Talk:Pixie, Variant (4e Racial Trait Variant)

Feedback Welcome

This was created by me before I got an account. I'd love some feedback as I made this for a player in my game and feel it is rather balanced. I started with the halfling.

I gave them a great fly speed and the Hover ability so they wouldn't be useless and punished them by giving them a terrible walk speed.

I also took away some of the halfling things like Bold and made Nimble Reaction better (Tricky).

I changed Acrobatics to Stealth since Flying creatures make Acrobatics a little confusing and no one looks up. I gave them lowlight because Pixies have had lowlight since forever. --YQM 01:30, 7 January 2009 (MST)

• Speed: If your goning to keep the Clumsy while grounded (see Flight below), you might want to place "(Clumsy)" after the speed value.
• Fey Invisibility: This power needs a duration. Perhaps; "(until end of your next turn or until you make an attack)", or something similar.
• Flight: Well this is a biggie. There are very good reasons why WotC has set the presidence of no "at-will" flight at Heroic levels (more then just the already incredible fact they never have to worry about Difficult Terrain, most traps, and most Heroic monsters can't attack at an altitude). And I can confirm this by saying I have tried multiple times to include it for several races, but it is very unbalancing. Even with the penalty to their ground movement it becomes a problem (at the moment no PC would ever walk, and take the unhindered 8 movement). You may want to drop the Clumsy, and convert Flight into a encounter power, or a Elite level feat. You may want to look at how I handled flight for my Cambion, it works great and the players find it fair when grouped. Be careful it is easy to convince yourself you can "balance" Heroic flight, but I can assure you better minds have tried (WotC attempted early on to test this ability and discovered more balance and play issues then they could list), and failed. As a feat and/or power it will work best.

Thanks for listening. -- Sepsis 14:54, 8 January 2009 (MST)

Took your advice and added "until you attack" and added "(Clumsy)" to the movement speed so its easier to notice.

I am going to leave the Fly as is because of a few things. Dazed, Dominated, Dying, Immobilized, Petrified, Prone, Restrained, Slowed (kinda), Stunned, Surprised, Unconscious all keep you from moving in, hitting, and moving out. Also moving out of hitting range would also keep you from ever getting Opportunity Attacks on people which is why you have Hover in the first place. Most buildings/Dungeons are 10' tall so you anyone standing next to you can still hit you. On the outdoor encounters you just have to make sure an artillery exist. The difficult terrain thing is something to think about but so is the fact you can design more interesting dungeons that rely on the Pixie helping teammates up to a higher location. There aren't many traps I LIKE that require people to be on the ground to be hit by them. Walk on the ground to activate them, maybe, not not often be hit by them. --YQM 04:37, 9 January 2009 (MST)

Nice ideas all, and by all means try it, but again I thought all the same things and found it isn't that easy. I will once again stress there are so many reasons WotC did not allow at-will Heroic level flying it isn't funny (remember it wasn't an oversight, it was intentionally removed from Heroic hands). The sick part is you may be months into allowing this race and then start seeing the problems. Unlike many 4e things Flying is the one that can break a race and unbalance it faster then anything else. -- Sepsis 15:28, 9 January 2009 (MST)

Added Load Limit to Flying to prevent characters from attempting to drop large objects on people from above. This also represents the Hummingbird like flight of the pixie. I got the idea from 3e's treatment of sizes. --YQM 21:07, 9 January 2009 (MST)

Tricky and Invisiblity

I think that the Tricky feature is a bit much. Pixies are already going to be hard to hit since they can fly all around, and therefore can only be hit by a limited number of things. The fact that a Pixie is likely going to get a bonus to AC already from its ability bonus, and that their ranged attacks will be stronger just makes me wonder even more about it all.

