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<blockquote data-quote="Rystil Arden" data-source="post: 3561006" data-attributes="member: 29014">Yeah, that's not quite the idea of the half-orc balance.&nbsp; It isn't reversible, and the explanation isn't quite the explanation you might think.The explanation for half-orc balance is--&quot;Many characters who kill for a higher Strength can ignore and totally dump Charisma with no effective penalty, and they barely feel the sting of Int loss.&nbsp; Let's make them eat both to get their Strength because otherwise it is really easy to min/max away the losses and keep the big gain&quot;But this does not apply backwards!&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; Because it assumes (often correctly) that the character who loves Strength does not really need Charisma (for Barbarian, Fighter, etc this is true).&nbsp; But that doesn't mean Charisma isn't ever useful--it means that you can make it not necessary if you want to do so.However, obviously anyone who took a +2 Charisma race that also gives bonuses to Cha skills is not going to be one of the people who dumped Charisma and made it useless!&nbsp; And for a character who uses Charisma as a casting stat, Charisma is pure gold and Strength is the stat that is worthless and easy to dump.So you see, stat value is relative for the character, and you have to balance the bonuses assuming they will pick something that likes the bonus and the penalty assuming they will pick something (if they can) that ignores the penalty.&nbsp; That's why it is often best to pick a penalty that hurts a character who would want the bonus.&nbsp; It tends to create balanced choices and you don't have to do the two -2s thing <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Rystil Arden, post: 3561006, member: 29014"] Yeah, that's not quite the idea of the half-orc balance. It isn't reversible, and the explanation isn't quite the explanation you might think. The explanation for half-orc balance is--"Many characters who kill for a higher Strength can ignore and totally dump Charisma with no effective penalty, and they barely feel the sting of Int loss. Let's make them eat both to get their Strength because otherwise it is really easy to min/max away the losses and keep the big gain" But this does not apply backwards! Why? Because it assumes (often correctly) that the character who loves Strength does not really need Charisma (for Barbarian, Fighter, etc this is true). But that doesn't mean Charisma isn't ever useful--it means that you can make it not necessary if you want to do so. However, obviously anyone who took a +2 Charisma race that also gives bonuses to Cha skills is not going to be one of the people who dumped Charisma and made it useless! And for a character who uses Charisma as a casting stat, Charisma is pure gold and Strength is the stat that is worthless and easy to dump. So you see, stat value is relative for the character, and you have to balance the bonuses assuming they will pick something that likes the bonus and the penalty assuming they will pick something (if they can) that ignores the penalty. That's why it is often best to pick a penalty that hurts a character who would want the bonus. It tends to create balanced choices and you don't have to do the two -2s thing :) [/QUOTE]

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