While that's commonly true, the history of 'differently equal' is generally "We actually mean inferior, but we're trying to be subtle".
Of course, there's no particular reason fantasy species need to be equal, other than it being a proxy for real-world racism (pretty much all D&D 'races' are actually distinct species; some of them wouldn't even be in genus Homo). The actual need is for all PCs to be balanced against one another. The easy way of doing that is to remove race from character creation completely -- you're just allowed X different customizations, and there's a specific set which generate a stereotypical elf, or dwarf, or w/e.
PF2e is a ponderous, impossible mess...but they did do some real cool things with character creation.
Personally, I'm a big fan of allowing everyone access to a feat at the start of any game, with the caveat that the feat must come from a pool of background-specific feats. Most of the racial feats, as well as things that account for long periods of study or training like Linguist. Elf/dwarf combat training would move into those feats, and if you were brought up in that culture you would take that feat. Not only does this get cultural bullhonky out of species selection, but it means that if your character is, say...a human foundling brought up in one of these enclaves, maybe your DM waives the usual restriction and allows you to take 'Elven Upbringing' since you did, in fact, have an elven upbringing.
If I were (re)designing the system, those feats would carry the third point of bonus stat (the first being from your species, the second being from your class), with background being there to add additional flavor and skills as it is currently. Most characters can manage one of their stat points being 'off' for their class. Some can manage two. It's real damn hard to have all three points 'off' when everyone else in your party aligns all three to their goals and is giving you the squinty eyes for going so cross-purpose. Seriously. Try it sometime. Make a tiefling noncaster. Make a dragonborn rogue. Make a gnome ranger. Watch the rest of your table, DM, included, sit there all "so...are you suuure about this, mang?"
It doesn't really feel great, no matter how attached to the character's story you happen to be.
PF2e is a ponderous, impossible mess...but they did do some real cool things with character creation.
Personally, I'm a big fan of allowing everyone access to a feat at the start of any game, with the caveat that the feat must come from a pool of background-specific feats. Most of the racial feats, as well as things that account for long periods of study or training like Linguist. Elf/dwarf combat training would move into those feats, and if you were brought up in that culture you would take that feat. Not only does this get cultural bullhonky out of species selection, but it means that if your character is, say...a human foundling brought up in one of these enclaves, maybe your DM waives the usual restriction and allows you to take 'Elven Upbringing' since you did, in fact, have an elven upbringing.
If I were (re)designing the system, those feats would carry the third point of bonus stat (the first being from your species, the second being from your class), with background being there to add additional flavor and skills as it is currently. Most characters can manage one of their stat points being 'off' for their class. Some can manage two. It's real damn hard to have all three points 'off' when everyone else in your party aligns all three to their goals and is giving you the squinty eyes for going so cross-purpose. Seriously. Try it sometime. Make a tiefling noncaster. Make a dragonborn rogue. Make a gnome ranger. Watch the rest of your table, DM, included, sit there all "so...are you suuure about this, mang?"
It doesn't really feel great, no matter how attached to the character's story you happen to be.
You really need to find better people to play with. There is nothing wrong with a Tiefling being a non-caster and if your group is giving you grief for playing against type, that is strictly a problem with the people you play with and not the rules of the game.
Let's talk about an actual example I came very close to running recently, then.
I very nearly worked up a dragonborn rogue for a game a buddy of mine is in the planning stages for. To be frank, I did work up that rogue, but the story never came together the way I'd hoped and so I ended up switching to a pallid elf later, but for quite a bit people were expecting me to play that dragonborn rogue. Black dragon bloodline, and I'll admit that I was using the Draconblood statblock since it was an Exandria game. For this game we were using Enhanced Standard Progression (start with standard array, all your ASIs except for the fighter and rogue bonus ones HAVE to be ASIs, you get a feat 'out of progression' at character levels 1, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19. It fixes so many 5e problems, but is also a discussion for another thread), and I assigned it as befits a rogue.
