Talk:Cala'diel (3.5e Campaign Setting)/Races/Catfolk

Setting Up Races

Alright, most of this is going to be about formatting standards to promote easy reading and a couple other grammar and race design things. I figure if I point out some mistakes and things now it'll save you time, effort and trouble down the road. Okay, first off, races are lowercase when used within sentences. We're called humans, not Humans. There's dwarves, elves and grumblins (okay, maybe not grumblins, but you should get the point). This also goes for class names like rogue, warrior and shoeshiner. Ability scores are the opposite. They're capitalized, like Dexterity, Strength and Charisma. This is most likely because they're specific game terms and allow the differentiation of talking about someone's constitution without talking about their Constitution score. Feats and skills are also capitalized among other game terms. Spells are lowercase and italicized.
Also, I see you started with the SRD stat block (in this case, from the high elf entry). This is kind of a double-edged sword. One on side, the truncated nature of the entries make it ideal for short blocks of basic racial stats. On the other side, they're not formatted like homebrew races having SMW properties because of the unchanging nature of the SRD and how it is organized. Ability modifiers in the SRD also use a different minus than the ones used in homebrew races. When I did the reformat a while back, I chose to go with the one found among the math symbols in the "Insert:" common wiki markup area on edit windows because its size matches that of the plus symbol. It was an aesthetic choice so you can blame that one on me. Because of this, you ended up with two different sized minuses in your racial ability score adjustments. On top of that, ability scores always appear in the order of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma, rather than from positive modifiers to negative modifiers.
On the topic of race design, this is intensely boring on the mechanics department. First off, I recommend adding a line after the skill bonuses to say something like "these skills are class skills for all her classes". This is something the original designers dropped the ball on. If members of a race are supposed to be good at a skill, they should be able to be good at it regardless of their class, since they're still naturally capable of it. It encourages racial identity. As for the boring part (man, I know I've discussed this same topic on a different catfolk race before), they really need a fun cat-power racial ability that makes taking the race enticing. Right now, this is just simple stat stuff and doesn't really add anything fun for players to want to do. I know the SRD is like this with basically every race, but we can do better. Give this some thought (or check out some of the other cat-like races here on the wiki for ideas). Other than going back through and proofreading everything in the article for spelling and grammar errors, which you should do, that's about it. --Ganteka Future (talk) 03:49, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Whoops, forgot to mention that humanoids are required to have a subtype. This is because of how the ranger works, mostly. Thankfully, you can just make one up (Catfolk Subtype?) as most humanoid subtypes don't grant features beyond being a member of that subtype. --Ganteka Future (talk) 19:53, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. I will do all the things you suggested. I am also going to take a look at and use your homebrew race pages as examples for page layout. I did intentionally make the race bland because I wanted everything to feel balanced and like it belonged in a supplement book. I was worried making this race have special traits would make everyone want to be it. I will try to make them less bland and unique. I am also sorry that I eat up so much of you time with stupid mistakes. I am also sorry you have to deal with my bad grammar and spelling. It is nice to see that all of my images I added made the cut this time. Thank you very much for your feedback, I really do appreciate it.Bramithra (talk) 23:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

There's no need to apologize. Everyone was new at this at some point, and practice, feedback and references are the way we get better at it. Anyways, as far as an enticing flavor abilities are concerned to make the racial features less bland, they don't need to be powerful, they just need to be fun and useful for a variety of characters and classes. This can often be tricky and it is still something I struggle with. If you're worried about too many features, grab some comparisons of races you like and measure against those. That's about all I've got for now. Keep at it. --Ganteka Future (talk) 00:45, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I have been looking at other race pages to find something I like. For now I stuck with the balance idea and given them 3 unique things that will really showcase their balance. It would be hard to match them if you wanted to RP as a thief, the kind that slips in and out quick and escapes over rooftops. I feel the race really does come alive more with more flavor added, thank you very much for the suggestion. It was a good idea to add more.Bramithra (talk) 01:01, 10 April 2014 (UTC)