But you’re right in that it seem underpowered. If I compare it with the Halfling and consider their second chance as the equivalent survival instinct and bold as the equivalent of dual heritage. I’m missing and equivalent to the halfling’s nimble reaction. But the halfling does have the disadvantage of being small.

So they could easily have another circumstantial ability. Maybe trap sense or something else…

That means a couple of things. One, it will always work in situations where it’s triggered. (Nobody would use the power to get a +2/-2 if they’d missed by 3 or been hit by 2 — that would still be a miss/hit.) Two, those situations will be relegated to marginal misses/hits.

Fact one makes it more powerful in some senses than the reroll powers, but fact two makes it less powerful. That may seem like balance, but I’m not so sure.

Consider Elven Accuracy. Is a reroll better or worse than a straight +2? Well, it depends on what you need in order to hit. If you need to roll an 11 (50% hit chance), then a reroll gives you a 75% chance, while a +2 gives you a 60%. Mathematically, the +2 becomes superior only when you need to roll a 19 or higher to hit. (And at 19, it’s only a 1% greater chance.) Plus, with Elven Accuracy, you can choose to use it when you flub your daily power; with Survival Instinct you can’t, unless you missed by 1-2.

Well, how about Second Chance? Mathematically, again, the -2 is inferior to a forced reroll in most cases — and definitely when you’re staring at a natural 20.

Survival Instinct is more reliable than the reroll powers, but it’s quite a bit weaker. Its biggest strength is that it will always deliver a hit/miss when used (and that it does work for both, admittedly). Its weakness is that it won’t affect nonmarginal rolls, even if it’s a roll you’d really, really like to make, and it won’t deliver or save you from a lucky crit.

It’s not a bad thing to have in your arsenal by any means, but it’s not as strong an option as other races get, and this race is already a bit on the weak side by my reckoning.

Playtest and see how it goes, though. I might be wrong about the usefulness of Survival Instinct in practice.

Ninetails last blog post..Character Development: Hot Potato

I will revise the template and revisit it in a later Interlude.

Since this is most likely to be run as a one-shot, will we ever see it in use? In other words, are the PC’s going to start the adventure at level 1? If the PC’s do start at level 1, it *needs* to be a 1-feat power, otherwise we’ll never get to see it.

Besides, at least for the purposes of this one adventure, we can deal with it by making sure there’s a soldier or two around that can counter or punish shiftyness.

In the larger scheme of things, two feats for shifty is probably worth it.

Plotters last blog post..D&D Insider Ennui

I’d vote for Insight and Dungeoneering. This would reflect their underground-yet-humanly curious nature better, and it’s fun to see how the players use Dungeoneering in strange and twisted ways.

greywulfs last blog post..Carnivals and Logos

I’m no longer sure it adds all that much as is. I’d easily let players decide a +2 bonus to 2 skills as they see fit among these four : Insight/Diplomacy (Human heritage) and Thievery/Dungeonering (Kobold Heritage)

Please continue to discuss this as I now realized I might have made the specs I gave Yan too restrained to be useful outside of the adventure which is what good adventure crunch should be.

That is one common design trap I assume.

If the template was not build specifically for an adventure I would definitely change the 2 skills bonus to thievery and dungeoneering.

As for Trap sense I toyed with the idea of putting it as a racial bonus but was not sure about it… The feat does seems under power and could easily be more interesting if it also added an extra boost of +2 to the thievery and dungeoneering skills when manipulating or searching for traps.

Why +2 Insight? I thought that Endurance would be a physical show of human’s resourcefulness. This also ties in more too your theme with the encounter power and CON bonus

Why +2 Diplomacy? Not sure i have ever seen a Kobold smooth talk his way out of any thing, though that would be a funny occurrence, I thought that Dungeonering would be good, tie into trap making. This also leads in to a human’s resourcefulness.

Why +2 DEX? Seems to me that cunning would be INT or WIS.

The encounter power works, and the feats for shifty are fine. I am kind of on the fence with Trap Sense, it is one of those feats that only has application if you come up against traps, which may or may not happen in a campaign depending on the DM, most of the racial feats now in 4th seem to have a chance to come up in every game. I think if I were that kobold character I don’t think I would pick it up, I can use a feat to get other things that come up more often.

This just my two cents, Thoughts?

Beer in mind that this template as not been play tested. That being said, the survival instincts power seem powerful enough to match the equivalent half-elf’s power of Dilettante & Group Diplomacy (our base of comparison).

As for the feats well I don’t find shifty (as written in the monster manual) that powerful either but as far as feat power are concern it does seems more powerful then what a feat usually gives you. Lowering it as an encounter power was an effort in that direction.

Nice crunch BTW, but now… We want even more Kobold Love!

Personally I’d give them Shifty per Encounter for free and make Shifty at-will a Feat. Either that, or give them Speed 7 (same as the Elf) and be done with it. Simplifies the whole thing.

Love the idea of making Powers usable more frequently by burning a Feat, though I’m pretty sure that kind of thinking is going to lead 4e to the Dark Side. I envisage entire splatbooks from Wizards full of nothing but Encounter powers turned into at-will powers.

::shudder::

Keep up the good work, CDM. Glad I don’t have to worry about anything like this in the Microlite20 version!

greywulfs last blog post..The Campsite

It is quite a powerful ability. I know this from experience, since my current monk class build has a mechanically-identical power. (It’s how I chose to update Uncanny Speed to 4e’s more mobile combats.)

On the other hand, it has less impact as teleport becomes more common, and full kobolds get it (and trap sense) without needing to spend a feat. The ability to take human feats is pretty good… but other than that, the half-kobolds don’t seem to offer anything outstanding.

I think I’d throw in the trap sense free, and make Shifty one feat.

Rogues could be kind of scary, but they tend to be good at avoiding OAs anyhow, and scary half-kobold rogues seem pretty thematic.

Ninetails last blog post..Myth Directions: Dragons’ Teeth

I imagine even with their height, they’re a bit huskier than your average kobold…shorter mouth-beak-jawtrap-things…but one thing confuzzles me…

What must their ears look like?…

*waves hands in confuzzlement*

Reverend Mikes last blog post..Sorsil: My Beloved Disaster-Waiting-To-Happen

Move along nothing to see here.

Phil as change the size but not the suggested height which should be changed to something like 4´ 3?–4´ 9? (as the dwarf) if you want them to be medium size creature.

My 2 cents

I’m curious to see what these halfbreeds look like…definitely on the light side as far as medium-size goes…

Reverend Mikes last blog post..Demotivational Monday: Self-fulfilling Prophecy