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Hyrael
2005-12-29, 01:35 AM
Hiya. Im here for opinions on the race ideas Ive amassed over the years. discuss, critique, flame, ect.

My pride and joy:
Raptor
A raptor is deadly. Five raptors are very deadly. A pack of five raptors is certain death
-Thared the Wanderer

The raptors are a race of exceptional hunters, known for their primal cunning and empathy. A less well-known but more profound trait is there understanding of the natural world, which they both study and revere. Thriving wherever there is sufficient space and prey, raptors can be steadfast friends and lethal threats.

Description
There are two distinct varieties of raptor: feathered and mountain. All raptors have the same general body plan of flightless hawk mixed with lizard. Raptor eyes are large with slightly oval pupils, with the rest of the eyeball a single crystalline color. Usual colors are varying shades of green, orange, yellow, red, with blue being a very rare color. Their heads are lizardlike, with tight s-curved necks. Male mountain raptors have a set of three psudofeather spines, while feathered males and females have a crest of true feathers that is often brightly colored. Female feathereds often intricately style their crests. They have compact torsos, and arms with long, three-clawed hands. Their long back legs end in three claws as well, two which are walked on and one large, curved talon held above the ground. A long-rigid tail provides balance. Mountain raptors have tough, pebbly/scaled skin, usually some shade of red (ranging from orange to nearly black) with darker stripes along the back. Feathered raptors are covered with psudofeather down that can be of any color and pattern, usually reminiscent of a bird. They have true feathers behind their heads, on their forearms and the tips of their tails, where it forms a fan.

Raptor racial traits
(mountain)
• Type: Monstrous Humanoid.
• +2 str, +2 dex, +2 wis, -2 cha. Mountain raptors are strong, fast, and perceptive, but tend to be gruff and un-subtle.
• raptor base land speed is 40 ft. raptors are very fast
• Pounce: when a raptor charges, it can make a full attack with all natural weapons at once.
• Natural armor +2
• +2 racial bonus on spot, listen, hide, move silently, jump, balance, and survival checks. Raptors are naturally adept at hunting. They also have a +4 bonus on fortitude saves to resist the negative effects of cold temperatures.
• Natural attacks: raptors have five natural attacks: 2 claws (1d6), 2 talons (1d10, and a bite (2d4). Each deals the indicated damage + str.
• Bestial: raptors count as animals for the purposes of spells and effects that target only animals (such as charm animal).
• Scent
• No Weapons Proficiency: a raptor does not become proficient with non-natural weapons through class levels or hit dice, though it can take weapon proficiency feats.
• Racial Hit Dice: raptors begin with one level of monstrous humanoid (d8), which provides one feat, a base attack bonus of +1, base saves of will +2 and reflex +2, and skill points equal to 4 + int modifier x 4. Their class skills are spot, listen, move silently, hide, survival, knowledge (nature), and jump.
• Level adjustment: +1
• Automatic Languages: Draconic. Bonus languages: common, sylvan, elven, gnoll, goblin.
• Favored Class: barbarian

Raptor racial traits
(feathered)
• Type: Monstrous Humanoid.
• +4 dex, -2 con, +2 int, +2 cha. Feathered raptors move like liquid steel, but are frail. They tend to be bright and enthusiastic, but lack the seriousness of their larger relatives.
• raptor base land speed is 40 ft. raptors are very fast
• Pounce: when a raptor charges, it can make a full attack with all natural weapons at once.
• Natural armor +1
• +2 racial bonus on spot, listen, hide, move silently, jump, balance, and survival checks. Raptors are naturally adept at hunting. They also have a +4 bonus on fortitude saves to resist the negative effects of hot temperatures.
• Natural attacks: raptors have five natural attacks: 2 claws (1d6), 2 talons (1d10, and a bite (2d4). Each deals the indicated damage +str.
• Bestial: raptors count as animals for the purposes of spells and effects that target only animals (such as charm animal).
• Scent
• No Weapons Proficiency: a raptor does not become proficient with non-natural weapons through class levels or hit dice, though it can take weapon proficiency feats.
• Racial Hit Dice: raptors begin with one level of monstrous humanoid (d8), which provides one feat, a base attack bonus of +1, base saves of will +2 and reflex +2, and skill points equal to 4 + int modifier x 4. Their class skills are spot, listen, move silently, hide, survival, knowledge (nature), and jump.
• Level adjustment: +1
• Automatic Languages: Draconic. Bonus languages: common, sylvan, elven, gnoll, goblin.
• Favored Class: Ranger