This dragonborn rogue was categorically awful at roguing. All the dex-y things rogues are expected to do, the rogue was utter pants at. It was bad at attacking, bad at hiding, bad at thieves tools-ing, just bad. I got a leg up on most other rogues on the Intelligence-based skills some rogues work with, and since I was aiming at Arcane Trickster the build would be partially salvaged at higher levels, but as it stood? If I wanted to play that particular rogue, I had to accept the fact that I would be actively awful at my job.
Now, most of the "play unoptimal characters! It's not the literal end of the world!" sorts will trip over themselves to tell me that said dragonborn rogue was better than any other equivalent rogue at Intelligence-based stuff, and a little better at Charisma, and those things means my character is fine and there's no problem so Just Have Fun. Heh. Here's the thing - those things are not my job. D&D is a strict, heavily class-focused game, and any given character in a well balanced party has a job they're expected to do. If you're not a bard, you're not supposed, or even allowed, to be a broad-based generalist. You are supposed to be good at your job and hope somebody else covers not-your-job. A rogue that's bad at being a rogue but good at being a smartyboi is a rogue nobody else wants to play with, because that's not the rogue's job.
Trading away your character's job for things that are not only not your job, but which are often things you actively don't care about is not a fair trade. And even if you're the sort who doesn't feel a strong need to ensure you're hitting your highest possible numbers, and playing with a group of the same, you still get to play with the knowledge that your character is actively bad at their job instead of good at it, and that WILL cause you problems.
Don't get me wrong. I like flawed characters. I actively seek out those sub-8, deeply bad scores for many of my characters, place gaping holes in them that they have to cover. My current artificer, in the only campaign I get to play instead of run, is an INT 19/WIS 6 character by level 7. I wouldn't trade that 6 for all the tea in China. But that 6 is not in the thing everybody is counting on me to be able to pull off as an artificer. It is not sabotaging my core class identity. That is not nearly as much fun as placing the hole in a spot where coping with it becomes amusing and drives character growth.
Mmmm, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that being +/- 1 or 2 in a primary stat in Tier 1 play is enough to make you "actively awful" at your chosen role. I mean if that was your impression of your character, then that was your experience, I'm not trying to say I know your rogue better than you did... but my concern is more of a bigger picture issue with the influence that stat boosts have on character selection in the first place, and then how those ruts and grooves start to form in player and DM expectations, in a way which limits and undercuts world building and storytelling. Individual characters are often salvageable, it's just that the game encourages players not to pick a character that needs to be salvaged in the first place.
If anything I think that Rogues are probably one of the classes least penalized by non-optimal stats, because the skills they focus on (stealth, Thieves tools) can be quickly propped up with Expertise to be unmissable, and eventually further bolstered by Reliable Talent, and their DPR comes from Sneak Attack dice and not from static stat-derived modifiers. So long as a rogue hits one attack per round, he's doing his job, and +/- a couple of Dex really truly is only a 5% difference in that equation. Stat squeezes are a much larger issue for casters, where a passed save or a whiffed attack both wastes an entire turn and expends a limited resource so every bonus counts, or for front liners that need to balance offense AND defense AND toughness in order to do their job.
But it doesn't really take being "awful" at your role to feel crappy about having chosen a Dragonborn rogue, it just takes a series of small disappointments. Realizing "oh, a round where I'm breath attacking is a round I'm not sneak attacking, so my "once per long rest" move is actually usually worse than making a regular attack, especially since it keys off of a stat I won't be advancing for my other features" feels bad, not because a breath weapon is actually bad, but because there's other racial features that could have been actively helping you instead. Realzing "oh, I have resistance to Acid, but acid effects are by and large reflex saves, and I already take half/no damage on those anyway" feels bad, not because it's bad to have acid resistance, but because it's set you up to overshadow your special racial features with your mismatched class features. Setting players up to feel "this is a waste, I'd be a better rogue if I was a halfling or a goblin" is poor game design.
Mmmm, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that being +/- 1 or 2 in a primary stat in Tier 1 play is enough to make you "actively awful" at your chosen role.
It's less relevant to spellcasters than non-spellcasters -- spellcasters it only affects to hit/save dc (and often its save for half, making it even less relevant), non-spellcasters it also affects damage per hit.
