Better alternative than stat-less races [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

qube

2023-01-25, 10:03 AM

Like many, I don't like the way D&D 5e moved away from racial bonusses. I understand why: from a game-mechanicaly point, as long as there's a train of thought you should max out your main ability score ... then races not boosting said score simply won't be an option. And that's a bad thing.

Imagine you want to make Auroth, a brutal Orc Sorcerer.
Orcs don't get the sorcerer casting stat? too bad for you.

But I like to look at things from a narative point of view.

From a narative point, there's no problem with a half orc fighter and an eladrin fighter being equally capable - but it doesn't make sense they'd be equally strong. After all, while the half orc's mighty swings might cleave through armor, the elf's graceful strikes draws blood between the plates.

high elf fighter, orc fighter, gnome fighter ... STR20 the lot of them

---------------------------

That's why I suggest something else

combat style scores

Auroth, Orc, Acolyte Sorcerer 1
Str 14 (+2) Dex 12 (+1) Con 16 (+3) Int 13 (+1) Wis 10 (+0) Cha 11 (+0)
Weapon 12(+1) Defense 13(+1) Toughness 16(+3) Mysticism 16 (+3)
Athletics (+3), Arcana (+3) Religion (+2) Insight Skill (+2) Intimidation (+2) Persuasion(+2)
AC: 11, hp: 9
Quarterstaff. +3 to hit, 1d6+1 damage.
Spells +5 to hit, DC 13

There are four combat style scores:

(WPN) weapon (attack & damage)
(DEF) defense (AC, initiative)
(THG) toughness (hit point)
(MYS) mysticism (magic, innate abilities, ...)
At character creation, you put 15, 14, 13, 12 in them. Then add a +2 to one and a +1 to another. Every time your ability scores increase, you may likewise pick these scores to boost.

(Dirty little secret : mechanically, combat style scores are just what your standard array abilty scores would be if optimized them. )

Your combat statistics are caclulated from those.
Your sword doesn't use PROF+STR, but PROF+WPN, and the damage is 1d8+WPN.
Your AC is not 10+DEX but 10+DEF
...

Auroth Might be strong, he's not quite melee focussed, so isn't that good with his quarterstaff.
Quarterstaff. +[proficiency+weapon] to hit, 1d6+[weapon] damage. (instead of strength)
in Auroth's flavor he uses bloodmagic, he's ability to manifest powerful spells despite not being that charismatic.
spells use mysticism instead of charisma to cast spells

Most things are common sense, but it's important to note that sometimes classes fuse two fighting styles.
barbarians mix toughness & mysticism (their abilities work on CON)
monks & rogues & rangers mix weapon and defense (they attack and defend on DEX)
hexblades fuse weapon & mysticism (they attack on CHA)

while SAD classes might virtually not use certain abilities (ex. melee for wizards)

-----------------

Or would you rather have a halfling swashbuckler-style fighter who uses taunts and feints as defense? A sword wielding elf fighter (a slashing sword, not a rapier)? A strong smithy dwarf artificier, ... These, and much more options are now viable options - without having to trade in flavor for game mechanics.

JonBeowulf

2023-01-25, 10:53 AM

I certainly like this more than the idea that races are just skins with no choice/consequence. I think races should have certain tendencies that differentiate them from each other. Using point buy for ability scores alleviates some of the impact (especially for SAD classes), but it comes down to choices. I believe playing an elf barbarian who's a little bit weaker but noticeably smarter than the typical barbarian is better than all barbarians being exactly the same. This isn't a competition among the players. Dare to be different.

However, I think you're going down a difficult road for little gain because there are systems out there that support the "build whatever you want" concept. GURPS and Rolemaster come to mind. They're certainly not as popular as D&D, but going with a system that does what you're looking for is much easier than building a new system on top of one that doesn't do what you're looking for.

It's one of the reasons Rolemaster is my favorite system (with MERPS being my favorite setting). The crit tables and absolutely insane spell list are two others. It's lack of popularity is why I haven't played it since 2003, so... yeah.

t209

2023-01-25, 11:24 AM

And this is TSR and later WOTC should have thought up weapons and ballistic skills like WHFRP should have been to prevent such an issue with racial ASI's, or at least Dwarves who aren't good (more so with bad Dex) with Crossbows despite being associated with them in fantasies.
(Though WHFRP is a lot different than DnD in terms of gameplay and idea, namely it had a literal lawyer and ratcatcher as character classes along with its origin as miniature war game.)

Psyren

2023-01-25, 12:07 PM

KorvinStarmast

2023-01-25, 12:36 PM

Keravath

2023-01-25, 01:03 PM

Excepting the small ones like gnomes and hobbits, goblins and kobolds, etc, I agree.

Personally, I wouldn't leave those out either. It may be less likely to find a very strong hobbit but is it impossible?

When discussing fantasy species there are two aspects that seem to get confused. There are the strengths and weaknesses of a specific species on average and then there are the abilities of a specific individual within that species.

The baseline bonuses for specific species (which are being phased out for player character creation) represent the averages for that species not the capabilities of any one individual.

Allowing player characters to choose which abilities to enhance is just allowing for individual variation within each species based on nature and the choices of the characters. Depending on the world building involved, each fantasy race could easily have the same potential as any other.

I don't see any issue with an individual kobold with a strength of 20 even if the average for the species might be a bit less.

Psyren

2023-01-25, 01:11 PM

Not to mention, small races already have less ability to utilize their strength (see grapple limits and the Heavy property.) You don't need a strength penalty to make them feel different. PF2 dumped stat penalties too and I haven't seen pitchforks and torches anywhere.

JLandan

2023-01-25, 02:35 PM

JNAProductions

2023-01-25, 02:45 PM

I'm not a big fan of race penalties, but at my table there will always be race bonuses. That said, of all the abilities, the only ability score that ever comes up as "unrealistic" is Strength. No one gawks at a genius goblin or a charismatic dwarf.

I've also never liked caps for most abilities for PCs, monsters certainly don't have them. But it seems sensible to cap Strength based on size, not race.

So, my house rule is a cap of 20 for medium, and a cap of 13 for small (originally, I had it at 12, but multiclassing requires 13), and a cap of 26 for large or medium with powerful build.

I suppose a small race with powerful build would have to be higher, say 19. I don't know of one, but there could be.

I have no caps for any of the other scores based on race or size.

That's... That's REALLY harsh.

If you want to be a strength-based class on a small PC, you're looking at being down one or two points of bonus at level one, and four points of bonus by late Tier Two or early Tier Three.
And it makes playing a Goliath, Firbolg, or other Powerful Build race unneededly strong when playing the same-the equivalent of a Belt Of Cloud Giant Strength (a Legendary Item) if you max it out.

JackPhoenix

2023-01-25, 03:36 PM

I'm not a big fan of race penalties, but at my table there will always be race bonuses. That said, of all the abilities, the only ability score that ever comes up as "unrealistic" is Strength. No one gawks at a genius goblin or a charismatic dwarf.

Because it's easier to link appearance with physical attributes, while mental capabilities are set entirely arbitrarily. Warcraft goblins are geniuses, Golarion goblins... not so much. But it's pretty unintuitive if 3'6" tall, 35 lb halfling can be just as strong as 7', 350 lb musclebound hulk of an orc (or whatever).

Psyren

2023-01-25, 04:40 PM

That's... That's REALLY harsh.

If you want to be a strength-based class on a small PC, you're looking at being down one or two points of bonus at level one, and four points of bonus by late Tier Two or early Tier Three.
And it makes playing a Goliath, Firbolg, or other Powerful Build race unneededly strong when playing the same-the equivalent of a Belt Of Cloud Giant Strength (a Legendary Item) if you max it out.

Agreed, this is nuts. You might as well ban Str-based classes for those races entirely, while the Powerful Build ones would be crazy to take anything else.

JNAProductions

2023-01-25, 04:43 PM

Agreed, this is nuts. You might as well ban Str-based classes for those races entirely, while the Powerful Build ones would be crazy to take anything else.

It also makes Strength-based classes (arguably the most simple classes-run to enemy, hit with weapon, repeat) have even less incentive to branch out.

Normally, it takes two ASIs to max your main stat. You can start at 16 easily, so +2 at levels four and eight (six for Fighter) nets you a 20.
With this rule, it'd take five ASIs to max Strength. Start at 16, then +2 at levels four, eight, twelve, sixteen, and nineteen nets you a 26. A Fighter has room for two feats besides that, but a Barbarian doesn't.

Even if you roll for stats, get an 18, and have +2 Strength from race choice, you still need three ASIs to max it-more than starting with a 16 needs. You wouldn't be encouraged to look at picking up a fun flavor feat, or shoring up defenses, till level sixteen (twelve for Fighter).

Hurrashane

2023-01-25, 06:32 PM

JonBeowulf

2023-01-25, 07:01 PM

I'm not a big fan of race penalties, but at my table there will always be race bonuses. That said, of all the abilities, the only ability score that ever comes up as "unrealistic" is Strength. No one gawks at a genius goblin or a charismatic dwarf.

I've also never liked caps for most abilities for PCs, monsters certainly don't have them. But it seems sensible to cap Strength based on size, not race.

So, my house rule is a cap of 20 for medium, and a cap of 13 for small (originally, I had it at 12, but multiclassing requires 13), and a cap of 26 for large or medium with powerful build.

I suppose a small race with powerful build would have to be higher, say 19. I don't know of one, but there could be.

I have no caps for any of the other scores based on race or size.
I kind of like this in theory but I'll need to see it in action. Do you somehow balance this small-race nerf or just accept that setting a max STR means they have more points for everything else?

elyktsorb

2023-01-25, 08:21 PM

Personally enjoy the lack of stats tied to races so that races can instead impart other things onto a character. Would be more into balancing individual race abilities instead of just having them have fixed stats.

Especially since, when it comes to fixed stats, you'll inevitably have races that get flexible stat distribution + good additional bonuses.

Aimeryan

2023-01-25, 08:34 PM

Because it's easier to link appearance with physical attributes, while mental capabilities are set entirely arbitrarily. Warcraft goblins are geniuses, Golarion goblins... not so much. But it's pretty unintuitive if 3'6" tall, 35 lb halfling can be just as strong as 7', 350 lb musclebound hulk of an orc (or whatever).

It is pretty much the reason we aren't elephant-sized gorillas - there is a tradeoff for adding more biomass such as energy consumption and gestations period. If you can have the biomass of a gerbil yet be as strong and durable as an hippo, why bother with the extra biomass negatives? Thats the part that comes off as unintuitive. Its not just pure biomass either - complexity requires the same tradeoffs too, like intelligence factor.

Essentially, what it comes down to is, does the extra capability provided outweigh the extra cost when it comes to survivability as a species? Usually, specialising offers greater returns than trying to do everything, hence why we are not elephant-sized gorillas with high intelligence, shark like jaws, and venomous claws. Hence, the previous stat bonuses for different races/species/ancestry showing what their evolution specialised in for survivibility.

The only way I can think to justify this is that until recently (in evolutionary timescales) there was no magic, so things progressed as normal. Then magic comes along and basically says nope. It feels like a cop-out.

AvvyR

2023-01-25, 09:28 PM

What's wrong with an elf having 20 strength? Even in Tolkien, just because they weren't walking around looking like Charles Atlas on creatine powder, they were still smithing plate and going toe-to-toe with things like trolls. Finrod literally wrestled a werewolf with his bare hands and won. The notion that X race should always cap your capabilities below Y race is silly, and doubly so when we're talking about PC adventurers/heroes from those races.

You'll notice when people get all up on "certain lineages should just have higher stats than others!" it's always Strength they fall back on. I think this is due to a massive fundamental misunderstanding of the Strength stat, how it's used, and what it means.

People like to whine that a Gnome and a Goliath can both get a 20 in their Strength stat as though that makes them identical, when it absolutely does not. Goliaths, Firbolgs, Orcs, etc. all have Powerful Build. Almost anything you can think of that is a display of raw strength, lifting an iron gate, pushing a boulder aside, carrying the unconscious bodies of all of your allies back to town, are affected by this ability, and they are much better at it than lineages without. On the other hand, Small creatures have reduced capacity in these exact same areas as well as an inability to use the biggest, most damaging weapons.

The STR stat is a measure of application, how good you are at applying your physical strength to achieve an end. Any martial artist will tell you breaking boards/rocks/whatever with a chop is far more about technique than raw muscle power, this is why a lot more of them are built like Jackie Chan than Arnold Schwarzenegger. And the same goes for swinging swords effectively (I've seen a lot of good arguments that if we wanted realism, all weapon attacks should be made with Dexterity).

Hytheter

2023-01-25, 11:00 PM

PF2 dumped stat penalties too

Uh, no they didn't. Most ancestries have Ability Flaws that give a -2 penalty to some stat.

Psyren

2023-01-26, 12:38 AM

Uh, no they didn't. Most ancestries have Ability Flaws that give a -2 penalty to some stat.

There was recent errata that lets every race ancestry simply choose +2/+2. The results of this were predictable. (https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/102yar8/the_new_ability_score_rules_should_have_been_and/)

Kane0

2023-01-26, 01:02 AM

Personally im far more bothered that its so rare we can play something that isnt humanoid. Warforged arent constructs, dhampir arent undead, firbolg arent fey nor giant, tieflings arent fiends, genasi arent elementals, dragonborn arent dragons, goliath arent giants, and so on. Its only pretty recently we have branched out a bit to fairies and plasmoids such, and the system just isnt well geared to support PCs being types other than humanoid

qube

2023-01-26, 01:50 AM

Dwarves who aren't good (more so with bad Dex) with Crossbows despite being associated with them in fantasies.That's another great example.

What's wrong with an elf having 20 strength? Even in Tolkien ... Finrod literally wrestled a werewolf with his bare hands and won.<insert off topic tangent how one can't just compare D&D elves with Ñoldorin Elves elves>.

But I 100% agree with you - "What's wrong with an elf having 20 strength?".

Findrod was also master of the bow ... but even with Tasha, how many STR 20 archers are out there? Not a whole darn lot of them.
Finrod was also "fairest of all the princes of the Elves". How many fighters are there with 20 charisma? Close to zero unless they mutliclass into charisma classes.
I'll in fact step it up a notch: "What's wrong with an elf monk having 20 strength?".

That's exactly what this sytem does.

Like tolkien elves, elves are naturally graceful. Other races are naturally more inclined towards strength (half orcs, etc...). It perserves that
but you aren't shoehorned into your abilities because of your class
It allows you to make "fairest of all the princes of the Elves", despite in combat you being a fighter and not a bard or sorcerer.

Powerful buildPowerful build would be a solution ... but it would require an entire rework of each and every race.

Not all strong races have powerful build
Other races would also require simelar abilities

But ultimately, this doesn't solve the narative question.
People are different - and they all would use their strengths to beat their foe.

A strong character - regardless of race - will use mighty blows
A graceful character - ragerdless of race - will use precise strikes
A charismatic character - ragerdless of race - will use taunts and feints
...

Top of my head I can recall 4 real life rapier styles - and that's one weapon for one race.

But in D&D a halfling and a goliath wouldn't haven't figured out different ways to use the same weapon???

Witty Username

2023-01-26, 02:48 AM

I would just half the bonuses from ability scores and double bonuses for proficiency.

So like say a 5th level char with 16 strength, would get a +7 to attack rolls, +1 from strength, +6 from prof.
It solves this probem real quick of classes working but not needing ability score to ride.
--
I like powerful build and heavy weapon thinking, a small sized creature can still be very athletic, which is the prime concern of the strength score, so good at climbing, swimming, fighting, etc. But that doesn't have to translate to dead lift. I saw a homebrew version of kobold that traded the -2 strength for slim build (strength halved for carrying capacity), I much prefer that way of thinking, as str in dead lift terms doesn’t usually mean much in combat.

akma

2023-01-26, 06:00 AM

Weapon 12(+1) Defense 13(+1) Toughness 16(+3) Mysticism 16 (+3)

I think it would be simpler to just say: "You can pick which stat you use for combat and magic", so a fighter could choose int for attacks, a sorcerer could use str for magic, etc, and the players would need to fluff it accordingly.

An average halfling could have a strength score of 6, but without it forcing players to have a -4 to strength; after all, the players aren't meant to play average members of their race. Similarly, the normal strength cap for halflings could be 14, but there could be circumstances in which halflings could get stronger than that - like worshippers of a god of strength, or halflings blessed by such a god, or some other explanation. So a very strong halfling could be as strong as a very strong goliath, but it just won't happen naturally.
There could be two types of limits regarding stats: "soft" limits, which require special circumstances to overcome, but not exceedingly difficult, and "hard" limits, maybe like having more than 20 in a stat, which requires a being to be truly above mortal limits.

Cheesegear

2023-01-26, 06:20 AM

I understand why: from a game-mechanicaly point, as long as there's a train of thought you should max out your main ability score ... then races not boosting said score simply won't be an option.

Correct. There needs to be - unequivocally - something player-facing that says that having a stat higher than a 14 (+2) is kind of unnecessary, due to bounded accuracy. And what you should want is a more-rounded character with 14s in everything, rather than a 20 in one stat, and 10s in the rest (and at least a 12 in Dex and/or Con). And you need to design the entire game around having a 14 in every stat, which basically means re-writing all of the classes - and nope, not even 1DD hit the mark.

D&D lends itself to min-maxing. Some species aren't good for min-maxing. Therefore, some species aren't good, full stop.

You need to to remove the cause - not the symptom. You need to tell players that they don't want to min-max.

Imagine you want to make Auroth, a brutal Orc Sorcerer.
Orcs don't get the sorcerer casting stat? too bad for you.

You get Intimidation! I don't want Intimidation.
You get Relentless Endurance! As a backline caster, I don't really need that.
You get Savage Attacks! I said, as a backline caster, I don't really need that.

Yes, you can trade Intimidation for Persuasion or Deception, maybe. Sure. Fine. But the latter two abilities simply don't make sense for most Sorcerers, and so, there are simply other non-stat bonuses from other races that are just better for a Sorcerer. Not even counting the ASIs, Tieflings get Fire Resistance. Fire Resistance is incredibly helpful for most of Tier 2, and then some. Unless your DM is specifically removing fire-damaging creatures from their bestiary.

TL;DR
I don't want Half-Orcs to lose +2 Str, +1 Con.
I want Str and Con to matter for a Sorcerer. Or a Wizard. Or a Rogue...Or anything.

You have a Fighter with 8 (-1) Cha? Cool. You can't Taunt/Provoke. (In this case, all Fighters can Taunt/Provoke based on their CHA score...Fighters with a very high Cha score can Rally.)
Your Barbarian has an 8 in Int? Well that sucks. Now you can't do the thing that Barbarians with at least a 12 in Int, can do.

Rukelnikov

2023-01-26, 06:54 AM

If you need to basically duplicate most attributes, then something isn't working correctly, under a paradigm like this you should eliminate the 6 attributes.

KorvinStarmast

2023-01-26, 09:26 AM

Then magic comes along and basically says nope. It feels like a cop-out. Which it sort of is, narratively.

... the system just isnt well geared to support PCs being types other than humanoid Which is fine, given that the players are human. :smallsmile:

Melil12

2023-01-26, 10:26 AM

I am confused… so far I have seen several examples and with their new UA system all of them work. It gives everyone the options to do what they want.

You want a smart Elven barbarian or tough half orc sorcerer … move your stats to accommodate. You want to your elven barbarian to be cookie cutter stat wise … well the new UA system lets you do that too.

No one should be forced to play their character to fit someone else’s RP.

Psyren

2023-01-26, 11:16 AM

Melil12

2023-01-26, 11:40 AM

But don't you see, you're just a human cosplaying if you do that. Pay no attention to all the other racial features.

I object. I don’t classify my self as a human. I am a meat popsicle.

Psyren

2023-01-26, 12:57 PM

I object. I don’t classify my self as a human. I am a meat popsicle.

Multipass! :smallbiggrin:

qube

2023-01-27, 05:25 AM

I think it would be simpler to just say: "You can pick which stat you use for combat and magic", so a fighter could choose int for attacks, a sorcerer could use str for magic, etc, and the players would need to fluff it accordingly.I've played around with that idea as well, but it has a few downsides:
that it still nudges players to max out stats
some DMs might requires players to come up fluff they find acceptable
(not all players are as elequent to put their ideas into a good argument, not all DMs are as excepting)

But aside from that, this abstraction is basically just that. Instead of

Str 14 (+2) Dex 12 (+1) Con 16 (+3) Int 13 (+1) Wis 10 (+0) Cha 11 (+0)
Weapon DEX; Defense INT; Toughness CON; Mysticism STR
It uses it's own numbers

You need to tell players that they don't want to min-max.If only life were that easy :)

As you pointed out yourself: the ideal solution would have been to rewrite the entire system ... but that's not really realistically.

You get Intimidation! I don't want Intimidation.On that note, the proposed system still provides the player with a "filled box" (This is a half-orc, This is an elf, etc ...). But it significantly disconnects their combat capabilities while not trying to errase their inter-racial diversity.

And yes, it doesn't do it away completely, but lets be honest - we could open up any on-line handbook for class X and look at the suggested races. The pattern was quite simple: the skills, abilities, etc ... might have made the class one tier better or worse, the overwelming difference between the "good races" and the "bad races" are the abiliy score.

If you need to basically duplicate most attributes, then something isn't working correctly, under a paradigm like this you should eliminate the 6 attributes.I'm not duplicating them - I'm disconnecting them from their most important use of combat.

But don't you see, you're just a human cosplaying if you do that. Pay no attention to all the other racial features.If the races were designed that ways, I'd agree. But they aren't.

Their racial features (alone) don't do this.

High elves, are designed to be a race that veers towards wizards. An extra cantrip could be a great addition for melee forced non-spellcasters, but is pretty meh for casters.
Dwarves are designed to be a race that veers towards melee classes. But their extra armor proficiencies is litterly useless for paladins & fighters, while great for the wizard who fears melee.
...

I have seen several examples and with their new UA system all of them work.I don't follow the UA. But a quick skimming of UA Expert-Classes (I presume you're referring to that?) still says things like primairy ability: dexterity.

What about the rangers & rogues that aren't dexterious? The friendly woodcutter (a strenght axe-wielding ranger), or the muscle bound mafia enforcer (a strength rogue).

Honest question - as, again, I haven't played it - how much does it affect these new UA classes use if
you happen to play a character where that primairy stat is dumped?
Or where you go for a more even spread of abilities instead of maximizing one? (realistically. in 5E +2 CON also gives a wizard hit points and concentration - but +2 INT is significatlly better)

akma

2023-01-27, 07:58 AM

I've played around with that idea as well, but it has a few downsides:
that it still nudges players to max out stats
some DMs might requires players to come up fluff they find acceptable
(not all players are as elequent to put their ideas into a good argument, not all DMs are as excepting)

Those are both cultural issues, not rules issues. A group could choose to play with unoptimized stats and very flimsy explanations for their capabilities, but it's not how things are usually done.

What about the rangers & rogues that aren't dexterious? The friendly woodcutter (a strenght axe-wielding ranger), or the muscle bound mafia enforcer (a strength rogue).

You could just play a fighter and in game call him an enforcer, or ranger, or even a cleric.

It seems that you want to do two things:
A) Break the culture of minmaxing.
B) Give more flexibility for how players can design their characters.

Instead of trying to change D&D into something it's not, I think you should just play another system. Point buy systems are more flexible than class based ones for character builds, and many are not as focused on combat as D&D is.

Sigreid

2023-01-27, 08:19 AM

That's... That's REALLY harsh.

If you want to be a strength-based class on a small PC, you're looking at being down one or two points of bonus at level one, and four points of bonus by late Tier Two or early Tier Three.
And it makes playing a Goliath, Firbolg, or other Powerful Build race unneededly strong when playing the same-the equivalent of a Belt Of Cloud Giant Strength (a Legendary Item) if you max it out.
I don't see a problem with their basic idea, but if you do that there needs to be a tradeoff. Not going that route myself, but if I did I'd do the same thing in reverse with dex at the least.

Cheesegear

2023-01-27, 08:19 AM

A group could choose to play with unoptimized stats and very flimsy explanations for their capabilities, but it's not how things are usually done.

It's not that it isn't usually done.
It's that there's no benefit to doing so. But there is a benefit to min-maxing.

akma

2023-01-27, 11:27 AM

It's not that it isn't usually done.
It's that there's no benefit to doing so. But there is a benefit to min-maxing.

That applies to every system, but I don't recall ever reading a discussion about optimizing character builds in World Of Darkness, for example.

The benefit to not minmaxing is more flexible roleplay, if you want to play something like a buff wizard. If the entire party is equally unoptimized, than the DM can just pit them against weaker encounters, and the game will work out about the same, even if they do something "crazy", like putting less than 10 in their constitution. Likewise, the DM could put harder encounters if they are hyperoptimized.

Psyren

2023-01-27, 12:13 PM

ahyangyi

2023-01-27, 12:34 PM

If the races were designed that ways, I'd agree. But they aren't.

Their racial features (alone) don't do this.

High elves, are designed to be a race that veers towards wizards. An extra cantrip could be a great addition for melee forced non-spellcasters, but is pretty meh for casters.
Dwarves are designed to be a race that veers towards melee classes. But their extra armor proficiencies is litterly useless for paladins & fighters, while great for the wizard who fears melee.
...

By the way, I often wonder, in an imaginary world where the designer would write and publish the design intention behind each mechanics, things would have been much more coherent and consistent over the years.

For example, it did not take long before we had the Genasi, who were generally as tough as the dwarf but were given random spell-like abilities...

qube

2023-01-28, 10:26 AM

You could just play a fighter and in game call him an enforcer, or ranger, or even a cleric.Quite true - though that's kind of mising the point.

There's a not uncommon houserule to let warlocks use intelligence instead of charisma. Yes, sure they could just play wizard ... I think every DM knows that. but the fact that this houserule exists notes that not always what people want.

Classes have different structures, focusses, etc ... (playing a low dex fighter, kind of forces you to wear heavy armor, they don't get sneak attack, etc...)

It seems that you want to do two things:
A) Break the culture of minmaxing.
B) Give more flexibility for how players can design their characters.

Instead of trying to change D&D into something it's not, I don't subscribe to the notion that that's is not D&D. I consider getting nudged toward minmaxing, and inflexible character desing, unfortunate (and solvable) sideeffects.

That's the case for the 2014 versions, but those are in the process of getting changed so its moot.Are they released already? I don't seem to find them.

By the way, I often wonder, in an imaginary world where the designer would write and publish the design intention behind each mechanics, things would have been much more coherent and consistent over the years.

For example, it did not take long before we had the Genasi, who were generally as tough as the dwarf but were given random spell-like abilities...Definately

Dienekes

2023-01-28, 10:45 AM

Are they released already? I don't seem to find them.

The UA for D&D 5.5 (called One D&D for likely silly marketing reasons) is out, can be found on DND Beyond if you look.

The races are... better. But they have some oddities to them. Like the fact Orcs are now mechanically more durable and defensive than Dwarves, which feels wrong to me on a fundamental level. But they do try to fix some of the issues where the species' traits make them better than the opposite of what they're designed for. No one has armor proficiencies any more. Really, very few have anything to do with hitting anything anymore, there are no abilities that involve Strength or Dexterity in the initial batch. The Revised Species with Cleric UA introduces two that do, the new weird Ardlings which are half-celestial/half-beastperson and the designers don't really seem to know which side they want to emphasize more(for the record, I'm all for dropping the celestial and just making a beastperson species) and the Goliath. And in both cases they make certain the attack focused abilities are optional.

It's functional.

Rukelnikov

2023-01-28, 11:24 AM

Or would you rather have a halfling swashbuckler-style fighter who uses taunts and feints as defense? A sword wielding elf fighter (a slashing sword, not a rapier)? A strong smithy dwarf artificier, ... These, and much more options are now viable options - without having to trade in flavor for game mechanics.

I think this is a core part of the divission on the subject.

Mechanics are the game system's implementation of the narrative, flavor is part of the narrative, you can't dissociate them without the mechanical representation losing precision in its modeling of the narrative.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-01-28, 11:42 AM

The UA for D&D 5.5 (called One D&D for likely silly marketing reasons) is out, can be found on DND Beyond if you look.

The races are... better. But they have some oddities to them. Like the fact Orcs are now mechanically more durable and defensive than Dwarves, which feels wrong to me on a fundamental level. But they do try to fix some of the issues where the species' traits make them better than the opposite of what they're designed for. No one has armor proficiencies any more. Really, very few have anything to do with hitting anything anymore, there are no abilities that involve Strength or Dexterity in the initial batch. The Revised Species with Cleric UA introduces two that do, the new weird Ardlings which are half-celestial/half-beastperson and the designers don't really seem to know which side they want to emphasize more(for the record, I'm all for dropping the celestial and just making a beastperson species) and the Goliath. And in both cases they make certain the attack focused abilities are optional.

It's functional.

One downside is that they have the "everything plausibly interesting is a spell" bug. So many of the races have the "cast spell x/day" instead of more "organic" features. Which also makes casters even stronger, since now they (and only they) get extra features from their racial choice--those spells are added to their spell lists. Which is a fairly large deal.

I think this is a core part of the divission on the subject.

Mechanics are the game system's implementation of the narrative, flavor is part of the narrative, you can't dissociate them without the mechanical representation losing precision in its modeling of the narrative.

I agree with this. There is no fluff/crunch divide. It's all on equal footing--all of it is bound up in the same task.

Dienekes

2023-01-28, 12:46 PM

One downside is that they have the "everything plausibly interesting is a spell" bug. So many of the races have the "cast spell x/day" instead of more "organic" features. Which also makes casters even stronger, since now they (and only they) get extra features from their racial choice--those spells are added to their spell lists. Which is a fairly large deal.

There is a reason why I used the word functional, not interesting, exciting, or even good. Which is my critique of most of 5.5 as far as I've seen.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-01-28, 12:55 PM

There is a reason why I used the word functional, not interesting, exciting, or even good. Which is my critique of most of 5.5 as far as I've seen.

On that we can agree. 5.5 has a few things that work ok, a lot of just meh, and a few really bad decisions. But nothing higher than "ok, that's something that works, I guess."

qube

2023-01-29, 05:21 AM

Mechanics are the game system's implementation of the narrative, flavor is part of the narrative, you can't dissociate them without the mechanical representation losing precision in its modeling of the narrative.Quite true. I think the paladin is a nice example of this: in 3/3.5E had paladins cast on wisdom, while in 5E they cast on charisma.

However, by including an abstract layer - you can midigate the effect.
In effect,that's also what the proficiency modifier does. (you're not stronger, and don't neccecairly know more abilities, but you're just ... better flavor it how you want )

Rukelnikov

2023-01-29, 06:16 AM

Quite true. I think the paladin is a nice example of this: in 3/3.5E had paladins cast on wisdom, while in 5E they cast on charisma.

However, by including an abstract layer - you can midigate the effect.
In effect,that's also what the proficiency modifier does. (you're not stronger, and don't neccecairly know more abilities, but you're just ... better flavor it how you want )

Flavor it what you want doesn't mesh with archetype centered design (like classes), and IMO works better in a point buy system like Mutants and Masterminds where you choose "Blast" as a power and flavor it being shotting with your assault rifle, throwing a Kamehameha, or whatever you want, all equally valid, all equally efective, I went with throwing a pigskin at my enemies really hard, my character used to be quarterback at high school american football, could've gone pro if he didn't end up in the reformatory.

