Skeleton and Children as playable races.

Hi guys, first post here. Long time lurker, but never had much to post until now. I'm currently thinking up a new campaign using the 3.5 edition rule set. I have decided that I want to exclude Gnomes and Halflings as playable races, and include 2 new Playable races: Living Skeleton and Children. Living Skeleton is a full Race, and the Child would be a sub-race (Players must still pick an original race, and the Child sub-race replaces some of the base race's abilities).
Please feel free to comment, especially on game balancing issues.


CHILD

"Child" is an inherited template that can be added to any living, corporeal creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature).
A Child uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here.

• Small Size +1 bonus to Armor Class, +1 bonus on attack rolls, +4 bonus on Hide checks, -4 penalty on grapple checks, lifting and carrying limits ¾ those of Medium characters.
• Base land speed of 20 feet. Dwarven children have a base land speed of 15 feet.
• In addition to the bonuses and penalties that the base creature has, it gains +2 Dex, +2 Charisma, -2 Strength, -2 Wisdom.
• +1 racial bonus to all saving throws except mind-affecting spells and effects.
• +2 racial bonus on Climb, Jump, Swim, Balance, Hide and Move Silently checks.
• -2 racial penalty on Concentration and all Knowledge checks.
• -2 penalty on saving throws against mind-affecting spells and effects.
• A Child must rest for an additional 2 hours per day.
• Favoured Class: Rogue.

LIVING SKELETON

Skeletons are the animated bones of the dead, mindless automatons that obey the orders of their evil masters. However, due to a mysterious event in the world, skeletons which were animated during that event regained parts of their minds as well as full consciousness. Most were put-down but the necromancers who summoned them, but a large number escaped and are scattered among the lands.

• Your creature type is undead.
• Medium Size
• Base land speed of 30 feet.
• +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -4 Charisma
• Living Skeletons gain +2 to Natural Armor
• Damage Reduction (Ex): At 1st level, Living Skeletons gain damage deduction 2/bludgeoning,magic. This increases to 5/bludgeoning,magic at 8th level.
• Turn resistance +4
• Darkvision out to 60 feet.
• +2 racial bonus against mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).
• Unlike other Undead, Living Skeletons are subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, stunning, ability damage, ability drain, energy drain, and death effects or necromancy effects.
• Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, fatigue and exhaustion effects, as well as nausea and effects that cause the sickened condition.
• Living Skeletons cannot heal damage naturally. Furthermore, positive energy (such as a cure spell) damages Living Skeletons.
• Negative energy (such as an inflict spell) can heal Living Skeletons.
• Living Skeletons are unaffected by raise dead and reincarnate spells or abilities. Resurrection and true resurrection can affect Living Skeletons. These spells turn the Living Skeletons back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead. Players must declare which race they belonged to when picking the Living Skeleton race.
• Undead do not breathe, eat, or sleep. However, a spellcaster must still complete 8 hours of uninterrupted rest to recover his or her spells. Living Skeletons can still benefit from the effects of consumable spells and magic items such as heroes' feast and potions.
• A Skeleton with 0 hit points is disabled, just like a living creature. He can only take a single move action or standard action in each round, but strenous activity does not risk further injury. When his hit points are less than 0, he is unconscious and helpless, and he cannot perform any actions. However, an unconscious skeleton does not lose additonal hit points unless more damage is dealt to him, as with a living creature that is stable.
• Light Fortification (EX): When a critical hit or sneak attack is scored on a Living Skeleton, there is a 25% chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and the damage is instead rolled normally.
• A Living Skeleton has a natural weapon in the form of a claw attack that deals 1d4 points of damage.
• Automatic Languages: Common. Bonus Languages: Language of Living Skeleton's original race.
• Favored Class: Fighter

Some points:

I disagree with bonus you give to Children, +1 on save, +2 on skills like jump, climb, swim and son on needing strength, +2 to charisma and dexterity.....?
Do you think arond 8-10 years old for this template?

For the Skeleton: You creature type is undead as such you have no constitution score, you cannot become a livng undead (?).
Think this templates already exist somewhere and you can start from there.

FEADIN said:

Some points:

I disagree with bonus you give to Children, +1 on save, +2 on skills like jump, climb, swim and son on needing strength, +2 to charisma and dexterity.....?
Do you think arond 8-10 years old for this template?

