Celebrim, to me it would seem you contradict yourself within that post. It contains lots of good points, but I believe your logic is flawed.
In brief, your complaint is the reason I said this: "And of course the true optimizer might well come up with an even more effective set of attributes melee focused character than the ones I suggested, I was just showing how large the potential benefit of that unbalanced stat array could be."
Longer answer follows:
3. here's why: Goliaths are fantastic for warriors, giving them a net total of +X to INT, +Y to CHR, +Z to Wis, and +W to DEX in exchange for a Human's skillpoints and feat.
How do effective bonuses to mostly mental abilities promote hyperspecialization in a warrior?
First, I'd argue that any character with two 18's is very specialized. My point was that one consequence of an unbalanced stat array was that it allowed you to play fully specialized characters without paying any of the normal price for hyperspecialization.
Secondly, I wanted to point out that in practice the Goliath character with high strength and constitution could ALSO have relatively high dexterity (the third physical stat) despite the dexterity penalty.
Thirdly, they aren't effective bonuses to mental abilities unless you want to use them this way. As I suggested, the optimized Goliath character probably trades down mental stats even further in order to buy 20's in strength or constitution (or both).
I'd rather say Goliaths are a good race for warriors because they make it easier on you to play one with actual breadth, instead of forcing you to go pure Str+Con, no skillpoints, no mental abilities except for prereqs, and no Dex. Isn't that nicely balanced?
By this definition of 'balanced' you seem to be offering up, a character with all 18's is 'balanced'. Normally however when we use the term balance in this context, we are referring to how it compares to other options and not how it compares to itself.
How is all strengths and no defects (ignoring the complexity of LA) in any way the definition of balanced? How is anyone who plays a warrior forced to go pure Str+Con? After all, I could have dumped the 16 points left over into Dex to play a Goliath with Dex 16, no skillpoints, no mental abilities, etc. Or I could have played a 20 STR, 20 Con Goliath with no skillpoints, no mental abilties, etc. I would be no more forced to do that than a human is forced to have a 18 STR and 18 Con.
I mean, I suppose you can argue that a character with omipotence is balanced in that it has breadth, but its not balanced by the normal RPG use of the term. Certainly omnipotence would be an attractive racial ability for a warrior as well; you could definately say with truth that omnipotent beings made good warriors.
Also, your point on how LA doesn't work is fine with me, but you want to do something else be reduce XP awards - because that would basically boil down to the same thing.
No it isn't. it's not even remotely the same thing. One is a linear and fixed adjustment. The other one is an adjustment that scales with level. The math is totally different. For example, consider how much easier it is to balance the Drow racial template with XP penalties than it is with a fixed LA. Or consider how huge of a penalty the +1 LA is for a second level character, but how relatively trivial it is at 30th level in comparison to the rewards of having higher attribute bonuses. On the other hand, if the Goliath character had an XP penalty, not nearly so huge of a penalty relative to its level would be required at low levels, but by 30th level perhaps the penalty had scaled up to being two or even three levels behind +0 LA races.
Have you thought about giving lower point buy for higher LA PCs, instead of reducing level/XP?
Doesn't really work because too many things go into LA. One of the more obvious is that unbalanced stat arrays are a big component of LA, and as we've seen it's very difficult to adjust that by point buy. A Goliath for example can use its bonuses to gain as much as an additional 16 points worth of point buy, but that doesn't mean that making the Goliath racial template cost 16 points of point buy is necessarily balanced or interesting.
The problem with the +LA templates is some of them offer benefits that are small at low levels, but increasingly important as the game progresses. A +4 bonus to con that cost you a HD sucks at low level, but within just a few levels will return far more hit points than you lost initially. And some offer benefits that are huge at low levels (like flight or spell-like abilities) but which might be a fairly trivial benefit at higher levels. Balancing the template involves considering this problem, possibly making adjustments and separating the two components (front loading and back-loading) and balancing them accordingly (with linear and non-linear penalties).