Parties end up being a bunch of weirdos and it's fun. But I like my DnD better when it reminds me more of LotR than Justice League.

EDIT: Well, thinking more about it, I guess that's a campaign/setting thing more than anything else, for some campaigns maybe the DC line-up would be better to have. Hmm... IDK, i'll think more about it.

qube

2023-01-29, 11:11 AM

I like my DnD better when it reminds me more of LotRI 100% agree! And that's where I find it weird.

In DnD all fighters have the same ideal score (presumable, STR 20 DEX 8 CON 20. it's way cheaper to pick the allert feat then investing into dexterity).
And the tasha's fix says "well, not all elves are dexterious. you got non-dexterious elves and dexterious dwarves as well !"

I'm going to be honest with you, that doesn't remind me of LotR. For me, in LotR, each race uses their strengths to fight.
Elvish fighter are dexterious and graceful
Dwarf fighter are strong and tough
etc ...

Even if they are equally compentent - how they fight is totally different.

Flavor it what you want doesn't mesh with archetype centered design (like classes):smallconfused: A class gives you the ability to use tools (fighters get armor and weapons, wizards get to read magical books) - they don't specify how you go from "knows how to use sword" to "dead goblin".

The fact that the fighter class need strength - is a side effect of how the melee attack roll mechanic works.

If melee attack roll said "use whatever stat you want", fighters would be a lot less strength dependant.
The only problem with that is that 5E has SAD classes and MAD classes. (but that problem is solved with my system)

greenstone

2023-01-29, 03:48 PM

I'm going to be honest with you, that doesn't remind me of LotR. For me, in LotR, each race uses their strengths to fight.
Elvish fighter are dexterious and graceful
Dwarf fighter are strong and tough
etc ...

I agree.
The backlash against racial stats really puzzles me. It seems that "orcs tend towards fighters and elves tend towards rogues" is bad, yet to me, that seems like a good thing.

If, in the fantasy world, elves are generally better at magic that other races then elves will tend to be wizards. If orcs are in general stronger than other races then a majority of phyical jobs (bouncers, fighters, gladiators) will be orcs.

The fantasy world should follow on from the mechanics. To me, having a mechanic that isn't reflected in the world breaks immersion more than almost anything else.

Similarly, I dislike having a world fact that isn't backed up by mechanics. For example, if a book says "Elves are graceful and dextrous" then there should be some game rule to support this. Otherwise, why say it?

akma

2023-01-29, 06:13 PM

I consider getting nudged toward minmaxing, and inflexible character desing, unfortunate (and solvable) sideeffects.

Class system is something that inherently limits flexibility. The less restrictive a class is, the less meaningful it is. Even if you could just choose whatever attribute you use to whatever rule, classes would still pigeonhole your character.

The fact that the fighter class need strength - is a side effect of how the melee attack roll mechanic works.

If melee attack roll said "use whatever stat you want", fighters would be a lot less strength dependant.

Stuff like that will make minmaxing worse, as eloquent players might convince the DM to have all the rolls they care about be dependent on a single stat, for example, constitution. It is already a stat that nobody dumps, and maxing it out to have more hit points would be useful for any character.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-01-29, 07:22 PM

Class system is something that inherently limits flexibility. The less restrictive a class is, the less meaningful it is. Even if you could just choose whatever attribute you use to whatever rule, classes would still pigeonhole your character.

This. And that's by design and working as intended. Classes are supposed to provide constraints, to define what archetypes are supported by the system. They're the antithesis of the "build-a-bear" model where you assemble a bunch of mechanics to fit your pre-determined character--you're supposed to start with the class and build around that archetype.

Stuff like that will make minmaxing worse, as eloquent players might convince the DM to have all the rolls they care about be dependent on a single stat, for example, constitution. It is already a stat that nobody dumps, and maxing it out to have more hit points would be useful for any character.

Agreed. We see how that goes with hexblades (albeit to a lesser degree).

greenstone

2023-01-31, 05:57 PM

Blackdrop

2023-01-31, 06:43 PM

Off the wall suggestion: species don't get increases to the ability scores, they get required minimums.

For example:

Elves are an agile and graceful people. No elf character can have a starting DEX of less than 12.

Dwarves are hardy and resilient folk. No dwarf character can have a starting CON of less than 12.

This way the game mechanics represent the game world description (because having something in the world that is not reflected in the mechanics is just empty words).

The player now has a cost to go with their choices. They want to get the cool elf immunities and abilities? They have to pay a cost of putting points in DEX.

If a dwarf PC loses CON and goes below the minumum then other dwarves notice it and behave differently. "Are you alright, cousin? You look really poorly, you need to see a healer?"

Or maybe , "Call yourself a dwarf? You're a disgrace, a weakling! Get out of here and don't come back until you've grown a spine." :-)

While I support this idea, it's a problem since it goes against the current "Character First, Mechanics Second" character creation paradigm. We'd have to go back to a pre-3.0 "Roll the Dice and see what you can play" paradigm for this to be serious option.

Hurrashane

2023-01-31, 07:40 PM

I prefer the species having differing abilities that say something about them. Like, Dwarves having extra HP/level and poison resistance sells them more for being a tough and hardy people than a +2 con or a con minimum would. A Dwarf fighter and a Human fighter with the same con, the Dwarf is tougher.

I like features like that.

ahyangyi

2023-01-31, 11:57 PM

Off the wall suggestion: species don't get increases to the ability scores, they get required minimums.

For example:

Elves are an agile and graceful people. No elf character can have a starting DEX of less than 12.

Dwarves are hardy and resilient folk. No dwarf character can have a starting CON of less than 12.

This way the game mechanics represent the game world description (because having something in the world that is not reflected in the mechanics is just empty words).

The player now has a cost to go with their choices. They want to get the cool elf immunities and abilities? They have to pay a cost of putting points in DEX.

If a dwarf PC loses CON and goes below the minumum then other dwarves notice it and behave differently. "Are you alright, cousin? You look really poorly, you need to see a healer?"

Or maybe , "Call yourself a dwarf? You're a disgrace, a weakling! Get out of here and don't come back until you've grown a spine." :-)

Nobody ever pays anything for the strongest racial trait that is the bonus feat, and I wonder why.

Well, you can't really claim "world reflect in the mechanism" by requiring a minimum of 12. That means, the constitution of the worst dwarf adventurer ever is better than the average human. Think about it, does that sound right?

Let's do the math: in the current system, you can start at 8, dwarf gives +2. That means a random heroic dwarf adventurer has a minimum constitution of 10, not 12.

qube

2023-02-01, 08:35 AM

eloquent players might convince the DM to have all the rolls they care about be dependent on a single statI share that concern.
You will note that, in the proposed system, this is not the case - as classes remain equally SAD/MAD.

Class system is something that inherently limits flexibility.
In the context of ability scores?

I find only one inflexibility - in multiclassing
paladins, sorcerers, warlocks and bards cast on charisma
Eldritch knights, spell thieves and wizards, artificiers cast on intelligence
clerics and druids cast on wisdom

The systems goes from the, frankly arbitrairy
paladin sorcerer OK eldritch knight wizard OK sorcerer bard OK
paladin wizard Bad eldritch knight sorcerer Bad sorcerer wizard bad
to now casters uses the same score to cast spells.

AFAIK there's no game-mechanical reason for this seperation (other then the 'fluff' that forces certain casters to use different stats). Best I can think of is wizards being able to cast cure light wounds by multiclassing ... but that seems quite missplaced when warlocks and sorcerer (by MC bard) are allowed to do it.

Imagine having to DM a world where one of the PCs is a mountain dwarf cleric of Moradin / artificier(armorer) ... silly players with their redonculous character ideas.

Xervous

2023-02-01, 10:40 AM

My knee jerk response is “make everyone MAD”. Each class will have their primary stat and a secondary, and subclass will add a third desirable stat on top of that. Assuming a PHB with four subclasses apiece that key to a different score, 9/15 ASI pairings will be relevant to playing some sort of X, even ignoring how desirable CON would be in a vacuum.

Consider a monk. DEX is their mainstay, and WIS will drive some other core features. Long death will want CON to interact with some of their unique abilities. Four elements benefits from INT. Kensei has a use for putting both STR and DEX high. Ascendant dragon has a burning desire for CHA. It’s impossible for a racial ASI to fail to improve some sort of monk, and 60% of racial ASI pairings will map directly to some sort of monk.

Far too complicated for the target audience, never going to happen, but I can dream.

Hurrashane

2023-02-01, 12:39 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-01, 12:51 PM

Things were more MAD before in 3.x, wizards needed dex, not just for AC but for ranged spell attacks and strength for melee spell attacks. All that did is make Wizards rarely use melee spell attacks.

All making classes more MAD will do is incentivize people to play the least MAD classes.

Or find "clever" workarounds (yes, hexblade, I'm taking to you) to remove the MAD. Or push it somewhere, as you say, that they don't care about.

Xervous

2023-02-01, 01:04 PM

And if you just make ASIs function like an extension of point buy...

Yeah never going to happen. D&D is about SAD.

Pixel_Kitsune

2023-02-01, 01:19 PM

Honestly, if you really want the Races to have specific stat tendencies, here's an idea I've seen done (I run open bonuses because I think the appearances, ribbons and other abilities are what make race/species interesting, not a +2 to a certain stat.).

Make the +2 static based on Race, but the +1 floating.
Make the +2 also bump the cap of the stat. Which encourages and allows improvement that way but doesn't penalize others.

So taking Standard array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9 and an Elf with a +2 Dex(Max 22 now) and a +1 floating.

If I lean into the Dex theme I can put the 15 or 14 in Dex for a 17/16 and eventually hit 22 netting me that extra 5% to things at level 12 as a nice power boost.

But if I want to play something that uses Heavy Armor and doesn't care about dex? Say a Light Cleric as an easy example. Alright, well, we toss the 9 into Dex to make it 11 and don't have to stress any penalties and put the +1 with the 15 in Wisdom and our High Elf Cleric no longer has an automatic disadvantage at levels 1-8.

Psyren

2023-02-01, 04:34 PM

Melil12

2023-02-01, 04:58 PM

I don't follow the UA. But a quick skimming of UA Expert-Classes (I presume you're referring to that?) still says things like primairy ability: dexterity.

What about the rangers & rogues that aren't dexterious? The friendly woodcutter (a strenght axe-wielding ranger), or the muscle bound mafia enforcer (a strength rogue).

Honest question - as, again, I haven't played it - how much does it affect these new UA classes use if
you happen to play a character where that primairy stat is dumped?
Or where you go for a more even spread of abilities instead of maximizing one? (realistically. in 5E +2 CON also gives a wizard hit points and concentration - but +2 INT is significatlly better)

Forgive me, I wasnÂ’t following this thread the past few days.

I think your misunderstanding what I was saying. I was not saying that all of a sudden stupid wizards become viable. That is a whole separate discussion.

We were specifically talking about if someone wanted their PC to represent their depiction of a racial stat.

What I was arguing against was the idea that because someone feels all elves should have above average Dex scores shouldnÂ’t effect how I choose to build my PC.

Jervis

2023-02-01, 06:18 PM

Personally I do think fantasy species should have their own up and down sides, flaws are more interesting to RP than powers after all and a person playing a mermaid probably shouldn’t expect to have 30 move speed on land unmodified. I don’t think stats are the way to do it though. Statistically averages in a demographic don’t need to apply to individuals, and if you really want to model it from a simulationist point of view then letting orcs Reroll d6s that land on a 2 or lower when determining strength works better. Also doesn’t have the feel bad of knowing that your human fighter will never be equal to a Orc fighter that started on the same place. As an aside thought I really think skills and attributes should be background dependent

RedWarlock

2023-02-01, 06:29 PM

Racial stat tendencies are for NPCs. If you want to establish that the average vanilla elf in your world has a higher dex than the average vanilla dwarf, that's totally fine, go ahead and do that. PCs however are not average or vanilla and never have been.

If I'm committing mechanical energy, and story elements, into having a strong/agile/tough character from a race renowned for their physical capabilities, and I go all in on being the paragon of that concept, and someone else brings a character from a race/culture of small, frail, weak creatures, with an entirely different set of cultural values (like knowledge, magic, and community), who just as easily matches every high functional bonus (saves, scores, attack bonuses) I've invested into, I'm going to feel a bit shortchanged.

Barely related: You know my favorite character to build/replicate? Late 3e, a half-ogre warlock. I loved that stat spread, because I could still make it work, in a wide variety of areas (especially if I could convince the DM to use the SS Half-Ogre's +1 LA, not the later +2). The other racial features were Large size, natural armor, and Giant type, and that was about it, but I could work with that. I played him as a gish, Hideous Blow was an early favorite invocation (still miffed we don't have a general counterpart ability for 5e). And I made it work even with a -2 Cha.

Psyren

2023-02-01, 11:10 PM

If I'm committing mechanical energy, and story elements, into having a strong/agile/tough character from a race renowned for their physical capabilities, and I go all in on being the paragon of that concept, and someone else brings a character from a race/culture of small, frail, weak creatures, with an entirely different set of cultural values (like knowledge, magic, and community), who just as easily matches every high functional bonus (saves, scores, attack bonuses) I've invested into, I'm going to feel a bit shortchanged.

Barely related: You know my favorite character to build/replicate? Late 3e, a half-ogre warlock. I loved that stat spread, because I could still make it work, in a wide variety of areas (especially if I could convince the DM to use the SS Half-Ogre's +1 LA, not the later +2). The other racial features were Large size, natural armor, and Giant type, and that was about it, but I could work with that. I played him as a gish, Hideous Blow was an early favorite invocation (still miffed we don't have a general counterpart ability for 5e). And I made it work even with a -2 Cha.

Nothing is stopping you from doing that. Declare that half-ogres in your world/at your table have -2 Cha and make bad warlocks, so that your mighty snowflake specimen can rise above his biological shortcomings, or whatever other bohemian narrative apparently hinges on the mechanic in question. But that has no bearing on what WotC and Paizo choose to put in their books.

RedWarlock

2023-02-01, 11:47 PM

Nothing is stopping you from doing that. Declare that half-ogres in your world/at your table have -2 Cha and make bad warlocks, so that your mighty snowflake specimen can rise above his biological shortcomings, or whatever other bohemian narrative apparently hinges on the mechanic in question. But that has no bearing on what WotC and Paizo choose to put in their books.

Aww, I said barely related for a reason. I was waxing whimsical on my favorite character who would not work in a system like 5e, or, indeed, in PF2e (or even 4e, as things stood), because the system isn't built to be capable of the kind of statistical variability in expectations that made his experience special. (I should've skipped that entirely, because you did exactly what I feared for posting it, you ignored the first paragraph as my argument, instead following my separate tangent. Please read the first block as my point to you, and not to the conversational thread as a whole.)

5eNeedsDarksun

2023-02-02, 12:02 AM

I think the best alternative to stat-less races would be to make all classes MAD. Make Con even more crucial. Add bonuses to all stats that don't depend on class.
Mostly, design classes like the Paladin. Want to make a Paly that focuses on Chr? Great! Want to make a Paly that focuses on the attack stat? Great! Want to go with Feats? Great! If all these things are in balance then more races are in play.
The Paladins we've had at our table have been the most diverse group both thematically and mechanically for this reason. That's good design.

Psyren

2023-02-02, 12:47 AM

Aww, I said barely related for a reason. I was waxing whimsical on my favorite character who would not work in a system like 5e, or, indeed, in PF2e (or even 4e, as things stood), because the system isn't built to be capable of the kind of statistical variability in expectations that made his experience special. (I should've skipped that entirely, because you did exactly what I feared for posting it, you ignored the first paragraph as my argument, instead following my separate tangent. Please read the first block as my point to you, and not to the conversational thread as a whole.)

I did read your first paragraph, and I didn't address it here because it was already addressed on page 1:

You'll notice when people get all up on "certain lineages should just have higher stats than others!" it's always Strength they fall back on. I think this is due to a massive fundamental misunderstanding of the Strength stat, how it's used, and what it means.

People like to whine that a Gnome and a Goliath can both get a 20 in their Strength stat as though that makes them identical, when it absolutely does not. Goliaths, Firbolgs, Orcs, etc. all have Powerful Build. Almost anything you can think of that is a display of raw strength, lifting an iron gate, pushing a boulder aside, carrying the unconscious bodies of all of your allies back to town, are affected by this ability, and they are much better at it than lineages without. On the other hand, Small creatures have reduced capacity in these exact same areas as well as an inability to use the biggest, most damaging weapons.

The STR stat is a measure of application, how good you are at applying your physical strength to achieve an end. Any martial artist will tell you breaking boards/rocks/whatever with a chop is far more about technique than raw muscle power, this is why a lot more of them are built like Jackie Chan than Arnold Schwarzenegger. And the same goes for swinging swords effectively (I've seen a lot of good arguments that if we wanted realism, all weapon attacks should be made with Dexterity).

Having the same strength cap does not make "a race renowned for their physical capabilities" in any way identical to (or "easily match" as you said) "a race/culture of small, frail, weak creatures." There are, in fact, other ways to represent that divergence without enshrining it into basic character math via attributes. Just like there are other ways to make a race good at hiding, or good at magic, or good at noticing things etc. Attribute caps or deficiencies are the lazy way out. It's about time the designers realized that.

Captain Cap

2023-02-02, 02:54 AM

LudicSavant

2023-02-02, 04:14 AM

A question for those advocating for races with fixed small bonuses/maluses (let's say in the range +2/-2 in general), no judgment, just curiosity: how do you feel about sexual dimorphism? Men are on average ~70% stronger than women (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology#Skeleton_and_m uscular_system), do you think it should be somewhat reflected in the game?

I'm not one of those advocates, but I wanted to respond to this anyways.

So here's the thing about that. Let's say we want to be a female firefighter. What should we make their strength stat?

The answer is that the character will be strong enough to pass the same strenuous physical test that many men can't pass. They have to in order to get the firefighter job.

The "average woman" isn't relevant to how strong this particular woman is. It may mean that there are fewer female firefighters, but the ones that there are will be strong enough to carry you out of a burning building.

The same principle applies to pretty much anything. For instance, the NBA may have fewer asian players, but the players that are there are so tall that they are visible from space (and Yao Ming is among the tallest to ever play the game).

So how's that apply to games? Fewer orcs may be Wizards, but I'd still expect every orc Wizard I meet to be smart enough to pass the tests to graduate from Wizard school.

But that's not really how racial modifiers in 5e worked. They didn't make the orc Wizard *rare*, they made them *suck.* They didn't even have a different stat cap (20). They just penalized you for having the *same* stat.

In game design, we don't generally cost character features by how rare they are, but how powerful they are. In a superhero game for instance, you might have a very exceptional human and an average member of a powerful alien race on the same team, and they'd cost about the same number of character points (or levels or whatever other resources) to build.

So yeah. Old 5e racial modifiers sucked. They didn't actually let you play a half-orc stronger than any man; the half-orc barbarian and an elven one would both end up at 20 str anyways. It just made your character less qualified of being on the team that they're on if they didn't conform to a stereotype. Which, let us be very clear, may superficially seem intuitive but is not actually realistic, for reasons above.

Anymage

2023-02-02, 05:01 AM

I'd be more okay with sexual dimorphism if there were enough other ways to add bonuses that the starting difference wound up being negligible, or if the system had enough ways to make other stats beyond your primary one relevant. 5e is by no means that game, with modifiers being deliberately limited and SADness being par for the course. (Mostly in the name of simplicity and playability, which are tradeoffs I largely approve of.) Which largely mimics my take on racial mods.

Aimeryan

2023-02-02, 06:14 AM

Race-leaning averages never made sense to me for the PC - the PC is specifically not an average member of the species (or we wouldn't even have the ability to influence the stats in the first place). This would also be the case for sexual-dimorphism.

What makes more sense to me, barring magic butting in, is that the cap would be different. The Gnome average may be low on Strength. The PC is not the average. However, the PC is still restricted by the fact that they are a Gnome. So the Gnome average Str may be for example, 8. The PC Gnome may be Str 14, but they are capped there because they do not have the biology capable of raising it higher. Just like height is capped, just like Gnome do not have wings and thus cannot fly, no matter how hard they try.

We already have caps. The caps are already lower for humanoid species than monstrous species. A Giant can reach into the upper 20s for Str. Should we just cap everything at 20? Or are we in agreeance that Giants should be able to reach a higher Str cap? If so, why can't we accept that a Human could reach a higher Str cap than a Gnome?

Magic changes this. We have magic belts that specificially make you stronger than you could otherwise possibly be. Thats magic.

LudicSavant

2023-02-02, 06:48 AM

Race-leaning averages never made sense to me for the PC - the PC is specifically not an average member of the species (or we wouldn't even have the ability to influence the stats in the first place). This would also be the case for sexual-dimorphism. Yep. There's no reason we should be trying to represent the "raw demographic average orc" in PC-generation rules.

What makes more sense to me, barring magic butting in, is that the cap would be different. The Gnome average may be low on Strength. The PC is not the average. However, the PC is still restricted by the fact that they are a Gnome. So the Gnome average Str may be for example, 8. The PC Gnome may be Str 14, but they are capped there because they do not have the biology capable of raising it higher. Just like height is capped, just like Gnome do not have wings and thus cannot fly, no matter how hard they try.

We already have caps. The caps are already lower for humanoid species than monstrous species. A Giant can reach into the upper 20s for Str. Should we just cap everything at 20? Or are we in agreeance that Giants should be able to reach a higher Str cap? If so, why can't we accept that a Human could reach a higher Str cap than a Gnome?

Magic changes this. We have magic belts that specificially make you stronger than you could otherwise possibly be. Thats magic.

Differing stat *caps* is fine. But that of course isn't what 5e-style racial mods do.

Blackdrop

2023-02-02, 06:49 AM

I wonder how effective it would be going back to exclusively rolling for stats and instead of adding flat bonuses, you instead vary the size of the dice pools. For example:

An Average Stat for your race you roll 3d6
An Above Average Stat for your race (Lightfoot Charisma, etc) you roll 4d6b3
An Exceptional Stat for your race (Elven Dexterity, etc) you roll 5d6b3

I feel like that would fix the current "[X]s are always better than [Y]s at [Z], but not really" problem that crops up with the flat bonuses, by definitively switching it to "[X]s are usually better than [Y]s at [Z]." It also addresses that pesky "phantom -1 to your preferred stat" problem that crops up.

The only problem I see with it is it also would require switching to the "Play what you get, rather than what you want" character creation paradigm, but to be honest, as someone who really enjoys roguelikes and related games, the more I think about it the less I'm considering that problem.

Psyren

2023-02-02, 09:43 AM

I'm not one of those advocates, but I wanted to respond to this anyways.

So here's the thing about that. Let's say we want to be a female firefighter. What should we make their strength stat?

The answer is that the character will be strong enough to pass the same strenuous physical test that many men can't pass. They have to in order to get the firefighter job.

The "average woman" isn't relevant to how strong this particular woman is. It may mean that there are fewer female firefighters, but the ones that there are will be strong enough to carry you out of a burning building.

The same principle applies to pretty much anything. For instance, the NBA may have fewer asian players, but the players that are there are so tall that they are visible from space (and Yao Ming is among the tallest to ever play the game).

So how's that apply to games? Fewer orcs may be Wizards, but I'd still expect every orc Wizard I meet to be smart enough to pass the tests to graduate from Wizard school.

But that's not really how racial modifiers in 5e worked. They didn't make the orc Wizard *rare*, they made them *suck.* They didn't even have a different stat cap (20). They just penalized you for having the *same* stat.

In game design, we don't generally cost character features by how rare they are, but how powerful they are. In a superhero game for instance, you might have a very exceptional human and an average member of a powerful alien race on the same team, and they'd cost about the same number of character points (or levels or whatever other resources) to build.

So yeah. Old 5e racial modifiers sucked. They didn't actually let you play a half-orc stronger than any man; the half-orc barbarian and an elven one would both end up at 20 str anyways. It just made your character less qualified of being on the team that they're on if they didn't conform to a stereotype. Which, let us be very clear, may superficially seem intuitive but is not actually realistic, for reasons above.

Yep. There's no reason we should be trying to represent the "raw demographic average orc" in PC-generation rules.

Exactly.

We already have caps. The caps are already lower for humanoid species than monstrous species. A Giant can reach into the upper 20s for Str. Should we just cap everything at 20? Or are we in agreeance that Giants should be able to reach a higher Str cap? If so, why can't we accept that a Human could reach a higher Str cap than a Gnome?

The gnome has a lower cap, it's just expressed in a more interesting way. They can't grapple a Large creature like the human can, nor can they wield a Heavy weapon effectively. It doesn't however mean that their jump distance is shorter, they're worse at climbing, they have a harder time resisting an Entangle or Gust of Wind etc.

Captain Cap

2023-02-02, 10:05 AM

they're worse at climbing
Ironically enough, their small size should actually make them better at climbing, according to the square-cube law.

Pixel_Kitsune

2023-02-02, 11:18 AM

If I'm committing mechanical energy, and story elements, into having a strong/agile/tough character from a race renowned for their physical capabilities, and I go all in on being the paragon of that concept, and someone else brings a character from a race/culture of small, frail, weak creatures, with an entirely different set of cultural values (like knowledge, magic, and community), who just as easily matches every high functional bonus (saves, scores, attack bonuses) I've invested into, I'm going to feel a bit shortchanged.

Alright, and the Goliath Fighter with 20 Strength has the ability to shrug off mortal blows and carries 600 pounds while being able to lift 1,200 pounds over their head or get moved out of the way. More than half a ton. Meanwhile the halfling who has worked their whole life to achieve the pinnacle of strength 20 can only carry 300 pounds and Lift 600. Meanwhile if you strike the halfling down they go down.

That feels a LOT more like significant differences due to being a race known for strength than the Goliath having an extra +1 over the Halfling for Tier 1 and Tier 2 before ultimately being the same anyway.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-02, 11:25 AM

Alright, and the Goliath Fighter with 20 Strength has the ability to shrug off mortal blows and carries 600 pounds while being able to lift 1,200 pounds over their head or get moved out of the way. More than half a ton. Meanwhile the halfling who has worked their whole life to achieve the pinnacle of strength 20 can only carry 300 pounds and Lift 600. Meanwhile if you strike the halfling down they go down.

That feels a LOT more like significant differences due to being a race known for strength than the Goliath having an extra +1 over the Halfling for Tier 1 and Tier 2 before ultimately being the same anyway.

Two notes--

If it's so insignificant...why do people make such a big fuss that they can't play a halfling STR-based character because they don't get that starting bonus to STR? Can't have it both ways, either it's insignificant one way or another (and so doesn't need to change at all, since changing it annoys some people and helps no one) or it's significant enough to matter that it's there.

Also, Tier 1 and Tier 2 represent the absolute majority of playtime. Not just because most campaigns end by level 10 or so, but because the leveling process is stretched out more in T2 compared to T3 (T2 takes about as many full adventuring days as T3 + T4 combined at the normal pace).

Bonus--Yeah. Lifting strength is so significant...said just about no one ever. Otherwise the interminable "DEX is God Stat" arguments would note it more than, well, never.

Pixel_Kitsune

2023-02-02, 11:31 AM

Two notes--

If it's so insignificant...why do people make such a big fuss that they can't play a halfling STR-based character because they don't get that starting bonus to STR? Can't have it both ways, either it's insignificant one way or another (and so doesn't need to change at all, since changing it annoys some people and helps no one) or it's significant enough to matter that it's there.

Also, Tier 1 and Tier 2 represent the absolute majority of playtime. Not just because most campaigns end by level 10 or so, but because the leveling process is stretched out more in T2 compared to T3 (T2 takes about as many full adventuring days as T3 + T4 combined at the normal pace).

Because I never said it was insignificant, I said it was less flavorful and gave less of a distinction than the other abilities.

People are unhappy because it essentially cheats a "non-optimized" player out of being able to take an interesting feat or do something fun instead of just "I increase my main stat."

At Level 1-8 a Fight will get 3 ASi/Feats Assuming Standard array and a desire to get to 20 Str someone with a 15 starting strength has to spend 2 ASI on pure Strength and the last on at best a half feat that gives Str. The 17 starting Strength Must spend 1 ASI and then can either get 1 half feats and one full feat. There's more variety and option to do something interesting.

And let's be clear. The 17 starting str only keeps that +1 edge from level 1-8, then everything's tied up. No one is going to epically remember how that Goliath is stronger than that halfling once you hit that point. If anything legends in that world will speak of the Halfling who was as strong as the Goliath, not that the Goliath was strong.

Heck, my table deliberately rolls stats and gives an option that if you want, after your 4th roll you can just declare the last 2 to be an 18 and 8. Forcing a low stat but guaranteeing a maxed one. Because the game's balance is around getting that primary stat to 20, but everyone at my table wants to be able to grab quirks and themes from feats to do interesting things instead of just forcing into the ASI.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-02, 11:49 AM

Because I never said it was insignificant, I said it was less flavorful and gave less of a distinction than the other abilities.

People are unhappy because it essentially cheats a "non-optimized" player out of being able to take an interesting feat or do something fun instead of just "I increase my main stat."

At Level 1-8 a Fight will get 3 ASi/Feats Assuming Standard array and a desire to get to 20 Str someone with a 15 starting strength has to spend 2 ASI on pure Strength and the last on at best a half feat that gives Str. The 17 starting Strength Must spend 1 ASI and then can either get 1 half feats and one full feat. There's more variety and option to do something interesting.

And let's be clear. The 17 starting str only keeps that +1 edge from level 1-8, then everything's tied up. No one is going to epically remember how that Goliath is stronger than that halfling once you hit that point. If anything legends in that world will speak of the Halfling who was as strong as the Goliath, not that the Goliath was strong.

Heck, my table deliberately rolls stats and gives an option that if you want, after your 4th roll you can just declare the last 2 to be an 18 and 8. Forcing a low stat but guaranteeing a maxed one. Because the game's balance is around getting that primary stat to 20, but everyone at my table wants to be able to grab quirks and themes from feats to do interesting things instead of just forcing into the ASI.

Except the game's balance isn't around getting that primary stat to 20. The game wants (as has been shown many a many a time):

1. A +2 or better at level 1 and a non-zero, positive CON mod.
2. A +3 or better by level 6-8.
3. A +4 or better by about level 12.

That's it. You're totally fine by the system's standpoint with never getting a +5. So it's totally plausible with rolled stats that you could have a high enough stat from level 1.

So the tradeoff is
* Pick the "suitable" race (one with a + to your primary stat) and get another feat or the ability to broaden your horizons (shore up a weak stat) later.
* Pick a "less suitable" race for different abilities, getting your broadening up front and pay by "having" to use an ASI later.

Again, all of this mess only comes about because people think (wrongly) that not having a 20 by level 8 is some kind of horrible penalty. It isn't. Not at all. Unless, of course, your entire party is chasing "make the numbers big" in all aspects, including encounter design.

