Fire and cold immunity are really strong, as is +3 str and heavy armour proficiency. You should probably change the fire giant bonus and tone down the immunities to resistances while adding another minor feature or two.
It's still pretty bad. Even with the extremely overpowered saving throw proficiency or heavy armor proficiency, Slow Learner makes it so nobody will play the race. Why not just use Goliath?
Pretty sure I recalled that CMB checks were called out as being a subset of attack rolls.
It does in 5e though. Heck, half the playable material gets playtested through Unearthed Arcana before release (and the stuff that wasn't is kinda obvious. Looking at you Monstrous Races)Well, I was with you right up till that last part.
Then I went
That's why I said "casual".Pretty sure I recalled that CMB checks were called out as being a subset of attack rolls.
Then again, PF has been known to change the rules, and the last semi-official ruling said that abilities that changing the stat you add to AC don't apply the same to CMD....
ugh, I kinda miss them just being ability checks. At least then we knew whether attack bonuses applied.
Well, I was with you right up till that last part.
Then I went
Relying on the DM to tell players that they are not allowed to exploit any loopholes they may find is a tradition dating back to the very first years of D&D
Is the Polymorph as an Action in the Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron? I'm looking at the UA Changeling from Races of Eberron and they get Change Appearance, which doesn't give any free hp and looks like it acts like a beefed up Disguise Self.
Yeah, I'm looking at the Changeling from the UA that came out before Wayfarer's Guide: https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/723UA_EberronRaces7232018.pdf
Having read about the 3e playtest....
Where are you looking?
If it is, it's in a version that I don't have, and certainly not the latest one.
Admittedly Unearthed Arcana is more about popularity and resonance than balance, but thanks to the small development team for 5e and the actual attempts made to listen to community feedback through the surveys its entirely reasonable to say any homebrew race should be kept roughly in line with other races whilst being aware of each races exceptions.
Found it. It's the UA Changeling from the first run with Eberron stuff, way before the Races of Eberron.
Ravenloft the setting or Ravenloft the original adventure?
Not really? Improv is a thing outside of RPGs. Round-robin writing projects are the closest metaphor to role-playing I can think of, where control of the story passes through many hands and no one person can know what will happen.
If the players are being suicidal or colossal dicks, then by all means, there should be consequences for that behavior. But that's not usually what happens in D&D. Usually it's more like "saw a bodak, rolled one bad roll, dropped dead." (Lost 4/5th of a party that way, once.)
Nobody in any of my gaming groups is a gambling addict who wants to bet it all on one roll of the dice.
You're probably right. I hadn't heard anything one way or another, so I wasn't sure what the official rule was.
Actually, there are quite a few non-core Pathfinder classes that strike me as being particularly well-suited for a horror-themed setting like Ravenloft. Inquisitor is all about that gothic monster-hunting, and provides a divine-themed skill-monkey class. Medium and some of the other occult classes seem particularly suited for gothic horror. Vigilante is all about hiding your true identity, even hiding your alignment and preventing scrying, so someone could seem harmless to the evil overlords but be secretly a hero.
Ravenloft blocks alignment detection on its own. You don't have to do anything. And certain Darklords have scrying/searching abilities that bypass any sort of blocking. Ironically that sort of class isn't actually much benefit there. ESPECIALLY if you have a Paladin in the party, since all darklords can detect them the moment they enter the Domain, with it being easier to pinpoint a precise location the higher level they are. Deception is not a great method for players in that setting in general.Not really? Improv is a thing outside of RPGs. Round-robin writing projects are the closest metaphor to role-playing I can think of, where control of the story passes through many hands and no one person can know what will happen.
The GM doesn't know what the players are going to do (and being surprised by what your players come up with is part of the fun of being a GM), but they probably do have a general idea of where they want the story to go, and probably some subplots planned to go along with specific characters. Having one of your protagonists drop dead because of a single bad Fort save is going to disrupt that a lot more than anything your players are likely to do.
I don't think it's a coincidence that D&D, the game where it's easy to die arbitrarily, is also the game that makes it easy to bring people back from the dead.
If the players are being suicidal or colossal dicks, then by all means, there should be consequences for that behavior. But that's not usually what happens in D&D. Usually it's more like "saw a bodak, rolled one bad roll, dropped dead." (Lost 4/5th of a party that way, once.)
Nobody in any of my gaming groups is a gambling addict who wants to bet it all on one roll of the dice.
Different players have different things they like best about an RPG--following the story, making unique characters, doing cool stuff, coming up with outside the box ideas--but I don't think I've ever played with anyone who found being at the whim of the RNG to be the fun part.
You're probably right. I hadn't heard anything one way or another, so I wasn't sure what the official rule was.
Actually, there are quite a few non-core Pathfinder classes that strike me as being particularly well-suited for a horror-themed setting like Ravenloft. Inquisitor is all about that gothic monster-hunting, and provides a divine-themed skill-monkey class. Medium and some of the other occult classes seem particularly suited for gothic horror. Vigilante is all about hiding your true identity, even hiding your alignment and preventing scrying, so someone could seem harmless to the evil overlords but be secretly a hero.