The AC Bonus was removed by someone else but the edit reads fine to since they took out the load penalty as well. --YQM 04:11, 16 April 2009 (MDT)

Also, the Invisibility should have another part to it, such as a time limit, unless you wanted it to have a 5-minute limit already due to it being an encounter power. Oh yes, and this ability also helps a Pixie even more. A Pixie rogue or ranger could easily turn invisible, fly out of range of the biggest threats/sneak in behind them, then pick them off. Then when the enemy turns around or tries to take them out, they're less likely to! Definitely something from that needs to be taken out. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nocturne (talk • contribs) 15:40, 15 February 2009 (MST). Please sign your posts.

Since your post Wizards Of The Coast has released the PHB2. The Gnome has a power that reads "You are invisible until you attack, or until the end of your next turn" My was Originally "Until you attack" Then "Until the end of your next turn." I have since taken a page from a book as they say and combined them. --YQM 04:11, 16 April 2009 (MDT)

Deletion

I would like this to no longer be up for deletion. I feel, with my edits from the original and those by people recently this race is perfectly balanced. I have had someone playing this race in my dnd game for the last two months and have encountered no problems. The race does force a DM to design his adventure with the pixie in mind but really that is your job as a DM. The characters aren't there to be forced into your story, you are there to mold a story WITH the characters.

The other part of the deletion thing says this has been unfinished for a year even though it was made in Jan. 2009. That and its finishedish. It could use more but its five AM. --YQM 04:01, 16 April 2009 (MDT)

Still Broken

First I gotta point out that the date stated in the author's box is Jan 2008 not 2009. Thats over a year ago.

But the big thing here is the at-will Heroic level flight. That is totally against the design of 4e races, by giving them that ability they remain broken/unbalanced. If you can't lose the flight I believe at least some form of disclaimer should be put on the page such as; I only say this because the Wiki can get bad press for "promoting" or warehousing broken/unbalanced creations, and if someone comes here I don't want them to click two or three links looking for such and finding a obvious step away from balance without us aknowledeging we know the creation is unbalanced, but for certain reasons a creation will be balanced within play. Otherwise I do like the rest of the race, although I gotta say I want more fluff. the Playing a Pixie section needs to maybe talk about different Pixie types, even if it is just cosmetic. Sorry my youngest has gotten into "Pixie Hollow" and she keeps asking about water pixies, and tinker pixies, etc. in my game. And it just got me thinking. Well good luck and thanks for your time. -- Sepsis 06:58, 16 April 2009 (MDT)

The date in the box is wrong; it says "2009" in the history. But, anyway, I completely agree. Why not remove flight, give it a good base land speed and say in the fluff that it represents the pixie hovering a short way above the ground but not actually flying? Then do a racial feat for flying at epic. You could represent the hovering as a bonus to Athletics skill checks to jump. --Sam Kay 13:33, 16 April 2009 (MDT)

The problem is that it gives the appearance of having been here for over a year and new comers will see it as that, they won't spend the time to look at the edit history. But I do agree with your suggestion of a fix for flight. The feat could even be Paragon level, Dragonborn gain limited flight at 12th (encounter power) and then full flight at 16th (becomes actual movement) with the Scion of Arkosia Paragon Path). -- Sepsis 13:45, 16 April 2009 (MDT)

Flight isn't given to the characters at level one because wizards didn't want to include anything that handicapped the players along with it. I don't really mind tacking Clumsy Grounded onto the flight and as such have. While playing with this character in my group I found out only one thing: almost everyone has a ranged attack. The MM goblins have javelins, the drow have crossbows, the kobolds have spears and the dragons, well, are dragons. The only change I made to the character i will post here now. I called it "very small hands" and ruled that all ranged weapons functioned only at short range. --YQM 14:44, 16 April 2009 (MDT)

Actually the biggest reason races arn't granted flight as a movement for PCs is because it unbalances them compared to abilities and movement types of the other races. Basically it is unfair to everyone who dosen't take the "flying" race. Now if everyone in the group gets flight you can say its balanced, you can't use a penalty to the race to say that balances it. Doing either (or both) clearly means it "outside 4e design standards". It can't use "your the DM so you fix it" to say its legal. All adventures and encounters require tailoring to your PCs, but you are asking people in general to accept that it is not going to disrupt things when Heroic level characters of this race ignore terrain, traps, and hazards. While others can't.

