Classic Races?

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, I have to say that I agree that bragging is an Impress/Influence check, 'I am headed towards greatness, care to come with?' and does not fit as a Profession - you are building yourself up by a performance, a professional bragger could sell his services bragging others up.... A good Boast, Brag or Lie is a piece of performance art. Not at all the same thing.

The Auld Grump, and a good bragger knows that hugely overblown boasts work much better than petty prevarications.

[Mister Andersen]

There's a difference between simply bragging and bragging for a living. Impress would however doubtlessly give a synergy bonus to your Profession check

[Morgenstern]

I guess my point is that the means is not goal. If the goal is motivate (particularly in a martial sense), then Tactics has the relevent checks. If the goal is to gather support, Profession has the check. If the goal is get get them to aprove of you, then Impress is the host for the check. In all three casses the -process- is the heroic bragging. The Legendary Orc always has 2 out of 3 of those skills and can add the other one through continuity if he's ever been more of a carrot than stick guy at any point in his career before hand .

[TheAuldGrump]

I guess my point is that the means is not goal. If the goal is motivate (particularly in a martial sense), then Tactics has the relevent checks. If the goal is to gather support, Profession has the check. If the goal is get get them to aprove of you, then Impress is the host for the check. In all three casses the -process- is the heroic bragging. The Legendary Orc always has 2 out of 3 of those skills and can add the other one through continuity if he's ever been more of a carrot than stick guy at any point in his career before hand .

Except that orcs are banned from making Impress/Persuasion checks.... Perhaps it would be better to make the limitation pertinent only to those who do not share a Talent with the character - orcs will listen to other orcs making their boasts for hours on end (where I piss the grass dies do, and when I pass wind the elves bottle it and sell it as parfume! to misquote Mike Fink). Others lack the delicate sensibilities to fully appreciate hour long sagas of destruction and slaughter....

The Auld Grump

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, I am slightly surprised that none of the Orcish feats increases their size. This surprise likely has more to do with certain companies and their miniatures than anything else - Reaper minis has some beautiful (?) Large orcs, and I think some of the GW orcs tuck into being Huge. (The Reaper Reven are what I would be using for CF Orcs, along with some GW plastics.

And yeah, the orcs in CF definitely have their Waaghh! on.

The Auld Grump

[Crafty_Alex]

I guess my point is that the means is not goal. If the goal is motivate (particularly in a martial sense), then Tactics has the relevent checks. If the goal is to gather support, Profession has the check. If the goal is get get them to aprove of you, then Impress is the host for the check. In all three casses the -process- is the heroic bragging. The Legendary Orc always has 2 out of 3 of those skills and can add the other one through continuity if he's ever been more of a carrot than stick guy at any point in his career before hand .

Except that orcs are banned from making Impress/Persuasion checks.... Perhaps it would be better to make the limitation pertinent only to those who do not share a Talent with the character - orcs will listen to other orcs making their boasts for hours on end (where I piss the grass dies do, and when I pass wind the elves bottle it and sell it as parfume! to misquote Mike Fink). Others lack the delicate sensibilities to fully appreciate hour long sagas of destruction and slaughter....

The Auld Grump

Think of it this way - as Morg said, there are 2 out of 3 ways of bragging Orcs can use (maybe a 4th - Intimidate/Coercion - would seem to fit in certain tales of manli...I mean, orciness and engender an idea of why NOT to cross the braggart). What those banned checks are saying is, Orcs don't use bragging to improve people's opinion of them. That's not their way. In fact, I challenge the collective to come up with a time an orc brags in fantasy or gaming lit to try and make people just like him better (and those other characters would not be PCs). Orcs intimidate (Intimidate/Coercion), they may try to improve their reputation (Profession/Endorsement), even recite particular heroic stories and examples of their skill (Tactics/Morale), but I don't see them doing it purely for engendering good will towards themselves

[Morgenstern]

One thing to consider when looking at subrace feats is that these are package deals, allowing characters to become heroic examples of a cultural ethnicity as much as physical phenotype. NPCs could take the feats, or they could amass the approriate qualities by other means, but the real focus in there design is what they will provide to players.

One of the tools used was weapon proficiencies. Weapon proficiencies are a cultural feature more often than a biological one. Sometimes they are logically required because a feat provides bonuses to using weapons of the included sort - in the same way that Practice Makes Perfect advanced tricks demand a forte level of expertise before you can use them. Sometimes the proficiency prerequisites are just there to firm up a theme - I paint images with mechanics at least as much as with flavor text, and usually the mechanics paint sticks a lot better with the concept meets the gaming table . The feats could have granted proficiencies instead or requiring them, but then that would have taken up some of the aproximate 'value' a feat could provide. By making proficiencies a requirement, I know that the character is competent with any weapon that the feat might boost and I can save the 'value' of the feat for creating benefits more unique to that culture. If the resulting feat/package doesn't strike a cord for you, then it's just focused on modeling a different culture than you might be thinking of, rather than doing it "wrong" . 15 kinds of elves may seem like a lot, but it's infintesimal compared to the number of kinds of elves that exist in the minds of gamers reading the book . If you have the book, what you are looking at is my interpretation of many common themes confined within a balanced and playable rule set. I for one am very happy with the results because I think we've developed some good tools for showing some gamer favorites having weakneses or drawbacks that make sense, rather than brushing it all under a Level Adjustment rug. Are Spider Nation Elves as powerful compared to high elves as Drow are? No they are not. But then they don't play weird games with mismatched levels in a party to try and cludge the difference, either. Will the Spider Nation massage the "my character is better than yours" urge that Drow play to so well for some? Maybe- if you are looking for a particular flavor and theme rather than bluntly overpowered attributes and benfits. Level for level and feat for feat a Spider Nation elf and plain old high elf are in a dead heat by design. And neither of them are particulalry better off than Joe the Human Barbarian. But all three of those characters are likely to appeal more stongly to one gamer or anther, and be able to contribute roughly as much at any gaming table where they meet.