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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cryptos" data-source="post: 4202898" data-attributes="member: 58439">I think the problem is that Illiteracy is OK if 'Barbarian' is a culture, but not so much if 'Barbarian' is a class / set of abilities.If we're talking about a character from the nomadic hordes roaming the hinterlands, then yes, he's probably illiterate.  If we're talking about an otherwise typical character that rages out during battle, fights like a berserker, and throws himself into melee without consideration of personal harm then it's questionable.  All too often, Barbarian characters were more like the latter.  When 'Barbarian' is stripped of flavor and used as a stat block, illiterate makes less sense.Personally, I hope it gets left out of 4e because it's not something you can universally balance.  In a campaign of intrigue, mystery, traps and puzzles it's a major penalty.  Or in 4e, a Skill Encounter heavier campaign.  In a campaign of kick-in-the-door and kill, it's hardly a disadvantage at all.The initial balance question in 3.0 was "given a choice, would someone (anyone) choose X ability over Y or take B class over C."  At least, that's the way they described their design philosophy back when we were eagerly chomping up bits of news on that edition on this site.  In one sense it was good, because it's almost impossible to fairly balance a bonus to "Use Rope" or "Diplomacy" against a bonus To-Hit.  That's going to vary by character, player, and campaign.  But "balance" was probably the wrong term for them to use.  Mitigating uselessness or extreme advantages, yes.  But you can't truly balance an Illiteracy drawback against an alignment restriction against Deflect Arrows.  Just ensure that the overall choices are attractive to someone without being too attractive.In 4e, though, there really does seem to be some effort to only include quantifiable elements in class and combat advantages, and then ship everything else off to whatever the DM decides to include (Rituals, skill encounters, etc.)I don't think illiteracy has a place as a class feature / class restriction in 4e given the difference in 3e and 4e philosophies.</blockquote>

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