I would do +1 to the race’s primary Ability, +1 to either Primary or Secondary, and +1 to anything other than the primary ability. That gives you a lot of options as a player, but at the same time also acts as a sort of suggestion. kind of the best of all options. At least, that’s my idea anyway.
In this specific case it was mostly me being unable to pull together a story/narrative I was satisfied with that ended up with the durgan shelved, but yeah. There is a lot working against that combination, and it's not the worst one out there. A personal idle daydream of mine is a half-orc monk, someone who fled to the monasteries to learn control and discipline over the inner fury that otherwise terrified them. But in anything but a game with the most heroic of Heroic Rolls, you just can't do it. Monks require very high scores in both Dex and Wisdom, and being two points down in both of those stats is just not tenable. Doesn't matter that horc gets a point of Con, they just cannot catch up enough to make reasonable monks by any standard one cares to name.
Why is that the case, D&D? Why is it basically impossible to do what would otherwise be a perfectly reasonable character concept, simply because the species stat alignment refuses to budge?
For point build I'd just give more points and allow buying a 16 for cost 12, and delete racial adjustments entirely. 32 points is about the same power as existing.
In this specific case it was mostly me being unable to pull together a story/narrative I was satisfied with that ended up with the durgan shelved, but yeah. There is a lot working against that combination, and it's not the worst one out there. A personal idle daydream of mine is a half-orc monk, someone who fled to the monasteries to learn control and discipline over the inner fury that otherwise terrified them. But in anything but a game with the most heroic of Heroic Rolls, you just can't do it. Monks require very high scores in both Dex and Wisdom, and being two points down in both of those stats is just not tenable. Doesn't matter that horc gets a point of Con, they just cannot catch up enough to make reasonable monks by any standard one cares to name.
Why is that the case, D&D? Why is it basically impossible to do what would otherwise be a perfectly reasonable character concept, simply because the species stat alignment refuses to budge?
I'd have to agree with Kolath, you're taking a Monk problem and making it a racial ASI problem. The fact that you have to push 3 different stats as much as you can (Dex, Con, Wis, mostly in that order) just to be relevant is kind of an issue. But you can't completely dump STR in case you ever need to Grapple something, which then means you are stuck dumping both CHA and INT. Doesn't matter what race you're playing, even Kenku or Aarakocra, it's just flat out hard to get a Monk to be and stay effective.
I think Champ and Kolath are correct. 1 or 2 points in a stat does not generally affect a character enough to make it unworkable. If you were not happy with the character that is valid, but you made it sound as though the rest of the players were to blame for not being able to play a sub-optimized character.
As for the Monk, as has been stated, that is an issue with Monk and that is a rules issue to be sure.
With stat bonuses being removed from your chosen race, then the race becomes merely a personality option, like the various background traits which you can add to the Personality section of the character sheet.
It removes the "flavour" associated with each race (or species, if you prefer).
With stat bonuses being removed from your chosen race, then the race becomes merely a personality option, like the various background traits which you can add to the Personality section of the character sheet.
It removes the "flavour" associated with each race (or species, if you prefer).
That was my thinking also, that’s how I settled on my idea to keep the identity, but still allow for lots of flexibility:
I would do +1 to the race’s primary Ability, +1 to either Primary or Secondary, and +1 to anything other than the primary ability. That gives you a lot of options as a player, but at the same time also acts as a sort of suggestion. kind of the best of all options. At least, that’s my idea anyway.
I am all for altering the way that we distribute stat modifiers, but it will take more than that to keep X race from becoming the new optimized option for X class. All of the races in print would need to be reworked from the ground up to remove anything that benefits one class over another. That is a lot of work and a major change to the game. You might as well move to a 5.5e at that point and update everything.
In what way is that flavorful, or relevant to your role playing? Am I describing a beast man or giant or science experiment or super soldier or tree person or tough laborer or..?
If I am designing a race and trying to clearly communicate, “this race is strong” as flavor, first of all that is boring flavor, and second of all, +1 Str is probably the least effective way I can think to do it, since it’ll be unnoticeable unless the player assigns a 15 to strength.