Psyren

2023-02-02, 11:56 AM

Again, all of this mess only comes about because people think (wrongly) that not having a 20 by level 8 is some kind of horrible penalty. It isn't. Not at all. Unless, of course, your entire party is chasing "make the numbers big" in all aspects, including encounter design.

Not getting 20 primary by 8 should be the player's choice, or at most the table's. It shouldn't be an arbitrary system-wide barricade tied to a specific biology.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-02, 12:01 PM

Not getting 20 primary by 8 should be the player's choice, or at most the table's. It shouldn't be an arbitrary system-wide barricade tied to a specific biology.

That's, like, your opinion man. And you can do it just fine...you just have to roll for stats. Which is the default, not point buy. Or...(horrors) be a fighter who has enough ASIs to go from +2 to +5 by level 8. It's neither arbitrary, system-wide, nor is it tied to a specific biology.

And you could say "being able to breathe fire or fly should be the player's choice or at most the table's. It shouldn't be an arbitrary system-wide barricade tied to a specific biology" with just as much justification. ASIs are not special. They're not different. They're identical to any other feature.

Personally, I don't really care one way or another. I've gone a different direction with races entirely. What I do care about is the transparent double standard and explicit "power is the only thing that matters" and "any limits are bad limits" mentality on display here.

Classes, levels, races, backgrounds--these are supposed to provide limits. Channels. Yes, an orc should be a better barbarian than a wizard. Yes, a high elf should be a better wizard than barbarian. Is the ASI structure the best possible way to do this? Meh, probably not. But it's a darn cheap and effective way of doing it. And removing this doesn't actually do what people says it does--all it does is foster a "must make numbers be as big as possible" mentality which then, in its usual all-devouring fashion, reduces variation and choice by reducing things to "does it make the numbers go up."

KyleG

2023-02-02, 01:22 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-02, 01:43 PM

Psyren

2023-02-02, 03:07 PM

And you could say "being able to breathe fire or fly should be the player's choice or at most the table's. It shouldn't be an arbitrary system-wide barricade tied to a specific biology" with just as much justification. ASIs are not special. They're not different. They're identical to any other feature.

No, they're really not. No other feature is such a direct and comparable metric of two characters' mental and physical innate capabilities and potential. Attributes being so general/encompassing in application means that caps and deficiencies related to them are making sweeping statements about the adventurers from those species whether the designers intend to or not.

Personally, I don't really care one way or another. I've gone a different direction with races entirely. What I do care about is the transparent double standard and explicit "power is the only thing that matters" and "any limits are bad limits" mentality on display here.

Strawman. I'm not saying "any limits are bad limits." I'm saying attribute limits are bad limits, for adventurers. And both WotC and Paizo are in agreement on that.

JackPhoenix

2023-02-02, 05:20 PM

I'm not one of those advocates, but I wanted to respond to this anyways.

So here's the thing about that. Let's say we want to be a female firefighter. What should we make their strength stat?

The answer is that the character will be strong enough to pass the same strenuous physical test that many men can't pass. They have to in order to get the firefighter job.

The "average woman" isn't relevant to how strong this particular woman is. It may mean that there are fewer female firefighters, but the ones that there are will be strong enough to carry you out of a burning building.

The same principle applies to pretty much anything. For instance, the NBA may have fewer asian players, but the players that are there are so tall that they are visible from space (and Yao Ming is among the tallest to ever play the game).

Every time this come up, it's the same argument, and every time, it's misinterpretating how statistics work, {Scrubbed}. Yes, a strong woman may be stronger than an average man. But a man who's got comparably lucky genetics, or who put the same effort to get stronger... i.e. a strong man... will be stronger than the strong woman.

It's not just averages, it's all across the bell curve.

So how's that apply to games? Fewer orcs may be Wizards, but I'd still expect every orc Wizard I meet to be smart enough to pass the tests to graduate from Wizard school.

Exactly the same way as it would apply to real life. Orc wizard has better intelligence than average orc or gnome by virtue of putting his highest ability score into Int, but that does not mean he's got the same intelligence as a gnome wizard who also put his highest ability score into Int AND got a racial bonus on top of that.

But that's not really how racial modifiers in 5e worked. They didn't make the orc Wizard *rare*, they made them *suck.* They didn't even have a different stat cap (20). They just penalized you for having the *same* stat.

Not really. They made orcs worse than someone with Int bonus... 5% of the time Int mod came up in a roll. Until he catches up thanks to ASI, anyway.. And in exchange, the orc got different abilities the player may or may not be interested in. Wow, that sucks too much.

So yeah. Old 5e racial modifiers sucked. They didn't actually let you play a half-orc stronger than any man; the half-orc barbarian and an elven one would both end up at 20 str anyways. It just made your character less qualified of being on the team that they're on if they didn't conform to a stereotype. Which, let us be very clear, may superficially seem intuitive but is not actually realistic, for reasons above.

So they are somehow "less qualified of being on the team" ({Scrubbed}), but as they can both reach the same bonus eventually, it doesn't matter? Which is it, then?

Now, I agree they could've done it better by having different ability score caps for different races, but that would created an actual inbalance (however slight) and the same people who complain about racial ability modifiers would complain all the louder.

strangebloke

2023-02-02, 06:58 PM

Every time this come up, it's the same argument, and every time, it's misinterpretating how statistics work,{scrub the post, scrub the quote}. Yes, a strong woman may be stronger than an average man. But a man who's got comparably lucky genetics, or who put the same effort to get stronger... i.e. a strong man... will be stronger than the strong woman.

It's not just averages, it's all across the bell curve.
No, you're completely misconstruing the argument. The argument is not "at the highest percentile, everyone is equal."

The argument is that at character creation, you are not trying to represent a certain percentile of a certain population segment at all. You're representing a certain sort of person who has done certain sorts of things. You're saying "I am playing a strong warrior" and then picking things like height and gender and age (and yes, race) to suit your preferences. Jaime and Brienne are equally strong fighters. Brienne might be more of a statistical outlier than Jaime, and there might be men who are far stronger than Brienne on the high end, but words like "statistical outlier" have no place in character creation. Jaime and Brienne probably have similar numbers of class levels, and similar overall stats.

If someone wants to play a strong woman, why shouldn't they be allowed to? Because its less statistically probable? What kind of an argument is that? By that logic everyone should roll for race and stats and class on a table that heavily favors "human fighter" as a result. Elves should just get 3 levels for free because of how much more time they have to learn "on average." Picking your height to be on the low end of the curve should have significant stat penalties/bonuses. Picking your age to be higher or lower should also have lots of penalties and bonuses.

But no, we don't do that. If someone wants to play a ripped old man who's 5', they should be able to. People should be able to play freaks! Something like a fallen Aasimar is extremely rare per the lore, but you can play one. The only reason there are capped stats at character creation is for balance/progression reasons. It's not there to simulate a certain percentile of person.

If you want to play a woman and have her be weaker than the average male adventurer go ahead. There's nothing stopping you, in the same vein that people sometimes make wizened old men with 8 CON.

Witty Username

2023-02-02, 10:57 PM

So, I was thinking about this and found some interesting numbers, let's compare possible rolled stat ranges for races:
Human
Str 3-20
Dex 3-20
Con 3-20
Int 3-20
Wis 3-20
Cha 3-20

High Elf
Str 3-18
Dex 5-20
Con 3-18
Int 4-19
Wis 3-18
Cha 3-18

Orc
Str 5-20
Dex 3-18
Con 4-19
Int 1-16
Wis 3-18
Cha 3-18

So looking at this sampling of ranges of Race stats, we notice something, human excels in every direction (due to the possibility of a half-feat) while High elf is actually inferior to human as a Int interms of trends. What is also telling is most options are within the ranges of human (orc has a rare int penalty, not reflected in any other race).

This indicates 2 things, races don't trend towards, so much as push away, for no gains, and trend towards a lack of diversity.

An Orc is not stronger than a humanon average. An Orc is weaker, slower, and dumber than a human, on average.

LudicSavant

2023-02-03, 01:00 AM

No, you're completely misconstruing the argument. The argument is not "at the highest percentile, everyone is equal."

The argument is that at character creation, you are not trying to represent a certain percentile of a certain population segment at all. You're representing a certain sort of person who has done certain sorts of things. You're saying "I am playing a strong warrior" and then picking things like height and gender and age (and yes, race) to suit your preferences. Jaime and Brienne are equally strong fighters. Brienne might be more of a statistical outlier than Jaime, and there might be men who are far stronger than Brienne on the high end, but words like "statistical outlier" have no place in character creation. Jaime and Brienne probably have similar numbers of class levels, and similar overall stats.

If someone wants to play a strong woman, why shouldn't they be allowed to? Because its less statistically probable? What kind of an argument is that? By that logic everyone should roll for race and stats and class on a table that heavily favors "human fighter" as a result. Elves should just get 3 levels for free because of how much more time they have to learn "on average." Picking your height to be on the low end of the curve should have significant stat penalties/bonuses. Picking your age to be higher or lower should also have lots of penalties and bonuses.

But no, we don't do that. If someone wants to play a ripped old man who's 5', they should be able to. People should be able to play freaks! Something like a fallen Aasimar is extremely rare per the lore, but you can play one. The only reason there are capped stats at character creation is for balance/progression reasons. It's not there to simulate a certain percentile of person.

If you want to play a woman and have her be weaker than the average male adventurer go ahead. There's nothing stopping you, in the same vein that people sometimes make wizened old men with 8 CON.

This, exactly. The Brienne, Jaime, and Fallen Aasimar examples are right on point.

RedWarlock

2023-02-03, 01:29 AM

Oh, I think the ability cap is part of the problem, personally.

As I keep trying to type this paragraph, I keep getting neck-deep in how my own houserules would do it better, I'm in too deep on my own fantasy heartbreaker system.

I'll spare you all, and simply say that the stat system, between the racial modifier system (and its permutations), innate growth, and the stat-boosting gear, has been a factor in my disappointment in 5e, with every change ongoing ruffling my feathers worse and worse.

A big portion of that discomfort is because one of my major points of enjoyment in 3e was playing that stats game. Like my half-ogre warlock, I enjoyed making characters to extreme levels of stats, and seeing to what cost that would be elsewhere. Lycanthrope templates, monster classes, level adjustment systems.. I remember in college, having my character die while we were doing a camping trip to wrap up the campaign before the DM's graduation, and so I made, in a tearing rush because I'd brought all my best books in a milk crate, an epic level replacement, a feral centaur barbarian frenzied berserker, and seeing what else came of it. Large and tiny characters have such interesting potential in the playspace, as do flying and merfolk and so on, if you give yourself room to explore it in mechanics and playstyle expectations.

And then 4e comes along, and it has the potential to explore those kinds of spaces, and I think was primed to, in what it inherited from 3e and the DDM-trained generation of players. (My group was founded and maintained through its connection to comic shop organized play.) And it drops the ball, locking the modifiers very low, and failing to explore wider options in playable creatures outside the humanoid norm.

Then, 5e comes along, and in the course of its run, we've gone from a very flattened curve in overall growth (and no wonder games don't last, when the upper levels just get boring) to the point where even the idea that biological and biomechanical differences can have effect on core capabilities becomes offensive to someone enough that the game must be changed to strip out those possibilities.

So, yeah, when I see the very thing that most engaged me as a gaming youth (amputee disabled, highly intelligent, neurodivergent, and built like a linebacker), chipped away at, piece by piece, and even demonized, cast off as sacrilege, it pushes me away from the game. And I'm a big fan of the game, the community it has fostered has been my major support network in my life.

qube

2023-02-03, 02:13 AM

PCs however are not average or vanilla and never have been.I 100% agree with you.

I've been playing D&D now over 20 years, and PCs were never average. ... yet they did have racial modifiers (unless I played human. not all editions had humans with racial modifiers ... but like other PCs they were also not average)

Clearly the proof is in the eating of the pudding: racial modifiers have nothing to do with PCs being average.

I think your misunderstanding what I was saying. I was not saying that all of a sudden stupid wizards become viable. That is a whole separate discussion.to quote post 1

Imagine you want to make Auroth, a brutal Orc Sorcerer.
Orcs don't get the sorcerer casting stat? too bad for you.

high elf fighter, orc fighter, gnome fighter ... STR20 the lot of them

What I was arguing against was the idea that because someone feels all elves should have above average Dex scores shouldnÂ’t effect how I choose to build my PC.So, what you're saying is that because someone feels all wizards elves should have above average Int Dex scores shouldnÂ’t effect how I choose to build my PC.

'casue that's the entire point.
If you want to get away from (in a nutshell) "only high elves have int + wizards need int ---> only high elves make good wizards" the most natural way to do this is to point out other races / people will have invented their ways become wizards.

You know my favorite character to build/replicate? Late 3e, a half-ogre warlock. ... And I made it work even with a -2 Cha.Another great character concept!

I recall reading my old MtG Kamigawa books, where the oni (the ogres) spellcasters made deals with demons. No charisma, wisdom or even intelligence - they provided "blood for the blood gods".

The fact you were able to make it work, is great ... But I'd like everyone to be able to play such a character.
And as such, you could make such a character using the proposed system (You could play a high STR/CON ogre ((if there's an ogre race)) - yet max out mystecism).

A question for those advocating for races with fixed small bonuses/maluses (let's say in the range +2/-2 in general), no judgment, just curiosity: how do you feel about sexual dimorphism?As someone who, IRL, does HEMA & reenactment, I can tell you that two of the most dangerous fighters of our club are women. Oh, yeah, sure, I could overpower them in grappling no problem, but they both are darn quick and precise (and this isn't epee fencing. We're talking longswords and/or spears)

So, I have no problem with it - if it doesn't impact that most important parts of the game.

Horic, the male orc fighter: Str 16 (+3) Weapon 16(+3) : attack +5 damage +1d8+3
Ellisandra, the female elvish fighter: Str 8 (-1) Weapon 16(+3) : attack +5 damage +1d8+3

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 02:39 AM

I 100% agree with you.

I've been playing D&D now over 20 years, and PCs were never average. ... yet they did have racial modifiers (unless I played human. not all editions had humans with racial modifiers ... but like other PCs they were also not average)

Clearly the proof is in the eating of the pudding: racial modifiers have nothing to do with PCs being average.

Quite right. Having different averages, maximums and normal distributions doesn't means that characters will be average. It just means that there's a slightly different range to choose from or role amongst.

Jaime and Brienne are equally strong fighters. Brienne might be more of a statistical outlier than Jaime, and there might be men who are far stronger than Brienne on the high end, but words like "statistical outlier" have no place in character creation. Jaime and Brienne probably have similar numbers of class levels, and similar overall stats.

This only works if you do apply the strength modifier based on gender. Brienne and Jamie prove the need to have gender divergence.

If men and women were exactly the same strength on average and at max, then Brienne wouldn't be more of a statisitical outlier than Jamie.

But she is - she is probably close to the strongest women in the show, but despite that she is only as strong as a man who is quite strong. This can be well represented by her rolling 18 for strength and applying -2 modifier (and Jamie rolling 16).

If someone wants to play a strong woman, why shouldn't they be allowed to? Because its less statistically probable? What kind of an argument is that? By that logic everyone should roll for race and stats and class on a table that heavily favors "human fighter" as a result. Elves should just get 3 levels for free because of how much more time they have to learn "on average." Picking your height to be on the low end of the curve should have significant stat penalties/bonuses. Picking your age to be higher or lower should also have lots of penalties and bonuses.

No, that logic doesn;t follow. Either way you can still either roll your stats (relying on statistical probability) or choose them as is your practice. But then you apply a modifier on the end.

But no, we don't do that. If someone wants to play a ripped old man who's 5', they should be able to. People should be able to play freaks! Something like a fallen Aasimar is extremely rare per the lore, but you can play one. The only reason there are capped stats at character creation is for balance/progression reasons. It's not there to simulate a certain percentile of person.

Yes, they should be able to play a ripped old man who is 5'. Given he would probably not as strong as a bigger guy, but sounds still strong he might be str 16, but then he is old, so we would apply age based modifiers. Easily represented.

It would be nice if the system allowed us to play statistical freaks on occasion. But if we could play a woman who was outside the usual range of strength for women, then why not men who are outside the usual range for men and are therefore even stronger.

LudicSavant

2023-02-03, 03:45 AM

But if we could play a woman who was outside the usual range of strength for women, then why not men who are outside the usual range for men and are therefore even stronger.

The argument isn't against differing stat caps. Different caps are fine. If you wanna say the strongest possible orc is stronger than the strongest possible elf, go ahead. Giants capping out at a higher strength than humans (in games that have that) is generally not controversial. Certainly not as much as 5e's old style of race mods, anyway.

But differing caps isn't what old 5e racial modifiers do.

Instead, the argument is against penalizing one gender/race/height/age/whatever for having *the same* statline. We're not talking Brienne and Gregor Clegane, we're talking Brienne and Jaime.

If Jaime and Brienne have about the same strength (and they do), they should pay about the same for it, because in game design we don't generally cost features by their "typicalness." For example, you wouldn't make a fallen aasimar a mechanically weaker race than a protector aasimar just because they're rarer.

This is why 5e's old implementation of stat modifiers sucked. Because you'd make Brienne and Jaime, two versions of the "person who is a championship-level knight" concept who should have similar capabilities, but Brienne would end up short a feat just because she isn't conforming to a stereotype.

Being a rare character is not a justification for being underpowered in any other part of the game, why would it be for race or gender?

Brienne and Jamie prove the need to have gender divergence.

If men and women were exactly the same strength on average and at max, then Brienne wouldn't be more of a statisitical outlier than Jamie.

But she is - she is probably close to the strongest women in the show, but despite that she is only as strong as a man who is quite strong. This can be well represented by her rolling 18 for strength and applying -2 modifier (and Jamie rolling 16).

Jaime and Brienne are both perfectly good concepts for a "championship-level knight" PC, of roughly the same level of capability.

So why should Brienne's player need to roll higher to play a character of mechanically similar capability to Jaime's?

Why is their degree of deviation from the raw demographic average for their genders even relevant to the PC character creation process in the first place? Should we also consider their degree of deviation from the raw demographic average for their height? Their age? Their eye color? Their weight? Should we also do this not only for their attributes, but also for their skill proficiencies, their feats? Should some feats cost 2 ASIs because they're rarer for some demographic you're a part of?

This is the problem right here. Both characters have the same feature, 16 Strength -- but one is having to pay a tax for their fluff not conforming to a stereotype.

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 05:20 AM

The argument isn't against differing stat caps. Different caps are fine. If you wanna say the strongest possible orc is stronger than the strongest possible elf, go ahead. Giants capping out at a higher strength than humans (in games that have that) is generally not controversial. Certainly not as much as 5e's old style of race mods, anyway.

But differing caps isn't what old 5e racial modifiers do.

Instead, the argument is against penalizing one gender/race/height/age/whatever for having *the same* statline. We're not talking Brienne and Gregor Clegane, we're talking Brienne and Jaime.

If Jaime and Brienne have about the same strength (and they do), they should pay about the same for it, because in game design we don't generally cost features by their "typicalness." For example, you wouldn't make a fallen aasimar a mechanically weaker race than a protector aasimar just because they're rarer.

This is why 5e's old implementation of stat modifiers sucked. Because you'd make Brienne and Jaime, two versions of the "person who is a championship-level knight" concept who should have similar capabilities, but Brienne would end up short a feat just because she isn't conforming to a stereotype.

Being a rare character is not a justification for being underpowered in any other part of the game, why would it be for race or gender?

I don't know why you are talking about races being underpowered. The aim at least, is that races are balanced, with each having different statistical advantages and disadvantages relative to one another.

If the stats represented men being stronger than women, then Brienne should pay more for being the same strength as Jamie, than Jamie does, because she is more of an outlier than he is. Her strength is exceptional for a human woman. Jamie's strength is merely good for a human man. If the game implemented a str penalty for females, then it would be reasonable to give them some advantage to balance it.

I don't knwo where rarity comes into it for you?

Why should Brienne's player need to roll higher to play a mechanically similar character to Jaime's?

Why is their degree of deviation from the raw demographic average for their genders even relevant to the PC character creation process in the first place?

This is the problem right here. Both characters have the same 16 Strength -- you're just making it so that one player is paying a tax for their fluff not conforming to a stereotype.

You refer to women being weaker as conforming to a stereotype, but it is in fact very well demonstrated by multiple of studies. Men who are in the tenth percentile for men for upper body strength are stronger than women in ninetieth percentile for upper body strength. Men remain stronger than women even when you control for them being larger, and the difference is persistent whether you examine average people, athletes, or records.

LudicSavant

2023-02-03, 05:33 AM

Brienne should pay more for being the same strength as Jamie, than Jamie does, because she is more of an outlier than he is. Her strength is exceptional for a human woman. Jamie's strength is merely good for a human man.

This isn't answering the core question, namely why is being a statistical outlier even relevant to how much you pay for a feature?

My eye color makes me a statistical outlier. Should I have to pay more in order to play a character with my eye color?

I'd say no, because in game design, we don't generally cost features by how statistically common they are. We generally cost them by how effective they are. It doesn't matter if your Kryptonian is just an average Kryptonian, they're going to cost a lot, because an average Kryptonian is a very powerful character. It doesn't matter if Green Arrow is a very very rare human, he's probably going to cost less to play than Superman, even though Green Arrow's much more of a statistical outlier for his race.

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 05:52 AM

This isn't answering the core question, namely why is being a statistical outlier even relevant to how much you pay for a feature?

My eye color makes me a statistical outlier. Should I have to pay more in order to play a character with my eye color?

Because stats are designed that way. That's why all characters pay more for a bigger divergence from the average for their stats. I suppose it is designed that way so not every character is super powerful in every stat. It makes sense to me that it costs more to be unusually powerful (or intelligent etc)

You shouldn't pay more for eye colour because that's not a feature of DnD - eye colour makes no mechanical difference.

I'd say no, because in game design, we don't generally cost features by how statistically common they are. We generally cost them by how effective they are. It doesn't matter if your Kryptonian is just an average Kryptonian, they're going to cost a lot, because an average Kryptonian is a very powerful character. It doesn't matter if Green Arrow is a very very rare human, he's probably going to cost less to play than Superman, even though Green Arrow's much more of a statistical outlier for his race.

it's interesting that you used a non-DnD race for your example here. I think it is because DnD races are not designed the way you say. Instead they make efforts to balance races so they are not consistently more or less powerful than one another. Indeed, what would be the point of playing a theoretical kryptonian, if you could only ever afford to play a severely substandard one. Better to balance the races by various means, and then charge by degree of divergence from the norm - which is what they do.

Captain Cap

2023-02-03, 06:00 AM

Because stats are designed that way.
Stats are designed to provide in-game numerical effects. That's it. Whatever cost should be associated with them is another matter. You can tinker with caps/modifiers/etc. without changing how the stats work in game.

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 06:06 AM

Stats are designed to provide in-game numerical effects. That's it. Whatever cost should be associated with them is another matter. You can tinker with caps/modifiers/etc. without changing how the stats work in game.

That may be their purpose, but we were talking about what they represent, not their purpose. They represent a distribution of stat scores - with average scores being standard and paying from divergence from that (or in previous editions, dice mechanics which make average scores mroe likely). Sure they don't have to do that, but they do in DnD. Whether they should is a different discussion.

LudicSavant

2023-02-03, 06:28 AM

Whether they should is a different discussion.

:smallconfused: Whether they should is the exact discussion I was having.

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 06:31 AM

:smallconfused: Whether they should is the exact discussion I was having.

Well that is the way they are designed at the moment in DnD. Even if you remove racial modifiers they still work that way (they just ignore the fact that different races have different distributions). If you think it shouldn't work that way, then it goes beyond not applying racial modifiers.

My suggestion is that racial modifiers is a good idea because it is consistent with how stats work in DnD.

Outside that, I think it is a good idea anyway, because I think it adds to the immersion of a setting that some creature types tend to be stronger (or more intelligent etc) than others. I think it's silly if there's a halfling or a gnome that is as strong as the strongest orcs and humans (without some sort of magical enhancement). It's like horses being as strong as elephants.

JackPhoenix

2023-02-03, 07:16 AM

The argument isn't against differing stat caps. Different caps are fine. If you wanna say the strongest possible orc is stronger than the strongest possible elf, go ahead. Giants capping out at a higher strength than humans (in games that have that) is generally not controversial. Certainly not as much as 5e's old style of race mods, anyway.

But differing caps isn't what old 5e racial modifiers do.

Instead, the argument is against penalizing one gender/race/height/age/whatever for having *the same* statline. We're not talking Brienne and Gregor Clegane, we're talking Brienne and Jaime.

Why not? You're allowed to play statistical outlier if that outlier's Brienne, but not allowed to play a statistical outlier if that outlier's the Mountain?

Why are different caps (which actually DO have impact on balance) fine, while different modifiers (which don't impact balance) aren't? How are different ability modifiers "penalizing" anyone?

This is why 5e's old implementation of stat modifiers sucked. Because you'd make Brienne and Jaime, two versions of the "person who is a championship-level knight" concept who should have similar capabilities, but Brienne would end up short a feat just because she isn't conforming to a stereotype.

That's why 5e's old implementations of stat modifiers was great, because I could make Brienne, Jaime or Gregor Clegane, THREE versions of "the person who is a championship-level knight" who should have different capabilities, but than the rules were changed because someone has decided to limit things to only Brienne or Jaime, and now I can't play Gregor Clegane, because he isn't conforming to a stereotype.

Jaime and Brienne are both perfectly good concepts for a "championship-level knight" PC, of roughly the same level of capability.

But that's the thing, everyone MUST have the same level of capability now. You aren't allowed to stand out from the crowd anymore (funny how that works, when the change is supposed to bring more diversity, isn't it?). And "balance" is just an excuse, the available options still aren't balanced with each other, and can't be without forcing everyone to being exactly the same.

So why should Brienne's player need to roll higher to play a character of mechanically similar capability to Jaime's?

Because Brienne's player decided to play an unique character that stands out among characters of the same [category] (sex, in this case, despite that not being a thing that matters in the rules). Brienne would hardly stand out as a character if Sansa or Cersei could have the same physical capabilities, would she? That's the core of her character... she's not trully accepted amongst "championship-level knights" because she's a woman, and she's not seen as other women.

Why am I allowed to play a freakishly strong halfling, but I'm not allowed to play similarily freakishly strong orc, because "freakishly strong orc" would mean he should be stronger than the halfling?

Kane0

2023-02-03, 07:18 AM

Every time this come up, it's the same argument, and every time, it's misinterpretating how statistics work, either deliberately, or out of ignorance. Yes, a strong woman may be stronger than an average man. But a man who's got comparably lucky genetics, or who put the same effort to get stronger... i.e. a strong man... will be stronger than the strong woman.

It's not just averages, it's all across the bell curve.

While true, I dont want to be the one to tell my wife that her fantasy roleplaying game lady barbarian isn't and will never be as strong as if she decided to make them a man instead.

Captain Cap

2023-02-03, 07:28 AM

That may be their purpose, but we were talking about what they represent, not their purpose. They represent a distribution of stat scores - with average scores being standard and paying from divergence from that (or in previous editions, dice mechanics which make average scores mroe likely).
Distributions are a statistical concept: the moment you let people build their stat arrays with point buy on any other method beyond throwing dice, the correspondence between stats and distributions is lost.

LudicSavant

2023-02-03, 08:19 AM

Why not? You're allowed to play statistical outlier if that outlier's Brienne, but not allowed to play a statistical outlier if that outlier's the Mountain?

Why am I allowed to play a freakishly strong halfling, but I'm not allowed to play similarily freakishly strong orc, because "freakishly strong orc" would mean he should be stronger than the halfling?
This is of course the opposite of what I said, as Strangebloke already pointed out to you (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25698282&postcount=86).

If you want to design a game where the world's strongest orc is stronger than the world's strongest halfling, I would have no objection.

Why are different caps fine, while different modifiers aren't?

It's the difference between "Only giants can be this tall, halflings can't," (a design choice I have no problem with) and "you can be a halfling just as tall as a giant, but if you do, you'll be underpowered." (a design choice I have a problem with).

If being as tall as a giant is not a valid flavor, you shouldn't be able to play it. If it is a valid flavor, you shouldn't be penalized for playing it. Flavor taxes are lame.

How are different ability modifiers "penalizing" anyone?

For any given 5e class, attributes are not of equal value. Points in your primary stat are worth more than your secondary stat, which are in turn worth more than points in your tertiary stat, which is worth more your quaternary, quinary, and senary stats.

This means that the racial modifiers don't balance out. If you get -2 to your class's primary stat, and +2 to a quaternary stat, then you've ended up with a net penalty for your racial modifiers choice, while that other guy in the same party got a net bonus.

This is extra clear when using point buy -- costs escalate as you raise a stat higher, so the +2 to a quaternary stat is only worth 2 point buy, but the -2 to a primary stat is worth more than that (and may even set you back an ASI, too).

Dienekes

2023-02-03, 09:33 AM

That's why 5e's old implementations of stat modifiers was great, because I could make Brienne, Jaime or Gregor Clegane, THREE versions of "the person who is a championship-level knight" who should have different capabilities, but than the rules were changed because someone has decided to limit things to only Brienne or Jaime, and now I can't play Gregor Clegane, because he isn't conforming to a stereotype.

I kinda think you can. Just be a Barbarian 20. Now admittedly, ole Gregor wasted a feat on Heavy Armor. But on balance, yeah, that’s him. Flies into rages, not much a thinker especially when angry. That’s him. Probably isn’t level 20, but then 5e is absolute crap at modeling anything that isn’t D&D anyway.

Personally, I kinda think an issue is just how centralized and structured ability scores are. For most of the game it’s more important than your proficiency bonus. So starting with it lower feels bad. Even when, honestly it mostly doesn’t matter all that much.

The other issue is how the replacements features tend to miss the mark.

Now let’s say we rework ability scores to represent the average of a species. Sure it doesn’t work as well for non-player creatures like dragons and giants and whatever. But let’s ignore that for a moment and assume we’ll fix that in the great reworking and then have racial features to demonstrate how a creatures bases are different.

Then at the very least those features should reflect at least the core part of the ability scores do mechanically.

Powerful Build is the most obvious “this feature represents Strength in a different way” and it only really interacts with the carrying capacity rules. For better or worse, most people ignore the carrying capacity rules. Or they’ll look at them on character creation and then they’ll languish in the background forever.

The part of the ability I think people actually interact with and correlate with Strength the most is hitting things harder, and maybe grappling. But mostly hitting things.

I kinda think reworking the ability score replacement features to actually hit the main parts of the ability score people want the most works better. Probably cordoning off accuracy (in attack bonuses and saving throw DCs) for streamlined numbers and bounded accuracy and all that. Figure out what the core features of each ability score represent and interact with and find a way to add those to the game would probably go decently far to get them accepted.

Another option would be to actually use the subclass system to make non-standard ability score spreads more beneficial. Oh your Orc has a bonus in Strength. Cool here’s a Sorcerer subclass that’s all about grappling people and casting touch spells against them that uses your Strength to do some neat bonus things. Could be interesting, provided you find a way to avoid the Hexblade problem.

Psyren

2023-02-03, 10:03 AM

strangebloke

2023-02-03, 11:01 AM

I just find arguments about how males need str bonuses relative to females so silly when this is a game where a stinking horse has 16 strength.

