D&D 5E I'd like to see Next do away with racial stat mods for PC races.

[Quartz]

If elves are supposed to be intelligent or wise or charismatic, why not just say that if you want to play an elf, you must put your highest stat into INT, WIS, or CHA? Similarly, if halflings are supposed to be nimble, why not just say that if you want to play a halfling you must put your highest stat into DEX?

At a stroke this will eliminate the problem of choosing your race to boost your class.

 

[Dungeoneer]

I think the 4e Essentials/13A approach of letting the player pick one of their racial stat mods makes races pretty flexible without doing away with the nice mechanical flavor the mods give races.

 

[delericho]

If elves are supposed to be intelligent or wise or charismatic, why not just say that if you want to play an elf, you must put your highest stat into INT, WIS, or CHA? Similarly, if halflings are supposed to be nimble, why not just say that if you want to play a halfling you must put your highest stat into DEX?

I agree, with one caveat: instead of saying you must put your highest stat in Int (or whatever), instead suggest that most elves do put their highest stat in Int (or whatever).

That way, a player can play against type with a race without being penalised for the choice.

 

[Li Shenron]

If elves are supposed to be intelligent or wise or charismatic, why not just say that if you want to play an elf, you must put your highest stat into INT, WIS, or CHA? Similarly, if halflings are supposed to be nimble, why not just say that if you want to play a halfling you must put your highest stat into DEX?

I agree, I would be fine with this idea of not having racial stats modifiers at all.

It's too late for 5e of course. I can also live with just having stats modifiers to represent the concept that elves are more agile than humans or dwarves are more stocky.

I do not live so well with saying "have a dex bonus to represent elves being more agile than humans", then seeing humans be given the same dex bonus. And a strength bonus, and a constitution bonus, and an intelligence bonus, and a wisdom bonus, and a charisma bonus, plus one more bonus wherever they want because otherwise the player of a human PC is frustrated by the lack of choice.

 

[Ahnehnois]

So you think a 3 foot tall halfling should have to choose Strength as his lowest ability?

 

[Paraxis]

Not a fan of racial maximums, but racial minimums of say 13 would be fine with me.

So no bonus to dex or wis for wood elves but if you want to play a wood elf your characters dex & wis need to be at least 13.

This could be an excuse for giving all the non-human races a slight bonus like their enhanced vision.

So each race including humans get say 3 special racial abilities but those with racial requirements get a small bonus like low-light vision.

 

[The Human Target]

I'd rather they just remove the bonus/penalties or just untether attack/damage and defenses from ability scores.

 

[Kinak]

Like [MENTION=1465]Li Shenron[/MENTION], I'd rather have no attribute modifiers than the current human modifier. In general, I'd be perfectly happy with not having modifiers and am very unhappy with the human modifier.

I've done races as backgrounds (similar to the D&D Next sense) before and that actually worked well, but it's pretty divergent for D&D.

Mostly, I just hope they sort out the human to make some flavor sense. Either they're superior to everyone else or their modifiers need to change.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Minigiant]

I kind of toyed with the idea of ability modifiers where your race just upgrades the formula. The normal formula is 13-15 for +1, 16-17 for +2, and 18+3. But a race who favors an ability uses the 3e/4e formula. And the very focused get something even more exaggerated.

A human with 15 Dexterity gets +1 but an elf or halfling gets +2. At 15 Strength, a human gets +1, a half orc gets +2, and an orc gets +3.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

If elves are supposed to be intelligent or wise or charismatic, why not just say that if you want to play an elf, you must put your highest stat into INT, WIS, or CHA? Similarly, if halflings are supposed to be nimble, why not just say that if you want to play a halfling you must put your highest stat into DEX?

At a stroke this will eliminate the problem of choosing your race to boost your class.

That would be lame if you're playing an elf fighter or a halfling priest.

I don't like the weird human racial bonus in D&DN but this is an even worse solution.