[3.5] New Race: Surikats

[DamnedIrishman]

A new race: great big meerkats! Woo!

Is this balanced?

Surikats

Personality: Surikats are playful, inquisitive beings, but this is temperered with a natural caution. Family is very important to them, and they live in large extended-family groups. Different clans control different areas in their homelands, but Surikats are not particularly violent creatures and thus rarely compete for territories, the smaller family often just moving on to a new area. However, when disputes arise within the clan hierarchy, surikats will occasionally kill one another.
They are naturally altruistic beings, and will stand watch over their families whilst other clanmembers forage or work. Adventurer surikats will often 'adopt' the party as their new small family. Occasionally this leads to disputes if a hierarchy is not clear.
Physical Description: Surikats stand around three to three and a half feet tall, and weigh between forty and fifty pounds. They have long slender bodies and limbs, with long thin tails which taper to black or reddish tips, adding up to two and a half feet of extra length, which they use for balance. They always have black patches around their eyes, small black crescent-shaped ears and tapering faces which come to a point at their noses, which are often brown. At the end of each of their fingers are small claws which they use for burrowing and climbing. Their coats is usually fawn-colored peppered with gray, tan, or brown with a silver tint. They have short parallel stripes across their backs, extending from the base of the tail to the shoulders.
Alignment: Surikats have strong, clannish tendencies and thus tend towards law as a race. Adventurers are often those who have left their families, however, and are often neutral.
Relations: Surikats are suspicious of larger races, but get on well with gnomes and halflings.
Surikat lands: Surikats are usually desert-dwellers. They live underground in comfortable burrows but spend most of their time up in the open air. Surikats who settle in foreign lands tend to group together in certain areas, and are most comfortable living in very high-density accomodations.
Relgion: Surikats revere Obad-Hai and Pelor, though some also worship Yondalla, goddess of Halflings. The surikats have a strong druidic tradition, and many worship nature spirits rather than actual deities.
Language: Surikats speak their own unique language, Surikati, which has no written form but is transcribable with the Common script. Their lack of writing means they have a strong oral tradition, and they take delight in stories and poems.

+2 Dexterity, -2 Wisdom
Small size: Surikats are small creatures, and as such gain +1 to Armor Class, +1 to attack rolls and +4 bonus on Hide checks, but use smaller weapons than humans and have lifting and carrying limits to three-quarters the amount of a Medium character.
Speed: A surikat's base land speed is 20 feet. Surikat claws are excellent for tunneling and thus they may also burrow at a base speed of 10 feet.
Low-Light Vision: A Surikat can see twice as far under moonlight, torchlight, starlight and similar situations of poor illumination. They retain the ability to distinguish color and detail in these conditions.
Keen Senses: Surikats receive a +2 racial bonus on Search, Spot & Listen checks.
Claws: Surikats recieve a +2 to climb checks and can cause lethal damage with unarmed strikes. Unarmed strikes causing lethal damage do not provoke attacks of opportunity.
Poison Resistant: Surikats recieve a +2 racial bonus to saving throws vs poison.
Automatic Languages: Surikati, Common. Bonus Languages: Halfling, Gnome, Terran, Sylvan.
Spell-like abilities: 3/day Know Direction.
Favored Class: Ranger or BARBARIAN! They have a vicious streak, y'know.

[Yora]

Hm, probably a bit on the weak side of LA +0. Like half-elves.
But on the other hand, just look at the picture! They are perfect to go.

[Xallace]

Have to agree with Yora there, they look underpowered (but the PICTURE).

Burrow Speed? Darkvision? They could use a little more.

...burrowing barbarian meerkats...

[DracoDei]

I would increase the weight a bit, as it stands I think they are on the high side of Tiny, rather than the low side of Small.

Specify that they don't provoke AoOs with their unarmed attacks. If they are doing lethal damage they shouldn't provoke, but you also don't want them getting Deflect arrows too easily.

There is no such skill as Awareness in 3.5 (that I am aware of... pun intended).

[EENick]

Hahaha! I love the concept but I don't have much to add.

You might give them a bonus bite attack or something.

[Lysander]

Instead of giving them Darkvision, how about you give them Blindsight with a range of five feet?

[Yora]

But why?

Every ability should fit into the creatures design, and I don't see why they should be able to see with other senses than eyes.

[Lysander]

But why?

Every ability should fit into the creatures design, and I don't see why they should be able to see with other senses than eyes.

They live in underground burrows.

[Brogen]

If they live in underground burrows, then Darkvision makes sense, because it lets them see in the dark of underground burrows. Blindsense, I think, would only make sense if they were literally blind, or lived somewhere, where their eyes wouldn't work anyway.

[DracoDei]

Real world meerkats can get along fine in their burrows without thermographic vision or whatever... and these can use torches just fine... gnomes live just as much underground as these do, if not more, and they don't have blindsight or darkvision...

[DamnedIrishman]

Real world meerkats can get along fine in their burrows without thermographic vision or whatever... and these can use torches just fine... gnomes live just as much underground as these do, if not more, and they don't have blindsight or darkvision...

I gave them low-light vision over darkvision because they're mainly active at twilight.

