D&D General No More "Humans in Funny Hats": Racial Mechanics Should Determine Racial Cultures

[Scribe]

whatever class and whatever ancestory together

You can do that right now in 5e. You could do that on the release of 5e, and for the last seven years.

EDIT: Correct me if I'm wrong, I dont have PF2e books, but are Ability Boosts not their version of ASI?

 

[ReshiIRE]

You can do that right now in 5e. You could do that on the release of 5e, and for the last seven years.

To clarify, because it needs to be said, to do it without at all any mechanical concern about effectiveness, whether justified or not.

Apologies for being a little... high strung. I thought I was clear and not to bring too much personal stuff into it, I'm going through some stressful stuff.

Maybe I need to remove myself from these discussions. From talking to game designers and having a bit of interest in it myself, it's pretty clear something is fundamentally wrong in the game design if this is so controversal and making everyone unhappy .-.

 

[Scribe]

Maybe I need to remove myself from these discussions. From talking to game designers and having a bit of interest in it myself, it's pretty clear something is fundamentally wrong in the game design if this is so controversal and making everyone unhappy .-.

I'm not unhappy.

Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss it, or not, but it looks to me like PF2e retained the ASI Penalty/Preference system in some regard, and yet people as you say dont have an issue with it there, perhaps.

I have not played PF2e so I dont know.

 

[Minigiant]

One thing I like about modern and modernish Fantasy Strategy Games, especially the war games, is that the game designers are often forced to expand races beyond a single or pair of tropes in order to field a full army for a race or racial alliance.

The Humans get Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Archers Cavalry, Mages, Priests, Rogues, Sailors, and Engineers.

The Elves get Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Archers, Cavalry, Mages, Priests, Rogues, Sailors, and Engineers

The Orcs get Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Archers, Cavalry, Mages, Priests, Sailors, and Engineers.

They might throw a twist in a race or two so Dwarves have their Mage and Priest combined or the Turtlemen have no light troops, or the Centaurs are all Cavalry.

However since they have to design a whole side and don't want to waste time on a race no one will play, a successful design team have to go further than jam a hat on a basic race skeleton.

I wish this way of thinking eventually came to D&D and their races.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Fair enough if you're not unhappy. I tend to associate continued arguing and debate as unhappiness and unfortunate; it means a consensis can't be reached and we can't move onto discussing other topics.

I think PF2e being a d20 system that its changes are relevant enough to be just discussed here.

PF2e did retain an ASI Penalty and Preference system. Most ancestories* get two set +1 modifiers (there are no +1 to ability scores in the system, every time you increase an ability score it goes up by two, increasing the modifier**), a free space to put in any modifier, and a negative. These are called 'Ability Boosts' and 'Ability Flaws'.

E.g., Kobolds get a boost to Dexterity, Charisma, and a Free boost, with a Flaw to Constitution.

Those Free boosts are restricted to scores that aren't ones that you already get a boost to. So a Kobold can boost their Strength, Constitution, Intelligence or Wisdom - but not their Dexterity or Charisma.

All backgrounds then provides two boosts. One boost is a choice between two different scores, and the other is another Free boost.

Then, you get four other Free boosts, to put into any score.

Then, your choice of class itself gives you a boost, depending on what class you choose. Some have a set boost (Wizard gives you a boost to Intelligence), others allow the choice between two (Fighter allows you to choose Strength or Dexterity). This is the primary ability score of your class.

There is a Voluntary Flaws rule. You take two extra Flaws you can put in anywhere, in exchange for another Boost. However, this Boost can't be in something that you got a set flaw in. So, for Kobolds, you could boost the same four I listed above, and can't boost the same two I listed above.

There are two other rules: you can't have a score less than -8 (so you can have a -1 Modifier, but not a -2 etc.), and you can't boost a score above 18.

Finally, you can roll for stats, but it's an alternative rule.

With how the system is set up, anyone can get an 18 or at-least two 16s in the ability scores of their choice, even taking into account their ability flaws, thanks to that Voluntary Flaws rule. So Lizardborn, who have a Flaw to Intelligence, can still be effective Wizards - they just have to take flaws elsewhere.

If I understand anything about this conversation, I feel this would easily satisfy everyone here. You get ancestories having different averages and unique statistics (without even taking into account the fact there's so many ancestory feats for every ancestory), and any ancestory can be any class, meaning nobody has to worry about issues of effectiveness.

Everybody wins.

If you want to check out how this works, use Pathbuilder 2e. Since everything for Pathfinder 2e is on the official SRD in Archives of Nethys, you can see all rules, ancestories, classes, feats etc. (basically everything except most Adventure Path stuff) for yourself. All the Character Creation rules are here.

* humans get two Free Boosts. Some other ancestories like Orc get a Boost to Strength and then a Free Boost.

** this is an oversimplification; ability score increases work very differently in Pathfinder 2e. Every five levels (and it is every five levels, as Pathfinder 2e doesn't do multiclassing like 5e does), you get a further 4 Ability Boosts. If you boost a stat that's 18 or over, it only increases by one - meaning that the modifier only goes up every 10 levels. This also means that if you have a 16 in a score, the max modifier you can get is +5, since if you tried to boost that at Level 20, you'd be wasting the boost. This does mean your Level 15 boosts have to be carefully considered.

