Okay, so in the darkest receses of my mind, there has been lingering an idea for a race, however it was kind of... well, weird... But after seeing the new Scifi setting races, it gave me the idea to finally just put in stats. So here's my work so far. And this is a work in progress.
Avacis
[spoiler]
(http://www.dinochecker.com/gallery/img/brachyceratops.gif)
An odd little race of Dinosauroid creatures, the Avaci resemble tiny triceratops. A single horn adorns there snouts, and their hides can come in many different colors. While they may seem like small animals, once you interact with them, their intelligence beams through. While not capable of speech like humanoids, they do have very powerful psionic minds and they use their minds to communicate with many different creatures.
These tiny creatures cannot wield weapons like normal creature as they have no limbs that can hold weapons. However they may learn other abilities to compensate for this glaring weakness. First off, these creatures are amazing healers. They have innate psionic ability that allows them to heal in ways that rival even clerical abilities. However they can become amazing psionicists as well. However spellcasting can be a major challenge since it's difficult to mimic certain spell casting styles.
Avaci are very gentle natured creatures, and yet enjoy a great degree of freedom in many places. This is because there was once an age of corrupted Clerical institutions that became dens of assasins.. Backstabbing, and especially poisoning, were constant tools of many so called clerics. Many kings and officials were always keeping an eye open whenever the clerics would come over and treat the sick in royal families. However once the Avaci were discovered, and showed their natural healing abilities, they were enslaved. However their benevolent nature made them a far better alternative to the pools of corrupted poisoners that dared to call themselves church leaders.
Eventually Avaci were allowed to roam in many lands healing the sick and injured. Many churches detest them however, or atleast the very corrupt ones. Many churches have cleaned up there acts, but the damage is done, and Avaci are protected under very special laws. Harsher penalties are instituted for the unwarranted murder of an Avaci because they provide such a valuable service, and are considered trustworthy.
Standard Racial Traits
Ability Score Racial Traits: Avacis gain -4 Dex, +2 Con, and +2 Int.
Type: Avacis are humanoids with the avaci and psionic subtypes.
Size: Avacis are Small creatures and thus gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a -1 penalty to their CMB and CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.
Speed: Avacis have a base speed of 30 feet.
Languages: Avacis begin play speaking Common. Avacis with high Intelligence scores can choose any languages they want (except secret languages, such as Druidic).
Defense Racial Traits
Feat and Skill Racial Traits
Magical Racial Traits
Movement Racial Traits
Offense Racial Traits
Natural Weapons: Avacis have a gore primary natural attack that deals 1d4 damage.
Powerful Charge: Select one of the race's natural attacks. Whenever a avaci charges, she deals twice the number of damage dice with the selected natural attack plus 1-1/2 times her Strength bonus.
Senses Racial Traits
Weakness Racial Traits
Other Racial Traits
Quadroped: Avacis possess four legs, but no arms. They can't use traditional weapons.
Mindlink: Avaci communicate through telepathy, and can do so naturally, however once a day, they may attempt to make a powerful connection with someone.
Still working on the healing part.
[/spoiler]
So yeah a very specialized race. However they are good at what they do. Not sure about this one, but I think it's cute.
I didn't think Psionic Dinotopia was a setting I wanted to play in until I read this post. I guess sometimes you need other people to tell you what you want.
Seeing as they got no hands, what do their own communities look like? Do they have anything that we might recognise as the physical trappings of culture?
Quote from: Pareidollhouse
I didn't think Psionic Dinotopia was a setting I wanted to play in until I read this post. I guess sometimes you need other people to tell you what you want.
Seeing as they got no hands, what do their own communities look like? Do they have anything that we might recognise as the physical trappings of culture?
Oh they have a culture! Sorry I only gave bare bones stuff. I imagine they're culture is something like the sea aliens from Abyss. The aliens in that movie transfer information and memories from one alien to another. I imagine that there are telekinetic Avaci that are capable of creating necessary tools and goods, but more often than not, they are capable of negotiating with humans for specially made clothing and stuff.
Also I imagine them a nomadic community with them running around and providing healing services. Sort of like a hospital caravan.
Wow, now I want to play Psionic dinotopia as well....
They're seeming a little weak right now, but I haven't built for 3rd edition D&D for a long time.
I'd make sure to state thatthey can make multiple attacks with their gore in case someone wants to be a warrior. I'd up the damage to 1d6 so it's equivalent to a small longsword, unless you want it to be finessable (which would be nice, then d4 is fine.)
For their healing, just give them some power points and the paionic cure wounds spell (from the complete psionic book).
Since armor costs more for them, and since they have a big dex penalty, I'd give them some natural armor.