With stat bonuses being removed from your chosen race, then the race becomes merely a personality option, like the various background traits which you can add to the Personality section of the character sheet.
It removes the "flavour" associated with each race (or species, if you prefer).
No, it removes the mechanical benefit associated with each race. The "flavour" of the race comes from the personality option effects.
In what way is that flavorful, or relevant to your role playing? Am I describing a beast man or giant or science experiment or super soldier or tree person or tough laborer or..?
If I am designing a race and trying to clearly communicate, “this race is strong” as flavor, first of all that is boring flavor, and second of all, +1 Str is probably the least effective way I can think to do it, since it’ll be unnoticeable unless the player assigns a 15 to strength.
Is it just the +1 or +2 to a stat, though? In many cases, it's also related to core features of the race. Powerful Build is justified by a STR bonus. Feline Agility is backed up by a DEX bonus. Elven proficiency with bows or crossbows is supported by a DEX bonus. I'm for greater flexibility, but completely eliminating any racial bonuses without readjusting a lot of other features creates A) theme problems that would explain, for instance, a Powerful Build PC with - 1 to Strength and more importantly, B) a lot of imbalances in many areas. So it creates more problems than it solves unless the devs are willing to completely re-work the character building system.
Agreed. You'd have to completely overhaul all the racial traits if you're going to take away the racial ASIs. Nevermind the fact that Aarakocra and Yuan-ti would suddenly be the best races in existence, maybe the Satyrs as well. Why play anything else when you get 50 feet of flight speed with whatever ASIs you want? Or when you can get always-on magic resistance, poison immunity, and innate spellcasting? Or again always-on magic resistance, along with being immune to all "target humanoid" effects?
In general the way other games have solve this problem is by moving everything to point build. You get X points, and each feature (racial or otherwise) has a cost; a race is then just a standard template for how you might spend your points. This is certainly doable for D&D (on the existing point build system, most racial features that aren't attributes are 1-2 points, though some are more) but it's a big change and a fair chunk of work. For example, let's consider the Dwarf
Age: being able to live to 350 is cosmetic in most games.
Alignment: no point value and not required anyway.
Size: cosmetic, 0 points (being Small might be worth negative points because of weapon restrictions)
Speed: probably -1, arguably -2 ([feat]Mobile[/feat] is +10 move with additional effects, and as a feat would cost 4). Not being reduced by heavy armor is probably worth 2 to characters who are proficient in heavy armor and don't have enough strength to cancel it out (rare).
Darkvision: in a game that actually uses vision rules (e.g. a VTT that enforces vision) this is a big deal and worth as much as 4. Other games it's less relevant.
Dwarven Resilience: it makes you a lot tougher against a pretty small fraction of the damage out there. I'd call it 1
Dwarven Combat Training: it's [feat]Weapon Master[/feat] without the ASI. Worth 2 to characters that actually want it.
Tool Proficiency: Not worth more than 1.
Stonecutting: Not worth more than 1.
Languages: Worth 1
Dwarven Toughness: it's half of [feat]Tough[/feat], so it's worth 2.
Dwarven Armor Training: it's [feat]Lightly Armored[/feat] and [feat]Moderately Armored[/feat] without ASI, so worth 4 if not redundant with class.
That's up to 15 points (a variant human is 7 points -- 1 feat for 4, 1 skill for 2 one language for 1) but many abilities are useless or redundant outside of specialized builds, so given a choice, most players would just not take them.
Powerful Build is excellent, because it communicates racial strength regardless of party role, in a way that’s fairly neutral as to class application. An 8 strength Minotaur Wizard would nevertheless carry as much as the 16 strength human fighter, which is enough to show “wow, Minotaurs are stronger than humans!” without giving them racial stat bonuses which DISCOURAGE wizard selection.
Racial ribbons don’t need to be “justified” by stat bonuses, they’re a great way to show-not-tell that Tabaxi are quick without falling back on “yet another dex race”. Get rid of stat buffs for all characters, and you’ll get more Tabaxi barbarians, Minotaur wizards, dwarves rogues, etc... all of which we’re TOLD exist in-game, but which the current rules discourage us from ever seeing
While that's commonly true, the history of 'differently equal' is generally "We actually mean inferior, but we're trying to be subtle".
