Always wanted to do those guys [High LA Race]

[Phosphate]

Osto

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Type: Medium Monstrous Humanoid
Ages:

{table=head]Adulthood | Simple | Moderate | Complex
16 | +1d6 | +1d8 | +2d6[/table]
{table=head]Middle Age | Old | Venerable | Maximum Age
35 | 53 | 70 | +4d10
[/table]

Osto live as much and learn as quickly as humans do.

Height/Weight: Osto are about 6'5" feet in height, with negligible differences between males and females. They weigh as much as a human of the same size, plus 50%.

Languages: Common, Osri
Bonus Languages: Orc, Giant, Gnoll, Elf, Undercommon

Speed: 40 feet

Appearance: In their natural form Osto look like regular humanoids but with white hair and sharp bone-like structures protruding from their skin in random places, but there are always some at the back and near the wrists. However, Osto can turn into much more monstrous beings in their Unleashed forms, harboring dark red skin, pupil-less eyes and much more protruding bones, claws, talons, and horns.

Alignment: The vast majority of Osto are chaotic neutral, with a notable large minority of chaotic evil, but their adventurers can be of any alignment.

Society: Osto are nomadic and tribal people, uninterested in technology, large societies or most of the times even agriculture. They are expert hunters and often pillage for resources, riches, and women from other races. Advancement in Osto society is done through challenging the high ranking leaders and killing them in duels.

Relation with other races: Most races fear the Osto for their aggressive and thieving nature. They are, however, held in high regard by other warlord races, like gnolls, some orcs, and hobgoblins.

Relations within the party: Osto adventurers are often more of a hassle within a party as they prefer plunging head first into battle without any plan or tactics. However, nobody can deny that they're quite good at it.

Names: Osto reproduce rampantly and take care of themselves from an early age, so there's no such thing as the concept of family in their tribes and individuals often name themselves. Due to this, there's room for a lot of variation.


Racial Features

Ability scores:

+2 Str, +4 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Int

Osto are strong, incredibly agile, though and perceptive, but have received faulty, usually self-taught, education.

Monstrous Humanoid Traits: Being Monstrous Humanoids, Osto have darkvision out to 60 feet and are proficient with all simple weapons.

Somatic Metabolism (Ex): When you are infected with a disease, you are delay its effects, and don't need to save against them, for con mod days. When contacting poison, you delay the secondary damage for con mod minutes. When receiving acid damage, you may delay the hit point subtraction up to con mod rounds.

Endurance: You gain the feat.

Unique Constitution (Ex): You are immune to any constitution drain or constitution damage, except those directly caused by your racial features. You may not heal constitution damage through magical means. You may not become immune to all constitution damage through any means. An Osto who lacks a constitution score loses all his racial features, including the ability score modifiers.

Hand Blades (Ex): When making unarmed strikes with your hands, apart from the regular unarmed strike nonlethal damage as appropriate for a creature of your size, you also deal just as much piercing lethal damage.

Skeletal Weaponry (Ex): Every time you gain a level, select a type of non-bludgeoning weapon you are proficient with.

Once per day, you may produce one of your selected weapons out of bone by taking 2 points of constitution damage, or 3 points to also make it Masterwork. The weapon is always made for a creature of your size category, and its creation takes 5 minutes. Weapons created this way have a number of hit points equal to double your character level, and hardness equal to double your constitution score.

When wielding a weapon made of your bone, you gain a +4 bonus to opposed disarm checks, and a +2 bonus to attack rolls made while initiating Strike maneuvers only.

When wielding one skeletal weapon in each hand, you are treated as having the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, or Greater TWF if you already have TWF. You don't actually have the feat, so this does not count as a prerequisite for branching feats. You are also treated as having TWF for the purpose of attacking with a skeletal weapon, and then with your other hand if it is free.

Limited Rend (Ex): If an Osto hits an opponent with two attacks, both from skeletal weapons, both unarmed, or one unarmed and one from a skeletal weapon, the target receives 3d6+5 bonus damage.

Bone Ammunition (Ex): You may shoot a projectile weapon of your size category or smaller without actually having projectiles. This either deals 10 untyped hp damage or 1 constitution damage to you per round, regardless of the number of attacks. Bone projectiles add +2 to damage.

You may also use this feature to deal damage at range without any weapon. The damage dealt is equal to your unarmed strike damage, except it is lethal and piercing, you add Dex mod to damage, and it is at 19-20/x3 critical (range increment 50 feet). You still need to give up hit points or constitution to use this.

