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View Full Version : Fenneckin (3.5 race).



Tempest Fennac
2009-02-08, 06:45 AM
I finally decided to make a race of humanoid fennec foxes, and here's the results. Please could you guys tell me if you think it's unbalanced?

+2 Dex and Int, -2 Str and Cha.
Small size, 20' movement, +4 to all Listen checks.
Heat Tolerance (eliminates need to make Fort saves for temparatures of up to 130 degrees F. as if affected by Endure Elements).
No need to drink.
Free Track or any +2/+2 Skill bonus feat and Darkvision 60'.
Height/weight: 3'-3'6", 30-40 Lbs. Age: Adult: 6. Middle Aged: 20. Old: 30. Venerable: 40.
Starting age: Simple= 1d3. Moderate: 1d4. Complex: 1d8. Maximum age: 1d6+Con modifier.
Favoured Class: Wilderness Rogue.

Most Fenneckin can be found living in self-sufficient communities which mainly consist of underground burrows in deserts. As the name suggests, they are basically humanoid fennec foxes (my sig and avatar contain pictures of fennecs if you don't know what they look like).

They are omnivours who tent to lean towards chaotic alignments. They typically don't bother with clothing due to the material they need for it being quite rare due to a lack of contact with other races, and any agriculture they are responsible for tends to be limited by how close the tribe is to an oasis (unless and Archivist, Cleric or Druid is available).

Fenneckin tend to favour classes which their natural agility and intelligence complement., such as Rogues, Archivists or Wizards.

Exeson
2009-02-08, 07:33 AM
Well I don't know much about balance but I really like the idea.

The lowering of charisma confuses me a little though, just from a flavour side of things. I would have thought that they were very agile and social creatures, interacting a lot with each other.

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-08, 07:35 AM
I couldn't really think of anything else to serve as a stat penalty, so I picked that because they tend to be shy while not getting much contact with other races, so I thought that would make them socially awkward.

Spiryt
2009-02-08, 07:50 AM
It could be Constitution penalty for having really small body. It would make sense and survival skill are already covered by listen, heat tollerance and all.

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-08, 07:56 AM
I didn't think Con made sense due to how they need to be tough to survive in harsh environments. (Also, small size doesn't necessarily mean the creature is unhealthy or frail.)

Spiryt
2009-02-08, 08:09 AM
I didn't think Con made sense due to how they need to be tough to survive in harsh environments. (Also, small size doesn't necessarily mean the creature is unhealthy or frail.)

I think it kinda does, from some point of view. Less meat to stand against the strikes, less body mass to disperse alcohol or poison and things like that.

Of course, D&D doesn't really need to follow logic, and small size also gives advantages to few things that are under "Constitution" in D&D, so I guess it's makers pick.

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-08, 08:17 AM
I know.:smalltongue: I tend to mainly see Con as being about general health and endurance, which the averae Fenneckin isn't likely to be lacking in. If you get any fluff ideas which fit with what I have so far, please could you post it here? (I couldn;t think of much to say.)

Dalek Zek
2009-02-08, 10:52 AM
I know.:smalltongue: I tend to mainly see Con as being about general health and endurance, which the averae Fenneckin isn't likely to be lacking in. If you get any fluff ideas which fit with what I have so far, please could you post it here? (I couldn;t think of much to say.)

Mabey you could strip the abilety panaltys and give them scend and prehaps some other abilety and ad an level adjustment of +1?

Would they hafe problems wielding weapons becouse of lack of opositional thumbs?

Also, ranger seams a logical class fore them to hafe.

CaelCyndar1993
2009-02-08, 10:56 AM
Imagine my surprise when I came here and the first thread in Homebrew was this.

You cannot escape me, Tempest. >:D

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-08, 01:29 PM
Dalek, were you refering to giving them Sending as a spell-like ability? They have the same sort of hands as humans do, so gripping things isn't a problem. Also, I don't like LA due to how it ends up nerfing you in the long run (and I like everyone to be on the same level in my games). I know Ranger would fit fluff-wise, but I can see Fenneckin as being more reliant on skills then combat ability, which is why I listed Wilderness Rogue as their Favoured class.

Llama231
2009-02-08, 01:49 PM
Gnomes are small and have a bonus to con...