Natural weapons are always finessable, but it honestly doesn't really matter at this point because nobody's going to be doing much weapon finessing with -4 Dex. Their +2 to Int means they could be a good race for arcane spellcasters, but the Dex penalty especially really hurts combined with classes that generally put heavy restrictions on armor; I also agree their limb restrictions would likely not interact well with somatic and material components, and most DMs are likely to not rule favorably in this case. Their other bonus is to Con, which doesn't actually help you play any classes, since nobody (except some weird archetypes, I guess?) uses Con as a primary stat.
It seems a bit like the race is designed around playing psionic classes but is essentially crippled when trying to play anything else, and I don't particularly like that.
Okay, how does this look?
Avacis
[spoiler]
Standard Racial Traits
Ability Score Racial Traits: Avacis gain -2 Str, +2 Con, and +2 Int.
Type: Avacis are humanoids with the avaci and psionic subtypes.
Size: Avacis are Small creatures and thus gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a -1 penalty to their CMB and CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.
Speed: Avacis have a base speed of 30 feet.
Languages: Avacis begin play speaking Common. Avacis with high Intelligence scores can choose any languages they want (except secret languages, such as Druidic).
Defense Racial Traits
Offense Racial Traits
Natural Weapons: Avacis have a gore primary natural attack that deals 1d4 damage.
Powerful Charge: Select one of the race's natural attacks. Whenever a avaci charges, she deals twice the number of damage dice with the selected natural attack plus 1-1/2 times her Strength bonus.
Senses Racial Traits
Weakness Racial Traits
Other Racial Traits
Quadroped: Avacis possess four legs, but no arms. They can't use traditional weapons.
Mindlink: Avaci communicate through telepathy, and can do so naturally, however once a day, they may attempt to make a powerful connection with someone.
Psionic Healing: 1/Day, Heal 1d6 damage as a racial ability
Naturally Psionic: 1 PP[/spoiler]
That's better. From an optimization perspective, a Str penalty is much better for a small character who probably isn't going to be a Fighter. With these changes, though, I'm not sure if "Powerful Charge" is really that useful or relevant any more, given that it applies a 1.5x bonus to a stat that the character probably isn't going to be focusing on. I also am not too impressed with Psionic Healing. It is going to rapidly become underpowered to the point of near-uselessness... a lot of racial abilities do that, so it's not a fatal weakness, but it's not going to see much use at around level 3 or beyond, except maybe to use it up after a battle just to top off your HP.
So a new concept just came to me. I've been working on a setting where magic works differently than in normal games. The system is unchanged, but magic has horrible consequences and destroys everything around it. Basically it's a lot like Athas, only it never got as bad as Athas did once the cleansing wars started. There are gods, but there very violent and brutal gods. One God is absolutely good, but not in a nice way. Divine magic is a very special thing that only a few people can wield. There are only 12 known paladins in this world, and Clerics aren't as rare, but they are very confined to their realms. Psionics is more common place than anything, and is generally regarded as okay, although exceptions always exist.
To put it lightly, I'm restricting access to arcane magics, and divine magics to players, but psionics and most marshal classes are open. I've always wanted to use Psionic rules in one of my campaigns.
I was thinking of Races for this world, but it just kind of dawned on me that I probably only want humans to be a major race of people, while other races are super rare for whatever reason. It feels right to me to have mostly humans but with a sprinkling of human offshoot races.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhhYFsoMMik
This video was really interesting to me. And I really like the idea of humanity having offshoots of evolution, especially since there's magic and psionics to act as triggers. Actually come to think of it, I could create entire races that were the result of magical meddling.
So the question I have is, let's assume I have a race of humanoids that evolved from humans, but lived in a bitterly cold environment. Through magical influences they have developed a stronger resistance to cold, and have developed minor abilities that helped them to deal with this climate (And I swear I wasn't thinking of white walkers as i was typing this). Is it just okay to have them have a cold resistance instead of a bonus feat to express this racial difference, or do I have to construct an entire race out of this concept?
(PS, I'm aware that GRRM has stated that Westeros is a magical world, and has no real "Scifi" stuff in it. Just an interesting video that triggered thoughts)
If you just want to swap out Human's bonus feat for resistance to cold, you could probably get away with it. I'm not sure if 5/10/15 cold resistance would be balanced (at levels 1, 7, and 14), or if you'd need to do more or less. Again, I haven't balanced for 3E in a long time. I can remember humans feeling a little weaker than the other races, but only because the other races got a lot of little things. If you want everyone to be an offshoot of humans, you could probably make a list of feats that can only be bought at 1st level by human bonus feats, or even restrict the human bonus feat to those feats. This would let you give out bonuses for the human offshoots, without having to make entirely new races.
I like the idea of an all psionic world. Or a mostly psionic world. I've always thought Psionics were fun.