The "bone bullets" you use this way, and all bone projectiles, are always destroyer when used, even if you miss.

Pointy (Ex): When you and an opponent are grappling, except for the first round, the opponent receives 2d4 piercing damage per round. This damage is dealt at the very beginning of the round.

Inner Reserves (Ex): Gain 2 reserve points per day, capped at your constitution score+1. You may, at any time, remove any number of reserve points to heal that much constitution damage and that much*3 hit points as a free action.

Whenever you would receive an ability increase from gaining 4 levels, you may give up that increase to gain 2 more reserve points per day.

Unleashed (Ex): Become a murderous beast of blood and bone for up to constitution mod rounds (at a time, not per day). During this time, you gain a +2 bonus to all saves, are treated as having Powerful Build, deal unarmed damage as if you were one size category higher, are treated as having both Evasion and Mettle, double the damage of Pointy, can use Bone Ammunition without a weapon without consuming hp or constitution, and gain DR/- equal to your con mod. This ability can be closed and activated as a swift action. After it is closed, you are fatigued for as many rounds as you had it active, and you receive 1 point of constitution damage, or 2 if you maintain it for more than 5 rounds.

Natural Initiator: You have access to the Stone Dragon discipline regardless of your initiator class levels. Also, only once, you may choose to gain 1 initiator stance in one of your initiator classes.

Religion: Osto have no time nor interest for deities
Favored Class: Swordsage/Dancer (I MIGHT make the Dancer class this week or not)
LA: +3

[Morph Bark]

"When contacting poison, you are immune to secondary damage for con mod minutes." This means that if their Con mod is at least 2, they are immune to poison, since secondary poison damage always comes 1 minute after the primary damage. It is even arguable this happens with a Con mod of just 1.

Likewise, Somatic Metabolism also effectively makes an Osto permanently immune to all diseases. In both cases I think you mean to say the damage is delayed rather than them becoming immune.

Limited Rend as worded deals damage to the Osto, not to his target.

Natural Initiator is worded incredibly vaguely. As is, I can interpret it to mean an Osto having access to up to 9th-level Stone Dragon maneuvers at level 1 and them gaining a Stone Dragon maneuver every level.

[Answerer]

The delay abilities seem like a bookkeeping headache for almost no good reason. Were I playing this race, I'd just ignore that ability most of the time because it's not worth remembering that I have it.

Ability Burn exists for a reason; you should probably use that instead of reinventing the wheel with your unhealable ability damage.

Doubled Unarmed Strike damage seems like a terrible idea. Particularly since as written, it's adding Str to damage twice.

You take Two-Weapon Fighting... and get Greater Two-Weapon Fighting? What does that even do if you don't have Improved Two-Weapon Fighting?

Limited Rend... what's limited about it? The damage is very high for low levels, too.

With Bone Ammunition, you're now dealing what, 2*(Unarmed Strike Damage Die) + 2*Str + Dex? That's absurd. Might not count as "with your hands" though, but you're still dealing (damage die) + Str + Dex in damage which is very odd.

Pointy: There is no such thing as one person grappling the other or being grappled by the other. Two creatures are just grappling. The rules are very explicit about this. So this doesn't make any sense.

Inner Reserves are bizarre; you get a ton of them but they regenerate very slowly. Yeah, appropriate possibly, but obnoxious to actually play.

Unleashed is just always on? Because anyone playing this is a fool to not find a way to cure or be immune to Fatigue, and just always leave this on. Also, does the damage size increase on the unarmed strike stack with the fact that Powerful Build is already doing that?

Natural Initiator is confusing as hell. I'm guessing that you meant to say that you can learn an additional Stance once, period, but can choose any level at which to do so, but "whenever you want" reads to me as literally just getting all the Stances.

And, of course, there's the LA. LA +3 is stupid. This thing is overpowered enough to make it worth working around, but there's nothing good about even including a creature with an LA that high. It's simply not appropriate for players at all.


Really, I'm sorry; I wasn't even going to comment, but several major problems caught my eye and I started going through it, and... just about every racial feature is problematic somehow. I just don't think, well... I don't think most of it is a good idea.

[Phosphate]

"When contacting poison, you are immune to secondary damage for con mod minutes." This means that if their Con mod is at least 2, they are immune to poison, since secondary poison damage always comes 1 minute after the primary damage. It is even arguable this happens with a Con mod of just 1.

Yes, delayed should work better.

Limited Rend as worded deals damage to the Osto, not to his target.

