1. This is very much a 'throw things at the wall and see what sticks' kind of design. I'm certain there's more here than needs to be, lots of little fiddly bits that can be easily removed. That's by intent. It is also a work in progress, with chunks of the entry still in flux.
2. I request that any commentary refer solely to balance and playability, not mythological or 'historical' accuracy. I'm certain this will be ignored, but I'm saying it anyway. I have my personal sources of influence for the design, and it really doesn't matter if they line up with the stories you've read, the comics you own, or the cartoons you've watched.
Anyway, on to the race
Kitsune
Clever, cunning, and manipulative.
Average Height: 5'2"-5'8"
Average Weight: 100-130 lbs
Size: Medium
Speed: 6
Vision: None
Languages: Common, choice of one other
Stats: +2 INT, +2 (WIS or CHA)
Skills: +2 racial bonus to Arcana and Diplomacy
Racial Power: You gain the Foxfire power
Foxfire
You summon a glowing ball of revealing light.
Encounter * Zone
Minor Action * Area burst 2 within 5
Effect: You create a zone of bright light that lasts until the end of the encounter. You and your allies get a +1 power bonus to Perception to percieve any creature or object within the zone. You may move the zone 3 squares as a free action once on each of your turns.
Special: Using this power does not provoke opportunity attacks.
Racial Power: You gain the Foxfire Flare power
Foxfire Flare
You will your Foxfire to dart across the battlefield and erupt in a burst of light that dazzles your foes.
Encounter * Radiant
Minor Action * Area Burst 1 within 5
Target: Each enemy in burst
Attack: (Highest Stat)+3 vs Reflex (+6 at Paragon, +9 at epic)
Hit: (Highest Stat) Radiant damage, and the target takes a -2 to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.
Special: This power does not provoke opportunity attacks.
Special: If your Foxfire power is active, it is dismissed.
(Note: The 'not provoking' lets both melee and ranged characters use it equally well.)
Tails: At each level where you get a bonus to your attributes, you grow an additional tail, to a maximum of 9 at 28th level. Your tails look solid, but are only as material as you will them to be.
Elemental Affinity: Choose a damage type. You gain Resist 3 to that damage type at heroic tier, 6 at paragon, and 9 at epic.
Immortal: After achieving adulthood, you do not age.
Knack for Deception: Choose one -- Bluff is a class skill for you, or you recieve a +2 racial bonus to Bluff.
(Notes: The stats are to make them good at arcane classes, particularly the wizard, and the psion, which I view as their 'iconic' class, and generally poor at martial classes, which I don't see as being their thing. Foxfire Flare doesn't provoke so both melee and ranged characters can use it equally well. Tails is just a flavor thing.)
FEATS
Master of Deception
Prereq: Kitsune
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to Bluff, and a +1 per tier feat bonus to attack rolls with powers with the Illusion keyword.
Master of Manipulation
Prereq: Kitsune
Benefit: When a power you use forces an enemy to make an attack against another enemy, the attacking enemy gets a +2 feat bonus to its attack roll. This bonus increases to +3 at 11th level and +4 at 21st.
Master of Domination
Prereq: Kitsune
Benefit: You get a +1 feat bonus per tier to attack rolls with powers with the charm keyword, or that dominate the target.
Enhanced Foxfire
Prereq: Kitsune
Benefit: The damage from your Foxfire increases to 1d4+(Highest Stat).
(Feat notes: I'm violating my personal code that racial feats need to relate directly to a race's mechanics in some places, but having a racial power that dominates would be ridiculous. My inspiration refers to kitsune as being experts at manipulation, deception, and powers of illusion and mind control, so the first three feats. The last is kind of a generic racial power booster that everybody has.)
Physical Qualities:
Kitsune resemble Raavasti (Manual of the Planes), but there is no relation. They are anthropomorphic foxes, bearing one or more tails depending on their age and experience. Most kitsune are red-furred, but some have fur colors influenced by their Elemental Affinity; a fox tied to radiance may have white or golden fur, while one linked to necrotic energy could be black. A poison affinity fox may have a green stripe in his hair.
Foxfire: You may use the Light power (Wizard cantrip) at will.
It's sort of funny that you said that you intend for these characters to make good Wizards, because this feature is totally useless to Wizards. I recommend going with the Gnome approach of granting the power as an encounter version that's slightly better. For example, it could be "close burst 10" instead of "ranged 5".
Racial Power: You gain the Foxfire Flare power
Foxfire Flare
You will your Foxfire to erupt in a burst of light that dazzles your foes.
