New Race Weaknesses

[McBish]

Hi people I am looking at the race builder for Pathfinder and wanting some more weaknesses. So here is what I have made up so far.

Limited Scent. Reduces scent to 2 RP from 4, limites range to 15 feet. 30 with good wind and 5 with bad.

Short sighted. -2rp Doubles distance penalty for perception from -1 per 10 ft to -2 per 10 ft.

Unwieldy weapons. Perquisite large. Not sure points maybe -2 maybe -3. Despite the creatures large size they can not use large weapons without penalties.

I am trying to make a spider race that is cool and not too much more powerful than a aasamir.

PS I also notice there isn't a RP cost for tremorsense. I was thinking 3 RP since it is slightly worse than blindsense which is 4 RP.

[stack]

First, this looks like it belongs on the homebrew subforum; you can report your post to request it be moved.

Second, the race builder has a pretty poor reputation. I mostly see people around here recommend either ignoring it or at best using it as a very rough guideline. Agonizing over RP values is work with little result since the base values are so poorly balanced.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by stack
Second, the race builder has a pretty poor reputation. I mostly see people around here recommend either ignoring it or at best using it as a very rough guideline. Agonizing over RP values is work with little result since the base values are so poorly balanced.

Huh. And here I was about to plow through the entire race builder looking for useful options.

Are there specific items that people don’t like, or the quantification of RP for those items?

[PersonMan]

Are there specific items that people don’t like, or the quantification of RP for those items?

My guess would be the latter, especially given that different abilities can easily vary in strength based on other abilities the race has, the character class/archetype of an individual of the race, and so on. It's hard to put an exact numerical value on, say, how much Darkvision is worth +2 Int.

[grarrrg]

Huh. And here I was about to plow through the entire race builder looking for useful options.

Are there specific items that people don’t like, or the quantification of RP for those items?

It mostly boils down to:
*If you are the DM making races for flavor, then the points are "close enough".
*If you are a player trying to make a race for optimization, then the points are meaningless.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by grarrrg
If you are a player trying to make a race for optimization, then the points are meaningless.

…how would you optimize a race? :smallconfused:

And wouldn’t a player need prior approval from the DM for a custom race? And the DM would need some way to evaluate the components, so the RP would need to have some meaning on that side at least.

[grarrrg]

…how would you optimize a race? :smallconfused:

And wouldn’t a player need prior approval from the DM for a custom race? And the DM would need some way to evaluate the components, so the RP would need to have some meaning on that side at least.

Same way you optimize a character.
"I'm making a Wizard, so I'll get +4 INT, take some dump stats I don't care about, some pointless 'flaws' to offset some other bonuses...".

And yes the DM should check it, but the fact that there's an "Official point system" might lead the DM to believe it's tested, balanced and useful, see the Wizard player turned in a "10 RP" race, which is "on the weak end" of point cost and allow it.
Meanwhile the race is the most brokenly perfect Wizard race ever.

[Psyren]

Players who use it are required to have "GM oversight" so it's very much a caveat emptor thing. GMs who rely solely or even primarily on a race's RP value to rubber-stamp submissions without a more thoughtful evaluation are doing their campaigns a disservice.