Opinions on Racial Ability Modifiers

[Ahnehnois]

Opportunity costs are great. You can't be the best at A, because you opted to be the best at B. However, you can be decent at A. Brilliant. Lovely.

Penalties suck. You can't be the best at A. You can't be decent at A. Because you liked something about the race, you must now suck at A.

If you define "suck" as "my character is not all things at all times", then yes. Flaws and weaknesses are part of characters, both in fiction and in life.

And yes, race should influence your character concept. Halflings should be better rogues than barbarians. Dwarves should be better fighters than sorcerers. Gnomes should be better illusionists than monks. Not all possible characters should be balanced with each other. What is wrong with that? Frankly, that's part of what makes it fun to play off type.

Why should halfings have to be weak? Says who? Why? Smaller does not directly and proportionately correspond with weaker.

Why should elves be frail? Most elves I've read about in fantasy fiction aren't frail at all.

Why must orcs be fools? A brutal and savage bunch, to be sure, but why must they all be idiots? Who is harmed by the possibility of the Einstein of the Orcs?

Strength doesn't correspond with size? I guess a cat really can kill a 1st level wizard in 1 hit then.

Most fantasy elves are much more powerful than humans. D&D elves have always been frail, partially for balance and partially to create their distinctive character.

The same for orcs. They have always been fools in D&D.

Regardless of the specific examples, shouldn't *some* nonhuman races be strong or weak, tough or frail, wise or foolish? When do ability modifiers start kicking in? Should everyone just have the same ones, even a dragon the size of a house? Or should it merely be every roughly human-shaped creature having the same modifiers?

What is the point of race if different races are not different?

 

[Grazzt]

Bonuses and penalties, as appropriate for the race concept and flavor.

They don't have to be perfectly balanced, but they have to be balaced enough to be PHB races.

If not balanced enough, they can still be playable races for more experienced players (-> move to DMG or supplements).

Yep. Agree. I voted bonus and penalty.

 

[Grydan]

If you define "suck" as "my character is not all things at all times", then yes. Flaws and weaknesses are part of characters, both in fiction and in life.

And yes, race should influence your character concept. Halflings should be better rogues than barbarians. Dwarves should be better fighters than sorcerers. Gnomes should be better illusionists than monks. Not all possible characters should be balanced with each other. What is wrong with that? Frankly, that's part of what makes it fun to play off type.

One can have flaws and weaknesses without having penalties.

Yes, race should influence your character concept. I agree. However, in 4E, with no racial ability score penalties:

Halflings do make better rogues than barbarians.
Dwarves do make better fighters than sorcerers.
Gnomes do make better illusionists than monks.

At the same time, in part due to not having ability score penalties, the against-type options remain viable. Halflings might be far better rogues than barbarians, but they make competent barbarians (which works nicely for Eberron and Dark Sun). Dwarves are far better fighters than they are sorcerers, but they can be pretty decent sorcerers. Gnomes are better illusionists than monks, but... uh, they actually make pretty decent monks in 4E. Quirk of the system, but then, is "not being good at being monks" part of some gnome archetype I'm unaware of?

Strength doesn't correspond with size? I guess a cat really can kill a 1st level wizard in 1 hit then.

Most fantasy elves are much more powerful than humans. D&D elves have always been frail, partially for balance and partially to create their distinctive character.

The same for orcs. They have always been fools in D&D.

I said strength doesn't correspond directly with size. On average, are bigger things stronger than smaller things? Certainly.

Chimpanzees are, on average, smaller than humans. The most conservative scientific estimates of their strength say that pound for pound, chimps are twice as strong as humans. Less conservative estimates go up to eight times as strong. A chimpanzee can, quite literally, rip you apart.

Most 400 lb men probably couldn't do a single chin-up using both arms. A 400 lb gorilla in a zoo was once observed hanging from a ceiling by one arm while ripping out screwed-in ceiling panels with the other arm. In a fight between a 400 lb man and a 400 lb gorilla, I'm betting on the gorilla.

Make it an 800 lb man and the gorilla doesn't even have to show up, because the 800 lb man can't get out of bed without mechanical assistance. But hey, he's twice as big, so he must be stronger, right?

Even without crossing species borders, and sticking within my own gaming group: I could not bench much more than half my own body-weight if my life depended on it. A woman in my group who is physically smaller than me can bench over her own body-weight. I'm fairly certain she can bench more than MY body-weight.

D&D elves haven't always been more frail than humans. 4E is D&D too, and elves have no Con penalty there.

It's entirely possible for all extant orcs to be fools without mechanically requiring that all future orcs be fools as well. Just because Karl Pilkington exists, doesn't mean humanity can't have Albert Einstein.

