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

[ourchair]

So...

...how about them races?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

@abdul:

right, i think in the end, it has about zero effect. Just another race is a little bit ahead now/dwarven fighters get a little bit stronger (+1 wisdom or constitution effictively compared to the former strength 18 build)

powergamers will still powergame, but at least, we will maybe see some more iconic best choices. (Best in a sense of 0,005% better)

 

[Solvarn]

Int/Con Race please

Our DM in our home game already houseruled secondary ability score choices for all of the races that didn't have them previously, so nice to see we're on the right track.

How about an Int/Con race though?

 

[Tony Vargas]

One possible variant to give races a little more differentiation would be to also set the stat bought up from 8. Not a penalty, just, this stat tends to be a little lower, but you can still buy it up as high as you like.

These correspond roughly to the old stat penalties from 1e, where aplicable:

Human: any
Dragonborn: DEX (nothing to go on, here, they look kinda bulky, though)
Dwarf: CHA (classic)
Elf: INT (4e Elves are basicly 'wood' or 'wild' elves, who had an INT penalty)
Eladrin: CON (Eladrin, are classic 'high elves,' they always had a CON penalty)
Gnome: STR (prettymuch going to be STR for the little guys)
1/2 Elf: none (you have to buy your 8 up to a 10, half elves get a good 'blend of the best traits of each parent,' so no dump stat for you)
1/2 Orc: INT (someone's gotta be big and dumb)
Halfling: STR
Tiefling: WIS (Your ancestors made pacts with devils, you inherited their common sense along with the horns)


This doesn't stop you from having an 18 INT elven wizard or 18 CON Eladrin Warlock - you just have to scrape the points together without dumping an 8 in anything else. It also means no 'clutzy elves' - if you have a bonus in a stat, the minimum post-racial becomes 12.

 

[Jhaelen]

To be technically correct, dice are horrible probability generators. While a computer system has an equal chance in an "if-then" situation to produce any probable value, dice have to take the force of the roll, spin, table shape, objects and so forth into account.

You may want to read up on computer-generated random numbers. There's a reason they're more properly called pseudo-random (they're usually based on very long sequences). 'True' random number generators are not widely used as of today.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

One possible variant to give races a little more differentiation would be to also set the stat bought up from 8. Not a penalty, just, this stat tends to be a little lower, but you can still buy it up as high as you like.

These correspond roughly to the old stat penalties from 1e, where aplicable:

Human: any
Dragonborn: DEX (nothing to go on, here, they look kinda bulky, though)
Dwarf: CHA (classic)
Elf: INT (4e Elves are basicly 'wood' or 'wild' elves, who had an INT penalty)
Eladrin: CON (Eladrin, are classic 'high elves,' they always had a CON penalty)
Gnome: STR (prettymuch going to be STR for the little guys)
1/2 Elf: none (you have to buy your 8 up to a 10, half elves get a good 'blend of the best traits of each parent,' so no dump stat for you)
1/2 Orc: INT (someone's gotta be big and dumb)
Halfling: STR
Tiefling: WIS (Your ancestors made pacts with devils, you inherited their common sense along with the horns)


This doesn't stop you from having an 18 INT elven wizard or 18 CON Eladrin Warlock - you just have to scrape the points together without dumping an 8 in anything else. It also means no 'clutzy elves' - if you have a bonus in a stat, the minimum post-racial becomes 12.

Don´t forget to Increase the point buy by several points. Otherwise Stats are generally lower. When you increase before buying, suddenly an 18 is 5 points more expensive than previously... An 18 from 10 costs 16 points. A 16 costs 9 points. A 14 costs 5 points.

When you want the healthy 18/16/14/13/10/8 after racial still be available (with the most favourable race, you want a point buy of: 29

this also allows 2 18s and an 11 if you chose so (note that this is a bit worse than per RAW with a perfect match race, a human can only get one 18 and a 17 and an 11, just like he can have now, but has no 8 then.)

The standard array before racial 16/14/13/12/11/10 would cost: 7+3+3+2+1+2 = 16 points. Leaving 13 points to increase. You can get an 18 for 7 points and a 16 for 4 points leaving just 2 more points. So now average scores will be a bit encouraged.

 

[CovertOps]

I still want someone to tell me why this whole change is 'adding flexibility'. I don't see that. It is just shuffling around which race is best at what. The EXACT same dynamics as before will drive players choices of race and class. The choices they end up with may be different, but how is that a better game? If players were already heavily influenced to play the best combinations then they will be still. If they were NOT heavily influenced to play the best combinations then the whole thing is irrelevant and they'll be just as happy with the old way as the new way.

