Talk:Canin, Standard (3.5e Race)

Commentary

Just glanced at it, but a few things stood out. One was the formatting was a bit borked, easy enough fix but I see it. And then... oddities. They're anthro dogs right? Why -4 Con? If anything you'd think they would be dumber but hardy. At the very least, dogs seem more hardy than elves.

Greater Sonic Vulnerability is a killer. Why so extreme? Actually, why is it there at all?

Lastly, consider Dangerous Allergy (3.5e Flaw) for your chocolate-bane. It may fit, and you can make it shorter by just linking to it.

Mostly I'm puzzled why these things are so frail and explode at sounds higher than speaking. It seems very un-canine like. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 17:20, 21 February 2017 (MST)

I'm not sure exactly what happened with the formatting. For some reason, it left a space where any subtype would go even though there isn't one. As for the -4 Con, I basically combined the medium and large breeds into Standard so that I wouldn't have to make the Giant breeds Huge size and the minus to Con is taking into account the health problems that the large breeds are sometimes known to suffer from. Maybe I should just bump the Giant breeds up to Huge and split the Standard breeds into Standard and Large. I don't really know about switching the attribute penalty over to Intelligence since many of the medium and large breeds are actually pretty smart. Maybe wisdom would work better since they can be a bit goofy. The sonic vulnerability is because dogs have extra sensitive hearing, but I guess that triple damage is probably too high. Maybe just an additional 50% or drop it entirely. I'll look into your Dangerous Allergy Flaw, if you don't mind that I use it. --Halloweenman33(talk) 19:03, 21 February 2017 (CST)

I can check the formatting thing later, but since you bring it up: Fun factiod. Apparently Humanoid type always has a subtype, even if the subtype is just (Race_Name). That's why you have Humanoid (Elf) and the like. My recommendation: there's an Anthro subtype already on the wiki. Use that as your subtype.

I haven't seen the giant ones, I find it unusual that they are weak of health. That's fine and all, though -4 is way too much. Actually as a general rule, I advise staying away from + or - 4 anything for anything LA 0. It's exponentially harder to balance, and the few examples that exist (Mongrelfolk and Water Orcs mostly) are usually considered on the side of cheese. +2 usually works for "they are good at this" and -2 for "they are bad at this". I'll leave it up to you where those ability scores should go, you seem to have an idea in mind.

I figured the sonic thing was due to hearing. I don't think they really need it at all, but yeah... +50% additional damage is the usual boilerplate for vulnerable. +200% is gonna kill everyone. As is the chocolate thing, that could be significantly reduced to what amounts to a fluff-based flaw. Word it like "If they ingest chocolate, treat as Insert-Ingested-Poison-Here". Preferably not on the tier of Black Lotus, seeing as it just causes liver damage in dogs but is usually not insta-fatal.

That said... so actually stats aside I'm not sure what is attractive about the race. Scent is nice, but I think the race could stand to use something iconic they have. Like... gnomes have their SLAs, and humans the bonus feat, and dwarves are super stable and magic resistant. What do the dogs get? Anything beyond scent, which is fairly generic? Given that they have the sonic flaw going on, I think you could get away with something functional, and something which can help each one of the breeds you have stand out. That is make me want to play a Toy Doge over a Giant Doge cause I want their Yipyap ability and not because it has the +2 Dex or whatever. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 19:10, 21 February 2017 (MST)

(Edit) I went ahead and added the missing type/subtype entries. Alter as you see fit. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 19:16, 21 February 2017 (MST)

Thanks. I'll work on the stats some more. I haven't posted the Giant Canin yet, but I think I'll bump them up a size category (which may actually be somewhat appropriate considering that they would include Great Danes and Mastiffs) and divide the Standard breeds into Standard (medium) and Large. With less of a size range in one category, it should be easier to make them a bit more unique. I'm also working on mechanics for the different breeds, which are basically going to be mini-templates (and optional). I've got a few other things for them in the works as well including templates and some feats. I didn't intend for the Canin to be a large project, but I just kept thinking of other ideas. --Halloweenman33 (talk) 20:23, 21 February 2017 (CST)

I would recommend having a single size for each of the races. Besides being easier to format, Medium/Small is the standard. When you get in the realm of Tiny and Large, things go weird. Specifically you're gonna have a harder time getting them to work without LA or racial HD or something. Which might be your intent, I don't know, since I haven't seen it yet. Just know that Large size comes with a bevvy of benefits.

