So, one of my players wanted a Centaur Druid...here's what I did.

[Matrixryu]

I was starting a new pathfinder based rpg lately, and one of my players wanted a centaur druid. Of course, there are two problems with this: racial hit dice, LA, and and caster classes don't mix.

So, I've come up with a watered down custom version of the centaur race which is based on a light horse instead of a heavy warhorse and with lower natural armor. It still has 4 racial hit dice, but No LA. He's basically getting one +2 stat per hit dice now, in addition to centaur advantages. A few other things were changed (like D10 hit dice instead of D8, and increased feats) because of pathfinder rule conversions.

I also created a special feat which would let him add 2 of his centaur hit dice to his druid level when determining spellcasting ability, and I'm wondering if you think this is balanced. He basically had to take this feat twice to catch up to the other characters. I did this because I don't like the 'buy back' rules for racial hit dice and LA, I'd rather the players pay feats or normal ability boosts to make up the difference.

So yea....I'm just wondering on what your thoughts on how well balanced this race and the feat I made for the character is. Keep in mind that I'm using pathfinder, so the base classes are significantly better than in standard DnD. He'll be joining a party of lvl 6 characters, and he'll already have two levels in druid.

Modified Centaur Race

• +4 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +4 Constitution, +2 Wisdom, –2 Intelligence.
• Monstrous Humanoid
• Large Quadruped: –1 penalty to Armor Class, –1 penalty on attack rolls, –4 penalty on Stealth checks, +4 bonus on grapple checks, a +1 bonus to their Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defense, lifting and carrying limits three times those of Medium bipedal characters.
• Space/Reach: 10 feet/5 feet.
• A centaur’s base land speed is 50 feet.
• Darkvision out to 60 feet.
• Racial Hit Dice: A centaur begins with four levels of monstrous humanoid, which provide 4d10 Hit Dice, a base attack bonus of +4, and base saving throw bonuses of Fort +1, Ref +4, and Will +4.
• Racial Skills: A centaur’s monstrous humanoid levels give it skill points equal to 4 × (2 + Int modifier). Its class skills are Knowledge(Nature)(Wis), Perception (Wis), Stealth (Wis), Survival (Wis).
• Natural Weapons: 2 hooves (1d6).
• Undersized Weapons (Ex): Although a centaur is Large, its upper torso is the same size as that of a Medium humanoid. As a result, they wield weapons as if they were one size category smaller than their actual size (Medium for most centaurs).
• Racial Feats: A centaur’s monstrous humanoid levels give it three feats.
• +1 natural armor bonus.
• Weapon Proficiency: A centaur is automatically proficient with all simple weapons, the longsword, and the longbow (including the composite longbow).
• Automatic Languages: Sylvan, Elven. Bonus Languages: Common, Gnome, Halfling.

FEAT: Druidic Centaur [Racial]

Due to their close link with nature, centaur druids often find that they have an easier time mastering their powers than other races.
Prerequisites

Centaur with druidic divine spells
Benefit

When determining his Druid spells per day and caster level, the centaur may add two of his centaur racial hit dice to his Druid class. He does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained (such as additional wild shape uses per day). This essentially means that he adds two of his centaur racial hit dice to his level in druid, and then determines spells per day and caster level accordingly.
Special

This feat may be taken multiple times. Each time it is taken, the centaur may add an additional two of his centaur racial hit dice to his Druid class when determining his caster level and spells per day.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Well, I suppose the (or a) thing to do would be to put it alongside a Fighter 4 / Druid 2, say, and see how they stack up. Because that's the closest 'standard' thing I can think of, weird-ass saves and abilities be damned.


edit --- The feat, I'm not sure about at all. . . is it balanced with other feats in the base system , is the question. Also, does it set a (bad or dubious) precedent, or might it, even. If you're going to bend the system like that, might be simpler to just, well, bend it. Make it so that racial hit dice contribute xx% of themselves to primary class abilities (e.g., Fighter feats, spellcasting in some way or other, etc.) - or, indeed, if you want to give monsters a favoured class (not an unreasonable decision, IMO) then that bending of the rules might only apply to said favoured class. But that really pigeonholes any given monster. . . not a good thing. This is not a straightforward problem, suffice it to say. :\

edit2 --- Speaking of feats, shouldn't they get two bonus feats from their MH levels? I don't have the Bestiary yet, so of course I might be mistaken. . .

 

[Herobizkit]

My easy answer: Practiced Spellcaster feat. I believe it is found in the d20 Complete Arcane, but I have also found it described on the PC NWN2 Wikia.

Prerequisite: Spellcraft 4 ranks

Specifics: Your caster level for the chosen spellcasting class increases by +4. This can't increase your caster level beyond your HD. However, even if you can't benefit from the full bonus immediately, if you later gain noncaster-level HD you may be able to apply the rest of the bonus.

