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)