Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 8205129" data-attributes="member: 6915329">And these two together, along with what else you wrote, strongly indicate that the ASIs don't do a great job of exemplifying the flavor text. They do sometimes, but also sometimes are there for balance reasons, as you note. Which means that the racial ASIs don't have a lot to do with the flavor.The racial ASIs are also there, IMO, because they decide that a particular race is supposed to the <insert class here> race and thus should get a stat bonus that aligns with that (such as turning firbolgs into the druid race this edition and giving them +2 Wisdom; previously, they had been much more ranger-y).Or because they want to differentiate various subraces, like elves or genasi. Are dark elves really more charismatic than high elves?Or because they forget that a race used to either have no bonus or actually have a penalty on a stat. Like the tieflings. Maybe dark, edgy, brooding, fearful natures are charismatic now?But it does show it's not really necessary for the racial ASIs to even exist in the first place, let alone be tied to the flavor text--or, for that matter, it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any flavor text in the first place.Basically, the flavor text provides a useful guideline for you, but don't force you to play your character in any one way, but the ASIs try to create a straightjacket that do try to force you play it in one way and hinder you if you don't.Look at Chaosmancer's earlier post where they compare a gnome and orc wizard. The orc has to spend all of its ASIs just to catch up, and the smaller, weaker gnome can max out its Int early and then improve its Con and even Strength.Not necessarily related, but elsewhere on these forums--I think it was on the thread about the old "leatherette" series from 2e--it's said that Gygax at least claimed he based his elves more on the Norse versions (i.e., using the same source material as Tolkien, but not using Tolkien himself as the source) but every other writer went straight for a LotR feel.</blockquote>

Verification