Re: New Build-Your-Own-Race Expansion is live!

**Stairc -Dan Felder** Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:50 am

The race expansion is optional Tyger. You don't have to build your own race. Why would you think you were being forced to use it?

Also, the nerfs so far haven't been because of the racial expansion. Working on the racial expansion just revealed a lack of balance between certain races already in the system. I'm sorry Tyger, but when there are balance issues - they kind of need to be addressed.

Luckily, the response to the Genetic Engineering system by reading the chats, talking to players and seeing PMs has been overwhelmingly positive overall. Once we work out these last wrinkles, possibly buffing everything to the 6+ cm system (might well do that when I have time), it's going to be a fantastically valuable expansion that gives initiative players a brand new set of cool things to play with for their characters and automatically generate new races without worrying about them being unbalanced.

Definitely loving this expansion. jocolor

Jason Shadow Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:37 am

tygerburningbright wrote:DAN! YOU SAID THERE WOULD NOT BE NERFING! YOU SAID THAT THE RACE EXPASION WOULD BE OPTIONAL! YOU SAID THAT EVERYTHING WOULD BE ALRIGHT!

RAAAAAGE!!!

Spoiler:

But anyway, while I really hate to bring this up again, I've thought long and hard about issues with - yes - the changelings. My main concerns are these:

Spoiler:

...Okay, I just checked the RoE document and saw that the Changeling race has been split in two. Okay, now I feel sort of foolish. Objections withdrawn, though I have my doubts about how often the "True Shifter" subtype will be picked. But I'll still leave my concerns here; I didn't spend fifty minutes typing them up just to delete them. Feel free to look at them and laugh, if the mood strikes you.

Oh, and I wanted to mention: I had an thought about cutie marks. The new racial system means that conceivably, if the player of a pony doesn't like the "plain old skill bonus" cutie mark, then the player could instead have their Cutie Mark supply a (2) or two (1) racial traits. Personally, I think this is awesome; while it means that some ponies would give up the chance for a Cutie Mark Critical, such a sacrifice would be a willing one and allow for much more versatility. I already plan to do that for at least one PC in my Plethora...

EDIT: I, for one, would appreciate expanding the racial to the 6 + Cutie Mark system; as it stands, my initial plan for the bat ponies (Flight + Cutie Mark + Echolocation) is barely too pricy to create under the current rules.

Ramsus Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:09 am

Jason, you should join me in cheerleading for your Fireborn alternates to be included... since you made them. geek

**Stairc -Dan Felder** Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:26 am

Ramsus wrote:Jason, you should join me in cheerleading for your Fireborn alternates to be included... since you made them.

Definitely going to include some version of those. =)

Ramsus Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:47 am

I really love those. In fact we need one for each Pokemon type. Wait, no, wrong thing. (Normalborn. Um...?) jocolor

Appkes Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:57 am

I go the oddball route and declare races should be able to do whatever they like, at Faust discretion.

Just kidding, I hate the way this new system interacts with CM and say meh to the whole lot. 6 +cm sounds okay, though.

Incidently, it's easy peasy to get a +20 modifier without even taking utilities.

RavenscroftRaven Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:38 am

Ramsus wrote:I really love those. In fact we need one for each Pokemon type. Wait, no, wrong thing. (Normalborn. Um...?)

...Each pokemon type?

Dragonborn?! Now this is a racial pick I can get behind!

On topic, seems like things are slowly sorting themselves out. Would be nice to keep the old books available and just copy-paste into a new doc to keep a "version history" though, for the games we're currently playing under grandfathered rules. Just for future.

Greywander Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:53 am

Okay, as someone playing a baby dragon in a campaign, I don't exactly understand why they're overpowered and need to be nerfed (except for the point totals adding up too fast, and Friendship is Dragons/Grandeur costing 3 points makes sense). I am, however, distraught that I seem to have lost my third trained skill and yet haven't gained a cutie mark/expert skill to replace it. Going from three trained skills to two will completely change my character, requiring me to reflavor him. I guess the optimal solution in this case is the 6+CM everyone's been suggesting, which makes sense to me. As someone else said, whether or not you have a magic tattoo on your butt doesn't mean don't have a skill you particularly excel in. Flavor-wise, one could suppose that cutie marks have some sort of magic in them that gives ponies an edge over nonponies, but that doesn't necessarily have to be represented in the mechanics.

Also, I'm not sure we should encourage players to recreate already existing races. Part of the fun is playing a race you like for the flavor, only to find later that some racial trait you never thought you'd use comes in handy. I understand doing this for playtesting purposes, but it seems like it would encourage min/maxing, and besides, this is essentially what utility talents are for.

I need to check my diamond dog and sleipnir races, and see how they compare to the new system. Of course, both of them had racial traits not listed in this expansion, so it might require some guesswork ranking custom racial abilities. Ooh, maybe I can make up some other new races. ...Fel pon ies... (Hmm, shadhavar would be basically identical to unicorns, mechanically speaking, and helhestes need poison/disease resistance.)

Also, need to make some alternate racial traits for earth ponies that involve geomancy/druidism/animals, since these tend to be underrepresented aspects of earth pony magic (except maybe animals, and they're mostly associated with Fluttershy, who is not an earth pony). Although, hmm... maybe those would work better as utility talents (animal stuff already exists there), since it's conceivable to have an earth pony that's phenomenal at... farming rocks, but very bad with animals, or vice versa. I should probably shut up and go to bed.