A horse.

Sure the size rules carry some weight here, but have you guys interacted with a horse? A horse can kill and flatten someone accidentally. And that's just where the nonsense starts for DND. An Elephant is only marginally stronger than a high level adventurer. A hill giant essentially isn't stronger than a high level adventurer, outside of carrying capacity and being harder to grapple. An ape has the same str and size as a first level human.

Like sure its true that olympic athlete males have way better numbers than olympic athlete females in the same events, but lol train a silverback gorilla in the deadlift and see how well he does.

Hytheter

2023-02-03, 11:52 AM

An ape has the same str and size as a first level human.

Not to diminish your overall point, but what size were you expecting? Even the tallest gorillas are barely taller than the average human (but of course much heftier).

Aimeryan

2023-02-03, 12:18 PM

If you want to play a woman and have her be weaker than the average male adventurer go ahead. There's nothing stopping you, in the same vein that people sometimes make wizened old men with 8 CON.

I'm torn on this statement. Factually, its not incorrect, however, is this not an example of the Oberoni Fallacy? Essentially, you can make changes, therefore its not broken? On the other hand, it really depends on the goal, so it may not be broken in the first place.

The truth here is, 5e is designed for gameplay not for simulation. So, the strongest a Halfling female can get to (without magic) being the same as a Goliath male breaks disbelief - but for gameplay purposes it works fine, and thats the goal for 5e. In this sense, whatever the developers state the goal is can restrict whether it is even possible to have a better system.

In the end, if a player would like a system balanced around not being homogenous and the system doesn't provide that in the relevant way (racial features are not the same as ability scores, so may not be relevant here), then for that player there is a better system. Furthermore, being able to change things doesn't make the system as is better (which is the point of the Oberoni Fallacy).

TL;DR: This is subjective, so subjectively what 5e does currently may or may not be what someone wants.

qube

2023-02-03, 12:29 PM

Well that is the way they are designed at the moment in DnD.
...
My suggestion is that racial modifiers is a good idea because it is consistent with how stats work in DnD.
One the one hand, yes. On the other ... I do advice you to read post 1 of this thread. It's litterly a proposition to play around with that :) (consider how "because core says so" is a strange argument in a homebrew thread)

TL;DR : I agree racial modifiers is a good idea, I disagree it should impact the general efficiency of characters (dwarf fighters and elf fighters will be very different fighters (racial modifiers) but equally efficient (presumably same attack score/etc...)

My eye color makes me a statistical outlier. Should I have to pay more in order to play a character with my eye color?

I'd say no, because in game design, we don't generally cost features by how statistically common they are.I would say, that could be the case. Ex. part of character creation could be that you have 10 points to be put in stuff that makes you unique/an outlier (if you're a Berathion (not a Lanister), blond hair could cost you 3 points :) ).

And I don't think anyone would argue that's inherently bad game design.

The problem arrises when these differences have noticable impact on the game. If there was a game design choice that men make equally good fighters as women (which I would argue is a good choice) - one should not be specifically held back.

It's why my proposition adds a layer of abstraction. it unifies the flavor of diversity (no, half-orges aren't as charismatic as an aasimar, and that's OK) but still allows the game design choice that all races are equally good at all classes (a half-orge warlock will just go about another way making a pact, the an aasimar would).

While true, I dont want to be the one to tell my wife that her fantasy roleplaying game lady barbarian isn't and will never be as strong as if she decided to make them a man instead.:smallbiggrin: I feel your wilfe would instruct you in the meaning of rage :smallbiggrin:

Right, but we're talking about the rules for creating PCs.
...
So long as you're not trying to force the PC elves and goliaths to have specific starting ability bonuses or penalties mandated by the books, I coudn't care less what else you do.You don't have a problem as long as I don't want elf PCs to have +2 DEX? then you have a problem.

Because I don't subscribe to the narative that Tasha's tries to sell. The extra-ordinairty & uniqueness of PCs has ALWAYS come from the fact they don't use the 10-10-10-10-10-10 array, but their rolls (or appointments). It's called "the heroic array" for a reason. Tasha tries to deal with the game mechanical problem that ability scores are quite impactful in the game. And I think they do that badly.

That's why the name of this threat is "Better alternative than stat-less races".

------------------------------
The problem is NOT problem ability scores - they are just 6 incremental abilities.
The problem is that they too greatly impact combat.

After all, if D&D was a weight lifting game, it wouldn't be a +1 modifer that was broken - but the fact goliats can lift WAAY more.

Psyren

2023-02-03, 12:41 PM

You don't have a problem as long as I don't want elf PCs to have +2 DEX? then you have a problem.

Not quite - I don't have a problem as long as you don't want the books to say elf PCs have +2 Dex. You can do whatever you want with both the PCs and NPCs at your table. If however you're advocating for the books to go back to fixed ASIs - especially OneD&D and other future published races like the Glitchling - then yes, we have a problem.

Because I don't subscribe to the narative that Tasha's tries to sell. The extra-ordinairty & uniqueness of PCs has ALWAYS come from the fact they don't use the 10-10-10-10-10-10 array, but their rolls (or appointments). It's called "the heroic array" for a reason. Tasha tries to deal with the game mechanical problem that ability scores are quite impactful in the game. And I think they do that badly.

What does the array PCs use have to do with fixed vs. variable ASIs? :smallconfused: These are two different things.

I'm torn on this statement. Factually, its not incorrect, however, is this not an example of the Oberoni Fallacy? Essentially, you can make changes, therefore its not broken? On the other hand, it really depends on the goal, so it may not be broken in the first place.

There is no fallacy here, we're dealing with two irreconcilable camps of people. Somebody is going to have to houserule here to be happy, there is no other way to satisfy everyone.

akma

2023-02-03, 12:43 PM

A question for those advocating for races with fixed small bonuses/maluses (let's say in the range +2/-2 in general), no judgment, just curiosity: how do you feel about sexual dimorphism? Men are on average ~70% stronger than women (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology#Skeleton_and_m uscular_system), do you think it should be somewhat reflected in the game? Would you like to see something in the style of Morrowind/Oblivion (https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Races), with race and sex both influencing the starting array?

No.
It is the custom in both setting design and actual play to basically ignore differences between men and women. It is not customary to ignore the differences between races.
I posted before about a world idea in which some cultures have strong opinions regarding gender, and people didn't seem keen on the idea.
Here is the link. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?643480-Feelings-regarding-a-very-Chauvinistic-and-somewhat-racist-world)
And that's without any mention of biological differences, just a culture that misinterprets scripture.

senary

Thanks to you I learned a new word!

Some character traits are considered purely aesthetical - like eye color.
Some are considered part of the core mechanics of your character - like your class.
The core relevant "philosophical" issue is how much race choice SHOULD matter. The stats are relevant to this discussion because they are considered an important mechanical aspect.
D&D is a class based system, which inherently limits how you can build your character, so making races more limiting would be somewhat consistent. And because of a culture of minmaxing, a +2 and a -2 to specific stats basically does that without making certain combinations truly unviable or outright impossible. If you make the +2 and -2 also affect the maximal and minimal values of a stat, or simply have a more limited range of values without modifiers, it would represent that philosophy better.
You could even get around that for minmaxers, by saying "your character can be better than that range, but something must have happened in her background that enabled them to break those limits".

Captain Cap

2023-02-03, 12:46 PM

The problem is NOT problem ability scores - they are just 6 incremental abilities.
The problem is that they too greatly impact combat.
Even this wouldn't be that much of a problem if any character could make an impactful use of any ability.

It is the custom in both setting design and actual play to basically ignore differences between men and women. It is not customary to ignore the differences between races.
So you don't look for bonuses/maluses for verisimilitude, in the sense that orcs must be stronger than elves because they normally have a more robust frame, but simply because orcs should be conceptually stronger than elves.

Aimeryan

2023-02-03, 12:50 PM

For any given 5e class, attributes are not of equal value. Points in your primary stat are worth more than your secondary stat, which are in turn worth more than points in your tertiary stat, which is worth more your quaternary, quinary, and senary stats.

This means that the racial modifiers don't balance out. If you get -2 to your class's primary stat, and +2 to a quaternary stat, then you've ended up with a net penalty for your racial modifiers choice, while that other guy in the same party got a net bonus.

This is extra clear when using point buy -- costs escalate as you raise a stat higher, so the +2 to a quaternary stat is only worth 2 point buy, but the -2 to a primary stat is worth more than that (and may even set you back an ASI, too).

I agree with you on the idea that being odd shouldn't penalise you. On the other hand, doesn't 5e technically do that with point buy? As you mention, having higher a stat, say Charisma, penalises you by having lower other stats. Even more, this penalty accelerates - each point of Charisma costs more points relatively that are removed elsewhere.

Of course, these are different statements of stat oddity - one is a stat oddity against an universal baseline (8 baseline, accelerating costs up to 15 where it caps), while the other is a stat oddity against specific characterists. 5e only did the latter with race/species, and then changed that with Tashas. Even then, race/species is not a purely flavour characteristic since they still retain unique features, so take that as you will.

Interestingly, rolling for stats technically doesn't penalise for stat oddities. In this case, only probability affects the stats, not a cost that must be payed elsewhere - the probabilities are independent. We could even use this for if we wanted to change probabilities for any particular stat based on specific characteristics (race/species, height, sex, etc.) by using differently weighted dice for each stat separately. The problem with rolling for stats, of course, is that it isn't balanced amongst the group (unless you allow everyone to use any rolled array, which wouldn't make sense with this method).

---

There is no fallacy here, we're dealing with two irreconcilable camps of people. Somebody is going to have to houserule here to be happy, there is no other way to satisfy everyone.

Yes and no; it depends on the official goal and whether that goal is met. If it is, then no fallacy because there is nothing to fix. If it is not, then its a fallacy because being able to change the rules to meet the goal doesn't change the fact that the rules as written do not meet the goal.

As mentioned previously, yeah, what the official goal for 5e is whatever the devs want it to be. What the subject goal is for players, on the other hand, differs amongst players. The fallacy can only really be applied to the official goal.

strangebloke

2023-02-03, 12:56 PM

Not to diminish your overall point, but what size were you expecting? Even the tallest gorillas are barely taller than the average human (but of course much heftier).

oh they are medium and that's as it should be.

But with a creature like a horse you can sort of argue that the creature's greater strength is reflected in things like carrying capacity and being harder to grapple. An ape is just. No stronger than a level 1 adventurer, except in that they're better at throwing rocks I guess.

I'm torn on this statement. Factually, its not incorrect, however, is this not an example of the Oberoni Fallacy? Essentially, you can make changes, therefore its not broken? On the other hand, it really depends on the goal, so it may not be broken in the first place.

The truth here is, 5e is designed for gameplay not for simulation. So, the strongest a Halfling female can get to (without magic) being the same as a Goliath male breaks disbelief - but for gameplay purposes it works fine, and thats the goal for 5e. In this sense, whatever the developers state the goal is can restrict whether it is even possible to have a better system.

In the end, if a player would like a system balanced around not being homogenous and the system doesn't provide that in the relevant way (racial features are not the same as ability scores, so may not be relevant here), then for that player there is a better system. Furthermore, being able to change things doesn't make the system as is better (which is the point of the Oberoni Fallacy).

TL;DR: This is subjective, so subjectively what 5e does currently may or may not be what someone wants.

Yeah my argument is essentially that DND generally and 5e specifically isn't and hasn't ever been geared for simulation. GURPS would give you a penalty for attacking with your left hand, DND would never do something like that, not even in 3.5 at the height of the "DND as a simulation." Even when DND is a simulation, its a simulation of fantasy adventurer tropes, which are sort of created by DND in the first place, thus creating an oroborous. If things were 'realistic' dragons couldn't fly, but if things were realistic and dragons could fly anyway, there's nothing martials could ever do to fight them. The dragon would land and the whole party would die.

Even if you were going to spend time making DND better at simulation, capturing the (relatively minute) differences between men and women on average would be one of my lowest priorities.

Though to speak to your example, relative to the halfling, the Goliath will have four times the carrying capacity, be able to grapple large enemies, and be able to wield a weapon that deals double damage, while the halfling can climb on more things and ride smaller creatures and hide behind creatures... so there is some differentiation here.

Captain Cap

2023-02-03, 01:04 PM

An ape is just. No stronger than a level 1 adventurer, except in that they're better at throwing rocks I guess.
And they got wrong even that, since humans are supposed to be the best at throwing stuff.

RedWarlock

2023-02-03, 01:25 PM

Yeah my argument is essentially that DND generally and 5e specifically isn't and hasn't ever been geared for simulation. GURPS would give you a penalty for attacking with your left hand, DND would never do something like that, not even in 3.5 at the height of the "DND as a simulation."

Umm, off-hand penalties in two weapon fighting were totally a thing. What kind of 3.5 were you playing?

Captain Cap

2023-02-03, 01:27 PM

Umm, off-hand penalties in two weapon fighting were totally a thing. What kind of 3.5 were you playing?
Wasn't in 3.5 more like a Schrodinger off-hand penalty? In the sense that as long as you attacked with just one weapon (whether it was held in the right or left hand) you suffered no malus?

strangebloke

2023-02-03, 01:41 PM

And they got wrong even that, since humans are supposed to be the best at throwing stuff.
yep

Umm, off-hand penalties in two weapon fighting were totally a thing. What kind of 3.5 were you playing?
Offhand attacks are not a general right-hand left-hand rule. It's a specific thing for two weapon fighting (which exists in 5e as well)

If you lose your right hand because you touch a cursed item or whatever, you can pick up your weapon with your left and do just fine.

akma

2023-02-03, 01:42 PM

So you don't look for bonuses/maluses for verisimilitude, in the sense that orcs must be stronger than elves because they normally have a more robust frame, but simply because orcs should be conceptually stronger than elves.

In this case, those two are basically the same. You can say orcs appear stronger than elves because orcs are conceptually stronger, or that orcs are conceptually stronger because they look stronger than elves.

If there was a small sized lanky race that was stronger than orcs, it would feel off to many people, even if there was a conceptual reason for that. But certain halflings being as strong as the strongest goliaths breaks both their visual and conceptual perception.

OldTrees1

2023-02-03, 02:02 PM

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 03:36 PM

Distributions are a statistical concept: the moment you let people build their stat arrays with point buy on any other method beyond throwing dice, the correspondence between stats and distributions is lost.

I don't think so - the point buy still represents the normal distribution by making more extreme stat scores more expensive.

I just find arguments about how males need str bonuses relative to females so silly when this is a game where a stinking horse has 16 strength.

Like sure its true that olympic athlete males have way better numbers than olympic athlete females in the same events, but lol train a silverback gorilla in the deadlift and see how well he does.

A silverback gorilla is not the same size as a human (it is the same height, but it's probably twice the weight). A chimp would be closer to an ape the same size. And chimps are not trained in strength - if they were they would not be an average chimp any more.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40405026

As for horses, as you point out, they work differently because the size rules come into play - so they are still realistic in terms of carrying capacity etc. I'm not sure that 16 in wrong in terms of the leverage they can actually apply with their limbs to an object. But if it is wrong, the better solution is to make horses stronger - not to say 'oh well, lets make other str differences disappear as well'.

One the one hand, yes. On the other ... I do advice you to read post 1 of this thread. It's litterly a proposition to play around with that :) (consider how "because core says so" is a strange argument in a homebrew thread)

TL;DR : I agree racial modifiers is a good idea, I disagree it should impact the general efficiency of characters (dwarf fighters and elf fighters will be very different fighters (racial modifiers) but equally efficient (presumably same attack score/etc...)

I fully get that saying 'it's consistent with the way stats generally work' isn't the end of the argument, because stats can be redesigned to work differently. But I did follow up on that comment with other reasons why I feel differences in ability for different races is a good design choice.

Not quite - I don't have a problem as long as you don't want the books to say elf PCs have +2 Dex. You can do whatever you want with both the PCs and NPCs at your table. If however you're advocating for the books to go back to fixed ASIs - especially OneD&D and other future published races like the Glitchling - then yes, we have a problem.

Why exactly? If some people prefer fixed ASIs and say they'd prefer that to be the rules, why do you have a problem with that?

So you don't look for bonuses/maluses for verisimilitude, in the sense that orcs must be stronger than elves because they normally have a more robust frame, but simply because orcs should be conceptually stronger than elves.

For the record, I am more concerned with it being because they have a more robust frame (more marked if you are talking halflings and orcs), and because i think it's positive for the game to create more meangful mechanical difference between them.

I do not consider human sexual dimorphism relevant. Like any other variation within humanity, I do not see human sexual dimorphism being significant enough to merit a modifier. This has an anchoring effect that tells me what a modifier means.

I I don't think you are right that human sexual dimorphism is not significant enough to merit a modifier, at least so far as strength is concerned. This study, for example, suggests that women are only half as strong as men in their upper body, and two thirds as strong in their lower body: Other studies show the difference remains persistent when you are talking about athletes and lifters.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf00235103

There may be good reason to not include strength difference. Human women and men are real people, unlike orcs and elves, and emphasising the differences may turn women off the game. It is also not so obvious what advantage you might give women to balance against their lack of strength. But I don't think contending that the difference is not that significant is correct

strangebloke

2023-02-03, 04:22 PM

A silverback gorilla is not the same size as a human (it is the same height, but it's probably twice the weight). A chimp would be closer to an ape the same size. And chimps are not trained in strength - if they were they would not be an average chimp any more.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40405026

As for horses, as you point out, they work differently because the size rules come into play - so they are still realistic in terms of carrying capacity etc. I'm not sure that 16 in wrong in terms of the leverage they can actually apply with their limbs to an object. But if it is wrong, the better solution is to make horses stronger - not to say 'oh well, lets make other str differences disappear as well'.

Gorillas cap out at 500 pounds are well within the realm of 'medium sized.' And sure they're not trained, which means that a human adventurer is even more likely to beat them in a wrestling match.

IRL, I would not encourage you to try that.

Horses are so much stronger than humans that domesticating cows and horses and bringing their strength to bear revolutionized all of agriculture and warfare across the whole of the ancient world. A horse can casually kill a human by accident.

And this is all fine, actually, because DND is not a simulation engine. It's a game with mechanics that are designed to be fun. Adventurers on foot need to be able to fight colossal dragons, trolls, giants with pointy sticks. A bear should be something you can fight and beat pretty early on. A horse should usually be less dangerous than its rider, unlike IRL. And yes, this is all inherently absurd, but that's the fun. You can't accept that premise of someone punching a dragon the size of a castle to death, and then turn around and say "but as a woman she should be weaker on average because-"

OldTrees1

2023-02-03, 04:40 PM

I I don't think you are right that human sexual dimorphism is not significant enough to merit a modifier, at least so far as strength is concerned. This study, for example, suggests that women are only half as strong as men in their upper body, and two thirds as strong in their lower body: Other studies show the difference remains persistent when you are talking about athletes and lifters.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf00235103

Whether it is significant enough to merit a modifier is a difference of opinion/preference. I do not dispute that studies show a statistically significant difference in human sexual dimorphism. However I do not consider it significant enough to merit a modifier. We have an infinite expanse of non-human possibility, it is easy to imagine a species that I would consider merits a strength modifier even if I put the threshold above what human sexual dimorphism can reach. (For example, a Giant)

There may be good reason to not include strength difference. Human women and men are real people, unlike orcs and elves, and emphasising the differences may turn women off the game. It is also not so obvious what advantage you might give women to balance against their lack of strength. But I don't think contending that the difference is not that significant is correct

These are all good reasons as well. If I analyzed it further there would be many reasons behind my preference to set the threshold higher than human dimorphism can reach, but that is my preference. I have the infinite possibility space of non-humans, so having a higher threshold doesn't stop anything.

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 04:57 PM

Gorillas cap out at 500 pounds are well within the realm of 'medium sized.' And sure they're not trained, which means that a human adventurer is even more likely to beat them in a wrestling match.

IRL, I would not encourage you to try that.

If the description is just for an ape, why do you think it means a gorilla, not a chimp? If it's a chimp the strength score isn't far off the mark, so no problem.

Horses are so much stronger than humans that domesticating cows and horses and bringing their strength to bear revolutionized all of agriculture and warfare across the whole of the ancient world. A horse can casually kill a human by accident.
The bring their strength to bear in terms of carrying and hauling items. And under the DnD engine they do that much much better than humans. The DnD engine does simulate their greater ability to haul and carry (the sorts of things they were domesticated for) adequately.

And this is all fine, actually, because DND is not a simulation engine. It's a game with mechanics that are designed to be fun. Adventurers on foot need to be able to fight colossal dragons, trolls, giants with pointy sticks. A bear should be something you can fight and beat pretty early on. A horse should usually be less dangerous than its rider, unlike IRL. And yes, this is all inherently absurd, but that's the fun. You can't accept that premise of someone punching a dragon the size of a castle to death, and then turn around and say "but as a woman she should be weaker on average because-"

It's not a perfect simulation engine, but it does aim to somewhat simulate. There is a very well known article from an earlier edition where a designer goes into great dpeth about how closely it was desgined to human stats. And in the real world a human with medieval weapons is more dangerous than a horse, and they are not too far below a bear.

Whether it is significant enough to merit a modifier is a difference of opinion/preference. I do not dispute that studies show a statistically significant difference in human sexual dimorphism. However I do not consider it significant enough to merit a modifier. We have an infinite expanse of non-human possibility, it is easy to imagine a species that I would consider merits a strength modifier even if I put the threshold above what human sexual dimorphism can reach. (For example, a Giant)

I'd wrongly assumed you were saying that the sexual dimorphism of strength was insufficient to merit a modifier because you underestimated the extent of the difference.

But isn't the problem with saying that near double strength advantage isn't enough to warrant a modifier, that strength differences of that extent are already represented between humans of unspecified gender and other somewhat stronger humans of unspecified gender?

Rukelnikov

2023-02-03, 04:57 PM

Whether it is significant enough to merit a modifier is a difference of opinion/preference. I do not dispute that studies show a statistically significant difference in human sexual dimorphism. However I do not consider it significant enough to merit a modifier. We have an infinite expanse of non-human possibility, it is easy to imagine a species that I would consider merits a strength modifier even if I put the threshold above what human sexual dimorphism can reach. (For example, a Giant)

These are all good reasons as well. If I analyzed it further there would be many reasons behind my preference to set the threshold higher than human dimorphism can reach, but that is my preference. I have the infinite possibility space of non-humans, so having a higher threshold doesn't stop anything.

That's not entirely correct, we have a reference in the game rules regarding about how much does a point of strength amount to, each point of strength represents about 30 pounds of deadlift. It'd be a matter of taking some statistics and applying some numbers.

However, I don't see a point in that. Gender shouldn't be a mechanical choice anymore than eye color, applying mechanics to it would mean that suddenly most characters of class X are either male or female because of min/max, I think that detracts from the game a bit.

Race (or species, ancestry, lineage, whateveryouwannacallit) on the other hand is not a stylistic choice anymore than what type of armor you wear.

I want my GWM Fighter to wear leather armor cause it looks cool, why do I have to be forced to put points in Dex penalized just to look cool while fighting?

strangebloke

2023-02-03, 05:16 PM

If the description is just for an ape, why do you think it means a gorilla, not a chimp? If it's a chimp the strength score isn't far off the mark, so no problem.

The bring their strength to bear in terms of carrying and hauling items. And under the DnD engine they do that much much better than humans. The DnD engine does simulate their greater ability to haul and carry (the sorts of things they were domesticated for) adequately.

It's not a perfect simulation engine, but it does aim to somewhat simulate. There is a very well known article from an earlier edition where a designer goes into great dpeth about how closely it was desgined to human stats. And in the real world a human with medieval weapons is more dangerous than a horse, and they are not too far below a bear.

My dude, you're literally arguing that a human having comparable strength to a horse (as in, able to wrestle a horse to the ground without tools most of the time) is a normal and reasonable thing, but women and men being treated the same by the system is some huge breach of verisimilitude.

However, I don't see a point in that. Gender shouldn't be a mechanical choice anymore than eye color, applying mechanics to it would mean that suddenly most characters of class X are either male or female because of min/max, I think that detracts from the game a bit.

Race (or species, ancestry, lineage, whateveryouwannacallit) on the other hand is not a stylistic choice anymore than what type of armor you wear.

I want my GWM Fighter to wear leather armor cause it looks cool, why do I have to be forced to put points in Dex penalized just to look cool while fighting?

Yeah precisely. People should be able to be abnormal, unusual. Nobody shows up eager to play the most statistically probable sort of character. That guy's probably a grungy human farmer without class levels.

Rukelnikov

2023-02-03, 05:22 PM

Yeah precisely. People should be able to be abnormal, unusual. Nobody shows up eager to play the most statistically probable sort of character. That guy's probably a grungy human farmer without class levels.

Same as I prefer different armors having different values and not dissociate the flavor from the mechanics therein, I prefer different species having different values.

A lvl 1 point buy Minotaur and Halfling that make the exact same decisions beside species, should come up with the Minotaur having higher Strength.

NichG

2023-02-03, 05:25 PM

Don't bother with things that can be bought off, and don't bother with things that are within a few standard deviations of the population variance. Arguing intensely over 5% shifts in success rates is silly, regardless of what sorts of external things can be brought in to try to justify it one way or the other.

So raise the stakes, and make each race give something that fundamentally changes build logic. Halflings get Dex to damage instead of Strength. Elves and only elves can freely combine a cantrip with any melee attack. Orcs can't roll 1s or 2s on damage dice - broadsword or fireball. Dwarves gain 50% increased bonuses from gear.

Rukelnikov

2023-02-03, 05:26 PM

So raise the stakes, and make each race give something that fundamentally changes build logic. Halflings get Dex to damage instead of Strength. Elves and only elves can freely combine a cantrip with any melee attack. Orcs can't roll 1s or 2s on damage dice - broadsword or fireball. Dwarves gain 50% increased bonuses from gear.

If that's the kind of racials they bring in to replace stats, I think that'd be reasonable. (free Bladesong EA, floor of 3 on damage dice, around that level, tier 2 feature)

Captain Cap

2023-02-03, 05:29 PM

However, I don't see a point in that. Gender shouldn't be a mechanical choice anymore than eye color, applying mechanics to it would mean that suddenly most characters of class X are either male or female because of min/max, I think that detracts from the game a bit.

Race (or species, ancestry, lineage, whateveryouwannacallit) on the other hand is not a stylistic choice anymore than what type of armor you wear.
However, if you take into account small differences (+2/-2) between races but ignore sexual dimorphism (which is statistically significant), you get inconsistent and paradoxical results, and end up with orcs that have a mechanical advantage over elves by being ~20% stronger on average than them, but also with male characters with no mechanical advantage over female despite being on average ~50% stronger. And this completely wrecks the verisimilitude angle.

If you don't think that ~50% is significative enough to be represented (because it is too small or because it is less controversial to ignore it), to be consistent you should award mechanical bonuses only to larger average deviations, like in the giant example already mentioned.

Rukelnikov

2023-02-03, 05:35 PM

However, if you take into account small differences (+2/-2) between races but ignore sexual dimorphism (which is statistically significant), you get inconsistent and paradoxical results, and end up with orcs that have a mechanical advantage over elves by being ~20% stronger on average than them, but also with male characters with no mechanical advantage over female despite being on average ~50% stronger. And this completely wrecks the verisimilitude angle.

If you don't think that ~50% is significative enough to be represented (because it is too small or because it is less controversial to ignore it), to be consistent you should award mechanical bonuses only to larger average deviations, like in the giant example already mentioned.

That's a simulationism argument, which I don't think holds since the game doesn't try to go for simulationism.

The game, otoh, does try to cater to medieval fantasy, races being differentiable by their traits is one thing most fantasy involving different species has. Removing the differentiation means removing different races as a concept.

Captain Cap

2023-02-03, 05:48 PM

That's a simulationism argument, which I don't think holds since the game doesn't try to go for simulationism.
Unless you go for some measure of simulationism, stats modifiers are completely arbitrary, and there would hardly be anything beyond personal preference to justify their presence or their association with particular races.

The game, otoh, does try to cater to medieval fantasy, races being differentiable by their traits is one thing most fantasy involving different species has. Removing the differentiation means removing different races as a concept.
What's discussed here is removing/replacing stat modifiers, not traits in general.

strangebloke

2023-02-03, 05:50 PM

Same as I prefer different armors having different values and not dissociate the flavor from the mechanics therein, I prefer different species having different values.

A lvl 1 point buy Minotaur and Halfling that make the exact same decisions beside species, should come up with the Minotaur having higher Strength.

Oh I completely misread you. Gender doesn't matter to you, but species does.

Well, fine.

But I don't know, a halfling is weaker than a minotaur in several ways. 1/4 the carrying capacity, worse weapon options, and can't grapple large creatures. A Halfling who is strength based is probably... what, a paladin? A ranger, maybe? People always talk about these halfling barbarians, but a lack of access to GWM is actually a huge downside, and even at range missing out on longbow is a bummer.

I'd be fine enhancing the differences between size categories OVERALL to be honest, but the minotaur/halfling comparison is the most extreme example of different playable races. Most races in 5e are things like tieflings or elves. It's one thing to give up STR because you're playing a tiny halfling man. Its another thing to give up having at-pace strength because you're playing a drow instead of a half-drow, or a lizardfolk instead of a dragonborn.

Again, I think the solution here would be stat caps rather than bonuses. Bonuses at level 1 are so impactful because of how ASIs and point buy works that if you're missing a bonus at level 1 you're basically screwed, but caps would give you a reason to play a certain classic archetype without hobbling the off-archetype race choices completely.

Maybe give small races a hard cap of 16 STR while goliaths and minotaurs and centaurs have 22 max STR, as one example.

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 05:56 PM

My dude, you're literally arguing that a human having comparable strength to a horse (as in, able to wrestle a horse to the ground without tools most of the time) is a normal and reasonable thing, but women and men being treated the same by the system is some huge breach of verisimilitude.

No, I'm literally not. i said an armed human was more dangerous than a horse. I also said that it sounded as if horse strength was well represented by a combination of its high strength score and increased carrying and dragging capacity due to its size.

I don't see how it would be normal for a human to be able to wrestle a horse to the ground, given the horses significantly higher strength compared to a normal human, and it grapple bonus due to size - but I am more familiar with 3e than 5e, so I'm not certain. If it's true that humans can outwrestle horses in 5e, then they should correct that inconsistency, not use it as an excuse to fail to represent other things realistically.

Don't bother with things that can be bought off, and don't bother with things that are within a few standard deviations of the population variance. Arguing intensely over 5% shifts in success rates is silly, regardless of what sorts of external things can be brought in to try to justify it one way or the other.

To be honest, the difference in str between an orc and a halfling should be much much more than +2. But I guess there are other considerations such as that having such vastly different strengths might complicate the game.

akma

2023-02-03, 06:03 PM

Gender ability score adjustments get much more complicated if you'll want to apply them to other races.
In some animals, the female is bigger and stronger, so that means that humanoid animal races should reflect that? What about races without animal analogues? Are you going to supply each race with two versions for male and female? If not, why are humans special in that regard? Biologically, someone can have traits of both or lack some traits, will you include that too? And that's without getting into questions relating to social differences, which is a can of worm we should probably avoid.

