Not precisely. there's a hierarchy of stats, though:
A bonus to Str or Dex can be balanced by a physical penalty or two mental penalties.
A bonus to Con can be balanced by a penalty to any stat other than Str.
A bonus to a mental stat can be balanced by a penalty to any other mental stat.
i agree. i always thought the STR thing was a bit silly. whay aren't races with an STR penalty given ability increases for two other stats of STR were in fact blanced against two other stats?
Because it's not that simple an equation. Of all the abilities, Strength has the most variance in its value to individual character classes. A high STR is very valuable to classes that rely on weapon damage, while a low STR is not terribly disadvantageous for rogues (who rely on skills sneak attack dice) and it's a very minor ability for spellcasters (who rely on, uh, y'know--spells!).
Now, I suppose you could hypothetically design a race that was intended to appeal to warriors that took a STR penalty, in which case a high ability score compensation could be appropriate.
Compatability is what you make of it. If you're super anal retentive and are going to do charts of the damage output possible over 10 rounds, then you'll find incompatability.
If you take compatability to mean that you are both rolling d20s for skills and to-hits and you're using class- and race-splits, then it's compatable.
AU falls somewhere in between. The problem is that people get upset when the subjective word "compatable" doesn't fit their own (of necessity highly individualistic) definition thereof.
Monte said that you can have a magister plopped down side by side with a fighter (paraphrasing). You can.
