Can somebody explain the bias against game balance?

[Dannyalcatraz]

(Nitpick: 1/2 Height = 1/8 mass)

Gnome: 3' 8", 75lbs.

Golaith: 7' 8", 340lbs.

At the top of the race's average range, a Goliath is 2.067X the height and 4.53x the mass of a similarly outlying Gnome.

 

[Garthanos]

It tells something -- but it has not always been as simple as one might like.

Originally Posted by 1st DMG, p. 15
The strength characteristic of a human or humanoid of any type, and of player-characters in particular, is more than a simple evaluation of the musculature of the body. Strength is a composite rating of physical power, endurance, and stamina.

Thanks Ariosto... though it is likely in fourth edition some of those qualities moved in to CON ... I was saying that there is an abstraction going on that made Strength different than raw physical musculature as you see applied towards a simple lift. I was thinking complex uses of multiple muscle systems to ability to exploit burst speed...

And when applied in a simple form treat it as relative to ones mass. It was explicitly this in RuneQuest and other games... and acknowledge by having a separate size attribute from the strength attribute.

 

[nightwyrm]

Gnome: 3' 8", 75lbs.

Golaith: 7' 8", 340lbs.

At the top of the race's average range, a Goliath is 2.067X the height and 4.53x the mass of a similarly outlying Gnome.

Nitpick:
What TS is quoting is the square-cube law. If an object retains its shape and you double its length (or any other one dimensional measurement), you will get 4x (2 squared) the surface area and 8x (2 cubed) the mass. Of course, objects of vastly different sizes also tends to have very different shapes and construction.

Square Cube Law

 

[Ariosto]

And when applied in a simple form treat it as relative to ones mass. It was explicitly this in RuneQuest and other games... and acknowledge by having a separate size attribute from the strength attribute.

In 1st ed. AD&D, halflings have maximum natural strength scores (no 18s). Even exceptional strength "is modified by a restriction that no creature of human/humanoid nature can lift more than twice its own body weight above its head." A 60-pound halfling could thus lift no more than 120 lbs. -- but could still get other benefits of high strength.

The benefits to hit and damage rolls made lower limits for females contentious. Players might not picture their fantastic swordswomen as matches for the most musclebound men in terms of toting barges and lifting bales. However, the thought that a human female character could not get the combat power benefits of a player's rolling 18/51 or better stuck in some craws.

Limiting hobbits to 4th level originally made sense, in my opinion, as reflecting the source material. It was to my mind no "game balance" against the 6th-level potential of dwarves (who lacked the hobbits' outdoorsy stealth and accuracy with missiles, but had more dungeon-oriented specialties). The elves, able to be both 4th-level fighters and 8th-level magic-users, were "just better" -- if not as much superior as some Tolkien fans thought they ought to be. (It was not the elves but the hobbits excluded from the benison of the clerical Raise Dead spell in the original set.)

"Should any player wish to be one ..." was on the mark, except that the halfling as a role had appeal beyond its apparent power as a game piece.

In the "B/X" edition, dwarves and halflings had their level limits doubled (to 8th and 12th) while humans topped out at 14th. (A projected Companion volume did not come out until the Mentzer "BECMI" revision.) They got their own experience progressions and a shared saving-throw table, and dwarves seemed to come out very strong. (For another 180,000 XP, a top-level human fighter got on average 1 more hit point and +2 to hit, but worse saves across the board by 1 or 2 points.)

Elves got up to 10th in both fighting and magic, which just rocked -- especially versus the relatively pathetic human magic-user. Casting 6th-level spells (tops in that game) was neat, but maybe not worth the wait -- and survival to beat the elf's top casting ability, requiring as many XP as the elf's maximum, was dubious. Raise Dead worked on any of the PC types.

I suspect a "power gamer" would pick a cleric, dwarf or elf in B/X. Yet, I routinely see halflings, thieves, fighters and -- most surprisingly -- even human magic-users. The perhaps seemingly superfluous m-u gains experience levels (and thus spell levels) more quickly than the elf. The fighter and halfling also advance slightly more rapidly than the dwarf, the halfling having a very short career (while remaining viable alongside higher-level PCs when there is something other than XP to gain). The thief goes up like a rocket, getting about a level ahead of the others for the same XP, and its very own special abilities improve at each level.

 

[Reigan]

I don't buy the balance vs flavour argument. Just because something is no longer supported by (often bad) mechanics doesn't mean it can't be done. You can use narrative and story to create that sense of wonder instead, even better your are no longer limited by "if the bad guy can do it, why can't I" expectation.

In regards to race, players tend to play classes that match racial stat bonuses. Most played Minotaurs will be strength based classes and will start with a strength of 18+. Its the 18 that matters not the +2.

 

[BryonD]

consider the possibility of simply removing the fluff which offends you: don't make the race in question eight foot eleven and over four hundred pounds of lean, angry muscle. Make it just like us humans, but with yellow Star Trek marks on its forehead, or something, and +2 Strength.

Use the rules, don't let the rules use you.

If you are forced to change your story to comply with your mechanics, then your mechanics have already failed.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Use the rules, don't let the rules use you.

If you are forced to change your story to comply with your mechanics, then your mechanics have already failed.

Well put. Use whatever mechanics you wish but the game should come first. If the rest of the game has to be worked around the mechanics then the game is serving the rules which is a backwards approach.

 

[Kingreaper]

Akin to what was stated above, it is disruptive to the immersive experience that being that is nearly 8' tall and 400lbs is only marginally stronger than a being that is half its height and a quarter its mass.

As always, YMMV.

The thing is, when you look at PCs you find that the race with +2 to a stat is an average of 4-6 points higher in that stat (at first level) than the race WITHOUT the +2.

The +2 is only +2, but people then pick their stats to accentuate their strengths, meaning that a racial +2 gives most of the race +more.

A racial +4 vs. a racial +2 would probably be a boost of average about +2.5-3, while a +6 vs. a +4 would be +2

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Use the rules, don't let the rules use you.

If you are forced to change your story to comply with your mechanics, then your mechanics have already failed.

Then we are back to a contradiction. What if I want a muscular race to not have inherent, largely counter-intuitive bonuses to hitting things?

Fiddling with +2 strength vs +4 strength has a larger in-game impact on combat effectiveness than its in-narrative effect on flavor warrants.

To bring back the very relevant chimp example.... note that the chimp has a different distribution of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers than a human. When it comes time to throw down and tear something's arms off, the chimp has more applicable strength. When it comes time to pick up a heavy backpack and carry it around, the human has more applicable strength.

Oh... so y'all are tracking combat damage and carry weight with the same stat and then complaining that there are rules problems and logical disconnects? Where there's your problem. If you actually wanted to simulate, you'd have several more stats in there to tease those apart. If you're not inclined to simulate to that extent... i.e. you are willing to hand-wave the distribution of muscle fibers, proportions of the limbs, and so on... then you have to be willing to also hand-wave the precise size of the stat bonuses if you want to keep combat balanced.

 

[Dausuul]

One solution to the "minotaurs only get +2 Str despite being enormous" issue is to set a stat floor; require all minotaur PCs to have a base Strength, before racial and level bonuses, of 14 or higher.