Talk:Summersite (3.5e Race)

Cyclops Expy
This race is... not good. The light detail in the various sections aside, the mechanics are poor. Its a fairly boring race with only a Con bonus and a laser to their name, and the mechanics of the laser is nearly unworkable. A Summersite with good Con would be able to pump out 4d6 fire damage 2/day, and always be caught by spell resistance since their CL is only, at max, 6th starting. The average Summersite (that is, starting with a 10) can't even use it. That's a Con bonus of +2, too low to even use the spell at all.

I see you're trying to make Cyclops, alright, fine fine. Perhaps you should make them a race with an in-build eldritch blast. Were I trying to make Cyclops I'd probably make him a warlock after all. By doing that you give them a solid, if weak, source of damage they could pull off and synergy with the actual warlock class if the blast stacks, or has some other sort of interference with it. The CL and damage would scale appropriate with level. And you can give him a series of other abilities that are more interesting that +4 Con. Cyclops isn't even all that unusually tough last I knew, he really is just a human warlock... -- Eiji-kun (talk) 12:19, 4 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, I just looked up eldritch blast and it looks a lot like scorching ray except that it's listed as a 0-level spell and it grows to be much stronger than scorching ray. I'm fine with that.
 * Yes, Cyclops is basically a human. Would you call the human race bad just because they don't have an eldritch blast that scales with level? I wonder if you're forgetting that races are only the starting points of characters - that they are meant to grow substantially from there. I've been reading a lot about different in-game races recently, and the vast majority of them don't have scaling spell-like abilities.
 * Yes, this energy blast ability would be rendered useless against high enough spell resistance... and the same could be said about a lot of spells. Is that an argument against using spells altogether? Or just spells that allow resistance? You might as well say that characters should never use swords because a lot of creatures have damage reduction or are immune to slashing damage.
 * Yes, you're right that a cyclops with a +0 con bonus wouldn't be able to use the energy blast ability. Hopefully, with a built-in +4 modifier, that would never happen. In fact, if a person bothered to max out their constitution, this race's energy blast should scale with the wizard's scorching ray up to level 8. By the way, just because a spell is listed as being used by a level-2 wizard does not mean that its effects cannot be co-opted by a race of people who can automatically use that ability at level 1.


 * I'm keeping this race in the sandbox for the time being. I'll consider the changes Eiji-kun suggested. -Nolanf (talk) 01:20, 5 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I... am not sure we're on the same subject. I'm not calling the human race bad, they're awesome.  The bonus feat is super useful.  I was saying that given your apparent goal of Cyclops, it would probably be best to take human (that is, no adjustments) and replace their major boon with a different major boon, a scaling blast in exchange for a bonus feat.  Scaling powers, while atypical for a race, can be balanced if scaled correctly.  For example: Dragonborn have a scaling breath weapon as one of their options.  If you kept LA 1, vanilla unmodified eldritch blast seems fair, though if you're shooting for LA 0 something less potent (but still scaling) may be in order.  You could even have it "scale" indirectly, such as the ability to gain +1 damage per die of offensive ray spells (and subsequently promoting taking classes who can take advantage of this trait).


 * On spell resistance, the whole thing is that spell resistance often matches your level. If you're level 10, fighting SR 21 is reasonable.  At level 35, fighting SR 46 is reasonable.  And thats all fine because your caster level is typically the same or only shortly behind your actual character level.  However with the blast as is, it will stop being useful about the same time SR starts popping up at all (usually levels 8+).  SR is like AC to physical blows... if you don't hit SR, you don't have any effect, you "miss".  DR and resistances aren't really what you should compare this too, this is a binary yes/no event, not something that ablates or soaks damage.  We don't even get to the damage.  In short, it is the same as giving them the power to attack their enemies at a +1 attack bonus, forever.  When they're level 15, and fighting a monster with AC 30, they will never, ever, ever hit with an attack with only +1.  It needs to scale, or it becomes useless entirely.


 * The other problem, of course, is that Con covers so much more than just the scaling of an ability that really shouldn't scale with it in the first place. Fort saves, Concentration, hp, pre-reqs... that, on top of being the one stat which is universally important to pretty much everyone.  If you seek to give a very specific bonus to anything, such as attacks or hp or balance, its far easier to give them their specific bonuses rather thn give Str, Con, or Dex in aforementioned examples.


