LA+1 race for homebrew campaign

This is for a low-level rather primitive [early iron age] campaign world (highest level NPC on the continent is L15, magic items are rarer[few people are high level enough to take some of the feats/spells required], but low level magic isn't too rare, especially summoning/calling magic).

One of the main plot of the campaign is that the world is linked to the plane of nightmare. The nameless ones are one of the player race I want to design for this campaign.
-They are the remnants of the "neutral " aspect of your nightmares: the nameless victims, unknown passer-by that inhabits your dreams before it turns in a nightmare...
-They are called to the world /given material shapeby a lesser binding spell (only able to call 2 HD of creatures ) to serve as warriors by wizards of the ruling houses.
-They are ageless, but otherwise looks like humans (often with less defined feature though).

A characteristic of the denizens of the nightmare realm is that they are very resistant to damage so I was thinking of giving them Dr5/magic and fire/cold/sonic/electric resistance 3.
Not having a well defined personality or personal feature I was thinking of giving them -2 penalty to charisma and no favored class.
Also they are outsider with all benefit and problems entailled, and no racial hit dices.

Now would you play such a race, or are they too weak to justify the LA (campaign start sat ECL2, probably end around ECL6)?
Or do you think the dr is too powerfull an ability?

There's a warforged feat that grants DR1/Adamantine, so the DR5/- seems pretty powerful for LA+1.

He stated Dr5/magic not DR5/-. So far this is what your race is

-Outsider Traits
- -2 Cha
- DR 5/Magic
- Fire/Cold/Sonic/Elec Res 3
- Ageless (if they do not age do they still have a lifespan or are they "immortal"?)
+1 LA

This does not seem to be too bad at all. DR 5/Magic and the resistances combined with -2 cha I would argue are a +0 LA race. Outsider traits probably would edge them over +0 LA.

Now they cannot be ress'd but they can be banished and the like or even called/summoned by someone else :O. Also they will be immune to charm persons and effects such as that. They do not sleep, eat, or breath (if I remember outsiders correctly). They have 60ft darkvision.

I don't see anything completely wrong with this race for +1 LA, in fact it is almost weak for an LA. Outsider is powerful but with no racial HD it does not seem to be that powerful.

Maybe give them a few more minor characteristics.

At low levels, esp. if magic is rare, DR 5/magic will be powerful. At high levels, it'll be useless. Given that your campaign is ECL 2 to 6 with low magic (meaning that at those levels only few magic weapons will be encountered?) I think that this race is strong for LA +1. In a normal setting which contains the normal amount of weapons and continues beyong ECL6, I think this race is fine at LA+1. For your campaign, perhaps consider DR3/silver or the like - something which can be solved without magic. Finally, in general, I would try to make energy resistances more specific. So don't give em resistances to more than at most three energy types, and preferably only 2 - that way you can adapt your strategy to fit that pattern. If you're trying to symbolize a general resistance to magic, include spell resistance of 5 + HD or so instead perhaps.

Perhaps if they had DR & Resistances derived from their PC level...

How about DR 1 per 4 PC levels, and Resistances to fire/cold/sonic/electric resistance at 2 per 3 PC levels, but with only type improving per 3 levels...player's choice. So at level 1, the PC could have fire res 2. Then at 3rd level, the player could choose gaining sonic res 2, then sonic res 4 at 6th, and cold res 2 at 9th, etc.

He said low-level magic isn't rare, it's the middle and upper level magic that is rare. A 1st-level character can cast Magic Weapon, so DR X/magic isn't all that strong (it's harder and more expensive to get an adamantine weapon), though it's certainly some advantage at low levels.

The race is kind of weak, and I'm not sure if you're giving them 2 Outsider hit dice or just a +1 Level Adjustment, or what?

As it is, the race's only real advantage is that they are moderately resistant to harm at low levels. Their defenses aren't going to be much use at upper levels, and they're rather low resistances to begin with.

I wouldn't play the race.....they're roleplaying possibilities seem kind of limited, and they have no real advantages. Even if your ageless quality is meant to make them immortal; it'd still be a weak race of immortals (and still killable).

You need to add something more useful to the race.

Arkhandus said:

He said low-level magic isn't rare, it's the middle and upper level magic that is rare. A 1st-level character can cast Magic Weapon, so DR X/magic isn't all that strong (it's harder and more expensive to get an adamantine weapon), though it's certainly some advantage at low levels.

