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Noctis Vigil
2011-12-26, 12:00 PM
OK, I'm working on a campaign to run at some point, and I'm working on a new race to torment my players with. I'm not very good at creating races, though, so I don't have much as of yet. Here's what little I have:

Flits (placeholder name until I come up with a better one)
Flits are a trickster race, somewhere between a gremlin and a pixie in nature. They live in nature, and generally abhor machinery, choosing to live completely at peace with nature...mostly. As natural tricksters, "peace" is a fairly relative term to them.

Ability Adjustment: Str -6, Dex +4, Con -4, Int -2, Wis +2, Cha +6; Flits have frames are frail and weak, and they aren't the smartest of races, but they're full of common sense and are very beautiful with strong personalities.
Creature Type: Fey (need to look up the full list of fey immunities and such)
Size: Tiny (need help here, because for the life of me I cannot find the size info on regular movement speeds and bonuses/penalties for sizes other than small)
Movement Speed: 10 feet/50 feet flight (good) (walk speed is a placeholder until I find the average for tiny creatures)
Unseen Tricksters: Flits can become invisible as the spell invisibility at will as a standard action as a spell like ability, with a range of personal and an unlimited duration. They may cancel the effect at will.
Weakness to Cold Iron: Flits take an extra 2 points of damage from all cold iron weapons. (need to look up the standard cold iron weakness, not sure if I got this right)
Sustained By Pranks: Unlike normal creatures, Flits do not need to eat or drink. Instead, they live off of the raw power of chaos they create. In order to survive, they must play at least one prank per day per hit die they possess. A prank constitutes any premeditated joke played on another creature of Int 3 or higher, such as tying shoelaces together or swapping the salt for the sugar in someone's coffee. Most Flits will have a few favorite pranks they are particularly good at to keep themselves both well sustained and highly amused.
Skills: Knowledge (Nature) and Survival are always class skills to a Flit.
Favored Class: Druid; almost every Flit takes at least one level of Druid.
Alignment: always Chaotic, usually Neutral or Good
LA: I haven't a clue. :smalleek:

So! Any help/suggestions/what have you would be amazing.

Tanuki Tales
2011-12-26, 12:04 PM
First thing I'll say is you need to define what exactly constitutes a prank. DMs may or may not strictly enforce rules for eating and drinking in their games so you'll need to explain what actions are necessary for the Flits to gain sustenance.

Noctis Vigil
2011-12-26, 04:37 PM
Updated to specify what constitutes a prank.

bloodtide
2011-12-26, 04:57 PM
The whole prank food thing is a bad idea. It will be bad enough to have pranks played on the player characters, but even worse to have a character that needed to play pranks every day. Pranks only really work if they are meaningless, but that means they must be harmless. You can't have a spellcaster 'have a knot' in there spell component pouch and then get killed in a fight. So that limits pranks to pointless flavor, ''oh he put dirt in my soup..well I just eat it.''

The even worse would be having a player character that needed to prank every day. You could just skip over it, ''oh everyone eats dinner and Bob plays pranks on everyone.'' But then why even have it. Or you could stop the game, every game day and have the single character play a mini solo game and play pranks for several minutes.

Invisibility a will looks very, very powerful...unless you want a high LA race.

Skills-why would they care about nature or survival? That does not seem to fit. Should they not like have perform for jokes and acting and such. Maybe move silently too.

Favorited class Druid? Why? They don't feel 'nature like'. Why not rouge?

Noctis Vigil
2011-12-26, 05:06 PM
Well, I guess it didn't come across well, but my intention was to develop two races: these and gremlins. Gremlins are essentially these guys who love machinery and dislike nature, have no flight but minor teleportation, have Sorcerer as a favored class, and are mostly Chaotic Neutral or Evil. I'm trying to make two polar opposite races, does that make sense?

The Durvin
2011-12-27, 01:22 AM
I'm picturing little twig-guys, very Brian Froud-ish, with consciously annoying voices and speech patterns; the kind of guys that speak in rhyme just to irritate people. My suggestion is that rather than pranking per se being the thing they live on, they just have to create some chaos, or maybe they live off people's frustration the way gods (sometimes) live off belief.

AugustNights
2011-12-27, 02:11 PM
When it comes to these boards, I've found good formatting can be your friend (and will help you get people to respond). I don't really remember what's popular format for races, but browse around and see what you can find.

That said, let's see what (misguided) advice I can offer...

If this is to torment players, perhaps you are looking to create a Monster with a Race option? If that is the case I recommend looking at some of these (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124688), particularly this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43009).

Anyhow, I will be evaluating/advising this as a Race, just so we're on the same page.

Ability Adjustments
While your overall modifier is 0, you have heft pulls in either direction, though it seems to be relatively weaker abilities that gain the hefty bonuses, and not terribly synergistic. Still, anything with a +6 is usually LA worthy. I'd say either reduce the higher bonuses/penalties, or buff it and add LA.

Fey
Fey features can be found here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#feyType)
Not intrinsically worth LA on it's own, but it does make them immune to "Person Spells," but most races anymore are.

Size
Tiny size is pretty... tricky.
It's weak in ways, but really strong in other ways.
Usually LA 1 or more worthy.
Size modifiers can be found here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/movementPositionAndDistance.htm#bigandLittleCreatu resInCombat)

Movement Speed
Base Land speed looks about right.
Tiny creatures' movement speeds tend to vary.
Flight with good maneuverability is pretty sweet, I'd say worth a +1 or +2 LA or two. Usually isn't available before L.5.

Unseen Tricksters
Right now this reads as a Natural Ability, rather than a Supernatural Ability, or Spell-Like Ability. That alone puts this race at an easy LA +5 or higher range, being distinctly better than the Pixie (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/sprite.htm#pixie).

Weakness to Cold Iron[/url]
An odd ability, especially for such a powerful race.
I think damage reduction 5 or 10 /Cold Iron would be more fitting with how powerful it already is.
Standard Cold Iron "Weakness" is actually handled by Damage Reduction.

[b]Sustained By Pranks
Odd ability. Fun. Makes them dependent on other creatures to survive. Could be seen as a weakness. Would recommend against making them more prank dependent with each hit die. After all, a L.5 Human doesn't require 15 meals per day.

Skills
Curious little ability, similar to a changeling IIRC, with speak language.
Nifty, I suppose. With a penalty to Intelligence they may want a bonus to that Knowledge skill.

Favored Class
Makes sense.

Alignment
Seems fair.

LA
Rough call. It needs some buffing to fill out an LA +5, which is where I'd place it. Maybe take a look at that pixie, I linked earlier.
LA works funny, it's not a simple point-buy, it's more like a sliding scale...

Hope any of that helps.