Legacey Races

[*Sunshine]

The difference is the following:

Old Vampire Mage: Inferior to a base race mage, but can start to play mage right away despite high LA.

New Vampire Mage: Inferior to a base race mage, but have to grind through several levels of a PRC before they can start to be a mage.


In general:

The new races are incredible in one role, far more powerful than a standard race would be. But! Try to use a build not supported by the prc and you get hit harder then before ( yes, LA might be effectively the same but in the old system I was not forced to grind through several levels wrth of PRC without gaining anything suppoerting my toon's role).

While it is possible to only take a few levels of the racial PRC it leaves the player stuck with.... something but not a Succubus, Vampire, Lich, ect.

[*MadPorthos]

You know, some people might not want to constantly be yoinked around and rebuild again, again and again. In their minds even and in their roleplay they might even have reflected the previous rebuilds as actually happening in game, traumas occurring that changed them - alterations on their path and profession. But sometimes too much is too much.

I got very frustrated in some ways, even though ultimately I'm behind the upgrading - due to my own experience with it. Here it was in a nutshell.

I was granted permission to play a special race Hound Archon about 3 years ago now. At the time, we had to get special approval, on account of these characters being more or less made with editing rather than a system of prescripted goodness as exists in later iterations.

I got to create my first character within that rules base and was enjoying levelling it, got almost to about level 15, with all the powers and some of the feats the character type was supposed to have on the character's creature skin, an item that doesn't normally show on the character sheet but that like an armor or other equipment item, can have special enchantment/effect properties that will be given to the character from having it. Problems seemed to occur from this system of doing things, perhaps made by shapechanging spells or polymorph effects and other special race characters where having issues, though I never had. Still, was told we needed to rebuild.

In the rebuild, the system changed. We got our powers on an "amulet slot" item. The item would of course exclude you from using an amulet in game, but essentially it was so good, you didn't miss it because it had all your bonus feats, damage resists and special spells and powers on it. With it equipped, all the stuff special about your race worked... and if you got of a level that you could have actually gotten a +5 natural armor amulet and your race didn't have that natural armor level, you'd get that edited onto the amulet. As you can guess, such was DM intensive. At this point also, in addition to getting the +5LA of the race, we were required to take the race's outsider levels, so I went from being a 15th level Paladin Hound Archon, to relevelling and taking my first 6 levels as outsider, then going Paladin. Essentially this made it almost like the real ECL was +11 in a way - because ultimately your max level would be 6 outsider + 19 levels of anything else. The +5 LA meant 25 was maximum. I played this for a while, but started foundering as the advantage of being hound archon counted for less and less against foes who could EASILY pierce DR 10/evil. The huge skill points of outsider levels were nice, but mainly just let the race use UMD skill, so they could use special magic items that simulated their shapechange ability, also have enough survival to use the Track and Scent skills/abilities.
Without those Outsider skill points, there weren't enough points from the main classes to be able to spend on being able to track/scent/umd - so I suppose Outsider made sense, but it seemed like having both the Outsider levels (monster class) and the ECL remaining was making it far less than optimal. An "epic" Hound Archon didn't actually get to be Epic in actual numerical levels.

I was away when the newer, scripted special race system came on line for Hound Archons - not the one Ceremorph has now done with PRC, but one before it. That one dropped the Hound Archon's base powers somewhat, reduced LA to +4 and completely removed the Outsider levels - I am guessing having a monster class like Outsider available with 8 skill points per level was seen as just too good, despite it not having any other real powers. It let those outsiders be skilled enough to do the things their base races needed to do, like tracking, etc. The new version however had lots of the advantages and NO LONGER on equipment slots. Fully integrated to the character sheet, the hound archons didn't require character editing from DMs, nor special attention if they got messed up by polymorphing and the like. However, they were missing some things the special race had - which meant that equipment that had been made at great trouble for the original character, could not really be used for this version of the character. This was a pain, but it was worth it I figured because this version of the hound archon would be able to use creature weapons. So I made this change when I got back. Unfortunately, no, in fact I was misinformed an this version did not have creature weapons and I lost what I had before. Fatigue began to set in and I felt vaguely sick of the whole thing and less than happy with roleplaying the character and where it was going.

When I heard Ceremorph was once again remaking the Hound Archon, I was trepidatious. Is that a word even? But the thing is, Ceremorph is a wizard. Seriously. Most everything I've seen here that's been from Ceremorph has worked out IMO, in the end and had a decent reason for happening. Even the special race version of Hound that happened before this change had it's issues, one of which simply was it didn't really reflect that some Hound Archons indeed might be greatsword wielding paladins, while others might have very little interest in fighting that way, prefering tooth n' claw, or be a spellcaster. It wasn't so flexible, also still had a +4 LA and did not even emulate the racial archon when you actually pursued being a paladin. There were things about Hound Archons as a race that just weren't touched upon which making it a PRC class allows one to take or leave and I think that's worth these rebuilds. That is my opinion though.

Someone who made their special race character two years ago and is happy with where it is, powerful or not - right now - should not be forced to re-level. It can be frustrating, hard to roleplay, repetitive and even punishing. As I think Mr.O said before, characters may be more powerful now, but they also can be less so in some ways, losing powers deemed problematic - or only gaining them later in their progression, when these powers make levelling less of a cakewalk. So when an old character is remade, while they maybe can get many more character levels, they still might not breeze through them quite the way they once did - even though our server's system for giving bonus xp to a character being recreated does give a significant helping hand.