How deep are you going on this? You got like 5 versions already. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 19:29, 21 February 2017 (MST)

Note for racial variant type stuff. If you're planning on doing breeds, just post them below the main part of the racial traits right on the race page. They'll be much easier for people to read and parse and you won't have to make dozens of extra pages and have to have all those pages open to read all the options and check all of them and cross-reference them for balance, they'll be all right there, convenient and easy to access and read, unlike this amazingly long run-on sentence I just made. Sorry about that. But yeah, just make a header below the racial traits and put the breeds there as options. A few races already have things like this and it works pretty well. --Ganteka Future (talk) 20:38, 21 February 2017 (MST)

Enticing Players and Selling Points

Getting players to choose a race comes down to two really obvious points that get muddled up later in complex decision making: flavor and mechanics. Helping would-be players decide often causes those ideas to get boiled down to their basic components. What we have here is "dogman" for flavor and "can smell things" for mechanics. Those are your primary selling points. The flavor provides a basis for players coming up with characters and can be totally ignored for a given game to have it fit in. The race provides some more specific mechanics to back up the flavor here, making it less mutable. That's fine and good since it sells your concept. That said, in game, you've got scent and that's about it. The Wisdom penalty makes them a liability in a few cases, what with the awful Will saves. You even had to provide racial skill boosts just to even out or provide a tiny bonus to Wisdom-based skills they should be good at as outdoorsy... wait, are they not supposed to be outdoorsy? Are they supposed to be city-based? That's what you've got and I kinda just realized that might be on purpose. What was the design goal here? What were these guys supposed to be able to do? --Ganteka Future (talk) 16:15, 23 February 2017 (MST)

I may need to give them more abilities. Given that they're supposed to be good at sensing stuff, I guess that the Wisdom penalty doesn't make much sense. I was trying to avoid having to give them a level adjustment and I had to balance the Attribute Bonuses somehow and it was pointed out to me above that the Constitution penalty they had previously didn't make sense either. I'll see what I can figure out a rework their attribute bonuses. Kind of like with actually dogs, they are outdoorsy, but also take well to living in the city. I may need to rework them. I'll see what I can come up with, but I'm open to suggestions if you have any ideas. Halloweenman33 22:07, 23 February 2017 (CST)

If you're worried about ability scores, remember a +0 adjustment just means their as good as humans, which can be just fine. Usually I imagine there must be some significant lack or gain for a race in generally to have a -2 or +2. What I'm saying from what is being described, they might be a lot closer to humans than you think. Course, the real problem is figuring out something to sell them with other than scent. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 04:26, 24 February 2017 (MST)

"Humans with Scent" is definitely not what I'm going for. I'll see what I can do to develop them more. The other ones may need some more abilities as well since they're similar, just with different sizes. Would it still be balanced if they had 1 or 2 pluses without a minus? I can't think of anything that would be particularly appropriate for them to have a negative attribute adjustment, but not giving them any pluses doesn't seem right either. --Halloweenman33 10:17, February 24 2017 (CST)

I'm still working on the Attributes, but I have added a few new Racial Features to make them stand out more. --Halloweenman33 13:03, 24 February 2017 (CST)

I removed a few of the more unusual features, including the Breed Groups. Hopefully that makes them a bit more playable, although I may reintroduce those options as feats or a racial paragon class or something. Shiba Scream and Watch Dog's Bark will be turned into feats --Halloweenman33 17:35, 24, August, 2017 (CST)

ROFLMAO I LOVE IT!

Keep up the good work! I LOVE this! hahaha "Overly Trusting", lack of common sense, and "chocolate vulnerability" - that's so great! hahahaha I might end up using this race in my campaign setting, Xal'Anim (see my user page in the sandbox) :) --ProphetPX (talk) 17:44, 28 February 2017 (MST)

Glad you like it. I'm still working on a few other features for them, but they should be finished soon. Feel free to use in you game world them however you like. They are pretty diverse and come in several sizes, so you may want to check out the Toy (Tiny), Miniature (Small), Large (Large size), and Giant (Huge) versions as well. Halloweenman33 9:09, 2 March 2017 (CST)