Dalek Zek
2009-02-08, 06:37 PM
Dalek, were you refering to giving them Sending as a spell-like ability? They have the same sort of hands as humans do, so gripping things isn't a problem. Also, I don't like LA due to how it ends up nerfing you in the long run (and I like everyone to be on the same level in my games). I know Ranger would fit fluff-wise, but I can see Fenneckin as being more reliant on skills then combat ability, which is why I listed Wilderness Rogue as their Favoured class.

I ment scent, I spelt it rong.

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-09, 02:21 AM
Thanks for clarifying. I thought that would make them too powerful if I'm honest. (I'll see what other people think.)

onasuma
2009-02-09, 02:33 AM
That would be why he said you should include la +1.

Anyhow, overall, it looks nice. I would justify the charisma penalty as a lack of understanding of other cultures and therefore it being hard to communicate with them. Just add in something that says "all Fenneckin ignore the -2 cha penalty when conversing with other fenneckin" and you're set.

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-09, 02:35 AM
That's a good idea about that Cha penalty. Did you know the -1 Cha penalty which Dwarves had in the 1st Edition didn't apply to non-Dwarves either? I think I'll keep it as it is if further improvements would give it LA.

DracoDei
2009-02-09, 08:43 AM
Short version:
Negate the CHA penalty when dealing with others of their kind and do not change the LA.


Slightly longer version:
Unless they are as wild-spread and populous as humans, negating the charisma penalty is UTTERLY trivial because the party won't be dealing with them often enough to matter. Even if there are settlements scattered around (but all isolated), that still doesn't make it a tweak worthy of adjusting the LA. They still make poorer bards, paladins, clerics (turn undead), and sorcerers than they would otherwise, so it is still a highly valid limitation. Go for it.

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-09, 08:46 AM
I can't see them as being that widespread (I couldn't even find a reason to include them in a desert-covered part of my campaign setting:smalltongue:). Thanks for the advice (I know a lot of players see some stats as being worth more then others regardless of class, but I tend to see them as equal due to different classes needing different stats).

Vampiric
2009-02-09, 04:48 PM
I'd take out the Int and Cha mods, or swap them.

Otherwise, I think it's a pretty good build.

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-10, 02:39 AM
Why would you swap the Int and Cha bonuses? I tend to see Int bonuses as suiting them due to their reliance of cunning over brute force, and the Cha penalty fits with them being skittish isolationists.

Fenric
2009-02-11, 01:09 PM
Ack! I've been hunted down and asked to post :smallsmile:

As a zero-LA build, it's not bad. For "fluff", I would recommend going through the list of normal abilities that the Monster Manual gives to "normal" animals.

I know where you are going with the INT bonus, but per the official descriptions of the six basic stats us foxy types have a higher WIS score, not necessarily INT - just a thought.

I'd check with Sandstorm about the Heat Endurance - that might be worth LA +1 all by itself (I know the cold resistance analog is in Frostburn, I haven't looked at Sandstorm lately)

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-11, 01:20 PM
Thanks. I mainly went with Int due to Vulpines having a Wis bonus. I haven;t seen that sourcebook, which is why I just gave them resistance to how conditions. (To be fair, I class myself as having high Int, below average Wis. :p)

DracoDei
2009-02-11, 01:43 PM
Besides, the spell is Fox's CUNNING not Fox's WISDOM.

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-11, 03:33 PM
I wasn't honestly considering that. I mainly designed Vulpines to be good Druids due to them being made as my idea race ( http://forum.mydndgame.com/index.php/topic,136.0.html ), but I thought I'd design Fenneckin so that they are good Rogues.

Matthew
2009-02-12, 11:06 AM
Looks fine to me.

Lady Tialait
2009-02-13, 08:37 PM
It looks good, I'm not sure about the minuses, but I never was good at that.

You and your Foxkin...i'll be stealing these and making a harem..

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-14, 02:39 AM
I was reluctant to give them a Cha penalty due to how cute they are. The problem was that nothing else would fit and make sense, and I wanted boosts to both Int and Dex.

Mr. Moon
2009-02-14, 05:40 PM
*nods* Yup, this looks good to me.
'Course, I'm bad at this stuff, so I dunno why you asked me. :P

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-15, 02:35 AM
I like to get a variety of players to give opinions (my logic is that if several people suggest that something's unbalanced, it's more likely to be unbalanced then if just 1 or 2 people disagree with it).