 * I'll be happy to help further, though I mostly need to make sure you understand the whole SR issue, as I think that is a crux of misunderstanding on how the rules work. I'll try and help. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 04:52, 5 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I see it moved out of sandbox... but hasn't really fixed the crippling issues sadly. I'd rate it, but I wanted to make sure this is what you are really going with first.


 * Okay, so some built-in spell penetration with the beam would be appropriate. -Nolanf (talk) 22:25, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I changed my mind. I never wanted it to be a spell-like ability in the first place. It's now an extraordinary ability that may be weakened by energy resistance. -Nolanf (talk) 22:57, 10 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. This is... better.  It still has problems, but better now.  Here's the issue: The beam is now useful, but now it's imbalanced.  Let's take a second level (because LA) Summersite with an 18 Con, so 22, a +6.  At 2nd level, we've creatures pulling off 2d6 tricks and whatnot.  And the Summersite?  6d6.  It easily mops the floor.  Overpowered, right?


 * A few levels later, and the Summersite has to keep pumping Con in order to keep up, and its losing the battle. It will never scale its Con fast enough to match even the most piddly damage, and the beam is unused because its much more likely he could do anything else from his class features and it will be a better use of his time.  It's not even good as an emergancy piddly blast, because it's limited to 2/day (effectively).  It is in effect a non-ability, so any Summersite who reaches level 6 and beyond is only getting +4 Con for their LA.  Is that worth an LA 1?  Technically, but a pretty weak one on part with the "LA 1" tiefling or bugbear.


 * But this is a best case scenerio, where one has an 18 Con in the first place, nevermind keeps pumping it. All classes enjoy Con but none are really dedicated to it.  Even barbarian, who benefits most, benefits more from Str than Con.  If they focus on Con, they gimp their much more useful and much more often used class features from whatever classes they take.  But if they don't take Con, then they're likely to remain with 1 or 2d6 blast 2/day, a non-ability if there ever was one.


 * It has the potential for abuse at early levels, and becomes pointless later. The race is now technically useable (rather than being utterly unusable before due to SR) but it's not very good.  I'd dislike rather than oppose it if I rated it now.   When it comes to these things... perhaps you should look at the pathfinder domain powers.  Many have the boilerplate of "You can use ability X, it does 1d6+character level damage" which scales and "3+X/day" which scales times per day on an ability score, giving enough to have a point but not enough to be unlimited. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 00:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC)


