Creating Races: Rabbitfolk

My daughter loves rabbits. To those of you who know her, this is no surprise. She wears rabbit clothes every day, cuddles rabbit stuffed animals, plays with rabbit toys, reads rabbit books, wears a rabbit toque, has rabbit costumes, and makes drawing after drawing of rabbits. When she says goodbye to my husband every morning she puts her fingers up in a peace sign and says “Rabbit, Dad!” possibly followed by the words “Boing” or “Hop, hop!” This is because peace signs are NOT peace signs. They are rabbit ears. And in addition to being an adorable animal, apparently ‘Rabbit’ is a perfectly acceptable greeting, conversation starter, and farewell.

She. Loves. Rabbits.

It will come as no surprise then, that when she’s making characters for Pathfinder they almost always involve rabbits. She’s had rabbit familiars, rabbit-demon familiars, rabbit non-combat pets, insisted on having a massive rabbit as a mount instead of a pony, and even played an almiraj sorceress who took up adventuring in order to protect her warren of baby almiraj. When she buys gear you can bet it’s not just a tent, it’s a tent with a rabbit painted on the side, or a backpack stitched with a rabbit face, or a cold weather outfit with fake rabbit ears on the hood. She has no problem paying extra to add a rabbit motif to her equipment.

Eventually, since my son was tired of my daughter constantly trying to play an awakened bunny rabbit whose combat tactics only involved running away, we decided to make her a race for Pathfinder: Rabbitfolk.

The Advanced Race Guide for the Pathfinder RPG has a TON of new races inside (in addition to old favourites) as well as alternate race traits, archetypes, feats, spells, and gear–all intended to be used with a single specific race found inside. Probably one of the most used books in my household, Advanced Race Guide is a bunch of awesome stuffed between hard covers.

But we wouldn’t be using any of that to make our Rabbitfolk, we would be heading straight to the back.

The final chapter of the Advanced Race Guide is entitled ‘Race Builder,’ and that’s exactly what it is. A series of short easy steps and decisions to make any kind of race you want. The system runs on points (called race points, or RP), which makes it easy to use, and easy to compare to other races to help determine how powerful yours is. With these rules we would make our Rabbitfolk.

To start with you need a race concept–for us that was pretty straightforward–and then you need to determine their category. Standard (which uses 1-10 RP), Advanced (which uses 11-20 RP) and Monstrous (which uses over 20 RP). Using the point system in the race builder, the core races vary in strength from 9 to 11 RP, with a few other commonly used races: the tiefling and the assimar, coming in at 13 and 15 respectively. Deciding there’s no way a rabbitfolk should be stronger than an aasimar, I gave her a hard limit of 15 points, placing her in either the standard or advanced category depending on how many RP she actually used, and let her get to work.

Once you know the category you’re aiming for and the concept for your race you need to determine their racial qualities. This is a fancy way of saying their type and subtype, speed, size, and ability modifiers.

First we chose the type. Humanoids are the baseline for this and cost 0 points to select. Other types cost more depending on how powerful their extra qualities are. For example, fey costs only 2 RP to select while giving your race the plant type would cost 10 RP and the construct type would cost 20 RP. Rabbitfolk are clearly humanoids with the rabbitfolk subtype.

From there you choose your race’s size, then speed. My daughter decided rabbitfolk would be small, which costs 0 points, and be really fast. She chose normal speed, which is 30 ft. and costs 0 points. However, she was adamant that they be even faster, so we modified it with racial traits, bringing their total base speed to 40 ft. (more details on this later).

Finally it was time for the ability scores. For this you choose what kind of modifiers you’ll get by selecting an array, and then you choose what abilities will receive those modifiers afterwards. Deciding to keep her rabbitfolk on par with most of the core races she gave them the standard array, which costs 0 race points. The standard array grants +2 to a physical ability score, +2 to a mental ability score and -2 to any other ability score. My daughter decided rabbitfolk are very nimble and clever, but not very strong. They get +2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom, and -2 Strength.

Finally, you select a language quality. She chose standard for 0 RP, allowing rabbit folk to begin the game speaking Common and Rabbitfolk. You then choose up to seven languages that they can choose to learn from having a high intelligence modifier. She selected Sylvan, Halfling, Gnome and Elven for these optional languages, deciding that rabbitfolk would feel most comfortable with these small or nature loving races, as well as Terran, the elemental language of the earth.