A race for which the males and females are significantly different sounds cool; but having to nitpick gameplay differences for each race simply sounds tedious.

So raise the stakes, and make each race give something that fundamentally changes build logic. Halflings get Dex to damage instead of Strength. Elves and only elves can freely combine a cantrip with any melee attack. Orcs can't roll 1s or 2s on damage dice - broadsword or fireball. Dwarves gain 50% increased bonuses from gear.

That would definitely make the races much more distinct than ability modifiers can, but will make the core problem worse - a culture of minmaxing that narrows race/class combinations.

OldTrees1

2023-02-03, 06:04 PM

Sorry for making this quickly (IRL time constraints):

I'd wrongly assumed you were saying that the sexual dimorphism of strength was insufficient to merit a modifier because you underestimated the extent of the difference.

But isn't the problem with saying that near double strength advantage isn't enough to warrant a modifier, that strength differences of that extent are already represented between humans of unspecified gender and other somewhat stronger humans of unspecified gender?

I parsed this 2 ways so here are 2 answers:
1) I don't see a problem with the 3d6 or point buy representing all the nuances that I don't see meriting an explicit modifier. Is that what you were asking?
2) There is merit in a linear Strength score translating into an exponential carrying capacity. 5E made it linear:linear which has some knock-on effects. That would diminish the observation you were making?

Sorry, out of time.

That's not entirely correct, we have a reference in the game rules regarding about how much does a point of strength amount to, each point of strength represents about 30 pounds of deadlift. It'd be a matter of taking some statistics and applying some numbers.

There is merit in a linear Strength score translating into an exponential carrying capacity. 5E made it linear:linear which has some knock-on effects (as you described).

Sorry, out of time.

Captain Cap

2023-02-03, 06:07 PM

Maybe give small races a hard cap of 16 STR while goliaths and minotaurs and centaurs have 22 max STR, as one example.
Personally, seeing the way Strength works, determining the Athletics score, jumping distance, carrying capacity relative to size etc., it seems to be more a measure of "pound for pound" strength than absolute strength.
In this perspective, if it was for me I'd emphasize the effect of different sizes than have Strength modifiers (unless you expect for a certain race to have more efficient muscles and better fitness all around): other than the effects already in game, a larger size could provide a damage bonus to represent the bigger weight behind melee attacks; at the same time, being smaller could make the character more evasive and increase the class armor, 3.X style.

NichG

2023-02-03, 06:17 PM

To be honest, the difference in str between an orc and a halfling should be much much more than +2. But I guess there are other considerations such as that having such vastly different strengths might complicate the game.

I mean, everything you add to a game complicates a game. I don't have much sympathy or taste for the school of game design of making everything so tiny and fiddly that even if you do it wrong you probably won't upset game balance, because that way also lies players not actually noticing things either. Given how much more time is spent on a single combat in a tabletop game compared to, e.g., an MMORPG, I don't think we should emulate the tendency to have things like +2% damage here, +3% health there (not that I even think that's a good idea in an MMO, but you can sort of argue that over the course of hundreds of mobs you might notice a 2% difference). But in a tabletop game you're going to be using things a hundred times less frequently than in a computer game, so they should be big, bold flavors or just not be options given in the first place.

That would definitely make the races much more distinct than ability modifiers can, but will make the core problem worse - a culture of minmaxing that narrows race/class combinations.

You might think that, but because these things work along different axes that depend on other components of your build, resources, what's going on in the campaign, personal taste as far as mechanics you like to engage with, etc, it will actually diversify those combinations. The problem with stat mods is that they're nearly fungible - a -2 from a race can just be bought off with point buy points. So you can actually do math and say 'in all cases, this combination is strictly better than the others' because you have a single axis of comparison (point buy efficiency). But when you have multiple axes, you can have pareto fronts with different things being conditionally optimal - that is to say, conditional on stuff like taste and circumstance and level range of the campaign and types of encounters and availability of loot and ...

strangebloke

2023-02-03, 07:11 PM

I don't see how it would be normal for a human to be able to wrestle a horse to the ground, given the horses significantly higher strength compared to a normal human, and it grapple bonus due to size - but I am more familiar with 3e than 5e, so I'm not certain. If it's true that humans can outwrestle horses in 5e, then they should correct that inconsistency, not use it as an excuse to fail to represent other things realistically.
A slightly above average human soldier with +1 str and athletics proficiency can do it 50% of the time.

An above-average human, say, a veteran, has better than 50/50 odds.

Personally, seeing the way Strength works, determining the Athletics score, jumping distance, carrying capacity relative to size etc., it seems to be more a measure of "pound for pound" strength than absolute strength.
In this perspective, if it was for me I'd emphasize the effect of different sizes than have Strength modifiers (unless you expect for a certain race to have more efficient muscles and better fitness all around): other than the effects already in game, a larger size could provide a damage bonus to represent the bigger weight behind melee attacks; at the same time, being smaller could make the character more evasive and increase the class armor, 3.X style.

currently this already exists, sort of. A half-ogre for example deals 2d6 with a javelin, and this is in accord with a rule that's found in the DMG under "oversized weapons." There's a similar distinction where 'heavy' weapons are considered oversized for small PCs. No greatswords or longbows. Obviously this is a much smaller downgrade generally, going from d8 longbow to d6 shortbow, or 2d6 greatsword to 1d10 versatile longsword, but the idea is there.

I'd be fine with making small races only able to use light weapons without disadvantage, but overall meh.

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 07:24 PM

Sorry for making this quickly (IRL time constraints):

I parsed this 2 ways so here are 2 answers:
1) I don't see a problem with the 3d6 or point buy representing all the nuances that I don't see meriting an explicit modifier. Is that what you were asking?
2) There is merit in a linear Strength score translating into an exponential carrying capacity. 5E made it linear:linear which has some knock-on effects. That would diminish the observation you were making?

Sorry, out of time.

Yes, the first.

A slightly above average human soldier with +1 str and athletics proficiency can do it 50% of the time.

An above-average human, say, a veteran, has better than 50/50 odds.

Right, so you not only need to be a stronger than usual human, but also to have a special proficiency (so not really normal at all). Whether that means that horse str is improperly balanced, I'm not sure. But either way, it makes no difference to modifiers by race or gender - the solution is to improve horses wrestling ability if needed.

Psyren

2023-02-03, 07:43 PM

Why exactly? If some people prefer fixed ASIs and say they'd prefer that to be the rules, why do you have a problem with that?

Eh, "problem" was just me being dramatic. What I meant was I disagree with that stance and would do whatever I could to not let the game regress in that fashion.

Liquor Box

2023-02-03, 08:45 PM

Eh, "problem" was just me being dramatic. What I meant was I disagree with that stance and would do whatever I could to not let the game regress in that fashion.

Sure, but why do you disagree so much that you would do whatever you could?

Psyren

2023-02-03, 09:02 PM

Sure, but why do you disagree so much that you would do whatever you could?

Because I agree with the updated direction.

If you're looking for more detail, that's going to take this thread down all the paths that got the previous ones locked.

Witty Username

2023-02-03, 09:12 PM

Think about it this way, I want to play a Mimic PC one day. Why would I baulk at the game including non-human species that merit agility modifiers? I don't need the game to limit itself to "humans in hats".

Given that every race in the game currently is either, as strong as, or weaker, than human.
Which ones warrent ability modifiers?

"humans in hats" is what fixed ASIs have amounted to. It has made race selection less interesting, not more.

OldTrees1

2023-02-03, 10:27 PM

Given that every race in the game currently is either, as strong as, or weaker, than human.
Which ones warrent ability modifiers?

"humans in hats" is what fixed ASIs have amounted to. It has made race selection less interesting, not more.

We will have to agree to disagree. Making the species more and more generic is not making species selection more interesting. That is taking a 10ft pit (5E had many species design decisions moving us towards "humans with hats" at launch) and digging deeper. I would prefer they start to climb out of the pit instead (although that can't happen until 6E at the soonest).

However you can prove me wrong if 1D&D includes a Large Giant, a Myconid, a Mimic, a Ghoul, and a Tiny Spider official species. If your scapegoat is really to blame, then 1D&D could deliver.

As I said, I want to play a Mimic PC one day. Why would I baulk at the game including non-human species that merit agility modifiers? I don't need the game to limit itself to "humans in hats".

goodpeople25

2023-02-03, 10:43 PM

We will have to agree to disagree. Making the species more and more generic is not making species selection more interesting. That is taking a 10ft pit and digging deeper. I would prefer they start to climb out of the pit instead (although that can't happen until 6E at the soonest).

However you can prove me wrong if 1D&D includes a Large Giant, a Myconid, a Mimic, a Ghoul, and a Tiny Spider official species. If your scapegoat is really to blame, then 1D&D could deliver.

As I said, I want to play a Mimic PC one day. Why would I baulk at the game including non-human species that merit agility modifiers? I don't need the game to limit itself to "humans in hats".
Saying "Others are scapegoating".

Repeating "Humans in hats".

Pick one.

OldTrees1

2023-02-03, 10:52 PM

Saying "Others are scapegoating".

Repeating "Humans in hats".

Pick one.

No?
2) I can critique 5E for its choices at launch and for it continuing to push even further.
1) I can disagree with Witty Username's claim that fixed ASIs caused the choices at 5E's launch that I criticized. It is an outlandish enough claim that I can say they are scapegoating fixed ASIs when they are trying to get me to blame it for my critique. However I also provide a falsifiable test that could convince me if the evidence were provided.

Of course, I think 2 interjections in (with plenty of room for misunderstandings each time), it is unlikely you and I are even having the same conversation. Bye.

strangebloke

2023-02-03, 10:59 PM

Right, so you not only need to be a stronger than usual human, but also to have a special proficiency (so not really normal at all). Whether that means that horse str is improperly balanced, I'm not sure. But either way, it makes no difference to modifiers by race or gender - the solution is to improve horses wrestling ability if needed.
Yeah you need a COLLOSAL 12 strength to wrestle a horse. Lol.

but no, this is the system working as intended. A system that was accurate and cared about simulation would not let you gain hit points, and would keep your abilities well bounded within 'guy at the gym' levels and would make you die instantly when a 50 foot dragon landed on you...

....and would suck.

We will have to agree to disagree. Making the species more and more generic is not making species selection more interesting. That is taking a 10ft pit and digging deeper. I would prefer they start to climb out of the pit instead (although that can't happen until 6E at the soonest).

However you can prove me wrong if 1D&D includes a Large Giant, a Myconid, a Mimic, a Ghoul, and a Tiny Spider official species. If your scapegoat is really to blame, then 1D&D could deliver.

As I said, I want to play a Mimic PC one day. Why would I baulk at the game including non-human species that merit agility modifiers? I don't need the game to limit itself to "humans in hats".

I agree with Witty here.

The way it was implemented was real bad. Racial modifiers were basically ASIs and ASIs are one of the main forms of progression in the game. You could play another race, and suck. And sure, 14 DEX at character creation doesn't make your monk 'unviable' but its a huge setback. You will always effectively be a whole feat behind the Wood Elf monk.

Like at level 1, the wood elf flurrying at ac 15 deals
[(1d8+3)+(1d6+3)*2]*0.55=7.1
whereas the githzerai (a very flavorful monk race) deals
[(1d8+2)+(1d6+2)*2]*0.50=5.5

That's a fourth of your damage, just gone! Yikes! And you're a monk, you can't afford to give up that much power! And this remains a problem for the entirety of your career as a monk.

So if you care about being strong at all, you're locked into wood elf, tabaxi, half-elf, human, and.... probably a few others. Not exactly spoiled for options. And why is this way? Because githzerai couldn't have a +1 to dex? Come on, that's silly. Gith aren't naturally less agile than humans, what are you on about?

At most, if racial modifiers should exist, its for edge case races like halflings and goliaths, and even in those cases you can probably just give them other features that make them feel strong.

OldTrees1

2023-02-03, 11:08 PM

So if you care about being strong at all, you're locked into wood elf, tabaxi, half-elf, human, and.... probably a few others. Not exactly spoiled for options. And why is this way? Because githzerai couldn't have a +1 to dex? Come on, that's silly. Gith aren't naturally less agile than humans, what are you on about?

At most, if racial modifiers should exist, its for edge case races like halflings and goliaths, and even in those cases you can probably just give them other features that make them feel strong.

Sounds like you are also mostly agreeing with me. There are plenty of ASIs 5E affixed that I would not agree with, and plenty of more non-human species that they chose not to print. (Clarifying Edit: Also I would be fine with many species not having ASIs if the species pool included edge cases like Giants that did.)

Also, 5E did choose to let your monk afford to give up a fourth of their damage. This whole "So if you care about being strong at all" is a problem we player voluntarily create despite the designers bending over backwards to let us still be strong enough anyways. 5E is the first edition where I would be fine with leaving my primary ability score at 14 all the way to 20th (unless the character cared about my disagreements with the 5E ability check system and that impacted their primary ability score). I could easily see an 18 Cha Rogue that gets by with a 14 Dex or a 16 Int 16 Wis 14 Cha Bard.

Hurrashane

2023-02-03, 11:15 PM

OldTrees1

2023-02-03, 11:34 PM

I never understood the humans in hats arguments. I really don't see how not having a +2 con and +1 str equates to either +1 in all stats nothing more, or +1 to two stats a feat and a skill. Especially when the former has like, dark vision, and a number of other traits up to and including spells. Unless the argument isn't a mechanical one in which case it being brought up when discussing mechanics is a little confusing.

Did you want to understand it?

Imagine a system where species are actually quite distinct from each other. They have many qualitative differences and a few quantitative ones.

Now imagine a system that took only the species that were the most similar already relatively speaking (mostly demihuman species with much less qualitative diversity), condensed similar traits, removed other traits, and filled in the balance gaps with cultural traits (which are things that don't actually make them feel different, it just feels weird).

Now down the line decide to remove one of the remaining species differences. It doesn't really matter which one. It could have been deciding all species are Medium Sized with no Darkvision. The importance is it is yet another difference removed moving them towards being the same.

This is the "humans with hats" argument. It is not even about ASIs themselves (and especially not about the cultural feature ASIs). It is not about claiming they are already identical. It is about disliking the direction where the pool of species is made more homogenized and less diverse. The less you have left, the more you cling to it.

If species stat boosts and/or negatives would become a thing again then I feel that the species traits should in some way balance what is lost.
This is a good idea. I do like drawbacks, and packaging a drawback with some way to balance what is lost is nice. I was recently thinking about a slow Snail that could not jump but could climb. The speed and jump drawbacks getting some way to balance it.

Likewise we should have more species without stat boosts that get something to balance what was lost there. We don't need a +2/+1 pattern everywhere.

Hurrashane

2023-02-04, 12:03 AM

Did you want to understand it?

Imagine a system where species are actually quite distinct from each other. They have many qualitative differences and a few quantitative ones.

Now imagine a system that took only the species that were the most similar already relatively speaking (mostly demihuman species with much less qualitative diversity), condensed similar traits, removed other traits, and filled in the balance gaps with cultural traits (which are things that don't actually make them feel different, it just feels weird).

Now down the line decide to remove one of the remaining species differences. It doesn't really matter which one. It could have been deciding all species are Medium Sized with no Darkvision. The importance is it is yet another difference removed moving them towards being the same.

This is the "humans with hats" argument. It is not even about ASIs themselves (and especially not about the cultural feature ASIs). It is not about claiming they are already identical. It is about disliking the direction where the pool of species is made more homogenized and less diverse. The less you have left, the more you cling to it.

I don't think I've played a system where the species are that distinct from eachother. Granted I've played mostly D&D 3.5 onwards (with a few CRPGs using AD&D), Pathfinder 1e and a few point based systems where races are what you want to build them.

Usually I see the humans in hats argument as a thing that is, not a thing that may become. Most I've seen say that express it like, "the races in 5e are just humans in hats" to which I don't agree. I can understand it as a fear of homogenization, though I also disagree D&D is headed in that direction.

NichG

2023-02-04, 12:18 AM

I don't think I've played a system where the species are that distinct from eachother. Granted I've played mostly D&D 3.5 onwards (with a few CRPGs using AD&D), Pathfinder 1e and a few point based systems where races are what you want to build them.

Usually I see the humans in hats argument as a thing that is, not a thing that may become. Most I've seen say that express it like, "the races in 5e are just humans in hats" to which I don't agree. I can understand it as a fear of homogenization, though I also disagree D&D is headed in that direction.

I mean, in 3.5ed you could play basically anything with an LA from the monster manuals, and with Savage Species you could do a lot of that stuff starting from 1st level. Is there any sort of equivalent to that in 5e?

OldTrees1

2023-02-04, 12:22 AM

I mean, in 3.5ed you could play basically anything with an LA from the monster manuals, and with Savage Species you could do a lot of that stuff starting from 1st level. Is there any sort of equivalent to that in 5e?

If 5E printed or 1D&D prints an equivalent of Savage Species, then it would disprove my criticisms.

I am currently playing a Mind Flayer in a Spelljammer campaign. I want to play a Mimic PC later. I gave a short falsification test of these 5 species: "Large Giant, a Myconid, a Mimic, a Ghoul, and a Tiny Spider". Even 3.5E's Warforged, Dragonborn, and Necropolitians are LA+0 examples.

Yeah, NichG Groks it.

Hurrashane

2023-02-04, 12:40 AM

I mean, in 3.5ed you could play basically anything with an LA from the monster manuals, and with Savage Species you could do a lot of that stuff starting from 1st level. Is there any sort of equivalent to that in 5e?

There's rules for it in the 5e DMG I'm pretty sure. Also nothing stopping you from, say, letting someone play as a Dragon either by making it a race or just letting them use the stat block and adding class levels to it.

Also iirc Savage Species was a 3e book and required a fair bit of tweaking to make it work properly in 3.5... Not that, again iirc, it was lauded as being balanced in any way. And savage species I think gave you like, a monster class. So you were essentially a human with a hat, effectively as monstrous as a Dragon Disciple.

NichG

2023-02-04, 12:54 AM

There's rules for it in the 5e DMG I'm pretty sure. Also nothing stopping you from, say, letting someone play as a Dragon either by making it a race or just letting them use the stat block and adding class levels to it.

Also iirc Savage Species was a 3e book and required a fair bit of tweaking to make it work properly in 3.5... Not that, again iirc, it was lauded as being balanced in any way. And savage species I think gave you like, a monster class. So you were essentially a human with a hat, effectively as monstrous as a Dragon Disciple.

If the particular question is whether the official D&D line has moved towards homogeneity or not, its not really relevant what a table could theoretically come up with a way to do. Similarly, whether it's balanced or not is an orthogonal concern.

Hurrashane

2023-02-04, 01:22 AM

If the particular question is whether the official D&D line has moved towards homogeneity or not, its not really relevant what a table could theoretically come up with a way to do. Similarly, whether it's balanced or not is an orthogonal concern.

I guess then, yes. Official player options are less varied than they have been in the past. But given what we've seen in the OD&D playtest I doubt there's some kind of homogeneous singularity anywhere on the horizon.

qube

2023-02-04, 03:04 AM

Not quite - I don't have a problem as long as you don't want the books to say elf PCs have +2 Dex.And in my mind, that makes no sense at all. Because that's saying.

BAD
Racial Ability score: +2 dex
while
GOOD
Ability: eleven dexterity : your dexterity modifier counts as 1 higher
After all, the second isn't a racial ability score ...

What I'm saying is

"Goliaths are stronger then elves" thus they have inherently more carrying capacity = good
"Goliaths are stronger then elves" thus they are inherently better in melee combat = bad

From a game mechanical point of view - it does not matter how "stronger" is implemented. Be it an ability score, or an ability.

What does the array PCs use have to do with fixed vs. variable ASIs? These are two different things.EXACTLY!

Even this wouldn't be that much of a problem if any character could make an impactful use of any ability.quite true.
that was my first line of thought, but I didn't find a way to implement this in a way that can't be abused into making characters SAD.

Human women and men are real people, unlike orcs and elves, counterpoint: I would argue that D&D humans, are moddeled after real humans, but they are still the fantasy/verisimilitude of them.
(simplest example: I don't see neither dying of an infiction of a cut - a very real problem back in the day)

--------------------
Fun fact: BTW: consider what happens if commoner elves get +2 DEX and commoner goliats get +2 STR.
That means, that in their society that's common, that's the norm.

From their respective point of view, adventures can be exceptionally strong, but fumbling, elves, or expetionally dexteriours, but weak goliaths ... but there's no such thing as expetionally strong goliaths or exceptionally dexterious elves :smallconfused:

Witty Username

2023-02-04, 03:27 AM

However you can prove me wrong if 1D&D includes a Large Giant, a Myconid, a Mimic, a Ghoul, and a Tiny Spider official species. If your scapegoat is really to blame, then 1D&D could deliver.

Why would any of those have any baring on the races we are using now?

Like take say a Fire Giant, in the MM they have a strength of 25, would that really fit +2 str, +1 con (as mentioned, statisticly equal to or weaker than a human)?

If worse or as good as human is all we get anyway, fixed ASIs just pigeonhole races into particular classes.

Now, if we got a Fire Giant PC race with a +8 strength bonus, interesting, but also bounded accuracy would have to go out the window for designs like that.

From their respective point of view, adventures can be exceptionally strong, but fumbling, elves, or expetionally dexteriours, but weak goliaths ... but there's no such thing as expetionally strong goliaths or exceptionally dexterious elves :smallconfused:
An exceptionally strong Goliath has 20 strength.
An exceptionally strong Elf has 20 strength.
Neither of which are prohibited by the rules, even without taking into account floating ASIs.

Captain Cap

2023-02-04, 03:38 AM

but also bounded accuracy would have to go out the window for designs like that.
Yes please.

JackPhoenix

2023-02-04, 08:03 AM

Also while removing ASI from species selection may be more or less interesting, for me at least, it certainly opens up the possibility of playing non-humans. Playing a mountain dwarf wizard is a much more enticing prospect when not burdened with the +2 strength they'll never need.

See, that's the thing... to you, dwarf wizard is "burdened with +2 Str they'll never need", because you (apparently) think a dwarf wizard must be build the same way as every other wizard (except wearing armor, I guess), while to me, it raises a question "how do I play a wizard in a way that makes +2 Str and weapon and armor proficiencies useful while dealing with the fact enemies have 5% better chance to save against my spells". The possiblity of playing non-human was always there, but now it's less interesting, because I should just default to bog-standard wizard where being a dwarf make little to no difference. I DON'T have to, of course, but there's nothing to provoke thinking and to go with anything except no-brain "put ASI to Int, ignore weapon proficiencies, proceed as normal".

I suspect it was the case with 3.5 Eberron's famous halfling barbarians... it probably started up with someone going "here's an idea, halfling barbarians (dinosaurs may have been part of the concept right from the start, or added later)", but instead of looking at both and going "We'll have to create a halfling that doesn't have strength penalty and low movement speed and can use larger weapons, because that's what every barbarian does", Keith Baker (or whoever) looked at both and thought "how do I make them work together?". Halfling is a pretty bad race choice for a barbarian (melee anything, really) 3.5, but, funnily enough, barbarian is NOT bad choice for a halfling. Compared to standard "Greatsword, Power Attack, RAAAAAAARGH!" barbarian, halfling barbarian has much better attack with thrown weapons (on account of increased Dex, small size bonus to hit and halfling bonus with thrown weapons), better AC (small size + Dex), of course lower damage (Rage bonus offsets the lower Str, if not smaller weapon damage dice, and applies to thrown weapon too (wait a minute...)), lower mobility (but comparable to non-barbarians, and better than non-barbarian melee halflings), and lower carrying capacity. Giving them dinosaurs improves the carrying capacity and speed further, making Eberron's barbarian halflings decent mounted skirmishers who throw boomerangs at enemies while using dinosaur's mobility to stay away, and have Rage to improve their melee capabilities when something closes the distance... and that's exactly the archetype they use in the setting.

Psyren

2023-02-04, 10:51 AM

And in my mind, that makes no sense at all. Because that's saying.

BAD
Racial Ability score: +2 dex
while
GOOD
Ability: eleven dexterity : your dexterity modifier counts as 1 higher
After all, the second isn't a racial ability score ...

No, both of these are bad.

What I'm saying is

"Goliaths are stronger then elves" thus they have inherently more carrying capacity = good
"Goliaths are stronger then elves" thus they are inherently better in melee combat = bad

From a game mechanical point of view - it does not matter how "stronger" is implemented. Be it an ability score, or an ability.

I'm fine with "Goliaths can carry more". That's one specific application of strength that doesn't even matter at most tables past low levels. It doesn't translate necessarily to "Goliaths are stronger than elves." An Elf adventurer might still beat an Entangle that a Goliath adventurer will fail to, or rip a mind flayer's tentacles off their skull, or swim across the same raging river.

Hurrashane

2023-02-04, 11:42 AM

See, that's the thing... to you, dwarf wizard is "burdened with +2 Str they'll never need", because you (apparently) think a dwarf wizard must be build the same way as every other wizard (except wearing armor, I guess), while to me, it raises a question "how do I play a wizard in a way that makes +2 Str and weapon and armor proficiencies useful while dealing with the fact enemies have 5% better chance to save against my spells". The possiblity of playing non-human was always there, but now it's less interesting, because I should just default to bog-standard wizard where being a dwarf make little to no difference. I DON'T have to, of course, but there's nothing to provoke thinking and to go with anything except no-brain "put ASI to Int, ignore weapon proficiencies, proceed as normal".

I suspect it was the case with 3.5 Eberron's famous halfling barbarians... it probably started up with someone going "here's an idea, halfling barbarians (dinosaurs may have been part of the concept right from the start, or added later)", but instead of looking at both and going "We'll have to create a halfling that doesn't have strength penalty and low movement speed and can use larger weapons, because that's what every barbarian does", Keith Baker (or whoever) looked at both and thought "how do I make them work together?". Halfling is a pretty bad race choice for a barbarian (melee anything, really) 3.5, but, funnily enough, barbarian is NOT bad choice for a halfling. Compared to standard "Greatsword, Power Attack, RAAAAAAARGH!" barbarian, halfling barbarian has much better attack with thrown weapons (on account of increased Dex, small size bonus to hit and halfling bonus with thrown weapons), better AC (small size + Dex), of course lower damage (Rage bonus offsets the lower Str, if not smaller weapon damage dice, and applies to thrown weapon too (wait a minute...)), lower mobility (but comparable to non-barbarians, and better than non-barbarian melee halflings), and lower carrying capacity. Giving them dinosaurs improves the carrying capacity and speed further, making Eberron's barbarian halflings decent mounted skirmishers who throw boomerangs at enemies while using dinosaur's mobility to stay away, and have Rage to improve their melee capabilities when something closes the distance... and that's exactly the archetype they use in the setting.

But then aren't you just really trading one standard for another? In my mind it's similar to prestige classes, some think they add more depth to the game while in my mind to qualify for one you're just following the steps and all of a specific prestige class will mechanically be the same.

With floating ASI you're still free to make a dwarf wizard with above average strength or a halfling barbarian that throws... But you now don't need to. You can build them however you want; to their classes strengths or against it. The eberron halfling works because it's a mechanical build that still works (save the dinosaurs, barbs had no means to guarantee obtaining one), there's likely a reason no 3.5 setting has Orc Wizards as a default because mechanically it just doesn't work well.

Like, sure there's a few mechanically viable options with fixed ASI, but with floating ones -all- options are on the table. Like an orc wizard evoker who recklessly blasts himself with spells or over channels them because he knows he doesn't die once per day. Or a 20 strength goblin fighter with PAM and Sentinel using hit and run techniques thanks to nimble escape. Neither would be as viable with fixed ASI or lower attribute caps.

Psyren

2023-02-04, 11:55 AM

But then aren't you just really trading one standard for another? In my mind it's similar to prestige classes, some think they add more depth to the game while in my mind to qualify for one you're just following the steps and all of a specific prestige class will mechanically be the same.

With floating ASI you're still free to make a dwarf wizard with above average strength or a halfling barbarian that throws... But you now don't need to. You can build them however you want; to their classes strengths or against it. The eberron halfling works because it's a mechanical build that still works (save the dinosaurs, barbs had no means to guarantee obtaining one), there's likely a reason no 3.5 setting has Orc Wizards as a default because mechanically it just doesn't work well.

Like, sure there's a few mechanically viable options with fixed ASI, but with floating ones -all- options are on the table. Like an orc wizard evoker who recklessly blasts himself with spells or over channels them because he knows he doesn't die once per day. Or a 20 strength goblin fighter with PAM and Sentinel using hit and run techniques thanks to nimble escape. Neither would be as viable with fixed ASI or lower attribute caps.

Exactly this. Decoupling race/species from fixed attributes creates more meaningful options, not fewer.

This is of course the opposite of what I said, as Strangebloke already pointed out to you (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25698282&postcount=86).

If you want to design a game where the world's strongest orc is stronger than the world's strongest halfling, I would have no objection.

It's the difference between "Only giants can be this tall, halflings can't," (a design choice I have no problem with) and "you can be a halfling just as tall as a giant, but if you do, you'll be underpowered." (a design choice I have a problem with).

If being as tall as a giant is not a valid flavor, you shouldn't be able to play it. If it is a valid flavor, you shouldn't be penalized for playing it. Flavor taxes are lame.

For any given 5e class, attributes are not of equal value. Points in your primary stat are worth more than your secondary stat, which are in turn worth more than points in your tertiary stat, which is worth more your quaternary, quinary, and senary stats.

This means that the racial modifiers don't balance out. If you get -2 to your class's primary stat, and +2 to a quaternary stat, then you've ended up with a net penalty for your racial modifiers choice, while that other guy in the same party got a net bonus.

This is extra clear when using point buy -- costs escalate as you raise a stat higher, so the +2 to a quaternary stat is only worth 2 point buy, but the -2 to a primary stat is worth more than that (and may even set you back an ASI, too).

Also this.

JackPhoenix

2023-02-04, 12:35 PM

strangebloke

2023-02-04, 12:39 PM

I think strength works pretty well as a "pound-for-pound" strength.

Think of it this way. The requirement for plate is 15 strength. It's obvious that a halfling can wear plate without issue, so (also obviously) they need to be able to have 15 strength without paying a premium.

The weight of plate scales with the size of the creature, so a goliath doesn't really have a particular advantage wearing plate compared to anyone else.

Similarly, if you scaled weapon damage dice more harshly (or increased the power of martial weapons) you could easily create a situation where the size and power of something like a goliath barbarian is driven by their weapon damage dice.

I'll note that features like GWM already do this to a degree, and this is actually a notable change from 3.5 where weapon size/type barely mattered.

The thing is, I really think the "goliath vs. halfling" comparison is kind of a red herring. It's by far the largest objective disparity between two races in the game, and 99% of the racial ability mods were way more tenuous than that.

Like people will say "SPECIES should have seperate ability mods to make them more distinct" but the vast majority of race options literally are just races. All the different sorts of elves, dwarves, tieflings, aasimar, gith, etc. are all different races of the same species. So even if there should be species ability mods (and I don't think you should) you'd still have way more floating bonuses than you currently see.

