6-5 Rule of Three

[UngeheuerLich]

Hmm, I think, the nimbleness of elves should rather show in racial benefits. Beeing immune to sleep and charm, beeing able to see at night, beeing very very perceptive should balance better stats out in a game, where you don´t need to keep up with something.

If you are a fighter and gain real accuracy boosts by level, and a miss just lets you miss out a few points of damage, you will soon not not notice 1 less damage and to hit. DPR is a bit fewer, but you still do your job perfectly. And the perception bonus may allow you to shoot at people before they notice you...

 

[variant]

Elf gaining advantage on balance and tumble skill checks would be nice.

 

[BobTheNob]

There was one thing he said which left me a little bewildered

"... I spend my action to help you, so you get advantage on a check ..."

Now in a non-time pressured scenario (let say picking a lock not under pressure) does that mean we always have advantage? So just because someone in the party other than the lockpicker sais "I help him" he gets to roll twice. Under this idea, when wouldnt you have advantage?

Im assuming that there is some intended limitation on this, or at least, Im hoping there is.

 

[dangerous jack]

1) I like Paladins as a class. I think there have been enough niche power styles for paladins over the years that a class is appropriate (e.g. auras, challenges/sanction, & smites)

2) I like advantage/disadvantage. Not sure how this rule of thumb will work out in the long term, but we'll see.

3) Like several others, I'm not thrilled with humans getting +1 to every stat and another +1. (Although I actually toyed with the idea of giving humans +1 to each stat in 4e when every other race was getting +2 to 2 stats). My reasons for dislike:
* I have a fondness for 3-18 being the bounds of normal human abilities
* It would be nice for humans to be a true baseline race where you can roll your 3d6 x 6, choose a weapon and go. If you want to be non-human, then all ability score adjustment kicks in. So elves subtracting 1 from everything except dex would accomplish the same thing, but puts the (admittedly minimal) extra effort when you create a non-human.
* Why are NPC/monster non-humans (presumably) able to exceed human abilities but not PC non-humans ("presumably" because looking over the playtest bestiary, the highest strength monster is a minotaur at 19, which doesn't exceed human limits)?
* It seems really limiting to not be able to have a fantasy race of creatures that exceed human abilities in any single dimension.


I do like humans having an edge in the world, and I really love my human-centric parties, but there are other simple ways to do it.
* Give other races significant penalties or negative traits (e.g. elves have disadvantage against poison, or dwarves have disadvantage when attacking creatures more than 20' away)
* If they hadn't already given it to halflings, I'd suggest giving humans a mulligan once per encounter (which is probably one of the easiest things to explain to new players). Instead give halflings the ability to turn a disadvantage into an advantage or something a little more situational, complicated, and interesting.

 

[Talath]

It makes me wonder if they are giving humans +1 to all stats because they are considering moving back to 3d6 per stat (though not necessarily in order). In that context, a +1 to everything would make sense, though I highly doubt they are going to abandon 4d6 drop the lowest.

 

[Pheonix0114]

Not sure if it would work yet, but already imagining a change where Humans keep the blanket +1 but lose the floating +1 and Demihumans get a +2 in their racial stat and have it max at 22 instead of 20 with the drawback that another stat maxes out at 18, but without any upfront penalty.

 

[mlund]

Im assuming that there is some intended limitation on this, or at least, Im hoping there is.

I think the limiter would be the DM. There are tasks where others "helping" just isn't any help. You can spend all the actions you want, but you can't make me type any faster. On the other hand if you're half-way competent at English you could help my writing by being a proof-reader or copy-editor.

- Marty Lund

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I am not sure, if +1 to all stats would allready suffice.
This way, human are not more agile than the most agile elf.

Still a +1 to everything is a huge advantage!

 

[Baron Von Mandrick]

Instead give halflings the ability to turn a disadvantage into an advantage or something a little more situational, complicated, and interesting.

That's a really cool concept. I would love to see that put into place somehow. It wouldn't even have to be halflings though it does make sense for them. It could be a feat, or something like that.

I think your mention of it as a halfling racial ability is my preferred implementation, but even if it's not that, it's so cool, I'd love to see it implemented in some form.

Too bad I can't give you XP right now.

 

[Gold Roger]

I want to point out that I think that being humans should be an awesome choice for PC's.

Most settings are humanocentric for the reason that it's easier to relate to elves and dwarfs integrated into recognisable human culture, than relating to any being, including humans, integrated into elven or dwarfen culture.

While this rationalises human dominance from a game design standpoint , the rules should give an in game recognition of this dominance.

However, I find +1 across the board and an additional +1 is a terrible solution.

One thing is that it has horrible repercussions uppon the implied setting. The other races are worse at every ability, but their best one, for example.

I feel that if you're going to bother with ability boni at all, the toughest dwarf should have a better Con score than the toughest human. With this system the toughest human at level 1 has 18 +1 (across the board), +1 (choice) for 20, while the toughest dwarf has 18 +1 (dwarf bonus) for 19. That's just wrong to me, considering the main dwarfen quality is that they are the toughest guys around.

There's many ways to do "exceptional humans are fated" or "humans are more diverse" than +1 all around.