Raptor Characters
As a raptor, you have an innate talent for hunting and a connection to the natural world that a druid would kill for.
Adventuring raptors
An traveling raptor is usually a young adult striking out in their own for the first time, seeking a new pack and a mate. Your natural curiosity led you to civilization, and the limitless opportunities, though you may chafe at the innumerable restrictions on behavior (like how you are not supposed to eat those cattle in the field). You may instead be an outcast, an exile from polite raptor society. Raptors think of an adventuring party as their pack.
Character development
Even without any class levels, you enjoy exceptional combat abilities. Your most potent ability is your pounce. With five natural attacks, you could bring down an opponent with one leap. Both raptor races have bonuses to dexterity and unusual speed, so it may be wise to infest in feats that allow you to freely move about the battlefield, such as mobility or spring attack. Keep your survival skill maxed out, so you can effortlessly live in the wild. The track feat gives you expanded use of your signature skill. A level or two of barbarian might be advised, as it gives useful class skills, speed bonus, and rage, always a useful ability in a tight spot.

Character names: Thared, Talia, Hyrael, Taranesh, Ardeli, Kirril, Riedrin

Roleplaying a Raptor
Despite your intelligence, you are essentially an animal. Humanoid hang-ups about money, religion, why-am-I-here questions, and proper behavior simply don’t apply to you. This gives you a useful A to E insight, but puts you at odds with civilization.

Personality: You are probably easygoing and hedonistic. You see your packmates as the most important thing in your life, and have absolute loyalty to your party. A raptor is essentially a simple creature, valuing good food, friends, fun, and the joy of the hunt.

Roleplaying application:
NEVER go against your pack. You might not like one or two members, or you might fight over dominance, but the though of actually betraying your packmates is unthinkable to you.

Behaviors: The hunt is of paramount importance to raptors. Hobby, survival, bonding, all these are part of it. What has less than no value to them is money. For the rare instances when raptors need something they cant make themselves, they barter with whatever they have lying around (animal pelts, claws, teeth, ect), as these things have value to humans, particularly the savage tribes raptors are usually in contact with.

Roleplaying application:
Never turn up a chance to hunt, be it an enemy or your next meal. Volunteer to provide dinner for your packmates. After the big fight, take a bite or two out of your vanquished foes. Growl, snarl, and roar (at your discretion) to express your mood. Ever get tired of keeping track of magic items and money? Being a raptor gives you an excuse not to care. Why do you need little discs of yellow metal? Magic is useful, but you can take care of yourself without it.

Language: Raptors speak draconic, though most learn common, and tend to have a talent for languages. For an uncivilized folk, they receive a very good education, particularly in environmentalism, natural history, and biology. Raptor shamans of any class know as much about the natural world as many druids.

Roleplaying application: make references to biology and evolution, as your race had formulated the theory of natural selection thousands of years before humans figured out where babies come from. If you are a magic-using class, you were probably a shaman, and should take time to study the wildlife around you (this includes things like humans, elves, and Halflings).

Raptor Society

Raptors live in packs, not tribes, like other savage races. A pack is usually an extended semi-family, centered around a dominant mated pair (raptors are as monogamous as the next race. Unfortunately, the next race is humans). These packs are semi-nomadic, occupying a single territory for a year or two, then moving on when they feel like it. Every pack has one or two shamans, who can be a spellcaster of any kind, but usually a druid or sorcerer.

Alignment: Raptors as a race tend toward chaotic neutral, and sometimes chaotic good. Chaotic evil raptors are uncommon, but can be one of the most deadly one-on-one foes imaginable. Raptors are almost never lawful.

Lands: Raptors live in un-spoiled land, wherever there is ample prey. Feathereds tend towards deserts, jungles, and open plains. The hardier Mountain raptors prefer cooer climes, like alpine forests, mountain ranges, and highlands. ( in Eberron, raptors are found in Argonessen and southern xen-drik, and they really hate talenta halflings)

Settlements: Raptors have no permanent cities or towns. The only static structure they maintain are shamanic dry caves, where records, arcane and natural lore, and past theories are stored for study by current spellcasters. It was by compairing ancient accounts of prey animals with modern data that shamans came to understand the mechanics of evolution.

Power Groups: Raptors have few large power groups. Beyond the alpha pair of a pack, there are occasionally convocations of shamans at infrequent intervals, and these mass gatherings are always a momentous occasion, as representatives from hundreds of packs are likely to turn up, each with one or more apprentices ad assistants. Some packs have been known to grow to epic sizes of almost 100 members, and these legions are truly deadly threats (raptors aren’t naturally groupy, and fight best in small groups).

