When is a lack of bonus a penalty?

"When is a lack of a bonus a penalty?"

When, due to the circumstances of the game, two characters lose the use of their bonuses, and one has a far higher bonus (and so more to lose) than the other.

See the rules for being flat-footed in 3e for a really good example.

As for the ability score adjustments in 5e... IMO they've managed to get into a real mess with these. It's probably way too late to do anything about it, but they probably should revert back to humans not having any bonuses, and give everyone else bonuses and actual penalties. (And, in fact, my preferred solution would be to get rid of all ability score adjustments entirely, but that's not going to happen, certainly not with 5e.)

Manabarbs said:

"But let's take Next as an example. Humans get +1 to everything. That's your baseline."

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Why not? My very point is that there's no compelling reason to do it or not do it other than aesthetics. And this is the only edition to take the human and give it a +1 to everything, making it very much - aesthetically - a baseline.

It's aesthetic modelling simply to ensure there's no "-" sign in sight.

Nobody talks about how 3.5 Elves are operating at a -1 Feat penalty. Nobody talks about how 4e Tieflings are operating at a -1 Encounter-Reroll-Power penalty. Nobody talks about how AD&D Humans are operating at a -4 AC-vs-Giant-Attacks penalty.

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Exactly my point! There is no difference, other than how you present it!

(And my other point - that complaining about penalties is a relatively new thing and I don't know why it started).

I mean, what I feel unclear about is why anybody feels like "+1 to everything is the new baseline" is a valid thing to claim. It happens to be the set of bonuses that one race gets. I don't see why it's more valid to consider that the baseline than any other racial set of benefits and/or penalties.

If you start by assuming a particular conclusion - that they secretly want to give a bunch of races penalties to everything, but feel the need to hide it - then sure, you can reason your way there by asserting that +1 to everything is the baseline, but unless they've said somewhere "Hey, everyone, the math is all being designed with the assumption that you have +1 to all your stats, and if you don't, you're definitely behind", I don't see why anybody is suddenly willing to consider +1 to all stats the baseline.

I guess you could also get there if you think of races differently than I do. I tend to think of races as a bunch of parallel options. If you think of races specifically as things that you trade away "human" for, then I guess the mentality that whatever one particular race has - humans, in this case - gets to count as the baseline makes more sense, but I still don't understand why nobody ever seems to talk about 3.5 races, for example, as all having -1 feat as a secret racial quality that the designers just wanted to hide or something because nobody wants to lose a feat, while lots of people seem willing to consider +1 to all stats to be the true new baseline for Next's human designs.

Ultimately, I agree that +1 to all stats is aesthetically clunky and has the potential to produce weird perception issues, but I am struggling to understand why here and elsewhere it's being taken almost as kind of a given that it's the real baseline, and a secret thing they're using to hide penalties. I can see getting to that place if, say, every race had +1 to most of their stats, +2 to one of them, and +0 to another one of them, but humans having +1 to all stats isn't really any more of a baseline than any other set of racial abilities.

Manabarbs said:

I mean, what I feel unclear about is why anybody feels like "+1 to everything is the new baseline" is a valid thing to claim. It happens to be the set of bonuses that one race gets. I don't see why it's more valid to consider that the baseline than any other racial set of benefits and/or penalties.

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Psychology, mixed with some edition history.

Humans, being the only humanoid race that actually exists in real life, have always been considered the baseline, from which all other races vary. That's why, in earlier editions, humans were the race that didn't get ability score bonuses and/or penalties.

To many players, that's still the assumption - humans are the 'average' or 'norm' from which the fantasy races diverge. Thus, when you present a set of stats for humans in a new D&D edition, those stats will be considered the baseline by many players, whether that's the designers' intention or not.

Manabarbs said:

I mean, what I feel unclear about is why anybody feels like "+1 to everything is the new baseline" is a valid thing to claim..

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Again, yes, that is my point. That's as much a valid thing to claim as anything else. You could also call the elf the baseline. Or the halfling. Anything. I'm clearly not explaining myself well, because you're getting the diametric opposite of what I mean.

My point is that mechanically there is no difference between saying an elf has +1 DEX and a dwarf has +0 DEX; or saying a dwarf has -1 DEX and an elf has +0 DEX. You can use either as the baseline. One approach puts a "ugly" (in some peoples' eyes) minus-sign on the page and is therefore deemed a "penalty" while the other does not. But the upshot is that an elf has one point more in DEX than the dwarf. Same result. Just one approach is presented as a penalty for the dwarf, the other as a bonus for the elf.

I agree with your point about the fact that a +1 to all stats for humans is fully equivalent to -1 penalties for all other races. I disagree though with the statement that it somehow feels different. To me it feels exactly like a penalty and, in fact, racial modifiers are one on my least favorite aspects of Next.

Nikosandros said:

racial modifiers are one on my least favorite aspects of Next.

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May I ask why?

Morrus said:

May I ask why?

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Sure. Because I don't like all races effectively having penalties on almost all the stats. If there is need for racial modifiers (and I'm not so sure about that), I'd rather have dexterous halflings and sturdy dwarves, instead of races that are overall "weaker" (stat-wise) than humans, except in their area of excellence, where they are equal.

I made a poll here sometimes back and a huge majority agreed with me, but unfortunately it must not have been very representative of the playtesters since the rules have remained stable for a long time (at least they got rid of the extra +2 for humans).

Nikosandros said:

Sure. Because I don't like all races effectively having penalties on almost all the stats.

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Ah, I thought you meant the very idea of racial modifiers. I agree that it's weird that the best a race can currently be is "just as good as a human in one or two stats".

Morrus said:

Ah, I thought you meant the very idea of racial modifiers. I agree that it's weird that the best a race can currently be is "just as good as a human in one or two stats".

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But you're okay with them getting a long list of race specific special abilities while humans get a flat "N/A" in that line? Why would anyone choose to be a human if they can potentially be better than a human at any stats that matter to their character (at the cost of being worse at a stat that frankly doesn't matter?) and get a pile of nifty not-found-anywhere-else abilities to boot?