Subrace Ability Tokens

Drow and Half Drow darkness, vampire domination, both are usefull at extremely low levels, but even towards the teen levels, the tokens are pretty much space hogs in the inventory. The drow ability has a minor benefit for any level character in that it can be used to help initiate a convo in daylight (wanderer's portals for example), but beyond that, there's not really much use for it.

The biggest reason these particular subrace abilities are just pants is that the items use very low caster levels, 7 for vampire dominate, 3 for the darkness abilities. Perhaps rather than using the dinky tokens, these abilities can be reworked to use the VC system, and scale to character level? It seems to me that a powerful drow would be able to cause a much longer lasting bout of darkness than a relatively young and untrained drow, and for vampires, a much stronger one should be able to use the domination ability to a far greater degree than a weaker vampire.

Not sure off-hand if any other subraces have any ability tokens, but they too would probably be of much higher value to the character if the ability scaled with their level.

Thism akes sense... racial abilkities usually scale with hit dice

Or rather, instead of trying to work it through the VC system, why not have the items use a unique-power, which fires off a custom version of the spell in question rather than doing the spell off the 'cast a spell' list?

and if I might suggest going as far as making All of the granted spells this way as well. Currently, only about half of the ones I've received are scaled to level.

Thread necormancy here....

How about shifting the subrace abilities to one of the unused player tools? Or two of them rather.

Label them genericlly "subrace ability I & II" (offhand, I believe only vampires have 2 subrace action abilities, all the others are either passive benefits, or just one action ability).

Fire off the tool... it checks the PC... if no subrace, nothing happens. If they do have a subrace, and one that has an ability (Drow and their darkness for example), it fires off a script with the effect... complete with scaling caster level based on HD.

Two tools... one script to handle all subrace targetted actions.... no loads of subrace tokens with non-scaling cast spells

Also... could even cut down the vamp ability from it's current 2 to just one.... Depending on the target's HD, the vampire could charm, or if sufficently powerful enough compared to the target, dominate them.

Well.. wouldn't even NEED a new feat... just make the "subrace stats/description" feat usable and have the "pseudo-spellscript" hook and fire from that...

EDIT :: A list of each subrace and the "bonuses" of each (not counting skill point increases);
"Feat usage Idea", is my idea of what each subrace should be able to do 3/day, possibly with scaling effects based on PC level, ideas loosely based on the "bonuses";

Subrace	"Bonuses"	Feat usage Idea
BadgerKin (Gnome)	Weapon Specialization (unarmed)
Bestial (Orc)	Regeneration	Regen Overload/ Full Heal
Bright (Gnome)	SR+7, (Int+4, Wis+4)	Identify/ Legend Lore
Demonspawn	SR+5, Wings	Fear/ Scare
Drow (Elf)	SR+6, Cast Darkness 3/day, Ambidex & TWF	Darkness
GoblinKin (Fae)	Imm:Poison, Wepon Proficiency (Martial)	Neutralise Poison
Gold Heart (Dwarf)	Spontaneous Gold	Create Lots of Gold
Half Drow (Elf)	Cast Darkness 3/day, Ambidex	Darkness
Half Sea (Elf)	Water Breathing	Create Water Breathing "Bubble" for allies
Mouse Blood (Fae)	"Brownie Size" ?
Sea (Elf)	Water Breathing	Create Water Breathing "Bubble" for allies
ShadowChild	Regen (night), Concealment: 20%	Full Fade (100% Concealment, limited rounds)
Stone Blood (Dwarf)	DR 5/+1 (-50% speed)	Speed Boost (+50% speed for short duration)
TritonKin (Human)	Water Breathing	Create Water Breathing "Bubble" for allies
Vampire	DR 5/+1, 25% Speed inc, Regen (night), Dominate person 1/day, Dominate Animal 2/day	Domination
Winged	50% Speed inc, Wings
Wolfblood	Cold Res 5, DR5/+1, Lunar Bonuses	Overpowing Shout/ Howl

And yes there are some that I just have no idea about.... ....

Feat suggestions for the blanks...

BadgerKin (Gnome): Regenerate (spell)
Mouse Blood (Fae): HiPS
Winged: Summon Ally (RP: carries them to location)

Summon ally seems a tad of a stretch.... I'd rather see them have the ability to fly TO a location (determined by teleport marker for simplicity, but only outside ones of course). Would make more sense that a winged character would FLY to someone rather than the situation of they could fly to someone and bring them to a place, but not fly to that place and just... stay.

HiPs for mouseblood, I would SO be up for that only for the sake that I'd like a way to have my mouseblood firestarter be able to drop SD for fae adept, but still keep HiPs.... But... I dunno, it seems a little tooo much for mousebloods. I could almost see it for shadowchildren though.

