Talk:Millenarch (3.5e Race)

Thanks

Thanks for the help guys this is my first creation on this wiki and I appreciate the edit I hope to make more cool interesting things on here in the days to come Firestorm Rex (talk) 07:57, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Formatting, Flavor & Mechanics

Sorry this is such a long comment. There was a lot to talk about.
Alright, let's address the formatting stuff first, since that's mostly an easy fix and pretty straight forward. First thing, races are lower case, which you've partially got. Creature names, like marilith and solar should be lower case as well. So yeah, within a sentence, millenarch should be lower case, unless there's some odd grammatical edge-case reason not mentioned in the flavor.
So, in the first sentence of the summary, we've got "Proto-humans born of a conflux of opposing magical energies." Sounds like primitive humanoids mixed with outsider or elemental or something. Also, those opposing magical energies are never mentioned in the article. What are they? Why do they oppose? Why is this important to mention in the first sentence of a summary and then never explain?
In the second sentence of the summary ("This is a lost race, a final blueprint of humankind that was scattered to the winds in eons past.") that makes them sound like they were created after humans (making them younger than humans). This also makes them sound like these are the things deific forces intended humans to be but there was a clerical error/mix-up along the way. However, none of the mechanical stuff below points to them being a revision or related to humans. So, just from the summary, we've got a bit of dissonance established and some questions that never get answered.
The flavor excerpt text is fine and starts to establish an idea of what these guys might be like. There's a little awkwardness to it, but not terrible, kinda silly-over-the-top (i.e. Epic D&D). Also, as a title, it should be "Seeker", since it appears that is part of his name.
Skipping ahead a bit, in Physical Description, we've got an opportunity to learn a fun thing about writing. It's a minor thing but it will help you along in the future if you keep aware of it. Let's talk about the word "seem" (and then about passive verbs). This is a word to avoid. Your subject should either do or do not. Don't let it seem to do things. If you need to add some vagary, use a simile or some such ("They look like the works of master artisans." or "Their features appear to be the works of a master's hand, carving them as living physical perfection." This is where things get a bit trickier, where you have to watch out for passive verbs, the "being verbs". These words can be used sparingly for emphasis, but when used too much, they suck all the action out of what you're reading and make it dull. "Was", "is", "am", "are" and "were" are examples. Using them is okay! Just don't use them too much (I've used them quite a bit already in this post). In descriptions, this can become tricky since you're trying to lay out as much information as you are able. If you want to engage your reader and get them excited, being verbs do the opposite. It's the difference between "There was an empty chair in the corner." and "A chair sat empty in the corner." I guess it could also be a showing vs. telling thing. I'm far from the king of language, so let's move on.
That first sentence of Relations is a beast. "To humans a Millenarch sees them as oblivious siblings,…" Just read that a couple times. I think it reads something like "Humans perceive that millenarchs see humans as siblings." Man, something goofy is going on there. Since I don't care to get into the rest of this section deeply for the moment, I will say that spelling out how they react to each race specifically is a pitfall of description (one I have fallen into in the past), and is better served at how they feel about certain racial aspects (like well mannered, brutal or tricky) and how they value those aspects (like honor, courage, even-temperment or basket weaving skill) since there is such a variety of races and people are likely to use some obscure ones, aiming to describe how they feel about all of them is a bit of an injustice to the reader when the reader really just needs to know why they feel that way about the aspects of those given races.
Quick skip to Language: Put those bonus languages down under the Racial Traits. Also, have them match up. If you do have a list of bonus languages, since they don't get a bonus or penalty to Intelligence, include at least 4, since that's the base racial max someone could have. The Language section, I find, is actually better served to detail their particular mannerisms of speech, if any, and discuss how they write.
Finish that names section. If they get male and female names, consider separating them out. If they get surnames, titles or other kinds of names, list those too.
Now, we're on to the meat, the mechanics of the Racial Traits. Oh boy, the make or break time for a race. I see you're going for LA +1, so you can afford some exotic abilities and a few extra bonuses (that usually have to make up for being a level behind). Overall +4 (with only +2 max) for racial traits and no big dumps, that's fine for ability modifiers. Medium humanoid with 30 foot movement is no problem. The burrow speed is weird though. That's out of nowhere. It's not mentioned in the flavor text at all and doesn't explain how they do it. Do they leave a tunnel? Anyways, on to Unstable Miasma, which has a double colon (fix that, one colon) and is bolded (racial abilities aren't bolded in D&D, fix that). This is a weird ability. First off, it has no duration, saying only that it kicks in when reduced to half HP. It doesn't say it stops when he heals or dies or whatever. A rewording like "When a millenarch is at or below half his HP total, his internal energy escapes and forms a foggy cloud centered on him with a radius of 10 feet." This keeps the fog on him and clears up any weird issues of wind and disbursal (though you could say a strong wind prevents the fog from accumulating). Anyways, why is an invisible fog providing any concealment? Is it only invisible for him? Also, you don't need to say "his or her". Pick one and stick with it. First off, that's really clunky. Secondly, D&D establishes that when writing races, to pick a single sex and write to that, matching it to an example character. Since you've got Zeroth in the introduction flavor text, go with "he/him/his". As for Endless Serenity, fix those couple formatting goofs. As for the ability itself, screwing around with the action economy (how many actions a character can perform in a single round) can be a dangerous thing. I'm going to leave that to someone else to better explain. I can't really comment on the overall balance of the race until some other things get sorted out first, so down to Vital Statistics.
Adulthood should be a single number; the starting year for adulthood. If it actually varies from individual to individual, provide a way of calculating it randomly and also mention that somewhere in the article, because that would be an interesting thing to know. Maybe they're able to stunt their own growth rate? Also, great goo gaw the entry under Venerable is a lot of text that doesn't register right. I recommend using a custom table (they're found on some other race pages that use older formatting, putting in an em-dash and adding another superscript notation at the bottom of the table. Also, the weight modifier on the last table is weird too. 1.5 - .75 would be .75. Is it supposed to be a range? That's what the dice numbers are for, which would be something like × (1d4/2 + .5) lb. where that result is multiplied by the die result from the Height Modifier section. Right now, if you rolled max for height (10), you'd only increase the base weight by 15 lbs at most, which is super weird. I think you just misunderstand how those tables are supposed to calculate things. Yeah, it really is the die result from Height Modifier you use to multiply by the die result in the Weight modifier.
Anyways, that's enough comment for now. --Ganteka Future (talk) 22:39, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Fixed the age table like you wanted

Sometimes you need to do things like that by hand, cest la vie. LenKagetsu (talk) 22:21, 6 March 2015 (UTC)