Any suggestions on the specifics of a burrowing ability? I'm not really sure what to do with it, though I like the suggestion and I'd like to incorporate it.

Made alterations regarding the unarmed damage.

[Lord_Gareth]

3.5 supports burrowing as a movement mode. Give 'em a 10 foot burrow speed.

[Darkkwalker]

Now all we need is a warthog race.......

[DamnedIrishman]

Added burrowing and +2 to search checks.

Is giving the Alertness feat free at second level too much?

[Lord_Gareth]

Races aren't classes. They should not get new things as they level up. At most, old things should get better.

[DamnedIrishman]

Races aren't classes. They should not get new things as they level up. At most, old things should get better.

That's a no then... what if it was at first level, like human bonus feats?

[purplearcanist]

Added burrowing and +2 to search checks.

Is giving the Alertness feat free at second level too much?

I would ditch it. You already have an ability that gives +2 to listen and spot. Adding alertness is sort of redundant. If you want them to have better senses, increasing the bonuses to listen, spot and possibly search is what you should do.

[DamnedIrishman]

Alertness is out. Any other improvements to make this race equal in power with other 0-LA races?

[PId6]

-2 Con nerfs it quite a bit. Maybe make it -2 Int instead or add on a +2 something else/-2 Int?

[DamnedIrishman]

-2 Con nerfs it quite a bit. Maybe make it -2 Int instead or add on a +2 something else/-2 Int?

They've got -2 constituion for real-world biological reasons. They have literally zero body fat, so aren't well-built for long term endurance and have to eat every day.

Anyway, meerkats aren't stupid.

[PId6]

They've got -2 constituion for real-world biological reasons. They have literally zero body fat, so aren't well-built for long term endurance and have to eat every day.

Anyway, meerkats aren't stupid.

Well they do have favored class barbarian... The only other race I know of with that is the half-orc, and they're not known for their wizardry.

Otherwise you might give them Scent and/or raise their base land speed to 30 (they seem pretty fast).

[Gorgondantess]

I'd stick with -2 strength, ior at least add that onto the -2 con. Can't get much leverage with those puny arms. The DM has spoken.

[Devils_Advocate]

"Core"? I do not think that you understand what that word means. (Nor does WotC these days. At least, they pretend not to.)

Why not just make their claws natural weapons?

Are they hated enemies of the gnomes, whose spell-like ability they stole?

[Eldrys]

MInor nitpick, not any actual advice. You forgot to bold speed.

[Lord Loss]

Their description says that they are Lawful and nonviolent, but their favored class is barbarian!!! Clearly you need to A) Replace scout with Fighter, B) Change their alignment. Also, they wouldn't make very good barbarians because of -2 Con. maybe -2 Wis or Cha?

[DamnedIrishman]

Their description says that they are Lawful and nonviolent, but their favored class is barbarian!!! Clearly you need to A) Replace scout with Fighter, B) Change their alignment. Also, they wouldn't make very good barbarians because of -2 Con. maybe -2 Wis or Cha?

Actually, the favored class thing is somewhat of a running joke.

MInor nitpick, not any actual advice. You forgot to bold speed.

Corrected.

"Core"? I do not think that you understand what that word means. (Nor does WotC these days. At least, they pretend not to.)

Why not just make their claws natural weapons?

Are they hated enemies of the gnomes, whose spell-like ability they stole?

1. Obviously not. Now that I bother to think about it, I can see what you mean.

2. Because I don't know how that business works. This was but together with only the PHB as a reference.

3. Couldn't think of anything else to do to make them a bit more powerful. I#ll get rid of it now though, since it doesn't make a huge amount of sense.

[Lord Loss]

A strange idea just popped into my head: A D&D Sourcebook called races of randomnesss... featuring surikats, voodo dolls and much much more...

[Draxonicar]

Physical Description: Surikats stand around three to three and a half feet tall, and weigh around twenty-five pounds.


25 pounds? a human could lift one up by the scruff of his neck and toss it! i'd say 75-90, if muscled

[DamnedIrishman]

Physical Description: Surikats stand around three to three and a half feet tall, and weigh around twenty-five pounds.


25 pounds? a human could lift one up by the scruff of his neck and toss it! i'd say 75-90, if muscled

They're meerkats. They're not muscled, they're very lean. Also, they're very skinny - this is why they're given as lighter than halflings. 75-90 pounds is far, far too many.

EDIT:

The meerkat is a small diurnal herpestid (mongoose) weighing on average about 731 grams (1.61 pounds) for males and 720 grams (1.58 pounds) for females. Its long slender body and limbs give it a body length of 25 to 35 cm (10 to 14 inches) and an added tail length of 17 to 25 cm (7 to 10 inches).

On average, a male meerkat has 1.61 lbs of weight and is a foot long body plus another 7 and a half inches of tail. Scaling that up to the given size, that would make them weight around six lbs. I think bumping them up to twenty-five is fair enough...

[Ashtagon]

These guys are 3 to 3.5 feet tall, compared to 1 foot for a rl meerkat.

weight would be proportional to length cubed if scaled up.

3.25^3 x 1.61 lb = 55.25 lb