Beliefs: the concept of organized religion is alien to raptors. They much prefer the druid spiritual philosophy of harmony with nature, combined with a scientific quest to understand the natural world. They think that worshiping big beards in the sky is, frankly, stupid. Many doubt that gods even exist, while some shamans postulate on the power of belief, hypothesizing that gods exist only through the faith of their followers, and have no divine origins. Raptors can be defined as ‘agnostic atheists’. They accept that gods probably exist, but don’t bother believing in them, as they can see full well that the world works just fine without magical sky fairies zooming around chasing anything in a skirt and whatnot. Raptor Clerics are rare, and can select from the Animal, Plant, Fire, and Cold domains.

Relations: Raptors get along well with other races. Unfortunately, other races often don’t get along well with raptors. Its like with wolves. Most wolves are loyal, shy creatures that only hunt when hungry and hardly ever harm a human. But, there are always a few folk-myths about wolves dragging off small children and whatnot. Raptors are often treated in a similar fashion. In areas where humans and raptors are in close proximity, farmers tend to blame any cattle disappearance or missing child on the local raptor pack, and a crusade usually ensues. Raptors are hard to catch, but their loyalty to each other makes them easily to manipulate. Even in places where there is more integration, raptor philosophical views tend to rather piss off the local priesthood. For their part, a raptor pack might occasionally hunt humans, but then, humans hunt deer, and it offers an interesting change from unintelligent animals.


Tursials

Tursials are cheerful, personable merfolk-like beings that hunt and play (they draw no distinction between the two) in the crashing waves of the world. They have a cultural passion for arcane magic, and the fun inherent in the Art. Their innate connection to magic allows them to take on a terrestrial form, allowing them to explore dryland until the longing for the sea draws them back.

Personality: Tursials as a race love fun. Humor, simple to complex games, ad the simple joy of day-today living, they approach everything with boundless enthusiasm and energy. They love to chat, and keep in contact with nearly everyone they have ever met, via long-range songs that carry hundreds of miles under water. They take joy in the smallest of things, though their perpetually upbeat mood can sometimes grate on landwalkers.

Physical Description: At first glance, tursials are often mistaken for merfolk, though they lack fish-like attributes such as scales or spined fins. They have hairless grey-silver, rubbery skin, with paler underbellies. Their hair tends to be steel blue and wavy. A tursial’s face is broad, with wide set black eyes, a bulb nose, no ears, and a perpetually smiling mouth. From the waist down, they have the bodies of dolphins, complete with a fluked tail, which makes their rough length 9 ft. At will, but with slight discomfort, tursials can also adopt a more humanoid form, using innate magic to transform their tails into legs. In this form, tursials are about the same height as a human, though slightly heavier due to their layer of blubber and thick skins. In this form, their toes are thickly webbed, as are their hands in either form.

Relations: like Raymond, everybody loves tursials. Ok, that was a joke. But it is true that tursials are almost universally liked by those they meet. Just being around them makes people feel better about themselves. Tursials for their part are silently amused by landwalkers (in an arrogant way), but still enjoy their company.

Alignment: Tursials tend to be neutral good, being generally well-disposed to people and reasonably honorable. A surprising number of evil tursials exist as well, nasty buggers who play sadistic, vicious games.

Tursials lands: Tursials live in water of all temperatures, following fish migrations in a nomadic pattern, following their quarry upstream during the spawning season. This is likely why they developed the ability to walk in the first place.

Religion: tursials revere the Whale Mother, though some also pay homage to Deep Sashelas. Tursials in general are not particularly pious, however.

Language: Dolphin-folk speak Aquan in high, quick voices, cramming as much chatter into their speech as possible. They intersperse their words with clicks and whistles, which they use to convey mood among each other. They have a talent for languages, however, and learn many more.

Names: Tursials pick whatever sounds good for a name, though they tend to be long, sometimes with clicks incorporated. They don’t have names like Snorky.




Medium Humanoid (water). Tersians have a strong connection to the elemental plane of water.

-2 dex, +2 cha. Tursials are pleasant to simply be around, but are clumsy (but in a charming way).

Base land speed: 5 ft. a moving Tursial provokes attacks of opportunity.

Swim speed 50 ft (+8 bonus, take 10, ect)

Low-Light Vision

Sunny Disposition: Tursials are almost perpetually cheerful. They have a +3 bonus on saves against fear effects and harmful morale effects (such as bane or crushing despair), and a +2 bonus on diplomacy checks

Tursials are immune to hypothermia and similar effects.

Water Breathing: Tursials can cast Water Breathing 1/day as a 5th level sorcerer, but cannot divide the duration amongst others.

Echosight: Tursials can emit clicks and whistles to gain a sonar image of their surroundings. As a move action, they can pinpoint the location of any object or enemy within a 60 ft cone as though they had Blindsense, but this effect lasts only one round and functions only underwater. Enemies still have concealment. This only gives a split-second 'sketch' of the immediate surroundings.