For the Skeleton: You creature type is undead as such you have no constitution score, you cannot become a livng undead (?).
Think this templates already exist somewhere and you can start from there.

Click to expand...

Hi FEADIN and thanks for the quick reply! First of all I decided to take out the Halfling and Gnome classes as Playable characters as I found it really hard to understand and differentiate their backgrounds from the other races. I looked instead for an alternative way to depict small characters, and the Child sub-race came to mind.

The Child sub-race is based on an 8-10 year old kid with AD/HD. Hence all the bonuses to the Movement skills and penalty to Mental skills. I intended for the bonus to saving throws to be a luck bonus instead of racial bonus, but I feared that not allowing to stack with equipment the PC might have in the future would cause it to be useless.

As for the Living Skeleton, I wanted a compromise between a living creature and an undead creature, so I used Eberron's Warforged as a template. I had to reduce the effectiveness of the Living Skeleton as the Undead template would be too powerful for Player Characters, thus I returned the Living Skeleton its Ability Scores to make it more vulnerable.

I am a young DM with only a year of DM experience, and this is my first attempt in introducing such a major, untested feature in my game, so a lot of critique as well as encouragement would go a long way! Please keep the comments coming, I appreciate it greatly.

Children:
Note that changing sizes changes Str & Dex. Beyond that, I would apply penalties, but not bonuses. For instance, if you have a Cha bonus, it implies the child becomes less charismatic with age (less personality?), which I don't get. Similarly, the size increase would give you a Hide bonus; other than that I'd leave physical skills alone. The knowledge and mind-affecting penalties are okay, though I might consider accomplishing the same thing by penalizing mental ability scores. Also, the template is designating as being for living corporeal creatures, but is clearly meant for medium humanoids, so I'd just change that language.

Skellies:
If the creature type is truly undead, that changes a lot of things. For instance, the character has no constitution (and thus the racial con bonus is meaningless). Such a creature is also totally immune to crits (and various other things) and is destroyed at 0 hp. It's hard to make a true undead as a viable race, so you've constructed a whole pile of exceptions. Comments on some of those exceptions:

Living Skeletons cannot heal damage naturally.

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Regular intelligent undead get natural healing, why not these?

A Skeleton with 0 hit points is disabled, just like a living creature. He can only take a single move action or standard action in each round, but strenous activity does not risk further injury. When his hit points are less than 0, he is unconscious and helpless, and he cannot perform any actions. However, an unconscious skeleton does not lose additonal hit points unless more damage is dealt to him, as with a living creature that is stable.

Click to expand...

When is the creature destroyed? -10?

Resurrection and true resurrection can affect Living Skeletons. These spells turn the Living Skeletons back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead. Players must declare which race they belonged to when picking the Living Skeleton race.

Click to expand...

Gold Dragon . Might want to qualify that choice of race or you get some weird silly abuses happening. Even something like drow could be a problem.

d23 said:

CHILD

"Child" is an inherited template that can be added to any living, corporeal creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature).
A Child uses all the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here.

• Small Size +1 bonus to Armor Class, +1 bonus on attack rolls, +4 bonus on Hide checks, -4 penalty on grapple checks, lifting and carrying limits ¾ those of Medium characters.
• Base land speed of 20 feet. Dwarven children have a base land speed of 15 feet.
• In addition to the bonuses and penalties that the base creature has, it gains +2 Dex, +2 Charisma, -2 Strength, -2 Wisdom.
• +1 racial bonus to all saving throws except mind-affecting spells and effects.
• +2 racial bonus on Climb, Jump, Swim, Balance, Hide and Move Silently checks.
• -2 racial penalty on Concentration and all Knowledge checks.
• -2 penalty on saving throws against mind-affecting spells and effects.
• A Child must rest for an additional 2 hours per day.
• Favoured Class: Rogue.

Click to expand...

First off, they need a note about when you stop being a child. No one gets to be a child for their entire life, no matter how much they want to.
Misc:

• total AC bonus is +2 (+1 size, +1 Dex).
• total Jump modifier is -5 (-1 for Str, -6 for speed, +2 for racial).
• total Hide modifier is +7, Move Silently is +3.
• total Will modifier is +0/-2 (mind-affecting).

Overall, they're crappy for everything except sneaky-rogues. It's odd that children make the best assassins in your world (especially Elven children - starting 22 Dex, baby!).
Mechanically, it's a strange Halfling. About as balanced as that race is (fairly balanced). Conceptually, it's wonky and wouldn't see much PC use in my games; but tastes differ.


