Echidnids
The Children of Echidnox [Ref: Echidnox: if anything seems just too random in this thread, read the Echidnox article] are a hedgehog-like race of humanoids. Stalwart homebodies, they are fierce warriors when threatened, but rarely choose to venture beyond the safety of their burrows. Almost all Echidnids revere Echidnox with a sort of strange combination of respect, adoration, and constant criticism. Everything bad is blamed on Echidnox not paying enough attention, and good things are usually grumped at ("Coulda made my corn half so good last season, Echidnox!"), but any outsider to dare critique the deity risks open derision at the very least.
Echidnids are surface burrowers and almost entirely subsistence farmers. Tradesmen and crafters are rare, found almost exclusively in Echidnox' religious centers (more on those some other time in another thread), though wood and stone carving are common skills found in farm villages and shared by all. They are simple salt of the earth, commonly ignored by other species. They're too fierce and prickly to be tempting to goblins and other smalltime barbarian races, and too small and introverted to trade with the major races.
(reference note: think tolkien hobbits with quills, the temper of the fightin' irish, and slightly less interest in social strata)
Racial Traits
Height: 4' to 4'6"
Weight: 100 to 160 lbs
Ability Scores: +2 Wis, +2 Cha
Size: Small
Speed: 6 squares
Vision: Normal
Languages: Common, Echidnid
Skill Bonuses: +2 Nature, +2 Intimidate, +8 Teamaking
Resist traffic equal to 5+1/2 level
Quills: You may use your quills similarly to a weapon (though the ability score you use for attack and damage may be different). However, you may not use them unless a power specifically permits you to make a quill attack.
* Echidnid Quills: +3 Proficiency. 1D6 damage. Light blade. Range 5/10. Off-hand, light thrown.
* Special: Choose one physical ability score (strength, dexterity, or constitution). Your quills use that ability score modifier when determining attack and damage rolls. Once chosen this cannot be changed. Additionally, your quills gain a +1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage at levels 5,10, 15, 20, 25, and 30.
Pincushion Stance: You do not grant combat advantage due to being prone. Additionally, melee attacks made with your quills do not suffer penalties due to being prone (other attacks are treated normally).
Prickly Counter: You may use your quills to make opportunity attacks.
Spiny: If you are grappling with a creature at the start of your turn, you may make a quill attack against that creature as a free action.
Unlikely Grip: You may wield weapons as a medium-sized creature: the normal penalties for being a small creature do not apply.
Racial Ability: You have the Teamaker racial ability.
Teamaker: Given access to hot water during a short rest, you can brew one batch of delicious tea. This tea may be drunk on the spot, or stored in an appropriate container (value 1sp) for later use. If drunk as a minor action it grants the imbiber a saving throw (add any enhancement bonuses to your tea to this save). Additionally, until the end of the imbiber's next turn you may apply any enhancement bonus to your tea as an enhancement bonus to your next diplomacy check targeting the imbiber. A given creature may only be affected by one drink of cold tea per encounter. The tea maintains its properties until your next extended rest, after which time it starts to taste like a bummet and offers no benefits.
Any enhancement bonus on your teapot is applied to the tea.
Oh. My. #@$*ing. God. That's just...
That picture was hilarious. Allow me to compose myself for a moment, so I may comment on this...
Just... Wow...
You asked for PEACHes, but with abilities like Resist Traffic and +8 Tea Making, I'm not sure how seriously I should take this. Plus, I'm sleepy. So I'll just be lazy and say that it needs work and point you toward my race mechanic creation guide.
You asked for PEACHes, but with abilities like Resist Traffic and +8 Tea Making, I'm not sure how seriously I should take this. Plus, I'm sleepy. So I'll just be lazy and say that it needs work and point you toward my race mechanic creation guide.
You can ignore the ones that clearly don't apply to the standard rules. I'm talking about the mechanics that are actually functional in D&D, ie. pretty much everything else (maybe not the deliciousness roll on the Teamaker ability, and a few other minor things).
Your guide is presently a forum-change-ruined unformatted wall of text, I'm afraid. I wouldn't mind a specific look at the rules and actual peach. The question here is if the racial ability choices are balanced, weak, or overpowered, and if the alternate (pincushion stance) is a reasonable alternate or minor enough to be included in the main body, since so far most of the racial benefits are very conditional.
I like this a lot! I touched it up for personal use and am totally going to integrate this species into my future campaigns -- I love the fluff behind the race!
I especially like the Teamaker ability, but it could use some touching up. Like,
You can brew one small batch of tea per short rest, equivalent to two servings of tea. This tea must be kept in some kind of vessel and consumed as a potion (a minor action). It allows the drinker to make a saving throw as a free action.
