Race Builder Conversion

[Quixotic1]

A friend and I have been working on a fantasy ttrpg setting for Pathfinder 1e inspired by the work of Pendleton Ward ("Adventure Time", "Over the Garden Wall", "Midnight Gospel". We would like to make it 5e compatible.

We'll have the following races available for player characters:

Races:
Beastlings (cat-girls, minotaurs, fishmen, werewolves, etc.)
Elementals (cloudfolk, rock-men, water nymphs, forest dryads, etc.)

Robos (battle driods, messenger bots, gizmos, rust buckets, etc.)

Humans

Dwarves (mountain, grey, forge, hill)

Elves (wood, moon, high, dark)

Gnomes (forest, deep, tinker, sylvan)

Goblins (hobs, boggarts, bugbears, orcs)

Instead of each race having it's own set of stats, we were going to open it up a bit and just let the players build what makes sense for the character.

Below is a list of (at least most of) the options we'd have available if we run a Pathfinder game with this setting:

+2 to a skill (max +4) 1pt
+1 to a save (max +2) 2pts

+1 natural armor (max +2) 2pts

+1hp/HD 2pts

+1 Initiative (max +4) 1pt

Low-light vision 1pt
Darkvision 2pts
Scent 3pts
Blindsense 20ft 6pts
Tremorsense 10ft 8pts

-10ft to base speed -1pt
+10ft to base speed +1pt
Climb (20ft) 4pts
Swim (40ft) 3pts
Burrow (5ft) 8pts
Fly (60ft) 12pts

Single primary natural attack 4pts

Paired primary natural attack 4pts

Single secondary natural attack 2pts

Paired secondary natural attack 2pts

Bonus Feat 4pts

What sort of traits would you put on the list? What would each trait cost? How many points would each character get at creation?

These races can be significantly more potent than the standard ones in the PHB. We're fine with that, so long as they're fairly well-balanced compared to each other.
We're also not doing anything with ability score modifiers.

Thank you in advance for your time. Any help at all is appreciated.

[PhantomSoul]

Some good spots to look for comparison/ideas:
- Detect Balance: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/53pf0j/detect_balance_an_improved_scale_for_measuring_5e/
- Musicus Scale: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ViqLSEN67mmd2Lo_OJ-H5YX0fccsfI97kFaqx7V1Dmw/pub
- Detect Greater Balance: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XQ9shwsH5tu2s4Nt4J2Lie-pY4_G8CYhjB-yuJ7FlTk/edit#gid=1880237047

(With copious discussion floating around!)

[quindraco]

A friend and I have been working on a fantasy ttrpg setting for Pathfinder 1e inspired by the work of Pendleton Ward ("Adventure Time", "Over the Garden Wall", "Midnight Gospel". We would like to make it 5e compatible.

We'll have the following races available for player characters:

Races:
Beastlings (cat-girls, minotaurs, fishmen, werewolves, etc.)
Elementals (cloudfolk, rock-men, water nymphs, forest dryads, etc.)

Robos (battle driods, messenger bots, gizmos, rust buckets, etc.)

Humans

Dwarves (mountain, grey, forge, hill)

Elves (wood, moon, high, dark)

Gnomes (forest, deep, tinker, sylvan)

Goblins (hobs, boggarts, bugbears, orcs)

Instead of each race having it's own set of stats, we were going to open it up a bit and just let the players build what makes sense for the character.

Below is a list of (at least most of) the options we'd have available if we run a Pathfinder game with this setting:

+2 to a skill (max +4) 1pt
+1 to a save (max +2) 2pts

+1 natural armor (max +2) 2pts

+1hp/HD 2pts

+1 Initiative (max +4) 1pt

Low-light vision 1pt
Darkvision 2pts
Scent 3pts
Blindsense 20ft 6pts
Tremorsense 10ft 8pts

-10ft to base speed -1pt
+10ft to base speed +1pt
Climb (20ft) 4pts
Swim (40ft) 3pts
Burrow (5ft) 8pts
Fly (60ft) 12pts

Single primary natural attack 4pts

Paired primary natural attack 4pts

Single secondary natural attack 2pts

Paired secondary natural attack 2pts

Bonus Feat 4pts

What sort of traits would you put on the list? What would each trait cost? How many points would each character get at creation?

