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View Full Version : What are the values of a race's non-attribute bonuses?



Jergmo
2009-07-24, 06:31 PM
IE: Human = +1 feat, 4 extra skills at first level and 1 additional skill point every level after.

How much are these racials worth? If humans were a race meant to be fighters, would they be the equivalent of a bonus to Strength, or maybe Dex + Int for a finesse-fighter race? Are each of them the equivalent of a special ability or bonus to an attribute? Do dwarves have so many gosh darn bonuses because their slower speed without having the benefits of being a Small character worth a lesser bonus?

woodenbandman
2009-07-24, 07:16 PM
It's like this:

Bonuses vs certain races: crap
Bonuses vs certain effects (poison): Good
Bonuses vs broad effects (spells): Great
Bonuses in general (+1 on all saving throws?): Awesome

Bonuses to certain skills: Crap except in niche builds
Bonuses to certain checks (stability, thrown weapons): good
Bonuses to certain stats: Great (usually)
Bonuses to variable things (Bonus feat): Awesome

Now, a human gives a bonus feat and bonus skillpoint. That's two awesome things right there.

Halflings are also surprisingly awesome, with bonuses to quite a lot of skills (enough crap looks good eventually), bonuses to using specific weapons(good), Bonus to stats balanced by a stat penalty, and the very awesome +1 on all saves, and the additional +2 on fear saves.

Gnomes? Also awesome! Spell like abilities (eh), +1 bonus to the DCs of their illusion spells, +2 Constitution and a bunch of other crap nobody cares about.

Elves, on the other hand, are not awesome. They lose Con and get Dex, which is a bad trade. They have some weapons, they get immunity to a niche of things, and they get a bonus on another niche thing. It's definitely a nice addition, but not worth the trade.

I like to think of it as a point system. good is 1, crap is 1/3, great is 2, and awesome is 3 or 4. If it has more than like 7 points, give it a level adjustment. Humans have awesome and awesome. Or great and awesome. So that's between 5 and 7 points, a fair number. Elves: I'd say they have about a 4. They get good stuff, but the trade is so unworth it.

Jergmo
2009-07-24, 07:35 PM
Alright, thank you, you've been very helpful. :smallsmile:

Darcand
2009-07-24, 07:56 PM
[QUOTE=woodenbandman;6572572]
Elves, on the other hand, are not awesome. They lose Con and get Dex, which is a bad trade. They have some weapons, they get immunity to a niche of things, and they get a bonus on another niche thing. It's definitely a nice addition, but not worth the trade.

QUOTE]

i don't know that I would call trading con for dex a bad trade. You give up one hp/ level and some fort save for a bonus to ac, reflex saves, ranged attacks, all light weapon attacks with wep finesse, a bonus to a load of skills, and it's required for a load of talents. That is pretty fair.

woodenbandman
2009-07-24, 08:05 PM
It does severely limit your options, though. Any race can overcome a bad dexterity somehow. Nobody overcomes bad constitution. Any character with a dex penalty can become an archer by pumping their wisdom, taking Zen Archery and making the minimal investment into dexterity. Meanwhile, it's REALLy hard to overcome bad constitution barring dragon magazine and extreme cheese. Add in the fact that fort saves >> reflex saves, and it's a bad trade all around.

AstralFire
2009-07-24, 08:11 PM
i don't know that I would call trading con for dex a bad trade.

I would. Woody hit the nail on the head, as she (he?) often does.

Humans really are just way too good, it's very hard to turn down their mechanical benefits, and the bonus feat's worth improves dramatically with each supplement added - if you dropped full Aasimar down to LA +0 and opened up all books, I'd still give it a toss-up with humans for just about any Wis or Cha base class except Paladin, which is MAD starved. (I am certain people will argue with me here, but for practical play I usually prefer the faster feat chain completion and added breadth of a feat and an extra skill versus the deeper penetration of a higher ability score.)

ZeroNumerous
2009-07-24, 08:17 PM
Elves, on the other hand, are not awesome. They lose Con and get Dex, which is a bad trade. They have some weapons, they get immunity to a niche of things, and they get a bonus on another niche thing. It's definitely a nice addition, but not worth the trade.

Close, but elves are great for one thing. Wizards. Grey Elf Generalist Wizards are some of the greatest wizards around when faced with sucktastic scroll availability.

