View source for Talk:Shikelf (3.5e Race)

== Ratings ==
{{Rating |rater=Eiji-kun
|rating=oppose
|reason=This is quite old it seems so I doubt there's any chance for change, so this is more of a warning for others.  This race is a bit of a mess.  Others have addressed it better, and "Dexterity is doubled" is straight up borked, but I think the most amusing thing (and the reason I noticed the race) is that it has no type.  Humanoid?  Outsider?  Animal?  It's a mystery I care not to unravel.
}}
{{Rating |rater=Ganteka Future
|rating=oppose
|reason=<s>For something apparently around since 2001, it's woefully terrible. The flavor isn't bad (though it is poorly written). The mechanics suffer from the same bad writing. It's a pile of cobbled-together stats and abilities without regard or research into how D&D actually works mechanically. This looks more like a rough draft than anything else. The author should start a dialogue to clear up some of the problems (which I don't really want to go into detail right now), otherwise this thing is gonna get dumped.</s></br>
Rating Update: Alright, a lot of edits went into making some big changes. Did they make the article great? No. Did they make the article good? Eh. There's definitely something here, but I wouldn't really recommend using it. Besides the odd, distracting spelling errors (apart/a part, loss/loose, dew/due, range/rage, cot/caught) the flavor text is almost well written now. There are parts about it that don't mesh together like they should (descriptive redundancies, overly-descriptive in places describing minor details without getting a better sense of the race for it), giving the "this is the way it is" without giving the reason for it being that way. Also, yes, they are supposed to be elves of some kind, but you don't find that out until you're nearly done with the article.</br>
Then we have mechanics. Looks okay at first glance keeping in mind LA+1. Charisma penalty for being "less attractive to other races", ha, yeah, I'm definitely not attracted to what I'm finding here. Once you dig into it, you start finding weird oddities, like their two climb speeds based on material-type, messy falling, stealth and natural weapon rules... and Fear of Absolute Darkness which contains no actual game mechanics to be usable. That ability is just ''flavor text''. That leaves the final racial ability ''"Demon Range"'', which I'll mention doubles Dexterity among other weird things and is generally confusing. Below that is a bunch of text that's either a copy of or a rehashing of earlier information. I was just going to rate this "Dislike", but the more I think about it, no. It's not usable without causing confusion and problems. This still needs some work and revision. As for the article date, it was really posted in late July of 2012. To the author, the date in the author box refers to when the article was posted, not when you "came up with it" or whatever. Providing this second review cost me an hour of my life.
}}
{{Rating |rater=Havvy
|rating=oppose
|reason=As Foxwarrior says.
|block=NewVersion
}}
{{Rating |rater=Foxwarrior
|rating=dislike
|reason=Most of my current complaints about the Cattine are relevant here, too, although an LA of 1 prevents this from being really overpowered. I don't like LA though.

Also, there's no DC for Dragnophobia. 
}}
{{Rating |rater=Franken Kesey
|rating=oppose
|reason=Still has too many unclear abilities for a 1LA race.
}}

== Holding back on the black ==

I saw you come over, you're from the old wiki, aren't you?  First of all, welcome.  I hope you enjoy your stay.  However I must be the bearer of bad news when it comes to your article.  You put a lot of work into it, but it has problems.  While I'm inclined to rate as the others have above, since I know you're new let's see if I can help first.  This will be long, take a seat.

Let's see, these are tree dwelling forest people, like animalistic elves with scaley bits.  Alright, just to make sure I know where you come from.

:::'''>''' Sounds about right. At the core they are technically a mixed species from a breed of wood elves and a heavy scaled species which evolved into their own species. [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

The first problem comes from the ability scores.  Their odd.  You'll notice no race ever has odd scores (the reasons mostly deal with avoiding minmaxing with pointbuy and whatnot).  You need to make them even.... +2 Dex, +2 Str, -2 Cha, and -2 Wis from the looks of it.  Also, its cleaner to keep it in order of Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha, so it should read +2 Str, +2 Dex, -2 Wis, -2 Cha.

:::'''>''' Corrected the ability scores to make them even. [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

A speed of 45 ft.  Again with the oddities... feet come in units of 10 because it's easier to measure.  Since 50ft is a bit excessive, I'm gonna say make this 40 ft.  Likewise, climb of 20 ft.  But... why do they climb different on wood and stone?  Is a smooth wooden wall really easier to climb that a rough cobblestone slope with plenty of handholds?  This is just off, and IMO you should drop that entirely.  Nevermind what happens if you climb a wall made of both materials.

:::'''>''' Adjusted base speed and explained the difference between wood type surfaces and stone type surfaces [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Alright, so we got some situational save buffs, +2 Reflex, +1 natural armor (which should be written +1 natural armor, +1 "racial" AC doesn't exist).  Low light vision (with a typo, it mentions elves).  Some perception skill bonuses and elf secret door sense.  Claws and.... Teeth?  I suppose you mean a Bite attack.  Not what I expect from an "elven humanoid" no matter how feral, but ok.  

