Race creation system reverse engineered and 38 example races in short form

[Coronoides]

Example races thread started here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-the-race-design-system&p=6736222#post6736222

 

[Duan'duliir]

Hey. How does pricing Elemental body work in regards to pricing the area and uses modifiers of a damaging power?

 

[Coronoides]

Links in 1st post now connect to version 1.07.

Also now on reddit D&D as "D&D 5e Race Design: reverse engineering WOTC's system" any up-votes to help me get the word out appreciated.

 

[Duan'duliir]

Dear lord. I have been looking at some of the reddit threads about what is in the SCAG, and apparently the Perception skill is the same cost as any two skills, including itself as an option for one of those two skills! The Half-Elf and Tiefling variants are both this way, with Infernal Legacy (or whatever it is called) being the same cost as fly speed 30 at 1st level (no restrictions on armour, as far as I can tell from the pictures)

 

[Coronoides]

Yep I think we are looking at an evolving system and it may be impossible to mathematically solve if you include these new races. My original intent was to just analyse races and feats from the core 3 books. The EEPC added a greater diversity enabling flyers for instance. But even by then some rules of the system behind the PHB were being changed. For instance a PHB only PC cannot fly before 6th level. The tool I have is a snapshot. It does however allow me to build the races I want. So I'm done.

Reddit: initially well recieved over there until the "not all races are worth the same and I disagree with your point costs' brigade showed up. I posted the text box answers but they just missed the point entirely.

 

[Duan'duliir]

I don't think I will try to price the SCAG stuff after all, just because of these two variants (Half-Elf and Tiefling)that conflict with your system so much.

Re: Reddit. Haters gonna hate, and the internet is full of haters. Reddit seems to be closest to the breeding ground for the haters, as does other social media (e.g. facebook, twitter) so I generally stay away.

 

[Coronoides]

Hey. How does pricing Elemental body work in regards to pricing the area and uses modifiers of a damaging power?

Azure's heated body. Does not effect an area and the DMG p280 is assuming that one foe will be hit per round (inferred from effective DPR increase for Monster). Area/target multiple =1

The Azer can't use it's ability proactively but is not limited to a small number of uses per day so for our purposes is 'at will' so x2.

The power does 1d10 (0.79pt) and this amount is allowed at first

I make the final cost 1.5pt (rounded from 1.58)

However this is wrong! as a reaction it plays havoc on actual DPR almost every round because it is additive to weapon damage. The price above (1.5pt) assumes that the only damage you are doing in the round is from the power, this is not the case here.

The right way is to treat it as a 'rider' that adds damage to an attack (like the centaur charge).
So assuming a 2d6 weapon + 1d10, DPR is 7.5+5.5=13.
*The level a DPR 13 attack becomes available is 11th level
but you only pay for 5.5DPR so 2.5pt

 

[Duan'duliir]

I can work around that. I had it at 1d6 with x2 area (all within 5ft as EEPC thunderclap), at will for 2pt total. This explanation is easier. If I use this trait in future, should I just pay for DPR, or should I continue doing it as a Damaging Power?

 

[Coronoides]

Since it:
Affects 1 target most rounds
Has a range of normal reach
can be used every round
And most importantly is in addition to a normal attack
I would calculate it as a 'rider' as I have done above. Ie as DpR. This will ensure the races DpR does not exceed that of PHB races at the same level.

 

[Duan'duliir]

You might need a version 1.08 then. You have got it as a Damaging Power in version 1.07 and before

 

[Coronoides]

Noted. I'm beginning to think this will never be over might be a while need to focus on work and my campaign starting in November

EDIT: I've decides to bring out once a month updates until people stop finding small issues like this. The core of the system will not change and further updates will be trivial.

 

[Duan'duliir]

Hey. I've just noticed that you have priced the Elf Weapon Training trait (2 martial melee, 1 martial ranged, 1 simple ranged) as 2pt (for 2 simple melee (2*0.25pt), 1 martial range (1pt), 1 simple ranged (0.5pt)), when it should be 3pt (two martial melee (2*0.75pt), 1 martial ranged (1pt), and 1 simple ranged (0.5pt)).
That puts the High elf, Wood elf, and Eladrin elf at 13pt, rather than 12pt. The Drow elf is fine, since it has different weapon training.