Of course, there's no particular reason fantasy species need to be equal, other than it being a proxy for real-world racism (pretty much all D&D 'races' are actually distinct species; some of them wouldn't even be in genus Homo). The actual need is for all PCs to be balanced against one another. The easy way of doing that is to remove race from character creation completely -- you're just allowed X different customizations, and there's a specific set which generate a stereotypical elf, or dwarf, or w/e.
PF2e is a ponderous, impossible mess...but they did do some real cool things with character creation.
Personally, I'm a big fan of allowing everyone access to a feat at the start of any game, with the caveat that the feat must come from a pool of background-specific feats. Most of the racial feats, as well as things that account for long periods of study or training like Linguist. Elf/dwarf combat training would move into those feats, and if you were brought up in that culture you would take that feat. Not only does this get cultural bullhonky out of species selection, but it means that if your character is, say...a human foundling brought up in one of these enclaves, maybe your DM waives the usual restriction and allows you to take 'Elven Upbringing' since you did, in fact, have an elven upbringing.
If I were (re)designing the system, those feats would carry the third point of bonus stat (the first being from your species, the second being from your class), with background being there to add additional flavor and skills as it is currently. Most characters can manage one of their stat points being 'off' for their class. Some can manage two. It's real damn hard to have all three points 'off' when everyone else in your party aligns all three to their goals and is giving you the squinty eyes for going so cross-purpose. Seriously. Try it sometime. Make a tiefling noncaster. Make a dragonborn rogue. Make a gnome ranger. Watch the rest of your table, DM, included, sit there all "so...are you suuure about this, mang?"
It doesn't really feel great, no matter how attached to the character's story you happen to be.
Please do not contact or message me.
You really need to find better people to play with. There is nothing wrong with a Tiefling being a non-caster and if your group is giving you grief for playing against type, that is strictly a problem with the people you play with and not the rules of the game.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Let's talk about an actual example I came very close to running recently, then.
I very nearly worked up a dragonborn rogue for a game a buddy of mine is in the planning stages for. To be frank, I did work up that rogue, but the story never came together the way I'd hoped and so I ended up switching to a pallid elf later, but for quite a bit people were expecting me to play that dragonborn rogue. Black dragon bloodline, and I'll admit that I was using the Draconblood statblock since it was an Exandria game. For this game we were using Enhanced Standard Progression (start with standard array, all your ASIs except for the fighter and rogue bonus ones HAVE to be ASIs, you get a feat 'out of progression' at character levels 1, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19. It fixes so many 5e problems, but is also a discussion for another thread), and I assigned it as befits a rogue.
This dragonborn rogue was categorically awful at roguing. All the dex-y things rogues are expected to do, the rogue was utter pants at. It was bad at attacking, bad at hiding, bad at thieves tools-ing, just bad. I got a leg up on most other rogues on the Intelligence-based skills some rogues work with, and since I was aiming at Arcane Trickster the build would be partially salvaged at higher levels, but as it stood? If I wanted to play that particular rogue, I had to accept the fact that I would be actively awful at my job.
Now, most of the "play unoptimal characters! It's not the literal end of the world!" sorts will trip over themselves to tell me that said dragonborn rogue was better than any other equivalent rogue at Intelligence-based stuff, and a little better at Charisma, and those things means my character is fine and there's no problem so Just Have Fun. Heh. Here's the thing - those things are not my job. D&D is a strict, heavily class-focused game, and any given character in a well balanced party has a job they're expected to do. If you're not a bard, you're not supposed, or even allowed, to be a broad-based generalist. You are supposed to be good at your job and hope somebody else covers not-your-job. A rogue that's bad at being a rogue but good at being a smartyboi is a rogue nobody else wants to play with, because that's not the rogue's job.
Trading away your character's job for things that are not only not your job, but which are often things you actively don't care about is not a fair trade. And even if you're the sort who doesn't feel a strong need to ensure you're hitting your highest possible numbers, and playing with a group of the same, you still get to play with the knowledge that your character is actively bad at their job instead of good at it, and that WILL cause you problems.