Well, that's my take on it.

[*Whitefly]

Most of the new 3 ECL + prestige class races are quite a bit stronger than their legacy forms, Vampire is stronger is some ways now, but the loss of that +4 charisma boost and the 13 level requirement made it quite awkward and difficult to come up with a build for.


Personally, I think all racial classes should have been d4 hit points, low BAB with no caster levels and have a max class level equal to the legacy race's ECL, thereby replacing their entire ECL (which was crippling due to the loss of epic feats) with a junk class to recover the freed up levels and stand in place of ECL.

What we got instead was a more focused design, intended to promote particular playstyles for particular races. Argue the merits of that as you will - it's not something that can really be changed anyway - but balance for the new PrCs is certainly something that can be tweaked.

[*Ariella]

As a small note i would like to point out that while you have lost several stats it has been replaced with AB, Saves, HP, Skills and Epic feats that previously had been locked away due to high LA. This included high level epic feats (Hymn of requiem for example) that previously couldn't be used by most high LA races.

Now a lot of these races might end up lower on the balance scale then before but its to be expected with a new system, A lot of them may very well be rebalanced once the remainder of the races are complete.

[*Ceremorph]

What we got instead was a more focused design, intended to promote particular playstyles for particular races. Argue the merits of that as you will - it's not something that can really be changed anyway - but balance for the new PrCs is certainly something that can be tweaked.

This is quite intentional, as the optimal builds are going to be those that fit with the lore of the creature in question. A troll is going to make a poor sorcerer but an excellent barbarian, so of course the Savage Marauder PRC is focused to synergize nicely with that sort of build. The same holds true for succubi being casters, angels being divine casters, and the upcoming eladrin having options for druid and bard... because it fits what the character would be if they actually were made using the true PnP method of level adjustment plus creature levels. The advantage here is that you can still step away from that, but it's just something we already see with the base races: half-orcs make poor wizards, halflings make poor frenzied berzerkers.

It's also why, at least with the primary outsider races, I'm making sure to have (eventually) at least three of each sort: currently the brachina and erinyes for devils and eventually amnizu, succubus/cambion/hezrou for demons, the three deva types for angels. Eventually the archons will have trumpet and word, eladrin (which I'm working on right now) will have bralani/firre/ghaele, and even slaadi will provide multiple options.

Now to revisit vampires... yes, I do plan to revisit vampires and give multiple options there as well, I just needed a break from the undead, particularly because I'm more of a fan of outsiders than of undead, and of course it's more fun to do work on your own interests. The other remaining racial PRCs, which will include half-racial and lycanthropy options, will likely be handled in a way that gives the highest degree of freedom as well.

[*MadPorthos]

I am moderately curious if Modrons beyond mono-duodrones will ever appear, additionally yugloths as these are sort of noted blanks in the spectrum we have represented.

[*Azelle]

3. As example, the previous Succubi Race had ECL+8, which made it very difficult to level up, at certain levels almost impossible to pierce enemy SR, getting dispelled everytime and no BAB to be anything other then a cha caster. Or take a look at the current Iron Golem. They hit like a rock, but get two attacks lesser then other races. Their starting stats are that strong that they dont even get Magic Immunity. Tieing abilities to levels is so much easier to balance over 27 levels.

One question. Is 2 less attacks really such a big deal?

I mean, they were going to be at -20 and -25 to hit anyway. The reason that PnP D&D stopped granting extra attacks at epic levels was because eventually you get to the point where those extra attacks all require a 20 to hit relevant AC values and it slows down the game for very little purpose.

While in NWN2 allowing the extra attacks works due to the computer doing the rolls for you, it does mean that just saying 2 extra attacks makes it sound a lot more important than it really is, because your fifth and sixth attack will probably hit less often combined than even your third, or possibly even fourth one does alone.

What we got instead was a more focused design, intended to promote particular playstyles for particular races. Argue the merits of that as you will - it's not something that can really be changed anyway - but balance for the new PrCs is certainly something that can be tweaked.

This is quite intentional, as the optimal builds are going to be those that fit with the lore of the creature in question. A troll is going to make a poor sorcerer but an excellent barbarian, so of course the Savage Marauder PRC is focused to synergize nicely with that sort of build. The same holds true for succubi being casters, angels being divine casters, and the upcoming eladrin having options for druid and bard... because it fits what the character would be if they actually were made using the true PnP method of level adjustment plus creature levels. The advantage here is that you can still step away from that, but it's just something we already see with the base races: half-orcs make poor wizards, halflings make poor frenzied berzerkers.

Actually, if it was going to be made using the true PnP method of LA and creature levels, Succubi would be terrible casters. +16 charisma is tempting for a sorcerer, but -12 to your caster level and 6 spell levels worth of spell progression missing is absolutely crippling to a spell focused character. In addition, their strength and dex are actually relatively balanced as opposed to only dex and cha, and their host of spell like abilities are comparatively less useful to a class who could by the point they're done with the race leveling cast them anyway.

PnP wise, they always struck me as more prone to something like a divine might/shield blackguard, or bard with Snowflake Wardance/Slippers of Battledancing. If anything should have been designed to accommodate bard builds, it should be succubi, whose whole point is deception and persuasion, while having an inherently chaotic base alignment, not the stoic Monadic deva, or inherently lawful Brachina.