Questioning your own decisions.

[Draconi Redfir]

So i really just wanted to make this thread to ramble about something i realized a minute ago, but making a thread just to talk about myself seemed wrong so... What are some decisions you've made either in a game, or out of game, that you later wondered "what the heck was i thinking?" about it?


Earlier today i was pseudo re-working the nine major races for my wanna-be low-magic pathfinder campaign. i knew i wanted them separated into three biological "kindoms" (orcs humans elves, dwarves halflings gnomes, and goblins hobgoblins bugbears) and that each "kingdom" would get only one darkvision race and only one low-light vision race buuut...

at some point down the line i also decided each "kingdom" would get a "Skilled" race. So Humans, Halflings, and Hobgoblins would all get +1 skill point per level. After about an hour of not working on the races though, a thought occurred to me...

Why?

Why does each kingdom need a "Skilled" race? Halflings and Hobgbolins already get a ton of neat features and tricks, Humans really only get Skilled, the bonus feat, and the "+2 to anything" ability score thing. So... why do Hobgoblins and Halflings need it? Is it because all the other races share a thing? (Orcs, dwarves, and Bugbears all have darkvision, Goblins, Elves, and Gnomes all have low-light vision) But... visions are a lot different then extra skill points. and a whole lot of races get those visions...

... I honestly can't think of a single reason why giving hobgoblins and halflings an extra skill point per level would be a good idea, even if i removed other abilities from them such as the Halfling's Fearless and Sure-footed abilities... I have no idea what i was thinking, or why i want to somehow justify it so badly...

[LibraryOgre]

It's somewhat natural to seek symmetry in things like this, especially if you're looking at symmetry elsewhere (three clades, each clade with similarities in design.

I would look at your three clades and decide what kind of similarities you want there to be. Can you redraw the groups to be otherwise similar? Like, instead of three families, do you have six different ways to draw the grid?

Or El Hu
Dw Gn Ha
Bu Go Ho

So you might also draw a grouping of Orcs, Dwarves, and Bugbears, who share a variety of traits, whereas a grouping of Elf, Dwarf, and Hobgoblin would share very little?

If you're going for symmetry, embrace symmetry. Decide what each row and column has in common with others in their row and column. Get weird. Get funky.

[Draconi Redfir]

Well my current thoughts were something along the lines of:

Orcs, Dwarves, and Bugbears. They're the biggest, burleys of their groups, and they're probably all going to have Darkvision (Though i'm still tempted to give that to the Goblins instead of the Bugbears, idk.) Bugbears and Orcs will need some heavy re-work ability-score wise, so far i'm giving Orcs +2 Str, +2 Wis, and -2 Dex. and Dwarves thave their normal +2 Cond, +2 wis, -2 Cha. Could work Bugbears to have +2 Dex, +2something (Wis again?) and -2 whatever so they all get a boost to their physical stats.


Gnomes Goblins and Elves are sort of the "outlyers" group i guess? My gnomes don't come from an extra-planar feywild, more like a valley with a sort of magic-atmosphere that would tear apart other races not in special suits. So i'm thinking of giving them the only spell-like abilities of the rest, and maybe some wild-magic and 30ft speed like Goblins. They're also the three who have low-light vision, can't think of any way Elves could be similar to the other two though unless i want to make them short. If the first three races all get buffs to physical stats, it'd make sense that they each got a buff to a mental one i guess. would be kind of tough for Goblins though :smalltongue:

Halflings humans and hobs are all kinda just the middle-child in all this, not as extreme as either of their sister races.


Think the main issue is that "Skilled" feels like a very "Big" thing to throw on to two other races, needing multiple racial traits removed to balance it right, and making it not unique to Humans who don't get a whole lot to begin with... Honestly i'm not sure if anything i just said is at all relvent to anything you just said or if it's just a repeat of what i said in the first post...

[Warlawk]

Think the main issue is that "Skilled" feels like a very "Big" thing to throw on to two other races, needing multiple racial traits removed to balance it right, and making it not unique to Humans who don't get a whole lot to begin with... Honestly i'm not sure if anything i just said is at all relvent to anything you just said or if it's just a repeat of what i said in the first post...

I don't think that the "skilled" trait is needed to represent your skilled race. My first inclination would be to switch the hobgoblin favored class to Rogue, Scout or something similar. When I looked though I was reminded that Goblins favored class is Rogue and the goblin alchemist/tinkerer seems to be fairly iconic lately in many fantasy sources. Hobs are sneaky and dexterous though, depending on their terrain maybe just have them fill that scout/outrider kind of role.

Halflings already seem like a natural fit to me, merchants, crafters, artisans and such. They wouldn't need any adjusting to fit that role in my opinion.

[Draconi Redfir]

I don't think that the "skilled" trait is needed to represent your skilled race. My first inclination would be to switch the hobgoblin favored class to Rogue, Scout or something similar. When I looked though I was reminded that Goblins favored class is Rogue and the goblin alchemist/tinkerer seems to be fairly iconic lately in many fantasy sources. Hobs are sneaky and dexterous though, depending on their terrain maybe just have them fill that scout/outrider kind of role.

Halflings already seem like a natural fit to me, merchants, crafters, artisans and such. They wouldn't need any adjusting to fit that role in my opinion.

ehh, it's mainly because the other races get something shared between them that's really useful (darkvision and low light vision) so i was hoping to give the races who didn't have that, either because i took it away or because they never had anything like it to begin with, something that was both useful, and shared between the three.

maybe i could look into alternate racial traits for humans and give them one or two free of cost? just so they have something of their own? i unno.

either way going to put these race alterations in the homebrew section to get feedback on it, so yea.

[Fizban]

All the time when homebrewing, that's the point- keep attacking your own idea until you're sure you've exhausted any reason to not do it. And many good ideas, most homebrews in the first place are the result of realizing "huh, I could just do the thing instead of trying to twist x/y/z into looking kinda like it."

For games, well there's characters that just didn't match the rest of the party, but those were never really sudden realizations.