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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 8041679" data-attributes="member: 7025508">Here are my thoughts on the matter. A lot of this is repost from another thread.People come up with all sort of convoluted background/culture/class/phase-of-the-moon based methods to assign the bonuses differently which ultimately amount to anyone getting to put the bonuses wherever the they want. If that's the goal just skip the nonsense and do point buy with higher cap and more points. Having races impose ability minimums and maximums in the point buy would be an elegant way to handle the capabilities of different species, but I doubt people who don't like racial bonuses to begin with would be pleased with that either.Ultimately the issue is due the main stat of the classes being too important in comparison to anything else. This is not only an issue with the races, it leads to cookie-cutter statlines in general. One somewhat counter-intuitive method I considered was making your class' main stat cost more point in the point buy. So you basically had a choice between having your main stat to be 16 and two secondary stats to be 14, or your main stat to being 14 and two secondary stats being 16. Then that might lead to there being an actual choice instead of maxing your main stat always being the optimal route.Personally really I want to keep some differentiation in ability scores for different species. I feel that their flavour value is pretty high. Legolas is inhumanly agile, Chewbacca is inhumanly strong and Spock is inhumanly smart. I want this to be represented and I want the abilities to actually mean something instead of just being arbitrary bonuses that do not really represent anything in the world. If high strength score on the character sheet does not correlate to a person being strong in the fiction, then I'd rather get rid of the ability scores altogether. Everyone can just have their boringly expected bonus and we can just call it 'Basic Bonus' or something. But I really feel that then something important would be lost.I want the game to proceed from the assumption that the ability scores actually represent something and that the fantasy races are biologically distinct species, not just funny looking humans. And this will mean their abilities will not be identical. You can and should try to counter the imbalance caused by this somewhat. All races should offer some benefits regardless of which class you choose. But ultimately this is co-op game, not competitive one and perfect balance is not required. And when it comes to choosing between verisimilitude and balance, I will choose the verisimilitude.</blockquote>

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