For example, a human 5th-level cleric/3rd-level fighter who selects this feat would increase his cleric caster level from 5th to 8th (since Cleric+Fighter has a 8 HD). If he later gained a fighter level, he would gain the remainder of the bonus and his cleric caster level would become 9th (since Cleric+Fighter now has 9 HD).

Your Centaur Druid is essentially a multi-classed Centaur 4/Druid 2. With this feat, he would cast as a Druid 6, but he would not gain the spells per day of a Druid 6. This is the tradeoff for multi-classing, and would be true regardless of his other class or racial levels.

Now, if you wanna be REAL nice, just drop the Centaur racial HD (and benfits/feats gained by racial HD), keep the xp "penalty" and let him be a Druid 6.

 

[Matrixryu]

Well, I suppose the (or a) thing to do would be to put it alongside a Fighter 4 / Druid 2, say, and see how they stack up. Because that's the closest 'standard' thing I can think of, weird-ass saves and abilities be damned.


edit --- The feat, I'm not sure about at all. . . is it balanced with other feats in the base system , is the question. Also, does it set a (bad or dubious) precedent, or might it, even. If you're going to bend the system like that, might be simpler to just, well, bend it. Make it so that racial hit dice contribute xx% of themselves to primary class abilities (e.g., Fighter feats, spellcasting in some way or other, etc.) - or, indeed, if you want to give monsters a favoured class (not an unreasonable decision, IMO) then that bending of the rules might only apply to said favoured class. But that really pigeonholes any given monster. . . not a good thing. This is not a straightforward problem, suffice it to say. :\

edit2 --- Speaking of feats, shouldn't they get two bonus feats from their MH levels? I don't have the Bestiary yet, so of course I might be mistaken. . .

Yea, the feat/spellcasting thing is actually the main problem I'm trying to balance at this point, lol. You're right to think that a feat which allows a character to gain two spellcasting levels isn't balanced with the other feats though.

I guess I'm trying to find an alternative to this rule:

Note that in a mixed group, the value of racial Hit Dice and abilities diminish as a character gains levels. It is recommended that for every 3 levels gained by the group, the monster character should gain an extra level, received halfway between the 2nd and 3rd levels. Repeat this process a number of times equal to half the monster's CR, rounded down. Using the minotaur example, when the group is at a point between 6th and 7th level, the minotaur gains a level, and then again at 7th, making him a minotaur barbarian 4. This process repeats at 10th level, making him a minotaur barbarian 8 when the group reaches 10th level. From that point onward, he gains levels normally.

I think that rule works with LA, but not racial hit dice, so I was looking for a 'cost' that players could pay to regain important level based class abilities that were 'eaten' by HD. I never liked just giving levels back to characters with LA. But yea, there's no perfect solution.

And you're right, it should be two feats. I miscalculated because of the increased feat acquisition in pathfinder, but I guess for those first few levels it is the same as in 3.5.

My easy answer: Practiced Spellcaster feat. I believe it is found in the d20 Complete Arcane, but I have also found it described on the PC NWN2 Wikia.
Your Centaur Druid is essentially a multi-classed Centaur 4/Druid 2. With this feat, he would cast as a Druid 6, but he would not gain the spells per day of a Druid 6. This is the tradeoff for multi-classing, and would be true regardless of his other class or racial levels.

Now, if you wanna be REAL nice, just drop the Centaur racial HD (and benfits/feats gained by racial HD), keep the xp "penalty" and let him be a Druid 6.

Yea, I know about that feat. Worse comes to worse (If I think the other one is too unbalanced), I'll just use that. I just think it would be nice if characters could regain their lost spell list as well by paying a greater cost or something.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Depending on exactly what it is the player wants, you might consider a bariaur (planar handbook), which looks a lot like a centaur and could easily substitute for one and is only LA +1 with no racial hit dice. Since you were already open to revising the race this seems like it might be an easy fix.

But going back to the feat, I think even 2 druidic caster levels is quite powerful. A character with this feat twice has traded in two feats, some sklill points, and some druid class abilities to gain +10 net ability bonuses (including +2 Wis), Large size, +1 natural armor, great speed and quadraped benefits to carrying and stability, monstrous humanoid type benefits (immunity to "... Person" spells and darkvision), and a different good save. This is assuming your revised centaur to be LA +0; even with the changes (which are good I think), this is a bit of a stretch to me. To me, LA +1 for the race and one druidic caster level for a feat might be balanced.

 

[Matrixryu]

Depending on exactly what it is the player wants, you might consider a bariaur (planar handbook), which looks a lot like a centaur and could easily substitute for one and is only LA +1 with no racial hit dice. Since you were already open to revising the race this seems like it might be an easy fix.

