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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6176717" data-attributes="member: 17106">That is potentially a problem. Then again, trying to "balance" things has also lead to the same criticism.This doesn't seem particularly bad. After all, in the TSR versions of the game, it was de rigeur to restrict races to choosing classes that were considered appropriate for them. The new school mentality is that you can try to make anything work, even if it isn't the stereotypical haling rogue or half-orc barbarian, but that some choices will be slightly better than others.If anything, 3e fails somewhat in making the "by the book" combos as effective as they should be. Elves have wizard as their favored class, but they aren't very good at being wizards (barring some late-stage rules that boost them). PF changed this a bit by explicitly rewarding characters for sticking to their favored class. That seems to create a sense of naturalistic play (i.e. it's easy to understand why half-orcs are often barbarians; because they're good at it), but the difference is small enough that it doesn't seem to have hampered creativity.I didn't exactly do that, but I did allow a player to play an overpowered half-ogre barbarian with a huge Str bonus. He had fun for a while, then dropped into the background. I didn't see people lining up behind him to play super-strong, stupid barbarians.To be fair, there is a point where it's game breaking and needs to be fixed if you give a strength bonus high enough. But before that, there's a gray area where some choices appear to be better than others, but the others are defensible and at least have some merit. That's pretty much where D&D tries to live.</blockquote>

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