A design goal: making different races FEEL different.

Aberzanzorax · Dec 29, 2011

In another thread, it was mentioned that (for 5e) it would be nice if the races felt different. How might you accomplish that?

Here is my suggestion/a bit of elaboration:

I'd love to see (with 3e as an example/model) something like the racial levels being core to the system. e.g. at levels 5, 10, 15, etc you get a racial level. I want a dwarven rogue, a halfling rogue, and an elvish rogue to be different...so much so that even if they took all the same equipment and class options as the same (all the same skills, feats, powers etc), they'd still be clearly different.

Derren · Dec 29, 2011

I would not go overboard with all that "make races feel different".
After all, a dwarf swinging a axe and a human swinging an axe is not all that different in the end.

Thotas · Dec 29, 2011

Yeah, Derren's right. No amount of playing with "crunch" will really provide the missing element here. It's pretty much the perfect example of what "fluff" is all about. (Does anyone use those terms anymore?)

I think campaign worlds could be better designed for that purpose, though. Look at Golarion, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Glorantha, and most of the others. The geography and culture of humans is laid out in detailed maps and essays. And the elves? Oh, they live of in the woods. Somewhere. Okay, dwarves? In the mountains. Somewhere. Gnomes? In the forests, too, or maybe the hills, someplace like that. I think.

Players might do a better job of playing the races as something other than humans with special powers if the campaign worlds developed better hooks for their roleplaying. Not every player, for sure, but some at least.

Fanaelialae · Dec 29, 2011

It's an interesting idea, but racial levels might be a bit tricky. The biggest issue I see is that it could give races too strong a bias toward one class. Certain races have been inclined toward certain classes in every edition (at least those that had the race/class distinction) but my concern is that this could take that much further.

Of course, it's probably feasible to avoid this issue, but I expect it would require significant design constraints. The designers would have to beware with regard to any racial benefits that favor certain classes over others. While to a certain extent this is inevitable, and probably even desirable for a consensus of mechanics and fiction, I do think it's important to be careful to avoid sidelining certain character concepts. In my personal opinion, returning to the days when dwarves could not be magic users would be a step backwards. That sort of thing isn't necessarily bad in specific settings (like WHFRP) but D&D isn't setting-specific and therefore needn't (and IMO shouldn't) hold to such conceptual constraints.

Perhaps "racial levels" could offer racial feats instead of features. This would allow the designers to offer a variety of choices for each "racial level" and thereby potentially avoid limiting a given race to only a subset of class choices.

[MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION] - I disagree. Every race ought to be both physically and psychologically distinguishable from humans, otherwise what's the point of having that race? D&D dwarves are significantly different from the average human, having both a lower center of gravity as well as greater density. As a result, their martial arts should differ from that of humans, and I see nothing wrong with reflecting this mechanically whenever reasonably possible.

Crazy Jerome · Dec 29, 2011

Thotas said:
The geography and culture of humans is laid out in detailed maps and essays.

This is the key for me, though I think my answer is contrary to Thotas' answer in at least one sense. I have thought for a long time that the 1st ed. separation of race and class for the non-humans stopped one division short. What was the "elf" class in Basic? It was mechanics for a fighter/magic user and expectations of racial abilities and cultural/archetypical baggage too.

So I'd like to see the cultural part moved out of race. (I'd also like to see the archetypes moved out of classes, but that is more contentious.) However, to do that, you really need to then provide the information on cultures (and archetypes). And mostly that is fluffed, though it wouldn't hurt to support that fluff with some light touch mechanics (e.g. mild special abilities in the woods if you come from a woodland elf culture--the implication being that you can learn that same ability later if you spend enough time with the elves).

Once that is done, however, you can afford to make mechanical changes in the races that really mean something, and balance those out. A dwarven resistance to poison is one example. It is in their blood. I think the main argument against is that it is difficult to come up with reasonably balanced abilities for every race to match. Just what is it that humans have that is intrinsic. Here is where I think making it something, "in the blood" explicitly helps, because then you can have a list of things to pick from. Humans would have more choices, being basically widespread mongrels.

Among other things, this would completely remove the need for any mechanical support for half elves and other such races. Plus, if your human was raised by a particular dwarven culture, it is easy to distinguish between what he got from the culture versus what he got from his own bloodline.

