Level Up (A5E) Changes to race (species?)

[TheSword]

Your first and second sentence literally cancel each other. If everyone can put +2 to strength then it indeed is not easier to make strong orc!

Well any other race is using their floating +2 to do so, while the Orc has still got theirs so yes it easier for them. It costs them less, is probably a better expression than easier. A floating bonus is worth more than a fixed bonus.

The floating ASIs already do that. And if you're gonna have four ability points that go above point buy that you can put pretty much wherever, then it is just more elegant to increase the point buy to allow buying those points directly.

One of those +2’s is fixed. Just increasing points buy destroys all stat difference between race, rather than reducing it to a manageable level

Yes, of course you would need to increase the cap. But it doesn't make characters more powerful as those extra point buy point just replace ASIs

If you increase the cap and add extra points enough to raise a stat to 17 you are making characters more powerful because of the scaling nature of points buy. You’re giving +4 to two stats below 13.

As long as 'not being excluded' is understood to mean 'everyone can have equally high main stat' these two wishes are literally incompatible. That's my point, you can't have both.

I don’t think this is quite true. I can be a very charismatic elf under this suggested system and yet still be much faster than a typical human.

An orc could be as intelligent as the most intelligent 1st level elf. But it couldn’t also be as fast. It could be as strong, and even the least strong Orc will still be as strong as an average elf.

You see, with this system you can preserve racial differences and yet they can have an equally high main stat.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If you increase the cap and add extra points enough to raise a stat to 17 you are making characters more powerful because of the scaling nature of points buy. You’re giving +4 to two stats below 13.

This doesn't make much sense to me. The idea is to redo the point buy math.

You see, with this system you can preserve racial differences and yet they can have an equally high main stat.

Nope. The difference is gone in practice. A gnome can be just as strong as an orc and orc as agile as an elf. There is no difference there. The only situation it would come up at all, is the unlikely case where the player wanted to max a stat which was not their main stat but was their species' favoured stat. So in theory an orc wizard could have a higher strength than an elf one (assuming that the elf wizard put their floating bonus to int,) but this is a thing that doesn't happen in practice.

 

[Scott Christian]

Man...

I know I’m not a humble person, but like, I feel like y’all are sleeping on the solution that I have already presented in several threads.

That is:

Your race and class (and possibly background) give you 1 or 2 Associated Ability Scores. From your AASs, you pick 2 Ability Scores to gain a +2.

This means that a Goliath Wizard can easily have +2 Strength and +2 Intelligence, as can a Gnome Fighter.

If we absolutely must keep the math the same, make it a choice of a +2 and a +1.

If the goal is to be fair and equitable without navigating into hurtful territory, why have any bonuses at all? Why not just let people use point buy or roll> Every person can be as unique as you want them without having to attach anything to race, class or background.
Surely, that would be the easiest method? Not to simply place numbers elsewhere, which apparently, some people find offensive. Everything else can be just dynamic feats decided upon based on your class, ancestry, and background.

 

[Scott Christian]

I should add that you can point buy to 20. No cap. This ensures a broader range of other stats. Thus the dwarven fighter that has only a 16 strength (oh, poor dwarf, how will he survive?) also has a 16 con. Whereas the 20 strength (yea! I can hit harder and have 5-10% better odds) has to deal with fewer hit points, and possibly a lower tertiary score.

 

[TheSword]

I should add that you can point buy to 20. No cap. This ensures a broader range of other stats. Thus the dwarven fighter that has only a 16 strength (oh, poor dwarf, how will he survive?) also has a 16 con. Whereas the 20 strength (yea! I can hit harder and have 5-10% better odds) has to deal with fewer hit points, and possibly a lower tertiary score.

Whereas this looks good in principal. Some classes can live with a single amazing stat and this makes them substantially more powerful. Wizards for instance. I like the soft limit on primary stats that then develop over time. It encourages more balanced characters.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Whereas this looks good in principal. Some classes can live with a single amazing stat and this makes them substantially more powerful. Wizards for instance.

Yes, and that is the thing that should be fixed. All classes should have some MAD so there would be more than one stat combination and thus more than one way to be good at them. This is the third time I say this in this thread alone.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

as for “whataboutism”, how is giving a very popular and widely praised supplement that does the thing we are arguing about, as a reply to the notion that I should “never publish a game” if I think it’s okay to put ASIs in culture, “whataboutism”?

I mean, that's pretty much textbook whataboutism. Instead of arguing why it's okay, you're just saying "Well why didn't people complain when X did it?!".

So one PC might rank their species high, which gives them access to troll, while another racks that low making them a baseline human. Other rankings determine (IIRC) ability scores, skills, magic potential, and wealth (very important to concepts like Rigger).

The trouble with this was that it was a flat cost, and a pretty extreme cost, when in fact different races had different values to different character concepts. So what this did was two things:

1) Strongly pushed people to select specific races to do specific things - two races might be costed the same, but one might be drastically more useful as a Decker or Street Sam or whatever. Or worse, a cheaper race might literally be better than a more expensive one. So anyone optimizing picks from a very narrow pool of races for any given role.

2) People who aren't optimizing get ripped off even more than usual. So when someone does go "Okay, I do want to be a Troll Rigger!", they're drastically worse off than, say, a Dwarf or Human Rigger, because they have less resources (which can be killer), less skills, etc.

I'm not quite sure what the solution is here, but I always found this to be a bit of a problem myself. Some editions it was worse than others.

Class is no better a place to put them thematically than background or culture.