 

[Coronoides]

(Fingers in ears) "lalalalalalalalala"

Checking the sheet you are right I have accidentally referenced the cell for Simple Melee instead of martial melee in the formula for elf weapons training. To fix this and get all the races to 12 again is pretty close to a an entire 'do-over'. I wish someone had spotted this during the year of development and testing. As is I'm just going to ignore it. I don't have the time or energy to fix this. Elves will be a point out. Some traits will be slightly out. However, hours and hours spent fixing this will not make this tool much better.

 

[Duan'duliir]

Well, most people aren't going to meticulously go through every single cell to spot typos and whatnot. I only discovered it because I was making a subrace of elf that didn't use standard elf weapon training, but one that had training with a simple melee, martial melee, and martial ranged, which added up to 2pt, and should have been less than elf weapon training, so I had a look at the standard elf weapon training and saw the error.

If you like, I could attempt to go through all the tabs looking for errors (and typos?) and compile a list to make your monthly updates easier (or would it be harder, hanks to bigger issues like this one?). With this issue, perhaps weapon proficiency is priced incorrectly?

 

[Duan'duliir]

Its been a while, but I've only been able to do a once over (end of year stuff is really time consuming!), and I've only found one error: 1st level spell in feat at 1st level is less expensive than the same at 4th level (2pt and 3.5pt respectively)

 

[GreenTengu]

(Fingers in ears) "lalalalalalalalala"

Checking the sheet you are right I have accidentally referenced the cell for Simple Melee instead of martial melee in the formula for elf weapons training. To fix this and get all the races to 12 again is pretty close to a an entire 'do-over'. I wish someone had spotted this during the year of development and testing. As is I'm just going to ignore it. I don't have the time or energy to fix this. Elves will be a point out. Some traits will be slightly out. However, hours and hours spent fixing this will not make this tool much better.

Honestly, I think part of the issue was presuming that getting any simple weapon proficiency was ever anything that should add to the overall "cost" of the race. There are many things in there that you assigned a 0 cost value to add to a custom race that were FAR more valuable than a proficiency that you automatically get as part of pretty much every class in the book without exception (and if there is an exception, they get access to the equivalent or better weapons regardless). If anything in your system was going to be a 0-point minor feature, it most certainly should have been proficiencies in specific simple weapons.

You could simply assume the simple weapons are free, the martial weapons cost a smaller amount (honestly, the way the combat system works, if a class could actually make any meaningful use out of a martial weapon, they already have proficiency in it regardless. The Thief and Bard have martial proficiency in all the light and finesse melee weapons. I guess an Elf can squeeze out an average of 1 point more in ranged with their longbow proficiency, but that is hardly a game changer. The only classes without martial weapon proficiencies are those with cantrips they can constantly spam).

This might also help you fix up the Dwarf a bit. Really, the Dwarf calculations are all messed up. Resistance to Poison damage and save against poisons being entirely free features? Stone Cunning also being free? I'd really like to know the mentality behind that one. It results in a massive overweight applied to the features of the subraces as a result of these arbitrary choices. For instance, because of the feat Lightly Armored which gives you a +1 to either Strength or Dexterity in addition to Light Armor proficiency, we can clearly see that Light Armor proficiency should be worth 2 points, not 4. Also, it is well understood that the Mountain Dwarf is intentionally "overcost" because the races do not exist in a vacuum aside from the classes-- the classes that can use the medium armor proficiency to any effect gain no significant bonus from +2 strength and visa-versa. It gets to be overcost due to the incompatibility of the features.

In fact, the more I look at it, the more and more I have to say that a lot of this "backwards engineering" is just random and arbitrary assigning of point values utterly detached from even the most basic common sense, as though you didn't even consider comparing like features to make sure they were comparable. It is the only way I can figure Advantage on saves and resistance to poison is free, but advantage on saves against fear costs as much as 2 attribute points.

The sensible solution here would be that an advantage to saves against poison naturally grants a resistance to that damage type, while more common damage types don't confer a save and that is equal in cost to advantage against a particular pass/fail effect-- both of which are probably equal to a 2 point advantage.

I mean, how ridiculous is it that via this system here one could give a race resistance to all non-physical damage types and it would be considered a 0 point feature?

While you did a great job of laying all this out and I don't doubt a lot of work went into various thing, it feels very much that you made some core presumptions and very basic early mistakes upon which the whole system was drawn and it caused you to make mistake after mistake throughout.

 

[Duan'duliir]

I mean, how ridiculous is it that via this system here one could give a race resistance to all non-physical damage types and it would be considered a 0 point feature?

