Human Variant Based on Endurance (PEACH) Probably too strong

[Aniikinis]

Please tell me how well this holds up and what you'd trim down to make it a bit more palatable. I was shooting for +1 LA but I'm not sure how well I hit the mark seeing as it's 6AM and I'm about to head to bed.


Human (Variant)
"These monsters don't stop moving and refuse stay down!" - Kavrai Ironsilk, Jhelma Scout during the first encounter with Humans

They're humans, but with less of a focus on the Jack of All Trades aspect that can be fairly easily applied to most other races and more of a focus on the traits that lead to our dominance on Earth.

Human (variant)
Human characters possess the following racial traits:

+2 Con, -2 Wis(+0 App)
Medium Humanoid(Human)
Speed: 40 ft.
Special Qualities: Extremophile, Gaian Luck, Pack Bond, Pursuit Predator
Automatic Languages: Common, and any one non-secret Bonus Languages: Any non-secret.
Favored Class: Any
Level adjustment: TBD


Extremophile (Ex): Humans can live and, after a fairly short adjustment period, thrive anywhere they can survive. They gain a racial bonus to saving throws equal to 1/4th their HD against the effects of environments (high altitude, heat stroke, hypothermia, noxious fumes, etc. but not plant poisons in a jungle or the like). Additionally, they gain a +2 racial to survival checks in wilderness. The bonus to wilderness survival checks increases to +5 after a full consecutive week of being in the same terrain.

Gaian Luck (Su): Humans have a +2 luck bonus to all saving throws. The bonus from this trait and extremophile do not combine, only the higher one applies. Once per day, if a human were to make a death save, they instead have a 30% chance instead of a 10% chance.

Pack Bond (Ex): Humans will attempt to make friends with anything. Whether or not it can think, react, or even emote. Humans have Wild Empathy with no type restrictions. When diplomacy is used in this way, the human takes a -10 on the check. If the human later gains wild empathy (or an ability like it), the penalty for those types changes to match those that the ability gives.

Once per day and an additional time per day per 4 HD, you may give an extremely simple, extremely easy order to an inanimate, mindless object. The object will then attempt to complete this order to the best of its' ability. (Eg. Stay, Fall, move about an inch, go faster, etc.)

Pursuit Predation (Ex): Humans don't stop moving and nothing can escape from their will. Humans gain Track as a bonus feat and reduce all nonlethal damage by 2. Additionally, the penalties to track are reduced by 2 and humans can ignore the first application of fatigue per day.

Sticks and Stones (Ex): Humans are good at long-range attacks, although a bit crude at it. Within the first range increment, humans gain a +2 bonus to ranged attacks and damage with thrown weapons, and a +1 bonus to ranged attacks and damage with non-thrown ranged weapons. They lose that bonus beyond this distance.

[pi4t]

Hmm. I'll have a quick look at this, try to break down how powerful the different abilities are compared to the normal human. Keep in mind I'm more of a Pathfinder player, so I may misjudge some things slightly. Paizo has produced a helpful guide (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/creating-new-races?/#TOC-Defense-Racial-Traits) to how they evaluate racial abilities in power, and while there are a few dubious decisions in there it helps give some idea of power.

Ability scores: Seems fairly standard, and theoretically equal in value to the base human stats. Not sure what the App is - appearance? In practice, this is a bit stronger than a standard human since con is useful for every class, but I don't think it's anything that would be considered a significant power increase for a race. Racial ability score bonuses are one of the areas that Pathfinder and 3.5 work differently though, so I might be mistaken here.
Speed: 40ft speed is a bonus, but a minor one, worth about 2000gp if we reverse engineer the pricing of Boots of Striding and Springing. Not important enough to consider when determining LA, though if the race turns out to be LA 0 we might need to consider cutting this.
Languages: An extra language is definitely too minor to consider here.
Extremeophile: Mostly a fluff ability; I don't think I've ever had to make a save against environmental effects, and by the time the bonus gets going spells which protect against the need for a save will be easily available.
Gaian Luck: This should probably be a typed bonus, either racial or luck. Paizo reckons a +2 bonus to all saves is equivalent to the human's floating bonus feat, and I'm inclined to agree.
Pack Bond: I think this ability needs to be rewritten, or cut altogether. You say players can use diplomacy "even if it cannot possibly work": you need to spell out what happens in that situation, and put some limits on it to prevent players from going "I diplomacise the universe to let me have an "I win" button". In particular, it's not at all clear what motivations an inanimate object would have, which makes it hard to establish DCs. Compounding this, diplomacy is famously abusable and messy as it is, so the power increase from this would vary between "useless" if the player wasn't using diplomacy and "broken and any LA" if they build around it. If you want to keep the flavour of the ability, maybe a limited use per day ability to make an inanimate object obey your instructions, with reasonable limits? Anyway, I'm going to pretend this ability doesn't exist for now, and evaluate the race without it.
Pursuit Predation: Basically unimportant fluff.
Sticks and Stones: Again the bonus should be given a type, probably racial. This is sort of like two uses of weapon focus if you're making a thrower, or one instance if you're making another ranged character. According to Pathfinder's metric, that's about equal to the human skill bonus, or half the human skill bonus respectively. Thrown weapons aren't exactly the strongest weapon choice, though, so overall I'd say this comes out a little below the skill bonus, which is balanced out by the other bonuses the class gets.

