A design goal: making different races FEEL different.

[Stormonu]

The designers would have to beware with regard to any racial benefits that favor certain classes over others.

Actually, I'm all for designing racial abilities that favor certain classes or professions over others. There will still be people who wish to play against type and will do so even if an option is unsupported. Likewise, I don't feel designers should be constrained to make every concept viable; they need only worry about the common and popular choices; individual groups can make their own stuff up for the sidelined choices.

Overall, I don't want to see racial levels or paragon classes to cover advances in race or culture. I'd rather see them somewhat like the background abilities of 4E - something that you just get at 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 12th and say 15th level. Small bumps that augment your character according to concept.

And I don't think it should be restricted to just race. I'd also like to see culture lumped into this. Being from a city, the woods, a citizen of Corymr, having grown up an orphan or even once being a member of the town guard could all provide small story-based bonuses to help build your character.

The trick would be to keep these from being purely mechanical bumps or bonuses. I wouldn't want to give someone whose city-born just a +1 bonus to Streetwise, for example. I'd want to instead look for a special use of Streetwise instead. Perhaps an ability "Face in the Crowd" would let the character use Streetwise instead of disguise when in a large group.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually, I'm all for designing racial abilities that favor certain classes or professions over others. There will still be people who wish to play against type and will do so even if an option is unsupported.

Yep- a race of 7'+ heavily muscled humanoids may well excell in the warrior role, but not be the best back-alley skulkers. And when someone finally plays a 7'+ heavily muscled humanoid back-alley skulker, it will be cool and unexpected.

 

[pming]

Hiya.

I just read through the thread and two or three people *almost* said what I would write...but not quite.

The key to making a race feel 'different' would be to break the rules. By trying to "use the core rules" to make a race feel different, all the designer is doing is setting up what we have:Dwarves get +2 to X, and +4 when performing Y. This will, and does, fail utterly in trying to make a dwarf 'feel' like a dwarf when all some other character has to have is Feat A, Talent B and a stat of C...now they are every bit as "dwarvish" as the dwarf, mechanically speaking.

What to do? Break the rules completely. For the dwarf, you end up with (assuming, say, 3e D&D): Dwarves all have a +2 to X (with a minimum of 14), and when performing Y they have a 5-in-6 chance of success. What this does is remove the Dwarves chance from anybody else having the 'same feel and chance' as a dwarf. A 1st level dwarven fighter has 5-in-6 chance...and 17th level dwarven fighter has a 5-in-6 chance. Everyone else? They have *no* chance because it's not related to any skill or bonuses they can aquire. It's in the diliberate 'breaking of the rules' where unique racial feel will come in. An elf with +10 to Stealth while in forest? Not any different than a thief with a potion and a magic item that gives him +10. An elf that can "move and hide in natural surroundings with a 90% chance of success"? *That* feels different.

For a good example of abilities and such that help a race 'feel different', I'd point people to the 2nd edition AD&D setting Birthright. Their elves, dwarves and halflings feel *quite* different from humans.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Things like that have been spread out over editions- Powerful Build, Stonecunning, sensing secret doors, breath weapons- and I agree that they add to racial uniqueness.

But I also think situational bonuses, SLAs, PLAs and the like do so as well. Just because a race's ability may be mimicked by class abilities (or vice versa, depending on your POV) doesn't make it any less unusual and interesting.

 

[Quickleaf]

Thats the fault of the players now is it?
Its not that dwarves have a third arm or something. They are all basically just humans with differences in height and ear length.

That right there is what disheartens me when a player runs a demi-human PC. For me, running a demi-human is a great chance to look at what makes them *different* from humans. After all, if I wanted to play a human I would.

Dwarves might not have a third arm, but they revere stone because it is said the eldest dwarves eventually return to the stone from which they came; that magic stone hammer your dwarf wields could literally be their forefather. That's the kind of thing which I like to have in my games.

"They're humans but with pointy ears" leaves me cold.

 

[Argyle King]

Perception is reality.

I'd start by fluffing and visualizing the races differently. I believe that if you change how someone thinks about something and change how they imagine it that they will also come to accept it as feeling different.

Example?

Maybe (instead of dragon boobs,) getting more creative with sexual dimorphism with some of the races. Perhaps horns and bone plates for dragonborn males; frills and crests for dragonborn females.