Encounter * Radiant
Minor Action * Area Burst 1 within 10
Target: Each enemy in burst
Attack: (Highest Stat)+3 vs Reflex (+6 at Paragon, +9 at epic)
Hit: (Highest Stat) Radiant damage, and the target takes a -2 to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.
Special: This power does not provoke opportunity attacks.
I like it. =)
I was about to say something about it being an area attack making it far less useful for melee classes, but you thought of that and fixed it, so yay.
Tails: At each level where you get a bonus to your attributes, you grow an additional tail, to a maximum of 9 at 28th level. Your tails look solid, but are only as material as you will them to be.
Immortal: After achieving adulthood, you do not age.
As these have no mechanical effect at all, even less of a mechanical effect than trance or origin keywords, I would suggest simply leaving them in the fluff.
Elemental Affinity: Choose a damage type. You gain a +1 racial bonus to attack rolls with powers with the chosen keyword.
This is too powerful. It's just too easy to get one particular damage type added to all of your attacks, effectively making this just a +1 racial bonus to attack rolls.
Knack for Deception: Bluff is always a class skill for Kitsune.
It bugs me that this feature is meant to highlight their deceptiveness but is actually totally useless to deceptive classes that already have Bluff on their class skill list, so I would suggest working this the same way that backgrounds are worked. "Knack for Deception: You can select either to add Bluff to your class skill list or to gain a +2 racial bonus to Bluff." And then up in their regular racial skill bonuses give them something else im place of Bluff so that this doesn't go overboard.
As for Elemental Affinity, I have to agree with Crimson, it plays too much into themed damage type builds. Swapping if for something that was more useful to melee/martial, but keeping the arcana/bluff theme would go some way to making a Kitsune Fighter build worth making. Of course a few feats that balanced out those builds would be cool as well.
Anyway, like it. Gotta go with CC about the Light cantrip, since it would be useless for Kitsune Wizards, so yeah maybe either doing a slightly stronger encounter power, or just getting rid of it and replacing with something else. I get the whole fox fire, light and illusion thing for kitsune but...it does become useless. Or at the very least, maybe it enhances Light if the Kitsune already is a wizard. Kinda like how CC suggested the change to the Knack of Deception.
Definitely the tails should be left to fluff, since they have no benefit of any kind. I mean I enjoy it, but it's a fluff thing unless you come up with an actual mechanical benefit.
The Elemental Affinity can be strong. I don't think it's entirely OP, but eh can tip some balances. A suggestion might be something along the lines of choosing an elemental type at character creation and letting you add that type to any attack power. Even that could be kinda OP, but not the same as what you have before since it doesn't give you an attack bonus for an element type, but allows you to add an element type. This basically means a kitsune who wants to take advantage of the cold feat combo would just say, need the take the feats where a normal character might have to buy a cold weapon/implement. But yeah, my suggestion there for that.
And just something Salla, you say you don't want people harping about kitsunes, and arguing myths and such, fair enough. My suggestion though is that if you are making traits, or the racial power and think it might not fly, or people would argue with it...explain why. Let us know why you felt this was a good racial trait, or why you made the trait this way and that. Also this helps us, because sometimes people who do homebrew races do things that don't seem to make sense, and then people start asking why all the time. This could cut down on that, if it comes up. Just wanted to impart that suggestion. Not arguing kitsune lore with you or anything though.
Re: Foxfire
Can't wizards select from different cantrips now? Or is that just mages?
Re: Foxfire Flare
Thank you. I know how picky you get about these things. ;)
Re: Tails and Immortal
Tails I agree with, but Immortal is a creature type keyword, and does have potential mechanical interactions (rare though they may be), so I think it should stay.
Re: Elemental Affinity
I figured it would be too powerful, but it seemed easier to throw it up there and get feedback. Would making it a damage bonus instead of attack bonus (since nobody takes feats like Astral Fire) be more acceptable?
Re: Knack for Deception
Makes perfect sense.
Can't wizards select from different cantrips now? Or is that just mages?
That's just Mages. Classical PHB Wizards (aka Arcanists) still get Ghost Sound, Light, Mage Hand, and Prestidigitation.
I know how picky you get about these things. ;)
^_^;
Tails I agree with, but Immortal is a creature type keyword, and does have potential mechanical interactions (rare though they may be), so I think it should stay.
Immortal is an origin keyword denoting that the race or its ancestors were native to the Astral Sea. If this race is intended to have originated from the Astral Sea, that's fine, but otherwise, a creature can certainly be immortal without having the immortal keyword.
