Race Balance

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cmsKarambit

First Post

• Feb 27, 2015

• #1

First of all, I love the games so far. The rulesets are fresh and original and the fact that all three will be perfectly compatible is amazing.

However, I did notice one thing unbalancing the games from each other.

In N.O.W. and N.E.W., you start with attributes at 3, and in O.L.D. you start with attributes at 2 and the races seem to be a bit more powerful on average to make up for it. However, this does mean that an O.L.D. human is less powerful than a human in the other games, and taking an O.L.D. race with a N.E.W. character starting at 3 for each attribute in a game with both rulesets would make an overpowered character. Will all three games be switching to the same baseline scores later on to make them compatible?

 

Last edited: Feb 27, 2015

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Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Feb 27, 2015

• #2

That's simply because the N.O.W. and N.E.W. playtest documents are more recent than the O.L.D. one. Any 'core' change you see in one game can be assumed to apply to the others, until those playtest documents catch up.

So, yep - the O.L.D. races will begin at 3 too! And humans will be identical in all three books (but may have slightly different skill choices simply due to cultural differences).

 

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Feb 28, 2015

• #3

Incidentally, if you're using the O.L.D. character generation document from last year, you should at a minimum be applying this hotfix document:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1219

(N.E.W. and N.O.W. already have it included).

 

C

cmsKarambit

First Post

• Feb 28, 2015

• #4

Alright, cool. Thanks for the help. Looking forward to my campaign of orc space marines and wizards flying spaceships.

 

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Mar 2, 2015

• #5

cmsKarambit said:

Alright, cool. Thanks for the help. Looking forward to my campaign of orc space marines and wizards flying spaceships.

Click to expand...

That sounds amazing! Be sure to tell us about it!

 

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SKid4

Explorer

• Mar 13, 2015

• #6

I have a hybrid race question for an OLD character, specifically a half-ogre (half-human).

Humans get a +1 adjustment to two attributes of my choice, but these have to be averaged with the ogre adjustments (+3 Strength, +3 Endurance). If I average the human adjustments before choosing the two attributes, the human adjustments are meaningless (they get rounded down to +0). However, if I average the human adjustments after choosing the two adjustments, I can apply them to Strength and Endurance to get +2 to both attributes.

Do I assign the two human attribute adjustments before or after averaging?

 

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Mar 15, 2015

• #7

The attribute adjustment is technically one of the human's exploits, so you'd apply it afterwards *if* human is the primary race (the one whose abilities you choose, as opposed to the one whose skills you choose).

Note that there's a minor error there -- where it says "Choose one of the two special abilities" it means the entire racial exploit list.

 

S

SKid4

Explorer

• Mar 16, 2015

• #8

Thanks for the clarification.

I'd also like to point out there's no mention of the life span of either ogres or orcs.