 * (Edit Conflict Time With Eiji!) Alright, I suppose I should weigh in here on some race design. This'll probably be long. Hopefully I'll jam in some comedy to keep this entertaining. First, you'd think I'd start commenting on the flavor text, but no, we're going pre-flavor country here. We're starting out on Pure Primordial Concept. That concept is of course "Turn Cyclops, Havoc and Cable (is Cable part of that family? I forget.) into a race for D&D 3.5e". So, ignoring that making a Summers would be better suited to the duty of a class and a race that was just a basic X-Mutant frame with a "pick one of the abilities below to be your X Power", we're going to go specific here. Careful though, we can't go too specific. We're not building people's characters for them, just giving them ideas and letting them shoot blasts of energy (not even red energy, just energy). The race should work outside of just being "oh hey, X-Men stuff". So, on to flavor.
 * Flavor: Initial reaction to reading the flavor on the article: "Ugh." To elaborate on that, it's boring and pigeonholing. Anyone who wants to play Cyclops is gonna play him how they know the character. This is a tricky thing to write, because you have to be general enough to describe the family without being specific that you rule out adventuring characters that people might want to make. Flavor is to provide ideas and a groundwork for players to make their own characters, not for you to tell them who their character is. It's really hard to strip away the specifics and get it to the point that it's still interesting to read. You also have to remember that it's just flavor text and you basically can just ignore it all and head for the mechanics. So, flavor provides ideas but players can ignore it, so what's the point then? They shouldn't feel like they want to ignore it. The flavor should enhance the mechanics and give DMs ideas for how to work it into the world they're running.
 * Just thinking back on what I initially remember on the Summers guys is that they didn't have great control all the time, they were kinda jerks but you still could count on them in a pinch. So how do you translate that into flavor? Well naturally, if they don't have control at an early age (like sorcerers), that could lead to some collateral accidental damage and local fear, which would lead to some jerky behavior because they're wary and outsiders. However, they strive to control their power and they want that trust, because they don't look so different, but know they are different from the folks they live around. It's fine to tell the reader that they're tough, but move into the meat of their motivations for becoming adventurers and the general attitudes they have. The X-Men were always about being the outsiders. Use that to your advantage. Also, give us more than a sentence or two on some of these headings. There should be a lot under Personality. Also, under Physical Description, there's room to say something about an unusual trait that might give away their mutant-ness. That's flavor that might intrigue players as an option. Also, Relations is just all wrong. Mutants and humans generally don't play well together. Anyways, the flavor text is bland and uninteresting and uninspiring (the last part being the most important hurdle to overcome). Do some big work here. On to Mechanics.
 * Mechanics: Alright, here's the beef. The main beef with this beef (yeah, you heard me) is the usability of their one fun ability. I'll get to that in a minute. Starting with that +4 Constitution. That's a problem. Everybody loves Constitution. Seriously a +4 Constitution bonus for no LA or Racial HD is ludicrous. Knock it down to +2 and don't worry about any other racial ability score adjustment. Anything else as a penalty is just going to limit the kinds of characters this race can make. Which, ugh, I wanted to ignore it, but no longer! This really should be an optimized character build or something rather than a race. A race provides a groundwork for a character to build upon rather than the main thing he does and is. Because of this problem, the energy blast can't possibly serve as "the thing he does in combat all the time as his main combat thing" because that job is reserved for his class. If the energy blast was the main thing, the race would be unbalanced. There, that's I think what Eiji was attempting to get at earlier. Continuing on, we'll address more of the energy blast. Don't have it scale by Constitution. Here's why: At 1st level, a Constitution-based character can deal an instant kill to basically whatever he wants, because it could deal up to 6d6 fire damage (starting Con of 18 plus that +4 to get a +6 modifier). Sadly, because it scales with Constitution, it becomes less useful as he gets stronger, which isn't fun for the player who picked the race, because that's all he got for fun out of it. Here's a recommendation: since it can't function as his primary combat purpose, it should scale, be usable frequently, be reliable but potentially go off unavoidably to add some drama. So, how do we determine what's fair for a race to have and have it scale but still be useful? Well, it just has to be functional but not the "must always use it" ability. So, most damage spells and such use d6s. We'll go with d4s for Energy Blast. Slightly less damage, but, if you're making an attack roll with this, you can critical hit with it. Give it a nice ×3 on a natural 20, or go the longsword route and have it be 19-20/×2 critical. That is just double your damage rather than rolling a boat-load of d4s which most people only have a few of, but that depends on the group I guess. So, 1d4 per HD comes up pretty fair as an attack. Damage type as fire (able to be resisted, which works in D&D's system of checks and balances) is fine if you really want. I could see this being either untyped (never resisted) or force (very rarely resisted). What about range? Scale that too. Don't want to make using a bow obsolete, so go with something like Close Range (25 ft. +5 ft./2 levels), something anyone who's ever run a spellcaster is familiar with. Now, this seems short for a super energy beam, but this isn't a class ability and it's not a main attack. Now, for frequency of use. 1/minute is probably fine. Getting off a couple shots per combat would be more useful, so perhaps some sort of cooldown like a dragon's breath or just a "recharge it as a standard action" or something, like maneuvers. The fatigue/exhaustion thing you have in there now is interesting and provides a combat option for desperation and drama, but really just made me cringe upon reading it. I might be alone in that. Get further opinions. Also, make Energy Blast a supernatural ability, because it is. Say no to spell resistance, that's fine because the damage is more in line now. That leaves...something I mentioned much earlier "going out of control". D&D has a check for that in the form of Concentration checks or Fortitude saves. When does he need to make a check, how about whenever dealt precision damage (like a critical hit or sneak attack). What's the DC? Not the damage dealt, that's bad because it scales with level poorly. In fact, just make it something like 10 + His HD. He'll be able to outgrow it at some point (unless you go with Fort saves, in which case a high-level character will only fail on natural 1s, which is fine for drama. Who does it hit? Well, gotta keep this simple, don't want to have to keep referring to a racial ability. Random direction d8? Nah, not really sure on that one. Guess I'm out of good suggestions. In conclusion, get crackin'. --Ganteka Future (talk) 00:31, 11 January 2014 (UTC)