So overall, I'd say that if you scrap the Pack Bond ability this works as a LA+0 race. It has a lot of abilities, but most aren't going to really come up very much. You might want to switch out the double attack bonus to an attack-and-damage bonus though, since the game tends to run into issues if attack bonuses get too high.

[Aniikinis]

Hmm. I'll have a quick look at this, try to break down how powerful the different abilities are compared to the normal human. Keep in mind I'm more of a Pathfinder player, so I may misjudge some things slightly. Paizo has produced a helpful guide (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/creating-new-races?/#TOC-Defense-Racial-Traits) to how they evaluate racial abilities in power, and while there are a few dubious decisions in there it helps give some idea of power.

Thanks for the response and that's fine by me. There aren't too many differences and I'm aware of the race builder.


Ability scores: Seems fairly standard, and theoretically equal in value to the base human stats. Not sure what the App is - appearance? In practice, this is a bit stronger than a standard human since con is useful for every class, but I don't think it's anything that would be considered a significant power increase for a race. Racial ability score bonuses are one of the areas that Pathfinder and 3.5 work differently though, so I might be mistaken here.
You're about spot on. 3.5 tends to have either a penalty or a neutral outcome when it comes to ability adjustments, but in this case it's not a major difference. App is indeed appearance, it's a variant rule for an additional ability score that modifies a few things should the player wish it to.


Speed: 40ft speed is a bonus, but a minor one, worth about 2000gp if we reverse engineer the pricing of Boots of Striding and Springing. Not important enough to consider when determining LA, though if the race turns out to be LA 0 we might need to consider cutting this.
Languages: An extra language is definitely too minor to consider here.
Both of these I expected to be extremely minor and didn't think would break anything. They're meant to emulate the fleet-footedness of humans and our ease at learning new languages.


Extremeophile: Mostly a fluff ability; I don't think I've ever had to make a save against environmental effects, and by the time the bonus gets going spells which protect against the need for a save will be easily available.
I agree, but I was also low-balling the bonus dramatically. Initially I had it as equal to HD then scrapped that for 1/2 HD, then switched it again just before posting. I've had to make checks against environmental hazards before and they can suck hard. Frostburn and Sandstorm have very good rules for that sort of stuff, and are a great tool when moving across wastelands and arctic terrain.


Gaian Luck: This should probably be a typed bonus, either racial or luck. Paizo reckons a +2 bonus to all saves is equivalent to the human's floating bonus feat, and I'm inclined to agree.
Yeah, I really should have put the modifier, it's supposed to be racial. I personally don't think this ability is that powerful, mostly due to the shenanigans you can get up to with a free bonus feat when compared to a +2 to all saves.


Pack Bond: I think this ability needs to be rewritten, or cut altogether. You say players can use diplomacy "even if it cannot possibly work": you need to spell out what happens in that situation, and put some limits on it to prevent players from going "I diplomacise the universe to let me have an "I win" button". In particular, it's not at all clear what motivations an inanimate object would have, which makes it hard to establish DCs. Compounding this, diplomacy is famously abusable and messy as it is, so the power increase from this would vary between "useless" if the player wasn't using diplomacy and "broken and any LA" if they build around it. If you want to keep the flavour of the ability, maybe a limited use per day ability to make an inanimate object obey your instructions, with reasonable limits? Anyway, I'm going to pretend this ability doesn't exist for now, and evaluate the race without it.
This is the one I wasn't sure how to write. It's meant to be our "attempts to make friends with anything" instinct, including stabby the roomba. I'm honestly thinking of completely rewriting the ability and making it just the basic wild empathy bit and maybe like 1-3/day a single inanimate object follows the most bare bones instructions as best as it can (so you could tell an unsteady object "stay" as you point at it and it stays, or you could have a small cart move about an inch or so).


