When is a lack of bonus a penalty?

[Morrus]

If you have two races. One gets a +1 to STR; the other doesn't. You could easily say that the first race has a STR penalty as much as you could say that the second has a bonus.

In previous editions of D&D an elf might get (for example) +2 DEX, -2 CON. That's essentially as compared to a human who gets no modifiers. Alternatively, you could say that the human gets +2 CON and -2 DEX, and the elf gets no modifiers. Just depends what you arbitrarily decide is your base-line.

So it's supposedly a truism that "players don't like racial ability penalties". I *think* that's true from various conversations I've had here at EN World, but that's anecdotal. Let's assume it is true, for the sake of argument.

I'd argue therefore that what the players don't like is having ability penalties being called penalties. They don't want to feel that their character is "bad" at something, just that they're "especially good" at other things. So a half-orc can be "strong" but an elf can't be "weak".

But let's take Next as an example. Humans get +1 to everything. That's your baseline. So EVERY race except humans has a whole bunch of ability penalties. Each gets a couple of abilities where they don't have a penalty (expressed as a +1 to make it the same as the baseline human), but the rest of the ability scores are at a penalty.

A hill dwarf has -1 DEX, -1 CON, -1 INT, -1 CHA. Hill dwarves are clumsy, sickly, stupid, and boorish compared to humans. But they at least have average STR and WIS.

It's not penalties that seem to be the problem. It's just calling them penalties that seems to be the problem. Simply moving the baseline and calling them a "lack of a bonus" - the exact same thing - seems to solve the issue.

What do you think? Personally - I think penalties are just fine. I like penalties and bonuses to be noticeable, so +/-2 to DEX and CON for an elf feels about right to me. Vary it a bit for subraces, of course.

 

[Tuft]

I think many players see through the ruse of moving the baseline easier than the designers think....

 

[Tuft]

The developers of the now sadly cancelled MMO City of Heroes were rather open and transparent, often participating in the game forum and engaging in discussions about their game.

Since it was an MMO, arguments about balance were rife and frequent (as were the accusations of "nerfing"), and one thing the developers were quite frank about was the impossibility to hide a penalty as a lack of bonus...

 

[Weather Report]

I like penalties and bonuses to be noticeable, so +/-2 to DEX and CON for an elf feels about right to me.

In a tangent, if D&D elves are to be at all akin to Tolkien elves, they should get a Con bonus.

 

[Li Shenron]

It's not penalties that seem to be the problem. It's just calling them penalties that seems to be the problem. Simply moving the baseline and calling them a "lack of a bonus" - the exact same thing - seems to solve the issue.

How many times have you seen a pack of something at the supermarket with a label saying "SMALL SIZE!!" or "NOW 20% LESS CONTENT THAN BEFORE"?

Of course, marketing is oriented at exploiting people instincts, not conscious thoughts, and unfortunately it works.

That said, I don't have the slightest problem with penalties, but I do have problems with Humans getting more ability bonuses than everybody else. I don't like this interpretation of "human flexibility" as "can do everything a little better", I largely prefer the "can learn more tricks" (ie, I prefer "horizontal flexibility" rather than "vertical flexibility"). The current design choice also does not resonate with traditional fantasy where elves and similar are famous for being somewhat superior to humans.

 

[Morrus]

How many times have you seen a pack of something at the supermarket with a label saying "SMALL SIZE!!" or "NOW 20% LESS CONTENT THAN BEFORE"? .

But I have played plenty of D&D games over the years which had racial penalties, so the analogy doesn't hold that strongly. And I was fine with that. Removing racial penalties and people complaining about racial penalties seems to be a new thing in the last few years. To me, at least.

 

[billd91]

I get pretty tired of people equating lack of a bonus with a penalty. I think it's a hallmark of an entitlement mentality or at least of a mentality that seems to think it's entitled to not experience adversity or any form of negativity (even if it's just numerical around a number line). Unfortunately, I think some games have fallen into the trap of feeding that mentality. Witness that 4e implemented a non-proficiency penalty for weapons a character isn't trained in as lack of a bonus. I suppose they might say that they did so so that nearly all mathematical operations were addition of positive integers rather than including more subtraction of integers, but all it really did, I think, is contribute to pointless modifier bloat and feed the mentality that negative modifiers meant the PC (race, class, whatever) was bad and that, in turn, reflected on the player.

The one general area in which I think lack of a bonus equates to a penalty is in 4e's level advancement and challenge system (and to a lesser extent, 3e's). Trying to fix the success rate for attacks across all levels, thus increasing defenses in step with attacks, strongly reinforces the idea that lack of a bonus is effectively a penalty. So I do have sympathy there when players bring up the issue.

 

[Morrus]

I get pretty tired of people equating lack of a bonus with a penalty.

That's definitely the exact opposite to what I'm seeing. I'm seeing people complaining about penalties when they're called penalties, and being happy when they're presented just as a lack of a bonus instead - despite them being merely relative ways of presenting the same differentiations.

 

[Deset Gled]

Removing penalties may be primarily psychological, but there is a mathematical effect as well: the swing caused by bonuses is cut in half.

In the 5e example given, the human with bonuses only has a score that is 1 higher than the dwarf with a penalty. Regardless of what you call it, the difference is only 1. In 3e, an elf had -2 con and a dwarf had +4, for a total difference of 4. Whether this swing is good or bad is a much less semantic issue than the naming of penalties and bonuses.

Also, in my experience, the "baseline" players compare themselves to isn't the average, it's the extreme. They don't care if their human fighter is stronger than a gnome, the just care that it's weaker than a half orc. Frankly, the entire concept of "baseline" gets rather muddled when your realize it has to be re-evaluated for each different class/build/character type.

 

[Stormonu]

That's definitely the exact opposite to what I'm seeing. I'm seeing people complaining about penalties when they're called penalties, and being happy when they're presented just as a lack of a bonus instead - despite them being merely relative ways of presenting the same differentiations.

They're not quite the "same differentiations". When you change that all humans get a +1 to all abilities, you're actually raising the "average" ability score from 10 to 11. Though its minor enough not to have an effect if you're using ability modifiers instead of the scores themselves, I just see it as unnessary bloat - along the same line where japanese card games have values in the hundreds or thousands, instead of using "1".