Living Skeletons are crap. That whole "no natural healing" thing completely gimps them. I realize that they resemble Warforged, but they completely lack the Warforgeds' ability to self-heal (via Craft checks) and are subject to Turn/Rebuke Undead. And the cherry is that they can't be raised.
They suck.

Okay, I'll try for something a bit more helpful since you're so new at this.

d23 said:

LIVING SKELETON

Skeletons are the animated bones of the dead, mindless automatons that obey the orders of their evil masters. However, due to a mysterious event in the world, skeletons which were animated during that event regained parts of their minds as well as full consciousness. Most were put-down but the necromancers who summoned them, but a large number escaped and are scattered among the lands.

• Your creature type is undead.
• Medium Size
• Base land speed of 30 feet.
• +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -4 Charisma

Click to expand...

Make a note that this stuff replaces their usual undead traits. Otherwise, as several have pointed out, you get a lot of weird interactions.
Also, their ability adjustments are very negatively balanced. Not unplayable, but they need some really, really good stuff to make up for the net -2 ability scores.

• Living Skeletons gain +2 to Natural Armor
• Damage Reduction (Ex): At 1st level, Living Skeletons gain damage deduction 2/bludgeoning,magic. This increases to 5/bludgeoning,magic at 8th level.
• Turn resistance +4
• Darkvision out to 60 feet.
• +2 racial bonus against mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).
• Unlike other Undead, Living Skeletons are subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, stunning, ability damage, ability drain, energy drain, and death effects or necromancy effects.
• Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, fatigue and exhaustion effects, as well as nausea and effects that cause the sickened condition.

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Interesting, but a wash as far as balance goes. +2 NA, and DR 2(5) is strong at low level but the DR becomes essentially meaningless by level 8. The NA bump is really solid, letting skellies tank like nobody's business (AC 3 higher than equivalent human build, due to Dex and Natural Armor), but is balanced by being subject to Turn/Rebuke (even if they do count as four levels higher).

• Living Skeletons cannot heal damage naturally. Furthermore, positive energy (such as a cure spell) damages Living Skeletons.
• Negative energy (such as an inflict spell) can heal Living Skeletons.
• Living Skeletons are unaffected by raise dead and reincarnate spells or abilities. Resurrection and true resurrection can affect Living Skeletons. These spells turn the Living Skeletons back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead. Players must declare which race they belonged to when picking the Living Skeleton race.
• Undead do not breathe, eat, or sleep. However, a spellcaster must still complete 8 hours of uninterrupted rest to recover his or her spells. Living Skeletons can still benefit from the effects of consumable spells and magic items such as heroes' feast and potions.

Click to expand...

Well, that's another pile of suck added on.
They can't heal themselves, unless they are Clerics or UMD wands of Inflict. Even then, they are having to burn resources. Compared to other intelligent undead, they are crippled. Compared to Warforged they are also crippled.
Oh, and they can't be brought back from the dead unless a 13th level cleric is around, it will cost at least 10k gp, and they come back as the living creature (not the PC they have been). And I'm skipping over the "base creature" abuse already mentioned.

• A Skeleton with 0 hit points is disabled, just like a living creature. He can only take a single move action or standard action in each round, but strenous activity does not risk further injury. When his hit points are less than 0, he is unconscious and helpless, and he cannot perform any actions. However, an unconscious skeleton does not lose additonal hit points unless more damage is dealt to him, as with a living creature that is stable.
• Light Fortification (EX): When a critical hit or sneak attack is scored on a Living Skeleton, there is a 25% chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and the damage is instead rolled normally.
• A Living Skeleton has a natural weapon in the form of a claw attack that deals 1d4 points of damage.
• Automatic Languages: Common. Bonus Languages: Language of Living Skeleton's original race.
• Favored Class: Fighter

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Pretty much straight from Warforged. Essentially Diehard and Light Fortification for free. A perk but not nearly enough.

Overall, this is a really weak race. Like half-orcs, without the strength bonus, or kobolds without the Pun-pun potential.

Good luck.

I can't think of too many children winning long jump records, and I would certainly trust an adult more than a child to haggle over a car.

For the living skeleton, I'd use the obitu from Alluria Publishing.