Rukelnikov

2023-02-04, 12:45 PM

strangebloke

2023-02-04, 12:54 PM

I agree with most you wrote, but the end is just wrong, there were multiple builds in 3.x whose main shtick was weilding dragon sized weapons, and the damage increases exponentially.

Yeah but I don't think that a few niche builds make the general statement untrue. Greater Mighty Wallop aside, weapon size is pretty much irrelevant.

If you're a barbarian in 3.5 wielding a two-handed maul and power attacking for +35 damage you don't really care whether your weapon is 2d6 or 3d6.

Hurrashane

2023-02-04, 01:13 PM

That's my point... you CAN make dwarf wizard with above average strength... but why would you, and more importantly, why would you even think about that idea, especially as someone less experienced with the system? With floating ASI, people will just default to running the same exactly build, just switching race around. No inspiration.

All right, this crap again. Repeat after me: Not optimized is NOT the same thing as not viable. All of that is perfectly viable, even with fixed ASI. Of course, floating ASI make this issue worse, because it promotes the (false) idea that you MUST have ASI in the right place for the character to be viable at all.

Then for the first point I'd ask why would someone less experienced in the system even make a Dwarf Wizard with fixed ASI? They'd see that the class requires Int and then think that something like an elf would make a better wizard and just play that. There's no problem with a less experienced player being able to pick the race they want and the class they want to play and then maximizing what the books claim is important, and they'll likely have a better time playing a character that excels in the role than one that is just ok or struggles. Once a player has some system mastery is when experimental builds start happening. I doubt any new player will read the description of the wizard then try and make a dwarf who melees out of it on their first go.

I believe I said not as viable not that it's not viable. In 5e an 8 int wizard is viable with the right build. A +2 mod may be alright, you'll get by... But you'll do better with a +3. I recently played a game with someone who's character had no higher mod than a +2, they didn't have fun at all with that character. They felt that they barely hit anything, their spells rarely landed, and that their bonuses to skills were underwhelming. Now it could have just been bad luck, but the player felt it was because they had no mod higher than a +2. And that's compounded by being in a party with other characters who have +3/4 in their main stat. The barbarian I was playing had the same charisma mod as this player's bard.

Rukelnikov

2023-02-04, 01:38 PM

Yeah but I don't think that a few niche builds make the general statement untrue. Greater Mighty Wallop aside, weapon size is pretty much irrelevant.

If you're a barbarian in 3.5 wielding a two-handed maul and power attacking for +35 damage you don't really care whether your weapon is 2d6 or 3d6.

Oh ok, yeah, compared to the flat extra damage, dice tended to become almost irrelevant for the majority of combatants. But wielding oversized weapons was still a thing.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-04, 01:39 PM

Then for the first point I'd ask why would someone less experienced in the system even make a Dwarf Wizard with fixed ASI? They'd see that the class requires Int and then think that something like an elf would make a better wizard and just play that. There's no problem with a less experienced player being able to pick the race they want and the class they want to play and then maximizing what the books claim is important, and they'll likely have a better time playing a character that excels in the role than one that is just ok or struggles. Once a player has some system mastery is when experimental builds start happening. I doubt any new player will read the description of the wizard then try and make a dwarf who melees out of it on their first go.

I believe I said not as viable not that it's not viable. In 5e an 8 int wizard is viable with the right build. A +2 mod may be alright, you'll get by... But you'll do better with a +3. I recently played a game with someone who's character had no higher mod than a +2, they didn't have fun at all with that character. They felt that they barely hit anything, their spells rarely landed, and that their bonuses to skills were underwhelming. Now it could have just been bad luck, but the player felt it was because they had no mod higher than a +2. And that's compounded by being in a party with other characters who have +3/4 in their main stat. The barbarian I was playing had the same charisma mod as this player's bard.

I've had
* tiefling druids
* dragonborn druids
* high elf strength paladins
* and every other sort of combination.
It worked fine.

ASIs don't really matter nearly as much as optimizers think. And generally new players are the most open to experimentation because they haven't been brainwashed into "only the numbers matter."

Witty Username

2023-02-04, 01:39 PM

All right, this crap again. Repeat after me: Not optimized is NOT the same thing as not viable. All of that is perfectly viable, even with fixed ASI. Of course, floating ASI make this issue worse, because it promotes the (false) idea that you MUST have ASI in the right place for the character to be viable at all.

Sometimes, wizard for example is the easiest to make viable with low Int, as spells don't always require attack rolls or saves to be effective.
Compare to say monk, a monk that has no stats above 15 will be below curve in every aspect of the game, with little recourse to cover their non-traditional weaknesses.
Further, 14-15 isn't the floor, 12-13 can be what your working with with a non-traditional race, if one is using rolled stats, I am personally comfortable with using a traditional race when I roll low and non-traditional when I roll high but that won't be true for everyone.

Also, fixed ASIs didn't much help at all, with the most popular race being variant human, it just defined other races as weaker than human, even if they were technically viable.

And all these things are still viable, if you want to be a half-orc wizard with an Int of 8 that casts quarterstaff, you can do that.

Just to Browse

2023-02-04, 02:01 PM

ASIs don't really matter nearly as much as optimizers think. And generally new players are the most open to experimentation because they haven't been brainwashed into "only the numbers matter."

I've had half-elf rangers, gnome druids, fire genasi rogues, half-orc monks, and several others. They didn't work well at all. All of the players regularly found themselves feeling underwhelming relative to their companions with stats in proper bindings. I had to hand out custom magic items and feats to make up the difference in multiple cases. And all of my listed examples were new players, not brainwashed bog-standard [insert additional pejoratives here] optimizers.

Rukelnikov

2023-02-04, 02:15 PM

ASIs don't really matter nearly as much as optimizers think. And generally new players are the most open to experimentation because they haven't been brainwashed into "only the numbers matter."

I think its the other way round, optimizers probably know how much they are worth, but people reading guides don't, because they didn't go thru the process of trying different combinations of a build to note which returned the better results. They understand that its what will have the most impact on the mathematical formulae used to calc DPR, and thus see it as the end all be all.

My most played character in 5e was an Air Genasi Storm Sorcerer/Chain GOOLock, mostly having one concentration up and spamming EBs. He had 16 Cha levels 1 to 8, at 9 (Lock5/Sorc4) it went to 18, and to 20 at lvl 14 (Lock8/Sorc6), and he did fine.

strangebloke

2023-02-04, 04:12 PM

That's my point... you CAN make dwarf wizard with above average strength... but why would you, and more importantly, why would you even think about that idea, especially as someone less experienced with the system? With floating ASI, people will just default to running the same exactly build, just switching race around. No inspiration.

All right, this crap again. Repeat after me: Not optimized is NOT the same thing as not viable. All of that is perfectly viable, even with fixed ASI. Of course, floating ASI make this issue worse, because it promotes the (false) idea that you MUST have ASI in the right place for the character to be viable at all.

Nobody thinks you need +2 to your main stat to be viable!

Depending on class, you can have an 8 in your main stat and be "viable!"

But if you're giving up a +1/+2 to your main stat, you are objectively going to be weaker in very measurable ways, and some classes (especially monk) REALLY suffer here. A monk giving up 1/4 of their already lackluster damage output is making a huge sacrifice for flavor. A half-orc monk is functionally three whole ASIs behind their Vhuman peer. Why do they need to do that? Because it satisfies the simulationist desires of random people who they don't play with?*

I've played a roll-for-stats tiefling paladin with 13 STR, 12 CON, and 15 CHA. It was 'fine'! But I was weaker than I could be, and the only reason I was okay with this is that as an experienced player I was going to be powerful anyway and I knew how to play around my weaknesses. A newer player is understandably going to be averse to making an intentionally weak character, and for good reason. If you're a newb at a table where the DM is legit trying to kill your PC, you cannot afford to give up basic baby's-first optimization guides.

*The ability mods themselves are effectively arbitrary and don't really mean anything anyway. You'll constantly see threads asking what the difference between strength and constitution is, or what the difference between wisdom and intelligence is. The game could pretty easily do away with ability scores entirely and lose little of value from a simulation perspective (indeed, I'd argue it'd get better)

Rukelnikov

2023-02-04, 05:06 PM

Nobody thinks you need +2 to your main stat to be viable!

Depending on class, you can have an 8 in your main stat and be "viable!"

But if you're giving up a +1/+2 to your main stat, you are objectively going to be weaker in very measurable ways, and some classes (especially monk) REALLY suffer here. A monk giving up 1/4 of their already lackluster damage output is making a huge sacrifice for flavor. A half-orc monk is functionally three whole ASIs behind their Vhuman peer. Why do they need to do that? Because it satisfies the simulationist desires of random people who they don't play with?*

I've played a roll-for-stats tiefling paladin with 13 STR, 12 CON, and 15 CHA. It was 'fine'! But I was weaker than I could be, and the only reason I was okay with this is that as an experienced player I was going to be powerful anyway and I knew how to play around my weaknesses. A newer player is understandably going to be averse to making an intentionally weak character, and for good reason. If you're a newb at a table where the DM is legit trying to kill your PC, you cannot afford to give up basic baby's-first optimization guides.

*The ability mods themselves are effectively arbitrary and don't really mean anything anyway. You'll constantly see threads asking what the difference between strength and constitution is, or what the difference between wisdom and intelligence is. The game could pretty easily do away with ability scores entirely and lose little of value from a simulation perspective (indeed, I'd argue it'd get better)

Because I want my PCs to be Characters, not killing machines (albeit some may be), so being a Half-Orc Necro as a character MEANS having to deal with a lower main stat that you could otherwise have, and that itself is part of the Character, numbers and flavor tend to go hand in hand.

And, sure I could put the +2/+1 somewhere else, and then we are back to 3e where you have to self police yourself, and can't really do whatever the systme allows you, in order to have a character.

strangebloke

2023-02-04, 05:25 PM

JNAProductions

2023-02-04, 05:26 PM

Anymage

2023-02-04, 06:22 PM

Because I want my PCs to be Characters, not killing machines (albeit some may be), so being a Half-Orc Necro as a character MEANS having to deal with a lower main stat that you could otherwise have, and that itself is part of the Character, numbers and flavor tend to go hand in hand.

And, sure I could put the +2/+1 somewhere else, and then we are back to 3e where you have to self police yourself, and can't really do whatever the systme allows you, in order to have a character.

If we assume that half orcs are larger and have heartier builds than other races, I think it's fair to look askance at the half orc wizard who decides that strength is a safe dump stat. Ditto with the gnome fighter who thinks that it's safe to dump intelligence, or the elven paladin who decides to go heavy armor and dump dexterity. That does feel like just digging for the most useful racials. Forcing any of the above to sacrifice prime stat as opposed to "highest stat after the important ones" (keeping in mind that most very few characters leverage more than two or three stats) is a much bigger ask and makes them much less likely to be seen.

Spitballing an idea that just hit me while I was writing this, I wonder how bad an optional rule giving certain races stat minimums might be. The low end and implied medium are kept, while the top end doesn't feel as limited to only the right races.

strangebloke

2023-02-04, 06:36 PM

If we assume that half orcs are larger and have heartier builds than other races, I think it's fair to look askance at the half orc wizard who decides that strength is a safe dump stat.
I mean, no? Not at all.

You can just be a runt. You're a half orc, you grew up with orcs, you had to fight for scraps at the orphanage and you always lost out to the bigger guys, meaning you often went hungry and ended up malnourished and small even compared to a human. Your interest in magic and your efforts to develop your mind flow out of a desire to compensate for your small stature.

like seriously I am begging you guys, exercise a bit of creativity here.

NichG

2023-02-04, 07:13 PM

If we assume that half orcs are larger and have heartier builds than other races, I think it's fair to look askance at the half orc wizard who decides that strength is a safe dump stat. Ditto with the gnome fighter who thinks that it's safe to dump intelligence, or the elven paladin who decides to go heavy armor and dump dexterity. That does feel like just digging for the most useful racials. Forcing any of the above to sacrifice prime stat as opposed to "highest stat after the important ones" (keeping in mind that most very few characters leverage more than three or four stats) is a much bigger ask and makes them much less likely to be seen.

Spitballing an idea that just hit me while I was writing this, I wonder how bad an optional rule giving certain races stat minimums might be. The low end and implied medium are kept, while the top end doesn't feel as limited to only the right races.

I mean, even if you want to do things via stats, there are a lot of other ways to implement stat affinity than modifiers that you couldn't just buy your way out of. For example, automatic advantage on skill checks involving the favored stat and automatic disadvantage on skill checks involving the disfavored stat, but things like attack rolls are left alone. If you've got automatic disadvantage, then even if you raise that stat to a 20 you're going to be a different 20 than someone without that; if you've got automatic advantage, even if you dumpstat to an 8, you're still going to be more consistent than someone without it. Or as a less potent effect, rolls with favored stats have a higher minimum value on the d20 and rolls with disfavored stats have a higher critical failure range. Or getting more interesting, change what stats mean - ability to treat the results of Strength checks to jump as double, ability to make a free Dexterity check each round in order to move an extra 10ft in a given round, ability to gain extra uses of per-long-rest/per-day abilities from Constitution modifier if positive, etc.

Witty Username

2023-02-04, 07:54 PM

Slight aside but I'm happy to be directed to a different resource.
How much does everyone being 20 in main stat by 8 affect the difficulty the dm should be throwing at the table vs say the 18 or even everyone on 16 (players likely taking feats?
I mean let's go basic with fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric L4 and no ones on 18 primary start...does that affect the difficulty the dm should be throwing out there vs the party with 18 or (let's go crazy) 20 in primary stat?

It depends on what you think of as encounter design functioning normally.
If you take that medium encounters should be the norm, and to never use a higher CR monster than the level of the party, then challenge will need to be upped.

If your of the mind that easy and medium encounters are, at best, meant to cause HP damage that may or may not require healing resources. And deadly is meant to be used to provide significant challenge to the party.
20 by 8 is perfectly fine, and should be mildly expected (feats being used, likely will push this down).

Both are given as system expectations in the DMG for encounter design, so dealers choice.

I have personally found the system structures are generally fine with hitting 20 by level 4, and 20 doesn't cause system distress at any level of play (probably why its the cap).

Note if you use the dmg encounter rules as written, you could probably have a party with a stat ceiling of 8 and be fine, it is very conservative in terms of challenge.

JackPhoenix

2023-02-04, 11:15 PM

I mean, no? Not at all.

You can just be a runt. You're a half orc, you grew up with orcs, you had to fight for scraps at the orphanage and you always lost out to the bigger guys, meaning you often went hungry and ended up malnourished and small even compared to a human. Your interest in magic and your efforts to develop your mind flow out of a desire to compensate for your small stature.

like seriously I am begging you guys, exercise a bit of creativity here.

Sure. You can be a runt for an orc or a half-orc. But, by nature of NOT being human, even a runt of an orc is still stronger than a human who grew under the same circumstances, and possibly just as strong as an average human, especially if you aren't rolling and the worse base value you can get is 8.

Of course, if you're rolling for stats, you can be weaker than average human even with +2 Str, but I wouldn't be surprised if rolling for stats was reduced to a variant in D&Done or even removed as an option.

20 by 8 is perfectly fine, and should be mildly expected (feats being used, likely will push this down).

20 at any level puts you above the curve, it's NEVER expected by the system, but it's not gamebreaking.

SpawnOfMorbo

2023-02-04, 11:57 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-05, 01:33 AM

Seems like a lot of effort to say "play my way or get out".

I think adventurers, heroes and villains, are assumed by the base game to be rare among most settings so having a player with a halfling that starts with a 16 or 18 Strength easily, fits right in with that idea.

It's not that every halfling can be that strong, but a PC halfling? Certainly.

Honestly, for years now, I've been thinking of just scrapping the idea of race/species and just letting it be a "pick X number of features, tell me what your race is".

Like, have three columns you get a racial feature from each of the columns so you can mix and match whatever you want.

Sure. If you and your group are happy with cardboard settings. Whatever floats your boat. But as for me and mine, no thanks.

I don't really care about racial modifiers. I'm slightly in their favor, but only slightly. I don't think they're as important on either side as people make them out to be, and I think they add a small amount of flavor. So yeah. Not worth redoing.

That said, I am very strongly on favor of racial restrictions (restricting the set of playable races) and strong racial features and archetyping. The set of races and how they're part of the setting is a huge chunk of world building. Which is very firmly in the DM's, not the player's, hands. So I'm even more opposed to build a bear races than I am even build a bear classes, which I dislike quite a bit.

qube

2023-02-05, 03:03 AM

If worse or as good as human is all we get anyway, fixed ASIs just pigeonhole races into particular classes.quite true, but *point to post 1* that doesn't have to be the case. That's a game design choice.

And likewise, as we've seen with Tasha (where suddenly the free-armor-proficiency dwarves have better features for wizard then yet-another-cantrip - high elves) this isn't an ability score problem - it's an ability problem.

An exceptionally strong Goliath has 20 strength.
An exceptionally strong Elf has 20 strength.
Neither of which are prohibited by the rules, even without taking into account floating ASIs.And I don't disagree with you on that. But I'm talking about Tasha. To quote

if you're a dwarf, your Constitution increases by 2, because dwarf heroes in D&D are often exceptionally tough

Exceptionally tough... compared to whom? if Dwarf commoners get +2 Con, these dwarf hero's would not be exceptionally though - they would be normal. While a dwarf that took +2 Dex instead would be both an exceptionally dexterious dwarf, and weak (as they lack the +2 CON that dwarf commoners have)

No, both of these are bad.I know, and yet

You previously lauded the fact that golaiths get an ability that increases their carrying capacity.
You're against elves having the get +2 DEX - even if pointed out that this would have different game mechanical effects then the current rules.

That does not make sense to me. Carrying capacity is ALSO a number you know. Why do think one is bad and the other isn't?

Repeat after me: Not optimized is NOT the same thing as not viable. Quite true. But that's not a standard. Not always.

When the rest of the people on the table blame you for the TPK, as you're playing a int 15 wizard, they're not saying not saying the character isn't viable - they are saying they feel the character isn't pulling it's weight.

(and mind you - I'm someone who does maths for a hobby: I'm no saying they are neccecairy right. Psychology and maths are not the same thing)

---------------------------

... Oh, and some food for thought : who is the guy in your party that has the best chance to (nonmagically) seduce the princes?

the orc warlock of course*

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/7/7a/GulDan_movie.png

* if he's the only charisma based character of the party

Captain Cap

2023-02-05, 03:20 AM

Rukelnikov

2023-02-05, 06:04 AM

LOL. You are currently arguing that you NEED the system to FORCE your orc to deal LESS DAMAGE and be LESS RESILIENT for the sake of FLAVOR.

How does that work out? Someone help me here.

If I'm creating a Half Orc Necro and intentionally don't make him as good at casting as I could, then as I understand/perceive/play that character, then he didn't put his all in that, there were choices when he went for something else. Then while he could tell others he did his best to be the greatest necro he could, he'd feel that's not true, he could've been a better Necro had he put himself to it, its not the same character.

Optimization and roleplaying are not opposites.

You can have a useless PC played with all the personality of a carrot; and you can have a powered to the nines PC who’s the most memorable character due to their personality and actions.

And that's exactly why not having a +2 in your main stat is unimportant at the end of the day.

Btw, I mostly agree with your second sentence, optimization and good character do not necessarily go hand in hand, but I'd say the process of optimization can often help with the conceptualization of the character

I'm gonna be a shuriken throwing ninja that's secretly a noble, how could I go about this?

I'm gonna have to somehow eventually get magic weaponry, I could go Artificer or Art2/Fighter... Batman? Maybe Shadow Monk/Artificer, BATMAN!

Or maybe go for Kensei's magic weaponry instead of having gadgets? Maybe even cause he rejected gadgets? Or look for something else?

Well, now I'm making important decisions about my character that help refine the original idea.

If we assume that half orcs are larger and have heartier builds than other races, I think it's fair to look askance at the half orc wizard who decides that strength is a safe dump stat. Ditto with the gnome fighter who thinks that it's safe to dump intelligence, or the elven paladin who decides to go heavy armor and dump dexterity. That does feel like just digging for the most useful racials. Forcing any of the above to sacrifice prime stat as opposed to "highest stat after the important ones" (keeping in mind that most very few characters leverage more than two or three stats) is a much bigger ask and makes them much less likely to be seen.

Spitballing an idea that just hit me while I was writing this, I wonder how bad an optional rule giving certain races stat minimums might be. The low end and implied medium are kept, while the top end doesn't feel as limited to only the right races.

The thing is, I completely reject the notion that a character is anything less than capable because they don't have a +2 in their main stat*. Of course my experience playing is very limited compared to the totality of the playerbase, but with some 15-20 different DMs almost all of them adjust the encounters after the first couple adventures to be challenging to the party whatever the power of the party is, if they find the party is bodying everything in its path in the first couple adventures, they will start crankin up the difficulty, and if the party is getting bodied regularly, either the DM is going for that for some reason, or they will tone down encounters a bit.

You could say that they'll be weaker than the other members of the party, and that may very well be the case, but I think that depends much more on the respective builds, is the pre Tasha Half Orc Gloomstalker "weaker" than the Lightfoot Halfling Thief whose racials are tailor made for the class? Well, that will depend on the situation, in most combats I'd expect the Gloomstalker to deliver more damage.

*Maybe in a niche build where the character has a lot of requirements and none align with their racials, like a point buy Rock Gnome Paladin/Ranger (13/15/11+1/8+2/13/13), this would likely be less powerful than the average party members, but its mostly because of the rest of the build, a Half-Elf looks better but it has likely the best statline for something like this (13/15+1/12/8/13+1/12+2), the +1 in Wis could go someplace else for a half feat later on like Res(Con) or something.

20 at any level puts you above the curve, it's NEVER expected by the system, but it's not gamebreaking.

What does "expected by the system" even mean? That the character can go thru the daily combat budget 95% of the time?

Captain Cap

2023-02-05, 09:07 AM

If I'm creating a Half Orc Necro and intentionally don't make him as good at casting as I could, then as I understand/perceive/play that character, then he didn't put his all in that, there were choices when he went for something else.
There doesn't need to be a correspondence between player and character's choices: I can choose my character to be naturally blonde, 2 meters tall etc. things that would be outside the realm of choices of the character itself. Does my half orc start with a 14 in Str instead of 16? Perhaps he was born scrawnier than most. Does he have 10 in Int instead of 14? He may not be as gifted as others, needing to spend much more time and effort to get to the same level, even if he puts his all in it.

Hurrashane

2023-02-05, 09:46 AM

And I don't disagree with you on that. But I'm talking about Tasha. To quote

if you're a dwarf, your Constitution increases by 2, because dwarf heroes in D&D are often exceptionally tough

Exceptionally tough... compared to whom? if Dwarf commoners get +2 Con, these dwarf hero's would not be exceptionally though - they would be normal. While a dwarf that took +2 Dex instead would be both an exceptionally dexterious dwarf, and weak (as they lack the +2 CON that dwarf commoners have)

Key word in the quote is "often". But even still, if you're a hill dwarf you have more HP than non-dwarves with the same con. Dwarf commoners would have 5hp, even a dwarf wizard with a 10 con is tougher than that.

But again, the key word is "often", usually dwarf heroes are exceptionally tough... But they don't need to be.

Psyren

2023-02-05, 02:42 PM

TyGuy

2023-02-05, 04:12 PM

It seems to me that sci fi ttrpgs lean far more heavily into race/ species variety and distinction. Starfinder has such a vast catalog and the differences go so much further than ability scores. Like, some races don't even have limbs or digits. My favorite is the Spathinae. The system does a good job of somehow not going overboard on racial traits, but still backing the narrative with a half dozen characteristics on top of stats.

Another sci fi game, shadowrun, doesn't have an expensive roster of options. In fact, it's more quintessential fantasy than D&D with humans, elves, dwarves, orks, trolls as the main core options. The metatypes, as they're called, open and restrict options. But I bring it up because shadowrun has one of the coolest concepts in the priority system. You have 5 categories during character creation. You have 5 priorities and no repeats. Your metatype will affect your PC more or less depending on what priority you give it. I.e. your dwarfiest dwarf PC will have a A or B metatype priority. For the player that doesn't care or wants to go a different route, they can skip the dwarf perks putting metatype priority low or last.

Envyus

2023-02-05, 05:05 PM

Ability Scores are one of the least unique things about the various species. I think them being made part of Background like the One D&D test has it currently makes the most sense.

The abilities they have are a much better way to make them separate without pidgin-holing them in certain classes and punishing those who want to do something different.

Witty Username

2023-02-05, 09:45 PM

I know, and yet

You previously lauded the fact that golaiths get an ability that increases their carrying capacity.
You're against elves having the get +2 DEX - even if pointed out that this would have different game mechanical effects then the current rules.

That does not make sense to me. Carrying capacity is ALSO a number you know. Why do think one is bad and the other isn't?

I think that this may be better pointed at me. I would actually fit that more as I like powerful build and wouldn't mind seeing more of it, but am pretty fine with +2 strength not being a race thing.
For me it mostly comes to interest.
Ability scores carry some, but not alot of, flavor, and class specific mechanical implications. This means they need to be contained to conform to bounded accuracy. This tends to make ASIs not particularly interesting, and has the tendency of making them unnecessarily restrictive.

Powerful Build is the portion of strength to have the least impact on archetype, but that allows it to be much greater scope (what would your opinion of a race with +15 strength be?). As mentioned it is an area of the game that most hand wave, but as one whose table does not, it has made for some cool moments, (being able to dead lift ~1,200 pounds can dramatically effect approaches to problems).
I generally prefer features to form to the dramatic and alien. Does anyone actually remember that time they didn't miss an attack roll by 1? How about that time you cleared a room of goblins with your dragonborn fire breath?

At least for me, the thing that makes a dragonborn interesting is the dragonbreath, the str and cha bonuses are just fiddling numbers. Now if this was 3.5 where having a +8 strength bonus was just on the table, sure. But 5e isn't equipped to handle that. Given that, I would prefer that races prioritize the features that make them feel unusual, alien, and that change outlooks on problems fundamentally rather than the fiddly numbers.

Kobolds losing sunlight sensitivity and pack tactics, would be an example of a loss of identity for me (culture vs nature is a thing, I personally saw pack tactics as nature in the same way it is for wolves but that is a separate argument), Kobolds loosing the strength penalty barely registester as a change to that identity.

strangebloke

2023-02-05, 11:09 PM

If I'm creating a Half Orc Necro and intentionally don't make him as good at casting as I could, then as I understand/perceive/play that character, then he didn't put his all in that, there were choices when he went for something else. Then while he could tell others he did his best to be the greatest necro he could, he'd feel that's not true, he could've been a better Necro had he put himself to it, its not the same character.

First of all, I wasn't talking about your example, I was talking about a monk. A pre-tasha's half orc monk was terrible. 2 AC lower, 25% lower damage. Even with the other racial benefits you just end up being a clutzy weakling.

And that sucks, it makes little sense. Because while Half-orcs are (maybe) supposed to be dumber than humans, it seems really weird to argue that they're clumsier. Because that's the issue, isn't it? "Lack of an ASI" makes you bad at that ability forever. It's impossible to overcome, and its not even an interesting inhibition. It's just mathematically bad.

Meanwhile, you're acting as though the opportunity to play a nonstandard race while still having good stats is somehow ruining your roleplay. lol.

Ability Scores are one of the least unique things about the various species. I think them being made part of Background like the One D&D test has it currently makes the most sense.

The abilities they have are a much better way to make them separate without pidgin-holing them in certain classes and punishing those who want to do something different.

Yeah, precisely. Goliaths having +2 STR makes them feel strong-ish, but not really more strong than a human or half elf or mountain dwarf or Githzerai. Mathematically, they're all basically the same from that POV, while all races that can get a bonus to STR are mathematically WAY stronger than any race that gets no bonus.

But what makes goliaths feel strong, actually, is that they have resistance to cold, stone's endurance, and powerful build. In terms of raw math these features are not all that signficant compared to +2 STR, but from a fluff perspective they're way more unique and compelling.

Less pigeon holing good. More distinct fluff good.

Absolute win.

LudicSavant

2023-02-05, 11:41 PM

I know, and yet

You previously lauded the fact that golaiths get an ability that increases their carrying capacity.
You're against elves having the get +2 DEX - even if pointed out that this would have different game mechanical effects then the current rules.

That does not make sense to me. Carrying capacity is ALSO a number you know. Why do think one is bad and the other isn't?

This question was directed at Psyren, but as I am also a person who thinks Powerful Build is fine but 5e-style +2 Str mod isn't (either for race or gender), here's why I think that:

Powerful build grants a new feature, but +2 Str changes the cost of an existing feature.

This is a subtle but very important difference from a game design perspective. With Powerful Build, the number of possible flavors actually increases. Now you can be someone who is not merely a person with 20 Str, but *also* Powerful Build.

With +2 Str, on the other hand, the actual amount of feature concepts does not increase -- you're still playing a PC with 8-20 Strength. What happens instead is that if you create 2 characters with 20 Str, they're both equally strong, but the one who didn't play into their race stereotype lost an extra feat in the deal and is underpowered relative to those who *did* play into the stereotype. This is because racial modifiers don't balance out -- for any given 5e class, your primary stat is worth more than your secondary stat is worth more than your tertiary, quaternary, quinary, and senary stats. So if one character gets +2 to primary and -2 to quaternary, that character gets a net positive, while the character who gets +2 to quaternary and -2 to primary gets a net negative. It's objectively inferior. This is especially evident with point buy -- if you get a +2 to a lower priority stat, it'll be worth 2 point buy points. Whereas if you get a +2 to your primary stat, it's worth more than 2 point buy, and might even be worth an ASI besides.

So if we make two characters with the concept "championship level knight" with largely identical capabilities (like Brienne and Jaime) but some designer decides it's a great idea to make Brienne get a Str penalty because she's a girl, then instead of a party with Brienne and Jaime (who are equally capable) you get a party with Jaime and some less capable girl who is not as qualified to be in the party as he is, because she's short a feat.

And why should Brienne be a more expensive character to build than Jaime? Because Brienne is a more unusual example of her gender? Why pay a penalty for unusualness? Usually in game design we cost features by their effectiveness, not their oddness. Why should races or genders be the exception?

Being "more unusual" shouldn't mean being worse.

The kind of character concepts that fixed 5e-style racial modifiers discourage shouldn't be discouraged.

Liquor Box

2023-02-06, 04:23 AM

And why should Brienne be a more expensive character to build than Jaime? Because Brienne is a more unusual example of her gender? Why pay a penalty for unusualness? Usually in game design we cost features by their effectiveness, not their oddness. Why should races or genders be the exception?

Being "more unusual" shouldn't mean being worse.

But, as someone pointed out earlier, the mountain is a more unusual example of his gender (and species) in terms of strength, so he does cost more.

The DnD stats system is based around paying more for having extremely good stats.

Just like in the real world - a woman can run the 100 meters in 11 seconds is in the 100m final at the olympics, a man who runs 110m in 11 seconds is just a fast guy. We celebrate the woman who runs the sub 11 second 100m because she is a more unusual example of her gender than the man who can run the sub 11s 110m. Indeed, she costs (and makes) a lot more than a man of equal speed to sponsor too.