I figured it would be too powerful, but it seemed easier to throw it up there and get feedback. Would making it a damage bonus instead of attack bonus (since nobody takes feats like Astral Fire) be more acceptable?
It may be somewhat more acceptable in terms of power, but I'd still suggest considering some other alternatives for other design reasons. It's just too easy for racial features like this to limit the way the characters are played. For example, every character taking a weapon-using class will feel it pretty much necessary to invest in a particular type of weapon or else they won't get use out of the feature. If a racial feature relies on a character purchasing specific equipment in order to be useful, that's problematic.
Ironically, a weapon-using character that does pick up such a weapon will likely have an easier time making use of the feature otherwise than an implement-user would because the weapon-using character will be able to add the relevant keyword to all of their attacks while the implement-using character will have to limit what types of spells they pick if they want to make similar maximum use of the feature.
Good point on the immotal thing, I hadn't considered that.
Another good point, I forgot the elemental weapons were getting altered to no longer work with spells properly. It's a shame, because I *like* single-damage-type-themed characters and wish they were more generally viable in D&D. I also really like the idea of the race having some feature based on a link or affinity to an elemental damage type, but I really want something cooler than, say, resistance. That's what really makes the race feel 'arcane' to me.
That way you can use it in melee or you can use it at range but you cannot use it to sweep minions or mark half the monsters in the encounter at range while in melee combat with the big guy (unless eating an OA)
Minor feedback regarding Foxfire Flare: I think it would be more interesting if the spell was either Area Burst 1 within 10 OR Close Burst 1 (decided upon casting) instead of Area Burst without provoking.
That way you can use it in melee or you can use it at range but you cannot use it to sweep minions or mark half the monsters in the encounter at range while in melee combat with the big guy (unless eating an OA)
Actually, melee/martial characters get so little from the race otherwise, giving them an Area whic doesn't provoke is reasonable balance-wise IMO. The Kitsune Fighter marking some remote foes seems to me in keeping with a trickster theme and very useful.
Minor feedback regarding Foxfire Flare: I think it would be more interesting if the spell was either Area Burst 1 within 10 OR Close Burst 1 (decided upon casting) instead of Area Burst without provoking.
That way you can use it in melee or you can use it at range but you cannot use it to sweep minions or mark half the monsters in the encounter at range while in melee combat with the big guy (unless eating an OA)
I don't understand your reasoning here at all, so I'm going to have to disagree. I see no issue with allowing this power to function as-is. It seems pretty similar in power to me as Dragon-Breath (trading damage and flexibility for range and a minor effect), which is great for Fighters but not so great that it deserves a nerf. Now, I could maybe support a slight decrease in the range from Area burst 1 within 10 to Area burst 1 within 5 so that marking can't be done from ridiculous distances, and I might also get behind making it not as ally-friendly...
I guess it can be a bit hard to find things where adding +9 at late game won't be overpowering.
because grey faced glam rockers with fox ears are too silly for even the most absurdist game of dnd
In all honesty, I suppose I was setting myself up for that. Now can you shut up or give me a real answer?
Curiosity begs me: Why a full race? Why not just a bloodline? Seems to me most kitsune tales fall under the changeling umbrella.
Not the way I envision them.
Remember that bit at the top of the first post, where I said I didn't care about 'real world mythology' or 'historical accuracy'?
Also, are you envisioning them as Elemental beings? As in with the Elemental keyword, and coming from the Elemental Chaos? Or do you picture them as from the Astral Sea, or even the natural world? Just wondering.
I'd think that resistance to a chosen element might be more balanced than attack or damage bonuses. Or perhaps the ability to have an "Elemental Harmony" that allows them to eat through a certain amount of elemental resistance on a monster. Basically, giving them a damage bonus, but only when they use cold against something that resists cold, etc. Kind of also gives them that trickster feel of bringing down someone by what that someone perceives as a strength.
Last point, the tails. The tails, at least in myth and fiction, are supposed to denote the overall power of the creature. This could most likely be a fluff thing, because I'm not sure there's any real way to add it in as an actual increase in power without creating a power imbalance.
What do you mean with "Vision: None"???
No special vision. Since it seems every homebrew race has either lowlight or darkvision, I felt it important to come out and say 'no, not this one'.
Some edits made; I haven't moved Tails or Immortal out of the stat block because I'm still composing the fluff, and thus have no place to move it to.
And well, you can still remove the Tails from the stat block, most people know kitsune have multiple tails and since it's only a fluff piece it can wait till you get the fluff done, just sayin.