Tainted and Touched

Creating game materials? Monsters, spells, classes, adventures? This is the place!
spidyfan21
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Re: Planar Races

Post by spidyfan21 »

What would the difference be between a hypothetical quasi-race and a template? Seems like the BFRPG way to go would be to design the rules for Quasi-Races.
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Clever_Munkey
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Re: Planar Races

Post by Clever_Munkey »

spidyfan21 wrote:What would the difference be between a hypothetical quasi-race and a template? Seems like the BFRPG way to go would be to design the rules for Quasi-Races.
The name?

From 3.x a template is not necessarily something good, e.g. skeleton: You get that immunity to cold, poison, and disease in exchange for a fear of holy things, a loss of all abilities, any intelligence, and your soul. Templates also weren't tied to race so you could apply a template to just about anything. Ultimately I don't think there is a huge difference, but quasi-races would probably have more in them (attribute requirements, xp bonus/penalties? etc.), whereas a template might just be some modifications a GM can quickly apply to a monster's stat block. In 3.x there was no difference between a character's, and a monster's stat block, so there would be no difference between the two.
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SmootRK
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Re: Planar Races

Post by SmootRK »

spidyfan21 wrote:What would the difference be between a hypothetical quasi-race and a template? Seems like the BFRPG way to go would be to design the rules for Quasi-Races.
Semantics mostly.

Honestly though, only approaching these few "races" this way because they strike me as being applicable to any such base race, and not from the specific desire to do 3.x style templates directly. When I add a couple more "planar" ideas, they will be more traditionally presented... or at least (if of an inherently powerful race) in the style that was used with the Monsters as Races, where some initial negative levels might be appropriate to deal with inherent abilities or higher hit dice.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Planar Races

Post by Solomoriah »

Templates as seen in 3.x rules are an example of making something explicit that should have remained unwritten, in my opinion. They should have remained metarules rather than becoming rules. Once you have a template for a skeleton, for example, you have a lot fewer people applying their own "take" to it... it's easier to just do what the book says. But variations are interesting... shame to throw them away AND write a bunch of words that aren't needed.

Rather than defining "Planar Races" I would create a few, and let the GM infer from them what features make them Planar. It's like the Nazgorean monsters I created... I did not and will not write down more than the basic Nazgorean "we are aliens and we like it wet" rule for them, even though there are other features that make them special. And because I did it that way, I got other people's versions of Nazgorean, and they were interesting because they were not just like what I was doing.
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SmootRK
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Re: Planar Races

Post by SmootRK »

Solomoriah wrote:Templates as seen in 3.x rules are an example of making something explicit that should have remained unwritten, in my opinion. They should have remained metarules rather than becoming rules. Once you have a template for a skeleton, for example, you have a lot fewer people applying their own "take" to it... it's easier to just do what the book says. But variations are interesting... shame to throw them away AND write a bunch of words that aren't needed.

Rather than defining "Planar Races" I would create a few, and let the GM infer from them what features make them Planar. It's like the Nazgorean monsters I created... I did not and will not write down more than the basic Nazgorean "we are aliens and we like it wet" rule for them, even though there are other features that make them special. And because I did it that way, I got other people's versions of Nazgorean, and they were interesting because they were not just like what I was doing.
Indeed... and exactly why I am not trying to start the Template thing directly (despite going in that general direction for a few of these). There are similarities in approach, but certainly not meant as a straight-jacket to how things should be.

Solomoriah provides sound advice as usual.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Planar Races

Post by Solomoriah »

My point about templates isn't that they are meant to be straight jackets; those who create them will tell you to do what you want. But they tend to become straight jackets merely by existing.
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SmootRK
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Re: Planar Races

Post by SmootRK »

Solomoriah wrote:My point about templates isn't that they are meant to be straight jackets; those who create them will tell you to do what you want. But they tend to become straight jackets merely by existing.
I will try to make sure that I word myself clearly so that this is not perceived as a Template approach... I will review my preamble wording to clarify as well. I am in agreement that I do not want this to serve as a gateway for a template mentality.

That said, in the case of Aasimar/Tiefling thing, I still see them coming from any particular prime race... not just a human thing, so I still like the general approach I took so far. Now, for the races I was going to call collectively "Jin", I may rethink somewhat so that they are more of a distinct race that has some initial roots coming from the planar sources.... but essentially are unique race altogether (or races ie water-Jin, earth-Jin).
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spidyfan21
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Re: Planar Races

Post by spidyfan21 »

Rather then considering Half-Angel/Demon and Planar as all related races perhaps it would be better to focus on each of them as individuals and see what quirks each race can have if you don't have to worry about consider it as the other side of the coin of some other race.
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SmootRK
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Re: Tainted and Touched

Post by SmootRK »

This got a bit lost, so I just put this one up on the Showcase.

I would still like to get back into this one to take stabs at Elemental-heritage. Alas, time and energy. :?
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GrimlinJoe
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Re: Tainted and Touched

Post by GrimlinJoe »

So while reading through the Basic fantasy field Guide 3, I noticed entries for Dantaeons (for tainted) and Celestial Descendant (for touched) that fit well for tainted/touched character templates. Tieflings have always been my favorite race in Dnd so when I was going through the forums and saw tainted&touched race supplement I was super excited but didnt really have a good reference to go off of for character creation without trying to covert from other sources. Just my two cents.
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