While it is ridiculous for some things you have mentioned, you can only give a race 1 resistance for 0pt. For more resistances, you have to do some maths. e.g. from my Fey'ri subrace on the examples thread:

Resistance Calculations
LA1, total levels 1 extra HP this level=5x2-5=5
LA2, total levels 2 extra HP this level=5x2-5=5
LA3, total levels 3 extra HP this level=5x2-5=5
LA4, total levels 4 extra HP this level=5x2-5=5
LA5, total levels 5 extra HP this level=0 no HD
LA6, total levels 6 extra HP this level=0 no HD
Class level 1 total levels 7 extra HP this level=8x1.5-8=4
Class level 2 total levels 8 extra HP this level=5x1.5-5=2.5
Class level 3 total levels 9 extra HP this level=5x1.5-5=2.5
Class level 4 total levels 10 extra HP this level=5x1.5-5=2.5
Class level 5 total levels 11 extra HP this level=5x1.25-5=1.25
Class level 6 total levels 12 extra HP this level=5x1.25-5=1.25
Class level 7 total levels 13 extra HP this level=5x1.25-5=1.25
Class level 8 total levels 14 extra HP this level=5x1.25-5=1.25
Class level 9 total levels 15 extra HP this level=5x1.25-5=1.25
Class level 10 total levels 16 extra HP this level=5x1.25-5=1.25
Class level 11 total levels 17 extra HP this level=5x1-5=0
Class level 12 total levels 18 extra HP this level=5x1-5=0
Class level 13 total levels 19 extra HP this level=5x1-5=0
Class level 14 total levels 20 extra HP this level=5x1-5=0
TOTAL = 5+5+5+5+0+0+5+2.5+2.5+2.5+1.25+1.25+1.25+1.25+1.25+1.25+0+0+0+0 = 40
2d20 can get this, so 11.25*2 = 22.5

 

[bedir than]

Someone needs to whip up a small dinocreature that may have really existed https://twitter.com/EricGomez86/status/674725353747705856

 

[Coronoides]

For an LA0 race with 2 resistances the cost would be a very expensive 26pt. See page 20 of article for more. please Excuse typos I am overseas and my laptop died so this is being written on my phone. At this point in time my focus is on running my campaign in my FLGS (big shout out to Gatekeeper Games Melbourne Australia). This campaign has new races playing alongside PHB ones (11 players!) so will add to playtesting done during my quarterly 10 hour Gatecon games. So for the next year or so I will be looking at what others have to say (as I did during the year it took to produce this project) and what the hundreds of PC hours of playtesting . Some suggestions like the Hobgoblins of 0pt simple weapon profs will be worth feeding in and seeing how they pan out when fed into the system. I *might* produce small updates in 2016 but my focus will be on the FUN bit playing. I expect to complete my campaign in December 2016. After that an overhaul of the system including fixing the elf issue and trying other inputs while remaining true to the mathamatical method used will take up my limited free time in 2017. A new version would be due early 2018. In the meantime: the tool works well and as stated in the article you are free to change anything you want at your own table. I invite Hobgoblin to make his proposed changes to the dwarf then adjust other trait costs to ensure all PHB and EEPC races are worth 12pt. I look forward to seeing his contributtion.

 

[Coronoides]

TheHobgoblin "In fact, the more I look at it, the more and more I have to say that a lot of this "backwards engineering" is just random and arbitrary assigning of point values..."

Common sense is simple 'judgement based on experience'. with a system this new and with the problem of human bias common sense is not common. Different players will argue forever over how useful a trait is in play. Common sense is not universal and is useless. I refer you to page 3 for more. From page 3: "judgment is really just another word for guessing; guessing what WOTC’s designers were thinking. By making this one assumption I can avoid hundreds of other judgment calls (guesses). Where possible I limit guesswork by using math.".
Yes, the point point values of some traits are solid and others are less certain than others but I tell you this. This is because there is only so much evidence available particularly for infrequently used traits.
I refer you to the article that describes the method used and details how I rate the levels of evidence used for each trait. Additionally, the spreadsheet lists page numbers for the evidence used to assign the values for each trait.

P.s. I have played for literally hundreds of PC hours and never seen stone cunning used. Your experience on the other hand legitimately leads you to believe it is a valuable trait. This is a good example of what I mean by the uselessness of common sense and the ability of gamers to argue forever.