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!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 8183413" data-attributes="member: 6799649">First, what the heck is a loxodon and why is it so badly designed?Second, the new system of totally floating racial bonuses takes away that abstract way to represent these physiological differences, but does not replace them with race specific equivalents that don't involve ability scores, leaving nothing. Not every race which currently has +2 Str has Powerful Build, and didn't need to because it already has its power modelled by +2 Str!Third, the game doesn't need to be totally simulationist in order to reflect these differences. Str +2 may not be enough to be simulationist, but it is enough to represent greater strength."It's a mouse! Run for your lives!""Mice aren't strong.""That mouse might be as strong as an elephant! You don't know its life choices!"In RPGs we suspend our disbelief. We can do this, not because we believe minotaurs exist, but because that we can work out that if they existed then they would be stronger than mice.If the game world has no connection between concept and game mechanics, how can the players make decisions for their characters? In real life we make decisions based on a mental model of how the world works. We do the same when we play D&D. But if the D&D world makes sense (elephants are stronger than mice) then when the DM tells us that an elephant (or a mouse) is charging toward us, we can make a sensible choice about how to react. But if the world does not make sense (bodybuilding mice and bookworm elephants with less strength) then how would we judge our responses?Role-playing in a world divorced from realism would have the decisions of players being meaningless.</blockquote>

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