NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="soviet" data-source="post: 8624482" data-attributes="member: 6925338">I actually think they're smart to limit the mechanical significance of cultural traits because it's a common point of friction between gamist and simulationist agendas. Basically, to satisfy a sim agenda we give each background and race etc a different set of modifiers and benefits. Characters of this type are slow, characters of the other type are good archers, etc.The issue particularly in a largely gamist-supporting design like 5e is that some of these are going to be better choices than others. So you thumb the scales of which class/race/region combinations are 'correct'. No-one plays a Culture A scout or a Culture B archer because Cultures C and D give you better stuff. And if you do build a Culture B archer there is a feeling that the game is punishing you, either directly with stat penalties and limitations or indirectly with opportunity costs. Better to try to keep these background choices orthogonal to combat effectiveness so as to preserve a wider diversity of viable builds.A similar dynamic can be observed in 5e, where the likely overpowered great weapon mastery feat puts a lot of pressure on fighter types to use a two-handed weapon over the much less effective but still theoretically cool options like axes, short swords, dual wielding, etc. Ditto 2e with its weapon specialisation rules locking you into a narrow niche while at the same time the random treasure tables turn most magic weapons the players find into longswords. Not a lot of axemen to be found in those games I'll wager.</blockquote>

Verification