But going back to the feat, I think even 2 druidic caster levels is quite powerful. A character with this feat twice has traded in two feats, some sklill points, and some druid class abilities to gain +10 net ability bonuses (including +2 Wis), Large size, +1 natural armor, great speed and quadraped benefits to carrying and stability, monstrous humanoid type benefits (immunity to "... Person" spells and darkvision), and a different good save. This is assuming your revised centaur to be LA +0; even with the changes (which are good I think), this is a bit of a stretch to me. To me, LA +1 for the race and one druidic caster level for a feat might be balanced.

Yea, you're definitely right now that I'm thinking about it. Hmmm, I guess I would have to at the very least nerf the feat down to +1 druid caster level instead of +2. I think I'll also take away one of the centaur hit dice and give him a +1 LA. Then maybe later on I could use a rule that let's the LA go away over time (maybe at the cost of ability boosts) without him getting bonus hit points out of it, and he'd have to spend 3 feats to get his caster level up if he wants.

You know, I wish that players gained stats faster in DnD, then I could just make players with monsterous races burn their stat gains to make up the difference. Unfortionately, stats are gained so slowly that I can only do this once or twice.

Edit: Bariaur might be a possibility, too, I'll have to see. It would sure make things simpler, lol.

 

[Sylrae]

I'm hating ENWorld right now it logged me out after I wrote a big post.

OKay: Instead of LA + Racial HD (Which makes characters tend to suck, especially as casters) Try Breaking the monster down into LA 0 Race + Racial Levels. I Attached an example of how I broke down the Satyr. It has all of the explanations plus the math. (I use UK's CR Rules for the numbers). > If you wanted to use the Racebuilder's or Classbuilder's cookbooks, or some other point-buy d20 rules for prices, you might be able to more accurately prce things not in the UK Rules. Also, UK stated that in his v5 rules (the newest), he overvalued iterative attacks. each subsequent attack is worth half of the previous, which isnt how he priced them in his guide.

If you want it to have less racial levels, then take your ability bonuses gained from levels into account for the monster and remove them based on levels gained accordingly, giving less ability bonuses to the monster race.

Also, since you mentioned players and ability bonuses by level, here is the rule I use for that very situation.

Feats: 1 every odd level, as in pathfinder (I use pathfinder RPG as my base ruleset).

Ability Bonuses: 1 to 2 different ability scores every 3rd Level (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18). Eg. So at L3, you get your first increase. Pick 2 abilities. each gets a +1, but they HAVE to be different ability scores.

If you work the higher ability gain rates into your level calculations, you'll be able to make the monsters have less racial levels.

If after you break it down, you can't get the power level to be right, having it either much over at one level, or much under if you add another HD, try increasing the HD size, increasing skills per level, or increasing saves or BAB. You can usually tweak one of these just a lil bit and get the racial class at the power level you are looking for.

Then Racial Levels are 100% optional. While most monsters encountered will have all of those levels, players may not be typical and may have other abilities instead (such as the minotaur wizard, *wink wink*)

I've been using this variant I thought of for the past 2 campaigns, and it really makes a difference. Monster Characters are around the same power level as regular characters. In the current game we have an Erinyes Druid, level 2. (An Erinyes is normally like ECL 12). Every level she can either take levels in Erinyes, or she can level in Druid.

Also, if you're trying to lower necessary Monster Levels, you can change immunities to resistances (most monsters with immunities should really only have large resistances anyways)~IE: In our games, Elves don't get sleep immunity. They get a +10 vs sleep effects. Demons and Devils usually don't get poison immunity, just resistances. For monsters with spell resistances, if you're trying to make a weaker version, try giving them a saving throw bonus instead, such as the one dwarves get. Even if you want to give them their full bonus, things like this can scale,from the lower powered ones I just mentioned to the more powerful abilities, and this can let you give them the immunities or whatnot gradually. Another thing to do to lower power levels, is to change many of the at-will SLAs per day into a more limited quantity.

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I'm slowly working on a change that puts caster classes on Par with eachother for free multiclassing, so a Cleric 5 Wizard 5 Casts spells like a 10th level caster in terms of spells per day and spells known and caster level, but has to divide spell slots between classes. (it's coming along slowly). This would allow monster classes which have lots of spell like abilities to instead give spellcaster bonuses and have their own spell lists instead. So the succubus Wizard at L20 with full succubus abilities would still be as effective as a straight wizard at L20 (which I see as logical and useful, if hard to implement). The Dryad Druid L20 would be as effective as the Druid L20. A Druid/Wizard with any combination of levels would be around as useful as either one single classed (that is the idea, anyways~harder to work out the details).