Once you’ve got your racial qualities completed, it’s time to move on to the final step: spending RP to purchase racial traits. Racial Traits are split into categories, including: Ability Score, Defence, Feat and Skill, Magical, Movement, Offence, Senses and Weakness. Each of these categories is further divided into tiers: Standard, Advanced and Monstrous. These tiers coincide to the race’s total RP, as mentioned back in step one. If you are a standard race you can only select racial traits from the standard tier and can have no more than three traits from each category. Advanced races can select from standard or advanced traits and may have up to four from each category, while Monstrous races can select from any tier and may have no more than five from each category.

Depending on what traits my daughter chose she would either be placing her rabbitfolk in the standard or advanced category. To decide where she would end up I asked her what she wanted the rabbitfolk to be able to do the most. If any of those abilities fell into the advanced category we would be spending between 11 and 15 RP so that she could select it, and if they all fell into the standard category then which category rabbitfolk ended up in would depend solely on how many points she spent.

She decided she wanted her rabbitfolk to be even faster, and to be able to burrow. After looking through the options we discovered both of these abilities were in the Movement category under Advanced Traits. Now we knew we’d be in the Advanced category for sure. She selected the Burrow ability for 3 RP, and the Fast ability for 1 RP, granting her a burrow speed of 20 feet, and increasing the base speed to 40 feet.

Having spent only 4 RP total so far, she had plenty of room to add on other abilities if she was going to make it into the Advanced races. My daughter decided she didn’t want the rabbitfolk to have flashy powers. No magical spells or exotic abilities here! She wanted them to rely on their natural, physical advantages. They were alert, nimble, quick, quiet and have great hearing. We gave the abilities a read and came up with list of options. In the end, she decided to give them Quick Reactions, an advanced feat and skill trait that grants them Improved Initiative as a bonus feat at a cost of 2 RP and Skill Bonus, a standard feat and skill trait that gives them a +2 racial bonus on a single skill check at a cost of 2 RP. She decided to select skill bonus three times, for a total of 6 RP, granting the rabbitfolk a +2 racial bonus on acrobatics, perception and stealth. Finally, she gave the rabbit folk their flashiest ability of all (and no, it’s not very flashy, haha): Cat’s Luck. Renaming this standard defence racial trait Hare’s Luck (as a play on those lucky rabbit feet people sometimes use as keychains) this ability is usable once per day and lets them roll a single reflex save twice and keep the better result.  With a cost of 2 RP, that brought the rabbitfolk’s abilities up to 13 RP, and made our rabbitfolk complete.

Now all there was left to do was write it down and keep it somewhere safe. But where would that be?

We taped it to the inside cover of the Advanced Race Guide, so rabbitfolk could sit alongside the other races of Golarion, right where they belonged.

So without further ado:

---

Rabbitfolk

Quick, clever and quiet, the skittish rabbitfolk keep careful watch on their warrens. More likely to wait in silence and hope enemies pass them by than to needlessly provoke danger, rabbitfolk are cautious and rarely seen. When roused to defend themselves, rabbitfolk prefer ambushes and fast-paced skirmishes, attacking from hiding with lightning fast movements before darting out of sight, only to repeat the process all over again. 

+2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom, -2 Strength: Rabbitfolk are physically weak, but nimble and clever. (0 RP)
Small: Rabbitfolk are Small creatures and gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a -1 penalty to their Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defence, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks. (0 RP)
Fast Speed: Rabbitfolk are incredibly fast, with a base speed of 40 feet. (1 RP)
Burrow: Rabbitfolk have a burrow speed of 20 feet. (3 RP)
Agile: Rabbitfolk receive a +2 racial bonus on acrobatics checks. (2 RP)
Hare’s Luck (Ex): Once per day when a rabbitfolk makes a Reflex saving throw, she can roll the saving throw twice and take the better result. She must decide to use this ability before the saving throw is attempted. (1 RP)
Keen Senses: Rabbitfolk receive a +2 racial bonus on perception checks. (2 RP)
Quick Reactions: Rabbitfolk gain Improved Initiative as a bonus feat. (2 RP)
Stealthy: Rabbitfolk receive a +2 racial bonus on stealth checks. (2 RP)
Languages: Rabbitfolk begin plays speaking Common and Rabbitfolk. Rabbitfolk with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Elven, Gnome, Halfling, Sylvan and Terran.

Total RP: 13

---

Thanks for checking out Rabbitfolk today! My daughter and I hope you enjoy it!

For more images of rabbitfolk, check out our Pinterest board, here.

Jessica