Pursuit Predation: Basically unimportant fluff.
I'm inclined to disagree a bit here. When trying to track down something vital that's moving away from you, the DC can ramp up quickly. This isn't necessarily just for the PCs though. If someone is trying to find them it could lead them straight to them. Additionally, I modified two parts of this ability just before posting and I'm not sure if I should change it back. The first modification was a lessening in the nonlethal reduction and the second was adding the words "from travel" when talking about the fatigue. This could be powerful early game, though it does drop off significantly later on.


Sticks and Stones: Again the bonus should be given a type, probably racial. This is sort of like two uses of weapon focus if you're making a thrower, or one instance if you're making another ranged character. According to Pathfinder's metric, that's about equal to the human skill bonus, or half the human skill bonus respectively. Thrown weapons aren't exactly the strongest weapon choice, though, so overall I'd say this comes out a little below the skill bonus, which is balanced out by the other bonuses the class gets.
Yup, racial was what it was supposed to be. This was more of a last-minute addition than anything else and I kinda figured it wouldn't be that powerful. I kinda nabbed it from the halfling's throwing bonus.


So overall, I'd say that if you scrap the Pack Bond ability this works as a LA+0 race. It has a lot of abilities, but most aren't going to really come up very much. You might want to switch out the double attack bonus to an attack-and-damage bonus though, since the game tends to run into issues if attack bonuses get too high.
I'm going to rewrite the pack bond ability and add the bonus to damage. Good to know that I came in under my bar to start with though.

[Debihuman]

40 ft. Speed is an issue for the rest of the party. You’re going to be slowed down by the rest of the party. Why are you faster?

I’m not opposed to giving out new racial traits but these aren’t even consistent.

I’d want see an ecologically based reason for making this racial variant.

[aimlessPolymath]

A 30 ft move speed, I thought, was based on actual human speeds- an average walking speed for most people is about 4.6 ft/s, which is 27 ft/round- roughly what we expect, based on my reading of the 3.5 overland travel chapter.

[Debihuman]

Speed is based on size. Humans are Medium so 30 feet is the standard speed. My question is what physiology would increase that to 40 feet?

I’m a big proponent of form follows function with design — usually I reserve this for monster creation but race creation really is no different.

With more athletic built humans, a 40-food land speed would make sense. So would giving them a bonus to physical stats. I’m not sure why they are necessarily Lucky? Wouldn’t good genetics explain some of this?

I’m not disagreeing with these traits necessarily, I just want to see an explanation for them.

Are these abilities all (Ex)? You left that out. Note special abilities all have a designation. A net gain of 5 special abilities is a lot for racial variety. I’m leery of that even if the net gain is slight.
Is this 3.5 or a mix with Pathfinder since you bring up Paizo.

[Aniikinis]

40 ft. Speed is an issue for the rest of the party. You’re going to be slowed down by the rest of the party. Why are you faster?
I wasn't quite sure on whether or not I wanted to increase speed, but ended up going with it. It was originally meant to tie in with the fact that we just don't stop moving.


I’d want see an ecologically based reason for making this racial variant.
This variant isn't quite ecologically-based as such, it's more based on our aptitudes here on earth and our ability to shrug of things that should kill us. The hunting style of pursuit predation, our extreme endurance when compared to other creatures, our drive to attempt to make friends with anything even if it isn't alive, our proclivity to live in and quickly adapt to new environments, and our ability to throw and sight geared towards ranged attacks.


With more athletic built humans, a 40-food land speed would make sense. So would giving them a bonus to physical stats. I’m not sure why they are necessarily Lucky? Wouldn’t good genetics explain some of this?
The luck is more our ability to avoid death for dumb or just flat out insane reasons. There are many examples of people who should have died but just didn't. Tamping irons through the brain during railroad work, drills through the head, flying through a tornado and coming out unharmed save for a few bruises, being completely frozen and recovering with no problems, being shot in the head and being unharmed save for a migraine, etc.


Are these abilities all (Ex)? You left that out. Note special abilities all have a designation. A net gain of 5 special abilities is a lot for racial variety. I’m leery of that even if the net gain is slight.
All but Gaian Luck is Ex, that one's Su.


Is this 3.5 or a mix with Pathfinder since you bring up Paizo.

Originally 3.5 but the first reply was from a pathfinder player.