User talk:The Wonky Turnip/Rour De Vrow (3.5e Race)

Ratings

Luigifan18 dislikes this article and rated it 1 of 4.

I kinda like the idea of a race that devours souls to survive; anything that can inject some danger of permanent utter annihilation into a world where raising the dead is commonplace and easily done helps to re-establish the dramatic impact death is supposed to have (by which I mean making it more than just a slap on the wrist). But being able to utterly annihilate someone at level 3?!? It's not completely unprecedented — there's a (vaguely-worded) 2nd-level spell that seems to partially capture a soul — but it's still completely nuts. Raise dead is a 5th-level spell. That means the minimum character level for convenient revival is 9 (there are effects that can revive characters earlier than that, but they all have some sort of drawback, such as the revived character not coming back in their own body or promptly dying again after a 1-round-per-caster-level duration expires). Therefore, effects that interfere with revival in a manner beyond what just chopping up the corpse can achieve should also be 5th-spell-level effects at minimum (which means minimum character level 9). Soul-stealing shenanigans are among the most fundamental and reliable means of preventing revival, so giving that to something under 9th level breaks the game. Period.

	Undead Knave opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	As mentioned.

	Spanambula opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	Would work better as a monster, IMO. While there are monstrous-flavored races on the wiki that would work well (or at all) in a party, like Eiji's Gray Vampire, this one brings nothing to the group except boring physical score boosts mismatched with slight build and a badly thought-out soul consumption mechanic.

	Eiji-kun opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	Just going back to this since it's been long enough to change it. Honestly, perma-killing at such low level just isn't cool. See more about my opinion below.

Ganteka Future opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.

Oppose. The race is kind of interesting and not terribly written… but entirely unusable as designed. They can't be used as NPCs against the PCs that actually take advantage of their abilities (making using them otherwise pointless) because of their soul-destroying abilities. PCs will immediately cry foul on such a low-level creature that makes resurrecting their character impossible. As a PC, the +2 level adjustment is of course crippling for any class progression. Feel Soul is just silly (as Eiji mentioned about bag of rats problem, rats have 12 Wisdom, enjoy having blindsight 40 whenever you want). Its own design is at odds with itself. It wants to be a powerful monster with abilities suited to higher levels, but it also wants to be a PC race, which unfortunately as is, aren't reconciled. This should just be sandboxed since there is stuff here that's salvageable. I wouldn't even recommend using it to testplay as is.

Soul Trappage

Trap the Soul as an always-on racial ability? For only +2 LA? Are you nuts? --71.94.112.128 00:42, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes! MUWAHAHAHAHAHA! (Though, I don't see what the problem is. The ability doesn't do anything by itself. It doesn't make it so you'll have any easier time becoming victorious in any particular facet of the game. It just makes it so that, if the Rour De Vrow does in fact win, it really sucks for the guy who died.) - The Wonky Turnip (talk) 00:51, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Except the Rour de Vrow doesn't even need to win, they just need to be in the room if someone dies. This is having something that's better than an 8th-level spell as a constantly active at-will ability. --71.94.112.128 02:06, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

This racial feature and the Trap the Soul spell can't really be compared, as the spell (effectively) kills a creature on a failed save, and can be used in a way that even denies the target spell resistance or so much as a saving throw. This racial feature just denies them resurrection or afterlife. - The Wonky Turnip (talk) 02:28, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

The preventing resurrection is mostly the important part of Trap the Soul. Just sayin'. --Undead_Knave (talk) 03:32, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

I would compare these guys more to walking thinaun rods. --Leziad (talk) 03:43, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Some Comments

It's strange to say that the Rour De Vrow does not eat, given that they have a racial feature that's all about how they eat.

"the specific speeds of everything is up to the DM's discretion" is of course a really terrible thing to say. Trying to multiply prestidigitation by X is not very elegant at all; prestidigitation is an extraordinarily ill-defined spell, that only gets away with it by virtue of doing solely frivolous things. --Foxwarrior (talk) 08:08, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Some More Comments

First off, hello and welcome. So, let's gather some words here and figure out what we're dealing with. I felt an immediate dislike upon first reading this, and after waiting a day or two or whatever and rereading, I really wasn't able to pinpoint an exact area or source of why this was. The flavor is adequate in amount and straightforward, easy to read. More description in a few places would be nice (mainly in their physical description). I find myself curious about how they move or dress. The mask-like face also presents an odd descriptive dilemma. Perhaps its just a choice of how it was described. I tend not to think of "…like a normal, human face…" and then find out that they have no expression, may or may not be able to blink, close their eyes, have nostrils, smoothed over features… which lends some confusion. Also, before I forget, there's some minor formatting weirdness that needs to be addressed:

• Race names are lowercase in sentences. We're called humans, not Humans.
• Language names are capitalized. This is English and D&D characters speak Common.
• You've got some redundant pluses spread out among the Vital Statistics and on your Level Adjustment. Also "lbs lb." in the Aging Effects table.
• There's a weird bracketed bullet at the end of Special Telepathy. Information concerning eating, breathing and sleeping is often followed up after creature type information, in this case, Monstrous Humanoid (which you have spelled incorrectly and needs to be fixed).

While on the topic of creature type, this sounds much more like an aberration or possibly outsider of some kind than a monstrous humanoid (which are generally creatures that have some humanoid features but can't fit in humanoid armor). Though, even this wasn't followed very well by the designers of 3.5e, as merfolk are humanoid for some reason. Look into a type change. Since we're now into mechanics, let's look at it as a whole first.

This is unusable as an NPC. This is because when put up against the PCs, when they're 3rd level, the PCs risk irretrievably losing their characters. They will immediately cry foul on this, or at least should, because that's malarky.

As a PC… I can't gather my thoughts on that yet.

As an aside, I imagine, with their soul devouring abilities, that they'd more often be slave creatures than roaming free, as useful abilities are useful for evil creatures that are actually powerful and can't do this sort of thing themselves. Anyways, that's all I've got for now. I guess I'm mostly just curious on a lot of the design choices that went into making this than anything else at this point. --Ganteka Future (talk) 04:43, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm with Gan. I don't like this, but other than the silly pun name and the party-unfriendly fluff I'm having trouble putting my finger on why. However, I'm wondering why a race that requires intelligent minds to survive roams around in sparsely populated areas. Also, what consequence does not having a soul to consume have? Do they take any penalties? Do they begin starving? Spanambula (talk) 05:07, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

I know why myself. My key sticking points are A) You died early levels? Gone forever, trololols. B) Multiple powers of prestidigitation? Whaaaaaa? C) Why are souls Int based? and D) Here, have some BLINDSIGHT FOREVER. It'll never be off if you need a bag of rats on hand. The others have said things better, but consider this a hat toss into the "no" category. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 05:14, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Wait wait wait... Span, are you saying the name is supposed to be a pun on "devourer"? Is that really what that's supposed to be? I'm gonna need a confirmation on this, because that has been buggin' me. --Ganteka Future (talk) 05:26, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Sounded like "Rwar, Devour" to me. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 05:53, 4 March 2014 (UTC)