Talk:Shocker Lizard, Civilized (3.5e Race)

Comments on Balance

Sorry for this being a long post, there's a lot to discuss and explain.

Alright, this race gets a lot of goodies. Race design is hard and I'm not going to pretend I've always gotten it right myself. Even after revision. There's a lot of weird, complicated factors that come into play with associated and non-associated bonuses as well as benefits that continue to be relevant versus ones that drop off in relevancy as characters level.

In race design, players pick races (typically) that grant them associated bonuses and try to minimize any associated penalties, things that directly grant boons or hinderances to the thing they want to do or perform well at. If all your penalties are non-associated, hindering things you're already bad at or don't care about, then such characters may end up over-performing unexpectedly. This is something to keep in mind for racial ability scores, giving out only physical boons and only mental penalties goes to some effort to assist players in min-maxing that decision. That said, +2/+2/–2/–2 is usually okay since you'll end up with some sort of unavoidable defensive or proactive deficiency, even if minimal (Sense Motive, Perception skills, the sorts of really common skill rolls that can get you into trouble if you fail personally).

As some quick points, Magical Beast can be very strong on a PC. Small size is usually pretty close to a wash as far as balance, being just a little better than Medium. Darkvision is obviously good, but also something other PC races get.

Their speeds though, hoo-boy. They're faster than base races and have two extra modes of movement. What we've got so far with none of the following features are enough for a race (barring some flavorful abilities that don't really have a strong mechanical effect). Electricity Sense is mostly a flavorful ability, and that's fine, unless I'm missing something about it.

Keep in mind that the monster you are adapting is CR 2, and monster ability and PC ability don't always line up in relevancy and balance at the same point. Immunities, natural armor, big skill bonuses, these are all things you need to be very careful about introducing. Right now, because of their size, a racial skill bonus and a racial ability bonus, they get +9 on Hide checks.

It's fine to go for ECL 1/LA 0 (I honestly recommend trying to figure that out and go that route), but with everything you have here and everything you want, it's going to be tricky.

As for addressing the racial paragon feat: Dear heavens no. Never use creature improvement HD increases stacked with PC levels. Those are for plain featureless HD advancements to attempt to keep monster CR relevant. There's a tome feat that grants these size bonuses and in a Very High balance game, they've broken every character I've seen use them (which was like, 5 characters or something, all across the same setting).

Short Advice: Take a look at comparable existing published material that you know would get approved in a game and try to add/subtract features of relative value until you come to a solution. That can at least help. --Ganteka Future (talk) 03:26, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm with Ganteka on this one. The various movement speed are busted, 40 ft for a small race is very uncommon and not entirely justified, except by the adherence to the original monster, and then there's the swim and clim speed which again aren't very well justified imo. I'm also worried of all the skill bonuses, immunities and so much features with electricity. Even the stunning shock attack is too much for a ECL 1 LA 0 race. I like it, but tone it down. Instead the Lethal Shock feature can basically kill everything at low levels if a standard party of four chooses to go with this race.

I'm also not happy with the fact that you didn't considered making them inable to wield normal weapons and items, and wear humanoid armor. They shouldn't also be able to cast spell with somatic components without some sort of feat. --The bluez in the dungeon (talk) 10:23, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Good points, well taken.

Thanks for the interest! This entry was mostly a project for me to see how the creation of a wiki article worked as I am new to this, but I did want to make a decent contribution, so please bear with me. My responses to critiques in no particular order:

I indeed did mean to include something like Inhuman form limiting their ability for tool use, and that has been remedied. Rather than making them unplayable with a crushing penalty, I turned it into a -1 feat cost requiring Dexterous, and still being left with a -1 penalty for common and important rolls.

Not being able to use somatic components I think is out of line though as it isn't consistent with core creatures. Plenty of creatures without hands can cast spells using their own particular somatic components.

The movement speeds are indeed top tier for an ECL 0 race, but I couldn't realistically say that any of them are worth raising the level. Swim speeds are rarely relevant, and climb speed is good stuff, but roughly a 2nd level spell-like ability with waning utility as you level up. 40' move speed is solid and useful to all builds, melee, ranged, and spellcasters. But it's dragged down by the limitation of Inhuman form. I could dock move down to 30' and just give +10' with the Paragon feat. I think that's okay.

The stunning shock ability is pretty weak and so far as I can tell, not very exploitable since it deals subdual and has a range of 5' and is not an attack roll so cannot be augmented with precision damage.

Likewise lethal shock would only come up with a party of shocker lizards (maybe with shocker lizard improved familiars later), which I think is great.... but Lethal Shock is broken. So I changed it to cap damage within CR 2 neighborhood, and cleared up interaction with feral shocker lizards (they inherit the cap if cooperating with a Civilized Shocker Lizard).

Electricity Immunity and subtype is strong. No doubt. I think this is by far its strongest feature but it is still a bit niche. It won't come up often, but when it does it is very nice.

