The minuses of pluses, the pluses of minuses.

[ogre]

WayneLigon- good point. Perhaps your conclusion will be right, which wouldn't be a bad thing imho.

Incenjucar and Jack99- you both mention the elf (wizard) being suboptimal., I'm assuming because of the -2 CON. Is that penalty to HP not offset by the +1AC due to the +2 Dex? I had always thought that statisically a better AC is better than HP, but perhaps I'm wrong. kunadam, care to run them numbers? (Though I'm sure someone knows already)
And Jack99, I have always though the elf was a strong race choice, despite the one drawback, more so before 3e, with class choice, but maybe that's just me. I've just never found that -1 hp a level to be an issue, certainly not better than a +1AC, +1 to hit ranged, +1 Dex skills etc.

 

[frankthedm]

I'm pretty sure that large part of popularity of dwarves is that their stat minus is in Charisma and until 3E, who cared?

And that is probably the best argument against penalties balancing out a race. Generally if a race had a penalty, a bonus was given in return. By picking a career that does not need the penalized score, the character got the bonus at a low cost.

A 3E half orc pays a lot less for his racial traits as a barbarian than as an arcane caster. Granted some say he pays too much in the first place.

Guys, face it. Humans are still going to own.

Only because they probably are going to get a floating ability score bonus* in 4E.

* In 2E days I recalled a few DMs i knew allowing humans to add +1 to a score of their choosing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In 3e and all (?) of the previous editions (although to a lesser extend), elf was always the weakest choice, since HP's are king. They have done away with the penalty to that, and once again made elf a viable race.

Hahaha, that's hilarious. Elves are nonviable in every previous edition? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight....

However, I still get the feeling it's all 'soda pop' and no 'beer' or to put it more succinctly, all edges no flaws.
If the proposed flaw is that you get this benefit instead of that benefit it's not much a flaw.
I like flaws.

Well, the designers HAVE talked about how every race has a flaw (humans are "corruptible," elves are "arrogant," dwarves are "greedy,"), but that might be more of a fluff thing.

I do think 4e is moving away from mechanical flaws that are inherent to the character, but I don't think it's a bad thing at all. The "power gamer grab bag" argument doesn't hold water because in practice, we would all move away from sub-optimal choices (especially in 3e when life and death sometimes rested on having the most optimal choice for the situation at your disposal). The natural reaction when facing a penalty is to minimize it's effect. How many dwarven bards have you seen? How many Elf Barbarians? Yet there's 1,001 really cool ways to do those characters (dwarven historians, wild elves...).

So in practice, the penalty just ended up limiting choices. "I could be a dwarven bard, but I'd be a pretty crappy one" generally meant "I'll be something else."

Flaws are good, but a good flaw adds depth. And 4e might take the idea with flaws that they've taken with a lot of things in the game: "They'll be in 4e, but not in the PHB because they're too difficult to get right on time!"

 

[frankthedm]

The natural reaction when facing a penalty is to minimize it's effect. How many dwarven bards have you seen? How many Elf Barbarians?

Just the one drawn by ron spencer

 

[Jack99]

Yes, it is because of the -2 CON that elves are a suboptimal choice of race. HP's are king. It's my mantra, embrace it and make it your own.....

 

[Jack99]

Hahaha, that's hilarious. Elves are nonviable in every previous edition? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight....

Yeah, I did mean in 3e mostly, although I do seem to remember that we thought the same about them in 2e, but tbh, it's been so long that I really don't remember. Before 2e, it's even more hazy.

So let's for a sec assume that I meant 3e/3.5e and not every previous edition, hehe.

Doesn't change the fact that HP's still are king, and that the elf sucked in 2e..

 

[dmccoy1693]

Guys, face it. Humans are still going to own.

Yea don't worry, humans will be as digustingly overpowered as the rest.

 

[Aloïsius]

Flaws are good, but a good flaw adds depth. And 4e might take the idea with flaws that they've taken with a lot of things in the game: "They'll be in 4e, but not in the PHB because they're too difficult to get right on time!"

Too difficult or take too much place.
Like druids, sorcerers, monks, gnomes, metamagic (or its equivalent), psionic...
I wonder if I will resist the urge and wait for PHB2...

 

[FireLance]

Yea don't worry, humans will be as digustingly overpowered as the rest.

And if everybody is disgustingly overpowered, nobody will be!

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I just wonder if 4E will make it as easy to gain multi-racial abilities as well as multi-class abilities. I mean, come on...having to stack up templates to get those elf bonuses for a dwarf is a real klutzy way to create a dwarf who spent half his youth training with the elves because his elven mother fell for a particular handsome dwarved warrior.

Opportunity costs are a funny thing...it used to be an opportunity cost to choose a certain class, because you couldn't be any of the other classes, and the multi-classing rules were designed to make circumventing that principle difficult. Then multi-classing gained a lot more favour all of a sudden, because hey, players like to mix and match the class abilities for certain concepts. I'm not saying this will happen to the same degree to multi-racial characters, but 3E introduced that idea with templates already, and now that racial choice confers more than a simple ability bonus/malus combo and maybe a proficiency or spell-like ability at level 1, I can see players wanting to mix and match racial choices to "better fit their concept"...which in 3.X already translated to "optimizes their build" in many cases.

So, should we expect the "opportunity cost" of choosing a certain race to be eliminated by 5E? Or am I just being silly here?

(Of course, part of this is meant in a silly notion, but somehow... )