The ONLY argument I've seen that really has any potential weight at all here is the one about games with heavily restricted choices of race. This is rather a corner case IMHO. It also isn't really entirely clear to me that even then the situation is really better with the new rule. It will heavily depend on exactly what races are and aren't allowed. I can see it being nice if you were excluding every race that was good at class X before and now a couple of them are better for that class, OK you may see more of that class show up. Remember though, every game has only so many PCs and all of them have a race and class. The actual distribution of races at the table is likely to have little to do with what is potentially best mechanically unless you have a lot of really serious optimizers, who are going to pick specific things regardless of what you do since something is ALWAYS best (at least in their view).

Ok...here's my story of "added flexibility". In a campaign I am currently playing in I made a Cleric because there were no other PC Leaders. I wanted to go melee so I did the STR build and went with Longtooth Shifter (STR/WIS). As for the build itself I focused on being defender secondary by taking both shield feats, scale, and finally plate. For RP and backgrounds there were 3 Dwarves in the party and I described my character as "Their wierd uncle" who was always showing up to family events (birthdays, weddings, etc). When I read the preview of the new Cleric build I was like...wow...I can be a real Dwarf and keep my build/concept/RP background pretty much in tact with just a few stat changes (shuffle some stats around).

Now admittedly the optional stat changes aren't what gave me this flexibility, it was the new Cleric build matching up to Dwarf stat bumps, but that doesn't mean that it can't happen. The point is that if you are optimizing then your first choice is to get a race that matches up with your class/build. By adding another stat choice to many races you've made more races compatible with this kind of matching and now you can make your choice more on flavor instead of just superior mechanics. A good example of this is the Rogue DEX/CHA build. You can go Halfling, Drow, Changeling for those stats which allows you to pick among those for your flavor. Do you want to be short? Maybe you want to be a shape changer.

Personally I'd have liked to see Humans get two +2 choices and all other races get one +2 choice and a fixed +2 stat. This makes Humans a good choice for anything, and all other races also good for anything, but with the caveat that you might lose out on a secondary stat. Perhaps some will see this as losing flavor (and I can see that position), but in my view stats are getting in the way of flavor and how you want to build your PC by making certain races "better" for classes where their stats line up.

One possible variant to give races a little more differentiation would be to also set the stat bought up from 8. Not a penalty, just, this stat tends to be a little lower, but you can still buy it up as high as you like.

These correspond roughly to the old stat penalties from 1e, where aplicable:

Human: any
Dragonborn: DEX (nothing to go on, here, they look kinda bulky, though)
Dwarf: CHA (classic)
Elf: INT (4e Elves are basicly 'wood' or 'wild' elves, who had an INT penalty)
Eladrin: CON (Eladrin, are classic 'high elves,' they always had a CON penalty)
Gnome: STR (prettymuch going to be STR for the little guys)
1/2 Elf: none (you have to buy your 8 up to a 10, half elves get a good 'blend of the best traits of each parent,' so no dump stat for you)
1/2 Orc: INT (someone's gotta be big and dumb)
Halfling: STR
Tiefling: WIS (Your ancestors made pacts with devils, you inherited their common sense along with the horns)


This doesn't stop you from having an 18 INT elven wizard or 18 CON Eladrin Warlock - you just have to scrape the points together without dumping an 8 in anything else. It also means no 'clutzy elves' - if you have a bonus in a stat, the minimum post-racial becomes 12.

I like this idea to go with mine from above. You lose 2 points if you try to focus on a stat that your race is bad in. This is a cost to be sure, but it's not horrible and won't get in the way most of the time.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So, that was just off the top of my head, but I don't see how it causes you to actually lose points. In effect, if you don't want to dump the race's classic 'poor' stat, you don't have a dump stat, at all, which means you're don't have as blind a blind spot - you're still getting something for those two points, you just have less choice where to put them (which is the point, just like with the fixed bonus vs the any-stat human bonus).

It's not a penalty, so it would /never/ 'cost' you more than 2 points, even if you insist on thinking of not having a dump stat as costing you points.