Sea Longing: a tursial that spends more than one day outside the ocean or other large body of water must make a will save (DC 15+1 for every previous save) at the beginning of every subsequent day or suffer a -1 penalty on all wisdom-based checks for that day. A tursial who spends more than one week outside a large body of water must make a (DC 20+1 for every previous week) will save or loose Sunny Disposition until the next week, when they can make a new save. Swimming in any body of water bigger than a pool for more than 3o minutes can alleviate Sea Longing

Alternate form (su): as a full round action that provokes an attack of opportunity, tursials can adopt a humanoid form capable of walking on land. While in this form, their swim speed drops to 15 ft, but they gain a land speed of 20 ft. Tursials are Nauseated for 1d4 rounds after making the change unless they succeed on a will save (DC 10+their HD).

Favored Class: bard

LA: +0


an attempt to bring the halo Elites into a fantasy framework

Sangheili Racial Traits
• +2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, +2 Charisma.
• Medium size.
• A sangheili’s base land speed is 40 feet.
• Racial Hit Dice: A sangheili begins with two levels of monstrous humanoid, which provide 2d8 Hit Dice, a base attack bonus of +2, and base saving throw bonuses of Fort +0, Ref +3, and Will +3.
• Racial Skills: A sangheili’s monstrous humanoid levels give it skill points equal to 5 × (2 + Int modifier, minimum 1). Its class skills are Climb, Hide, Listen, Move Silently, Intimidate, Spot, Diplomacy, and Jump. sangheili gain a +2 racial bonus on Tumble, Jump, .
• Racial Feats: A sangheili’s monstrous humanoid levels give it one feat. They also gain Lightning Reflexes as a bonus feat.
• Weapon Proficiency: A sangheili is automatically proficient with the Bastard Sword (as an exotic weapon), and with the Repeating Crossbow.
• +1 natural armor bonus.
• Special Qualities: Powerful Build (Whenever a Sangheili is subject to a size modifier or special size modifier for an opposed check (such as during grapple checks, bull rush attempts, and trip attempts), the Sangheili is treated as one size larger if doing so is advantageous to him. A Sangheili is also considered to be one size larger when determining whether a creature’s special attacks based on size (such as improved grab or swallow whole) can affect him
• Automatic Languages: Draconic. Bonus Languages: Common, Elven, Terran, Undercommon.
• Favored Class: Samurai.
• Level adjustment +1.
Plasma Swords
Least Plasma Sword: this +1 bastard sword deals an additional 2 points of fire and electricity damage. On command, or when wielded in combat, it gives off the same light as a candle. Faint Evocation, CL 5. Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Magic Weapon. Price: 2,500 gp
Lesser Plasma Sword: this +2 Bastard Sword deals an additional 1d8 points of fire and electricity damage. It gives off the same light as a candle, but when the wielder makes a successful melee attack with it, flares for an instant, giving off the same light as a torch. Moderate Evocation, CL 15. Craft magic Arms and Armor. Magic Weapon, Call Lightning or Lightning Bolt, Flaming Sword or Flame Strike. Price 18,500 gp
Greater Plasma Sword: this is a +2, Shocking, Flaming Bastard Sword. When activated, It gives off the same light as a candle, but when the wielder makes a successful melee attack with it, flares for an instant, giving off the same light as a torch. Moderate Evocation, CL 15. Craft magic Arms and Armor, Magic Weapon, Call Lightning or Lightning Bolt, Flaming Sword or Flame Strike. Price: 32,400 gp
Legendary Plasma Sword: this is a +3, Shocking, Flaming, Brilliant Energy Bastard Sword. Strong Evocation, Cl 20. Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Magic Weapon, Call Lightning or Lightning Bolt, Flaming Sword or Flame Strike, Gaseous Form, Continual Flame. Price: 162,000 gp

beholder
2006-03-24, 11:19 AM
hi for plasma swords, you have gaseous form as an enchantment, but i can't see anywhere whether you can make the blade gaseous or not

Splendor
2006-03-24, 06:16 PM
Raptors? Didn't you post these awhile back? Dosen't look like there are any changes since the last time you posted them. Still over powered.

Tursials need to be atleast a +1 LA


Lesser Plasma Sword: this +2 Bastard Sword deals an additional 1d8 points of fire and electricity damage.

Greater Plasma Sword: this is a +2, Shocking, Flaming Bastard Sword
These are the same weapon.

All magical weapon when created can be made to glow at no additional cost.

Catch
2006-03-24, 07:14 PM
These are the same weapon.

Actually, the Shocking and Flaming properties do a d6 worth of energy damage, so the Lesser and Greater versions should be swapped. Maybe make the greater have Shocking burst and Flaming Burst abilities.