The Monstrous Creature type isn't a big deal in my mind. It limits some spells like Enlarge Person, grants immunity from some spells like Charm Person. But since you aren't gaining HD outside of classing, it's mostly a wash.

While Shocker Lizards are CR 2, they also have a bonus HD and higher combat stats including more strength and more natural armor, and natural weapons. A level 1 NPC Civilized Shocker Lizard would possibly not be as challenging as a stock CR 2 Shocker Lizard.

Closest core race to this would be Kobold. This race has more upsides (movement, niche specials) and more downsides (inhuman form). I think they're pretty comparable in power level. I would not say that this race makes Kobold obsolete despite their overlaps.

The Paragon feat I will tone down but I think I can still make the idea work with some alterations, starting with removing Large Size and Huge Size. Those are already feat equivalents themselves.

--ErikOfWiki (talk) 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Changes noted, here are my comments:

The inhuman form feature works well, but I must stress that the PHB expressly says that creatures without human-like hands cannot cast spells (it says that you must be able to make "measured and precise" movements with at least one free hand), which doesn't apply to animals or animal-like creatures, usually (see the Natural Spells feat). I admit though that creatures such as dragons seem able to be wizards without any special feature or feat to cast spells. But maybe their hands are dexterous enough.

The extra movement options are surely not worth a +1 LA alone, but combine them with the Magical Beast type (immunities are nicer than you credit them for) electricty immunity, +1 natural armor (which gives a base AC of 13 at level 1 thanks to the +2 to Dex and the Small size).

Quadrupedal gives back an higher tier land speed and the feat gives the rest. This makes it very good for every build, as both casters and melee combatants with the feat benefit of the improved speed as the quadrupedal stance doesn't impede spellcasting and doesn't hinder a natural weapon attacker. Also, the description of the race never implied that they would be bipedal (which they should according to the Quadrupedal feature, but shocker lizards are quadrupedal in the Monster Manual).

As for comparing this race to kobolds... no, they are not comparable. Kobolds have abysmal Strength, lose Con, have only +1 natural armor, darkvision, small size and the bonus to Dex. If you are talking about the RoD kobold, well they do get some natural weapons, Slight Build, a couple subtypes, some weapon proficiency and better bonuses to skills (while retaining all downsides, even light sensitivity), which makes them better but not even close to the civilized shocker lizard.

I'd say that this, for now, is at least a +1 LA, or even +2. --The bluez in the dungeon (talk) 08:18, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I think my counterargument for hands and spellcasting is Naga. It's literally a snake with a human face, and they cast spells without any special justification. I get that that guideline was written originally, but it is so soundly ignored that I will do the same. The inhuman form bit is basically so harsh that the race has a -1 feat penalty since Dexterous is about mandatory.

I disagree that this is good for every build. Having to have hands-free to get to standard 30' move limits a lot of weapon builds, as does being -1 feat to be a small character with no size attack bonus. The -2 penalty to Int and Cha makes it really below par for casters as well. It mostly shines for rogues and maybe some divine casters. If we take the Paragon feat into account then it can set it up to be an ok melee bruiser but that's all.

The paragon feat is stronk, for sure, but it is in comparison to scaling feats that are pretty gonzo, even at *only* High balance. It has disadvantages and advantages over Constricting Tail for example. But I'm not gonna try and balance a race based upon other feats that may not even be taken. Even if I wrote it just for this race. If the feat causes problems then that's on the feat.

I forgot Kobolds got boned on stats so hard. My bad. Nevertheless, I couldn't see playing this with LA. Nothing it gets is going to make it +1 level in a fight. --ErikOfWiki (talk) 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Just for giggles I tried to recreate this race using Pathfinder race building rules where over 20 RP counts as LA +1. Spoiler alert, a stronger version of it with faster movement still doesn't meet LA +1.

Small size 0 RP

Normal speed (30') 0 RP

+2 Dex +2 Con -2 Int 0 RP

-1 Feat -4 RP

Dexterous Penalty -1 RP (similar to Light Sensitivity)

Natural Armor 1 RP

Climb Speed 30' 2 RP

Swim Speed 30' 2 RP

Skill bonus (perception) 2 RP

Camouflage 1 RP

Electricity Sense 1 RP (similar to water sense)

Breath Weapon Electricity 20' line, 4d6 damage, 3/day 6 RP

Electricity Immunity 4 RP

Total 14 RP. A solidly strong LA 0 race, but definitely not worthy of +1 LA. --ErikOfWiki (talk) 22 June 2022

Well, lots of these things seem to not be accurate to the race as written, and some of them are also not accurate to the actual race point list, so let's see if we can fix that.

