Pathfinder 1E Pixie in the party

[Savage Wombat]

Really, losing half your hit dice and the associated BAB/skills/saves is not much? On the occasion that your invisibility and spell-like abilities don't work, you're pretty helpless. I'd say they better be nice.

I interpreted his statement to mean he'd be playing a pixie / rogue 4 among the eighth level party, so he'd not be losing HD at all. If you interpret him to mean he'd be playing a pixie with 4 HD and ECL+4, your statement would be accurate. Pathfinder doesn't use ECL, so I didn't want to assume.

But nothing wrong with ratfolk.

 

[Ahnehnois]

[MENTION=1932]Savage Wombat[/MENTION]
You're right. That was an assumption on my part having so internalized the ECL rules. Non-issue now anyway

 

[DMZ2112]

You do know that 4E pixies use all the same rules as Small characters, right? Other than fitting four of them into one square, there's really no difference... You could certainly claim 4E messed them up by the way they balanced them without a level adjustment, but ruined them by making them Tiny? Really?

There's really no difference, other than that they're the size of housecats? Did you really just dismiss being smaller than a breadbox as the least relevant part of the D&D4 pixie redesign?

 

[doghead]

... and with a disturbing tendency to snack on dead things...

Uuhh. Thats not really an image I wanted in my head. But it does sound like an interesting character to play.

thotd

 

[Ahnehnois]

Uuhh. Thats not really an image I wanted in my head.

Don't most people snack on dead things?

 

[TwoSix]

Don't most people snack on dead things?

I hope so, I don't want the mental image of people snacking on live things.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Don't most people snack on dead things?

Some people snack on Twinkies, or fat-free snack chips. No organic molecules in those.

 

[Celebrim]

Pixie is an available PC race in my homebrew, though so far I've never had anyone take one because they are really fragile and I haven't had the right personality player to overlook that.

They don't work anything like the traditional D&D Monster - Pixie - though, and some of what makes my implementation work is very specific to my homebrew particularly the interaction between size class and hit points. They certainly don't get invisibility at will, but they can fly (which is huge). But since they don't have racial hit dice or ECL you can play one from first level - you'd just have to put up with having 4-6 hit points (or so) while your human/dwarf/hobgoblin comrades have 16-24. It's like having 1e hit points while the other PC's have 4e hit points. And yes, you'd have the "+12 bonus to hit, but only do 1 point of damage" problem. I really doubt you can make one work except as some sort of spell-caster, but that just increases your fragility problems.

 

[doghead]

They don't work anything like the traditional D&D Monster - Pixie - though, and some of what makes my implementation work is very specific to my homebrew particularly the interaction between size class and hit points. They certainly don't get invisibility at will, but they can fly (which is huge). But since they don't have racial hit dice or ECL you can play one from first level - you'd just have to put up with having 4-6 hit points (or so) while your human/dwarf/hobgoblin comrades have 16-24. It's like having 1e hit points while the other PC's have 4e hit points. And yes, you'd have the "+12 bonus to hit, but only do 1 point of damage" problem. I really doubt you can make one work except as some sort of spell-caster, but that just increases your fragility problems.

I suppose one person's trash is another person's treasure. This sounds like a pretty interesting character to play, I think. Do they get invisibility at all?

thotd

 

[Celebrim]

I suppose one person's trash is another person's treasure. This sounds like a pretty interesting character to play, I think. Do they get invisibility at all?

thotd

Not directly. They can gain it as a spell-like ability from the Feyblood class (which is sort of like gaining racial hit die), or they can gain it as a spell from being a Sorcerer or Bard. But since they are tiny, you have a +8 bonus on hide checks, and they also have a +6 racial bonus to Dexterity (which means in general, you'll just about never see a PC Pixie with less than 20 Dex). Combine that with flight and you get the myth that Pixies have natural invisibility. Since its not that hard to get to +20 hide checks from a low level, you've got more than a decent chance of attacking from range and not being seen (although the way distance and spot checks interact is different in my game as well).

What they can do though is max out Planeswalking since Pixies always treat it as a class skill regardless of class, which would give you the ability to go ethereal (and hence pretty undetectable) from a fairly early level regardless of class. It's not as good as invisibility for most of the purposes people put invisibility too, because you can't generally attack anything in the material. And Ethereal doesn't work exactly like standard stock D&D either, but it would mean that from a fairly early level most doors don't present a barrier. Really old stone buildings and undisturbed ground have a tendency to also exist in the ether though, which limits what you can walk through (though you can tear holes in ethereal objects if you have the time, it's sort of like working with clay). Then again, every time you go ethereal you get a wandering encounter check to see if some other spirit happens to be hanging around...good thing that Pixies are relatively immune to horror and madness.

I don't have a Pixie in the party, but I have had Sidhe - which take the place of Halflings and Gnomes in my game (any Halfling or Gnome you wanted to play would be a Sidhe with a particular personality). They work similarly, only no wings and a bit bigger.