Pathfinder Race Builder: Gaests

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Currently making a race for a setting, and I am having trouble with the RP system for making them. What I am creating is a race of people who are very similar to Ghosts, although they are not shades of dead people, but rather a race composed primarily from ectoplasm. They are simply-built, that is their bodies are a single entity, and thus much more resistant to breaking down like humans. Gaests are effectively immortal as long as they can continue feeding on energy (moonlight, leylines, human interaction, volcanos, magic, etc, etc), but they do build up a lot of metaphysical junk. Their bodies are light, but tangible. They are attuned to negative energy, and operate under an alien biology. They may alter their appearance to look like others, and may regrow lost limbs, even their head as their cognitive process is strewn throughout their form, not just their heads.


Humanoid: Translucent, colorful skin (0rp)
Darkvision (2rp)
Amorphous: Immune to Precision Damage and Critical Hits
Immune to Sleep effects, +2 against mind-affecting (2rp)
Regeneration: regrow limbs and/or head
Negative Energy affinity (-1rp)
Immune to Disease/Poison
Resist Level Drain (1rp)
Lesser Change Shape (3rp)
Gliding Wings: Perma-featherfall (3rp)

tl;dr, I need help figuring out the RP cost of Amorphous, Regeneration, and Immunity to food, breathing, disease and poison.

[avr]

First, since you're listing out the Race Point costs, I guess you're assuming that the RP system & costs make sense. I'm not sure about that, but assuming this here goes:

Your version of Regeneration is largely flavor; once you've paid for immunity to crits etc the ability to regrow limbs is probably zero cost.

Duergar Immunities (4 RP) gives immunity to paralysis, phantasms and poison and +2 to saves vis spells and spell-likes. That's not unlike the immunity to sleep, disease and poison, and +2 to mind-affecting saves you've given them. (Edit; a little less maybe. Adding in not needing to eat might make them the same.) If you want to price immune to disease/poison separately it might be 2 RP.

Now, the big one. Immune to crits and precision damage - I'd call that better than duergar immunities. Call it 5-6 RP?

[Yanisa]

Fast Healing 1* is 6 RP and doesn't regrow limbs, any form of regeneration would score above that. Unless your Regen doesn't heal... then I could see 6 RP work.

Breathing, Eating and Sleeping is tied to monster type as well, only (Half) Undeads and Golems could get it trough the RP system... Then again Aasimar and Tiefling easily get rid of eat (and drink) requirements on a DM's whim so those aren't expensive. Sleeping is more fluff then actual rules. So that leaves breathing is the most expensive one. Seeing as Amphibious is 2 RP*, I would peg the total cost at 3-4 RP.

And the hardest one: Immunity to Crits and Sneaks. Which is a major ability in pathfinder, only 3 creature types (and a couple of exception) have this and non of those are available to make a custom race. Even 25% to ignore is expensive in game terms. If you want add it to your race, the race point system is not build for it, because Paizo doesn't want PC to have it. Seeing how hard it is to even get 25% immunity, this one should be very very insensibly expensive. I would peg 25% immunity in the range of 6-10, judging from other abilities in that range*. Full immunity would end up being a stupid number and at that point you are better off taking the Incorporeal subtype, which also isn't available to players, but from the undead type*, it is easier to put points on that one. Say 20? something stupid like that.

My advise, just avoid the crit immune, the game isn't meant for you to have crit immunity. And I would also avoid regeneration if you want to keep the class within playable RP point range.

P.S. Note that I am not talking about actual game balance, more trying to ballpark RP costs in a rough matter based on other abilities*.




*Disclaimer: Do note that once you start making comparisons within the RP system, the whole RP system falls flat.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Thank you for the replies! Currently typing on my phone, so forgive any mistakes in this post.

@avr: Duergar Immunity sounds pretty close to what I was going for. I figured a race of energy beings wouldn't need sleep, so that's why I originally went with elven immunity. I also see what you mean about making their form of regeneration fluff.

@Yanisa: You make some good points about how expensive these traits should be. And how some of them really shouldn't be allowed at all. So I can assume that eating, breathing, and sleeping immunity would cost around 4rp, but you think this form of regeneration should be six? Even if it does not allow healing?

@Both: You both seem to think very poorly of the RP system. What exactly is wrong with it? Should I be worrying about balance this much?

[Yanisa]

@Yanisa: You make some good points about how expensive these traits should be. And how some of them really shouldn't be allowed at all. So I can assume that eating, breathing, and sleeping immunity would cost around 4rp, but you think this form of regeneration should be six? Even if it does not allow healing?
Thinking about it logical, severed limbs rarely happen so from that side it ain't that huge of a boon. At the other side the only way of dealing with it is with a level 7 spell. So basically you are giving your race an ability on the level of a 7th lvl spell (technically half of the spell), but one that isn't needed a lot. You probably get away with less points, unless you have house rules that allow easier severing of limbs, or run a campaign where it happens more often. The ability self is powerful, but on a grand scale it should happen rarely.


@Both: You both seem to think very poorly of the RP system. What exactly is wrong with it? Should I be worrying about balance this much?
I have made a lot of races with the system, it ain't that bad, but in my book it suffers two major problems, both which are apparent once you start comparing abilities.

Sporadic RP assignments - Sometimes its really hard to understand why certain abilities have a certain RP.
Uneven RP assignment - Sometimes powerful abilities tend to have the same or less RP then weaker abilities, or the other way around. (And they sort of try to fix it by having tiers in abilities, but that just undermines the whole idea of giving abilities points in the first place.)
Thats where my disclaimer also comes in, trying to use existing RP to base on things outside the system doesn't really work, (and it also makes me and avr give vastly different RP for the same abilities, just because we use different baselines within the same system) because the system isn't written with consistency.

The real problem appears when you can make two races at 10 RP. One is a powerful race that everyone wants to play and one is a mess of useless abilities no one wants to play. You sort of can see that with the core races, how Human have a set of abilities that make them all around perfect, but other races linger between good and horrible depending on the class. And this doesn't have to be a bad thing, but strictly speaking it isn't balanced. (Then again most of pathfinder isn't.)

After some of my personal frustrations, I kinda stopped with taking RP at face value and just use it as a starting point. After making races I tend to take a step back and compare to other races, and adjust outside the RP system if I feel it is needed.