[Playtest 2] Races: Humans too good?

[MoonSong]

Why? Players get more skills as they go up in level anyway. I don't see how it would break anything to give humans an extra trained skill at 1st level. And I don't see how a bonus feat would break anything, either. You could still have your speciality you just have one extra feat on top of that that you pick.

Oh but I'm not speaking from a balance side of things, but rather from practical one. The whole Background/Specialty thing is meant to provide a plug-and play experience, the extra feat/skill basically forces all human players to handpick at least one skill and one feat whihc goes agaisnt that estrategy. But if you could choose between the +1 to all abilities and the xtra feat and skill, that would be good.

 

[Manbearcat]

I would say unequivocally yes, it is "too good" (not to even get into the discussion of blandness). In any of the past editions these bonuses would have been too potent. In this edition specifically, this iteration of the human race will be a big problem and I suspect it will create fodder for optimizers everywhere.

- + 1 bonus to 6 of the 7 defenses which will be brought to bear in an extraordinarily high % of gameplay.
- An extra + 1 to primary attribute beyond what any other race can bring to bear when leveraging their expectant class dynamics. Again, this will be brought to bear in an extraordinarily high % of gameplay.
- An extra + 1 Ability Scores to interface with the ability check and skill check system that will buff both the general modifier bonus and, likely more potent, will provide an upward adjustment to the floor to determine if a task is too remedial to warrant a roll. Again, this will be brought to bear in an extraordinarily high % of gameplay.

As much as their individual potency, it is the extraordinarily high % of gameplay that these two racial features will impact that makes them "too much."

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I have a visceral gut reaction to this. It's simply wrong. Humans are the most versatile, but they are not the best, statistically, in any ability score. That's how it has always been.

Personally, I don't think humans should get any ability score adjustment. Instead, their versatility should be explored through a sizable list of racial traits that a human can choose from. Make them mini-backgrounds. Steal some of the cultural ones from other races.

Perhaps even go so far as to make human sub-races for the various environments and trades that humans might pursue.

 

[Someone]

Having so many universal human traits to choose from I don't know why they resorted for some so bland. I would have suggested a choice from one of these:

Murderhobo: As a human, your ability to benefit from death and misery is unparalleled. When you clear a lair, you can increase the treasure gain in gold coins, jewels, natural resources, etc by 10% for each human in your party. No cavity shall remain unsearched!

Bigoted: Hatred for those who're not like you is in your veins. Once per day rest you can gain combat advantage on an attack on a member of a race, ethnicity, social class, ideology or religious denomination different than yours. Additionally, you can rationalize anything as a service for your cause: you never lose class features for grossly violating a code of conduct.

Sex machine: You can draw unheard amount of energy in the pursue of getting laid. If your current task can improve your chances of getting some, you get advantage on Constitution checks, and every time you're subject to a random healing effect you can roll the dice twice and use the better result.

 

[Li Shenron]

I have a visceral gut reaction to this. It's simply wrong. Humans are the most versatile, but they are not the best, statistically, in any ability score. That's how it has always been.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Balanced? Probably. But it just feels wrong. Because of all a sudden all other races are inferior to humans in bare ability scores. And because ability scores used to represent human average, ok so now humans are better than their own average.

You can try to explain just by saying that after all a human PC is special. So maybe human PCs are just 1% of humans, while elven/dwarven/halfling PCs are 10% of their races, since generally humans are much more than everybody else in the average setting.

That explanation is satisfying against the campaign setting's world, but IMHO it's not satisfying against the group of PCs... it's quite normal for someone who envisions playing a nimble character to play an elf, or play a dwarf when you want a stocky type, and to expect the elf to be most dextrous and the dwarf the toughest etc. The resulting "feeling" is that humans are now the most everything, and feeling matters.

I would probably consider house-ruling this out (maybe leaving only a +1 of choice) and then letting humans choose one extra background. OR in a non-vanilla setting maybe I'll give a background only to humans but not the other races (so that e.g. there are no elves nobles, merchants, commoners or knights... just elves).

 

[fba827]

well keep in mind that it is slightly campaign dependent as well... if, for example, the campaign makes a lot of poison use... then, well, a dwarf will outshine (and live longer) than a human. But, yes, I am talking about a corner case scenario here...

 

[variant]

It feels very wrong. I would never let this human into my campaign because it doesn't feel right at all, whether it is balanced or not.

 

[Nikosandros]

I'll add another voice in the chorus of dislike for this idea. It might possibly be balanced, but the flavor is terrible. Please, get rid of this WotC!

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I'm with the 'it feels wrong' crowd here. I would get rid of the +1 across the board, giving them a +1 to any ability already leaves them as effective as any sensible race/class combo. Further, on average they get a +1 to checks and saving throws on three abilities and for random-generation anyone with enough odd scores will pick human by default. They need another feature, and other races get a bit of subrace choice, so I would do the same here.

A simple but boring choice could be selecting a bonus skill. Perhaps for versatility they should get +1 on all untrained skills.
Humans were always the dual-classing masters, but we don't know how multiclass works yet.
Or offer them subclasses - humans are adaptable, they could become resistant to cold or fire if they lived in the arctic or desert. Maybe opt for an urban/rural division for some skill effect or trait-like bonus.

 

[Prickly]

I like it.

Makes them interesting.