The race is kind of weak, and I'm not sure if you're giving them 2 Outsider hit dice or just a +1 Level Adjustment, or what?

As it is, the race's only real advantage is that they are moderately resistant to harm at low levels. Their defenses aren't going to be much use at upper levels, and they're rather low resistances to begin with.

I wouldn't play the race.....they're roleplaying possibilities seem kind of limited, and they have no real advantages. Even if your ageless quality is meant to make them immortal; it'd still be a weak race of immortals (and still killable).

You need to add something more useful to the race.

Click to expand...

Inhabitants of this world have fought creatures of the nightmare realms for centuries so they would know they need to enchant their weapon to hurt these... In retrospect it does make the dr5/magic pretty weak, only usefull vs the most unaware of mooks or animals.
I agree that even though outsider is generally a good type it doesn't help without racial hit dice. Also I really want to keep the various kind Of DR in the world limited to 2 kinds: magic, starmetal. Since they are victims in the nightamre realms they need to be able to be hurt even temporarily by all other nightamre creature, and a lot of them can't bypass Dr/magic, so that looks like the wrong ability.

They are immortal as far as age goes, they can still die from natural causes though (disease, poison as those are common fears in the nightmare than spawn them).

Look like they need to be tougher, that is the main characteristic I want to emphasize about them, they come from a land where they will experience pain but never trully die... Appart from their resilience they shouln't be to different from humans. So I really wonder why I didn't give them a con bonus...
For the energy resistance, i wanted to show that nothing really affected them fully, more than them having any resistance to magic, it does indeed feels like the wrong ability after all.
How does it look like that:

- outsider traits (cannot be raised or reincarnated*, darkvison, different spell succeptibility)
- Con+2, Cha-2 (They are though, but trying to forge themselves a personality. kind of latching on to charismatic people as a results)
-Limited imortality: do not age, do not need food (but still can eat and drink) still can die from disease poison, lack of air...
- Regeneration 1 (they keep facing pain and torture in their realm but never trully die, starmetal inflicts lethal damage on them) **
- No Favored class (they tend to stay in the class they were originally dreamt as)
- LA+1

*that is a huge limitation now that i think about it, since reincarnation is the only real way of coming back from the dead and not that hard to access.
** That might be very powerfull as starmetal is rare (on the other hand they can't use it either[it would burn them 1d6 damage/round to even touch a weapon containing a small amount] so they lose access to the best anti-nightmare weapon). Combined with their imortality that also explain why they wouldn't be that uncommon.
ps: starmetal is a rare metal that fall on the world from distant stars, it is extremly dense and only a single pound is needed to alter the steel alloy of a weapon, for some unknown reasons it burns the flesh of nightmare creatures. The weapon has then the same hardness as adamatine, bypass certain dr and inflicts an extra d6 damage to nightmare creature...

That now looks more interesting to play and closer to the role I want them to have (ain't gonna dwell too long on this, the story of this campaign world beeing over 60 pages long), I have a feeling it's a bit strong though.
Thanks a lot to everyone for their advices and criticisms. It probably need more criticism though.

Well, some other stuff should overcome the Regeneration as well, since Regen is a strong ability...... Most creatures with regen suffer normal damage from acid and fire, or one of those two.....so maybe allow acid and fire to overcome the Regeneration just as starmetal does. Maybe just acid and starmetal, but I don't know, that would probably be a bit too strong for just LA+1 and no racial hit dice.

Arkhandus said:

Well, some other stuff should overcome the Regeneration as well, since Regen is a strong ability...... Most creatures with acid suffer normal damage from acid and fire, or one of those two.....so maybe allow acid and fire to overcome the Regeneration just as starmetal does. Maybe just acid and starmetal, but I don't know, that would probably be a bit too strong for just LA+1 and no racial hit dice.

Click to expand...

Good idea with acid, kinda fit some of the background too (the world has 6 energies: sonic, fire, elec, cold, positive, negative and 3 elements: air, water, earth. Acid is the distilled essence of the three elements arcoding to the wizards, would make sence that it would hurt a creature of dreams where such elements don't really exist). Fire wouldn't make much sense though background-wise...

So acid and starmetal bypass the regeneration. Now what penelaty should I add to make it more balanced?

Hmm, I dunno. Maybe removing the Constitution penalty will be enough; their Regeneration is what will make them tough to knock out/kill. I dunno if that'll be quite fair for their LA, but at least it's close to balanced, so it would be playable.