**Stairc -Dan Felder** Sat Nov 17, 2012 6:08 am

I'm going to go with the 6+cm system. It's just cool.

But will take me a few days to spend the time re-balancing everything.

Fury of the Tempest Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:02 am

Jason Shadow wrote:Oh, and I wanted to mention: I had an thought about cutie marks. The new racial system means that conceivably, if the player of a pony doesn't like the "plain old skill bonus" cutie mark, then the player could instead have their Cutie Mark supply a (2) or two (1) racial traits. Personally, I think this is awesome; while it means that some ponies would give up the chance for a Cutie Mark Critical, such a sacrifice would be a willing one and allow for much more versatility. I already plan to do that for at least one PC in my Plethora...

I actually really like that idea and I second the notion!

Doubly so as a (2) racial trait is an extra utility talent.

Appkes Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:51 pm

Thats a real good idea

XandZero2 Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:25 pm

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:I'm going to go with the 6+cm system. It's just cool.

But will take me a few days to spend the time re-balancing everything.

Here's something to consider too, and I'm not sure how much of this has already been mentioned by Jason Shadow (so if it has, just consider this as me agreeing with him) but...

You could allow players to choose a CM/ES in both systems, and if they don't take the CM/ES, just give them two more race points.

-OR-

Even more simply, you could just start everyone out with 8 race points, and keep the CM/ES as a 2 point option. 8 race points may seem like a lot, but that's basically what 6+CM equals out to be, right?

**Stairc -Dan Felder** Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:28 pm

It's so odd to base the entire balance of a racial system just around some players not wanting to have their favorite race debuffed. But that's how much I care about keeping you all happy with the game. =)

Ramsus Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:30 pm

Kinda, there is a bit of a difference. 6+CM means it actually requires (as default) GM permission to swap out the CM for 2 points worth of stuff. This would prevent people from being munchkins somewhat.

Fury of the Tempest Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:53 pm

Ramus has a point... I mean I think it'll be up to the GM to decide in the end whenever or not the cuite mark and the talent behind it means you have a bonus in a skill, or something else.

And to be honest, 6 + Cuite Mark means that the pony races will probably have to be rebalanced. As currently they all have 4 points + CM. So...

Earth Pony gets... stubbornness. Pegasus, Heart of Courage and Unicorn's... ... Specialist and Magical Attunement?

**Stairc -Dan Felder** Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:59 pm

Earth ponies would probably trade out freaky knowledge for their old ability. Not sure of the others though.

However, while I'd like to make the CM mandatory, I'm not sure that it encourages munchkining if we don't. A CM is quite possibly the strongest 2 point trait already.

Xel Unknown Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:02 pm

Just keeping it to a base 8 points seems the most logical to me...

Fury of the Tempest Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:03 pm

There really is a lot of things that required to be thought about when it comes to this...

Cutie Mark's being made a bit more flexibility and being allowed to be used as a 2 (1) racial abilities or a (2) ability for the species that already have a Cuite Mark sounds good. 6+CM/ES... I could do without that.

Xel Unknown Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:10 pm

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:It's so odd to base the entire balance of a racial system just around some players not wanting to have their favorite race debuffed. But that's how much I care about keeping you all happy with the game. =)

Well you did say you'd NOT be doing any debuffs, or at least would do everything in your power to not do so, cause while it's easier, people don't like seeing that type of thing happen most of the time. Cause the system seemed balanced before this lastest update that somehow makes you need to do debuffing cause of how your numbers that people might or might not agree with seem to have some races end up adding up a bit too much and junk.

**Stairc -Dan Felder** Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:23 pm

Exactly. I want to do everything possible to avoid debuffs, even to the point where I'm strongly considering completely altering the power of races in comparison to the power of utility talents and other elements of character creation just to keep dragon players from having to lose a trained skill. It just worries me a bit that we're basing such point allocations not on the overall gameplay of the system or power balance, but rather because we made a race that was too strong the first time through and don't want to change it.

But frankly, if CMs are supposed to be optional, we could nix the auto-cutie-mark (which necessitates the 6+CM total) and just make pony tales' stuff a 7 point system - which standardizes it to Living Legends' own totals. Baby dragons and changelings would still get their training but wouldn't have CMs unless they sacrifice other things.

**LoganAura** Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:30 pm

i like the 7 point system idea. it makes people feel POWAHFUL.

Fury of the Tempest Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:31 pm

To be honest, apart from the idea that Cuite Mark Skills can be swapped out for 2 (1) racial talents or a (2) racial talent if the GM agrees to the selection. I'm okay with how things are right now. The Dragon's have been nerfed slightly, but sometimes that must happen to keep things balanced.

Ramsus Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:34 pm

If we're going to do that I'd rather it be 8 than 7 so we still have the same standard of 6+CM mechanically speaking.
Edit: Also 7 makes Earth Ponies really awkward. Epic Pwny (3), Cutie Mark (2), Freaky Knowledge (1) = 6. Um... what do we do with the extra point? More skill training? That seems really weird that the default for one race would be having 3 Trained Skills and a Cutie Mark Skill and another might end up with 2 Trained Skills.

Fury of the Tempest Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:35 pm

It seems we are unable to agree with one another XD

Ramsus Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:37 pm

It's not my fault you want to nerf everyone? Does 1 more point actually bother you? Because one less will bother a lot of people.

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