Captain Cap

2023-02-06, 04:56 AM

But, as someone pointed out earlier, the mountain is a more unusual example of his gender (and species) in terms of strength, so he does cost more.
He doesn't cost more because he's unusual, but because he's mechanically stronger.

Bosh

2023-02-06, 05:29 AM

Now if you want to get really evil do:
1. First choose a race.
2. Roll stats IN ORDER.

That'll get you some characters of the sort you don't see very often.

If you want character creation to be a bit more balanced instead of rolling for stats get 18 numerical playing cards and deal out three to each stat (you can tweak the overall power of each character by doing things like removing 1's and adding more higher number cards).

At the end of the day it's pretty goofy to not have half-orcs be weaker than halflings, but it's ALSO goofy that just about EVERY SINGLE half-orc PC has peak strength, etc. etc. There should be a bit of a bell curve with half-orcs averaging higher than halflings, but instead you get just about every half-orc being a vast mountain of muscle even by half-orc standards etc. etc.

LudicSavant

2023-02-06, 06:25 AM

But, as someone pointed out earlier, the mountain is a more unusual example of his gender (and species) in terms of strength, so he does cost more.

The reason Gregor should cost more is because he's stronger, not because he's more unusual.

Brienne and Jaime are of equal effectiveness, so should cost the same. Their "unusualness for their gender" should not be a relevant variable to how much their features cost.

He doesn't cost more because he's unusual, but because he's mechanically stronger.

Exactly.

Liquor Box

2023-02-06, 06:43 AM

He doesn't cost more because he's unusual, but because he's mechanically stronger.

Those are the same things - he is a more extreme example of strength

Brienne and Jaime are of equal effectiveness, so should cost the same. Their "unusualness for their gender" should not be a relevant variable to how much their features cost.

When you use the word 'should', you are just stating your opinion, not giving a reason for it.

What are your reasons for thinking possibly the strongest woman in the world shouldn't cost as much as possibly the strongest man? Why should absolute strength matter more than how strong they are relative to their species (or gender)?

Aimeryan

2023-02-06, 07:01 AM

First of all, I wasn't talking about your example, I was talking about a monk. A pre-tasha's half orc monk was terrible. 2 AC lower, 25% lower damage. Even with the other racial benefits you just end up being a clutzy weakling.

And that sucks, it makes little sense. Because while Half-orcs are (maybe) supposed to be dumber than humans, it seems really weird to argue that they're clumsier. Because that's the issue, isn't it? "Lack of an ASI" makes you bad at that ability forever. It's impossible to overcome, and its not even an interesting inhibition. It's just mathematically bad.

Meanwhile, you're acting as though the opportunity to play a nonstandard race while still having good stats is somehow ruining your roleplay. lol.

Yeah, precisely. Goliaths having +2 STR makes them feel strong-ish, but not really more strong than a human or half elf or mountain dwarf or Githzerai. Mathematically, they're all basically the same from that POV, while all races that can get a bonus to STR are mathematically WAY stronger than any race that gets no bonus.

But what makes goliaths feel strong, actually, is that they have resistance to cold, stone's endurance, and powerful build. In terms of raw math these features are not all that signficant compared to +2 STR, but from a fluff perspective they're way more unique and compelling.

Less pigeon holing good. More distinct fluff good.

Absolute win.

This really comes down to two opposing desires:
1) Play any race/species, any class, no difference.
2) Synergistic race/species and class combinations, with good choices and bad choices.

Neither is right or wrong objectively. 5e seems to be leaning towards the former more and more; is this the goal for WotC? Maybe, or maybe they are just bad at accomplishing what the goal is. If this is the goal, then their current approach is not 'broken' - although they could still improve by taking away any unique features that are race/species specific and fully realise that goal.

If this is not their goal, then threads like this may help them (unlikely, but who knows?).

On a side note, this is not a roleplay vs non-roleplay argument. Both paths encourage roleplay in different directions. The first encourages a 'nothing is holding you back' roleplay and if you want to be a Halfling Barbarian pushing back the strongest Half-Orc Barbarian in a contest of strength, then why not? The second encourages a 'working with your strengths and covering your weaknesses' roleplay, where you don't try to win a contest of strength as a Halfing Barbarian against the strongest Half-Orc Barbarian, instead you sneak to the side and stab them. Both paths have their own roleplay - neither is superior objectively. The only issue is that you kind of can't have both - either that Halfling can be as strong as the strongest Half-Orc, or they can't. Either they are forced to work with what they have, or they aren't.

Captain Cap

2023-02-06, 07:12 AM

Those are the same things
They're not, because an unusually weak character does not cost more.

When you use the word 'should', you are just stating your opinion, not giving a reason for it.

What are your reasons for thinking possibly the strongest woman in the world shouldn't cost as much as possibly the strongest man? Why should absolute strength matter more than how strong they are relative to their species (or gender)?
She already gave you a reason, and it's gameplay: the strongest woman in the world shouldn't cost as much as the strongest man because she would have lower in-game benefits than the latter.

Attributes points are not a thing in the real world, the possibility of spending them how you want has no basis in reality or fiction, they are just a game currency that you spend to obtain in-game effects.

Liquor Box

2023-02-06, 07:13 AM

This really comes down to two opposing desires:
1) Play any race/species, any class, no difference.
2) Synergistic race/species and class combinations, with good choices and bad choices.

Neither is right or wrong objectively. 5e seems to be leaning towards the former more and more; is this the goal for WotC? Maybe, or maybe they are just bad at accomplishing what the goal is. If this is the goal, then their current approach is not 'broken' - although they could still improve by taking away any unique features that are race/species specific and fully realise that goal.

If this is not their goal, then threads like this may help them (unlikely, but who knows?).

On a side note, this is not a roleplay vs non-roleplay argument. Both paths encourage roleplay in different directions. The first encourages a 'nothing is holding you back' roleplay and if you want to be a Halfling Barbarian pushing back the strongest Half-Orc Barbarian in a contest of strength, then why not? The second encourages a 'working with your strengths and covering your weaknesses' roleplay, where you don't try to win a contest of strength as a Halfing Barbarian against the strongest Half-Orc Barbarian, instead you sneak to the side and stab them. Both paths have their own roleplay - neither is superior objectively. The only issue is that you kind of can't have both - either that Halfling can be as strong as the strongest Half-Orc, or they can't. Either they are forced to work with what they have, or they aren't.

Good post, I agree. But still fun to talk about.

Captain Cap

2023-02-06, 07:22 AM

Aimeryan

2023-02-06, 07:37 AM

There's another camp: make race and class combinations different without unequivocally good/bad choices.

I would still put this as part of the second; the choice will be good or bad depending on your goal for the build. Consider a race that makes melee stronger, and pair this with say the Fighter. Is this a good race and class combination? That depends - do you want to focus on melee or ranged? If the latter, then its bad. If the former, then its good.

Ideally, this should be the case for all race/species and class combinations - all work in some way, but HOW they work makes them good or bad for different builds. The problem here is that this would also require classes can be played in all ways, with feats and subclasses leaning in different directions. Certainly this is the case to some extent, but sometimes there is only say one path for the class that accomplishes this and it just isn't good - which makes the overall race/species and class combination bad even if it synergises.

Psyren

2023-02-06, 10:52 AM

This really comes down to two opposing desires:
1) Play any race/species, any class, no difference.
2) Synergistic race/species and class combinations, with good choices and bad choices.

Nobody is advocating for "no difference." Of course different species playing the same class should have differences. And I'd argue that nobody wants there to be "bad choices" either. Some choices being better or worse than others, comparatively, is reasonable - but not being clearly or objectively "bad," there's still a baseline level of effectiveness that every species should be able to hit.

For example, picking Eladrin for your Warlock arguably gives it more interesting tactical options than picking Orc. But the Orc (a) isn't a bad choice for Warlock, and (b) gets a couple of interesting tactics of its own, especially for a Hexblade or Celestial.

Aimeryan

2023-02-06, 11:47 AM

Nobody is advocating for "no difference." Of course different species playing the same class should have differences. And I'd argue that nobody wants there to be "bad choices" either. Some choices being better or worse than others, comparatively, is reasonable - but not being clearly or objectively "bad," there's still a baseline level of effectiveness that every species should be able to hit.

For example, picking Eladrin for your Warlock arguably gives it more interesting tactical options than picking Orc. But the Orc (a) isn't a bad choice for Warlock, and (b) gets a couple of interesting tactics of its own, especially for a Hexblade or Celestial.

Choices that are poorer than other choices are bad choices, relatively. The absolute values do not matter, this is still the case. As mentioned up above, these choices may be entirely build dependent, with a race/species and class combination being good for one type of build and bad for another type of build. I think many players want choices to matter, and many players who just want to build whatever combination they want without being penalised. This is why there are two divisions.

The worst case scenario in my opinion is to still have differences that make certain races/species and class non-optimal, but for these differences to be minor - it doesn't really work for either camp. Its not a compromise, its the worst of both. People are still penalised, while the choice feels very unsatisfying and does not encourage figuring out how to best work with the result. Its an irritant rather than a useful feature.

strangebloke

2023-02-06, 12:23 PM

In general, I would say that the goal should be to make every race as mechanically interesting as possible. Whether something is 'interesting' or not is subjective, but in general I would say that a race that is good for several classes while also being very different from other races that are good for those classes should be the goal.

One of my favorite races is the tortle. Objectively, not remotely overpowered, but it allows you to play certain classes (druid, monk, cleric) in new ways, and people still bring it up now and again./

The problem with fixed-stat modifiers is that they're both

very mechanically important.
very standardized and not particularly distinctive.

So looking at the PHB races, dragonborn, half-orcs, mountain dwarves, humans, and half elves all could get bonuses to strength, which made all of them good as barbarians or strength fighters. They are all way better for such builds/classes than the alternatives. Dragonborn make WAY better barbarians than wood elves under the PHB rules, in spite of being much weaker overall.

But all these "good barbarian races" are good for the same reason. They good because of the bonus to strength. for different reasons. A barbarian doesn't actually want the (non-strength) features that a half-orc or dragonborn has. Mechanically speaking, playing a half-orc doesn't feel very different from playing a half-elf that put its modifier into strength. Things like brutal critical and standing up at 1 hp and sleep immunity don't come up much overall.

And that's bad. These races are very boring, and concepts that could be fun are much mechanically worse for no real reason. Something like a wood elf being so much worse than a half elf, while the half elf is just as good as a half orc, is pretty hard to justify on the basis of fluff, and the mechanical reasons for this are boring as heck.

I'll also note that speaking for myself, I've seen a LOT of vhumans and half-elves at my table over the years. Those races having floating modifiers made them easy to slot into any build.

The Tasha's solution here is simple: make every race have floating modifiers, so that race choice is guided by their non-ASI features, and then make those non-ASI features really strong and distinctive. And though I was skeptical at first...

Look, compare the Fizban's dragonborn to the PHB dragonborn. Can you seriously tell me that you'd ever prefer the PHB dragonborn? And the Fizban's dragonborn isn't even OP, its just good and has interesting abilities.

AND its more in keeping with the lore, since Dragonborn aren't supposed to all be big muscly half-orc lookalikes.

Psyren

2023-02-06, 12:45 PM

Choices that are poorer than other choices are bad choices, relatively. The absolute values do not matter, this is still the case.

The absolute values do matter, and the fact that you think they don't is why we're unable to come to any kind of compromise on this. A big part of what we (those of us who want ability modifiers decoupled from species) want is a floor that is higher than a fixed ability score penalty and a ceiling that is below a fixed ability score bonus. Reattaching those, or their equivalents, to a given species to make it strictly better or strictly worse than all other options with that modifier as their key ability is the nonstarter here. As strangebloke mentioned, your key ability is "very mechanically important" (absolute value) in a way that something like increased carrying capacity or even counting as a size larger for specific calculations is not.

As mentioned up above, these choices may be entirely build dependent, with a race/species and class combination being good for one type of build and bad for another type of build. I think many players want choices to matter, and many players who just want to build whatever combination they want without being penalised. This is why there are two divisions.

No, this is still the same false dichotomy that you and others insist on perpetuating. My presence in the "Not wanting to be penalized by absolute values" camp does not mean I don't "want choices to matter." I can and do have both in a post-Tasha's/MPMM world. Just because choosing to play an Orc Warlock is not penalizing me mathematically over an Eladrin one anymore, does not mean the choice between the two doesn't have any impact. An even cursory read of the features they get proves that belief to be false.

Slipjig

2023-02-06, 01:29 PM

Nobody is advocating for "no difference." Of course different species playing the same class should have differences. And I'd argue that nobody wants there to be "bad choices" either. Some choices being better or worse than others, comparatively, is reasonable - but not being clearly or objectively "bad," there's still a baseline level of effectiveness that every species should be able to hit.

For example, picking Eladrin for your Warlock arguably gives it more interesting tactical options than picking Orc. But the Orc (a) isn't a bad choice for Warlock, and (b) gets a couple of interesting tactics of its own, especially for a Hexblade or Celestial.

That's kind of my thought on the whole thing. A +1 on your primary stat isn't honestly THAT big of a deal unless you are playing at a fairly-high-optimization table. And if you ARE playing at a high-optimization table where it's important that you pull your own weight, then make optimized choices.

Street Racing Game Player: I wanna drive an Edsel, because it's unique and different and I want to play against type!
Devs: Sure, here's an Edsel.
<Two minutes later>
Player: Why can't my Edsel keep up with the other players' Lambos?!? This is BULLS--T!

JackPhoenix

2023-02-06, 01:39 PM

The Tasha's solution here is simple: make every race have floating modifiers, so that race choice is guided by their non-ASI features, and then make those non-ASI features really strong and distinctive. And though I was skeptical at first...

That's the thing: Trasha DOES have a solution, and applying it cost nothing. Not listing fixed ASIs for new races is pure laziness on WotC's art, whoever wants to give them floating ASIs at their table is free to do so.

strangebloke

2023-02-06, 02:01 PM

That's kind of my thought on the whole thing. A +1 on your primary stat isn't honestly THAT big of a deal unless you are playing at a fairly-high-optimization table. And if you ARE playing at a high-optimization table where it's important that you pull your own weight, then make optimized choices.

Street Racing Game Player: I wanna drive an Edsel, because it's unique and different and I want to play against type!
Devs: Sure, here's an Edsel.
<Two minutes later>
Player: Why can't my Edsel keep up with the other players' Lambos?!? This is BULLS--T!
Yeah but a half-orc monk isn't "off meta" or "unique" it just sucks in the most boring possible way (having lower numbers)

With Tasha's rules Half-Orcs still aren't as good at being monks as other races, but they are a lot better than they were.

Meanwhile the optimizers get more options than just "play or tabax, wood elf... or just go vhuman/half elf again." Wood Elves and Tabaxi are really good still, but you can also play a mountain dwarf or goliath or bugbear or githzerai or dragonborn and be very strong while also being unique.

So the floor is a lot higher and there's a lot more diversity at the top level. Seems like an unmettled win?

That's the thing: Trasha DOES have a solution, and applying it cost nothing. Not listing fixed ASIs for new races is pure laziness on WotC's art, whoever wants to give them floating ASIs at their table is free to do so.

First of all, Tasha's didn't print new races so I'm not sure what you're on about.

As to other new races (fizbans dragonborn, owlkin, hobgoblins, MMOM races) I think the fact that you even need fixed ASIs listed for you rather underlines how arbitrary and stupid they are. If fixed ability mods actually correlated to something meaningful in the fluff, you wouldn't need fixed ASIs because you'd look at an autognome and go "oh obviously they get bonuses to int and wis" and it wouldn't be up for debate.

But you can't do that because fixed ability mods are completely arbitrary and don't really correspond to anything int the fluff.

Captain Cap

2023-02-06, 02:42 PM

That's the thing: Trasha DOES have a solution, and applying it cost nothing. Not listing fixed ASIs for new races is pure laziness on WotC's art, whoever wants to give them floating ASIs at their table is free to do so.
Not all stats are created equal. As long as this itself isn't changed, you can't have races that are balanced against each other both with fixed and floating ASIs.

Liquor Box

2023-02-06, 05:45 PM

Psyren

2023-02-06, 06:09 PM

Do you think each main race should be good at several classes or all classes? Because I've seen a few complaints in this thread that half-orcs (with fixed stats) aren't good at one particular class.

The only class I can really think of that the new Orc doesn't get as much out of is Rogue, and that's simply because Cunning Action Dash is somewhat redundant with Adrenaline Rush... and even then, AR has benefits over the former. The Orc's other features benefit a rogue quite beautifully too; Darkvision for sneaking around, Relentless Endurance to feign death in a dangerous situation, even Powerful Build to help you haul loot better than you could otherwise etc.

JackPhoenix

2023-02-06, 06:22 PM

First of all, Tasha's didn't print new races so I'm not sure what you're on about.

I never said it did.

As to other new races (fizbans dragonborn, owlkin, hobgoblins, MMOM races) I think the fact that you even need fixed ASIs listed for you rather underlines how arbitrary and stupid they are. If fixed ability mods actually correlated to something meaningful in the fluff, you wouldn't need fixed ASIs because you'd look at an autognome and go "oh obviously they get bonuses to int and wis" and it wouldn't be up for debate.

But you can't do that because fixed ability mods are completely arbitrary and don't really correspond to anything int the fluff.

No, I can't do that because I don't give crap about new races. If I did, perhaps I could figure out what ASI they should have. Assuming they had anything to work with in the first place... there's barely any fluff for them.

strangebloke

2023-02-06, 06:34 PM

Do you think each main race should be good at several classes or all classes? Because I've seen a few complaints in this thread that half-orcs (with fixed stats) aren't good at one particular class.

I think that fixed ability mods

pigeonhole races into certain classes (half-orcs are only really good as barbarians and strength paladins/fighters)
Make certain classes (particularly MAD classes like monk) have very few truly good options
are really boring and don't actually serve to differentiate races to a useful or mechanically interesting degree.

"how strong is a half orc?"
"functionally, as strong as a strong half-elf."
"How strong is a tiefling?"
"as strong as a halfling."

No, I can't do that because I don't give crap about new races. If I did, perhaps I could figure out what ASI they should have. Assuming they had anything to work with in the first place... there's barely any fluff for them.
You've talked about races in "trashas" (which had no new races in it) said that you don't care about new releases, but are angry that they don't have fixed ASIs, but could easily figure out what they should be, if you cared/they had good lore.

Kinda hard to follow here. :smallconfused:

But really, how good were the fixed ASIs at following the 'lore'? Dwarves having CON bonuses and Elves having DEX bonuses, sure. Strong half-orcs. But from there it gets murky.

Dragonborn in 3.5 were a template that could have any base states but had a bonus to CON and a malus to CHA, to reflect the process of their transformation leaving them hardened but also physically awkward. So logically you'd assume a CON bonus and a floating ASI, or somethingg similar in 5e. Instead they get STR and CHA because.... paladins? Sorcerer? It's a bit hard to parse, to be honest.

Tieflings had a malus to CHA in 3.5, to reflect that they were hated and feared, but in 5e they get a large bonus? Because horns are sexy? Or because wotc wanted them to be be warlocks IG? (nevermind that warlocks being CHA-based makes little sense based on lore...)

And of course gnomes did have a bonus to CON in 3.5 and some gnomes do now, but how much sense does that make? You're extra hardy despite being 3 feet tall?

Any actual examination of the fixed ASIs that most of these races actually has leads to the conclusion that an awful lot of these decisions were pretty much arbitrary and had large mechanical impacts for no real reason. And the net effect was that most people just played humans or half elves. It was just easier.

NichG

2023-02-06, 08:13 PM

Do you think each main race should be good at several classes or all classes? Because I've seen a few complaints in this thread that half-orcs (with fixed stats) aren't good at one particular class.

The ideal would be that for each race/class combo, you would find players and corresponding builds and campaign contexts such that those players would say 'this is the best race for me to use in this build' and, if you were to shuffle the mechanics and fluff, those players would still say that about wherever the mechanics ended up landing.

Hard to universally achieve, but that would be the thing to aim for for me.

Liquor Box

2023-02-06, 10:54 PM

I think that fixed ability mods

pigeonhole races into certain classes (half-orcs are only really good as barbarians and strength paladins/fighters)

So paladins, barbarians and. Sounds like the pre-Tasha's half orc does have several class options.

Make certain classes (particularly MAD classes like monk) have very few truly good options

They all have lots of options. Do you mean options where they get a bonus to their most important ability score? That is meant to make a race stand out at a certain class - you shouldn't look at it so you cannot play the class without it.

are really boring and don't actually serve to differentiate races to a useful or mechanically interesting degree.

This one is obviously subjective, but can you explain what you mean differentiate them to a useful of mechanically interesting extent? Because it seems to me that the fact you think certain races are not suitable for certain classes means they are differentiated (if not in a way you personally think is interesting).

"how strong is a half orc?"
"functionally, as strong as a strong half-elf."
"How strong is a tiefling?"
"as strong as a halfling."

Yeah, seems silly right.

The ideal would be that for each race/class combo, you would find players and corresponding builds and campaign contexts such that those players would say 'this is the best race for me to use in this build' and, if you were to shuffle the mechanics and fluff, those players would still say that about wherever the mechanics ended up landing.

Hard to universally achieve, but that would be the thing to aim for for me.

I don't think that's a universal perspective (I know you are not saying it is) - some game designs deliberately restrict class access - DnD 1e and 2e did it, and it's not uncommon to have the dwarves are incompatible with magic trope.

A couple of questions. First, do you think that each class /race combo needs to be equally (or similarly) powerful. So would it bother you if you could make a gnome fighter which was viable, but it was still less well optimised than an orc fighter. Or an orc wizard is possible, but is less optimised than an elf wizard?

Second, do you think your preference for each class combo to be viable is the overriding factor? Or do you think it needs to be balanced against each race being meaningfully and mechanically different from one another, as well as avoiding the sillyness of small races being as strong as big races?

Psyren

2023-02-07, 12:03 AM

"how strong is a half orc adventurer?"
"functionally, as strong as a strong half-elf adventurer."
"How strong is a tiefling adventurer?"
"as strong as a halfling adventurer."

Yeah, seems silly right.

Not with the edit for precision, no.

NichG

2023-02-07, 12:37 AM

I don't think that's a universal perspective (I know you are not saying it is) - some game designs deliberately restrict class access - DnD 1e and 2e did it, and it's not uncommon to have the dwarves are incompatible with magic trope.

A couple of questions. First, do you think that each class /race combo needs to be equally (or similarly) powerful. So would it bother you if you could make a gnome fighter which was viable, but it was still less well optimised than an orc fighter. Or an orc wizard is possible, but is less optimised than an elf wizard?

Well, part of the reason I phrase it the way I do is to get away from the sense that every character can be summarized as a single number which is 'how powerful are they', because if you do that then it becomes difficult to actually see how you might design this.

I like to use Path of Exile as an example of a game (CRPG, yes) that has a huge diversity of builds, because there are multiple factors that can't be reduced into a single scalar power, and its relatively easy to see how those come about. I would say that the four main practical factors in a PoE character are: survivability, clear speed, DPS, and cost. If I'm playing a new league I will generally end up making 3-4 different characters in order to cover these bases. I need a fast clearing character to get currency and drops effectively and unlock maps, I need a high survivability character for certain special game modes like Delve as well as for things where the cost of dying is multiple hours of gameplay, I need a high DPS character for special bosses and endgame content, and I need these things at both a 'low cost' level as well as a 'high cost' level - the low cost level to act as a league starter, and the high cost level to hit higher peaks as I gain resources. So that's between 4 to 6 characters.

On top of that, different 'main attacks' have very different aesthetics of play. I can make a character who is relatively weak but is basically a walking simulator - they automatically kill things around them on-hit and on-kill and chain effects. I can make one-button characters, characters with complicated flask sequences and need to self-buff or react to situations with different active abilities, etc. I can make characters whose playstyle is that they have a 'rev up' period and then they sustain power for 30 seconds, or characters who summon armies and then mostly just buff their minions and keep themselves alive. Single-target absolute blenders, or characters who wipe out screens of weak mobs at a time and have to change to a high damage option against bosses, etc.

So rather than saying 'a gnome fighter has to be as powerful as an orc fighter', I want to instead say that, for some combination of purpose and plan and aesthetic of play and campaign context (low level, high level, low gear, high gear), I should feel like I would be worse off if I accepted an offer from the GM to keep the fluff of the gnome but get the orc's mechanics instead.

Maybe my personal aesthetics of play will never favor the gnome and every single time I'll do orc fighter. That's okay, so long as for some other set of players, their aesthetics of play go the other way around.

Second, do you think your preference for each class combo to be viable is the overriding factor? Or do you think it needs to be balanced against each race being meaningfully and mechanically different from one another, as well as avoiding the sillyness of small races being as strong as big races?

Its less about viability or silliness and more about what exactly 'meaningful diversity' should (IMO) mean. Having a bunch of things which are different in fluff but which play the same isn't really engaging with diversity, its avoiding the question - at that point, better just do all-human IMO. Having a bunch of things which are basically forced choices if you care at all about optimizing to your own purposes fails to actually be diverse - if you play a fighter you play the best race for fighters, etc. The path through the paradox is to have differences which do matter and strongly, but which matter differently to different players because they catch on to different things you could try to be optimizing for.

RedWarlock

2023-02-07, 01:07 AM

Honestly, I think it's because inter-score balance is busted, and the classes have received nowhere near the polish in design that would allow the stats and racial abilities to be more balanced for a wider variety of cases (including atypical arrays, broad-spreads and valid secondary stat ideals), so instead the designers went to a default of treating the races all the same, in terms of how their abilities (both stats/bonuses and intangibles) interacted with the class abilities.

I think the designers took the easy way out, and that put the onus of viability onto the races, which was exacerbated by the current social trend of looking at game-races with an eye to player diversity. Things like, if a race already has a swim speed, or darkvision, or armor proficiency, then a class ability recreates it, that whole feature is wasted, when they could've added a minor line that gives that bonus some further benefit for the overlap, like an improved value (as w/ swim/darkvision), or stacking further benefits. That kind of stuff being missing just makes the whole system feel lazily designed.

Witty Username

2023-02-07, 02:37 AM

But really, how good were the fixed ASIs at following the 'lore'? Dwarves having CON bonuses and Elves having DEX bonuses, sure. Strong half-orcs. But from there it gets murky.

My personal preferred example is Drow, prior editions and current setting stuff get into drow have long practiced and affinity to magic, along with the elite classes of their society being Clerics and Wizards along with this. So one would expect an int or wis bonus, 3.5 did some gender dimorphism with favored classes being wizard for male drow (excluded from the clergy) and Cleric for female drow (part of the clergy of Loth, or a disappointment to ones family). And they get Cha, for the noble reason, that high elf got Int and Wood elf got Wis, and that left Cha for drow.

On this note, if you want to use fixed ASIs at table, floating ASIs still has some benefits as a DM tool, if you see the stats of different races as off base, or correct with some caveats. Like say if you think elves should have a strength bonus instead of a mental stat (they are supposed to be good with longswords aren't they?). Alternatively, you can use it to tailor world-building, (Dragonborn will have an int bonus instead of cha, because we are repurposing the race a bit for this world).

But now we are at the phase of this conversation, fixed ASI tables lose nothing, floating ASI tables gain utility, and fixed ASI with addendums gets a balance is probably fine token from the Dev team. Even if ones preference is fixed, the game is benefited by the shift as it harms no one, and provides an additional point of utility.

qube

2023-02-07, 08:08 AM

Maybe because the latter makes the character unequivocally better at insert class than others,Well, that's my point. What you describe is a game mechanical effect.

As pointed out in post 1 (and various times in this thread), I'm advocating that this would not longer be the case. Regardless if you make
a warlock who maxed INT or CHA
a wizard who maxed INT or CON
a fighter who maxed STR or DEX
Your attack, damage, AC, init and DC would be the same (presuming both builds take the same combat style scores).

for any given 5e class, your primary stat is worth more than your secondary stat is worth more than your tertiary, quaternary, quinary, and senary stats.Quite true. Now - I'd say attack, damage modifier, DC, etc ... is what determines what is a classes primairy, ... stats? :smallwink:

So if we make two characters with the concept "championship level knight" with largely identical capabilities (like Brienne and Jaime) but some designer decides it's a great idea to make Brienne get a Str penalty because she's a girl, then instead of a party with Brienne and Jaime (who are equally capable) you get a party with Jaime and some less capable girl who is not as qualified to be in the party as he is, because she's short a feat.

And why should Brienne be a more expensive character to build than Jaime? Because Brienne is a more unusual example of her gender?If I note, (arguably)
Brienne & Jaime are equally capable
Brienne & The mountain who are equally exceptional (both significantly stronger indivduals compared to their respective group)
But also
The Viper & The mountain also equally capable - despite the mountain being significantly stronger.
I wouldn't be surprized if Brienne was stronger then The Viper. And that's what I advocate: that this OK - that doesn't mean Brienne, or The Viper, should be less capable fighters then The Mountain. In a fight, people use their own strengths.

if you found a similarly inconsequential way to represent elven grace I would evaluate that in similar fashion, but ability scores and modifiers ain't it as Captain Cap stated.so ... *points to post 1 of this thread* ... like that?

Again, if you're against elves getting +2 DEX as the game is now - I 100% get that. To quote

Imagine you want to make Auroth, a brutal Orc Sorcerer.
Orcs don't get the sorcerer casting stat? too bad for you.

At least for me, the thing that makes a dragonborn interesting is the dragonbreath, the str and cha bonuses are just fiddling numbers. Now if this was 3.5 where having a +8 strength bonus was just on the table, sure. But 5e isn't equipped to handle that. one of my fav characters was a lvl 1 fighter half-dragon with a lvl 4 party :)

But more then that, while in default 5E, +8 STR is indeed OP, ... looking at post 1, they idea of +8 strength, while powerful, doesn't seem ... THAT overpowered. (vs a default +2 STR race, it ends up a +3 difference on strength saves and skills.)

Psyren

2023-02-07, 10:20 AM

so ... *points to post 1 of this thread* ... like that?

You mean the convoluted mess of complexity for complexity's sake that still results in race X being strictly better at class X than race Y?

No. Not like that.

strangebloke

2023-02-07, 10:29 AM

So paladins, barbarians and. Sounds like the pre-Tasha's half orc does have several class options.
3, maybe 4 classes that a given race is actually good for is not some stunning example of flexibility.

They all have lots of options. Do you mean options where they get a bonus to their most important ability score? That is meant to make a race stand out at a certain class - you shouldn't look at it so you cannot play the class without it.

This one is obviously subjective, but can you explain what you mean differentiate them to a useful of mechanically interesting extent? Because it seems to me that the fact you think certain races are not suitable for certain classes means they are differentiated (if not in a way you personally think is interesting).

You say that ability scores are "meant to make a race stand out"

But objectively they don't. WRT strength, for example, you either have a bonus or you don't. All races either (can) have a bonus to STR, or can't. A Half-Orc isn't stronger than a mountain dwarf or half elf or human or bugbear or goliath. Meanwhile everything that doesn't have that modifier is also the same. Gnomes are as strong as elves are as strong as tabaxi are as strong as halflings, etc.