*facepalm* true

Natural Initiator is worded incredibly vaguely. As is, I can interpret it to mean an Osto having access to up to 9th-level Stone Dragon maneuvers at level 1 and them gaining a Stone Dragon maneuver every level.

Can't imagine why, but I'll reword it.

The delay abilities seem like a bookkeeping headache for almost no good reason. Were I playing this race, I'd just ignore that ability most of the time because it's not worth remembering that I have it.

And...you're just going to receive damage from poison, disease, and acid?

Ability Burn exists for a reason; you should probably use that instead of reinventing the wheel with your unhealable ability damage.

It's not the same thing, and definitely more underpowered than what I already have anyway.

Doubled Unarmed Strike damage seems like a terrible idea. Particularly since as written, it's adding Str to damage twice.

How is it adding Str to damage twice, exactly?

You take Two-Weapon Fighting... and get Greater Two-Weapon Fighting? What does that even do if you don't have Improved Two-Weapon Fighting?

You don't have to QUALIFY for feats which you emulate without having, so yes, you can skip prerequisites.

Limited Rend... what's limited about it? The damage is very high for low levels, too.

It's limited in that it only works with specific weapons.

With Bone Ammunition, you're now dealing what, 2*(Unarmed Strike Damage Die) + 2*Str + Dex? That's absurd. Might not count as "with your hands" though, but you're still dealing (damage die) + Str + Dex in damage which is very odd.

How exactly do you double, and how can you add strength?

Pointy: There is no such thing as one person grappling the other or being grappled by the other. Two creatures are just grappling. The rules are very explicit about this. So this doesn't make any sense.

Oh, fair. Changed.

Inner Reserves are bizarre; you get a ton of them but they regenerate very slowly. Yeah, appropriate possibly, but obnoxious to actually play.

Ever played a psion? That's much more bookkeeping.

Unleashed is just always on? Because anyone playing this is a fool to not find a way to cure or be immune to Fatigue, and just always leave this on. Also, does the damage size increase on the unarmed strike stack with the fact that Powerful Build is already doing that?

Yes, it stacks.

And yes, you can keep it always on if you want to die. Let's take an extreme example.

Say that at level 10 you have 26 constitution. You can keep it up 8 rounds at a time. After the first 8 rounds, you lose 2 constitution, so now you can keep it 7 rounds at a time. And then 6. And then 5. And so on. And every time you're doing that, you're removing a large part of your hp (a healthy 10 points of it).

And, of course, there's the LA. LA +3 is stupid. This thing is overpowered enough to make it worth working around, but there's nothing good about even including a creature with an LA that high. It's simply not appropriate for players at all.

And yet there are LA 7 races. And this race is actually better than most LA+4, but only because the LA+4 are underpowered. All I'm saying is, it's worth it. Especially if you can buy it off.

[Answerer]

And...you're just going to receive damage from poison, disease, and acid?

Delaying them by a short time period isn't going to matter most of the time.

It's not the same thing, and definitely more underpowered than what I already have anyway.

What?

This is a special form of ability damage that cannot be magically or psionically healed. [...] It returns only through natural healing.

You may not heal constitution damage through magical means.

These two statements are the same thing.

How is it adding Str to damage twice, exactly?

It says that "apart from" your regular damage, it "also deal just as much" damage of another sort. So take whatever damage you were doing without this ability, and do it again. Hence, doubling.

You don't have to QUALIFY for feats which you emulate without having, so yes, you can skip prerequisites.

Yes, and Greater Two-Weapon Fighting says "You get a third attack with your off-hand weapon" – which seems impossible if you haven't got a second one yet. Even ignoring the pedantry there, what is the intent: that you get another offhand attack, or that you get three attacks total? Because it's unclear.

Also, if you do intend for there to be three attacks total, that means that until you have BAB +11, you have more offhand attacks than you do primary attacks, which is dumb.

How exactly do you double, and how can you add strength?

Your unarmed damage includes Strength. You take that, and add Dex. You never said Dex instead of Str, which you presumably intended. And it doubles if Hand Blades applies.

Ever played a psion? That's much more bookkeeping.

Wasn't commenting on bookkeeping, I was commenting on the fact that you have a large pool that regenerates over a period of days. That's just annoying, the same way a Monk's ability to kill someone 1/week is just annoying. A smaller number of uses per day would be far more balanced and much better design.

Yes, it stacks.

Then it should say so, because that's not clear.

And yes, you can keep it always on if you want to die. Let's take an extreme example.

