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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 5861909" data-attributes="member: 1465">This is not a problem with the core rules, it's a problem with the supplements. It is not PHB's responsibility to foresee what kind of material supplements will carry because the game can take unexpected publishing directions (for isntance in 3ed there were no base classes in supplements for a few years - except some settings sourcebooks - there were only prestige classes). It should be instead the responsibility of the book providing new classes to say how to adapt core characters to them, so in this case it should have been the designers of the Scout book to tell the players that every race who has Ranger as favoured class also has Scout, or can swap one for the other.That said, I think that the concept of favoured classes was not nice in 3ed because (a) it removed a penalty rather than providing an incentive and (b) it applied to multiclassing which is very odd, considering that a "favoured" class should probably mean that people of that race actually prefer that class including being totally devoted to it.The problem with (a) is that if you do provide bonuses to characters of a race taking its favoured class, then you can't go very far with such bonuses or everybody else feels penalized (you are encouraging stereotypes and penalizing more creative character concepts). But if bonuses are too small then it feels like a joke. Furthermore, if bonuses are generic (like +1 skill points) then it feel bland because your Elf Wizard is hardly "more wizard" than a Dwarf Wizard, it's just 1 skill point ahead.What to do? How about instead of giving a bonus, give it some unique options? For instance, how about having a bunch of good feats (or even spells if appropriate) that can only be taken when levelling up in your favoured class? So only the Dwarf Fighter can learn feat X and only Elf Wizard can learn spell Y, but it's not automatic (you still have the same number of feats or spells than everyone else).</blockquote>

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