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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 5829523" data-attributes="member: 32536">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.</blockquote>

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