For the record, I am not a dragon boob h4ter. I just feel that more creative options were available. Plus, how cool would it be to roll on a random horn and crest table?

 

[Fanaelialae]

Actually, I'm all for designing racial abilities that favor certain classes or professions over others. There will still be people who wish to play against type and will do so even if an option is unsupported. Likewise, I don't feel designers should be constrained to make every concept viable; they need only worry about the common and popular choices; individual groups can make their own stuff up for the sidelined choices.

Overall, I don't want to see racial levels or paragon classes to cover advances in race or culture. I'd rather see them somewhat like the background abilities of 4E - something that you just get at 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 10th, 12th and say 15th level. Small bumps that augment your character according to concept.

And I don't think it should be restricted to just race. I'd also like to see culture lumped into this. Being from a city, the woods, a citizen of Corymr, having grown up an orphan or even once being a member of the town guard could all provide small story-based bonuses to help build your character.

The trick would be to keep these from being purely mechanical bumps or bonuses. I wouldn't want to give someone whose city-born just a +1 bonus to Streetwise, for example. I'd want to instead look for a special use of Streetwise instead. Perhaps an ability "Face in the Crowd" would let the character use Streetwise instead of disguise when in a large group.

I think it's okay for a race to favor some subset of classes, but only to a degree.

Hearkening back to the example of the 4e Dwarf, resistance to forced movement and trips is something that favors front line classes over ranged classes, but it's still useful to both. A fighter is more likely to see it come up regularly than a wizard, but when it comes up it's still just as useful to the wizard.

Contrast this with something like a +1 to hit with axes. That's what I'd consider a poor choice for a default racial ability, and that's before considering the cultural aspect of not all dwarven clans necessarily favoring axes. +1 to hit with axes is something that a fighter might use, but a wizard probably never will. Even in the case of the fighter, it pigeon holes him into how the designer feels the dwarf should fight. If you think a dwarf who fights with a spear is awesome, too bad; use the axe or lose that racial feature. I don't even think I'd be happy to see this as an optional racial feat, but I'd hate it as a racial feature.

I think that a well thought out race should have mechanics that make it clearly distinctive, but that those mechanics should generally be of use to any class within reason. I could see making the occasional exception, such as a minotaur whose features favor melee and little else, but as a general rule I think the designers should give those kinds of limiting mechanics a wide berth.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

See Monte Cook's racial classes in his Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evoved game. It works.

I think that can work but each racial class level needs to give you a unique racial ability. I played a Giant PC with Giant racial levels and if I recall correctly the first two Giant levels only boost stats, which didn't make my character feel more Giantish. (Although I only have experience with Giant racial levels, so my frame of reference is quite limited.)

 

[Plane Sailing]

I would like to see Race continuing to make a difference, but I wouldn't want it to be through racial feat, class or paragon class options - because so many players don't want the options, they focus on the key aspect of their class, and it doesn't alleviate the real problem (for those who perceive it - for those who love it like it is, well, I'm not talking to you!)

The option I'd most like to see is to have race features which gain as you level up, along with class features and 'theme' features. So each PC is a combination of Race, Theme and Class; gaining a level means you get a new feature from each of these or the next one of them, depending upon whether the system was designed with lots of features or a round-robin of improvements (so at 1st level you have one of each, then at 2nd you get a class feature, at 3rd a theme feature, at 4th a race feature, at 5th a class feature and so forth)

Cheers

 

[TrickyUK]

I like the idea of having race and class development as separate element. You choose your race and you choose your class. You do some adventuring and you improve in your class as well as becoming more of a racial paragon.

Mixed in with this is the cultural element of maybe spending time with another race and so you can adopt certain racial traits from other races.

For example, each race has a development path which allows the choice of certain abilities. This could be tied to level. Some abilities are based on nature and therefore unique to that race. Others are based nurture and so could be chosen by other races, although another race may receive a diluted benefit.

All abilities should be accompanied by fluff in such a way as make the choice as much about defining a role-playing character as it is about gaining a specific mechanical benefit.

The problem I see (and this may have been mentioned before) is that for something like D&D (which is a rules system), the races may be too generic and so the fluff seem negligible. Also, there is a tendency to make races balanced, limiting the range of crunch, and yet the genre (high fantasy) almost cries out that races are not equal – it’s so cool to be an elf, they live forever, dwarves can drink all day and never get drunk!