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)

TyGah's response: Hoo boy. What a response to get! So lets tackle it while I'm editing the page... and since I happen to notice it... yes, british spellings. Blame my word processor, and my own being british. I thought it'd caught most of it, but oh well. Now then!

• Semantics - this was because I didn't pay attention when migrating the article from it's place on dandwiki, which doesn't use them, and now I've got to go through and handle that. Oops. I *think* I've done that, but as you say, they're a tricky thing at first. The special stuff is the only bit I haven't tackled just yet; I'll go look at how other pages handle that and tweak it accordingly.
• Wiki Linking... is coming/being done. Mainly because I have to actually remember what's in the SRD and find it all.
• LA and RHD. This is something of a contentious issue in my groups, and I personally don't often agree with LA's widespread dislike. But that aside. They should not have that 10 foot reach, Going 4RHD/0LA shouldn't upset anyone too much, except for one who always insists shapechange is an automatic +1LA. Also means I can (have, probably, if you're reading this after my own edits) make the younger ones 2 and 3 RHD. I'd leave them out, except they're being used.
• Class skills. This is my bad - I so rarely play creatures with RHD I completely forgot about this.
• Land speed changed to 50ft+run was probably something I should have done. And while I'm at it, the natural weapons got a boost too. In a sense the SRD is to blame here since I was working off the light horse and SRD Unicorn, and not fully playing attention.
• SR. Ah, SR, the bane of my life. In campaigns I've seen people (ab)use it to such extents that one campaign very nearly ended coming to blows. The whole reason the SR is done the way it is, is so it scales instead of giving someone who's instantly going to laugh in the face of magic. It's not meant to make them immune, and it grows with them. In the books, they're all but completely immune, except for Adept level magic (Adepts, in D&D terms, being your local wizard who can change the face of the earth). So yes, it's low, but it's by design, and to stop people abusing it.
• Magic horn. And here we have the other side of scaling, where now I see it, I realize where it's needed. Rather than working it by ECL (Which I understand, don't get me wrong) I've linked it to Ability score increases, which make sense. To me, anyway.
• Darkvision. Simply put: because there's no indications in the books that these Unicorns have them. I used Magical Beast because it was what the SRD Unicorn used and there wasn't anything more appropriate, this doesn't mean I agree that all the traits of the Magical Beast type should be there. Of course if I go and re-read the books and find out I'm wrong (or someone else does) I'll quick-fix that.
• Giving them Finesse is largely thematic, and therefore something that probably should be dropped. In the first book at least, Stile and Neysa fence against each other, and her dexterity with her horn is noted, I felt Weapon Finesse was the most appropriate way to show that.
• Shapechanging. OK. Yeah. I see what you did there, and I realize that needs fixing. I think adding the clause '...that possesses HD equal to or less than your ECL, but never higher.' should address that. If there's still other loopholes feel free to throw them at me. I may move the entire details of the shapechange to it's own section, or it's own page later on if it gets too lengthy.
• Favored class is druid because... honestly because I don't have any idea what's more appropriate. Probably Ranger. I've yet to play in a campaign where the multiclassing penalty has been dead and buried, so this is another one I didn't really think much about.
• Younger unicorns - yeah, these will be altered, probably into a racial progression. At the moment they're more a quick-reference (Like I said, they're being used right now).

Where I get time I'll work on finishing updating the semantics for the racial traits and wiki links, though if people want to help me out there it'd be appreciated - especially on the semantics, it's a new thingy for me. Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated, and I hope I've done something to address most, if not all, your points! TyGah (talk) 09:44, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Just a quick note here, without going into too much detail: The biggest issue with the SR having been 5+HD when they had as much LA as they did was that any creature with a caster level at least equal to their ECL never needed to roll because the minimum they could have rolled would be the SR of the Unicorn (or higher for higher caster levels). That has been mitigated somewhat by getting rid of their LA, which now requires an equally leveled full caster to roll at least a 5, which is still not good, but is able to block some things (although not much). I hope this helps clear things up. --Undead_Knave (talk) 21:54, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Edit: Another thing that probably ought to be mentioned is that typically things even bonuses to their ability scores. While this isn't a hard and fast rule (as far as I know), it is still common enough to be worth noting.

Oh man, thanks for reminding me UK, I forgot to mention that bit about the odd-numbered racial ability score modifiers. I may as well address it quickly. So, the gist about why (from what I've gathered) about why even-numbered modifiers are only ever given is because:

• Even-numbered modifiers always cause a meaningful impact on a character's calculations. That is, a plus or minus of 1 may not do anything at all for a character depending on his pre-racial adjustment numbers.
• Odd-numbered modifiers allow a weird bit of extra min-maxing when doing point-buy ability scores causing weird number adjustments/power boosts that were unintended.

Now, if you only want a minimal effect on a character related to a certain ability score, you could alternately just break down what the ability score does and focus on giving the boost exactly where you want it. Now, if we're talking Wisdom, you could give a boost to Will saves or a bonus on spell save DCs or a bonus on Wisdom-based skill checks and ability checks. Hey, a short comment from me this time. Hooray! --Ganteka Future (talk) 00:35, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, there's a Racial Progression added. It probably needs work - I've never made one before, and I suspect there's parts that may need work. I know I haven't done any wiki-linking; it's coming Soon(tm) - getting things right is a tad more important for the moment.TyGah (talk) 17:38, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

8 + HD SR is going to be good against lower level spellcasters, and not so much against equal or higher level spellcasters. Which may well be working as intended.

If you're previous problems with SR were a result of SR stacking, I suggest you consider adopting this stacking guideline. The authors wrote it as official (possibly reverse engineered from published sources), but didn't list a source or show their work so it may just be a solid stacking houserule. And if your previous SR problems were not a result of stacking, or already stacked like this, then you may want to look into SR lowering effects / spells (assay spell resistance, for example) and consider making them more prominent in the setting. Which seems pretty reasonable if creatures with SR are quite common.

Lastly, a note about formatting. It's common on talk pages to indent your responses by starting each line of your response with 1 more : than the previous response. And when it gets too long (say, 10 :s), resetting to 1 : instead. It just helps keep the responses visually distinct. - 02:57, 13 January 2015 (UTC)