New Race - Subtype inheritance

[bepnewt]

I'm a new user but am getting the hang of the application. The forums have been quite helpful in answering my question so far. This question is more of a design question than a "How do I..." question.

My goal was to create a new race. So, I jumped right into making one. I copied the Dwarf race, made my changes, added new favored classes, new racials, etc., and removed Dwarf as a subtype because it's not a Dwarf.

Then I realized it really needed a subtype. After an embarrassingly long time to figure out how the subtype creation worked, I found the Creature Subtype tab. I looked at the Dwarf subtype and got confused.

It seemed to me that things that most Dwarf types would have should be in the Dwarf subtype and then any Dwarven race based on that subtype would inherit that. But, I see almost all of the racial stuff for Dwarf in the Dwarf race, not the Dwarf subtype. My race will have 2-3 variations, but most of their racial stuff will be the same between them. So, my first question is:

1) If I create a subtype then base a race off of it, does the race inherit all the stuff I set on the subtype?

If the answer is "yes", then I don't understand why most of the Dwarf detail is in the Dwarf race and not the Dwarf subtype since I only see the ability to do 1 level of inheritance - Ie. a subtype can't have a subtype.

Edit: I do understand why the detail wouldn't be in the subtype if there were going to be multiple races that use the Dwarf subtype and those multiple races don't share a lot of what the Dwarf race has for racials. If that's the case, then it's all good.

I'm having a few other oddities popping up when I try to use my new race but I have a feeling some of it will go away when I get my subtype created and my new race using it.

I'm sure I'll have more Qs but, for now, I'll hammer away a little more at it.

-BEP

 

[Mathias]

You'll find the dwarf race on pg 21 of the core rulebook - it's a full page of information.

The dwarf subtype is implied, and never written out anywhere in the rules. Other humanoid subtypes like Gnome or Halfling (both on Bestiary 1, pg 312) are very small - three or four lines of text.

So, Hero Lab reflects that - we put the same information in each thing that Paizo does.

Compare that to outsider subtypes like Angel (B1, pg 311) - that has a dozen different abilities that all angels get.


(BTW, the ARG does have racial subtypes - they implement them as Alternate Racial Traits. From what I've seen, I think the philosophy for Pathfinder is to avoid the the dozen different Elf variants that d20 ended up with, and instead have a dozen different ARTs that can modify the Elf race in order to represent different elf cultures) (ARTs can also be mixed and matched, unlike full races).

 

[bepnewt]

I'm having a few other oddities popping up when I try to use my new race but I have a feeling some of it will go away when I get my subtype created and my new race using it.

Using my new subtype didn't fix the weird issues I was seeing when I used my new race on the hero's background tab. What did fix it was changing my race's "Race Type" to "Normal" instead of "Custom Built Race". I set it to the latter when I first started messing with the editor and didn't know what most of the stuff meant.

It does look like my race is inheriting the stuff from the subtype, so I deleted all the racial stuff that will be shared from the race and put it in the subtype.

Looking good so far!

-BEP

 

[bepnewt]

Thanks Mathias. I'm brand new to PF, I grew up on 1st Edition and played that exclusively from 1980 to 1991, then didn't play again until 4e was out. I don't even own a PF book at this point, yet, so I didn't understand that subtype was an actual PF thing and you guys were adhering to PF when you supported it. That's great.

I appreciate you taking the time to explain that to me. PF seems pretty decent so I have a feeling a few more books will be sitting next to my 1st Ed stuff soon.

-BEP