Plus, Faeries Mysteries Initiate requires Elf. INT to HP instead of CON? Hell yes.

AstralFire
2009-07-24, 08:19 PM
Faeries Mysteries hoozawhadda?

Also, I'm not following on what makes Grey Elf generalists so good. Explain?

Jergmo
2009-07-24, 08:20 PM
Close, but elves are great for one thing. Wizards. Grey Elf Generalist Wizards are some of the greatest wizards around when faced with sucktastic scroll availability.

Plus, Faeries Mysteries Initiate requires Elf. INT to HP instead of CON? Hell yes.

Grey Elf = +2 Int
Elf = No +2 Int

All those elven subtypes are silly, anyway. Seriously, 7 elven races in core alone? I did away with those, made them a single species, and merely have archetypes (+2 in a mental attribute of choice), and increased it to Awesome value due to there being that flexibility.

AstralFire
2009-07-24, 08:22 PM
Oh, right. Grey Elves are different from normal Elves.

What type are normal Elves supposed to be? Moon?

And in general there are too many subraces - humans get more than elves, and dwarves aren't far behind elves IIRC. Halflings have three or four and from a generic setting PoV there's not really much there for why they're not related to gnomes, who have like three themselves.

ZeroNumerous
2009-07-24, 08:28 PM
Faeries Mysteries hoozawhadda?

Also, I'm not following on what makes Grey Elf generalists so good. Explain?

1) If I recall, Faerun-specific feat. It requires you to do a minute-long ritual every day to replace your CON bonus with INT bonus for 24 hours. Requires 2 people to do the ritual, but only you need the feat by RAW.

2) +1 spell slot of the highest level, +4 spells learned/level and *2 to your familiar bonus. Big deal when there's no scroll shops or scrolls dropped as loot or when you have a nice familiar(Hummingbird :3).

AstralFire
2009-07-24, 08:29 PM
Yeah, I just mixed up my elven subraces. The PHB Elf is Moon, right?

Tackyhillbillu
2009-07-24, 08:34 PM
Standard Elf is High Elf.

ZeroNumerous
2009-07-24, 08:35 PM
Yeah, I just mixed up my elven subraces. The PHB Elf is Moon, right?

I forget. Really, I have no clue since I never play them. I only play Wild Elves(+4 Dex, yay!) or Gray Elves.

EDIT: Apparently High Elf.

AstralFire
2009-07-24, 08:36 PM
...

'scuse me. Mister Rusty Knife needs to confer with Mialee about this very important matter.

#Raptor
2009-07-24, 08:44 PM
So if we look only at PHB races (So, the MM variants not included), how would you rank them?

I'd probably rank them like this:
#1 Human
#2 Dwarf/Halfling (pretty much tied for secound place)
#3 Gnome
#4 Elf
#5 Half-Orc
#6 Half-Elf

AstralFire
2009-07-24, 08:47 PM
I think Dwarf is, strictly speaking to potential, tied with humans - it's just less flexible as to what builds it suits. On a similar but much lamer level, the Half-Orc has a higher potential than the Half-Elf, though the Half-Elf is usable for more classes. But yeah, sounds about right.

Emy
2009-07-24, 08:49 PM
Halflings are also surprisingly awesome, with bonuses to quite a lot of skills (enough crap looks good eventually), bonuses to using specific weapons(good), Bonus to stats balanced by a stat penalty, and the very awesome +1 on all saves, and the additional +2 on fear saves.

Gnomes? Also awesome! Spell like abilities (eh), +1 bonus to the DCs of their illusion spells, +2 Constitution and a bunch of other crap nobody cares about.


The Strongheart Halfling (bonus feat) and Whisper Gnome (30' move, stealth bonuses) subraces are both great, too.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-07-24, 10:59 PM
1) If I recall, Faerun-specific feat. It requires you to do a minute-long ritual every day to replace your CON bonus with INT bonus for 24 hours. Requires 2 people to do the ritual, but only you need the feat by RAW.No, you need to do the ritual with someone else who has the ritual, but you only need to do it once. Very nice.
2) +1 spell slot of the highest level, +4 spells learned/level and *2 to your familiar bonus. Big deal when there's no scroll shops or scrolls dropped as loot or when you have a nice familiar(Hummingbird :3).For those who are confused, Races of the Wild has elven substitution levels that are extremely good. Not perfect for every build, but great for a lot of them.