Add any enhancement bonuses on your teapot to the saves granted by your Teamaker ability, or to Diplomacy checks made against creatures who have drunk your tea.
(Remember to differentiate between Teamaking and Teamaker!)
As for Pincushion, I say scrap Quill Roll and make Pincushion a plain racial ability that prevents you from granting combat advantage while prone.
I like this a lot! I touched it up for personal use and am totally going to integrate this species into my future campaigns -- I love the fluff behind the race!
I especially like the Teamaker ability, but it could use some touching up. Like,
You can brew one small batch of tea per short rest, equivalent to two servings of tea. This tea must be kept in some kind of vessel and consumed as a potion (a minor action). It allows the drinker to make a saving throw as a free action.
Add any enhancement bonuses on your teapot to the saves granted by your Teamaker ability, or to Diplomacy checks made against creatures who have drunk your tea.(Remember to differentiate between Teamaking and Teamaker!)
As for Pincushion, I say scrap Quill Roll and make Pincushion a plain racial ability that prevents you from granting combat advantage while prone.
I like your suggested changes to Teamaker, and it's good to get a vote of confidence
For pincushion, since I would like to keep the idea of the quills featuring into it, what about something like this:
Pincushion Stance: You do not grant combat advantage due to being prone, nor do you suffer an attack penalty for melee attacks made with your quills while prone (other melee attacks are still penalised).
And to flesh it out,
Sea Urchin Stance (feat): (requirements TBA) While prone you may make an opportunity attack against an adjacent creature that misses you with an attack.
I have been thinking of making Quillroll part of the Echidnid Paragon Path and rebalancing it to suit that, rather than a racial ability. It doesn't seem like something all (or half of all) echidnids can do.
You should also maybe do something to flesh out Teamaking to make it an actually functional skill, instead of something completely facetious. As in, have the Teamaking roll for deliciousness vaguely influence something or other -- retain it's inherent silliness, but don't make it useless.
Also,
Resist Traffic: You gain a +5 racial bonus to checks made to avoid vehicles or riding animals.
Works better as a concrete mechanic. It's just as facetious though -- really, how often is that bonus going to come in handy?
Your guide is presently a forum-change-ruined unformatted wall of text, I'm afraid.
Actually, the guide was largely untouched by the forum change, at least on my end. Though right after I read your reply I accidentally fubared it to hell. Its unfubared now and with a hyperlinked table of context, so that should help if you decide to give it a second look.
You can ignore the ones that clearly don't apply to the standard rules. I'm talking about the mechanics that are actually functional in D&D, ie. pretty much everything else (maybe not the deliciousness roll on the Teamaker ability, and a few other minor things).
Very well then.
Skill Bonuses: +2 Nature, +2 Intimidate, +8 Teamaking
Resist traffic equal to 5+1/2 level
While I know these are here for humor mostly, from a serious perspective I suggest you remove these elements from the racial stat block and relegate them to flavor or figure out some way to make them meaningful to player characters. It would make the stat block cleaner.
Quills: You may use your quills similarly to a weapon. However, you may not use them unless a power specifically permits you to make a quill attack.
* Echidnid Quills: +3 Proficiency. 1D6 damage. Light blade. Range 5/10. Off-hand, light thrown.* Special: Your quills gain a +1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage at levels 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30.
Prickly Counter: You may use your quills to make opportunity attacks.
Spiny: If you are grappling with a creature at the start of your turn, you may make a quill attack against that creature as a free action.
This is an interesting set of racial abilities. Applause for not forgetting to take enhancement bonuses into consideration with your natural weapon as well as your interesting method of limiting said natural weapon to prevent wealth abuse.
However, I do think that these abilities are on the weak side. In most cases, Prickly Counter is a lack luster ability.
With Prickly Counter, Melee oriented Echidnids almost undoubtedly have weapon options that would be superior to what Quills provides. Non-melee Echidnids, Quills are basically a slightly more damaging dagger; not much consolation.
Spiny is pretty interesting, though it suffers from two problems. First, its very situational. Unless a player fights consistently fights monsters that use grabbing as an option, the ability won't see much defensive use. A Echidnids could try to use it offensively, but that would require very specific builds for the tactic to be consistently reliable. A Str focused char would be the minimum, which already excludes many classes from pursuing the option. Second, it's a melee specific ability, and racial abilities should never be made useless by class or choice. Ranged and implement specific characters more often than not won't have the strength needed to make the most of what the free attack Spiny grants. Taking Melee Training can get around this issue, but FSBNNR.
Option 1.
