blindfight feat free it's still to weak at +1? I'm leaving the dex just cause I have them dreamed up to be incredibly aglie, lithe, ect... and the higher dex is for that reason. Would it be wiser to beef them up with a +2 to another stat then de-power them, or would a +2 stat(Probably wis) bump make them a bit OP for a +1 |