It definitely is. Classes require and involve actual training/aptitude. To be a Fighter you have to exercise and so on, whether you get strong or get agile or both or whatever. To be a Wizard you have to train your mind. I'm not sure how we deal with Charisma but there are a million approaches, like that becoming a Warlock or Paladin actually strengthens your presence by augmenting your soul or whatever. Wisdom can come from being touched by the divine or whatever.

There's an actual logical link there. Whereas the idea that everyone from Culture X is "more agile" or "more intelligent" or whatever doesn't hold up to even casual inspection. Background is a bit more viable but the problem there is different - what exactly Background entails/represents is pretty vague. If you could narrow down the concept of Background to be a bit more precise (probably eliminating a few extant backgrounds whilst likely adding others) you'd reach a position where ASIs either did or didn't make sense for Backgrounds.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Anyway, if we are not going into class design and just consider how a more crunchy, extra options version of the game should handle the species, this is how I'd do it:

Break down all features and bonuses of the species to clearly defined half feats/ASIs. Then you can have the species as pre-built packages of these traits, everyone getting the same amount. (Six, maybe? Being small might be worth negative one and there could be other such 'flaws' that let you have more traits.)

But then it would be super easy for people to customise these species, or if some people wanted more freedom, then they could just built their trait package from the scratch. Just choose any six. Or the half way point where the species are somewhat flexible; they might have nine traits and you get to choose six of them. And of course two of these traits are directly tradeable for an actual feat. And even for people who like rigidly defined species this system would be a boon, as it would make defining mechanics of new species super simple; just choose which six traits they have. Each campaign could easily customise how rigidly they want their species to be defined.

I think this really would be the best way to handle it. There are fundamental disagreements about what people want the species to be and I don't think any one inflexible way will ever satisfy everyone (or even nearly everyone.)

 

[Derren]

It definitely is. Classes require and involve actual training/aptitude. To be a Fighter you have to exercise and so on, whether you get strong or get agile or both or whatever. To be a Wizard you have to train your mind. I'm not sure how we deal with Charisma but there are a million approaches, like that becoming a Warlock or Paladin actually strengthens your presence by augmenting your soul or whatever. Wisdom can come from being touched by the divine or whatever.

There's an actual logical link there. Whereas the idea that everyone from Culture X is "more agile" or "more intelligent" or whatever doesn't hold up to even casual inspection. Background is a bit more viable but the problem there is different - what exactly Background entails/represents is pretty vague. If you could narrow down the concept of Background to be a bit more precise (probably eliminating a few extant backgrounds whilst likely adding others) you'd reach a position where ASIs either did or didn't make sense for Backgrounds.

Training is represented by distributing your stats. The ability score adjustmens reflect basic aptitude which is influenced by race only, not training for a class or culture.
A halfling can train a lot to be strong and be stronger than most average or untrained humans, but a trained orc will be stronger than a trained halfling simply because of biology. And there is nothing bad about that, those are different races/species so of course their biology is different.

And if people want to minmax, they will minmax and will take whatever is best for them. If its not for ability score adjustment then they will take it for other racial abilities. Or take cultures and backgrounds with the most synergy for their class.
But be honest, when was the last time you actually have done so? Played something completely minmaxed? And when was the last time you have played something suboptimal? The game should not be build around roll players who minmax everything in my opinion and should not remove ability score adjustments from where they make sense just so to "force?" people who do not care about what they play and only look at numbers change their default builds.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, that's pretty much textbook whataboutism. Instead of arguing why it's okay, you're just saying "Well why didn't people complain when X did it?!".



The trouble with this was that it was a flat cost, and a pretty extreme cost, when in fact different races had different values to different character concepts. So what this did was two things:

1) Strongly pushed people to select specific races to do specific things - two races might be costed the same, but one might be drastically more useful as a Decker or Street Sam or whatever. Or worse, a cheaper race might literally be better than a more expensive one. So anyone optimizing picks from a very narrow pool of races for any given role.

2) People who aren't optimizing get ripped off even more than usual. So when someone does go "Okay, I do want to be a Troll Rigger!", they're drastically worse off than, say, a Dwarf or Human Rigger, because they have less resources (which can be killer), less skills, etc.

I'm not quite sure what the solution is here, but I always found this to be a bit of a problem myself. Some editions it was worse than others.



It definitely is. Classes require and involve actual training/aptitude. To be a Fighter you have to exercise and so on, whether you get strong or get agile or both or whatever. To be a Wizard you have to train your mind. I'm not sure how we deal with Charisma but there are a million approaches, like that becoming a Warlock or Paladin actually strengthens your presence by augmenting your soul or whatever. Wisdom can come from being touched by the divine or whatever.

There's an actual logical link there. Whereas the idea that everyone from Culture X is "more agile" or "more intelligent" or whatever doesn't hold up to even casual inspection. Background is a bit more viable but the problem there is different - what exactly Background entails/represents is pretty vague. If you could narrow down the concept of Background to be a bit more precise (probably eliminating a few extant backgrounds whilst likely adding others) you'd reach a position where ASIs either did or didn't make sense for Backgrounds.

In all honesty, I just like the idea of splitting ancestry and culture because of the character ideas it supports, and because this way the sensitivity issue is addressed in a way many people (judging by the popularity of Ancestry & Culture on Drivethru) seem to like. Personally, I would be fine with leaving ASIs as they are. But since we want to be inclusive, this seemed like a good way to have our cake and eat it too.