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<blockquote data-quote="EscherEnigma" data-source="post: 8063262" data-attributes="member: 6750014">I'm reminded of Shadowrun, actually.For those unfamiliar, in character creation in Shadowrun you assign a &quot;rank&quot; (A to E) to five categories, and that determines how many points you have to spend in that category.So one PC might rank their species high, which gives them access to troll, while another racks that low making them a baseline human.&nbsp; Other rankings determine (IIRC) ability scores, skills, magic potential, and wealth (very important to concepts like Rigger).D&amp;D, being a class/level system, obviously doesn't match nicely.&nbsp; But if you took all that stuff before class (stats, racial abilities, background features and skills, etc) and did something similar, you allow unequal backgrounds and races, while also making it easier for a PC to de-emphasise aspects that aren't important to that character.Or to put it another way... Having an &quot;overpowered race&quot; is less if a problem if that means you have less &quot;powerful&quot; options in other categories.This could be made backwards compatible by saying &quot;default, species and culture are combined to take the A and C ranks, point-buy is B rank, and backgrounds is D rank&quot; or something.&nbsp; Then moving forward you can create new options that, in the aggregate balance out, but are (individually) more complicated and &quot;powerful&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EscherEnigma, post: 8063262, member: 6750014"] I'm reminded of Shadowrun, actually. For those unfamiliar, in character creation in Shadowrun you assign a "rank" (A to E) to five categories, and that determines how many points you have to spend in that category. So one PC might rank their species high, which gives them access to troll, while another racks that low making them a baseline human. Other rankings determine (IIRC) ability scores, skills, magic potential, and wealth (very important to concepts like Rigger). D&D, being a class/level system, obviously doesn't match nicely. But if you took all that stuff before class (stats, racial abilities, background features and skills, etc) and did something similar, you allow unequal backgrounds and races, while also making it easier for a PC to de-emphasise aspects that aren't important to that character. Or to put it another way... Having an "overpowered race" is less if a problem if that means you have less "powerful" options in other categories. This could be made backwards compatible by saying "default, species and culture are combined to take the A and C ranks, point-buy is B rank, and backgrounds is D rank" or something. Then moving forward you can create new options that, in the aggregate balance out, but are (individually) more complicated and "powerful". [/QUOTE]

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