A Clockwork Soul - the Aulos

[Chronologist]

Yet the Fighter in plate armor gets a DEX bonus and can use the Dodge feat.

DR seems like a reasonable alternative.

I suppose so. I just figured, D&D's already filled with enough strange rules and situations, that I might as well go out of my way and try and make some that doesn't just work mechanically, but makes some sort of sense.

DR 1/- with a feat to improve it by 1 seems pretty good to me. The DR and con bonus make it good for any kind of warrior, the Perform bonus is good for bards, the charisma will be loved by Paladins, Bards, and Sorcerers, and I'm sure all kinds of casters will love the immunities the Living Construct subtype grants. Even rogues will like the charm and toughness the race brings, even if they lose a little mobility in the process.

I figure, if your race looks like an attractive option for pretty much all the classes in the game, and has the same power as any other Pathfinder race, you did your job right.

 

[LogantheBard]

Instead of armor bonus, why not a +2 fort bonus, and automatic light fortification (25% to avoid crit), or +4 ac against confirmations

 

[dragonis111]

Since they seem to be metallic in nature, maybe a weakness to rust attacks such as rusting grasp and the rust monster?

EDIT: so far this race seems awesome, I can't wait for it to be finished so I can use it for npcs and offer it to my players as a racial choice!!!

 

[Chronologist]

A raw +2 bonus to Fortitude saves is about as good as a feat, and I think that would make the race a little too strong, since it would also stack with Great Fortitude.

Light Fortification is more of a Warforged thing, I think, and makes the race decidedly not-human. I'm shooting for a race that can be fluffed as either constructs or as humanoids with planar ancestry. That way, it can be more easily introduced into a variety of campaign settings, unlike the Warforged which are pretty much Eberron-specific, and tend to feel a little out of place without a lot of explanation.

For the weakness against rust attacks, I figured that was part of a Living Construct's nature, along with reduced healing from Cure spells and the ability to recover hit points with Repair spells. If not, it should be included.

 

[dragonis111]

hmm I would have to look up on that, also it depends if your race is iron or an iron-alloy, as rusting grasp only works with those types of metal where as the rust monster can damage any non magic metal.

 

[Chronologist]

Maybe a good solution would be to remove the DR 1/-, and allow the race to choose from a number of different materials at character creation. Iron alloys would have a larger bonus, but give the vulnerability to rust effects, while non-rusting metals like (presumably) Mithral would have lesser benefits, but no drawback. Heavier materials might also come with an inherent armor check penalty that stacks with other armor check penalties. If you're made of Adamantine, then you can't really swim that easily or jump that high.

By doing this, the DM can also tell the player which material types are allowed and which are not in his campaign. Maybe it's a low fantasy world and there's precious little Mithral or Adamantine. Maybe it's more steampunk, so all Aulos are Copper. Alternatively, it could be a high fantasy world where they were constructed to look dazzling, so they could all be made of Mithral.

I'll write up a variety of materials at some point. I figure five or six should be enough to cover all bases. At the moment though, I have Mithral and Iron prepared.

Mithral: Aulos made or born of this material are particularly attractive and graceful. They receive a +2 racial bonus to Diplomacy and Acrobatics checks, and a +1 racial bonus on reflex saves. Their physical weight is halved. They take no penalties.

Iron: Aulos made of iron are particularly tough, if a little rusted around the edges. They receive DR 2/adamantine, but they are also vulnerable to Rusting Grasp and other abilities that target metals.

 

[SteelDraco]

If you're using them, the trait mechanics might be a good place to introduce the variant materials and other mechanical adjustments to a base race. That's what I did in my setting's version of a similar race, the forgeborn.

 

[Dingo333]

So this is a race for everyone but the druid?

As it stands now, an Aulos could not be a druid due to the metal skin

 

[Chronologist]

What if they had Carbon Skin as an option? It would allow them to be a druid, and give them another minor benefit. Plus, carbon is pretty strong, so it would work just fine conceptually. Maybe it would give a bonus to swim checks due to lightness or something.

Traits sound okay, but since not every campaign allows them, I'm trying to avoid them. Making it a racial feature seems okay, and there's precedent in Pathfinder for members of the same race to have different racial features.

 

[Squire James]

I can imagine some low-life thugs going after these guys to loot their copper (sort of like what real-world thieves do to vacant houses nowadays)!

As for the Druid metal restriction, I think it's better to acknowledge the restriction or declare it an exception than to invent some even-stranger skin composition to circumvent the restriction. I would think constructs would be an anathema to most druids similar to how demons or undead would be to paladins. That would not necessarily prevent that class but would make them rare enough that such a PC is likely to be the only one in the world.