haiiro said:
I wondered why there weren't any ECL 0 races with a CHA shift in WotC products (unless I missed one somewhere, of course). Any idea what the rationale for this restriction is? Or why it's not applied across the board, as Gez mentioned (sun elves in FR, etc.)?
I'm not sure completely, but I've heard some discussion on it. It seems that since physical stats boost things that are easily modified in other ways (attack and damage rolls, AC, etc.) whereas mental stats do the opposite (skill points, spell save DCs, bonus spells, etc.) that mental stats are more valuable as racial traits.
Note: I'm not endorsing or arguing this opinion, just stating what I've heard.
As for it not being applied, well, that's anyone's guess. What I will say, and this goes for every piece of game design out there, is that it's definitely an art, not a science. Any time you hear talk of "game balance" take it with a grain of salt, there is no hard and fast rule to creating a perfectly balanced mechanic. There are rational rules and mathematic considerations based on the system you are using, but these only go so far.
Also, when the WotC design team was much larger there were probably many disparate views on many different rules subjects, and some leeway was probably given to individual designers. Not that I have any more insight into this than anyone else.
In addition, there are campaign-specific reasons you might change the "balance" of certain races. Perhaps they wanted to encourage Sun Elves to be sorcerers for a campaign world reason, who knows? As an example that I do know something about, the races in Midnight are all considered ECL +1 in power. They are balanced against each other, but certainly not with the core races, which is why we have new writeups for all the core races that exist on Aryth. Not to mention we wanted to add campaign-specific flavor to them all. As far as the FRCS is concerned, I think those races should be treated the same...balanced for the setting. The designers may disagree with me, but I'm really just stating my preference as a DM rather than their design decisions.
haiiro said:
Setting aside that the spark should be ECL +1 based on the CHA shift, it just seemed to me that there would be no reason not to play one at ECL 0, particularly not for a human sorcerer. I agree that the spell-like abilities are relatively minor, but the skill bumps and low-light vision strike me as elements that deserve to be balanced elsewhere.
The biggest reason would be DM fiat.
But that said, there are role playing considerations as well, since magical races are somewhat different than the others. I guess what you said originally is also my opinion: sparks may be slightly better than a normal race, but I definitely do not think that they deserve an ECL bump based on their non-attribute abilities. They just aren't that powerful.
haiiro said:
Any comment on the issue of template elements not applying evenly across all races? Things like gaining low-light vision being a bonus for humans, neutral for elves and a loss for dwarves, for example? I don't know how important this is, and it certainly happens with monster templates as well -- but with monsters and CR there's a little more latitude, IMO, than with PC races (which should be carefully balanced, again IMO).
Dwarves always get the shaft, you'd think it would be different with me, eh?
In any case, I don't think that the differences are imbalancing (there's that word again) in any way, these races are meant to be different than standard races. The templates just give you an idea of how these races would differ from standard races. Low-light isn't that much worse than darkvision, it's just a different ability, in my opinion. But that specific example aside, I don't think it's a major issue, although your mileage may vary depending on your own campaign.
Hope this helps some!