Fixed ability scores create two categories of race, for any given stat: those that have a bonus to the stat, and those who don't. Dividing every race into two categories doesn't make them distinctive. There's no differentiation among the halves.

What post-tasha's has been done, is to throw away fixed ability scores as a source of distinctiveness AND REPLACE IT WITH OTHER FEATURES.

Look at PHB dragonborn. Look at Fizban's Dragonborn. Tell me with a straight face that the Fizban's Dragonborn is less interesting. Tell me that the MMOM Goliath is less interesting than the EE version.

Yeah, seems silly right.
Dude, that was literally all true in the player's hand book.

If I note, (arguably)
Brienne & Jaime are equally capable
Brienne & The mountain who are equally exceptional (both significantly stronger indivduals compared to their respective group)
But also
The Viper & The mountain also equally capable - despite the mountain being significantly stronger.
I wouldn't be surprized if Brienne was stronger then The Viper. And that's what I advocate: that this OK - that doesn't mean Brienne, or The Viper, should be less capable fighters then The Mountain. In a fight, people use their own strengths.

Come on dude, you don't actually think that someone getting +2 to DEX or whatever compensates for not getting a +2 to their main stat.

It's obvious that in a version of DND where men get a bonus to strength and women don't, Brienne would be a deeply suboptimal build. And while that might make sense in a system that's intended to reflect the unforgiving and brutal world of westeros, it makes very little sense in DND, a system which has an aesthetic that I'd generally describe as "woo woo flashy magic explodey bang woo bang slash"

But more then that, while in default 5E, +8 STR is indeed OP, ... looking at post 1, they idea of +8 strength, while powerful, doesn't seem ... THAT overpowered. (vs a default +2 STR race, it ends up a +3 difference on strength saves and skills.)
I mean partially that's because STR sucks, but no.

Someone with (functionally) a +3 magic greatsword out the gate? I've let someone build this character. He destroyed every encounter unless he got CC'd to oblivion, and his damage was good enough that he could load up on feats that made it hard to CC him.

Its "fine" because a dumb STR fighter is basically never breaking the game, but do this with DEX or WIS and the problem gets way more severe.

qube

2023-02-07, 12:42 PM

You mean the convoluted mess of complexity for complexity's sake that still results in race X being strictly better at class X than race Y?No, post 1 of this thread.

Considering it's not convoluted, nor complex, nor for complexity's sake - I can only conclude you're looking at something else.

But just in case you were looking at the first post of this thread, and you found something too complex, you are free to point it out, so I can explain it - and even maybe edit it in the first post.

Come on dude, you don't actually think that someone getting +2 to DEX or whatever compensates for not getting a +2 to their main stat.Oh no, I 100% agree. Because "+2 to their main stat", is not just +1 to save & skills, but also to attack & damage (or spells DCs, or ...)

so ... that's where I got the idea: what if that "attack & damage (or spells DCs, or ...)" thing from the previous sentence ... would no longer be tied to the 6 existing ability scores, but a new set:
the 6 ability score describe a character natural attributes (strength, intelligence, ...)
another set of scores that allowing you to determine your fighting style. (do you focus on attacks, on the DC of your abilities, on your AC, etc ...)

As you state yourself: the problem with +8 STR vs +2 STR, basically is that they get a "free +3 greatsword" - a free +3 to attack & damage. Which is ONLY the case, as long as attack & damage work on strength.

If attack no longer works on strength ... then suddenly the entire game of throne cast becomes a possibility:

Brienne of Tarth - could combine her focus (wisdom) & strength
Jamie Lansiter - could combine strength with charisma
Stannis Baratheon - could be a high intelligence character, where you flavor his capability by knowing 1001 strategies & sword techniques; and of course, corring people's grammar
Jon Snow - could be an all round character - some strength, consitution, wisdom & charisma.
Oberyn Martell - could be one who combines dexterity and charisma

As DnD is now, these characters don't get made, because the "spellcasting ability score", the "attack ability score", ... are ability scores. Whatever you attack ability score is (STR for fighters, INT for wizards, CHA for sorcerers) ... you get pushed to maximize that. If you don't - you miss out on that "+3 greatsword" ... meaning, every fighter ends up as The Mountain.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/62/55/9d/62559dcffc5ba8370d9c681bd42aee16.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dw3DZrNX4AAnMDQ?format=jpg&name=medium
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/480/271/851.png

Dr.Samurai

2023-02-07, 01:27 PM

Aimeryan

2023-02-07, 02:09 PM

The absolute values do matter, and the fact that you think they don't is why we're unable to come to any kind of compromise on this. A big part of what we (those of us who want ability modifiers decoupled from species) want is a floor that is higher than a fixed ability score penalty and a ceiling that is below a fixed ability score bonus. Reattaching those, or their equivalents, to a given species to make it strictly better or strictly worse than all other options with that modifier as their key ability is the nonstarter here. As strangebloke mentioned, your key ability is "very mechanically important" (absolute value) in a way that something like increased carrying capacity or even counting as a size larger for specific calculations is not.

No, this is still the same false dichotomy that you and others insist on perpetuating. My presence in the "Not wanting to be penalized by absolute values" camp does not mean I don't "want choices to matter." I can and do have both in a post-Tasha's/MPMM world. Just because choosing to play an Orc Warlock is not penalizing me mathematically over an Eladrin one anymore, does not mean the choice between the two doesn't have any impact. An even cursory read of the features they get proves that belief to be false.

You are getting fixated on the specifics of how things are now and making any position as adjacent to this, where as, I am talking more generalised. So, for example, you argue for wanting differences while not liking being mathematically penalised and therefore stats cannot be a part of the race to achieve this; in my ideal, all the stats would have value to all classes, just in different ways. In this scenario, there is no penalisation for a race/class combo, only for a specific build. So in this ideal, stats can achieve this.

Yes, of course, everyone in one camp or the other that I specified doesn't want all the same things - there are near infinite divisions within these camps. So you and I may want differences in race/species and yet want totally different differences. The problem for both of us is that the current trend of 5e is going towards no differences, and there is a camp that desires that so we can't say WotC are objectively wrong to do so.

I actually think 5e is probably best suited to the approach of no differences. What could be simpler? What could be more 5e? All flash, no bang. I'll be awaiting a whole different edition.

ZRN

2023-02-07, 02:36 PM

Jumping in this thread late, but if it hasn't been said yet, I think it's worth noting WHY someone might care about not getting a +2 to their main stat. It's not just because they're irrationally obsessed with being "the best." It's because in 5e, (1) a strong majority of your offensive rolls (or DCs) are usually based in ONE stat, and (2) boosting stats comes at the opportunity cost of not getting a feat, and feats are really precious commodities.

So if I'm a high level rogue with 18 Dex instead of 20, I'm 5+% less likely to succeed on every attempt to do anything even vaguely roguish - sneak around, stab someone in the back, pick a lock, whatever. The only way to fix that is to give up one of my feats for an ASI, and (especially as a non-spellcaster) this means giving up one of very few customization points after level 3, just to stay mechanically on par with a more "optimal" race.

I've actually suggested something similar to the OP but just for attack bonuses and spell DCs, because I think that change alone would drastically reduce the relative importance of primary stats.

Yakk

2023-02-07, 02:59 PM

JNAProductions

2023-02-07, 03:25 PM

Something (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?651555-PST-5E-Redux) I think might be worth linking, from about three or four months ago.

Psyren

2023-02-07, 03:46 PM

No, post 1 of this thread.

Considering it's not convoluted, nor complex, nor for complexity's sake - I can only conclude you're looking at something else.

But just in case you were looking at the first post of this thread, and you found something too complex, you are free to point it out, so I can explain it - and even maybe edit it in the first post.

By convoluted I didn't mean incomprehensible, I meant overengineered and unnecessary.

Yes, your additional invented stat layer allows for an Orc swordfighter to smash through their opponent's defenses with brute strength, and the Eladrin swordfighter to slip around their defenses and target vital areas with precision, thus fitting your narrative preconceptions about how all members of these species would approach a swordfight. This is something the game already lets you do by simply choosing to be a Str- or Dex-based fighter and putting your highest score there, but I digress. I understand your goal was to make racial ASIs more palatable by decoupling combat statistics from them and putting them towards these new scores instead, letting you play an off-meta race without falling behind in terms of raw damage output or defense.

The problem with this is that the fantasy of being a "dex fighter" or "str fighter" does not begin and end at making and receiving attack rolls. Ability checks and saving throws happen during combat too. If someone is playing an agile combatant, they're not just wanting to keep up in terms of damage with a rapier or bow, they want to be someone that can walk a tightrope, or sneak past a guard, or dodge a spray of acid etc. Similarly, the person wanting to be Str-based also wants to hold a door shut against an onrushing horde, or drag a fallen ally to safety with one hand, or flip a table to use as cover, or shove a teetering statue onto their enemies. In short, even with your added layer, stats are still more than just cosmetic addons to a character even during a fight. And by keeping racial ASIs fixed, you're saying that Orc adventurers can never be as good at the former set while Eladrin ones can never be as good at the latter set. And that is unacceptable.

Or I suppose you could keep going with additions to your layer, adding on more Defense scores for all the things that saving throws tied to those stats would originally represent, and utility scores for all the things that ability checks key off of. And when you're done, the racial ASIs won't cause issues anymore, because they won't mean anything.

The problem for both of us is that the current trend of 5e is going towards no differences, and there is a camp that desires that so we can't say WotC are objectively wrong to do so.

This is the premise I fundamentally disagree with, yes. Which means that no, it's not a problem for both of us - just you.

ZRN

2023-02-07, 04:33 PM

Even simpler is to make stats not modify save DCs and to-hit.

The stats are too mechanically important. A +2 to strength improves your PC as much as +4 levels in your classes core ability to do something.

The option of +2 to a prime stat means "do you want your character to be 4 levels more competent or not", which is why it was mandatory, and why having it in-game was a problem.

Yes, agreed.

I think just taking this relatively simple step (maybe just double PB on attack rolls and DCs instead of adding an ability modifier?) opens up a lot more diversity in ability score allocations. For example, a 16-Str, 20-Con barbarian does a tad less damage than 20-Str, 16-Con, but he has a lower AC and fewer HP.

The biggest remaining issue is that if this isn't a part of a broader revamp (like 5.5), you end up with weirdnesses like Wizards not caring much about Int.

strangebloke

2023-02-07, 05:14 PM

Something (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?651555-PST-5E-Redux) I think might be worth linking, from about three or four months ago.

A good take.

I've also pointed out that switching to a pure point-buy system for stats also completely avoids the issue, since it doesn't lock you into this "boost the main stat or get a feat or you're wasting build resources" mindset.

Envyus

2023-02-07, 08:30 PM

I never said it did.

No, I can't do that because I don't give crap about new races. If I did, perhaps I could figure out what ASI they should have. Assuming they had anything to work with in the first place... there's barely any fluff for them.

I feel you have not read much of the new stuff. Anyway ASIs are not needed to be part of species background makes more sense for that.

Dr.Samurai

2023-02-07, 09:00 PM

ASIs make sense on any of it. Race, background, class. Any of it could influence your stats.

Witty Username

2023-02-07, 09:03 PM

No, post 1 of this thread.

As I mentioned on page one, my primary thought on the matter of the house rule is we already have a system for skill set as aposed to atrltributes, which is proficiency. Adding a set of scores is fine, but also an additional set of numbers to track, and if it is just a set of numbers to make the class a go-go it doesn't need to be fungable like ability scores.
Double proficiency bonus and half the effects of ability scores was my recommendation. The exact numbers could be tinkered, but it generally reduces the concerns with ability score chasing and solves a minor problem I have with ability scores, which is they are more role defining that class for the most part.

Anymage

2023-02-07, 11:05 PM

The problem with this is that the fantasy of being a "dex fighter" or "str fighter" does not begin and end at making and receiving attack rolls. Ability checks and saving throws happen during combat too. If someone is playing an agile combatant, they're not just wanting to keep up in terms of damage with a rapier or bow, they want to be someone that can walk a tightrope, or sneak past a guard, or dodge a spray of acid etc. Similarly, the person wanting to be Str-based also wants to hold a door shut against an onrushing horde, or drag a fallen ally to safety with one hand, or flip a table to use as cover, or shove a teetering statue onto their enemies. In short, even with your added layer, stats are still more than just cosmetic addons to a character even during a fight. And by keeping racial ASIs fixed, you're saying that Orc adventurers can never be as good at the former set while Eladrin ones can never be as good at the latter set. And that is unacceptable.

If core combat competencies are left out of it and we're just looking at stunting, why is an halfling having a slight edge at being Quick while a dragonborn has an edge being Powerful a bad thing, while a dwarf will have an edge on resisting poison over my elf no matter how much I write "iron stomach" on my character sheet. (And if I convince the DM to give me an actual Iron Stomach feat, that would tie up a feat slot that the dwarf could use for something else useful instead.) Once you reach the level of what sort of stunts you do instead of how well you do your basic job, that sounds about right for racial differentiation if we're going to have racial differentiation at all.

Of course core competencies are going to remain tied to stats, because if WotC even thought about decoupling them there'd be raging about how the resulting game was "not D&D". But if that weren't the case, when would it be okay to say that one character will forever have an edge on something because of their racespecies. And if the answer is "never", what's the point of racial features existing anyways?

Psyren

2023-02-07, 11:24 PM

As I mentioned on page one, my primary thought on the matter of the house rule is we already have a system for skill set as aposed to atrltributes, which is proficiency. Adding a set of scores is fine, but also an additional set of numbers to track, and if it is just a set of numbers to make the class a go-go it doesn't need to be fungable like ability scores.
Double proficiency bonus and half the effects of ability scores was my recommendation. The exact numbers could be tinkered, but it generally reduces the concerns with ability score chasing and solves a minor problem I have with ability scores, which is they are more role defining that class for the most part.

What about things you're not proficient in? Saves for example - most characters are only proficient in 2/6, a few more in 3/6. You can compensate for this in 5e by having decent scores in the off save(s) you're worried about, but this would cripple that.

If core combat competencies are left out of it and we're just looking at stunting, why is an halfling having a slight edge at being Quick while a dragonborn has an edge being Powerful a bad thing, while a dwarf will have an edge on resisting poison over my elf no matter how much I write "iron stomach" on my character sheet. (And if I convince the DM to give me an actual Iron Stomach feat, that would tie up a feat slot that the dwarf could use for something else useful instead.) Once you reach the level of what sort of stunts you do instead of how well you do your basic job, that sounds about right for racial differentiation if we're going to have racial differentiation at all.

Of course core competencies are going to remain tied to stats, because if WotC even thought about decoupling them there'd be raging about how the resulting game was "not D&D". But if that weren't the case, when would it be okay to say that one character will forever have an edge on something because of their racespecies. And if the answer is "never", what's the point of racial features existing anyways?

You can have an edge on things. As you yourself mentioned for instance, dwarves get an edge on resisting poison over elves due to species, even in the UA, and it's much more interesting than a mere Con boost. As LudicSavant said earlier, it's an additional feature, rather than changing the cost of an existing feature.

qube

2023-02-08, 01:15 AM

How does Armor interact with this?The same way armor interacts with dexterity: Leather armor is 11 + you Defense combat style attribute, while full plate is 18 flat.

Narrative justification: you only need to look at, for instance, fencing, vs Buhurt (modern fighting where ppl wear heavy medival armor). If you're lightly armored, you'll have to fight more defensively. if you're heavily armored, you can run straight into your opponent and keep bashing till one KOs.

Mechanicla justification: The system is set up in such a way that characters remain equally MAD/SAD - and Heavy armor is a way to make characters less MAD (fighters/paladins don't need to boost dexterity score to ability score

I've actually suggested something similar to the OP but just for attack bonuses and spell DCs, because I think that change alone would drastically reduce the relative importance of primary stats.I have considered something simelar, but was left with the implication that people would then start to boost their second attribute.

single-attribute-dependant would have free reign over his stats, while a dual-attribute-dependant characters would become single-attribute-dependant.

Something (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?651555-PST-5E-Redux) I think might be worth linking, from about three or four months ago.that looks quite interesting at first glance, I'll definately will take a closer look!

The problem with this is that the fantasy of being a "dex fighter" or "str fighter" does not begin and end at making and receiving attack rolls. Ability checks and saving throws happen during combat too.
...
In short, even with your added layer, stats are still more than just cosmetic addons to a character even during a fight.Quite true. And carrying capacity is also relevant for combat.
The amount of javalins you can carry
the fact you might be able to carry a dying ally (or the mcguffin) away from danger.
I recently had a campaign with a very low STR wizard (rolled stats. I think it was STR 3 or something) that multiclassed in cleric - but still did not wear ANY armor, because he simple couldn't carry that much.

The bar of this system is not perfect equality - it's equivalent combat capability. As such,
As I've done before, I'll point to the fact there's a not uncommon variant rule to let warlocks use int instead of charisma.
Or as you point out, how one can already make STR or DEX fighters (the latter using ranged or finesse weapons)

Different? Definately. But considering nobody is saying, for example, that "rogues suck because frontliners need high STR saves", the fact our non-strength fighter will now end up not having such a high strength saving throw, is a mute point. People faun more of weahter the dex or str fighter can have the higher AC.

Having a different skillset & saveset simply has very little impact on combat capability. Thats
quite dependant on what you encounter
and even then ... considering fighters gain strength saving throw proficiency ... I seriously wonder if medium dex & str saves are better or worse then high str low dex saves.

ASIs make sense on any of it. Race, background, class. Any of it could influence your stats.Quite true.

The less the game pushes for maximizing primairy stats, this all becomes a possibility.

As I mentioned on page one, my primary thought on the matter of the house rule is we already have a system for skill set as aposed to atrltributes, which is proficiency. Adding a set of scores is fine, but also an additional set of numbers to track, and if it is just a set of numbers to make the class a go-go it doesn't need to be fungable like ability scores.
Double proficiency bonus and half the effects of ability scores was my recommendation. The exact numbers could be tinkered, but it generally reduces the concerns with ability score chasing and solves a minor problem I have with ability scores, which is they are more role defining that class for the most part.That indeed does sound like an interesting idea.
Especially as proficiency goes from +2 to +6 (about a modifier of a good stat), one could for example disstribute one full proficiency, two half proficiencies, and a 0 over the 4 categories.

Though that feels more like personal preffence to me (I know players who like 'proficiency to skill', I know players who love the 3E ranks to skills system).

Psyren

2023-02-08, 02:51 AM

The bar of this system is not perfect equality - it's equivalent combat capability.
...
Having a different skillset & saveset simply has very little impact on combat capability.

AC and HP are combat capabilities but saving throws aren't? Uh... okay...

Not that I agree with the premise, that skills aren't combat capabilities, and non-combat capabilities shouldn't matter when comparing two species, anyway.

Bosh

2023-02-08, 10:42 AM

This really comes down to two opposing desires:
1) Play any race/species, any class, no difference.
2) Synergistic race/species and class combinations, with good choices and bad choices.

The sort of race design I like is when the ability scores bonuses a race gets and their racial abilities clash.

For example the races that need mountain dwarf stats don't need armor and weapon profs. So while pre-Tasha's dwarf fighters were quite good things like mountain dwarf wizards were also quite viable (if not strictly optimal) since medium armor on a wizard is quite nice.

Same goes for high elves, wizards need int but an extra centrip isn't a big deal for them but it's very very nice on many non-wizard classes who don't need the bonus to int.

Goblin is an extreme version of this since it makes being a goblin rogue really redundant so that goes a bit too far...

Would like to see more things along those lines so that a race is solid at things that make use of their stat bonuses while their racial abilities are more useful to classes that don't really need their stat boosts. Something like half-orcs being tough enough to make them a viable choice for squishier classes, that sort of thing...

Also post-Tasha's stat rules do still have some race/class combos be much better than others. Mountain dwarves are comparatively pretty **** fighters now for example.

Liquor Box

2023-02-08, 09:45 PM

Not with the edit for precision, no.

I expect we will differ on this, but to me it still does. It suggests that very weak characters cannot be useful. If we had fixed ability scores average half orcs would be stronger than average halflings. But if halfling and halforc PCs tended to be the same strength, that suggests that mostly unusually strong halflings, or unusually weak halforcs are PCs. To me this seems odd - surely weak halflings (who bring other skills to the table) are also viable PCs, and halfling PCs shouldn't necesarily usually be stronger member of the species?

So rather than saying 'a gnome fighter has to be as powerful as an orc fighter', I want to instead say that, for some combination of purpose and plan and aesthetic of play and campaign context (low level, high level, low gear, high gear), I should feel like I would be worse off if I accepted an offer from the GM to keep the fluff of the gnome but get the orc's mechanics instead.

But this i what the game (and the fixed ability scores) are designed to achieve. There is a combination of purpose and plan and context where the gnome is better mechanically than the orc. That may not be a fighting type character because it's strength disadvantage might hold it back, instead it might be a wizard class (or Monk, I gather from this thread). I feel like i may be missing your point here?

I think it is ok (and in fact preferable) for the gnome to be good at some things (classes) and less good at others (classes), and it lessor size and strength are a pretty obvious distinguishing factor between it and an orc which you'd expect to make it tend to be less good at brute force type roles. I'm not against it still being good at more niche fighter builds, which don't rely on strength, but it strikes me as odd a gnome being a strength based fighter on the same level as an orc (on average). Perhaps you can help me with where (and whether) you disagree?

Its less about viability or silliness and more about what exactly 'meaningful diversity' should (IMO) mean. Having a bunch of things which are different in fluff but which play the same isn't really engaging with diversity, its avoiding the question - at that point, better just do all-human IMO. Having a bunch of things which are basically forced choices if you care at all about optimizing to your own purposes fails to actually be diverse - if you play a fighter you play the best race for fighters, etc. The path through the paradox is to have differences which do matter and strongly, but which matter differently to different players because they catch on to different things you could try to be optimizing for.

Why do you think having some races better for fighters than others is bad for diversity? Other races might be good at different things. I guess it's bad if you had one obvious race for each class (so you only ever saw fighters of that class, etc), but that's not the case as I understand it - your choice of fighter (if you want to optimise) is not forced, it is just limited.

3, maybe 4 classes that a given race is actually good for is not some stunning example of flexibility.

No, orcs probably aren;t the most flexible race. Humans perhaps are. But that's not a bad thing, each race has its advantages. That orcs, being one of the more specialised races, are still optimal for several (three or four) classes is great game design - they are good at certain things but no so pigeon holed they have only one option.

You say that ability scores are "meant to make a race stand out"

But objectively they don't. WRT strength, for example, you either have a bonus or you don't. All races either (can) have a bonus to STR, or can't. A Half-Orc isn't stronger than a mountain dwarf or half elf or human or bugbear or goliath. Meanwhile everything that doesn't have that modifier is also the same. Gnomes are as strong as elves are as strong as tabaxi are as strong as halflings, etc.

Fixed ability scores create two categories of race, for any given stat: those that have a bonus to the stat, and those who don't. Dividing every race into two categories doesn't make them distinctive. There's no differentiation among the halves.

Bolded for emphasis. Yes, that does make those two groups distinct. Even more so when they aren't divided 50/50, but instead only a few races have the bonus and most do not.

It could be better of course - it would be better if some races had a bonus to str (say orcs) some have a penalty (halflings and gnomes) and some have no modifier (dwarfs and humans). So I agree splitting them up more would add more differentiation and be better.

What post-tasha's has been done, is to throw away fixed ability scores as a source of distinctiveness AND REPLACE IT WITH OTHER FEATURES.

Yes, and that sucks. The fixed ability scores were better because they tended to have more consistent mechanical in game effect and therefore are more meaningful. Mind you, I don't necessarily mind the other features, as they also add to the distinctiveness of the races in minor ways - but they should be an addition to stat differences rather than a replacement.

Look at PHB dragonborn. Look at Fizban's Dragonborn. Tell me with a straight face that the Fizban's Dragonborn is less interesting. Tell me that the MMOM Goliath is less interesting than the EE version.

Unless I'm missing something Fizban's Dragoborn has all the features of PHB Dragoborn (incl fixed ability scores), but with some additional features for different dragon colours? So it doesn't remove the important features like str and cha bonuses?

KyleG

2023-02-08, 10:47 PM

Maybe a solution is to suggest "typical" classes for race instead of the asi. Eg. Drow of x are fanatical worshipers of thier god (clerics) whilst many of their men become powerful wizards. The tabaxi of y are scouts (rogues) whilst others become lone explorers (rangers). Those born in the mountains of z survive in a savage unforgiving environment (barbarians), and are guided and empowered by signs and portents (div wizard).

NichG

2023-02-08, 11:31 PM

But this i what the game (and the fixed ability scores) are designed to achieve. There is a combination of purpose and plan and context where the gnome is better mechanically than the orc. That may not be a fighting type character because it's strength disadvantage might hold it back, instead it might be a wizard class (or Monk, I gather from this thread). I feel like i may be missing your point here?

I think it is ok (and in fact preferable) for the gnome to be good at some things (classes) and less good at others (classes), and it lessor size and strength are a pretty obvious distinguishing factor between it and an orc which you'd expect to make it tend to be less good at brute force type roles. I'm not against it still being good at more niche fighter builds, which don't rely on strength, but it strikes me as odd a gnome being a strength based fighter on the same level as an orc (on average). Perhaps you can help me with where (and whether) you disagree?

I think you may be. One limit would be, what if you just made everything identical in all ways? In that case, of course every combination is valid, but also it shouldn't matter to you if you swapped the mechanics of one for another, because they're all identical. So this isn't what I want. Another limit would be that there are synergies such that any player could objectively say 'if you're playing a wizard, this is the best race to be' or 'if you're playing a fighter, this is the best race to be'. That's not what I want.

What I want is something where one player will say 'orc wizard is the best wizard, any other race would be a bad pick for me!', and another player will say 'elf wizard is the best wizard, any other race would be a bad pick for me!' and another player will say 'kobold wizard is the best wizard, any other race would be a bad pick for me!', and none of them will be wrong, because each race provides something which is good for a player whose skills and sense and goals align with that thing. The player who likes high calculated risks with big impact has a best choice and will disagree with the player who likes to play Xanados chess who in turn will disagree with the player who likes to just throw caution to the wind and improvise who will disagree with the player who wants their contributions to take the form of modifying the exploration and economics of the game even if they're just plinking away when it comes to combat itself.

Why do you think having some races better for fighters than others is bad for diversity? Other races might be good at different things. I guess it's bad if you had one obvious race for each class (so you only ever saw fighters of that class, etc), but that's not the case as I understand it - your choice of fighter (if you want to optimise) is not forced, it is just limited.

In general, optimization puts stress on diversity, because it tells you that one thing is a better choice than something else in some sense. In order to make optimization and diversity of outcomes compatible, you have to drive the process of optimization with a diversity of sense in which something can be better than something else. I think putting the burden on the player to intentionally choose to be suboptimal when the game bottlenecks things into a single form of value is bad game design - its asking the player to decide whether roleplay or optimization is more important to them. But if you design more carefully, so that there are many different senses of 'best' and things play into enriching that, you can avoid those things being in opposition. A gnome wizard can be the best wizard to play in the moment, as can an orc wizard, a kobold wizard, a pixie wizard, a githzerai wizard, etc. But to get there, you have to take a holistic view of the game that resists boiling things down into repeatedly checking d20 vs the same number derived the same way as the primary source of a character's effectiveness.

t209

2023-02-08, 11:33 PM

Maybe a solution is to suggest "typical" classes for race instead of the asi. Eg. Drow of x are fanatical worshipers of thier god (clerics) whilst many of their men become powerful wizards.
Well, this is forgetting worshippers of Eilistraee...but not sure since their "clerics" act more like dexterous fighter.

Witty Username

2023-02-08, 11:49 PM

What about things you're not proficient in? Saves for example - most characters are only proficient in 2/6, a few more in 3/6. You can compensate for this in 5e by having decent scores in the off save(s) you're worried about, but this would cripple that.

Well I have too possible ideas:
-the first would be nothing, weak saves are factored already into class balance and I am not necessarily against PCs having weak saves personally. But I recognize that could be a concern if the table is skittish.

- my second thought is increasing the number of saves each class gets to 3, maybe with some tinkering with the Strong - Weak save ratio depending on class, maybe 2 strong saves and 1 weak for the martials:
(Spitballing)
-Barbarian (Str, Con, and Wis)
-Paladin (Con, Wis, and Cha)
-Rogue (Dex, Int, and Wis)
-Ranger and Monk (Str, Dex, and Wis)
-Fighter (Str, Dex, and Con)
And following that 1 Strong and 2 weak for Casters:
(More Spitballing)
- Bard (Dex, Int, and Cha)
- Cleric and warlock (Str, Wis, and Cha)
- Druid (Str, Int, and Wis)
- Sorcerer (Str, Con, and Cha)
- Wizard (Int, Wis, and Cha)
- and maybe Artificer (Con, Int, and Cha)
This doesn't so much solve the issue so much as mitigates its effects. Having more strong points to make up for the weak points being more significant.
This way has some side effects, martials having better defenses than casters mostly for ambiance. And generally PCs being a little more resilient.

Shift some class abilities around that get displaced, like Ranger and Rogue. Maybe just swap to getting another save proficiency if it comes off as a significant issue.

Psyren

2023-02-09, 12:14 AM

I expect we will differ on this, but to me it still does. It suggests that very weak characters cannot be useful. If we had fixed ability scores average half orcs would be stronger than average halflings. But if halfling and halforc PCs tended to be the same strength, that suggests that mostly unusually strong halflings, or unusually weak halforcs are PCs. To me this seems odd - surely weak halflings (who bring other skills to the table) are also viable PCs, and halfling PCs shouldn't necesarily usually be stronger member of the species?

What? I can't see any relation between this and what I said :smallconfused: There is no "tendency" for adventurers beyond having elite stats, as represented by Array/Point Buy/4d6k3. Those stats don't have to be allocated to strength or any other specific attribute. You can be a physically weak adventurer and be, not just useful, but outright potent.

Unless I'm missing something Fizban's Dragoborn has all the features of PHB Dragoborn (incl fixed ability scores), but with some additional features for different dragon colours? So it doesn't remove the important features like str and cha bonuses?

Fizborn have floating ASIs.

Maybe a solution is to suggest "typical" classes for race instead of the asi. Eg. Drow of x are fanatical worshipers of thier god (clerics) whilst many of their men become powerful wizards. The tabaxi of y are scouts (rogues) whilst others become lone explorers (rangers). Those born in the mountains of z survive in a savage unforgiving environment (barbarians), and are guided and empowered by signs and portents (div wizard).

What's the "typical class" for a Harengon? Sea Elf? Hadozee? Thri-Kreen?

Even if you can come up with one that most people would agree on, what value does that add?

Well I have too possible ideas:
-the first would be nothing, weak saves are factored already into class balance and I am not necessarily against PCs having weak saves personally. But I recognize that could be a concern if the table is skittish.

It's nothing to do with being "skittish" and everything to do with player choice. Under current 5e, if I have a weak save that I want my character to be decent at, I can allocate points to the relevant ability score, for example monks being at least okay at Wisdom saves makes sense to most people. But under your proposal, even with max Wisdom they top out at +2, at least until they hit 14. Sucking at Wisdom for the vast majority of their career is not how a lot of people imagine monks to be.