Sinfire Titan
2009-07-24, 11:41 PM
i don't know that I would call trading con for dex a bad trade. You give up one hp/ level and some fort save for a bonus to ac, reflex saves, ranged attacks, all light weapon attacks with wep finesse, a bonus to a load of skills, and it's required for a load of talents. That is pretty fair.

This debate has been done to death. It's 20 HP, a +1 to Fort saves, and a +1 to Concentration checks.


Think about it. What's the worse thing that can happen due to you failing a Reflex save in Core? You would have to make a Fort save against Earthquake. You take damage 95% of the time otherwise. There may be a few traps, that's about it. You can survive HP damage so long as it never puts you to -10.

What's the worse that can happen if you fail a Fort save? You die, outright. You are turned to stone. You lose ability score points to poison. You turn to dust. You can't be Rezzed due to a Death effect. You die after being turned back into flesh and blood (Stone to Flesh has a chance of killing you). The list is huge.


Every +1 counts. The extra HP also provides protection from the HP damage you would take on a failed Reflex save.






Oh, and both Kobolds and Halflings have better AC/Reflex saves than Elves. So the pointy-eared bastards can suck it.


For those who are confused, Races of the Wild has elven substitution levels that are extremely good. Not perfect for every build, but great for a lot of them.

Focused Specialist>Generalist almost 70% of the time. The last 30% involves banned schools of magic.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-07-24, 11:51 PM
Focused Specialist>Generalist almost 70% of the time. The last 30% involves banned schools of magic.IMHO, it goes Domain Wizard>Elven generalist>Specialist>Focused Specialist>Generalist, with some FS's being better than even Domain Wizards under certain circumstances, especially low levels. But I hate giving up options, so that's part of it.

The key with Elven Generalist is that the first sub level gives you a bonus slot of your highest spell level. You still have no bonus slot of the lower levels, but for your best spells, you're as good as a specialist, without having lost 2 schools.

Devils_Advocate
2009-07-25, 06:03 PM
Yeah, I just mixed up my elven subraces. The PHB Elf is Moon, right?

Of course, Elves make up the second highest percentage of students at Sigil. They tend to be annoyingly social, and form more clubs and fraternities than any other group. Elves are way ahead of the curve when it comes to trends, and were piercing and streaking when everybody else was still into mohawks. On Greyhawk, they’re High Elves; on Faerun, they’re Moon Elves. They are very sensitive about this. Call a High Elf “Moon Elf”, you are in for a hurting. Call a Moon Elf “High Elf”, it isn’t pretty. It’s safer just to say “Elf”.
- Sigil Prep (http://www.sigilprep.com/) 3rd Curriculum

As to the high elf's ability score modifiers... There may be builds for which trading 2 points of Con in for 2 points of Dex is favorable, but it will never be as favorable as trading 2 points of a dump stat in for a useful stat is. Gnomes, halflings, and dwarves get to do that. And except for maybe gnomes, their non-stat bonuses are better than the elf's, too. Free weapons proficiencies? Please, they're redundant (e.g. Ranger) or pointless (e.g. Wizard) at worst and fairly trivial (e.g. Rogue) at best.

High elves stink. They're supposed to be the most common subrace, but players are given a mechanical disincentive to choose them. Why pick high elf over gray elf or wood elf? Almost every build is gonna benefit from either +2 Int -2 Str or +2 Str -2 Int.

Myrmex
2009-07-25, 06:30 PM
Elves are only worth it if your DM lets you Chaos Shuffle.

Barbarian MD
2009-07-25, 07:09 PM
Elves are only worth it if your DM lets you Chaos Shuffle.

????

Please explain this term.

Irreverent Fool
2009-07-25, 09:25 PM
????

Please explain this term.

Using certain spells to swap your feats. Of course, this depends on whether you count their weapon proficiencies as feats or not.

obnoxious
sig

Sinfire Titan
2009-07-25, 09:33 PM
Using certain spells to swap your feats. Of course, this depends on whether you count their weapon proficiencies as feats or not.

obnoxious
sig

RAW says they are feats.


Weapon Proficiency: Elves receive the Martial Weapon Proficiency feats for the longsword, rapier, longbow (including composite longbow), and shortbow (including composite shortbow) as bonus feats.

Technically, that's 6 bonus feats at 1st level (counting the Composite versions of a bow as a separate proficiency).