Flavor Mish-mash and favored classes (what 4e got wrong)

[Odysseus]

That would work for me! It would make dwarves good fighters, wardens and battle-clerics. Drow make good laser clerics (and oddly, good chaladins, nothings perfect) and tieflings good ANY type of warlocks, as well as valorous bards (again, nothings perfect).

Perhaps also make half-elves int/cha as well. Still good bards. Longtooth shifter steal Con/Wis (shaman). Heck, I wouldn't mind if something became Int/Con.

I think the choice for Dwarves , is think up a whole load of fighter powers that use Con, or give them the str bonus instead. Pragmatically I think the str instead of con works.
The other thing you could do with Drow is females get wis/cha and males get int/cha. That would make drow males more suited to wizards, while the females would do well with clerics.

Half elves i think I would be better with dex/cha. The classes I also ways associate half elves with are rogues and rangers. So i think they need dex.

 

[Gort]

I don't really get all this absolute need to have the most optimal race ever for your class. For me, race is far more about the concept for my character rather than the stat modifiers.

Sure, I had my spate of playing the heck out of dragonborn when I first started 4e, but I grew out of them and am back to making rather more "flavourful" human characters again.

And those of you saying that dwarves don't make good fighters really need to take a look at all the amazing feats for dwarf fighters and their other powers, like how hard to push around they are, or the ability to use second wind as a minor action, which is bloody fantastic.

 

[jbear]

If what your saying (OP) is correct. What should the racial bonuses be, to create less of a mish/mash?

As far as I can see.
Dwarves should have str/wis instead of con/wis
Teiflings con/cha instead of int/cha
And drow wis/cha instead of dex/cha

But thats about it really.

And then you'd have people complaining that Drow don't make good Rangers.

 

[Remathilis]

And then you'd have people complaining that Drow don't make good Rangers.

That, my friend, is a feature, not a bug.

 

[pawsplay]

That's the one thing I never really got back in 2E. Elves were supposedly these great wizards but unless you used the optional level adjustment by ability score table, an elf couldnt even cast 9th level magic.

Yet elves were supposedly responsible for teaching humans magic AND magic that goes beyond 9th level magic.....Something is not adding up here...

In AD&D, an 11th level wizard was a powerhouse. There were few characters who could cast 9th level spells at all. The elves were the old, fading away; it was humans, with their ambition, who were ascending.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In AD&D, an 11th level wizard was a powerhouse. There were few characters who could cast 9th level spells at all. The elves were the old, fading away; it was humans, with their ambition, who were ascending.

Yet with lifespans measured in multiples of centuries, you'd expect the elves to hold on to their arcane prowess, even as their numbers declined, forcing them to cede living space on battlefields to the more fecund and physically imposing humans, orcs and goblinkind.

The AD&D discrepancy is just a design flaw, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[billd91]

Yet with lifespans measured in multiples of centuries, you'd expect the elves to hold on to their arcane prowess, even as their numbers declined, forcing them to cede living space on battlefields to the more fecund and physically imposing humans, orcs and goblinkind.

The AD&D discrepancy is just a design flaw, nothing more, nothing less.

The level limits were also rules designed for PCs more than NPCs.
But then, I never did like different rules for PCs and NPCs. So flaw? More of a different design approach, I think.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The level limits were also rules designed for PCs more than NPCs.
But then, I never did like different rules for PCs and NPCs. So flaw? More of a different design approach, I think.

You say "Tomato," I say "Tomahhhhto."

(well, not really, but...)

 

[pawsplay]

Yet with lifespans measured in multiples of centuries, you'd expect the elves to hold on to their arcane prowess, even as their numbers declined, forcing them to cede living space on battlefields to the more fecund and physically imposing humans, orcs and goblinkind.

The AD&D discrepancy is just a design flaw, nothing more, nothing less.

I think the idea was that elves had been in decline for centuries. If there are any uber-elves left, they are unique and powerful NPCs, not something to which a PC could aspire to in a reasonable span. Just think that high level magic is a one in a million talent, and there may not be a million elves in existence. While PCs come in a variety, in the game world, elves were outnumbered by a magnitude or more. Level limits were there to preserve balance (at least until high level play, when demihumans fell behind) as well as to enforce the game world conventions (while elven wizards may be more numerous, the greatest wizards of the age were destined to be human). Having elves be the ultimately lesser wizards was a deliberate design goal.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think the idea was that elves had been in decline for centuries. If there are any uber-elves left, they are unique and powerful NPCs, not something to which a PC could aspire to in a reasonable span. Just think that high level magic is a one in a million talent, and there may not be a million elves in existence. While PCs come in a variety, in the game world, elves were outnumbered by a magnitude or more. Level limits were there to preserve balance (at least until high level play, when demihumans fell behind) as well as to enforce the game world conventions (while elven wizards may be more numerous, the greatest wizards of the age were destined to be human). Having elves be the ultimately lesser wizards was a deliberate design goal.

I understand that it was a design goal. I also think it was a flawed goal.

That Elves were in decline I can accept (see my post above).
That Elves don't number in the millions I can accept.

But given that mechanically, Wizardry is about "book learning" (not "talent"- that shows up in the Sorcerer of later editions) and that Elves have a lifespan 10 times that of a human, a hard cap on PC Elven mages is goofy.

Elves without a hard cap on magery doesn't preclude humans being the greatest wizards of the age. After all, seeing as how they master magic in a fraction of the time Elves do- indeed, in so short a time that a similarly aged Elf would still be considered a child- speaks volumes about humanity's arcane prowess. Factor in that a top level Human mage could pass along his knowledge to dozens of students before an Elf mage got out of his 1st level classes at the Academy of Elvish Magery, and suddenly you have Human mages of power far outnumbering Elvish mages by orders of magnitude.

Elves would still have power...but the Humans would be the innovators.