Anyway, anyone think I called out the wrong stats for a given race? Want to add a race I missed?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ok...here's my story of "added flexibility". In a campaign I am currently playing in I made a Cleric because there were no other PC Leaders. I wanted to go melee so I did the STR build and went with Longtooth Shifter (STR/WIS). As for the build itself I focused on being defender secondary by taking both shield feats, scale, and finally plate. For RP and backgrounds there were 3 Dwarves in the party and I described my character as "Their wierd uncle" who was always showing up to family events (birthdays, weddings, etc). When I read the preview of the new Cleric build I was like...wow...I can be a real Dwarf and keep my build/concept/RP background pretty much in tact with just a few stat changes (shuffle some stats around).

Now admittedly the optional stat changes aren't what gave me this flexibility, it was the new Cleric build matching up to Dwarf stat bumps, but that doesn't mean that it can't happen. The point is that if you are optimizing then your first choice is to get a race that matches up with your class/build. By adding another stat choice to many races you've made more races compatible with this kind of matching and now you can make your choice more on flavor instead of just superior mechanics. A good example of this is the Rogue DEX/CHA build. You can go Halfling, Drow, Changeling for those stats which allows you to pick among those for your flavor. Do you want to be short? Maybe you want to be a shape changer.

I guess my response would be two-fold though. One being you certainly could have gone dwarf before. Given your melee focus most, if not all, of the same feats that would benefit a dwarf fighter also benefited a dwarf cleric, DWT, Hammer Rhythm, the various saving throw based feats, etc. I don't know if dwarf was listed as a 'sky blue' choice for STR cleric or not, but it was certainly one of the better mechanical choices with CON always being useful to a melee character, WIS obviously useful, and the option of an 18 STR still being pretty reasonable.

Likewise NOW with the 18 STR being much lower cost you're correct that the dwarf is an even better choice there, but some other races probably also get a STR option and may well reach the same level. My point overall being that a lot more goes into who is optimum for what class than just ability score alignment.

The other point is it cuts both ways. Suppose the shifter was the class you DID want to be? NOW instead of playing the mechanically optimum shifter you feel equally compelled to play the mechanically optimum dwarf to the same exact degree. It isn't a net gain from the perspective of the game overall. Certainly it is a net gain for some players in some situations and it is exactly equally likely to be a net loss.

The question can really only devolve down to was it worth all the errata and nonsense that now follows for this net gain of well what?

The two arguments I've seen that COULD hold some weight aren't very convincing so far. Some hypothetical campaigns with a very limited race choice may work out better, depending on which choices those are. Secondly there is a theory that races and classes MAY now better align with racial stereotypes carried over from basically Old D&D all the way up through to now. The problem with that is I haven't seen any analysis that indicates this is actually the case. Even if it is the case that just begs the question of if the trope "dwarves are good at being fighters and clerics and mostly not so good at other classes" is actually something that the rules need to enforce so urgently that there needs to be a major change to races in order to enact it.

I realize there are a couple of races who's optimum choices seem ODD, like Tieflings, and one or two classes that practically state outright in their fluff they're iconic for a specific race (Eladrin and Swordmage) that failed to ACTUALLY match up well, but with those two as the main offenders wouldn't it have made more sense to just write a couple more racial feats for those two races that gave them an edge? Or maybe just add a build choice to those two classes that gave the desired races an edge, rather than revamping the rules simply to make a Tiefling the ideal Infernal Pact Warlock (which ironically is something we don't even know for sure will happen).

 

[CovertOps]

I was thinking more along the lines of if you wanted (for example) to be a Halfling Fighter (start with an 8 STR based on your suggestions). In order to raise your STR you'd have to first buy the 2 points from 8 -> 10 and then buy it up like any other stat. In effect you are making a 20 point character build because you don't have the "dump stat" of an 8. I like that is has a built in "cost" (what off stats do you have to lower to buy that stat up?), but also that the "cost" is minimal.

With the racial stat bumps the way they are now you'd never make a Halfling Fighter because it would be vastly sub-par to other choices. With our ideas put together you could be an "Essentials" Slayer (assuming here that +2 DEX would be the Halfling fixed stat bump and choice would go to STR) and start with 18 STR/18 DEX and be pretty damn awesome even if you can't use large weapons. Wield a long sword or maybe a battleaxe with 2 hands. Your sum difference then becomes 2 less points spent in off stats AND 1 die type lower damage d12 -> d10 or d10 -> d8 depending if you use an axe or blade.

Edit: Forget the lower die type. Bastard Sword and Waraxe are both versatile so you lose 1 point of damage from wielding those 2-handed. All-in-all pretty damn awesome.