Prehensile Feet could be tricky.  This makes any Shikelf a three handed creature, or four if they gain flight.  Multiple hands is tricky to work with.  IMO, you can nip a lot of this in the bug by denying "wielding" in those feet-hands so they can hold, but not fight with them.

:::'''>''' Expanded on the use of their feet for gripping and added heavy penalties for trying to use them to wield weapons [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Feline Leap is just confusing and has no mechanics to it.  How does this work with the Jump skill?  Also, it seems they don't have a bonus language category, odd.

:::'''>''' Cut it out for now as I do more research into jump skill. The idea was that this species has a greater natural jumping ability than humans do so they are able to easily jump distances which would be very difficult or impossible for a human [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

From the looks of it, this is not going to be ECL 1.  There's just too much which can be abused to make this a low level creature.  I'd offer more advice, but first I'd need to know your intent if you want a powerful creature not suitable for low level, or a creature which can be played at low levels alongside humans and dwarves and stuff.

As stated above, Basic Instincts needs to be a part of the racial abilities as well.  Why this is its own section, I don't know.  I can say that the mechanics around it though are both overly and needlessly complex, and a bit overpowered from the looks of it (again, depending what level this is meant to be played at).  It also reminds me of this one (joke) class called Warrior of Elothair or something... which pidgeonholed them into one very specific style and plotline.  They say many, not all, shikelf are good aligned.  So what if I play an evil one?  Suddenly these powerful and ancient instincts make no sense to me.  Or what if I play a LN shikelf who is general good but a dick to children?  Etc etc etc.

:::'''>''' Moved the basic instincts into the racial traits. Don't understand the joke at all.
:::As to an evil character, they just can't use dragons or be in a 100% dark room without flipping out.
:::As to the rage chart, few evil characters (depending on how evil) would encounter the types of situations which would result in a high chance of raging. [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Again, dragonphobia and fear of darkness, these are racial traits.

:::'''>''' Moved to racial traits. [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Then we get into a long section which, for some reason, isn't in PHYSICAL DISCRIPTION.  I enjoy a good delve into biology myself, but this is both wordy and doesn't need it's own section, especially not down here.  Summerize, compact, and stick it in physical description.

:::'''>''' If your referring to the "Additional Information" it was information which was written up later as more of a deeper look into the species. I did not think it was too critical to game mechanics and did not want to turn the general "Physical Description" section into a lengthy 3 page essay that players would have to skip past if they are not interested in the extra detailed stuff. [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's a mess, and to fix it we first need to identity your goal and stated power level.  This isn't comparable to humans and dwarves as is right now, so decide what level these are appropriate.  We can go from there.

The other issue is that, as a direct port from the old wiki, all the formatting is botched.  It's easiest to open two windows, one with the old, and one with the preload for the new (click on create a race elsewhere in homebrew), then start copying and pasting things or re-writing things into the appropriate categories.  It's the easiest way.

:::'''>''' Corrected the formatting to what is used here. [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I tell you this here because I don't want you to get the wrong idea.  We like new people, but we do want good usable work too.  Hopefully this helps. -- [[User:Eiji-kun|Eiji-kun]] 00:15, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

== Updated - 08/16/2012 ==

Updated the page's formatting and made some changes to racial traits. Still trying to figure out and understand ECL. They didn't have ECL in 3.0 when I first wrote up the species. {{unsigned|Krahazik}}

:ECL is equal to racial hit dice (or 0 if they only get 1 racial hit die that would be replaced by a class hit die, like humans and most other starting races) + level adjustment. - [[User:Tarkisflux|Tarkisflux]] <sup>[[User talk:Tarkisflux|Talk]]</sup>  17:31, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

::So what I need to figure out then is what level adjustment is?

::I never included ECL or level adjustment in the original write ups because these were written up as a player race (not a monster) in which those 2 stats are not included in the stats for a player race. Since I never looked at using a monster as a player race before I never encountered those 2 stats which is listed in the DMG under the section for using a monster as a player race. {{unsigned|Krahazik}}

:::LA is a common thing in races outside of the PHB, and it is basically a level and xp penalty that you pay to have a stronger race. It's been around since the 3.0 Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (at least). You can read more about it at [[SRD:Race Descriptions]] and [[SRD:Creatures as Races]], and see SRD races that use LA and ECL [[SRD:Races by LA, HD, and ECL|here]].

:::Side thing, it's traditional to sign your comments on talk pages with the signature button at the top of the window, or <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. It helps make it easier to see who's saying what and follow the conversation. - [[User:Tarkisflux|Tarkisflux]] <sup>[[User talk:Tarkisflux|Talk]]</sup>  18:01, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. Never looked at Forgotten Realms. [[User:Krahazik|Krahazik]] 18:36, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

==A Note on Ratings==

While I just mentioned this on the cattine talk page, I'm mentioning it here again. Don't delete ratings. If the article is significantly altered, we can modify the individual ratings templates to not calculate into the article's rating. All previous ratings remain visible until their respective authors modify them. --[[User:Ganteka Future|Ganteka Future]] 20:22, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
Disliked	Foxwarrior +
Opposed	Ganteka Future +, Franken Kesey + and Eiji-kun +
UncountedRating	Havvy +