D&D General How do you like your ASIs?

[clearstream]

It absolutely would affect their cultures. The profound size differences would alter how those races see the world and threats, and how their cultures adapt to those differences.

It would isn't the same as - I have evidence it would. I think darkvision might alter things more. And innate spells.

 

[clearstream]

Certainly that only matters on if you care about character power though? Like sure, investing in 'wrong' scores makes your character weaker. But that is only a problem if you see a character being weaker as a problem. Theoretically I wish things were better balanced, but then again, this is not a competitive game, so it is not such a big deal. It actually doesn't matter if some characters are not as powerful as others, as long as the more powerful ones don't completely overshadow the others.

For me it is about equivalent leverage over the narrative that emerges from the mechanics.

Overall I value verisimilitude over balance, so if it necessitates that goliaths are better barbarians than halflings, then that is fine by me. Granted, ideally there would be agility-based barbarian build that would let halflings to be effective and fierce anklebiters without being bizarrely strong superhobbits.

An issue with verisimilitude, is to whose fiction?

 

[Maxperson]

It would isn't the same as - I have evidence it would. I think darkvision might alter things more. And innate spells.

Real world cultures differ drastically by living just a few miles from one another due to how they interact with geographical features, flora and fauna. Cultures are incredibly fluid and are affected by even slight differences. That's evidence that size would affect culture. I'm willing to bet that if we had an anthropologist here, that anthropologist could point to real world cultures where size made a difference in the development of that culture.

 

[Vince_Snetterton]

In classical philosophy, this is known formally as the "Kids On My Lawn" argument.

That sounds an awful lot like ageism to me, which I believe is a form of discrimination.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Certainly that only matters on if you care about character power though? Like sure, investing in 'wrong' scores makes your character weaker. But that is only a problem if you see a character being weaker as a problem. Theoretically I wish things were better balanced, but then again, this is not a competitive game, so it is not such a big deal. It actually doesn't matter if some characters are not as powerful as others, as long as the more powerful ones don't completely overshadow the others.

Overall I value verisimilitude over balance, so if it necessitates that goliaths are better barbarians than halflings, then that is fine by me. Granted, ideally there would be agility-based barbarian build that would let halflings to be effective and fierce anklebiters without being bizarrely strong superhobbits.

The extreme to be avoided with balance is having a bunch of believable, logical-in-setting, fictionally developed and verisimilitude-improving options, but High Eleven Swords Bards are just better at everything so that's what everyone plays. It doesn't matter how believable your rangers are if no one wants to be one.

The other imaginary extreme is the one where players just tell the dm what their character can do with no restraints (mechanical or fictional) and the dm must pander to them.

The ideal middle ground not only balances the need for mechanical and fictional, er, balance, but also does so without false choices: ie don't allow halfling barbarians if halflings just suck at being barbarians. But is it better to figure out how to make halfling barbarians work or just tell players "no" at the design level? For a game like DnD, I'd want to make as many choices work as possible.

Hence the need for ambush barbarians.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

You and @FrozenNorth make good points. Another way to characterise the data might be to say that the counts for and against - fixed or floating - look roughly equal. And for, against, and none, likewise. Seems like the debate will likely grind on.

Even the way the question is formulated can influence results. "Do you want to lock certain races into stereotypical classes?" and "Do you want some classes to be better at certain classes?" are maybe asking the same things but might not yield the same results. The debate will probably grind on, I concur, until everyone recognize it's a matter of preference.

Certainly that only matters on if you care about character power though? Like sure, investing in 'wrong' scores makes your character weaker. But that is only a problem if you see a character being weaker as a problem.

It might be if one is the only one playing this way (ie, not trying to make the perfect character). If everyone is trying to portray an especially effective character in a group, the GM just adjust the difficulties of the opponents to take that into account. The game isn't easier or more difficult as a result. Same if everyone is portraying a less-than-paragon of his class and priorizing less critical stats. It will simply result in the GM toning down the opposition. In a mixed group, however, it can lead to less spotlight if one player is playing the best wizard of the universe while the other is playing an OKayish meddler of the arcane, accepted into the academy because he was a great quarterback.

Overall I value verisimilitude over balance, so if it necessitates that goliaths are better barbarians than halflings, then that is fine by me. Granted, ideally there would be agility-based barbarian build that would let halflings to be effective and fierce anklebiters without being bizarrely strong superhobbits.

I agree. I wouldn't have a problem with goliaths not being mechanically stronger than halflings if the setting was making clear that goliaths are not known for their strength and halfling for being small. As soon as halflings are the same size as humans, the ceiling of their houses is at the same level as human houses, for example.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

For me it is about equivalent leverage over the narrative that emerges from the mechanics.

This has far more to do with niche protection than with exact power. If one member of the party can do everything you do, except better, that might be an issue. But if no one else can really do, say, thievery stuff, it doesn't really matter terribly much if you're optimally competent at it. You just need to be more competent than rest of the party so that it is your niche.

An issue with verisimilitude, is to whose fiction?

Even the nebulous assumed generic fantasy of D&D has some assumed fiction. If it wouldn't we wouldn't have fluff. And be perfectly honest, completely aside of any mechanics balance issues etc, does it really make sense to you if eight feet people are not any stronger than three feet tall people? And not just these two species, there are several larger than human species and several smaller than humans species. Does it really seem believable, that all of them just happen to be exactly equally strong despite massive differences of size?

I fully get that some people value balance over representing this, but I really don't think it should be hard to get that some people feel that this is something the mechanics perhaps should try to represent. To me main purpose of RPG mechanics is to codify underlying reality in a manner that allows resolving tasks and situations via rules. At the point the rules stop representing the underlying fiction, the rules lose their purpose to me.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This was brought up in the last (locked, I think) thread on this topic, but the underlying problem is the simplistic design of D&D, or perhaps more generally the (necessary?) simplicity of TTRPGs. For example, a highly intelligent fighter should be just as effective in combat as a very strong fighter, but in different ways.

But the game doesn't work that way. Mechanically, it's simply better to be a strong fighter than an intelligent one. ("Blah blah blah other two pillars blah blah blah." Yeah, sure. Have fun with that.)

So the strengths and weaknesses of the various races inevitably get applied unequally to different classes.

Now, if you like that, because you like the image of various races tending toward certain professions, and you think PCs should reflect that, then fixed racial ASIs make sense.

But if you don't like that, because you like to see more variety among PCs (perhaps with NPCs still adhering to cultural stereotypes), then fixed racial ASIs don't make sense.

It really comes down to that very basic aesthetic preference: racial predispositions apply to PCs, or PCs are outliers and those predispositions don't apply. Both opinions are valid, and all these attempts to use the illusion of neutral logic to elevate one opinion over the other are doomed to fail.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Real world cultures differ drastically by living just a few miles from one another due to how they interact with geographical features, flora and fauna. Cultures are incredibly fluid and are affected by even slight differences. That's evidence that size would affect culture. I'm willing to bet that if we had an anthropologist here, that anthropologist could point to real world cultures where size made a difference in the development of that culture.

Anthropologist here: the real-world range of human size doesn't seem to be big enough to make a noticeable difference. There's no evidence that the Danish, being the tallest people in Europe, are different from other Europeans because of how tall they are. Or that the Maasi being tall makes them good herders (it's just as likely that being unmounted cowboys makes them tall, since height is heavy nutrition- and exercise-dependent).

But the height difference is order of magnitude less than the halfling to goliath gap, so I don't think you can use real-world evidence as a guide.

 

[Lyxen]

I can't find where you've demonstrated that.

And this is just another demonstration. If you had other uses, they would have been provided by now.