Don't get me wrong. I like flawed characters. I actively seek out those sub-8, deeply bad scores for many of my characters, place gaping holes in them that they have to cover. My current artificer, in the only campaign I get to play instead of run, is an INT 19/WIS 6 character by level 7. I wouldn't trade that 6 for all the tea in China. But that 6 is not in the thing everybody is counting on me to be able to pull off as an artificer. It is not sabotaging my core class identity. That is not nearly as much fun as placing the hole in a spot where coping with it becomes amusing and drives character growth.
Please do not contact or message me.
Mmmm, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that being +/- 1 or 2 in a primary stat in Tier 1 play is enough to make you "actively awful" at your chosen role. I mean if that was your impression of your character, then that was your experience, I'm not trying to say I know your rogue better than you did... but my concern is more of a bigger picture issue with the influence that stat boosts have on character selection in the first place, and then how those ruts and grooves start to form in player and DM expectations, in a way which limits and undercuts world building and storytelling. Individual characters are often salvageable, it's just that the game encourages players not to pick a character that needs to be salvaged in the first place.
If anything I think that Rogues are probably one of the classes least penalized by non-optimal stats, because the skills they focus on (stealth, Thieves tools) can be quickly propped up with Expertise to be unmissable, and eventually further bolstered by Reliable Talent, and their DPR comes from Sneak Attack dice and not from static stat-derived modifiers. So long as a rogue hits one attack per round, he's doing his job, and +/- a couple of Dex really truly is only a 5% difference in that equation. Stat squeezes are a much larger issue for casters, where a passed save or a whiffed attack both wastes an entire turn and expends a limited resource so every bonus counts, or for front liners that need to balance offense AND defense AND toughness in order to do their job.
But it doesn't really take being "awful" at your role to feel crappy about having chosen a Dragonborn rogue, it just takes a series of small disappointments. Realizing "oh, a round where I'm breath attacking is a round I'm not sneak attacking, so my "once per long rest" move is actually usually worse than making a regular attack, especially since it keys off of a stat I won't be advancing for my other features" feels bad, not because a breath weapon is actually bad, but because there's other racial features that could have been actively helping you instead. Realzing "oh, I have resistance to Acid, but acid effects are by and large reflex saves, and I already take half/no damage on those anyway" feels bad, not because it's bad to have acid resistance, but because it's set you up to overshadow your special racial features with your mismatched class features. Setting players up to feel "this is a waste, I'd be a better rogue if I was a halfling or a goblin" is poor game design.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
It's less relevant to spellcasters than non-spellcasters -- spellcasters it only affects to hit/save dc (and often its save for half, making it even less relevant), non-spellcasters it also affects damage per hit.
I would do +1 to the race’s primary Ability, +1 to either Primary or Secondary, and +1 to anything other than the primary ability. That gives you a lot of options as a player, but at the same time also acts as a sort of suggestion. kind of the best of all options. At least, that’s my idea anyway.
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A well reasoned post, Champ.
In this specific case it was mostly me being unable to pull together a story/narrative I was satisfied with that ended up with the durgan shelved, but yeah. There is a lot working against that combination, and it's not the worst one out there. A personal idle daydream of mine is a half-orc monk, someone who fled to the monasteries to learn control and discipline over the inner fury that otherwise terrified them. But in anything but a game with the most heroic of Heroic Rolls, you just can't do it. Monks require very high scores in both Dex and Wisdom, and being two points down in both of those stats is just not tenable. Doesn't matter that horc gets a point of Con, they just cannot catch up enough to make reasonable monks by any standard one cares to name.
Why is that the case, D&D? Why is it basically impossible to do what would otherwise be a perfectly reasonable character concept, simply because the species stat alignment refuses to budge?
Please do not contact or message me.
For point build I'd just give more points and allow buying a 16 for cost 12, and delete racial adjustments entirely. 32 points is about the same power as existing.