Say that at level 10 you have 26 constitution. You can keep it up 8 rounds at a time. After the first 8 rounds, you lose 2 constitution, so now you can keep it 7 rounds at a time. And then 6. And then 5. And so on. And every time you're doing that, you're removing a large part of your hp (a healthy 10 points of it).

Ah, missed the Constitution damage. Whatever.

And yet there are LA 7 races. And this race is actually better than most LA+4, but only because the LA+4 are underpowered. All I'm saying is, it's worth it. Especially if you can buy it off.

There are LA +7 races: they are unplayable and terrible design. That's not any kind of excuse.

Moreover, it's not about whether or not it's worth it, it's about whether or not it works well. This doesn't. Your HP, HD, saves, BAB, etc. are all considerably lower than they ought to be. The game expects you to have these things. Encounters balanced by ECL/CR are going to be extremely problematic: you've got all sorts of major shortcomings in terms of sheer numbers.

At the same time, you have fairly-potent abilities that are not going to be appropriate for a character whose numbers are more similar to yours (i.e. one three levels lower), which means that you'll steamroll anything appropriate for them.

These things do not counteract each other. Having enormous weaknesses and huge bonuses is not good design.

[bobthe6th]

could see making this a racial class, would fix the LA problem...

[Phosphate]

These two statements are the same thing.

You do realize that ability burn CANNOT be healed by Inner Reserves..right? Also, you would lose the benefit of You are immune to any constitution drain or constitution damage, except those directly caused by your racial features.

It says that "apart from" your regular damage, it "also deal just as much" damage of another sort. So take whatever damage you were doing without this ability, and do it again. Hence, doubling.

Um...no. REGULAR damage in case of unarmed strikes is nonlethal. Please tell me that 1d4+str nonlethal +1d4+str lethal is high damage. Please do.

Yes, and Greater Two-Weapon Fighting says "You get a third attack with your off-hand weapon" – which seems impossible if you haven't got a second one yet. Even ignoring the pedantry there, what is the intent: that you get another offhand attack, or that you get three attacks total? Because it's unclear.

You get three attacks with your offhand weapon, and that's it.

Also, if you do intend for there to be three attacks total, that means that until you have BAB +11, you have more offhand attacks than you do primary attacks, which is dumb.

How so? Unusual maybe, but I wouldn't go farther.

Your unarmed damage includes Strength. You take that, and add Dex. You never said Dex instead of Str, which you presumably intended. And it doubles if Hand Blades applies.

It doesn't double if Hand Blades applies, cause Hand Blades is a MELEE attack. Also, Str applies to unarmed strike in melee only, and the term "unarmed damage" is referring to the damage dice, not other additions.

Wasn't commenting on bookkeeping, I was commenting on the fact that you have a large pool that regenerates over a period of days. That's just annoying, the same way a Monk's ability to kill someone 1/week is just annoying. A smaller number of uses per day would be far more balanced and much better design.

The difference between this and a monk is that a monk has nothing to do within those 7 days of waiting, while an Osto, instead of stockpiling, can use it to heal every day.

Are you suggesting the pool be reduced, but the points per day increased? Because that would be overpowered even for LA+3.

Moreover, it's not about whether or not it's worth it, it's about whether or not it works well. This doesn't. Your HP, HD, saves, BAB, etc. are all considerably lower than they ought to be. The game expects you to have these things. Encounters balanced by ECL/CR are going to be extremely problematic: you've got all sorts of major shortcomings in terms of sheer numbers.

How so? While you lose BaB and saves and HP worth of levels, the loss is not that bad considering that....you get +2 Str, +4 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Wis.

If you would have taken levels in a poor BaB class, first 3 levels would have given you +1 bab. You don't get that, but you get +1 to melee and +2 to ranged from ability scores. So it's actually a +0/+1 bonus. If you would have taken levels in a 3/4 BaB class, you take only a -1/-2 penalty. If you would have taken a full BaB class, you would indeed lose -2/-1, but the racial features you get are combat-oriented and fit for full BaB anyway.

As for saves:

Fort, good - -1 penalty
Fort, bad - +1 bonus
Ref, good - -1 penalty
Ref, bad - +1 bonus
Will, good - -2 penalty
Will, bad - just the same

So not only is there almost no difference, but you ALSO have Unleashed, which temporarily increases all of them by 2.

As for HP, it balances out after a couple levels from the +2 to your con modifier.

These things do not counteract each other. Having enormous weaknesses and huge bonuses is not good design.

