Race: Laguz

[vivi]

I need help creating a new race based of the Fire Emblem:Path of Radiance "Laguz"(or Sub-human) race. Any Ideas?

[watsyurname529]

Well, it depends on how powerful you want them. Do you have an LA in mind? After that then you can get to the crunch.

[Shades of Gray]

Rough beast laguz. You can swap abilities for bird and dragon. I'd assume hawk would gain wisdom and dexterity, and good eyesight. A dragon would be high LA, and get a breath weapon.

Tiger Laguz
Humanoid (Laquz)
Abilities:+2 strength, +2 Con, -2 Charisma
Traits: Scent, Beast Form, Low-Light Vision.

Beast Form: To use beast form, a tiger laguz needs 30 "Laguz points". Every round a Tiger gains three Laguz points, every time he is attacked he gains a Laguz point. A Tiger Laguz can transform into a tiger, gaining +4 Strength, and +4 Constitution. They cannot wield human weapons in this form. This form lasts for 6+ constitution rounds.
LA: +2

Cat Laguz
Humanoid (Laguz)
Abilities: +2 Dex, +2 Strength, -2 Charisma
Traits: Scent, Low-Light Vision

Beast Form: To use beast form, a cat laguz needs 30 "Laguz points". Every round a Cat gains three Laguz points, every time he is attacked he gains a Laguz point. A Cat Laguz can transform into a Cat, gaining +2 Strength, and +6 Dexterity. They cannot wield human weapons in this form. This form lasts for 6+ constitution rounds.
LA: +2

[Icewalker]

Throw in a few natural weapons also, of course.

[DarknessLord]

Those look fine if you want to just keep the idea, but if you want to keep their flavor and personality from in-game, they need racial hit die, and lots of them, plus class equivalent progression with their racial hit die. They don't use weapons or magic, so only a rare few would forsake their racial hit die progression for class progression.

Also, does the tiger's transformation last for their human form’s con modifier or their higher beast form’s modifier?

[DaTedinator]

First off, this post should be prefaced by saying I've only played a very little Fire Emblem, so, I'm a bit more willing to sacrifice Fire Emblem flavor to make it work in D&D better, and am more than likely going to be inaccurate on other issues too.

That said, I would base them off of Lycanthropes, their closest D&D incarnation. It shouldn't be too difficult. The whole Laguz point mechanic in the game just seems to be (A) a balancing factor, to add a new element of strategy in the game, and (B) there to represent the fact that they don't have complete control of their form changing. Also, they can't transmit Laguz-ness by biting someone. Conviently enough, afflicted lycanthropes need to make skill checks to control their transformations (i.e., they don't have absolute control) and can't transmit lycanthropy. So we're good there.

Next, take away hybrid form, the DR, the alignment restrictions, and the scent ability (so far as I know, 'sjust the kitties have scent, so that'll be an individual thing). This is a pretty significant power reduction, so we can drop the LA to +1, which is good, because LA sucks.

Next you just have to pick the individual animals. Leopard, dire hawk (is there such a thing? I think it's in MM2), whatever (not sure what all the others are, and no idea what to do for heron). Then for things such as the birdies having wings, and the kitties having scent even in humanoid form, you just tweak the base race. Birdies could be based on Raptorans, just add ability adjustments or whatnot, kitties could perhaps be based on Half-Orc, but give them scent, whatever. Seems simple enough.

The tricky ones are the dragons. While this is much less thought-out and has more possibility to be overpowered, what I would do, is treat it like the other laguz, but let them pick any large dragon as their animal form, except they get only the extraordinary qualities and the breath weapon. You'd *probably* have to up the LA to +2, but, seeing as they're already gonna have a lot of racial HD, as in HD with no class abilites, I'd let a player get off with just a +1 and if it ends up being overpowered, have them burn a feat or something, and then have new dragons have to spend a feat to get the breath weapon more than once a day. Then if that's still overpowered, add the extra LA.

And DarknessLord, I'm gonna have to disagree, they could very easily take class levels. Fighter, Barbarian, and Monk obviously, Ranger could get a special fighting style, Paladins, even Bard (think Herons' songs). Remember, just because they don't use the magic of the Fire Emblem world, magic in D&D is very much up for reflavoring, it's all about where you say they get their power. But then of course you could make a special PrC or whatnot that some of them might even be able to qualify for without class levels, due to racial HD.

[Mando Knight]

Dire Hawk would be good for most Hawk tribe laguz... Tibarn's Hawk form is at least Huge... (In RD, his Hawk form is larger than Haar's dragon.)

Giffca, Caineghis and Skrimir ought to be Dire Lions... unless those are too small...

You may also want to include the Branded, though that might be slightly too much (I've noticed this pattern: the Dragon-branded is an excellent tactician and a powerful mage, the Heron-branded is a powerful mage, and Beast-branded have massive physical capabilities (see Zelgius and Stefan)...).

Dragon Laguz should have an Int and Wis bonus, then massive physical bonuses only in dragon form. PoR Dragon Laguz are actually quite different from RD Dragons, since RD dragons remain transformed longer, and are huge.

Perhaps this? (Beasts get Int penalties because of stated tactical ineptitude in RD...)
Tigers: ++Str, +Dex, -Int
Cats: +Str, ++Dex, -Int
Lion: ++Str, +Con, -Int
Hawk: ++Wis, +Str, -Con
Raven: ++Dex, +Wis, -Con
Heron: ++Cha, +Wis, -Con
Dragon: +Int, +Str, +Con, -Cha

(Somewhat balanced between each other, maybe... the +'s and -'s are just relative modifiers, not actual stat bonuses...)

This isn't quite what they have in RD and PoR, but giving them their full bonuses would require to introduce the transformation gauge...

[vivi]

LA doesn't matter, I'd prefer a powerful race with LA +4, then a slightly more powerful than average race with LA +1

[Fenrir]

What about wolf laguz?

[Fiery Diamond]

The problem with LA is that LA and racial HD stack for determining what I call "true level adjustment," or ECL modifier. For example: LA +4 creature with 6 racial hitdice and first level fighter = gains experience and levels up at the same rate as a level 11 character.

That's how I think it works, anyway. Which is messed up, in my opinion.

-Fiery Diamond (oh, long live Fire Emblem. Lookit my name. Indirect reference to fire emblem)

[vivi]

I could never figure out how monster HDs work.

[DaTedinator]

Right. Racial HD are no fun and people want as little of those as possible; however, with some races/monsters that have fun abilities, those abilities come as pseudo-class abilities, thus giving somewhat of a semblance of a sort of mini, paragon and/or prestige class, thus, it's a decent tradeoff, in some situations. Others - such as, say, Ogre - it's just ridiculous and unfair.

LA just suck period and nobody likes them at all. They almost completely jip a character and should be avoided whenever possible. Much better to have a *slightly* overpowered race than to have a situation like the Planetouched, where it just results in nobody playing them until either you houserule it or an official variant comes out.

I, did have more typed out here, but I don't want to get *completely* off-topic. So. :smallredface:

Mando Knight, like I said, I've really played very, very little of Fire Emblem, so I bow to your knowledge. But the things you mentioned should still be easy to apply using "my system" (for lack of a better way to refer to it).

I don't know anything at all about the "branded," but if you enlighten me, we could probably figure out something for them. Perhaps a PrC? Or are they, like, a subrace?