Type (Magical Beast): This isn't actually listed on the options, but it's pretty easy to reverse engineer the cost. Darkvision (2) + Low-Light Vision (1) + normal consumption requirements (0) + frequently having magical abilities and qualifying for Monstrous feats (1) give Magical Beast - Cost 4 RP

Small Size - Cost 0 RP

Slow Speed (20') - Cost -1 RP

Stat line is atypical for PF, but looks like it would be in line with Weakness - Cost -1 RP

Language (Linguist) - Cost 1 RP

Natural Armor: You have this listed as costing 1 point, but it's actually - Cost 2 RP

Elemental Immunity (Electricity) - Cost 4 RP

Skills (Hide): This is closer to Sneaky, but only applies when naked. On its own, that would be 5 points, but with the limiting factor this would probably still be overpriced to - Cost 3 RP

Skills (Spot/Listen): This is one skill in PF so that simplifies it to just a simple - Cost 2 RP

Skills (Dex to Climb/Jump): Jump is already covered by this in PF, but I don't think there's an equivalent, so it's probably just - Cost 1 RP

Climb speed (20')*: *See below - Cost 2 RP

Swim speed (30')*: This one is a little weird, so see below on it as well - Cost 2 RP

Quadrupedal Movement: Because of the wording on this, it applies to all its speeds. Swim and Climb would always be applied because that's how those things work in the game. For Swim that's (kinda?) applied already, but for land/climb speed it's not. Plus while this is active, it's basically Stability - Cost 3 RP

Lethal Shock: This is a weird one because it's kinda problematic for pricing. I agree that Breath Weapon is the closest thing to compare it to, but this alone would technically speaking just destroy any race. Something that's 5/day is involved with the pricing for something to do with daily charges for items, so I'm going to generalize that back here because that's the nicer way to do it. I'm also going to take off... hell, I'll halve the points for needing a second shocker lizard because whatever, this is still going to be ridiculous. Breath Weapon (1) + Increased Area (2) + Extra Breath x4 to bring it up to at will (3+4+5+6) + Increased Damage x3 for +3d6 (7+8+9) + Half damage on a failed save (10). That's 55 points as an estimate before any reduction. I said I'd half it, and D&D rounds up. This is still obviously ridiculously overpriced. - Cost 23

Stunning Shock: I'm just gong to call this being closest to a Natural Weapon because it's basically a longsword that never misses and sometimes crits with a +0 Str. Also, it's implied this is electricity, but as written it does typeless nonlethal damage. - Cost 1 RP

Electricity Sense: There isn't a super great comparison for this, but so long as you don't say that nerves firing counts, I agree at - Cost 1 RP

Inhuman Form: I'll be generous and say this is as bad as Sunlight Powerlessness which has the highest weakness cost on the list - Cost -2 RP

Alright, I think that's everything. I'll give the costs with and without a saner pricing for Lethal Shock, just or fun.

As above - Total Cost 45 RP

Lower price on Lethal Shock - Total Cost 26 RP

Just for fun, not reducing the price on Lethal Shock - Ignore Cost 77 RP (lul)

That being said, a lot of these features just don't scale well. Lethal Shock and Stunning Shock are way too good at level 1, but will never really see use at level 10. Unless you cheese Lethal Shock with Leadership, I suppose, because your Followers could all just spam it. I think this base idea (shocker lizard PC) has teeth, but I think you may need to go back to the drawing board for the specifics. I do hope you're able to get this to a form that is more satisfying mechanically. --Undead_Knave (talk) 06:24, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I've been playing this race as a PF unchained ninja (as I consider the ideal class for this race to be some sort of rogue) in a campaign for the last few months and it really is ECL 0. The climb speed and swim speed were kinda useful as this is a largely aquatic campaign. Electricity Immunity was mildly handy as like half our party was using some form of electric attack. So this was about as ideal a situation for the race as possible. And still, the race didn't come close to being worth a class level. It would be junk if I paid that price. I could have made a stock halfling just as powerful as this character.

The Hide bonus has come up zero times as I wear clothing. It's pretty much flavor, just like Electricity Sense.

We started at level 5, so the electric shock abilities also never came up. I'd never want to use the subdual shock, and never met another shocker lizard, and even if I did, it wouldn't be worth a combat action to be doing a lethal shock. It's flavor. A 3/day breath weapon would be much more useful, but even that only for levels 1-5. As written, Stunning Shock is ok at level 1-2, and Lethal Shock is flavor that may cause someone to get a shocker lizard familiar (available at 5th level), and maybe be useful as a trick for a couple levels. Nobody is getting a CR 2 minion at levels low enough for it to matter unless the DM is really on board with it.

The quadrupedal movement has barely ever come up, and only out of combat because it is more beneficial to use a weapon. Stability is a complete nothing burger because if something was going to trip me then it succeeds since it would still beat me massively on size and strength, and what would I be doing unarmed on all-fours next to a monster anyway? Terrible idea.

I stopped interacting with the discussion because my 15 RP (yes, I counted nat armor wrong by 1 pt) comparison was a more powerful version of the same idea while still even paying some points for pure fluff abilities. It shows that you can do the same (or better) stuff in the guidelines of a PF race and be firmly ECL 0. The 45/77 RP comparison knowingly uses "obviously ridiculously overpriced" metrics, and was not worth digging into.

--ErikOfWiki (talk) 13 Nov 2022