Designing Racial Traits: Odd Attributes

[Brutalskars]

So, constructing a d20 inspired system and setting; I was curious about something I have noticed about racial traits.
Every so often, there is a species that has a +1 or a -1 to an attribute, such as +1 Strength or such.

Any thoughts on basing more traits with uneven numbers? Such as Elves having only +1 Intelligence and -1 Constitution, or things of that sort of nature?

I am looking for ideas of how such a change would effect the game and how you may implement such a change if you did it yourself when designing racial traits and such.

 

[Ahnehnois]

In published 3e materials, these are vanishingly rare. Given that the modifier, not the score, is the currency the game is built on, it makes sense that if you really want race X to be good at Y, you'd better make sure they get a modifier advantage.

However, I don't think that it would really change things if odd numbered modifiers became more common. For any one character, changing a +2 to a +1 has only a 50% chance (or a bit greater, if you include the rare uses for ability score numbers) to even matter. It would very modestly disincentivize playing those races.

I'd think, if anything, it would make more sense to leave the elf at +2/-2 and make the half-elf +1/-1.

 

[Brutalskars]

The only thought that has sprung up from this I have recently encountered is the idea when 'remaking' all the races, of removing many negative attributes and only giving +1 to a certain attribute. Making racial traits slightly more focused on certain skills and proficiency (If you were to have a wider prof. system more similar to 2e).

So one example of this someone just threw together in my skype group was,
Orc
+1 Strength
Illiteracy (Only a class such as Wizard counteracts this, or if an orc starts with 13 or higher Int)
+2 on Intimidate Checks
+2 on Handle Animal checks
-2 on Acrobatics Skill checks (Such as jump, tumble, balance)


I like to think the idea is simple, but one would have to take into account how much this may change race selection or such. A clever little thing about this I thought about is if you used more 'half breeds' in your game, it can help with changing out half breed information. Orc/Elf will choose between either the Orc's +1 Strength or Elf's +1 Int? Just a thought though.

 

[the Jester]

I'm curious as to whether you will find any such races in an official source, or whether such things are found only in Dragon articles and third-party books.

IMHO it's an absolutely terrible idea that enables min-maxing via stat allocation. It's far, far worse in the case of a game with point buy. You simply put your starting odd stats where the +1 will help, and put a starting odd stat where a -1 won't hurt you, and you get the equivalent of a two-point stat increase.

EDIT: Mixed up my odds and evens.