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A design goal: making different races FEEL different.
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<blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 5760499" data-attributes="member: 23240"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>To help in differentiating races, we need racial abilities that are:</p><p>- Useful enough to be invoked more than once a session on average. If something is very situational, it will be forgotten.</p><p>- Meaningful in many non-combat situations. In combat, everybody's using a lot of strange abilities anyway.</p><p>- 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.</p><p>- Affecting life in such a way that racial identity builds around them.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="steenan, post: 5760499, member: 23240"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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