Talk:Unicorns, Variant (3.5e Race)

You Knee Corns

Ah, unicorns. What we need here is a list!:

• You don't have semantic properties at all. You're gonna need to put those in. You can find them on the preload (just hit Edit and copy and paste the stuff you need). Having them allows people to locate the article easier and know what's in it without having to click the page and scroll down a bunch of text. If you need help with them, just ask and someone can be helpful. It can be a bit of a hassle to get a grasp of at first.
• Adapting anything from another source into D&D always brings baggage and in the interest of playability, dropping as much of that baggage as possible while retaining the spirit of what you're creating results in a much better article (where better here means "more accessible and playable").
• The second sentence under "Personality" has very little to do with personality and could probably just go after your summary in the introduction text. You may want to re-read the whole article and decide if each bit of text really belongs where you have it or if it would be better served elsewhere in the article.
• Race (and creature) names are typically lower case when used in a sentence (as in humans, orcs, chickens and manticores).
• Race names should be in the singular form for the article name. Moving an article to correct this is super easy.
• Wiki linking is good and you should learn to utilize it to make it easier readers when referencing other material (like skills, spells and other rules or article pages). Most things in the SRD are easy to link to like the Sense Motive skill.

So, now we get to the meat as it were, with the Racial Traits section. There's a lot to read and take in here so I'll do my best to make this as straight-forward as possible:

• You really need the semantic properties here.
• Honestly, I'd leave off the bit about the younger sizes at the top and just include that under each sub-header for those ages, perhaps saying instead "Younger unicorns have different sizes, see their listings below" or something of the like.
• Okay, so, HD and LA… ugh. Players will best be served by having one or the other (with the correct answer being racial HD). LA is far more difficult to balance and usually still ends up needlessly crippling characters anyways. LA +1 or +2 can be okay (er, usable) if properly designed on their own. This is a unicorn, with only one real meaty ability (talkin' about Shapechanging) that's not appropriate at low level, so we'll want to keep their total ECL as low as possible so players can actually branch out in careers as class-leveled individuals.
• Let's say we aim for like, ECL 3 or 4 with 3 or 4 racial HD and no LA. As large magical beasts, they're probably "Large (Long)", a notation I think they stopped using after 3.0e but still use the rules of so whatever, the only difference really is that they don't get 10 foot reach that Large-sized humanoid creatures get. Unless they're supposed to have a 10 foot reach, because right now they do.
• Give them some racial class skills for those racial HD. Right now they have none, making that weirdly (2+Int Mod)x5 skill points only able to be put as cross-class. That's just mean. I see why you shortened "2+Int Mod per level (x4 at first level)" but it still weirds me out. Also, you're totally allowed to give them more skills rather than being forced to use the base Magical Beast Type skill listing and just say "they're more skilled than typical magical beasts" and be done with it. They already have to basically invest in Shapechange and are already crippled with their "wild" skills (Listen, Spot and Survival), getting spread awfully thin, even with a +4 to Intelligence.
• If you go for 4 racial HD, consider a Wisdom boost or something.
• "A Unicorn's base land speed in it's natural form is 70 feet." Oh man that's fast. Too fast though? Well, as is now, no, but if you want it to be more playable/accessible, toning it down to 60 feet (or 50 feet with the Run feat thrown in) wouldn't hurt.
• Spell Resistance as is… kinda pointless since it's so low. Out of the box, a caster has to check against a DC of 7 and get +6 at minimum for being a 6th level caster (plus at minimum a 1 on his d20 roll to match that DC of 7 to overcome it). If you want them to be good at resisting magic, consider boosting it or dropping it in favor of another mechanic like double-rolled saving throws (where the unicorn's player would roll two dice for each save, taking the preferred roll as the result).
• Natural Horn Weapon (as a primary natural weapon): Okay, so this +3 Large-sized rapier I'm assuming is a +3 from magical enhancement bonus. Man, that's a pretty good bonus for a 6th level character. A shame it's stuck at that. Recommendation: Have it scale with the unicorn's ECL so the horn gets more magically powered as they grow in level. +1 bonus every 3 or 4 ECL (capping at +5), or something custom like +1 at ECL 2, +2 at ECL 6, +3 at 10, +4 at 14 and +5 at 18. Alternatively, also provide other bonuses for it like counting as the unicorn's alignment for the purposes of overcoming certain alignment-based damage reduction (allowing them to wreck up Chaotic creatures most likely).
• Natural Hoof Attacks: Looks like the hooves count as a single secondary natural weapon attack with a -5… but only 1d4 damage? Is it supposed to be two attacks? It's probably supposed to be two hoof attacks and can be made with any hoof. D&D doesn't really have facing so "if target is behind them" is arbitrary and unnecessary. As for the 1d4 damage, I recommend boosting this to 1d6 (same as the heavy horse) and perhaps treated as masterwork and able to be enchanted like a weapon.
• Low-light vision is fine and all, but why not darkvision as per the traits of the Magical Beast type? Also, vision abilities are often listed below speeds and above any other abilities.
• Spell-like abilities are often listed last (before Languages, Favored Class, LA and ECL). Ah, british spelling of neutralize. Also, spells are always lower case in a sentence and italicized. You can link them as well so people can easily reference those articles in the SRD.
• Bonus racial feats are fine, though its weird that with the bigger bonus to Strength than Dexterity you'd even want to finesse the horn attack since it would make your attack worse, at least regarding the base stats. Yes, a character could dump Strength and focus on Dexterity, which is good that a character could do that if they wanted, especially to get that bonus to AC since I foresee armor availability being a problem for these guys.
• As Shapechanging is the big beast ability here, I really wanted to get into it but man, I just can't. I just can't do it. I guess I'll just say DC 25… with 2 HD, max ranks of 5 and perhaps maybe a 10 Wisdom, doable out of the box. Start game knowing how to become a CR 23 solar, which appears by all accounts acceptable as written. Win D&D.
• As for classes, why favored class of druid? They oddly don't get any Wisdom bonus (for spell casting) and would only get their first level of the class six levels behind an ECL 1 starting race character, making them absolutely terrible druids (with abysmal Will saves), coupled with the fact that wild-shape becomes a bit redundant but whatever.
• For the young variations, have those as sub-headers, or better yet, with the route of racial HD, have it be a racial progression and just scale everything up through the HD for "aging", allowing characters to take other classes and levels while starting out adventuring lower ECL and younger.

All in all, it's not a terrible first attempt and looks to adhere to the Savage Species sort of way of Wizards of the Coast published material… which we now know as rather skewed and not all that good (I can elaborate on that if you'd like). I'm not going to rate this just yet (gonna give it a few days) but man oh man, you need to make some corrections, playtesting or not. To finish, communicate with us here as much as you can if you need anything or have questions. --Ganteka Future (talk) 00:26, 9 January 2015 (UTC)