Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 8205207" data-attributes="member: 6799649">Just because they do an imperfect job, this doesn't mean that they aren't trying to do that job.I don't share your opinion.I don't believe for a second that the designers chose racial ability score bonuses in order to steer a player's choice of class.If anything, it's the other way around; they chose those abilities to reflect, as best they could bearing game balance in mind, the concepts of that race. THEN some players decided for themselves that the lack of a +3 modifier in a class' most important ability renders that class unplayable for that race!So, yeah, it's all about that 16 at first level.I think that a lot is lost by taking away racial ability score modifiers. Either there IS a species concept that the game utterly fails to model, or there is NO conceptual difference between species that could possibly be reflected in ability scores.Either stance is absurd.And yet in the first iteration of D&D, halflings were called 'hobbits', a term which was invented by Tolkien, for a species that was invented by...Tolkien.The different kinds of D&D elves (grey, high) reflected those concepts in Tolkien (Sindar, Noldor).</blockquote>