Talk:Raier (3.5e Race)

Helpin' Out

I see you're trying your hand at races. Not bad. I won't comment on the value of the race itself, first time to help out with coding. You remember back with the Brawling Rogue how I told you about comment tags? Remember you're supposed to remove <!--THIS PART HERE, THESE COMMENT TAGS--> because the computer doesn't read anything inside those brackets, so get rid of them. Now, I removed the comment tags on your author box, but left the rest for you.

Secondary, you really need that racial code stuff, it helps the wiki know what to do with your article. I added it back in, but did not fill it out. It's up to you to do that.

Good luck. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 00:42, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Now that I've fixed some code, a bit on the race itself...

It's odd. I'm not quite sure what these things are, and they need more fluff text badly, especially in their physical description. Take a look at quito race I made. Here we have a race who isn't normal or something everyone already knows, like a human or elf. You need to go into detail what they look like and their abilities. I find a good way to go about this is ask yourself some simple questions, like "what do they do every day?" "what do they eat?" "how to they hunt for food?" By answering these questions you'll bring up interesting trivia facts about your race and probably get more questions. For example, using the quitos, I determine that they eat blood. Well, if they eat blood, where do they get blood? From people? Livestock? If they get it from livestock, do they raid or do they farm? If they raid, are they a culture of warriors? Or if they farm, are they good farmers? Do they have big cities? What do their cities look like. Who defends those cities. What kind of culture might appear if everyone ate blood? And BOOM, suddenly you have a dozen paragraphs and its awesome.

For example, they're magically delicious. Why? What circumstances made them magical? Are they like elves? Were they a magical creation? If they're magically delicious, why to they live where they do? Where do they live, and how? And they roll. How do they roll, their physical image is a bit unclear. Why do they roll? What kind of creature did they evolve from to make rolling an advantage? Was it to escape predators? Do they live on sand dunes and roll like certain spiders to escape predators? Or were they the hunters? Etc etc...

Then for some reason, they have a bunch of tiny skill bonuses to a whole lot of skills. Why? Consider condensing that down to whatever iconic skills they are. They roll... and they're good at magic... this is telling me thinks like Balance, Tumble, and Spellcraft. Why are the other skills there?

There's also the whole rolling fluff which needs clarity. They move at a bizarrely slow rare, unless they roll. What are the mechanical benefits and penalties of rolling?

For example, and I forgot to mention this in the changes below, when I converted rolling I put "-4 penalty to Move Silently checks for 1 round." This tells me the mechanics (a -4 penalty) and the duration (1 round). Now all we need is the fluff why this is, which you should probably put in physical description. Why do they make so much noise rolling, and why do they roll at all? Indeed, why are they slow as they are on foot?

Answer those, and the quality shall rise. You're doing better, keep at it. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 03:25, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Changes

You request, and so it is done. Lemme explain to you what I did (and what you need to add) from here.

First, look at the code for the racial section carefully and see what I did. Compare it to what you had (you can look at the history here). I see what you did... you saw the brackets successfully, but you put all your fluff text in there. You can't do that. What those brackets do is they tell the computer to look for a second bit of infomation (such as -2 and strength or +2 and wisdom) and then put it in proper code and text. Then, when people go looking for your stuff they can search for pages with a race with +2 wisdom and find yours. If you put all the fluff there, it will look at that, say "this isn't +2 Wis, which is what I'm searching for", and skip it. You can add fluff after. In fact, I've CAPS LOCKED some text where you should put fluff or clarify. Be sure to replace that with something appropriate.

Same thing with Darkvision. What you see there with {{3.5e Darkvision|20}} is called a template. It says to the computer, "bring up the usual darkvision text. And that number says their darkvision is 20", so it will write "Darkvision: A Raier can see in the dark up to 20 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise like normal sight, and a Raier can function just fine with no light at all." automatically for you. This also, again, lets people search for a race with darkvision 20 feet and find your race.

As for whenever you give a race some kind of ability, like a bonus feat, or wild empathy, or the ability to burst into flames, that's when you use that line of *Name of Power {{Something}}: Description. The something there is Ex, Ps, Su, or Sp, which is D&D for extraordinary, psi-like ability, supernatural, or spell-like ability. If you don't know what they do or what they mean, I'll get into that. I'm going to assume you know.

I made some changes... while you wisely got rid of the -1 Int for a -2 Int, I had to take liberties to the language issue. Besides making Speak Language effectively useless (doubly damning since they don't speak common!), there wasn't really any mechanics behind it I could work with. No one can have a 30 Int to start with, which would give them the +10 bonus to learn a language. I am pretty sure that's not what you meant, so I added "Dim Wit". It shows a penalty for learning languages, without going so far to make it impossible, just harder.

Notice how I made the ability scores go in order (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha). Also notice I put the racial abilities in alphabetical order. It looks more professional when you do this.

I've also fixed the favored class thing, look at the code and study it. This is another thing that helps people search for and find your class. Remember, the computer doesn't know better so you do have to be exact when you put info in there.

Finally, unless you're doing something unusual, the LA will always be 0 and the effective character level (ECL) will always be 1.

Further below, we run into the Vital Stats which I cleaned up. Down there in the table isn't the place for fluff, thats for stuff above. It's an old relic of early D&D, but its there cause presumably somewhere, somebody is still randomly rolling for height and weight. On that note, they're intended to be random rolls instead of a +N increase. I've added dice who averaged the same numbers your flat number increases were. Like +50 to maximum age is pretty much 10d10...

Does this help? -- Eiji-kun (talk) 03:11, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

(Sees your edit) Close, very close. You see how your code says {{Property Link|Favored Class|SRD:Ranger|Shaman}}. Well, the first part says what it is (a property link), the second a subtype of what it is (favored class) and then the third is what it links to, and the forth is the name it displays. So what's the problem?

Lookie, it is linking to SRD:Ranger, even though it says Shaman. Go on, click the link it makes, you'll see.

Now I'd edit it for you, but I know Shaman isn't an SRD class. I'm not sure what class Shaman refers to... Spirit Shaman? Or a homebrew shaman class on the wiki? If it's on the wiki, I'll show you how to link it, if it's something in another WotC book (like Spirit Shaman), then it's actually fine to just write in "Spirit Shaman" without the links or code. It won't link and you can't search for it, but that's fine.

FUN FACT: Usually if you're quoting something from another book, like Improved Toughness (from COmplete Warrior) you can actually put it in superscript, usually using some common shorthand for the book. For example, the shorthand for Complete Warrior is CW, so it would be Improved Toughness^CW. The code for that is ^Text. A little coding knowledge for ya. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 03:58, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

(EDIT) I see "Shamans, are the village leaders and the only ones who are allowed to use magic." in the fluff text. If this is the case and Shaman isn't referring to a class, I suggest making one of their favored classes cleric. Clerics are basically shamans as you put it, and it works with their Wisdom bonus they get. Incidentally, this means they aren't really good at arcane magic so much as divine magic.

You're still working on it, but by all means, go on. You say only shamans are allowed to use magic, so this is a perfect opportunity to go into a long speil on why their culture does that, what the punishment for violators are, how this interacts with rangers and their spellcasting, and so forth.

I may not be able to be in the mibbit chat, but I am watching. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 04:15, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Roll

Why not just roll all the time? It doesn't seem like there's any penalty to doing it. Surgo (talk) 15:28, 25 September 2012 (UTC)