Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
When is a lack of bonus a penalty?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Manabarbs" data-source="post: 6153601" data-attributes="member: 6717251"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>secret</em> 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 <em>true </em>new baseline for Next's human designs.</p><p></p><p>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, <em>every</em> 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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manabarbs, post: 6153601, member: 6717251"] 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 [I]secret[/I] 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 [I]true [/I]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, [I]every[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
When is a lack of bonus a penalty?
Top