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View Full Version : How to Homebrew a Stonechild plz



Noobborn
2013-07-17, 10:25 AM
Well the race is interesting and I wanted to play it but that +4 LA and 2 Outsider Dice is a heavy cost.

Anyway you all can think of bending or outright homebrewing the rules to lessen this burden.
Its features of note are:
+8 Strength, +8 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, –2 Charisma.
+4 Natural Armor
Magic Stone Spell Effect 3 times a day.

Deepbluediver
2013-07-17, 11:10 AM
Well the race is interesting and I wanted to play it but that +4 LA and 2 Outsider Dice is a heavy cost.

Anyway you all can think of bending or outright homebrewing the rules to lessen this burden.
Its features of note are:
+8 Strength, +8 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, –2 Charisma.
+4 Natural Armor
Magic Stone Spell Effect 3 times a day.

Hmm...

The net gain of +16 to stats is kind of hard to balance with any sort of reasonable penalties. Some more details on why you like the race, what you want to keep or are willing to jettison, your desired starting point/level, and how you are going to play it could be helpful. (also, what book are they in? I want to look up the description)

I'm thinking modeling some homebrew after the Bloodlines might be acceptable. Basically you start off fairly unexciting but, every few levels you trade off class advancement for a RHD and new stats or features.

Edit: After double checking, it's more like you get a couple HD-less levels, but continually gain new traits and features.

Noobborn
2013-07-17, 11:20 AM
Races of Stone

The idea that they are Half-Breed children of Elemental and Humans.


STONECHILD RACIAL TRAITS
• +8 Strength, +8 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, –2 Charisma.
• Size: As Medium creatures, stone children have no special
bonuses or penalties due to size.
• A stonechild’s base land speed is 30 feet.
• Darkvision: Stonechildren can see in the dark out to 60
feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise
like normal sight, and stonechildren can function
just fine with no light at all.
• Racial Hit Dice: A stonechild begins with two levels of
outsider, which provide her with 2d8 Hit Dice, a base
attack bonus of +2, and base saving throw bonuses of Fort
+3, Ref +3, and Will +3.
• Racial Skills: A stonechild’s outsider levels give her skill
points equal to 5 × (8 + Int modifi er). Their class skills
are Appraise, Climb, Craft (stoneworking), Intimidate,
Knowledge (history), Knowledge (the planes), Listen,
Search, Spot, and Survival.
• Racial Feats: A stonechild’s outsider levels give her one
feat. In addition, stonechildren get Blind-Fight as a
bonus feat.
• Weapon and Armor Proficiency: As an outsider, a
stonechild is proficient with all simple and martial
weapons, with light and medium armor, and with shields
(except tower shields).
• Natural Armor: A stonechild’s tough hide protects her
from harm, giving her a +4 natural armor bonus to
Armor Class.
• Immunity to Acid and Poison: Stonechildren take no
damage and suffer no ill effects from acid or poison.
• Magic Stone (Sp): Three times per day, a stonechild can
use a magic stone effect, as the spell (caster level 3rd).
• Automatic Languages: Common and Terran. Bonus Languages:
Celestial, Dwarven, Ignan.
• Favored Class: Fighter.
• Level adjustment +4.

That is the full racial traits.
I am willing to balance it as much as possible to reduce the Level Adjustment down to something more reasonable.

Eldan
2013-07-17, 11:30 AM
Hmm.

Similar to the half-dragon, maybe:

+6 Str, +6 Con, +2 Int, -2 Cha
Outsider type
Dark Vision 60 ft.
Blind-fight as a bonus feat
+4 natural armour
Immune to acid and poison
Stone tell 1/day
LA +3

Seems about reasonable?

Noobborn
2013-07-17, 11:34 AM
I am ok with losing the Immunity to Acid and Poison, and maybe half the Natural Armor. What would that do for the LA? Maybe reducing the the Str and Con down by 2 (So +6 total)

Deepbluediver
2013-07-17, 12:16 PM
Alright, I took a stab at writing up a bloodline-based version (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm), too, so you have a choice to present to your GM and an option if you want to start at level 1.
Now, full-disclosure, I'm not normally a fan of D&D's lego-genetics (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LegoGenetics). Bloodlines are something I could sort of see working out, although I would tweak the fluff and the rules.

Character|Major


1st|+2 on skill check


2nd|Toughness


3rd|Strength +2


4th|Resistance to Poison +5


5th|Darkvision 30 ft.


6th|+1 to natural armor


7th|+2 on skill check


8th|Resistance to Poison +10


9th|Strength +2


10th|Magic Stone (Sp) 3/day


11th|Darkvision 60 ft.


