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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 7271558" data-attributes="member: 6777454">Attribute bonuses could be removed all together. At that point one wouldn't have to worry about adding bonus attributes to the humans. If the races only conferred proficiency bonuses, some general weaker versions of first level class abilities that you can use at times instead of your main class abilities and bonuses in certain social and environmental situations, you can still the idea that the race is a bit different from a normal human without worrying about them being the best or the worst choice for your class.I don't know about still conferring bonuses but specifying physical or mental though. I think it is typically understood that your general Dwarf is not going to have a large bonus to Dexterity even though Dexterity is a physical stat.  Also, it wouldn't be unusual for an Orc who lives as an Orc out there in the wild having to survive on the land and stay firm and stubborn in the face of overwhelming adversity and having to stay alert to danger at all times while also having to read his fellow tribesman who tend to be quick to anger and lash out violently could develop a pretty good Wisdom.... I don't think it would be reasonable for that to shift to a large bonus to Intelligence instead.But, hey-- maybe the game would be better all together if attributes were entirely removed from it. We have seen so many editions pass by and not a single time have the designers not failed to make all 6 attributes meaningfully beneficial to even half the classes. The fact that there is always a "dump stat" that can just absolutely be ignored unless you are one of a very small number of classes or builds (in which case, another stat is your dump stat) indicates that attributes are something that is causing the game to be worse than it could be.I think you really missed the point entirely of the abilities I was adding to these races. Not only were your two very much stacked with more abilities than any of the ones I did, but you made them basically entirely built out of combat abilities.The abilities I wanted to add were things like..."You know, we basically never hear of elf farmers. In fact, elven settlements tend to be in places where we can be absolutely certain that there aren't peon elves working large plantations to feed their population. And yet somehow they always seem to have more food than they know what to do with despite us being led to believe they put very little effort into getting that food... so clearly elves must be able to come up with more than enough to feed themselves just by being within woodlands. That should be something an elf PC can do."or"Wow, Dwarf and Kobold create these large labyrinthine mines that are extremely difficult not to get lost in. And yet somehow they can get around-- they can even get around unfamiliar areas without ever getting to see the sun or the stars for navigation. So if a party is going around underground, shouldn't the Dwarf or Kobold with them be able to prevent them from getting lost?"or"You know, Goblins seem to be able to make friends with wolves and ogres and other things that just attack the PCs and try to kill and eat them on sight. Why is it these lowly, weak, easily killed people can manage to befriend and ride around on these creatures that, by all rational, should be more eager to kill them than the PCs, not considerably less so like all signs indicate. Clearly this is something that they especially excel at more so than any other race. That really seems like something the PCs can use."But these abilities don't directly inherently help you kill the bandits you are fighting or escape your prison cell with ease or assassinate the king or slay the dragon. In fact, all too many DMs entirely ignore the wilderness survival rules and don't do much in terms of the social pillar. But they are still there, they could be used... and these bonus abilities could even save the party under certain circumstances. In fact, just by the abilities being there encourages the DM to use those parts of the game more. As things are in this edition, the Ranger is the only class or background or race that at all has abilities that involve the wilderness survival rules. By knowing that the PCs have certain special abilities, the DM will likely create situations where they can use those abilities.It should be less "Blasty-blasty, boom-boom, you can't hurt me because of my elite powerful magic" and more "OH!! So that's how my people manage to survive in a place humans would struggle to survive in regardless of their elite fighting skills and ability to launch fireballs."I also think that listing a handful of specific weapons that they get proficiency in doesn't help anything. It just encourages the creation of more random subraces just because your culture of Dwarves should use polearms instead of hammers and axes or such. Every class already gains proficiency in simple weapons regardless, so listing those is meaningless. Beyond that, either just grant them martial weapons or don't rather than being prescriptive about an entire species of 100,000s of individuals all supposedly universally only using a small number of all the possible weapons available. You can add a note that the dominate culture of their people tend to favor a particular weapon set for whatever specified reasons, but the race should be flexible enough that there might be communities that prefer a different set or an entire other world where they exist and universally favor a different weapon because of their history in that world.</blockquote>

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