For children, I believe that d20 Modern says the following:

d20 Modern SRD said:

Children (newborns to age 11) are handled differently from other characters. They do not have classes or levels. They begin with the same ability score package as ordinaries (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), but their ability scores are reduced as follows: –3 Str, –1 Dex, –3 Con, –1 Int, –1 Wis, –1 Cha.

Children have 1d4 hit points plus their Constitution modifier (minimum 1 hit point). They have no skills, feats, action points, or occupations. Their base attack bonus is +0, they have a +0 modifier on all saving throws (plus any modifiers for high or low ability scores), and their Reputation bonus is +0. Children have a +0 modifier to Defense and a normal speed of 20 feet. Children have no effective attacks and should be treated as noncombatants.

When a child turns 12, he or she is considered a young adult and takes his or her first level in one of the six basic classes. At that point, the character becomes an ordinary (or hero, in some cases).

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Now, the second and third paragraphs aren't too helpful for a child PC, but if you just give them the ability score modifiers in the first paragraph, the speed listing in the second, and the normal traits for their race - I'd make them one size category smaller also - then you could play them as a PC, albeit a weak one.

tl;dr'd about half the replies.

the Undead type already makes one immune to charms and compulsions, just fyi. so a +2 bonus to IMMUNE is rather useless.

Alright, first of all, thanks to all who have replied, Volcarthe, Alzrius, pawsplay, ValhallaGH, Ahnehnois.

Let me focus on the LIVING SKELETON for the time being so as to make the discussion simpler. I have taken into consideration the comments made and have edited the race accordingly:

LIVING SKELETON

• Your race is Living Skeleton
  
• Players must choose a race which they belonged to before the Living Skeleton died. (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Half-Elf, Half-Orc) (better clarification)
• For all effects related to creature type, a Living Skeleton is considered an Undead. This does not mean that you gain undead traits, but spells and effects such as Turn Undead affect your character as though it were Undead. (previously: Your creature type is Undead)
• Medium Size
• Base land speed of 30 feet.
• +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -2 Charisma (from -4)
  
• +2 to Natural Armor
• Damage Reduction (Ex): At 2nd level, Living Skeletons gain damage deduction 1/bludgeoning. This increases by 1 for every 2 levels that a Living Skeleton gains, to a maximum of 10/bludgeoning at level 20. (previously was 2/bludg,mag at lvl1, 5/bludg,mag at lvl 8)
• Turn resistance +4
• Darkvision out to 60 feet.
• +2 racial bonus against mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).
• Unlike other Undead, Living Skeletons are subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, stunning, ability damage, ability drain, energy drain, and death effects or necromancy effects.
• Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, fatigue and exhaustion effects, as well as nausea and effects that cause the sickened condition. (removed immunity to death effects)
• Living Skeletons cannot heal damage naturally.(removed)
  
• Positive energy (such as a cure spell) damages Living Skeletons.
• Negative energy (such as an inflict spell) can heal Living Skeletons.
• Living Skeletons are affected by raise dead and reincarnate spells as per normal (previously unaffected)
  
• Resurrection and true resurrection affect Living Skeletons differently. These spells turn the Living Skeletons back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead.
• Undead do not breathe, eat, or sleep. However, a spellcaster must still complete 8 hours of uninterrupted rest to recover his or her spells. Living Skeletons can still benefit from the effects of consumable spells and magic items such as heroes' feast and potions.
• A Living Skeleton with 0 hit points is disabled, just like a living creature. He can only take a single move action or standard action in each round, but strenous activity does not risk further injury.[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] When his hit points are less than 0 and are greater than -10, he is unconscious and helpless, and he cannot perform any actions. However, an unconscious Living Skeleton does not lose additional hit points unless more damage is dealt to him, as with a living creature. ( A Living Skeleton does not die if his Hit Points are reduced to -10 or greater) (better clarification)[/FONT]
• Light Fortification (EX): When a critical hit or sneak attack is scored on a Living Skeleton, there is a 25% chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and the damage is instead rolled normally.
• A Living Skeleton has a natural weapon in the form of a claw attack that deals 1d4 points of damage.
• Automatic Languages and Bonus Languages: Use Living Skeleton's original race to determine.
• Favored Class: Fighter

As for being able to turn a Living Skeleton, I wanted to add this in as a risk-reward thing for parties. I gave it Turn Resistance +4 so that it would not be turned so easily, yet it would have that vulnerability. I realise that Players hate having control of their Characters taken away from them, so I am considering allowing Living Skeleton to be immune to turn undead.