And brownie appearance for mousebloods... I think that should stay a voucher appearance thing. I love the brownie appearance, but I could see other players NOT wanting to deal with the various issues that come with it (can't use horses, Hats of disguise, fighting styles (well you can, sorta), sheer pain in the ass to tailor up one's armor....)

Stoneblood... the speed increase would be useful on the playerside, but doesn't quite fit with the archetype of the subrace... Yeah, the subrace sucks as is because of the speed thing, but I'd think a limited time super-DR would be more fitting.

Goblinkin.... why neutralise poison? They're already immune to poison.

Badgerkin.... perhaps a rage like effect?

Overall, great ideas though

MannyJabrielle wrote:Summon ally seems a tad of a stretch.... I'd rather see them have the ability to fly TO a location (determined by teleport marker for simplicity, but only outside ones of course). Would make more sense that a winged character would FLY to someone rather than the situation of they could fly to someone and bring them to a place, but not fly to that place and just... stay.

Yeah, being able to fly off to some far location (an outside tp slot for example) sounds way cool...

MannyJabrielle wrote:
HiPs for mouseblood, I would SO be up for that only for the sake that I'd like a way to have my mouseblood firestarter be able to drop SD for fae adept, but still keep HiPs.... But... I dunno, it seems a little tooo much for mousebloods. I could almost see it for shadowchildren though.

And brownie appearance for mousebloods... I think that should stay a voucher appearance thing. I love the brownie appearance, but I could see other players NOT wanting to deal with the various issues that come with it (can't use horses, Hats of disguise, fighting styles (well you can, sorta), sheer pain in the ass to tailor up one's armor....)

HiPS for mouseblood does sound cool... but maybe overpowered... and will open a whole can of "HiPS" worms that I don't want to go into... the "brownie appearance" thing was mentioned because mechanically other then skill point increases mousebloods don't get any other "bonuses" that came to mind, but I remembered this being a point of note that only mousebloods can get this feature....

MannyJabrielle wrote:
Stoneblood... the speed increase would be useful on the playerside, but doesn't quite fit with the archetype of the subrace... Yeah, the subrace sucks as is because of the speed thing, but I'd think a limited time super-DR would be more fitting.

Much better idea....

MannyJabrielle wrote:
Goblinkin.... why neutralise poison? They're already immune to poison.

Not for themselves... to be able to cast it as a spell-like effect on someone else... they draw the poison out of said person into themselves.. which they are naturally immune to... does that better explain the line of thought ?

I love the idea of the subraces' spells and spell-like abilities scaling with the PC as they gain more levels/growing more powerful.


@Rusty: Great idea too, although not really fond of the Bright Gnomes' current suggestion...since those which choose to take the path of a Wizard/Bard (and let's face it, it's the majority of them, with the other half being a wisdom-inclined-class type) would gain no benefits which their class wouldn't already give them...

Although, then again, maybe it could work if they were able to use those spell-like abilities free of charge or at half price if deemed too powerful?

RustyDios wrote:
ShadowChild - Regen (night), Concealment: 20% - Full Fade (100% Concealment, limited rounds)

May or may not be related to tokens, but since we're throwing out a bunch of ideas for subraces, I'll just put in another plug for a few of my favorites:


A tweak to the Shadow Child's Self-Concealment to source it from SC I and SC II so that the rest of the SC feats will stack onto it up to 50% permanent Concealment.

The idea of HIPS being a Rogue bonus feat could be extended for HIPS to also be a bonus feat for a higher-level shadowchild or mouseblood.

And Subrace Skill Additions would be better if they would actually stack as a true bonus over one's investment, rather than be included in the investment limit.

Not sure if there's a clean easy way to add feats to a character at higher levels based on race. For classes it's easy: add the feat as a bonus feat to the class when it reaches the designated level.

RustyDios wrote:

MannyJabrielle wrote:Summon ally seems a tad of a stretch.... I'd rather see them have the ability to fly TO a location (determined by teleport marker for simplicity, but only outside ones of course). Would make more sense that a winged character would FLY to someone rather than the situation of they could fly to someone and bring them to a place, but not fly to that place and just... stay.

Yeah, being able to fly off to some far location (an outside tp slot for example) sounds way cool...

Yeah, I like this idea too. Some free teleports each day would be nice and fits RP really well.

RustyDios wrote:

MannyJabrielle wrote:
HiPs for mouseblood, I would SO be up for that only for the sake that I'd like a way to have my mouseblood firestarter be able to drop SD for fae adept, but still keep HiPs.... But... I dunno, it seems a little tooo much for mousebloods. I could almost see it for shadowchildren though.