Perfectly agreed, but it DOESN'T have enormous weaknesses :)).

could see making this a racial class, would fix the LA problem...

I intend to make the dancer class for that.

[Answerer]

You do realize that ability burn CANNOT be healed by Inner Reserves..right? Also, you would lose the benefit of You are immune to any constitution drain or constitution damage, except those directly caused by your racial features.

And you could easily add the same exemption here, but be calling it what it is. That, to me, is better.

Um...no. REGULAR damage in case of unarmed strikes is nonlethal. Please tell me that 1d4+str nonlethal +1d4+str lethal is high damage. Please do.

See, that's not what "regular" means to me. To me, "regular" just means "without this feature." Does this feature mean that you cannot use any means to increase your Unarmed Strike damage? Because the wording along with the clarification given states that you always do 2d4+2*Str damage, no matter what class features say you do more. That's now broken the other way.

You get three attacks with your offhand weapon, and that's it.

That's unclear, and also, IMO, poor design.

How so? Unusual maybe, but I wouldn't go farther.

Because the concept of "offhand attack" in 3.5 only makes sense as a follow-up to a main hand attack. There's no such thing as an off-hand attack without a preceding main attack, because that's how the TWF rules are written. This seems to want to make "off-hand attack" a separate thing, which is a bad idea.

It doesn't double if Hand Blades applies, cause Hand Blades is a MELEE attack. Also, Str applies to unarmed strike in melee only, and the term "unarmed damage" is referring to the damage dice, not other additions.

The term "unarmed damage" refers to the damage your unarmed strike does, period. When you say that it refers only to the damage dice, you are incorrect: it does not refer only to the damage dice. That may have been what you intended, but it is not what you wrote.

And Hand Blades never states that it is only for melee attacks. It does say something about "with your hands" which is unclear and may or may not apply to the bone ammunition (which I imagine are shooting out of your hands).

The difference between this and a monk is that a monk has nothing to do within those 7 days of waiting, while an Osto, instead of stockpiling, can use it to heal every day.

Are you suggesting the pool be reduced, but the points per day increased? Because that would be overpowered even for LA+3.

What? Without specific numbers, it's impossible to say what would or wouldn't be overpowered. 1/day would not be overpowered, it would be underpowered. (Con score + 1)/day would be overpowered, yes.

The thing is, as it stands, you can use it (Con score + 1) times in one day (which I've already stated is overpowered), you're just not going to get to use it for a week or more after that. This makes the ability heavily dependent on how much downtime the character does or doesn't have, which is not a good design. Much better to have something consistent, that can't be nova'd for an overpowering burst.

So the trick is to figure out how many days of hard use you want the Osto to go through before running to empty, work out how many points he uses in an average day, and use that as the formula for per day use.

How so? While you lose BaB and saves and HP worth of levels, the loss is not that bad considering that....you get +2 Str, +4 Dex, +4 Con, +2 Wis.

+2 Str gives +1 to melee attacks; 3 BAB gives +3 and gets you closer to an iterative (this doesn't strike me as a race for a caster). +4 Con gets you 2 HP/level, but your level is three lower than it would be otherwise and you don't get those three HD; that's +(2 HP)*Level - 3*(Con mod - 2) - 3*(HD average). By high levels, it's probably a wash. At level 4, you're freaking screwed.

The Wis hardly matters.

If you would have taken levels in a poor BaB class, first 3 levels would have given you +1 bab. You don't get that, but you get +1 to melee and +2 to ranged from ability scores. So it's actually a +0/+1 bonus. If you would have taken levels in a 3/4 BaB class, you take only a -1/-2 penalty. If you would have taken a full BaB class, you would indeed lose -2/-1, but the racial features you get are combat-oriented and fit for full BaB anyway.

Why would you even compare to a low BAB class? This would be awful for a low BAB class, because it loses spellcasting levels by default.

Again, as I stated: good features and bad numbers don't counteract each other. Design is not that simple. You need to keep the numbers within a certain range, and give good features. Giving bad numbers, and trying to shore it up with overpowered features is not going to work well.

And the HP matters way more than the attack bonus.

As for HP, it balances out after a couple levels from the +2 to your con modifier.

No, it doesn't.

Perfectly agreed, but it DOESN'T have enormous weaknesses :)).

It does at level 4.

I intend to make the dancer class for that.

Making a custom-tailored class that a race has to take just to deal with its own weaknesses doesn't strike me as a good way to do a race.