Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bagpuss" data-source="post: 8850891" data-attributes="member: 3987">But the mechanics no longer reflect the narrative.This is a good thing it means the players are more likely to play classes that reflect the narrative, it rewards players that reflect the narrative, it is good design.You can't have it both ways, players can set their attribute however they want (assuming standard array, assign where you like or point buy), but they are rewarded when they make use of the bonuses in the (old) mechanics, so they tend not to give the elf a 8 in Dexterity (upped to 10), and more often put a high value to exploit the bonus. Thus the ability score modifier accomplishes something meaningful by encouraging the player to reflect the narrative. Again good design.Yes because on the whole PC are encouraged to they put higher values into Dexterity. So in the elves players come across in the party and NPCs tend to have higher than average dexterity.It doesn't matter about odd variant humans because when looking at species as a whole, you are looking at a bell curve, and while an out lying human (with +2 Dex) will be in the upper quartile for their race, a similar elf will just be average for theirs.No it doesn't. Check out any of the elves in various NPC in monster books or other sourcebooks they virtually all have higher than average Dexterity (and were written under the old rules).Yet earlier you said inspires/lightly forces characters of those races to make use of those bonuses, so they will. At least they would under the old rules, unless they are specifically playing against type.Yes that is to be expected with bell curve distributions within a population, but the case where an Dwarf has a higher Dex than an Elf, are the edge cases and aren't anywhere near as common as the Elf having the highest Dex in the party.Thus proving ability scored do exactly what they are trying to do, reward and encourage players for playing characters that reflect the narrative norms.But that's not what we use to see, group after group elves had the highest dexterity in the party, and played classes that exploited that racial Dexterity bonus.Cutting down the options is desirable, it helps enforce the narrative realities and reduces decisions the players need to make early on, "Oh you want to play an archer, you might want to pick elf as your race then." it's good game design. Once a player has more experience and knows the norms they can play against them with their Elf with 10 Dex and 16 Strength, and again it rewards those players because they are special acting against the norms, not just another Fighter with maximum Strength.Only the narrative and the mechanics were in agreement when they gave a racial bonus to elves' Dexterity. Now they don't agree.I would say the narrative takes precedence, and the mechanics where possible should reflect that.Having the rule either way makes no difference the openness to players.Except what is in the rulebooks will become the standard and what players expect.Anyway it's a moot point, the power gamers got their way. Everyone gets a 20 in their primary stat, now everyone is "special".</blockquote>

Verification