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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9025357" data-attributes="member: 29398">You must run with different players than I, as there's always someone here (and not always the same someone) who will try playing against type now and then just for the challenge of it.Sure, and this explains both a) why characters almost invariably start with their highest stat in the prime requisite for their class and b) why we as designers allow players to rearrange their stats such that this is (with rare exceptions) the case.You keep equating "challenging" with "punishing".  Why?Meanwhile, if those are the Human limits in a fantasy world then while there might be an occasional Dwarf who through disease or whatever also can't lift 15 pounds, the strongest of them could clean-and-jerk 800 pounds rather than 500.  Meanwhile, the Elf who could clean-and-jerk even 400 pounds would be among the rarest of specimens.I should probably mention here that Mages in my game can't wear armour of any kind, assuming they want to be able to cast any spells.  But, I've otherwise heard worse ideas. (EDIT to add: there's an exception to this, that being rare and stupendously expensive armour enchanted with a property I call "Arcane Aid" that lets you cast while wearing it; but if you can afford this stuff you're long past the point of balance meaning anything anyway) <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Which falls apart the moment a Dwarf goes to Praetos and get her mage-schooling from Humans.OK, I suppose that could work.Rather not go this route; if anything I'd like to chop down the number of sub-species a bit if I can (and I already don't have all that many).It does ooze with dramatic potential and so on, but one thing I very much favour is things mechanically working the same for everyone in the setting, mostly for reasons of player-side simplicity.  In this case, that means if wizardry becomes rune-based for Dwarves then it would have to become rune-based for everyone else as well.That's just it - I'm not OK with one thing being powerful, and it's invariably easier to fix that one thing than to fix everything other than that one thing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Having not allowed them before, I opened the Mage classes up to another very high-Con species - Hobbits - for my current game; and the long-term numbers tell me their average survival rate (sessions per death) and longevity (overall career length by either sessions or adventures) far exceeds that of Mages of all other species, to the point where my little internal red warning flags went up quite some time ago.Worth noting that the survival rate of non-Hobbit Mages is more or less on par with that of most other class-species combos.I look at these numbers (and others) to give me an idea of what needs tweaking next time out.  For example, Cavaliers (of any species) have the opposite problem - they tend to drop like flies - and I need to do something to help them out, though I've no idea what.  Nature Clerics (Druids) are still overpowered despite previous attempts to knock them back a bit.  And so forth.Given as I'd really rather not redesign all the classes from the ground up, I'm not sure 5 holds much water.  And 6 very quickly runs into internal consistency issues unless extreme care is taken.</blockquote>

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