I perfectly understand your desire to change the rules and I find it reasonable.
I think it is the wrong way of doing so. Allowing every race to have their bonus wherever they want looks terrible to me. It just makes other races the best choice.
Instead you should for example replace +2 con bonus with an abilty that makes dwarves tougher (like the goliath encounter power). For con it is not that problematic because it is no attack stat.
The half orc would be fine even without +1 con and +2 strength. They already have both an offensive and a defensive trait. Now you need to look if every race has such a defining trait.
Sure, that would be an interesting take, but that would be a heavy re-write to the game. Far more than a single optional rule.
While I can truly appreciate a look into your thought process, I'm sorry but IMO this is still really a matter of perspective.
Yes, it is a matter of perspective. That is my point.
From where I am standing, this is a great rule, because it fixes a problem I have personally had. So, when I see people trying to tell me that I am wrong, because I really just want to powergame a min-max character that has no regard to the story, I'm flabberghasted. In that case, why did I care about the race/class combo, instead of picking the well-trod cliched builds.
Of the 56 playable races I include (sorry, no Dragonmarks...), only 14 get a ASI for WIS, and ONLY the Kalishtar is WIS +2. Add the 5 races with ASI +1s they can place anywhere (including WIS) and now you have 19 races.
So, does that mean 66% of the races in the game have sub-optimal clerics? No. It means 37% have better starting potential at level 1. That's it. I don't know why you felt you had to spend so much to improve one ability score with that PC. All it takes is one ASI to give you the +2 that makes you as good as Kalishtars, and better than all the races with only +1 WIS. And, frankly, it isn't even that when you think because you have a +2 to INT, if you use point buy you have more points to put into WIS from the beginning. So, that does help, even if only a little. Playing with feats and you could easily take a feat with a +1 WIS included, making you as good as every other race (again, except Kalishtars).
You realize none of this matters for what I was saying right? When this game took place, we only had the PHB. So there were no races with +2 wisdom. Most of them had +1 as a secondary.
Yet, my expeirence is still valid, is it not? Just because you can point to all these numbers and tell me how little I was sacrificing, that doesn't mean I suddenly will feel good about that character and how they played.
Did you roll scores? I mean, seriously you dumped DEX, and then complain about needing to raise STR as well as WIS? If you plan to go the heavy armor route (with dumped DEX, makes sense) for a good AC, then wouldn't you have at least a STR 13? Also, the CON bonus for rock gnome should have improved your HP and concentration checks, didn't it?
It was your choice to dump DEX (even if a role-playing one), then you have to accept the harsh reality of dumping arguably the most important ability score in the game. I mean, did you really not expect that to have a huge impact?
Anyway, my point is even with this look into your thought process, and I don't know all the ins-and-outs of your experience, but I have to question it somewhat. When push comes to shove, any race without an ASI +2 in your prime score, at worst, requires a single ASI bump to improve it. You get other things to make up for that. Frankly, gnomish magic resistance IMO is a huge feature (sorry it didn't seem to help you much in this case).
And this comes across as judgemental.
How did I get those numbers, didn't this aspect help? Didn't I notice this boon? How did I possibly think that decision was a good one?
Honestly, I dumped Dex because it was a god-stat. I had never dumped dex on a single character in my entire DnD career. I always dumped strength. But, I had access to heavy armor, and I was a wisdom caster, so I figured I'd reverse it. I didn't mind always going last. Spells were never an issue in that game. We never stealthed. So, mostly, it was a non-issue. Except for that crossbow, which still reeks, since it was a uniquely created item for my character, but was something they had no capability of using.
Is that reason good enough to meet your approval?
Finally, I'm sick of the whole thing. Just remove racial ASIs completely. No longer an issue either way. For the people who will whine about not getting a few extra points, increase point-buy to a max of 16 or 17, improve the standard array, and allow rollers to roll 7 scores and drop their lowest score. All of those ideas will make up for the lost 2-4 racial ASI points.
IMO other racial traits represent the idea that some races are stronger (powerful build), smarter (gnomish magic resistance), more hardy (adv/resistance to poison, +1 HP), and so on. Giving races proficiencies in skill also represent it. Maybe even give them "expertise" or advantage (why the hell don't elves get advantage on perception checks with a trait called Keen Senses, I mean every other creature in the game with that feature does in one respect or another).
Again, that could work. But, it would take a much more intensive re-write than seems to be intended by WoTC at this time.
Completely irrespective whether one wants to have species-based ASIs or not, my criticism is that this rule change doesn't accomplish what it (presumably) aims to do.
If the intent is to encourage wider variety of race and class combinations because the races are better balanced, it doesn't do that. Some races are still way better for certain classes, they're just now different combinations. Furthermore it increases the power disparity between the races, as now it is blatantly clear that some simply get more stuff.
And if the goal is to remove biological essentialism, that didn't happen either. Wood elves are still faster runners, goliaths are better at carrying things and aarakocra are better fliers etc.
It seems to me that it accomplishes the goal fine if there are now new class/race combos with the rule.
Before this combos A,B,C were optimal. Now you have combos A, B, C, X, Y, Z. That is a wider diversity of options. Creating new options is still an expansion on what was possible before.
No one has said it ruins the game. It is just bizarre that the same people who have been whining about how the int bonus races making marginally better wizards than non-int bonus races is utterly terrible are now super cool with the mountain dwarfs being obviously much better for that class than most other races. Races being imbalanced=bad; races still being imbalanced but slightly differently=fine and dandy. Does not compute.
Man, I wish I knew before that armor was the most absolutely powerful thing a wizard could ever get. I'd have played Hobgoblins and Gith far more in that case.
I mean... I never heard people saying that Githyanki were the best choice for Wizard in the entire game, even though they had a bonus to int, bonus spells, and medium armor and martial weapons. But clearly now Mountain Dwarves are... because they get medium armor... hmmmmm
That seems to not add up. That seems to suggest if it was really that powerful, that it would have been a big deal before right now.
