David wrote:What do they get that puts them above human at this point, the low-light vision? fey type?
Some quick background before I answer this. The point-buy system that I'm using to measure the costs of these races is meant to be universal across the d20 System. That means that - insofar as building characters goes - it's meant to be used with 3.0, 3.5, d20 Modern, Pathfinder, etc. all simultaneously; indeed, using this would let you largely use all such characters side-by-side in a single adventuring party.
Because Pathfinder characters are marginally stronger than their 3.X counterparts, they get a small "package deal" - that is, a mini-template - which, because it's applied to *all* Pathfinder characters, isn't charged to their total cost insofar as pricing their characters goes. Between this package deal (which the co-author of the book kindly posted on his blog) and the quickened feat progression, it's actually fairly easy to quantify how much Pathfinder characters are stronger than their 3.5 counterparts overall (even if that overlooks the details of the actual difference between Pathfinder's versions of the various races and classes - you can quantify those too (and the co-author has, for the most part, in other blog posts), but that's a separate issue).
The reason I'm going on about this is that the "Pathfinder Package Deal" helps to set the cost of the net +2 to an attribute that Pathfinder characters receive. From that site:
+2 to an Attribute, Corrupted/the attribute is fixed by race (8 CP).
"Corrupted" refers to a mechanism whereby a weakness is introduced so as to gain a corresponding one-third price reduction, or a +50% increase in power. In this case, the price for a +2 bonus to an attribute has been reduced from 12 Character Points down to only 8 CP, but at the cost of having the +2 be pre-determined by the race in question.
Which brings us back around to the cost of humans under this system. Humans receive:
- One bonus feat, which is 6 CP as a standard price.
- 1 extra skill point per level, which is 3 CP (I can go into why it costs that much, but that's tangential here), and
- Spending 4 CP to buy off the corruption, and so spend that "free" +2 attribute bonus wherever they want.
So in other words, humans cost 6 + 3 + 4 = 13 Character Points under this system. (In 3.5, a human wouldn't get access to that package deal, and so would only cost 9 CP total, for the bonus feat and the skill points.)
Now, contrast this with your standard pony satyr. They get:
- One bonus feat (aka the "brand of destiny") just like humans (6 CP).
- They also receive the Pathfinder Package Deal, and just like humans, spend 4 CP to buy off the corruption so that they can spend it where they want.
- They get low-light vision. That's an Occult Sense, which costs 6 CP.
- Being able to re-roll one Bluff or Diplomacy check once per day isn't very expensive, costing only 2 CP ("Luck, specialized for one-half cost/only for skills, and corrupted for two-thirds cost/only for Bluff or Diplomacy, may not take 20").
- Being treated as per the fey creature type isn't worth much more, being only 3 CP (as a variant of the Privilege ability, since it's basically letting them ignore the very few spells and effects that are specific to Humanoids).
That's 21 CP altogether; among the stuff that they get that humans don't, it's the low-light vision that's the most expensive. That's because any kind of special sensory ability is a not-inconsiderable advantage. In this case, in any condition of less-than-daylight but brighter-than-darkness standards (e.g. most indoor adventuring), they're going to see enemies before their enemies see them (unless they have a special sense as well), which is significant; I've had parties slaughter enemies that had no idea they were there thanks to this.