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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6106037" data-attributes="member: 4937">Thanks for stopping by and providing perspective.   Let's just say that I initially thought it would be cooler to get 'elfier' or 'dwarfier' over time, when I started trying to implement that I found it never was actually cool in practice.   This forced me to back up and question my original premise: "Why would it be cooler to get elfier or dwarfier over time?"I've never been able to find a satisfactory answer to that question.  In fact, the more I thought about it, the wierder it sounded.  I eventually realized that get 'elfier' or 'dwarfier' over time just meant using chargen resources in ways that synergized with my racial archetype, and that mostly people do that anyway and to the extent that they don't, what good does it really do to force them to?  Besides, I don't really feel I get 'humanier' over time.Over the years I've come to realize that if the implementation is confounding, it's probably because the idea wasn't that good in the first place.What I've settled on is that for the most part racial customization should be limited to making it much easier for the race to do the few things that you want to decide are more or less impossible for every other race or which require extensive training for other races but which are more or less innate skills of that race.  Even that has proven to be a difficult list to expand.Lately I've been thinking of making a list of flaws which a race might possess which are unique to that race, representing extremes in the racial spectrum that don't overlap with other races experiences, but which in some fashion or another might represent a unique advantage to the individual.   Maybe 'autistic savants' are unique to humanity.   Maybe dwarfs can smell gold from some short distance, but in extreme cases this sensitivity creates severe problems for the individual.  Things like that.  My main concern there though would be over reliance on these RP cues by players, resulting in parties entirely filled with mildly dysfunctional people.  Mechanics => personality is a dangerous thing, which, could probably be the "tl;dr" version of this post.</blockquote>

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