NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 6505672" data-attributes="member: 6787503"><p>This response really shows how far things have gone in the direction of optimization. I think it (or something like it) is a good solution to the problem of providing freedom of choice for all kinds of character concepts by effectively separating race from class while still allowing optimization at present levels. In fact most if not all of the responses so far would fall under what I called in my original post "facilitating" or accommodating character optimization. The problem as I see it with these approaches is that they pretty much do away with everything that makes the races unique. As a DM I want to have races in my worlds that confer the same qualities on the characters that belong to them. If characters of any race can apply a bonus to any stat depending on which class they wish to join, then I'd be afraid of ending up with an oatmealy texture of races which look different, but all feel the same, as another recent thread pointed out. Unfortunately, the solution I would find preferable would be to sacrifice character concept to maintain the integrity of racial identity. The easiest way that I can see to do this is, of course, anathema to modern role playing, and that would be to declare race, roll stats in order, then choose a suitable class. Perhaps it's a bit too extreme, but it's the only way I can think of right now to prevent the feedback loop that results when race is made to serve character and then threatens to destroy the races by encouraging changes like turning longswords into rapiers because they are not "optimal." In fact a longsword is perfectly optimal to the one-sixth of elves who undoubtedly have their highest stat in strength.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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