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Phosphate
2012-06-06, 10:01 AM
The Goblin

http://wiki.ansalonmud.net/images/Goblin.jpg

Goblins are small yet highly disruptive creatures with a knack for invention.They have been held down as slaves, feared as pillagers, admired as scientists and rarely even regarded as witty adventurers. Their chaotic nature combined with their slight tendency towards evil and instinctual knowledge in various domains has made them into interesting personas.

Another peculiar feature of those humanoids is the way they can easily spot imperfections in walls, wells, roads, shields and even creatures, and use that to their advantage.

Type: Small Humanoid (Goblinoid)
Ages:

{table=head]Adulthood | Simple | Moderate | Complex
8 | +1d2 | +2d2 | +2d4[/table]
{table=head]Middle Age | Old | Venerable | Maximum Age
20 | 30 | 40 | +1d10
[/table]

Height/Weight: Goblins are about 3 feet tall and weigh as much as gnomes of the same size.

Languages: Common, Goblin
Bonus Languages: Undercommon, Gnoll, Orc, Elven, Draconic

Speed: 20 feet

Appearance: Goblins are scrawny individuals usually with hunched backs, pointy chins, greyish skin and large floppy ears pointing sideways.

Alignment: Any, although more than 90% of goblins are chaotic, and of the rest, only a tiny portion see value in law.

History: Nobody knows how the first goblins came to be, but it is generally agreed upon that they were a pure race. This indicates a yet unproven divine origin.

Society: Most goblins live in stateless societies where there's no law protecting the weak and helpless against possible thieves. Usually these societies stay together out of interest, for instance, because the zone has a great amount of resources to mine on a small patch of land. Strangers are viewed with suspicion when entering those kinds of communities, but it's not like goblins trust each other either. Most goblin-produced art presents itself in the form or trinkets made with metal scraps and other such materials.

Relation with other races: To most races, goblins are a menace, thieving and mischievous to the extreme. Orcs and gnolls mock them for their weak body and unimpressive stature, while humans actively seek out and destroy them.

Names: Go wild with ideas. Goblins make their own names anyway.

Racial Features

Ability scores:

-2 Con, -2 Wis

Goblins are frail and not very patient or cautious.

Darkvision: Goblins can see up to 60 feet into complete darkness, but everything seems black and white.

Erratic Crafting (Ex): If you fail a Craft check by 4 or less, instead of making no progress you ruin one third of the raw materials. However, when you add one skill point to any Craft skill, you gain 2 ranks out of it.

Correlations (Ex): Goblins have a great ability to infer from various fields despite their lack of former education. If you have maximum ranks in at least one Knowledge skill, you are treated as having 2 ranks in all Knowledge skills in which you have none.

Structural Weak Points (Ex): When attacking with melee weapons, goblins ignore the immunity to critical hits of constructs only. This allows them not only to deal critical damage to constructs, but also to deal precision damage suck as sneak attacks and features such as Stunning Fist. Also, they treat fortification as being one step lower (light becomes none). Also, they ignore 1 point of hardness per 2 points of Str modifier (minimum 0).

Flight Response (Ex): When a goblin is using the withdraw action, treat his base speed as being 20 feet higher.

Naturally Insane (Ex): A goblin is immune to confusion and fascination effects.

Religion: Most goblins worship goblin-specific deities, mostly war and ingenuity gods.
LA: +0

Welknair
2012-06-06, 02:41 PM
I'd say that these are closer to LA +1. The stat penalties make it a tough call, though. Still a bit powerful for LA +0.

Erratic Crafting: Double bonus on Craft skills? The penalty will rarely come up, since a first level Goblin with maxed Craft will have a +8 already. How often will they be failing checks? This will pretty much make Goblins the best crafters ever in whatever setting this is used in.

Correlations: How does this fit with the goblin theme? :smallconfused:

Structural Weak Points: They can overcome the main resistance to Sneak Attack? Or, well. I guess you don't explicitely state that. But it'd be weird for them to be able to crit on a construct, but not SA it. In any case, this makes Goblins super-rogues. Fortification is the main defence against SA, and these little guys have a greatly increased chance of overcoming it.

Flight Response: By "Withdraw", do you mean the "Withdraw" action? I think you need to be a little more clear here. Depending on how you define it, players could always claim to be "Withdrawing" from a creature opposite the direction they're going in, and thus gain a static speed boost. 40ft land speed is good. Be careful about how easily you dole it out.

Naturally Insane: Interesting.. Nothing really to say here. Makes sense and isn't woefully under or overpowered.


Note: I rarely critique races, so there's a decent chance my balance-metric is off for them. Those are my first impressions, though.

Phosphate
2012-06-06, 03:10 PM
Correlations: the way goblins can extract lots of knowledge without being systematically cultured is a feature of the world of warcraft goblins. Seems nice to me.

Crafting: while using one point increases rank by 2, their cap is still class level+3, just like with everybody else. The only advantage they have is they can develop more craft skills at once: like, say, a human can afford at level 5 to have Craft(Weaponsmithing) and Craft (Bowmaking) at 8 ranks, whereas a goblin can have those two at 8 ranks, and add maxed Trapmaking and Alchemy to the bunch as well. Thing is, being the best at a single skill is laughable as an advantage merely because of how easy it is to achieve.

I've chosen those ability score penalties because they fit the flavor, but also because, seriously, no classes can dump Con and Wis completely. None. So they matter.

Structural weak points is very strong as worded, and yes, this is perfectly intended. There has to be at least one anti-construct race, is what I'm saying.

I am aware that the conditions for using the withdraw action are lax and you can basically use it anyway, but keep in mind that it's a full round action. Meaning that you're giving up your attacks for the round to use it.


As for the LA... here's my standard. Check the Zonqurath and Veritay races in my sig. You will see that both are noticeably stronger than this goblin, and at the same time solidly LA +1.

Welknair
2012-06-06, 03:36 PM
I think most of these abilities could benefit from a sentence or two of fluff before the crunch, explaining the reasoning.

Correlations: See above. Your explanation makes sense, but isn't included in the race proper.

Ability Scores: I figured as much. Hence my note that they do a lot to balance the race.

Structural Weak-Points: You ought to specify how this ability functions in relation to SA. The way you have it set up, it makes sense that it'd allow SA to work against Constructs.

Withdraw: Not to mention, if you're using a full-round to move, you could just have easily taken a double-move. Which is still 40ft total. So yeah, that's not a problem.

Balance: That makes sense. I was mostly looking at the PHB races for balance, which I suppose is about as valid as looking there for feat-balance.

In other news! I very much like the flavor you've worked into the class! It actually makes you want to play a Goblin!

Faerieheart
2012-06-06, 05:08 PM
Structural Weak-Points: You ought to specify how this ability functions in relation to SA. The way you have it set up, it makes sense that it'd allow SA to work against Constructs.

Personally sneak attack is overly restrictive as is anyway. Even if it allows for sneak attacking constructs it's not overly powerful. Sneak attacking should be less restrictive anyway. I say at most it's allowing sneak attack to do something it should be able to do anyway.

Yitzi
2012-06-07, 09:20 AM
-How does Erratic Crafting interact with max skill ranks? Are you still subject to the same maximum (so it just halves the cost of craft skills), or is that doubled too (making goblins, especially high-level ones, into really good crafters)?