These races can be significantly more potent than the standard ones in the PHB. We're fine with that, so long as they're fairly well-balanced compared to each other.
We're also not doing anything with ability score modifiers.

Thank you in advance for your time. Any help at all is appreciated.

There's no budget at which this is balanced, but some problems are worse than others. For example, +1 natural armor (max +2) 2pts fundamentally assumes a 3.5E/PF1E approach to armor that is alien to 5E - 5E doesn't have natural armor bonuses, it has natural armor as a distinct way to calculate AC. Other problems abound - of the 5 senses listed, only 2 exist in 5E (the other three could be homebrewed, but there would be multiple possible ways to do so), and both of those 2 need defined distances to mean anything. You have severe problems here with bounded accuracy, as well. Without getting into the weeds of points costs, let me at least give you some senses to work with that function in 5E.

Keen Sight: Advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks involving sight is the RAW for this, but I recommend extending it to other vision-centric checks, which for sight is primarily Intelligence (Investigate) and Wisdom (Insight) (when they are primarily vision-based). Make this the most expensive Keen ability.
Keen Hearing: As Keen Sight but for hearing.
--If you have Keen Hearing, you can take Blindsight 10 feet, which doesn't work while deafened.
Keen Smell: As Keen Sight but for smell; extending it will usually mean it applies to Wisdom (Survival) as well. Make this the cheapest Keen ability.
--If you have Keen Smell, you can take Blindsight 5 feet, which doesn't work while you can't breathe.
Darkvision 30 feet
Tremorsense 30 feet (I would require a Burrow speed in order to take this)

[Quixotic1]

Some good spots to look for comparison/ideas...Awesome, thank you. These seem pretty comprehensive. I'll have to study these a bit.


There's no budget at which this is balanced, but some problems are worse than others. For example, +1 natural armor (max +2) 2pts fundamentally assumes a 3.5E/PF1E approach to armor that is alien to 5E - 5E doesn't have natural armor bonuses, it has natural armor as a distinct way to calculate AC. Other problems abound - of the 5 senses listed, only 2 exist in 5E (the other three could be homebrewed, but there would be multiple possible ways to do so), and both of those 2 need defined distances to mean anything. You have severe problems here with bounded accuracy, as well.To be clear, I wasn't asking if the system designed for use with Pathfinder was suitable for use with 5e as-is; I'm well aware that would never work.
To reiterate, I was asking what sorts of things you would put on such a list for 5e, how many points each item would cost and how many points a character would get at creation.
But there already exist several very detailed breakdowns of this exact nature, so it looks like my work is basically done. Unless there are any abilities/traits that don't exist on those lists that people think would be necessary or beneficial?

I'll have to play around with them a bit and see what I can build at what point levels.

Thank you both for your time and feedback.

[Greywander]

Some good spots to look for comparison/ideas:
- Detect Balance: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/53pf0j/detect_balance_an_improved_scale_for_measuring_5e/
- Musicus Scale: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ViqLSEN67mmd2Lo_OJ-H5YX0fccsfI97kFaqx7V1Dmw/pub
- Detect Greater Balance: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XQ9shwsH5tu2s4Nt4J2Lie-pY4_G8CYhjB-yuJ7FlTk/edit#gid=1880237047

(With copious discussion floating around!)
These are all pretty good, although you'll find some pretty wild discrepancies between then on certain features. I've used them when creating homebrew races before, and if nothing else they at least make you think about how much power you're giving a race. You might not end up with something totally balanced, but if you end up with a score that is way too high or way too low, you'll know that you still need to tweak things.

I'll also throw in a suggestion for my Simple Custom Races (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?629700-Simple-custom-races). This works pretty well for adapting a race from one system to D&D 5e, where you're more concerned about accurately replicating that race in 5e and less concerned about optimization. It doesn't try to be balanced, so it requires some care if using it for freeform race building, but it is pretty easy to use. One thing I learned from doing this is that ideally a race will have 3 to 6 traits, with 4 traits being about average. If you create a race using the above guides and the final score looks balanced but the race has like 10 traits, then you might need to streamline that race a bit. Sometimes it can't be helped though if you're doing something unconventional, such as playable undead (which need base undead traits on top of their unique racial traits) or playable animals (which need base animal traits on top of their unique racial traits).