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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DSRilk" data-source="post: 4253468" data-attributes="member: 35212">I think it was done similarly to base class features.  It's an overall... "it feels right" situation.  The problem with both racial and class features is that some things are obviously worth more than others.  If you assigned a point value to everything, +1 language would certainly rank lower than most powers.  Then again, each power would probably be a little different in terms of value as well.There's also the situation in races where you can have several powerful abilities as long as they don't work well together.  For example, giving a bonus to AC when wearing heavy armor plus a bonus to melee attacks is much more powerful than giving a bonus to AC when wearing heavy armor along with a bonus to stealth when in light armor since the first pair work well together while the second pair are mutually exclusive.When it comes to penalties, I think you have to be VERY careful - especially when it comes to "balancing" them with benefits.  I've always been very much against the whole "X flaws = Y benefits" systems.  My (decades of) experience has been that virtually every flaw can be worked around, leaving you with just the benefit.  Either that or it's up to the DM to really make it impact the character, which is often hard to do even for a good DM (as you'll probably have several characters all with a variety of flaws you'll have to "make" come into play).  In your example, it's extremely easy to bypass the flaw entirely simply by attacking bloodied things.  In general, the creature you want to attack is the one everyone's already attacking, thus it'll be the first one bloodied - and thus it'll be the main target anyway, eliminating the downside leaving you with just a bonus that is now no longer balanced against anything.  The solution, I believe, is pretty much what they've done in 4e.  Benefits balanced against other benefits.  E.g. one race gets a benefit against bloodied opponents which is balanced by... every race getting some kind of equally powerful benefit (well, really it's not balanced one v. one in a vacuum, so it's really the composite benefits of one race balanced against the total benefits of another being roughly equal).My advice?  Figure out what your goal is (e.g. having a race that finds itself drawn to blood once it's been spilled), then give role-playing advice and mechanical benefits to help guide the player in that direction.  This will naturally give the benefit you desire - i.e. the character attacking things that are bloodied because it has an advantage against them.  If they're RP-driven players, they'll do it for that reason alone, and if they're power-ish gamers they'll do it because they know that the math is more in their favor if they do.</blockquote>

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