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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9642058" data-attributes="member: 7006">You bring up a very good point and which extends my own feelings out from it... which is that I would be more inclined to be okay with game mechanics for denoting different species (for example) if those mechanics actually always worked and were unique to that species and made them functionally different to the other ones.&nbsp; Which is not something that D&amp;D usually does.Usually D&amp;D mechanics give a species a mechanic that is no different and completely obtainable fifty-five different ways to Sunday, and just oftentimes makes the PC merely slightly more likely to be able to do/know something... which means it in no way actually denotes anything special about that species.&nbsp; An Elf gains the Perception skill.&nbsp; Great.&nbsp; A skill that almost every other PC in the party is going to have.&nbsp; So what makes this &quot;elf&quot; different than any of the other species in the group?&nbsp; It doesn't.&nbsp; Everyone can Perceive equally.&nbsp; This is an elven mechanic that you could remove from the game and not change a bloody thing.So instead... an elven perception mechanic should say something like &quot;You can see with complete clarity and focus out to 1 mile.&quot;&nbsp; THAT'S something meaningful for this species.&nbsp; Something that no other species has the power to do, and something that always works-- not just a slight bonus to a check of some sort.&nbsp; And in fact the elf does have something like that in their Trance feature, where they only &quot;sleep&quot; for 4 hours a night and still maintain a sense of semi-consciousness.&nbsp; This always works, is not gated behind any sort of check, and makes the species completely different than any of the others in game.If all the species write-ups had these sorts of &quot;mechanics&quot;... I'd be less likely to poo-poo them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 9642058, member: 7006"] You bring up a very good point and which extends my own feelings out from it... which is that I would be more inclined to be okay with game mechanics for denoting different species (for example) if those mechanics actually always worked [I]and[/I] were unique to that species and made them functionally different to the other ones. Which is not something that D&D usually does. Usually D&D mechanics give a species a mechanic that is no different and completely obtainable fifty-five different ways to Sunday, and just oftentimes makes the PC merely slightly more likely to be able to do/know something... which means it in no way actually denotes anything special about that species. An Elf gains the Perception skill. Great. A skill that almost every other PC in the party is going to have. So what makes this "elf" different than any of the other species in the group? It doesn't. Everyone can Perceive equally. This is an elven mechanic that you could remove from the game and not change a bloody thing. So instead... an elven perception mechanic should say something like "You can see with complete clarity and focus out to 1 mile." THAT'S something meaningful for this species. Something that no other species has the power to do, and something that always works-- not just a slight bonus to a check of some sort. And in fact the elf does have something like that in their Trance feature, where they only "sleep" for 4 hours a night and still maintain a sense of semi-consciousness. This always works, is not gated behind any sort of check, and makes the species completely different than any of the others in game. If all the species write-ups had these sorts of "mechanics"... I'd be less likely to poo-poo them. [/QUOTE]

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