 * "A race provides a groundwork for a character to build upon rather than the main thing he does and is. Because of this problem, the energy blast can't possibly serve as "the thing he does in combat all the time as his main combat thing" because that job is reserved for his class." That was the most important thing said so far....
 * I've been sitting here at just about 1am, thinking about this whole thing for a while. (Why do I force myself to do this at 1am?) I thought I was going to make a point, but I'm not even sure what point I want to make any more. I guess I still don't see how the energy blast is any different from using a sword. The sword's damage never scales up, so why should this? I'm tired. So tired.... Mr. Future, you have some very interesting things to say, but your ramble at the end there made me think maybe you're just crazy. No offense intended.
 * Maybe this is just a bad race idea because it forces the player into a specific role (which a lot of other races do too, but whatever). I'm so very tired. -Nolanf (talk) 09:34, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Using a sword huh? Then I have your solution. Step 1: Drop Con having anything to do with damage or times per day. Step 2: Make it at will. Swords are at will. Step 3: Make it an attack action. The power of swords isn't so much in a huge damage amount (though you can) as it is the full attack, getting moderate damage multiple times. Step 4: Swords DO scale a bit. They scale with an ability score. NOW you can say "Beam does 1d8 + Con damage" if you like. Dex is a bit more appropriate, but you can justify Con in that "the beam is fast so its less of a matter of if you hit, but if your hit was enough to deal any damage or just tapped them harmlessly". Step 5: At this point you need to compare it to other weapons. This is like a bow, being a ranged attack. We want to match or be less than a bow, but not exceed. Getting an ability score to ranged for free is already a bonus. However, we're LA 1, I think we can pass that. You can obtain ability score to damage via money or a feat, so that gives you an idea of its power level. Then decide if this is a ranged attack, or a ranged touch attack. Ranged touch attacks are stronger, as they hit much more often.

ALTERNATE PATH: You don't want it to be an attack action. Make it a standard action. What changes? Well the best comparison here is a martial maneuver, where you take a sword and you make only one attack, but this one attack usually has a lot more punch behind it. 1d6 per level is the boilerplate, and you can take advice to reduce this damage if you see fit to make it less useful. In this one, a ranged touch attack is also more appropriate as you don't have to worry about multiple attacks multiplying your damage in unexpected ways.

I find what helps me in creation is always have a comparison. I'm making a ray. This ray is like (scorching ray? searing light?  eldritch blast?)  How does it compare to its closest kin. What's different, what's the same, and what makes one better than the other?

For this, think of this as a human who always has a bow equipped. And the bow is made of lasers. How do you make that? Don't give up dude, you can do it. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 09:49, 11 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Yeah, sorry about the Gigantocommentapithicus. I know it's a lot to digest. Also, I wanted to point out that the design philosophy on the mechanics I mentioned there were to aim the race at LA0. If you really want to go the LA1 route, Eiji makes some nice points. --Ganteka Future (talk) 07:07, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Help create the Complete Superhero
I've been wanting to make up a campaign setting based on comic books for a while now. Yes, I know - Someone already did that. In my searches, I've found old TSR games of Marvel super heroes and Wizards of the Coast's "Heroscape" stand-alone games, but I've never found anything that works with the 3.5 mechanics. So I guess that leaves it up to me... er, and you guys if you feel like it. I'm starting up a new source book - The Complete Superhero - and I'd like Eiji-kun (the first name that came to mind) and anyone else who's interested to help out. That's all. Thanks. -Nolanf (talk) 23:07, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Here's a link to the homepage which has the bare minimum of content: Complete Superhero -Nolanf (talk) 23:35, 10 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I'll take a look. I'm honored you thought of me first, though I don't know how much focus I can give it.  Advice is always welcome though, I'll give it whenever you wish. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 00:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC)