Racial Value and Build Points

I'm working on some custom races and have some questions.  Perhaps I'm just being dense, but I can't seem to grok the underlying math behind it.  According to the Player's Companion, racial classes can have up to an additional 4 build points, for a range of 4-8 build points, of which they can spend a maximum of 4 on the standard HD, fighting, arcane, divine and thievery categories.  I can't seem to find where it gives the trade off value for the additional build points = custom powers, if there is such a ratio, or how the extra XP total is determined.  

For instance, a class with Dwarf 0 has the standard 4 build points as any other character, an added base cost of 200 XP and what I count to be a total of 3-1/2 custom powers (I'm not sure what Dwarven Languages as).  

Elf 0 also has the standard 4 build points, an added base cost of 125 XP and what I count to be 3 custom power, although I don't know the value of Elven Languages.

Also, how does one figure out the base XP cost for racial values of creatures with more than 1 HD?  The bugbear example in Axioms has a base cost of 10,000 XP, but I'm not sure how that was arrived at.

Thanks!

Many of the PC races' Racial Values are broken down here:

http://www.autarch.co/forum/gnomish-infravision-0

XP total at 1st level is the sum of the Racial Value XP value plus the value from the 4 'normal' build points; so a Dwarf 0, Fighting 2, HD 2 would be 2,200 points. The custom powers in the Racial Value aren't "trade-off-able", by the book, but the link above would tell you how many points are in most of the racial values if you'd wanna try that out.

The extra HD races start off with something like 3,000XP per extra HD, though I think there's some other considerations in there; there was some commentary on that here:

http://www.autarch.co/forums/autarch-patreon-forums/axioms-discussion/mystic-paths-beastmen-breakdowns

Thanks!  I saw the gnomish thread but didn't actually look through it.

One more quick question: where does the 25 per skill appear?  This post (http://autarch.co/comment/19701#comment-19701) mentions that it is in the Player's Companion, but I can't seem to find it.  

That's in reference to an Elf class getting Diplomacy, as per elven courtier. PC pg 86, fourth paragraph, High Elves.

I haven't done the math, but I wouldn't be surprised at all that if one were to redo the Elf race with Diplomacy built in, it may come out (due to rounding) to be 25 XP above the regular Elf value, so that may just be the "simple case" for adding that to the Elf rather than the general guideline for adding a power to any given race.

Contrast that with (I believe) the recommendation in the Colors Of Magic article in Axioms that grants powers at 75XP a pop to a spellcaster build - 75XP is the more accurate "going rate" for a single power at first level, which derives from several sources; the easiest being dividing out the Thievery value (an average value of 73.75 XP per granted power).

 

[quote="koewn"]

That's in reference to an Elf class getting Diplomacy, as per elven courtier. PC pg 86, fourth paragraph, High Elves.

I haven't done the math, but I wouldn't be surprised at all that if one were to redo the Elf race with Diplomacy built in, it may come out (due to rounding) to be 25 XP above the regular Elf value, so that may just be the "simple case" for adding that to the Elf rather than the general guideline for adding a power to any given race.

Contrast that with (I believe) the recommendation in the Colors Of Magic article in Axioms that grants powers at 75XP a pop to a spellcaster build - 75XP is the more accurate "going rate" for a single power at first level, which derives from several sources; the easiest being dividing out the Thievery value (an average value of 73.75 XP per granted power). [/quote]

 

Got it!  Thanks!  As is often the case with ACKS, there's a ton of stuff buried just below the surface that I miss in initial readings . . . 

As an additional note, I've created a tool to help with creating spells, classes, races, and custom magic; it's available here. It's pretty clunky, and there may be some holes, but it can save a lot of time in quickly putting together a race/class, just to see what it looks like. Some day, I'm going to make it look pretty... some day...

Arman, my hat is off to you. Great resource!

Wow, Arman, this is amazing! You have better tools than I do.

Can I share these on G+?

Please do! I can’t promise my website will have 100% uptime, but I do my best :slight_smile: