Race choice March 31, 2008
Posted by chorenn in Other.trackback
Hi there! Yes, I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been working a bit on a couple of articles (three, to be exact), and then I got hit by a cold last week, so none of it got done. I thought, though, I might elicit some opinions about something I’ve been thinking about for a while, that has nothing to do with my campaign.
I am creating a new character for my husband’s campaign, which is a simple, mostly combat-oriented, very little role-playing dungeon crawl and monster bash. I happen to be creating a wizard, and I’ve decided to make an Ultimate Magus (from Complete Mage), with wizard and beguiler as the base classes.
One thing I’ve found, when creating characters, that if there is no roleplay/backstory restriction on my race, I tend to choose human, mostly for that extra feat (and secondarily the extra skill points). So far, in the last few years, I’ve created a cleric, a rogue/cleric/pious templar (my favorite character, though she didn’t live long), and now this mage, and they’re all human. I had an elven rogue/archer, but the race was chosen for roleplay purposes, and a half-elven barbarian, but if I had to make her again, I’d make her human. (Actually, I have no idea why I made her half-elven. I had to twist her backstory around very awkwardly to make it fit; human was what she should have been.)
I know that other races have their benefits, but so many of them can be obtained through other means. It’s tough to get more skill points or feats, and with new feats being introduced with every book, humans just seem so much better.
Maybe if I ever created a really good heavy fighter with all the bonus fighter feats (or a Warblade, with all the nifty maneuvers and stances), I might consider some other race. I’d love to hear what people think about other races and why they choose them — not counting roleplay reasons, of course.
Picking a race for me ends 50% with a human, I think the reason is very much the same, the overall “performance” is just “ok” and this is fine for most classes.
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Since we happen to play with a point buy system, the racial modifiers tend to be a small motivator for chosing a different class – (once again without roleplaying aspects). Furthermore for me the “human” are played just too little in our parties – the faszination of our players is mostly the more exotic the better with regards that some of them would never pick an ECL +1 race (or worse)
If I were free to pick whatever race I like, I end up most of the time with a half-something template of a strange (perhaps psionic) race. I’m into faszinating and colourful personalities and for me those start by strange heritages, but as said before, some things have to be done by example and this leaves at least me with less choice than others have.
I tend to go with mostly human as well, for the same reasons, but I’ve recently been experimenting with the other races. Of the three campaigns I’m actively playing I’ve got a human sorcerer/cleric, a dwarf fighter/barbarian, and a Githzerai monk/Shintao monk(sort of). I’m finding that the racial abilities can add a LOT of style, power, and even character to a character. My dwarf is involved in a mostly dungeon crawling expedition and darkvision is invaluable. The +1 vs. orcs and goblins actually saved the party when I remembered it, thus hitting the goblin vampire that was about to finish us off. For the Githzerai I get a +2 to Wisdom, a +2 to Dex, a +4 psionic armor, and only a +1 ECL. For a monk that turns into an extra +6 to AC! Get that with your extra feat! Sure I have a major minus to Charisma when dealing with non-githzerai, but I had a terrible Cha anyway. I turned it into a character trait and mostly speak in Zen koans or folk saying like “The sun shines on mud, yet does not get muddy.”
I think it really depends on where you want the character to go and how soon you want to get there. For my sorcerer/cleric I contemplated playing a non-human but since I didn’t have an intelligence bonus, and only got 2 skills a level from either of those classes, I needed the extra skill points to be able to do anything other than take the two knowledge skills I need for Mystic Thurge. With the Dwarf I just wanted a DBF, so even though I have a -1 Int penalty, and only got 1 skill point a level for my 4 fighter levels, I really don’t need skill points all that much (plus, now the 3 skill points I get for Barbarian levels seems like I’m a rogue!)
I think there are a lot of good races that are specific to particular builds — like your Githzerai monk thingy. Also, answering to both Nick and Tommi, I haven’t been in a campaign recently that really had much personality. Certainly Robert’s “anti-Chorenn” campaign isn’t doing it. (It’s Robert’s backlash against my heavy roleplay campaign — no roleplay, no funny voices, etc.)
Your dwarf story, Nick, reminds me of the Tomb of Horrors campaign that Bob ran. In case you don’t know, it’s a big dungeon crawl, and one of the players decided to make her fighter a bariaur. For not too many advantages, she gave up an ECL and… the ability to easily navigate in a closed space. There were a number of combats that she was left out of because she was unable to navigate to the party (such as up a rope or ladder).