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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 5141215" data-attributes="member: 19675">I want to examine and clarify this a bit.If we look back at 1ED, there were no playable races that were significantly more powerful or dexterous than any other.  All of the PC races were basically just a tiny bit of a variation away from humanity, at least in terms of physical/mental attributes.  Essentially, the issue we're talking about didn't exist.In 2Ed, we got the Complete Book of Humanoids, which let us play creatures like Ogres and Minotaurs.  While their Str bonuses were only +2, realize that those races could go beyond the whole fractional Str chart.  That meant that an Ogre or Minotaur PC could get up to a Str of 20 (yes, I'm looking at the book as I write this), which was far outside the reach of most other PC races which were capped at 18/00 or even 18 or less.  They literally were as strong as some Giants...indeed stronger than a couple of subtypes.3.X gave us wide open PC gen rules, Savage Species (the spiritual descendant of Complete Book of Humanoids) and standardized stats- no more 18 to 18/00 stuff on the Str chart, so a +2 was a +2.  In THAT regime, Minotaurs (and other races with stats far outside of human variation) used for PCs didn't get a +2 bonus to stats like Str, they got bonuses of +6 or more.  In addition, some had abilities on top of those larger attribute bonuses, like the Goliath's Powerful Build ability.4Ed, OTOH, stripped away some of the iconographic potency of these races in the interests of balance.  IMHO, this stripped away their flavor.In 4Ed- looking at PHBs 1-3 plus FR and Eberron- there are 8 races or subraces capable of getting a +2 bonus to Str: Humans, Half-Orcs, Shifters, Genasi, Warforged, Minotaurs, Goliaths and Dragonborn.  Most have an average mass under 250lbs.  In that context, those that mass over 300lbs seem almost...wispy...in comparison to their mass.  They're not as impressively beefy as they used to be.And other races that got the same kind of treatment suffer just as much.  Githzerai of previous editions were granted unusually large Dex bonuses.  They were agile in ways that Elves could only wistfully contemplate. This contributed to their aura and mystique.  Now, Elves are every bit as dexterous as Githzerai.  The grey-skinned monks of the Astral plane have lost some of their cache.</blockquote>

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