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<blockquote data-quote="Recidivism" data-source="post: 5826300" data-attributes="member: 51740">I agree in that I see two options that I like: (1) Either race is irrelevant to the mechanics of your character, or (2) race is important to the mechanics of your character.Given that we don't need special rules in a book cover scenario (1), that means that D&amp;D should create some good rules for reflecting racial mechanics throughout an adventurer's career.I think 4E and 5E generally did a decent job of presenting core PHB races that didn't overly favor one class over another. Every class offered something unique and useful to a character, but many times the racial characteristics were broadly defined enough not to totally favor one player's exact build. (Later on, when more builds &amp; races were released this became less true.)The continual problem with having races that have strong mechanical effects is it leads to people trying to &quot;solve&quot; the system. And then once the system is &quot;solved&quot; either the internet-consensus becomes, &quot;That race is overpowered&quot; or &quot;No one should ever play anything but that race when building X.&quot;A lot of people will say, &quot;I want a Half-Orc fighter and a Halfling fighter to be equally mechanically balanced, but different.&quot; In other words, we don't want to ever be able to &quot;solve&quot; whether a Half-Orc is a better fighter than a Halfling.But personally I have no problem with saying that a Half-Orc just should be better at fighting than a Halfling. I don't have a problem with that existing in my game world. I think that's okay, when presented up front. If you choose a Halfling don't go expecting to fight toe-to-toe with bigger, stronger characters unless you've got some edge on them.In a lot of ways the discussion about race and how important it should be is similar to discussion about how 4E achieved 1:1 &quot;balance&quot; between martial characters and spellcasters by basically making them work the same way. The game doesn't have to go for that 1:1 equivalence in classes, nor does it in race. As long as we keep in mind some of the blunders of past editions I think a good course can be laid in that allows race to be mechanically relevant without watering down their effects.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Recidivism, post: 5826300, member: 51740"] I agree in that I see two options that I like: (1) Either race is irrelevant to the mechanics of your character, or (2) race is important to the mechanics of your character. Given that we don't need special rules in a book cover scenario (1), that means that D&D should create some good rules for reflecting racial mechanics throughout an adventurer's career. I think 4E and 5E generally did a decent job of presenting core PHB races that didn't overly favor one class over another. Every class offered something unique and useful to a character, but many times the racial characteristics were broadly defined enough not to totally favor one player's exact build. (Later on, when more builds & races were released this became less true.) The continual problem with having races that have strong mechanical effects is it leads to people trying to "solve" the system. And then once the system is "solved" either the internet-consensus becomes, "That race is overpowered" or "No one should ever play anything but that race when building X." A lot of people will say, "I want a Half-Orc fighter and a Halfling fighter to be equally mechanically balanced, but different." In other words, we don't want to ever be able to "solve" whether a Half-Orc is a better fighter than a Halfling. But personally I have no problem with saying that a Half-Orc just should be better at fighting than a Halfling. I don't have a problem with that existing in my game world. I think that's okay, when presented up front. If you choose a Halfling don't go expecting to fight toe-to-toe with bigger, stronger characters unless you've got some edge on them. In a lot of ways the discussion about race and how important it should be is similar to discussion about how 4E achieved 1:1 "balance" between martial characters and spellcasters by basically making them work the same way. The game doesn't have to go for that 1:1 equivalence in classes, nor does it in race. As long as we keep in mind some of the blunders of past editions I think a good course can be laid in that allows race to be mechanically relevant without watering down their effects. [/QUOTE]

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