Regardless of the specific examples, shouldn't *some* nonhuman races be strong or weak, tough or frail, wise or foolish? When do ability modifiers start kicking in? Should everyone just have the same ones, even a dragon the size of a house? Or should it merely be every roughly human-shaped creature having the same modifiers?

What is the point of race if different races are not different?

Races can be different without racial ability score penalties. 4E did it. A human plays differently than a halfling which plays differently than an elf which plays differently than a dwarf. All without a single -2 to Str/Con/Dex/Int/Wis/Cha appearing anywhere in the game.

Races can even be different without ability score modifiers at all.

The more I think about, the more I see the arguments for it, the more opposed I become to racial ability score penalties.

If you think that halflings should generally be physically weaker than humans, it's trivially easy for the rulebooks to contain a line saying "it is very rare for halflings to have more than 8 strength" without having to include a line that says -2 to Strength. PCs are supposed to be exceptional, after all.

 

[Hassassin]

D&D elves haven't always been more frail than humans. 4E is D&D too, and elves have no Con penalty there.

Since humans can have a Con bonus, you could argue elves are frailer.

Really, no race is more [adjective] than humans in 4e except on average.

 

[El Mahdi]

I voted for Racial bonuses without any penalties. But I also want the class skills also, like stone cunning, etc.

 

[the Jester]

I'm fine with both ability bonuses and penalties.

"Must have" is far too strong to describe how I feel, though.

 

[Mengu]

Chose other. Let the designers decide. I don't know how much impact stats will have on the game, so I don't know how much impact racial modifications should have on the character. Don't care if there are bonuses and/or penalties, or not, as long as the system doesn't extraordinarily compel me to play races that match up primary stat to a class, or force me out of a class/race combination due to a penalty.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I can take or leave racial ability modifiers. I'd definitely like to see races with significant and useful racial abilities though.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Strength doesn't correspond with size? I guess a cat really can kill a 1st level wizard in 1 hit then.

Regardless of the specific examples, shouldn't *some* nonhuman races be strong or weak, tough or frail, wise or foolish? When do ability modifiers start kicking in? Should everyone just have the same ones, even a dragon the size of a house? Or should it merely be every roughly human-shaped creature having the same modifiers?

What is the point of race if different races are not different?

Massive difference in philosophy between us aside, I wanted to address some of these points.

First, why should a creature of different size have a different strength or dexterity score? Why can't the physical difference be expressed in other ways?

For example, 3E had plenty of rules for dealing with larger or smaller creatures outside of ability score differences. Bigger creatures could carry more, could use weapons that did more damage, couldn't hit as well, and were easier to hit. Smaller creatures carried less, used weaker weapons, were more accurate, and were harder to hit. This is all totally fair. However, adding strength and dexterity mods to account for size on top of all that was just double-penalizing and double-benefiting. It was redundant. Why give halflings a Str penalty if you already factored that difference into their size category?

Also, on a purely physical standpoint it is unnecessary. Generally speaking, creatures don't get stronger as they grow bigger, they grow weaker. According to basic math and physics, if you double a creature's height you double its muscular strength and quadruple its bone strength, but its mass is increased by eight times. Thus, its effective strength is dramatically reduced. That is why giants don't exist in real life. A real life giant wouldn't have enough strength to stand up, or would even be crushed under its own body weight (not to mention all the other physical problems). On the other hand, reducing size has the opposite effect, which is why ants can carry things incredibly heavy compared to their own weight.

Trying to reflect size changes with strength or dex modifiers has all kinds of silly repercussions that mess up gameplay and unnecessarily limit race options like faeries and giants that should be in the game. On the other hand, effects more in line with 3E's size category rules express the difference in a way without some of those problems.

Also, as for one of your direct questions... I'm fine with the idea of all humanoid creatures having the same basic stat baseline. That way it is actually easier to differentiate non-humanoid creatures via stat bonuses and penalties. It actually opens up the possibility of giving creatures stat bonuses to make up for the fact that they can't equip weapons or wear armor. The differences between humans and elves are trivial enough to not require stat bonuses, since those bonuses should be saved for differentiating between humans and dragons. Or something like that.

 

[Hassassin]

First, why should a creature of different size have a different strength or dexterity score? Why can't the physical difference be expressed in other ways?

If it's expressed in other ways, one of those must be a bonus on strength checks so that they can break out of ropes, arm wrestle, or open stuck doors more easily. But in that case, why not just make it an ability score bonus?

According to basic math and physics, if you double a creature's height you double its muscular strength and quadruple its bone strength, but its mass is increased by eight times. Thus, its effective strength is dramatically reduced.

Effective strength to move itself around? Yes. Effective strength to move other things around? No.