D&D 4E 4E Races, Post-Essentials: Flexibility, You Say?

[UngeheuerLich]

Making it a bit worse balance wise and better flavourwise is a plus.

Maybe adding stat bonuses before increasing could help race balance...

 

[FireLance]

So, Dwarves have really good Feat Support for the Fighter class, enough to more than make up for being CON/WIS. Now, they can be STR/WIS with the same feats. Hopefully a lot of those feats are heavily based on CON....

Actually, Con is the fixed stat for dwarves, so they can be Con/Wis or Str/Con, but not Str/Wis.

Nonetheless, the same feat support argument could be made for a Str/Con dwarf, and to that I say: a Str/Con dwarf fighter just gets a +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls compared to a Con/Wis dwarf fighter, and I remain unconvinced that such a small difference will break the game or be even noticeable in actual play.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The 4e 'treadmill' makes any difference in attack bonuses quite noticeable, yes. If you're a little behind at 1st level, you're a little behind at 30th. At the highest levels, even with feat taxes, or anytime they're overlevelled, the monsters pull ahead and such differences become more noticeable.

Even so, you could always play any race with any class. Starting with a 16 instead of an 18 is noticeable, not fatal. Broadening the range of stat bonuses available to races actually makes it more likely a race will only be used if it can get a bonus to the apropriate primary stat - as there are more such races for each stat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Actually, Con is the fixed stat for dwarves, so they can be Con/Wis or Str/Con, but not Str/Wis.

Nonetheless, the same feat support argument could be made for a Str/Con dwarf, and to that I say: a Str/Con dwarf fighter just gets a +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls compared to a Con/Wis dwarf fighter, and I remain unconvinced that such a small difference will break the game or be even noticeable in actual play.

People go to all kinds of lengths to get a +1 to-hit. It absolutely is quite a significant difference, especially for a class/race combo who's main limitation was limited accuracy (favoring +2 weapons and usually starting with a 16 in attack stat). Your average dwarf axe/hammer fighter before was at +6 to-hit, and with DWT STILL has the highest DPR of any fighter. Now with an extra +1 to-hit AND damage the same fighter just gained 15% to its overall damage output. Not only are they the most damaging fighter per hit, they're now on par to-hit with any other fighter except a human that takes Expertise. Given that the human already has the two best feats he can get second level just allows the dwarf to take Expertise and get even MORE ahead.

The problem with the 'myth of flexibility' is it really is illusionary. Because every other race has gained the same advantage the upshot is only that if you had a race like dwarf that already had good feat support for certain classes they are just better than ever. All the other races that gained access to STR are at best keeping up (IE still behind the dwarf as a fighter, slightly) while all the other races are relatively even worse fighters.

This goes for each other class as well. The best possible theoretical outcome would be that all races equally got better at everything and nothing has changed except we have some power creep. That's the BEST possible outcome. The real outcome is going to be somewhere less than that, as again the dwarf clearly shows.

The end result of this whole thing is power creep and even more lock in of class/race choice to a few optimum choices. On top of which the human now has much less of a unique thing. BIG win.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The 4e 'treadmill' makes any difference in attack bonuses quite noticeable, yes. If you're a little behind at 1st level, you're a little behind at 30th. At the highest levels, even with feat taxes, or anytime they're overlevelled, the monsters pull ahead and such differences become more noticeable.

And still at the heart of the problem lies the "I lose 10% damage" mentality...

hitting a little less hard and hitting a little less often is only a problem when monster hp is very high and damage of monsters quitelow... the new damage and monster design guidelines alone should make having a 16 post racial much less dramatic, as encounter will now be filled with a little lower level monsters.

Increased damage means making monsters of equal level a better challenge, means lower defenses and lower hp for a combat of about equal difficulty.

I wholeheartedly believe, monster design was at the heart of the problem. Not the 4e system itself.

 

[Klaus]

The differentiation of races goes beyond the Ability Score Modifiers.

A Str/Con dwarf has to feel different than a Str/Con goliath.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And still at the heart of the problem lies the "I lose 10% damage" mentality...

hitting a little less hard and hitting a little less often is only a problem when monster hp is very high and damage of monsters quitelow... the new damage and monster design guidelines alone should make having a 16 post racial much less dramatic, as encounter will now be filled with a little lower level monsters.

Increased damage means making monsters of equal level a better challenge, means lower defenses and lower hp for a combat of about equal difficulty.

I wholeheartedly believe, monster design was at the heart of the problem. Not the 4e system itself.

