Racial Tendencies not Racial Stereotypes

[Grydan]

I really find myself incredulous about objections to penalties. There's no difference between a lack of bonus and a penalty. It seems to me that a lot of people get really hung up on the word "penalty".

But they don't object to bonuses.

My advice to WotC? Hand out a boat load of "bonuses". Give everyone, like, five ability score "bonuses". They'll all be happy then, because they're called "bonuses".

Oh, and set the base score at 8.

Whether there's a difference between "lack of bonus" and penalty depends on whether there's a baseline or not. In 3E and 4E (I don't know about earlier editions, sorry), there is such a baseline, and lacking a bonus or penalty puts you there.

This becomes especially apparent when looking at point-buy (which, I know, doesn't appeal to everyone, but is certain to be an option at least).

A 4E dwarf (+2 Con, +2 Str or Wis) doesn't have to pay more points than the baseline cost to get an 18 Charisma, he simply can't get to 20 to start at all.

A 3.XE dwarf (+2 Con, -2 Cha) can't get higher than 16 to start, and that costs him as much as it costs anyone at the baseline to reach 18.

I mean, sure, you could look at that as "races with +2 are the baseline, and then there's two levels of penalty", or "races at -2 are the baseline, and there's two levels of bonus". However, it's easiest to look at a -2 as a penalty, and a +2 as a bonus.

I prefer the 4E approach of "baseline or bonus", to the earlier three (or more) tiered approach.

 

[Mokona]

I guess the best way to do that would be to just ignore race as a mechanical concept, and leave it to player fluff. You have your stats; describe your character how you want. Call it an elf or a dwarf or a halfling or whatever.

I'm not a fan of that approach personally, but it's certainly the opposite of racial stat adjustments and the like.

There are legitimate mechanical ways to achieve the same racial flavor that don't boil down to the current solution. Typically, when players have a problem with race "preventing" their choice they are IMO talking about playing a certain race-class combination.

I talk more about this at my blog though as Monte points out I should have had 1e handy when I was writing it.

In my experience, only one aspect of races create this problem: Ability score bonuses (and to an even greater extent, penalties).

If strength is key to being a fighter then only +2 Strength races are the "Best Fighters on Earth". Any other race that wants to have a strong martial flavor actually doesn't make sense mechanically. Here the rules we played with in 3e actually prevented dwarves from achieving their warrior flavor.

Hand-waving aside, you could make a much tighter match between mechanical concepts for each race and the traditional D&D flavor of those races by focusing all the racial benefits in special traits and abilities with zero stat bonuses/penalties. If shown a specific examples of this for each race I suspect most people would prefer more flexible class choices that go along with highly mechanically-flavored races.

 

[Kzach]

I'd just like to point out that I inspire Morrus: http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/318567-morrus-races-new-post.html