Racial Ability: Choose either Teamaker or Quillroll. Once chosen, this may not be changed.
Quillroll: Encounter, move action, personal. Move up to your speed +2 squares. As a free action, you may make a quill attack against any creature that makes an attack against you during this move; doing so reduces the total distance you can move by 2 squares. If you have only one or two remaining movement points left after making a quill counter, you end the movement immediately and are prone.
Teamaker: Given access to hot water during a short rest, you can brew delicious tea (make a Teamaking skill check to determine the deliciousness level). The drinker may make an extra save vs any diseases afflicting him or her; failure on that save does not move the drinker down the disease track.
You may also brew one batch of cold tea per short rest. This tea must be kept in some kind of vessel (approximate cost 1sp) and consumed as a potion. It grants the imbiber a saving throw. A given creature may only benefit from one drink of cold tea per encounter.
Add any enhancement bonuses on your teapot to the saves granted by your teamaking ability.Option 2.
Pincushion Stance: Using your second wind or a total defense action lets you use the Pincushion Stance until the end of your next turn. You enter this stance automatically (as a free action) while prone. In the Pincushion Stance, you do not grant combat advantage due to being prone. If any creature enters a square adjacent to you or makes a melee attack against you, you may make a quill attack as an opportunity action against that creature.
Option 3. both racial abilities. Would this be too much?
Quillroll and Pincushion Stance suffer from relaying on strength-based melee attacks, which makes them far less useful to non-strength based chars.
Aside from that, Quillroll's a pretty decent encounter power. The chance to make yourself prone while using it is a bit of a buzzkill though.
Teamaker is potentially broken due to not having any hard limits. Using it during a short rest, an Echidnid can brew infinite tea until all members of her party are cured of any disease. And with its combat use, an Echidnid can prepare nigh infinite amounts of oregano "Battle Tea". A short rest is only 5 minutes long, and at 1sp per bottle (a one time charge since the cost is for the bottle and not the tea), it's easy to stock up a Handy Haversack full of the stuff. Having a Echidnid in the party would basically mean that every member of the party can reroll a save for free as a minor action once per encounter. That's crazy good. Adding enchantment bonuses to all those almost-free saves pushes it from maybe-broken to yup-that's-broken status.
Pincushion Stance is pretty sweet. Again, it offensive capabilities suffer from being str-reliant. But the ability to ignore the CA aspect is being prone is very nice indeed. I'm gonna have to steal this idea.
Overall, I think the Echidnid underpowered. A race should have two mechanically significant (major) racial abilities. Of their racial abilities, Spiny is the only one with some significant mechanical worth, and it loses points for being highly situational and melee-specific.
Quillroll and Pincushion Stance are both decent offensive powers, though personally I think Pincushion Stance is the more interesting and racially distinctive of the two.
While the way you handled Quills is interesting, I suggest doing away with it completely. You have Quills are stated out as a weapon, but a player could never use them as regular weapons due to the restrictions you imposed. I think it would be cleaner to incorporate Quill damage as an attack line in the encounter abilities. That kinda leaves Prickly Counter high and dry, but as I said earlier, I don't think that ability is all that useful to begin with.
Pincushion Stance: You do not grant combat advantage due to being prone, nor do you suffer an attack penalty for melee attacks made with your quills while prone (other melee attacks are still penalised).
And to flesh it out,
Sea Urchin Stance (feat): (requirements TBA) While prone you may make an opportunity attack against an adjacent creature that misses you with an attack.
This version of Pinchusion Stance would make for a useful and much needed major ability, and its supporting feat is decent as well.
Woo, lots of stuff to chew through now. Thanks for the feedback everyone.
Skill Bonuses: +2 Nature, +2 Intimidate, +8 Teamaking
Resist traffic equal to 5+1/2 levelWhile I know these are here for humor mostly, from a serious perspective I suggest you remove these elements from the racial stat block and relegate them to flavor or figure out some way to make them meaningful to player characters. It would make the stat block cleaner.
I may move them, or (as some above posters suggested) make them have a trivial mechanical function for fun. However, the spirit of the whole race is the same silliness of the Echidnox article, so keeping a level of tongue-in-cheek is important.
Quills: You may use your quills similarly to a weapon. However, you may not use them unless a power specifically permits you to make a quill attack.
* Echidnid Quills: +3 Proficiency. 1D6 damage. Light blade. Range 5/10. Off-hand, light thrown.* Special: Your quills gain a +1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage at levels 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30.
Prickly Counter: You may use your quills to make opportunity attacks.