Nor do I think this would be terribly complicated. Instead of "pick race" -- surface easy but with some embedded issues related to class and culture, it becomes "pick race, select racial abilities, pick culture, select cultural abilities" -- fewer embedded issues, and pretty darn obvious what you want from the names of things.

Of course, from a balance perspective, it would also be a lot better if any "cultural abilities" were either idiosyncratic and minor, or more about access to things than the things themselves. That is, assume you can come up with a way in the base mechanics to distinguish between ease of learning bows and sneaking in the woods versus a flat bonus to related skills. Then being in a wood elf culture (or similar) gives you more access to learning those things, but doesn't automatically make you better at them. D&D mechanics to so distinguish have generally been underwhelming thus far.

FJammet · Dec 29, 2011

In my game, I'm allowing a free racial or regional bonus feat at some levels. This way I'm trying to make each race feel different, even humans with their different home countries. The goal is also that race matters even after level one, a thing the game as it is isn't very good at. Racial levels are a good tool to do this too, but I find it is overly complicated.

Crazy Jerome · Dec 29, 2011

Racial levels are a fairly decent kludge to build this kind of thing onto existing D&D systems with some form of multiclassing. They aren't a good first choice if you want to design this distinction into a new version from the get go.

Ahnehnois · Dec 29, 2011

I think the broader solution lies in the area of nature vs. nurture. A problem with all versions of D&D that has gotten progressively worse is that the nurture (i.e. skills, saving throw and attack bonuses, and other level-derived benefits) quickly outweighs the nature (race and ability scores). Thus the motivation behind E6 and similar philosophies.

A 3.X elf rogue is pretty different from a halfling rogue or a dwarf rogue-at 1st level. Later on not so much.

The solution is to rework the math so ability scores mean more and class levels mean less. Then that elven +2 to Dex doesn't quickly become irrelevant, as well as solving a number of other problems. Racial levels (or racially influenced class features) aren't a bad idea at all, but they're not ultimately going to fix things.

steenan · Dec 29, 2011

The best way of achieving good characterization is tying fluff and crunch together. Pure numbers do not mean anything and pure description feels empty in a crunch-heavy game (remember the 3e elves, described as talented wizards, with no mechanical support for it?). You need both to really make the races feel different.

But it's not any kind of fluff and any kind of crunch. For example, attribute bonuses channel characters of given race into specific classes, but do not really affect how they are played. Similarly, racial history, homelands and cultures may be nice to read, but rarely affect play.

To help in differentiating races, we need racial abilities that are:
- Useful enough to be invoked more than once a session on average. If something is very situational, it will be forgotten.
- Meaningful in many non-combat situations. In combat, everybody's using a lot of strange abilities anyway.
- Doing something specific, not just giving bonuses. Unique ability usable once per day, or being invulnerable to non-magical fire tell more about you than being stronger or more skilled.
- Affecting life in such a way that racial identity builds around them.

The last point is important, but easily overlooked. It's not enough to help or hinder characters in some situations. Racial abilities should create good reasons to perceive the world differently and to behave differently, both as individuals and as societies.

Eladrin fey step power is a good example, though, afaik, unexplored in 4e fluff. With every member of a race being able to teleport every few minutes, you get much different perception of space and property. One either closes everything tight, with no crack or hole to look through, or accepts that everybody may enter and exit as they like. As a result, you either get a race with high level of paranoia, very good at keeping secrets, or an open culture where items and places are mostly shared and being a "thief" is a strange idea. Maybe you have both, in separate cultures of the same race.

Crazy Jerome · Dec 29, 2011

[MENTION=23240]steenan[/MENTION], the Burning Wheel elven "grief" and the elven "spell songs" that they use to mitigate it somewhat are an excellent example of what you are talking about. The "grief" from living a long time and seeing shorter-lived friends long gone, the world change, etc. is a powerful agent that the elf can call upon to do certain elvish-themed things, but when it beomes to great, the elf fades back into the woods permanently and/or "sails into the West". It becomes mechanically necessary for a PC elf to manage this grief through song, to keep the character in play for long.

I think one way of thinking about this mechanically is that every benefit of the race should have a cost tied thematically to that benefit. So you are long-lived, which is good sometimes. But what does it cost you?