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General Tabletop Discussion
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (A5E)
Point Buy Races?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8063146" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>I noted that:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is not something that someone tried once and screwed up. This is something countless people, in countless gains, have tried, and not done well with.</p><p></p><p>Now, if you can explain specifically how they'd deal with the problems it causes, sure, that'd be interesting. And yeah there's always a chance they'll just hit upon some cool system, but I am pretty skeptical.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This isn't an actual argument you're presenting, rather an unsupported opinion (indeed, some of it is outright illogical - the "had since birth" thing in the context of a points-based balance discussion is <em>beyond irrelevant</em>). I presented an actual argument - flat values are bad, because the actual utility of abilities varies wildly to different characters.</p><p></p><p>I'm not saying they need to be tied to classes, because that would be impractical, but my point is, once you start putting flat values on racial abilities, and letting people buy and sell them from their "version" of a race, you inevitably favour certain subclasses and certain races in a pretty unreasonable way that isn't currently a problem. This isn't an argument <em>in favour</em> of non-fixed values. This is an argument <em>against</em> points-based races.</p><p></p><p>The only argument I can see in favour is that if they were done well, you might make it so that some wildly underpowered races (Genasi, for example) got a lot more discretionary points to spend than the more stacked ones (most Elves and Dwarves, for example), assuming there was a fixed "race and culture" budget. But my experience, as I've said, is that these things are not typically done well. Usually some stuff will be unreasonably valued, either high or low, which can be particularly bad when races combine fixed and variable elements.</p><p></p><p>Re: Wood Elf ability, it would have functioned so differently in different editions that it's not reasonable to compare it. It's not particularly useful for other classes, because of 5E's action economy combined with the slightly tricky conditions for it to work. I say that having played Wood Elves, note.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8063146, member: 18"] I noted that: This is not something that someone tried once and screwed up. This is something countless people, in countless gains, have tried, and not done well with. Now, if you can explain specifically how they'd deal with the problems it causes, sure, that'd be interesting. And yeah there's always a chance they'll just hit upon some cool system, but I am pretty skeptical. This isn't an actual argument you're presenting, rather an unsupported opinion (indeed, some of it is outright illogical - the "had since birth" thing in the context of a points-based balance discussion is [I]beyond irrelevant[/I]). I presented an actual argument - flat values are bad, because the actual utility of abilities varies wildly to different characters. I'm not saying they need to be tied to classes, because that would be impractical, but my point is, once you start putting flat values on racial abilities, and letting people buy and sell them from their "version" of a race, you inevitably favour certain subclasses and certain races in a pretty unreasonable way that isn't currently a problem. This isn't an argument [I]in favour[/I] of non-fixed values. This is an argument [I]against[/I] points-based races. The only argument I can see in favour is that if they were done well, you might make it so that some wildly underpowered races (Genasi, for example) got a lot more discretionary points to spend than the more stacked ones (most Elves and Dwarves, for example), assuming there was a fixed "race and culture" budget. But my experience, as I've said, is that these things are not typically done well. Usually some stuff will be unreasonably valued, either high or low, which can be particularly bad when races combine fixed and variable elements. Re: Wood Elf ability, it would have functioned so differently in different editions that it's not reasonable to compare it. It's not particularly useful for other classes, because of 5E's action economy combined with the slightly tricky conditions for it to work. I say that having played Wood Elves, note. [/QUOTE]
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