3.5e Custom Race Balancing

[Blaze Gamma]

So I've got a custom class I'm working on, for now, I need advice on balancing it. I'm leaving out the name and some of the details around the name, in case it causes a fuss. For now, here's what I have:

+2 to all Ability scores
Medium
Base Land Speed 30 Feet
No 1st level feat
-4 to Move Silently and Disguise Checks
-2 to handle animal and ride checks
-2 to diplomacy and gather information checks with non-((race)) characters.
Cannot learn any magical or psionic abilities
Cannot use any magical or psionic items
Immunity to magic Sleep effects
Low-Light Vision
No Armor proficiency, and can never gain armor proficiency
-2 to HP gain per level.
Can choose between 2 Natural Weapons:
Arm cannon (1d4 piercing damage, critical 19-20x2, & range Increment of 80 feet. Can be charged for one round to deal 2d6 damage on the next shot. 50 shots per day plus 5 per character level starting at level 2. Number of shots is recovered upon resting.)
Energy weapon (2d8 slashing damage, Critical x2)
Cannot gain any additional weapon proficiencies, and cannot use any weapons other than natural weapons.
One auto-resurrection is gained every 10 levels.
Favored Class: (Custom for Race A)/(Custom for Race B)
Automatic Language: Common. Bonus Language: Any.
I'm trying to work it out so that it can be used at Level 1 in any campaign without being too OP, even with the +2 to all stats. Please, tell me what you guys think I should do to change it.

[Reddish Mage]

Overpowered? This class looks to me like it is gimped in the extreme!

No magic, no armor, and nothing except the natural weapons? Plus huge HD and misc skills penalties? Those are HUGE gimps.

And for what? +2 to all stats (the int addition balances out the -1 to skill points) and a couple of natural weapons that aren't even that powerful, with arm cannon lousy and the energy melee weapon gimpy compared to even a moderately powerful magic weapon?

Its gimpy. It'll be Pwn'd by a normal build.

[Blaze Gamma]

What do you recommend I do? I figure the Natural weapons would level up and get stronger every 4-5 levels, but I don't know how to do progression for that.

I can easily remove the skill penalty.

Maybe change the HP penalty to just -1 gained HP per level...

But what else do you recommend for this?

[Pesimismrocks]

I believe one of the problems I that in you post you called it a class and that is what he was responding to this is a race not a class. Unfortunately I can't help you on balance.

[Blaze Gamma]

That was just a typo, lol ><

[AuraTwilight]

This race is totally and completely awful. It has neat race bonuses....at the cost of ever being able to take any sort of class in a meaningful way.

...And since it can't benefit from magic whatsoever, it'll become even more useless than a Fighter after level 7 or so.

[Blaze Gamma]

So... How do I make it more useful?

I'm thinking I'll rescind the magical inability, planning to add natural armor.

Problem is that I had no idea how to balance it, and I think I went a bit crazy on lowering it to compensate.

[Pesimismrocks]

What's the point of this race? I ask because it nerfs itself at anything. The only class that could take this is a monk. That's not really a great thing. Have you any fluff or is it purely mechanical super powerful with super weaknesses stuff?

[inuyasha]

here, tell me what you were trying to make? A cyborg? Robot? Genetically enhanced energy being? if I know this I can help you and PM you :)

EDIT: Ninja'd

[Blaze Gamma]

It's meant to be used with two Homebrew classes.

It's... Ah... An enhanced human type, but I want to balance it in such a way that it would be usable at level 1 without an adjusted level.

Where I want to start, and what's most important to keep are the +2 to all stats, the Natural weapons, blah blah.

Inu, it is technically a cyborg/robot. I'm sure you can guess as to for what from that.