There is still a 'treadmill' effect though. That arises out of the way 4e monsters have fixed and monotonically increasing numbers for most everything. It makes encounter design a lot less of a headache, but it also means you are ALWAYS not useful if you can't keep your to-hit number increasing and you never see a big advantage from doing so. The core math of say 1e AD&D wasn't actually much different from 4e, but because the AC of monsters didn't increase in any kind of fixed relationship to their other abilities you could often run into monsters at 10th level that had AC similar to 3-4th level monsters. Under those conditions having a higher to-hit number was actually meaningful in a concrete way. Now its only meaningful in some abstract sense where you can hit goblins really easily at 10th level, except you'll never SEE a goblin at 10th level! In the old days my 10th level fighter might EASILY see a Hill Giant at 10th level, which is still a threat because it can do a LARGE amount of damage and has a high to-hit, but your level and str and magic and whatever also means you hit it often as well. The differences between monsters thus is much more dramatic (between characters too). 4e ends up feeling samey at all levels and monsters often feel like they are almost the same as all the other monsters.

The problem with the idea that it means less to hit better against lesser defenses really doesn't work out either. It is only marginally less important and in fact disposing of these higher damage monsters faster by hitting them more often can be even MORE rewarding. You could afford to wiff a bunch before, the consequences were trivial at high level. That isn't really true anymore. Greater damage outputs just increase combat intensity, putting more of a premium on hitting often and hard. It may shift the equation a bit in favor of damage bonuses, but not much.

The whole design of the game fosters the desire to hit 10% more often. A few slight tweaks are not going to measurably change that. I totally agree the changes to monsters are a good thing, but don't overestimate what it does for the game.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Welcome to the Mouseferatu fallacy. (Sorry, Ari, you were just the first to mention it.)

The Mouseferatu fallacy seems that adding a choice to stat bonuses will increase pigeonholing. Pigeonholing, aka, choosing class, then race off of Stat bonuses is a disease of the player, not the system. This will increase diversity in races being played by each class, and classes by each race.

There are three players, Adam, Betty, and Charlie. Adam is a hard-core optimizer, Betty is story oriented, but keeps stat theory in he back of her mind, as she wants to stay mechanically in the ballpark with Adam. Charlie is purely story focused, and chooses his stats out of personality.

Adam right now picks class first and believes that no one should play a non-double-stat race unless the feat and feature support is amazing. Adding more double stat choices will increase his non-human diversity. His human playing might decrease, as it is less attractive with more "viable" races for each class.

Betty picks face and class together, but looks to get stat bumps when she can. Adding a stat choice allows for more relaxed freedom, as the threat of being behind the curve is reduced.

Charlie will barely notice the change, except maybe he'll appreciate the slight increase in diversity.

There is less pigeonholing in all three cases.

As for the "mechanical flavor" argument... Any mechanical flavor system that leaves dwarves as better Druids than Warlords and better laser Clerics than melee Clerics has a problem. Additionally, why do Tieflings not tend towards infernal Warlock.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I would support getting rid of stat bumps altogether. Give everyone a +2 to any two stats, or give no one stat bumps.

Even better, with point buy, what's wrong with racial minimums? All dwarves must have Con 12, all Elves and halflings, Dex 12.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

There is still a 'treadmill' effect though. That arises out of the way 4e monsters have fixed and monotonically increasing numbers for most everything. It makes encounter design a lot less of a headache, but it also means you are ALWAYS not useful if you can't keep your to-hit number increasing and you never see a big advantage from doing so. The core math of say 1e AD&D wasn't actually much different from 4e, but because the AC of monsters didn't increase in any kind of fixed relationship to their other abilities you could often run into monsters at 10th level that had AC similar to 3-4th level monsters. Under those conditions having a higher to-hit number was actually meaningful in a concrete way. Now its only meaningful in some abstract sense where you can hit goblins really easily at 10th level, except you'll never SEE a goblin at 10th level! In the old days my 10th level fighter might EASILY see a Hill Giant at 10th level, which is still a threat because it can do a LARGE amount of damage and has a high to-hit, but your level and str and magic and whatever also means you hit it often as well. The differences between monsters thus is much more dramatic (between characters too). 4e ends up feeling samey at all levels and monsters often feel like they are almost the same as all the other monsters.

The problem with the idea that it means less to hit better against lesser defenses really doesn't work out either. It is only marginally less important and in fact disposing of these higher damage monsters faster by hitting them more often can be even MORE rewarding. You could afford to wiff a bunch before, the consequences were trivial at high level. That isn't really true anymore. Greater damage outputs just increase combat intensity, putting more of a premium on hitting often and hard. It may shift the equation a bit in favor of damage bonuses, but not much.

The whole design of the game fosters the desire to hit 10% more often. A few slight tweaks are not going to measurably change that. I totally agree the changes to monsters are a good thing, but don't overestimate what it does for the game.

Actually I agree with your reasoning here. A little bit more variance in attack bonus and defenses would be a bit more funny.

You should however remember to include lower level foes in your encounters. You can increase the number of goblins the character face, and should do so, so that your players notice their increasing power.

It is mainly a DM problem if he lets his characters play in the threadmill all the time.

@charwoman gene: i believe this would be the perfect solution..., and when we are at it, stat increases with levels should go away too...