I'd have to agree with Kolath, you're taking a Monk problem and making it a racial ASI problem. The fact that you have to push 3 different stats as much as you can (Dex, Con, Wis, mostly in that order) just to be relevant is kind of an issue. But you can't completely dump STR in case you ever need to Grapple something, which then means you are stuck dumping both CHA and INT. Doesn't matter what race you're playing, even Kenku or Aarakocra, it's just flat out hard to get a Monk to be and stay effective.
I think Champ and Kolath are correct. 1 or 2 points in a stat does not generally affect a character enough to make it unworkable. If you were not happy with the character that is valid, but you made it sound as though the rest of the players were to blame for not being able to play a sub-optimized character.
As for the Monk, as has been stated, that is an issue with Monk and that is a rules issue to be sure.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
With stat bonuses being removed from your chosen race, then the race becomes merely a personality option, like the various background traits which you can add to the Personality section of the character sheet.
It removes the "flavour" associated with each race (or species, if you prefer).
That was my thinking also, that’s how I settled on my idea to keep the identity, but still allow for lots of flexibility:
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Content Troubleshooting
I am all for altering the way that we distribute stat modifiers, but it will take more than that to keep X race from becoming the new optimized option for X class. All of the races in print would need to be reworked from the ground up to remove anything that benefits one class over another. That is a lot of work and a major change to the game. You might as well move to a 5.5e at that point and update everything.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
“This race receives +1 to Strength.”
In what way is that flavorful, or relevant to your role playing? Am I describing a beast man or giant or science experiment or super soldier or tree person or tough laborer or..?
If I am designing a race and trying to clearly communicate, “this race is strong” as flavor, first of all that is boring flavor, and second of all, +1 Str is probably the least effective way I can think to do it, since it’ll be unnoticeable unless the player assigns a 15 to strength.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
No, it removes the mechanical benefit associated with each race. The "flavour" of the race comes from the personality option effects.
Is it just the +1 or +2 to a stat, though? In many cases, it's also related to core features of the race. Powerful Build is justified by a STR bonus. Feline Agility is backed up by a DEX bonus. Elven proficiency with bows or crossbows is supported by a DEX bonus. I'm for greater flexibility, but completely eliminating any racial bonuses without readjusting a lot of other features creates A) theme problems that would explain, for instance, a Powerful Build PC with - 1 to Strength and more importantly, B) a lot of imbalances in many areas. So it creates more problems than it solves unless the devs are willing to completely re-work the character building system.
Agreed. You'd have to completely overhaul all the racial traits if you're going to take away the racial ASIs. Nevermind the fact that Aarakocra and Yuan-ti would suddenly be the best races in existence, maybe the Satyrs as well. Why play anything else when you get 50 feet of flight speed with whatever ASIs you want? Or when you can get always-on magic resistance, poison immunity, and innate spellcasting? Or again always-on magic resistance, along with being immune to all "target humanoid" effects?
In general the way other games have solve this problem is by moving everything to point build. You get X points, and each feature (racial or otherwise) has a cost; a race is then just a standard template for how you might spend your points. This is certainly doable for D&D (on the existing point build system, most racial features that aren't attributes are 1-2 points, though some are more) but it's a big change and a fair chunk of work. For example, let's consider the Dwarf
That's up to 15 points (a variant human is 7 points -- 1 feat for 4, 1 skill for 2 one language for 1) but many abilities are useless or redundant outside of specialized builds, so given a choice, most players would just not take them.
Powerful Build is excellent, because it communicates racial strength regardless of party role, in a way that’s fairly neutral as to class application. An 8 strength Minotaur Wizard would nevertheless carry as much as the 16 strength human fighter, which is enough to show “wow, Minotaurs are stronger than humans!” without giving them racial stat bonuses which DISCOURAGE wizard selection.
Racial ribbons don’t need to be “justified” by stat bonuses, they’re a great way to show-not-tell that Tabaxi are quick without falling back on “yet another dex race”. Get rid of stat buffs for all characters, and you’ll get more Tabaxi barbarians, Minotaur wizards, dwarves rogues, etc... all of which we’re TOLD exist in-game, but which the current rules discourage us from ever seeing
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.