[inuyasha]

heheh, let a homebrew god do his thing ;)
heres my idea for something you want:

• +2 to all stats
• Gun arm: 1/day+1 for every point of constitution bonus, fire a spike at a range of 80ft, 1d6 damage
• +2 natural armor
• Antisocial: (race name)'s are not very social with other race, -2 on all charisma based checks and cannot take speak language ranks, but may learn druidic (if a druid) or draconic (if a wizard/sorcerer)
• Unnatural being: (race name)'s are unnatural due to the technological changes that have been made, and animals tend to avoid them, -2 to handle animal and ride checks
• Stonebones: the weight of a (race name) is triple that of a human of their height
• Short circuit: entering a body of water or electricity attacks cause the (race name) to short circuit, stunning them for 1 round, or stunning them for 1 round per round spent in water

Sorry if I changed it too much from the original race, how do you like it?

[Blaze Gamma]

Not particularly. I can move this to PM, because...

Well, openly discussing the concept I'm going for may be a tad derisive, and I don't want to be flamebait.

[Reddish Mage]

Can we get more about the type of thing you want? I get its a cyborg-like creature, possibly anime inspired, and you don't want to invite a flame war over whatever fantasy or sci-fi inspired you since it isn't standard D&D fantasy whatever it is (is that sort of thing common on these threads?), but its hard to have a conversation on developing something we don't know what its supposed to turn out.

The best I can make up without this info is that its supposed to be a human-part construct with a weapon, probably something that doesn't sleep.

Seriously though, is flamewars that much of a problem on these sites? I thought the mods had a control over it.

[Maraxus1]

I recomment not breaking the system. You are doing stuff to the class/race/level system that should not be. Don't hammer some really powerful-for-first-level stuff into a race without any level adjustments by countering it with weaknesses that make it unplayably bad, on the long run (and "long" is quite short here but whatever).

Think what people normally get on first level and build up on that. If you have to much racial stuff think about level adjustments and/or add that stuff with racial feats.

The Bioborg
Medium sized humanoid (augmented construct?)

+1 racial bonus to all ability and skill checks while unarmored
+1 racial bonus to attacks with natural weapons gotten by a racial feat exclusive for Bioborg.
-4 to Move Silently and Disguise Checks
-2 to handle animal and ride checks
-2 to diplomacy and gather information checks with non-Bioborg characters.
Immunity to magic Sleep effects
Low-Light Vision


Racial Feats:

Arm cannon:
Requirement: Bioborg
You get an arm cannon (1d4 piercing damage, critical 19-20x2, & range Increment of 80 feet. Can be charged for one round to deal 2d6 damage on the next shot. 50 shots per day plus 5 per character level starting at level 2. Number of shots is recovered upon resting.) The weapon becomes a magical +1 weapon on character level 5, on 9 this increases to +2, on 12 to +3, on 15 to +4 and on 17 to +5

Energy blade:
Requirement: Bioborg
You get an energy weapon (2d8 slashing damage, Critical x2) than you can extend from your arm. The weapon becomes a magical +1 weapon on character level 5, on 9 this increases to +2, on 12 to +3, on 15 to +4 and on 17 to +5

Auto-resurrection:
Requirement: Bioborg, character level 10
When the character dies, an internal repair system activates, reviving the character after 1d4+1 rounds, as if effected by a raise dead spell (including the level loss).
After one use, the repair system is depleated but it can be refilled in a process that takes about 1 week and materials worth 5000 gp

[Blaze Gamma]

I wouldn't know, this is my first time posting on these forums.

I just like the comic ><

[Rainbownaga]

The other problem is we dont know your homebrew classes. If they progress natural attacks while still granting meaningfull abilities, this could still be balanced.

The arm cannon is a minor feature since it is basically a weak crossbow and charging it during combat would generally be a waste of an action.

Likewise, -2 diplomacy is basically fluff.

I am curious why you would be unable to mention it. Is it tjat carto
?on network robot girl?

[Blaze Gamma]

Er, no, nothing that sordid.

Spoiler

Show

More of a Megaman thing...

[Blaze Gamma]

I recomment not breaking the system. You are doing stuff to the class/race/level system that should not be. Don't hammer some really powerful-for-first-level stuff into a race without any level adjustments by countering it with weaknesses that make it unplayably bad, on the long run (and "long" is quite short here but whatever).

