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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8043852" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I guess we need to prove that then3No they did not. In this part of the example, they were both "null race". I was showing only the difference between the scores in this part of the example. That is part of what I'm saying. The scores, by themselves, are not an interesting difference. A human wizard with 16 Int is just a straight better wizard than a human wizard with a 14 Int, and the difference between them is uninteresting and fully mechanical. So, the claim that racial ASIs are interesting, seems to fall flat, because if that were true, then differences in ability score alone would be interesting.See, but this is not how my experience has ever played out. No one even looks at a non-Int Race for wizards, unless they have a very specific concept. And if they have that concept, why are we punishing them with a -1 to all their attacks? And, in the world you inhabit, where a -1 is not a punishment and a 14 in the stat is perfectly viable... people are already saying most of their wizards are mountain dwarves, for armor and con. So, again, the aspect you are arguing against is already a statement of fact for your side. And, an unspoken benefit here is that with the floating scores, people can choose the types of things they want to focus on. If they have a 16 INT already, and they want to be an entertainer wizard with performance, then they can choose to put their other scores in charisma. They can choose to have a charismatic wizard, or maybe they want to choose to have a 14 IN, so they can have a 16 Con and 14 Cha. But, it gives full power to make those decisions to the players, which will help prevent Cookie Cutter builds, because now every Tiefling isn't getting social skills, because if you have a +2 to Cha, you have to use it, otherwise you just wasted that bonus.But if you have a player who wants to play Dwarves no matter what, they already do that. They just never play bards. We also have people who always want to play bards, and so they only play races that have a + to Charisma.And yes, the upper limit is still the same, so, why are we deciding that one player should have fewer feats and be mechanically weaker for the majority if not the entirety of the campaign? What are we gaining by denying people feats if they want to stay competitive?See, this is sort of a catch-22. Either the -1 to attacks, saves, ect is a big enough deal that it affects decision making, in whcih case we are leading people to never choose a non-Int race when playing wizards and making more cookie cutters.OrThe -1 isn't a big deal and affects decision making, in which case allowing the other races to start with a 16 INT isn't a big deal and should be allowed. Either direction points to floating ASI's being more versatile and allowing more interesting builds.Only barbarians I've seen are human, goliath and half orcOnly Rogues Elves, half-elves, humans, halflingsOnly warlocks half-elves, tieflings, AasimarI'd say easily 85% to 90% of all characters I've seen are optimized like that. In fact, going off the top of my head, here are two parties that we've got. Party 1Wood Elf RangerAasimar Sorcerer/cleric (1 level)Halfing RogueHuman PaladinHalf-Orc BarbarianHalf-Orc ClericParty 2Half-Elf RogueHalf Elf Druid Human WarlockHalf-Orc BarbarianTielfing Cleric11 characters, only 2 not optimized to have their ASIs set for their class.You are missing that numbers are easy. A higher INT is +1 to hit, +1 Spell DC, +1 Spell Known. It is tangibly making you a better wizard. How do you measure the value of re-rolling 1's vs the ability to ignore being dropped to 0 hp 1/day? Medium Armor and poison resistance vs the ability to fly, heal, and deal extra damage per hit 1/day?These are hard things to optimize. They are legitimate trade-offs that are useful in different ways. +1 on every ability related to INT or DEX is an easy decision. That's why most guides recommend maxing your stats to 20 before taking feats, despite a wide array of useful feats that can do many different things, including giving better armor, or advantage on saves, the tangible benefits of +1 are too great to ignore.But they already don't. Goliath with 10 str, Halfing with 15 is already RAW. It exists and if you do point buy is trivial to create. So the mechanics are already dissociated. The only way to prevent this would be to have static scores, so that Goliaths always have a strength of 16 and Halflings always have a strength of 8. Otherwise, this issue exists and will always exist.See, but even if you take out the abilities, and look solely at the racial traits, that can still be true. Hill Dwarf gets +1 HP per level and Poison resistance. They are heartier than elves.Wood Elves have +10 ft over dwarves and prof perception. They are fleeter of foot and more observant of the worldDwarves get blacksmith tools and stone cunning. Elves can't sleep and have resistance to charm effect. The real things that actually exist, still exist. We still have differences between the races.</blockquote>

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