Pathfinder ruleset assumes PCs to be Medium or Small humanoids. Not so many rules exist for non-standard characters.
- The only "official" way to play as a bigger dude that I know of is using race building rules. With explicit DM permission, it's possible to create an 11-RP race that will be Large and still have the reach of a Medium/Small creature. Also, this race probably won't fit into the world of Golarion unless you work for it.
- Bestiary creatures that are Large or bigger typically have racial Hit Dice, and I've heard it many times that mixing racial and class HD for players is generally a bad idea.
- Some monstrous humanoids, e.g. Trox, have official racial stats and are Large, but playing them is usually frowned upon, as their appearance creates certain social difficulties unless the campaign is set in a monstrous setting.
- Half-Giants published by Dreamscarred Press are up to 8 ft. 4 in. tall, but still Medium. They are treated as being Large for certain purposes, but not for reach, although they can use Large weapons.
Threads about PCs being Large usually bring up all the related bonuses: CMD/CMB, reach, extra damage, extra STR, and say that it all makes such races overpowered. Very often they also talk about Enlarge Person alongside Haste creating Huge Barbarians that one-shot everything they see, and about enemies that can't even retaliate because of limited reach. What makes me a bit interested here, though, is that it's usually
mundane characters who benefit most from increasing their melee potential, and melee characters are rarely overpowered compared to casters.
However, lacking any first-hand experience, I wish to know:
Is it actually a bad idea to allow players to choose Large races for their characters?
By "Large races" I mean races that are properly Large, have all the related benefits, including reach. This race can be custom-made, adapted from another source, or an existing one can be used.
Please remember about the Good Subjective/Bad Subjective guidelines and state your experience of seeing Large or larger races in actual play if you decide to post an answer. Let's not get this question closed.
Best Answer
I’ve played in games with it allowed; it’s not that big a deal.
Being Large is a considerable advantage for warriors, because reach is so potent. If it is available, anyone going in for melee combat is going to be very, very interested in that race. Many other races will simply not be able to realistically contribute as much for many types of warrior.
But that’s not really all that different from how things were to begin with. There are almost no races in Pathfinder with as much to offer as humans for, well, most everything. That includes warrior-ing. A bonus feat is a huge deal for almost everyone; only fighters gain so many bonus feats that the human bonus feat looks lackluster. And there are other rather-strong races to consider, such as strix. Strix are often banned precisely because flight is that good and so many people want it. Humans, of course, are almost-never banned.
So your Large race is going to be joining the ranks of those races that really stand out as being among the best of the best. On some level, all of your fighters are going to be this race, or strix, or they’re going to simply be worse off than they could be. Your non-fighter warrior-types might consider human another option. There may be a few others, but the point is that a lot of races are just going to be worse. They already are, but adding a new option may highlight that fact in uncomfortable ways.
In the end, though, your Large warrior is still, quite simply, not as powerful as a spellcaster, so there are distinct limits on how far one can go in claiming that this would be “overpowered.”