Soon the other Players start eyeing the race and grumbling about "unfair"...then next campaign you have 5 PC Pixies because no one is getting fooled by that stupid "ground thing" anymore. And while you can compensate for this, it takes away from many cool monsters and encounters you could use at Heroic level. Then it gets dull. And basically because an unbalanced ability that is not accounted for at Heroic levels was introduced without a limiting control. The rules don't support it (without help), and it has a tendency to overshadow other racial abilities. Making it a "go to" race for nearly every ranged class.

Regardless of personal experience and your abilities you want to keep in mind you are creating something you want everyone to be able to use with the least effort and work on thier part (4e is all about ease of use). If this is a creation that should only be used by experienced DMs and Players, you should say so. Maybe even include a section on tips for using the race, both for Players and DMs. I won't say this can't be done, It just shouldn't without the proper care. -- Sepsis 15:46, 16 April 2009 (MDT)

I have to agree with Sepsis on this issue. One of the major design points for 4th edition was that the DM should be able to take any monster or hazard from any of the books and throw it at the PCs without having to take the exact party composition in mind - a given challenge might be slightly easier or harder for a certain class or race to overcome, but it still prevents a reasonable amount of difficulty. At-will flight lets the PC bypass a large range of challenges with little to no effort: even excluding creatures that lack readily available ranged attacks, the pixie can still bypass and ignore almost every single trap and natural hazard in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

While it is very possible to design the encounters in a given campaign with the pixie in mind (and I'm sure there are a number of DMs who are willing to do so), the fact that the DM has to tailor his entire campaign to deal with a single racial ability is a sure sign of something that's unplayable for practical reasons, particularly within the confines of 4e. I realize that flight is a fairly defining trait for pixies in D&D, but it needs to be limited or removed in order to make this race comparable to those that already exist. --Dracomortis 12:53, 17 April 2009 (MDT)

I have edited flight to reflect a change the person who played the Pixie in my game suggested. How does that look? --YQM 00:02, 18 April 2009 (MDT)

I do like the power, although it should cost a Move action (not be a Free action), and I would change the usage to once per day at Heroic, twice at Paragon, and three times at Epic. -- Sepsis 06:11, 18 April 2009 (MDT)

If I made it a move then you'd have to double move on the first turn to get two turns of use out of it. I imagined the ability to swoop in and out of combat which is why I made it till end of next turn so it still has a tricky feel to it. However reducing its usages and making it a minor doesn't see out of the question. --YQM 07:29, 18 April 2009 (MDT)

I see your problem, well you could do a simple wording change allowing them to "fly" and move in the same action, or perhaps easier would be making it a Minor action. But using this power should take some effeort. A Free action allows them to to use it even if its an enemies turn, and thats a bit much. -- Sepsis 11:51, 18 April 2009 (MDT)

Now that the issue of the pixie's flight has been resolved, I feel that the deletion template is no longer warranted. If anyone disagrees with this, please state so here along with why you feel the template is still warranted; otherwise, I'll assume that there is no disagreement and remove it within the next couple of days. -- Dracomortis 14:17, 18 April 2009 (MDT)

I agree, now all we need is more "fluff". But there is no need for this article to be deleted. -- Sepsis 14:59, 18 April 2009 (MDT)

One More Little Thing

You might want to update Tricky to something like; "Tricky Flight: Your fairy wings let you dart about during combat. You gain a +1 racial bonus to your Reflex defense." This may work better since flight is no longer a standard form of movement. -- Sepsis 15:04, 18 April 2009 (MDT)

How does that read? --YQM 05:31, 19 April 2009 (MDT)

Rename

This should be renamed to "Pixie, Variant (4e Race)" now that there is an official Pixie. Marasmusine 03:06, 11 January 2012 (MST)

Done. --Green Dragon 12:50, 11 January 2012 (MST)