Fay Graydon
2009-02-19, 03:11 AM
I like the fact that they don't need water.
I always felt that was a bit of a silly thing in D&D (I took the your-characters-can-get-by-on-what-they-have sort of attitude) and could easily have a reason given with some fluff.

The stat mods. also seem fair (if not a little extreme, you could probabbly get away with something like +1 Dex and +1 Int (+additional 1 Dex for being so small) and only a -1 Str and/or -1 Cha.

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-19, 03:21 AM
Are there any 3.5 races which only give +1 bonuses to stats? I've never seen any.

DracoDei
2009-02-19, 12:37 PM
Theoretically the idea is that people can manipulate that into no losses and noticable gains during character creation. But with the every 4th level stat bumps, and/or point-buy character creation, I am not sure I buy that...

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-19, 01:09 PM
I agree with you, Draco. (My stance is that while Fenneckin are great if you want a Wizard or Rogue, they are a bit limited as far as a lot of other classes go, which balanced them to me.)

Devils_Advocate
2009-02-25, 09:26 AM
(My stance is that while Fenneckin are great if you want a Wizard or Rogue, they are a bit limited as far as a lot of other classes go, which balanced them to me.)
That's... not how game balance works. The game is balanced by preventing the creation of overpowered characters, and ideally by preventing the creation of underpowered characters as well. If you create an uber Wizard race that makes fairly lousy Sorcerers, it's actually unbalanced on two counts. A fenneckin Wizard doesn't suffer from fenneckin Sorcerer being underpowered... unless there happens to be one in his party.

If you want a race to be balanced, you want it to help several different classes, though not necessarily in the same way. For example, dwarven darkvision and stonecunning are more useful to scout-type characters, while their racial weapon familiarity is helpful to tanks (in theory).

"Rely on their cunning rather than brute force" does not indicate above-human intelligence, by the way. That's not fluff for a high Int race, that's standard, fairly generic fluff for a size Small race.

I'd say nix the Int and Cha mods and bonus feat and give them, say, Scent.

Note: According to the SRD, whatever variant of your favored class you take first is the favored one for you, so Wilderness Rogue is essentially the same favored class as Rogue. Which is fine if you just wanted to suggest that particular variant. (Personally, I favor getting rid of multiclassing XP penalties altogether.)

Tempest Fennac
2009-02-25, 09:46 AM
I thought small races typically relied on agility rather then cunning? I tend to think that limiting options for a race is a huge drawback due to liking to play a variety of different classes. Wouldn't Scent be roughly on [ar with the free +2/+2 skill feat or Tracking?

Devils_Advocate
2009-02-26, 11:00 AM
I tend to think that limiting options for a race is a huge drawback due to liking to play a variety of different classes.
1. That reads to me like a case of Total Logical Disconnect (e.g. "I like pasta because my house is made of bricks.")

2. Who do you think that's a drawback for?

I'm having trouble following you here.

See, if you make a bunch of specialist races, that doesn't prevent players from playing a variety of different classes, nor indeed from min/maxing characters with a variety of different classes. A player can pick whichever class she wants and then pick whichever race it is that excels at that class.

If you make the specialist races better at their specialties than the PHB races, then you're running a slightly higher than normal power game, which is fine. Just don't pretend that the specialist races are balanced against elves, gnomes, halflings, etc.

On the other hand, if you want to balance the game on the assumption that players are going to make a wide variety of race/class combinations, then you want a wide variety of race/class combos to be viable. If you make a few significantly better than others, then that leads to unbalance. Obviously.

Making some options bad doesn't make the game balanced, it makes it unbalanced.

... As I think about it, it looks almost as though you're trying to balance a race's potential geopolitical power as a race, instead of individual characters. In which case, yeah, a race can excel at some necessary roles at the expense of others and be roughly on par with less specialized races as a whole. And that's an interesting criterion for setting design, but it's not how you balance options for PCs.

DracoDei
2009-02-26, 12:40 PM
Which is one role that LA can serve in differentiating the two (geopolitical vs player).

One other concept is that Tempest Fennac MAY be assuming but forgetting to mention that his campaign will be based around ONLY Fennackin, and is concerned about the balance of the PARTY, rather than that of the individual characters.