And brownie appearance for mousebloods... I think that should stay a voucher appearance thing. I love the brownie appearance, but I could see other players NOT wanting to deal with the various issues that come with it (can't use horses, Hats of disguise, fighting styles (well you can, sorta), sheer pain in the ass to tailor up one's armor....)

HiPS for mouseblood does sound cool... but maybe overpowered... and will open a whole can of "HiPS" worms that I don't want to go into... the "brownie appearance" thing was mentioned because mechanically other then skill point increases mousebloods don't get any other "bonuses" that came to mind, but I remembered this being a point of note that only mousebloods can get this feature....

I don't see this being overpowered if it is restricted to X number of times/day.

No way to restrict it's uses. If you make HiPs a use per day ability, it would gut the shadow dancer class, and as far as I know, the HiPs feat is a hardcoded feature and can't be copied into a second feat that could be use restricted.

MannyJabrielle wrote:No way to restrict it's uses. If you make HiPs a use per day ability, it would gut the shadow dancer class, and as far as I know, the HiPs feat is a hardcoded feature and can't be copied into a second feat that could be use restricted.

Definitely don't want to affect SD. So much for that idea...

MannyJabrielle wrote:Not sure if there's a clean easy way to add feats to a character at higher levels based on race. For classes it's easy: add the feat as a bonus feat to the class when it reaches the designated level.

Well, then, maybe HIPS could be a higher-level bonus feat choice (i.e. I've always meant optional) for certain classes like Rogue and Fae Adept.

MannyJabrielle wrote:No way to restrict it's uses. If you make HiPs a use per day ability, it would gut the shadow dancer class, and as far as I know, the HiPs feat is a hardcoded feature and can't be copied into a second feat that could be use restricted.

Not entirely true, but it 100% depends on how the PW is coded. I had a PW that had "Wilderness HIPS" for Rangers at level 17, and it worked just like HIPS, only in natural, outside areas only. There would have been a way to limit HIPS as a per day feat on selected PCs as well, or as an "unspammable" feat, which I did have implemented at one point (i.e. you can only use it 1/ round or 1/2 rounds or whatever, scaling with SD level). This allowed us to scale up to full on HIPS at higher SD levels, making SD dips less cheesy. I think for a while we even had "Urban HIPS" for higher level assassins, just 'cos it was cool

But, there was a lot of underlying code there, and it would take significant reworking of an existing PW to make it happen, if the PW isn't set up to do that.

Ah, so I was wrong, HiPs isnt hardcoded then

What kind of work was put into that?

@About the HiPS discussion (which probably deserves it's own thread by now):

After a bit of googling, I found the following suggestion in a discussion about the Shadowdancer class:

1. Remove the standard HiPS feat.
2. Grant a new feat that works as a free action (e.g. player tool) to function as a new HiPS mode. When activated, a check is made. If the character has a combat target and is not in stealth mode, then send the standard "you cannot stealth in combat" message and abort. Otherwise, toggle stealth mode. If the character is entering stealth mode and is not on HiPS cooldown, then also apply the standard HiPS feat to the character's hide for 0.01 seconds before the mode is toggled.
3. When a character leaves stealth mode (NwNX event hook), set a time-stamp variable on the character to function as a HiPS timer. Delete this variable after a delay if the timestamp checks (i.e. the character hasn't unstealthed more than once during the cool down duration).


^I only know the most basic of scripting, so don't know if it'd work or how hard it is to incorporate into an already existing PW, but it's something to go on at least...

If HiPS could be scripted via one of the player tool feats, like described above, additionally scripting limits shouldn't be that hard to code in, (such as a Class Feat given to Rangers at level 17, which only works in outdoor/non-city areas, as well as an Urban version for Assassins at level 8 ), maybe even as a Bonus Feat for Shadow Children/Mouseblooded characters at a given level (be it 1st, mid or epic), etc


*Hides from the giant purple worms which made their way out of the can*

My point being: IF the HiPS feat was hard-coded (which it appears like it's not, according to Vagabond) or found especially difficult to make changes too, script-wise, in an existing PW's structure...the work-around described above could be used as a solution, using one of the player tool feats available as a stand-in. Anyway, I hope I have made my point clear enough to avoid confusion (although I have my doubts as I am a non-native English speaker)

Angel of Death wrote:@About the HiPS discussion (which probably deserves it's own thread by now):

Heh... it has several actually

MannyJabrielle wrote:

Angel of Death wrote:@About the HiPS discussion (which probably deserves it's own thread by now):

Heh... it has several actually

I know ...I meant it as split from subrace tokens', since it's another discussion entirely.