 

[Scribe]

Fair enough if you're not unhappy. I tend to associate continued arguing and debate as unhappiness and unfortunate; it means a consensis can't be reached and we can't move onto discussing other topics.

I think PF2e being a d20 system that its changes are relevant enough to be just discussed here.

PF2e did retain an ASI Penalty and Preference system. Most ancestories* get two set +1 modifiers (there are no +1 to ability scores in the system, every time you increase an ability score it goes up by two, increasing the modifier**), a free space to put in any modifier, and a negative. These are called 'Ability Boosts' and 'Ability Flaws'.

E.g., Kobolds get a boost to Dexterity, Charisma, and a Free boost, with a Flaw to Constitution.

Those Free boosts are restricted to scores that aren't ones that you already get a boost to. So a Kobold can boost their Strength, Constitution, Intelligence or Wisdom - but not their Dexterity or Charisma.

All backgrounds then provides two boosts. One boost is a choice between two different scores, and the other is another Free boost.

Then, you get four other Free boosts, to put into any score.

Then, your choice of class itself gives you a boost, depending on what class you choose. Some have a set boost (Wizard gives you a boost to Intelligence), others allow the choice between two (Fighter allows you to choose Strength or Dexterity). This is the primary ability score of your class.

There is a Voluntary Flaws rule. You take two extra Flaws you can put in anywhere, in exchange for another Boost. However, this Boost can't be in something that you got a set flaw in. So, for Kobolds, you could boost the same four I listed above, and can't boost the same two I listed above.

There are two other rules: you can't have a score less than -8 (so you can have a -1 Modifier, but not a -2 etc.), and you can't boost a score above 18.

Finally, you can roll for stats, but it's an alternative rule.

With how the system is set up, anyone can get an 18 or at-least two 16s in the ability scores of their choice, even taking into account their ability flaws, thanks to that Voluntary Flaws rule. So Lizardborn, who have a Flaw to Intelligence, can still be effective Wizards - they just have to take flaws elsewhere.

If I understand anything about this conversation, I feel this would easily satisfy everyone here. You get ancestories having different averages and unique statistics (without even taking into account the fact there's so many ancestory feats for every ancestory), and any ancestory can be any class, meaning nobody has to worry about issues of effectiveness.

Everybody wins.

If you want to check out how this works, use Pathbuilder 2e. Since everything for Pathfinder 2e is on the official SRD in Archives of Nethys, you can see all rules, ancestories, classes, feats etc. (basically everything except most Adventure Path stuff) for yourself. All the Character Creation rules are here.

* humans get two Free Boosts. Some other ancestories like Orc get a Boost to Strength and then a Free Boost.

** this is an oversimplification; ability score increases work very differently in Pathfinder 2e. Every five levels (and it is every five levels, as Pathfinder 2e doesn't do multiclassing like 5e does), you get a further 4 Ability Boosts. If you boost a stat that's 18 or over, it only increases by one - meaning that the modifier only goes up every 10 levels. This also means that if you have a 16 in a score, the max modifier you can get is +5, since if you tried to boost that at Level 20, you'd be wasting the boost. This does mean your Level 15 boosts have to be carefully considered.

Interesting, I found a copy to flip through. Its very similar to what I was discussing a few posts back in terms of the system I was working on earlier this year.

Thanks for writing this up!

 

[Geoff Thirlwell]

Optimising characters can vastly change the power balance between character.s. I’m sure we’ve all seen situations why one player does 6 damage but the next one does 3d8 + 5d6 times two plus 7. I felt guilty playing my half-orc Champion with Great Weapon Fighting and killing the big bad in one round with my Action Surge but some players take this to a whole different level. I understand there were builds in 3e that made you an unstoppable killing machine. When a character’s power level due to min/maxing, jumping between classes/sub classes and use of obscure Feat combinations unbalances the game, that is when I would term the player a power gamer.
Each to their own of course but I think the +2 wherever you want it encourages negative play styles and I’d rather it not be the default rules.

 

[Vaalingrade]

For a system that supposedly embraces diversity, 5e actually instead promotes uniformity by eliminating differences between gender, race, size and weight. While that might be equality, it’s not diversity

Okay. No.

This is a terrible argument to make even outside the realm of D&D, but adding gender to this particular argument reeks of '-4 STR' and we don't need that here.

 

[Geoff Thirlwell]

Okay. No.

This is a terrible argument to make even outside the realm of D&D, but adding gender to this particular argument reeks of '-4 STR' and we don't need that here.

There never was a -4 STR for female character. AD&D had caps on maximum STR based on gender and race. I’m certainly not wanting this to degenerate into an argument about gender. The point I’m making is that diversity doesn’t exist in a world without differences. Minotaurs having the same physical characteristics as Gnomes detracts from the diversity of both races.

 

[Vaalingrade]

There never was a -4 STR for female character. AD&D had caps on maximum STR based on gender and race. I’m certainly not wanting this to degenerate into an argument about gender. The point I’m making is that diversity doesn’t exist in a world without differences. Minotaurs having the same physical characteristics as Gnomes detracts from the diversity of both races.

No one is removing 'physical characteristics', just the numbers stapled to a species to enforce playing specific race/class combinations.

The idea is to replace the boring numbers with actual powers that matter and mean something like a minotaur's horns or a gnome's being terrible.

The only person proposing to make physical characteristics all the same was being hyperbolic in order to conflate ASIs with something genuinely interesting and unique about a species.