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New player race - need help with design

clockworkjoe

First Post
I've thought up a new race for my DnD campaign but I want to make it interesting, not just a variant pointy eared humanoid. Basically, the idea is a very small flying race that lives fast and dies young. They were engineered to be the perfect adventuring species because their creator saw adventurers as the dominant life form of the cosmos. I have a few questions though:

1. One of their abilities is to communicate at incredible speeds with one another. This is mainly so they can learn fast to take up adventuring. How could biological organisms share information at high speeds?

2. What kind of abilities would you give them?

3. Are they over or under powered?

4. How do you picture them in a fantasy DnD world? They aren't inherently good or evil, so you could have a range of competing nations fighting each other.

5. I'm terrible with names. What would you call this race?


Here's what I have so far:

Koborians
diminutive monstrous humanoid

Description: An insectile humanoid six to twelve inches tall, golden colored with small but functional wings. They are magical derivatives of the kobold

Size: Diminutive
+4 to attack +4 to AC, -12 to grapple, +12 to hide

Speed 15 feet land 30 feet flying

Chitin hide: +2 natural armor AC

Attribute modifiers
-10 Strength (minimum 1), +4 dex, -2 con +2 int

Lifespan: 5 years.

Special Qualities: All koborians have the following characteristics

Dark vision 60 feet.

Fragile: The extremely small size of the koborian reduces their ability to survive massive traumatic injuries. A koborian must make a massive damage check if one takes 25 points of damage or more in a single attack. (fort DC 15) Failing the check puts the koborian at -1 hit points and bleeding.

Accelerated communication (ex): Koborians share information with each other at a much faster rate than any other intelligent species, in both written and spoken communication. An elder koborian (4 to 5 years old) can tell their life story in great detail within an hour to other koborians. While non-koborians can speak or read their language, they are unable to absorb the information at the same rate. In game terms, a koborian can say up to 500 words of information as a free action or write 500 words as a full round action.

Traits: Koborians continually evolve to adapt to new surroundings. As a result, many koborians have different abilities than their fellows. Koborians can select their trait package upon reaching maturity, which usually takes two weeks from birth. A character can only choose one trait package.

Standard: One additional feat at first level.

Stealth: Can alter their coloration as camouflage, up to 30 minutes a day, giving a +10 circumstance bonus to hide checks. Can be activated or deactivated with a swift action.

Warrior: The character’s attribute modifiers are as follows: -4 strength

Wizard: The character can expel an organic compound that can be mixed with plant matter to create a thin membranous paper. This paper can be bound into a spellbook only usuable by koborians.

History: A powerful kobold lich was obsessed with making his species free from their fate of serving various evil dragons or the kobold god. He also wanted them to compete with the most dangerous predator kobolds had ever known; adventurers. After long years of research, he concluded these goals could only be possible if his new race were adventurers themselves, with free will and power to fight off their foes. Finally, the lich created the most efficient and independent race, the koborian.

The lich saw many advantages in the hive structure of insect races such as the fomorians. They were highly cooperative and organized. Most importantly, they bred fast and in huge numbers, so they could quickly recover from devastating losses. However, they lacked free will and independent initiative, vital traits for any adventurer. So, the lich gave the new kobolds incorporated human and kobold mental traits, to put them on an equal footing. In order to give them these traits, the lich had to keep them extremely small, as larger species would take too long to grow. The lich saw the small size as an advantage, as almost
 

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First, I think you may be confusing fomorians (large deformed giants in the MMII, various evil beasties in Celtic legend) with formians (ant-centaur-things from Mechanus). That happens a lot.

Second, stats. You really need to list the manuverability rating for a Koborian's flight (clumsy, poor, average, good, or perfect; clumsy's worst, perfect's best). And maybe give them a longer lifespan (five years game time is probably not long enough for an adventuring career, never mind the time needed to grow to maturity). I'm guessing that Fragile is an (ex) ability, but what about the Stealth and Wizard special traits? The wizard traits are definately not on par with the other trait packages. Also, Accelerated Communication doesn't have much of a game effect. Perhaps something like this would be better:
Accelerated Communication (ex): Koborians share information with each other at a much faster rate than any other intelligent species, in both written and spoken communication. An elder koborian (4 to 5 years old) can tell their life story in great detail within an hour to other koborians. While non-koborians can speak or read their language, they are unable to absorb the information at the same rate. In game terms, a koborian takes half the normal time to scribe a scroll, place a spell in a spellbook, make a Forgery or Decipher Script check, make a Spellcraft check to decipher a scroll or spellbook, or make any Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Intimidate, or Perform (Comedy, Oratory, or Sing) check directed at other koborians. In addition, non-koborians take a -2 penalty to Spellcraft checks made to determine what spell a koborian is casting.
Speaking bluntly, very few players are going to want to use this race, given the massive penalties to strength and the Fragile trait (which I see little point to; it's not as if the penalties to strength weren't enough to offset all of the other traits together). I'm afraid that the race needs a lot of work, and there's many people who are better than me at helping others, making monsters, or both.
 


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