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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scars Unseen" data-source="post: 8511238" data-attributes="member: 10196">I'm going to resist my "return to the old ways" stance I often take when it comes this kind of thing and instead, roll with the idea that D&D is just changing into something else.  That WotC will continue to make changes going into 6E that take the game further and further from what they inherited from TSR.So, for my part, I'd start by divorcing ability scores from primary combat related functions altogether.  In fact, I'd consider dropping ability scores completely since the scores themselves don't really do anything anymore and, as has been pointed out to me on many occasions, aren't connected to the physical reality of the races that possess them.  Instead, I'd work on the assumption that for your primary combat functions (e.g. anything that touches the combat formula), competence trumps raw ability, so a halfling fighter with a short sword is just as deadly as a half-ogre with an axe (within the scope of attack vs AC) because positioning and a well placed attack are more important than being able manhandle your way past steel.  No ability scores, no ASIs, done.  Then instead, I'd have three types of features that bundle into character creation:  inherent, developed and legacy.  Inherent is what we would think of as "genetic" in a modern context.  Keen Senses, Monstrous Strength, Fleetfooted, etc.  I would make a collection of these traits, and give each race a select pool of which they could choose 2.  Most of these abilities would be non-unique for a given race, but not available to all races.  So an ogre wouldn't have Fleetfooted available, but an elf and halfling both would.  Meanwhile an elf and ogre might both have Keen Senses, but an elf would choose between sight and hearing, and an ogre would get smell.  And an elf might have Keen Senses, Fleetfooted, and Nature Attunement available in their pool, but they wouldn't be able to take all three of them.Developed would be like some of the traditional racial abilities that could be funneled into the category of being cultural abilities instead.  Martial Upbringing, Stonesense, Pack Tactics, etc.  Anything that if you were raised in the appropriate community, you could adopt regardless of race.  This would be a lever that could be used in world building to help build cultural identity instead of relying on race for that.Legacy would be something of a cheat.  It's something that your character specifically takes on to help define them, and it can come from both the Inherent and Developed lists (as well as potentially having unique options).  It could represent abilities taught by your heroic parents, a heritage from a special bloodline, divine intervention, etc.  Create your Heracles by giving a human a Monstrous Strength legacy.  Your orcish diplomat could be Silver-tongued despite being raised in a warrior caste.  There's more I could probably come up with on how to develop it at higher levels if I put more time into it, but for a starting point, I think that would work for most players to have decently defined races while retaining a lot of flexibility in creating individual characters and without forcing specific decisions to be optimal in combat.</blockquote>

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