12th|+1 to natural armor


13th|+2 on skill check


14th|Blindfight


15th|Strength +2


16th|Earth Glide


17th|Poison Immunity


18th|+1 to natural armor


19th|+2 on skill check


20th|Elemental Form

Skill Boost
At levels 1, 7, 13, and 19 you gain a +2 racial bonus on a skill check of your choice, though the skill must be from the follpwing list: Intimidate, Knowledge (dungeoneering), Knowledge (architecture and engineering), Knowledge (nature), Listen, Search, Spot, Survival
The knowledge skills I picked seemed to make more sense than the listed racial ones. Feel free to add Appraise to the list if you have some house-rule uses that make it not suck.
Toughness
At level 2 you gain the toughness feat. This grants you 1 additional HP for every d4, 2 HP for every d6 or d8, and 3 HP for every d10 and d12.
This is my homebrew version of the toughness feat, because lets face it; the original one wasn't worth it's weight in copper.
Ability Boost
You gain a permanent +2 increase to Strength at levels 3, 9, and 15. This is similar to the ability increase gained by characters at every fourth level.
The ability boosts are all strength; the normal boost to Con is instead represented by the Toughness feat.
I scrapped the +2 Int part because that didn't seem to be as important, and I'm not sure why an earth elemental would be inherently smarter anyway. :smallconfused:
Resistance to Poison
Beggining at level 4, you gain a +5 to any check to avoid taking the effects of Poison. This increases to +10 at level 8. At level 17 you become completely immune to poison.
I scrapped the acid immunity in favor of this; some rocks can be worn away quite quickly by acid. :smallbiggrin:
Darkvision
At level 5 you gain Darkvison out to 30 ft. The range increases to 60 ft. at level 11.
This mostly replaced the Affinity boosts, which I never liked. Since there aren't normally penalties for dealing with creatures of other races, this meant that a human with the bloodline would be better at talking to a dragon/demon/whatever than something of the same type.
Natural Armor
Beginning at level 6, you gain a +1 natural armor bonus. This increases by 1 at levels 12 and 18.
I based the progression on the natural AC boosts from the Dragon bloodlines.
Magic Stone
At level 10, you can use Magic Stone as a spell-like ability up to 3 times per day.

Blindfight
At level 14 you gain the Blindfight feat.

Earth Glide
At level 16 you may earthglide like an elemental for 1 round per HD each day, divided any way you choose.

An earth elemental can glide through stone, dirt, or almost any other sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water. Its burrowing leaves behind no tunnel or hole, nor does it create any ripple or other signs of its presence. A move earth spell cast on an area containing a burrowing earth elemental flings the elemental back 30 feet, stunning the creature for 1 round unless it succeeds on a DC 15 Fortitude save.

Elemental Form (Su)
At level 20, once per day as a Full-round action you can alter your physical form to be more like that of a earth-elemental. This ability lasts for 1 minute.

While in this form, your size increases by 1 category, you gain DR 10/-, and you gain an elemental's Earth Mastery and Push traits.

Earth Mastery (Ex)*
An earth elemental gains a bonus on attack and damage rolls if both it and its foe are touching the ground. If an opponent is airborne or waterborne, the elemental takes a penalty on attack rolls.
Size|Attack|Damage|Penalty
Small, Medium|+1|+1d8|-2
Large, Huge|+2|+2d6|-3
Gargantuan|+4|+3d8|-4
Colossal|+6|+4d10|-6

Push (Ex)
An earth elemental can start a bull rush maneuver without provoking an attack of opportunity. The attack-roll modifiers given in Earth Mastery, above, also apply to the elemental’s opposed Strength checks.
*I tweaked this a little to make it scale better. The RAW version just has a flat +1 attack/damage bonus and -4 penalty. Use whichever you prefer.


Like I said, I'm not really a huge fan of most of the listed bloodlines, but this seems like something I would consider taking.

Noobborn
2013-07-17, 12:21 PM
Thanks for the hardwork, this looks like a good slow racial progression that would be easier to get past the DM then the current one, also doesnt seem to leave me with the crippled HD issue.

Noobborn
2013-07-17, 01:18 PM
What class should I play this character as? What fits best I know their favored is a Fighter, maybe Barbarian or one of the ToB classes?

Deepbluediver
2013-07-17, 01:29 PM
Thanks for the hardwork, this looks like a good slow racial progression that would be easier to get past the DM then the current one, also doesnt seem to leave me with the crippled HD issue.

Glad to be of service. It wasn't terribly difficult, since I was able to copy a lot of stuff from the existing write-ups. The reason most players don't like bloodlines is because the boosts are mediocre at best, so I simply tried to make things a little more powerful and interesting.

If you think about, let me know what your DM says and how it works out in a game if they approve.


What class should I play this character as? What fits best I know their favored is a Fighter, maybe Barbarian or one of the ToB classes?

Casters tend not to like Bloodlines because the trade off in spells lost isn't really worth it. Barbarians, Fighters, and the like are the obvious choice, but really any melee-based class would make an acceptable chassis. For something like a Rogue or a Monk, the boosts to Strength, AC, and HP would help you remain combat-viable despite being MAD and somewhat squishy.