Spiny: If you are grappling with a creature at the start of your turn, you may make a quill attack against that creature as a free action.This is an interesting set of racial abilities. Applause for not forgetting to take enhancement bonuses into consideration with your natural weapon as well as your interesting method of limiting said natural weapon to prevent wealth abuse.
However, I do think that these abilities are on the weak side. In most cases, Prickly Counter is a lack luster ability.
With Prickly Counter, Melee oriented Echidnids almost undoubtedly have weapon options that would be superior to what Quills provides. Non-melee Echidnids, Quills are basically a slightly more damaging dagger; not much consolation.
Spiny is pretty interesting, though it suffers from two problems. First, its very situational. Unless a player fights consistently fights monsters that use grabbing as an option, the ability won't see much defensive use. A Echidnids could try to use it offensively, but that would require very specific builds for the tactic to be consistently reliable. A Str focused char would be the minimum, which already excludes many classes from pursuing the option. Second, it's a melee specific ability, and racial abilities should never be made useless by class or choice. Ranged and implement specific characters more often than not won't have the strength needed to make the most of what the free attack Spiny grants. Taking Melee Training can get around this issue, but FSBNNR.
You're right about strength reliance, and I see that came up a lot later. I wonder if, rather than rewriting this whole section, I should simply go with the standard racial attacks solution (see italics):
Quills: You may use your quills similarly to a weapon. However, you may not use them unless a power specifically permits you to make a quill attack.
* Echidnid Quills: +3 Proficiency. 1D6 damage. Light blade. Range 5/10. Off-hand, light thrown.
* Special: Choose one physical ability score (strength, dexterity, or constitution). Attacks made with your quills key off this ability score, whether they're ranged or melee. Additionally, your quills gain a +1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage at levels 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30.
Prickly Counter: You may use your quills to make opportunity attacks.
Spiny: If you are grappling with a creature at the start of your turn, you may make a quill attack against that creature as a free action.
Given this, Prickly Counter may actually be too good as it grants nearly all echidnids a half-decent opportunity attack (aside from the very few classes that don't have a single decent physical score, but those classes typically don't fit well with the style I'm going for for echidnids anyway), even for classes normally and crippled in that department. Thoughts? I don't think it changes much of anything else besides allowing non-strength-based characters to use their quills.
Quillroll and Pincushion Stance suffer from relaying on strength-based melee attacks, which makes them far less useful to non-strength based chars.Aside from that, Quillroll's a pretty decent encounter power. The chance to make yourself prone while using it is a bit of a buzzkill though.
Coupled with pincushion it's not as big a deal, and the only way you'd go prone is by getting greedy with your quill attacks. However, like I said above, I think Quillroll will get passed on to the paragon path for echidnids. I don't see it being a standard racial ability, but something learned.
Teamaker is potentially broken due to not having any hard limits. Using it during a short rest, an Echidnid can brew infinite tea until all members of her party are cured of any disease. And with its combat use, an Echidnid can prepare nigh infinite amounts of oregano "Battle Tea". A short rest is only 5 minutes long, and at 1sp per bottle (a one time charge since the cost is for the bottle and not the tea), it's easy to stock up a Handy Haversack full of the stuff. Having a Echidnid in the party would basically mean that every member of the party can reroll a save for free as a minor action once per encounter. That's crazy good. Adding enchantment bonuses to all those almost-free saves pushes it from maybe-broken to yup-that's-broken status.
That's a bit of a RAW/RAI mixup, as the echidnid is only supposed to be able to brew one batch of tea per rest. In addition to that I was thinking of adding that "the tea maintains its benefits until your next extended rest. After it passes that expiration date, it is merely delicious."
Pincushion Stance is pretty sweet. Again, it offensive capabilities suffer from being str-reliant. But the ability to ignore the CA aspect is being prone is very nice indeed. I'm gonna have to steal this idea.Overall, I think the Echidnid underpowered. A race should have two mechanically significant (major) racial abilities. Of their racial abilities, Spiny is the only one with some significant mechanical worth, and it loses points for being highly situational and melee-specific.
Quillroll and Pincushion Stance are both decent offensive powers, though personally I think Pincushion Stance is the more interesting and racially distinctive of the two.
While the way you handled Quills is interesting, I suggest doing away with it completely. You have Quills are stated out as a weapon, but a player could never use them as regular weapons due to the restrictions you imposed. I think it would be cleaner to incorporate Quill damage as an attack line in the encounter abilities. That kinda leaves Prickly Counter high and dry, but as I said earlier, I don't think that ability is all that useful to begin with.
The reason for incorporating quills as a weapon is to allow simple modifications of quill damage via feats. I'll get into that later, once the race itself is ready.
Rewrite in next post.
Updated first post. Still a bit unwieldy but better, I think.