Think what people normally get on first level and build up on that. If you have to much racial stuff think about level adjustments and/or add that stuff with racial feats.

The Bioborg
Medium sized humanoid (augmented construct?)

+1 racial bonus to all ability and skill checks while unarmored
+1 racial bonus to attacks with natural weapons gotten by a racial feat exclusive for Bioborg.
-4 to Move Silently and Disguise Checks
-2 to handle animal and ride checks
-2 to diplomacy and gather information checks with non-Bioborg characters.
Immunity to magic Sleep effects
Low-Light Vision


Racial Feats:

Arm cannon:
Requirement: Bioborg
You get an arm cannon (1d4 piercing damage, critical 19-20x2, & range Increment of 80 feet. Can be charged for one round to deal 2d6 damage on the next shot. 50 shots per day plus 5 per character level starting at level 2. Number of shots is recovered upon resting.) The weapon becomes a magical +1 weapon on character level 5, on 9 this increases to +2, on 12 to +3, on 15 to +4 and on 17 to +5

Energy blade:
Requirement: Bioborg
You get an energy weapon (2d8 slashing damage, Critical x2) than you can extend from your arm. The weapon becomes a magical +1 weapon on character level 5, on 9 this increases to +2, on 12 to +3, on 15 to +4 and on 17 to +5

Auto-resurrection:
Requirement: Bioborg, character level 10
When the character dies, an internal repair system activates, reviving the character after 1d4+1 rounds, as if effected by a raise dead spell (including the level loss).
After one use, the repair system is depleated but it can be refilled in a process that takes about 1 week and materials worth 5000 gp

I can see this as a somewhat workable thing to start with, but...

I'd still like the boosts, at least to the Con/Str/Dex, due to physical enhancements, the race is supposed to be as human as possible. I also may want there to be a penalty such as Knowledge (Geography) always being treated as cross class. I donno.

I would also like to see the weapons as being one or the other. I wanted to work out the race first and then work out the classes after.

Oh, and the reason I was setting up the auto resurrections as only one every so many levels was so I couldn't make it so much as a death is cheap for them.

So, I guess that's more the direction I'm looking at going.

But not that name, lol.

I also would wonder if it better to just set this up as a template to be applied to preexisting races/creatures.

[Reddish Mage]

I can see this as a somewhat workable thing to start with, but...

I'd still like the boosts, at least to the Con/Str/Dex, due to physical enhancements, the race is supposed to be as human as possible. I also may want there to be a penalty such as Knowledge (Geography) always being treated as cross class. I donno.


I also would wonder if it better to just set this up as a template to be applied to preexisting races/creatures.

That template idea sounds interesting. Now a penalty such as Knowledge (Geography) always being treated as cross class? Seriously? That's meaningless!

I consider cheese like "can't use magic" to be problematic for race balancing (it means nothing if you want to take certain classes or play certain concepts, it kills others).

I'd consider using the BESM D20 rules to build your template (that's Big Eyes Small Mouth, D&D anime, not whips and leather). The Anime D20 rules, which is basically the entire book, is available for open-license and free online.

[erikun]

Er, no, nothing that sordid.

Spoiler

Show

More of a Megaman thing...

Are you familiar with Warforged from Eberron? That's generally a good fit for most "robot" sort of characters.

I might recommend a living construct, naturally psionic (for PP) along with the 1st level Soulknife's mind blade ability (does not progress). For the blaster, giving the mind blade a shortbow form would provide ranged damage. Psionic focus and Psionic Shot would easily represent "charging" a buster, and you not only have Greater Psionic Shot (for more damage) and also Psionic Weapon (for the same with the sword).

However, I still think that starting with a Warforged and modifying it into something more along what you have in mind would work better. I'm sure there are some traits of the Warforged that don't fit what you have in mind, but would be significant enough to grant Naturally Psionic + Mind Blade. Really, those two aren't that powerful (especially as they won't progress on their own) and so exchanging nearly anything would probably be worthwhile.