Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 28, 2021, 12:47:17 PM
This certainly makes sense for verisimilitude, although (as is my wont) I'll note the other side of it, i.e. the reason the Forgotten Realms has so many ridiculously high-level NPCs running around: If it only takes getting to level 11 to be among, literally, the best in the history of the world, where does the challenge come from?

Level 11+ is the best of the playable species in the world. Monsters have a different scale (PCs top out at level 15, monsters can reach 18 and may be elite or champion tier such that only an entire party of heroes could challenge one... those tend to be inhuman beasts like an avatar of Tiamat or Moloch or an ancient dragon though). But the upper end of both are quite rare.

But also, because leveling in my system mostly scales hit points and damage, with only a slight increase in accuracy and defenses, large numbers of weaker foes will always be a threat. A legendary 15th level fighter still faces mortal peril if they had to fight a score of 5th level veteran warriors all at once by themselves. Heroes are valuable because they concentrate a lot of power into a small mobile package, but they're never invincible.

Further, unlike Forgotten Realms, there aren't really any options for immortality. Even with magic to eliminate all diseases and cancers, humans can only live a bit more than a century. The longest lived species can reach about 240 (though some like elves reincarnate with hazy memories of their previous lives). Undeath and demonic magic can bypass this, but both also shackle your free will, eat your soul and leave you an unplayable monster).

Thus, there's no ever building stack of level 11+ immortal champions ready and able to oppose the next rising threat. The world has to make do with the handful of heroes that are alive now (and due to distributions it's entirely possible there won't be a single level 11+ hero within a thousand miles of you when trouble shows up).

In other words, history can be full of legendary scientists; Newton, Einstein, Hawking, etc.; but not many who lived contemporaneously with each other. How many Babe Ruth or better caliber baseball players have their been and separated by how many years?

And finally, there's no guarantee the epic heroes of your century will be on your side. In the history of the default setting region there have been two sets of legendary champions in the last 200 years. The most recent established the Free Cities (the default heroic realm), but the group before that was the Orc warlord and his allies who took the disparate orc tribes and united them into the Bloodspear Empire which conquered half the region a century ago and only in the last 40 years fell into a four-way civil war between the last Emperor's heirs.

Also noteworthy is that there were spans of decades in the default setting where there were ZERO legendary champions at all (before the rise of the Orc champions and after their deaths and the rise of those who founded the Free Cities a century-ish later).

So, does that pass muster for why the setting doesn't end up like Forgotten Realms?

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 28, 2021, 02:03:50 PMLevel 11+ is the best of the playable species in the world. Monsters have a different scale (PCs top out at level 15, monsters can reach 18 and may be elite or champion tier such that only an entire party of heroes could challenge one... those tend to be inhuman beasts like an avatar of Tiamat or Moloch or an ancient dragon though). But the upper end of both are quite rare.

Fair enough; I suppose on second thought this is kind of an unfair criticism, since pretty much every game I've ever seen introduces elements which from a setting perspective should be extremely uncommon, but in terms of what happens to the PCs are a statistical inevitability. Law of Drama over Fortune, all that.

QuoteFurther, unlike Forgotten Realms, there aren't really any options for immortality. ...Thus, there's no ever building stack of level 11+ immortal champions ready and able to oppose the next rising threat.

This also works as a perfectly cromulent explanation: I will point out, though, that it's an explanation based on making a key presumption about the game's setting (i.e. no immortality), which some players may well wish to change or ignore if they'd rather use your rules in their preferred gameworld.

The flip side of "the weirdest stuff possible in the setting always eventually happens to the PCs" is "it's always the players who want to introduce the things that up-end the setting" -- as Luke Crane wrote in BURNING WHEEL, "If the GM creates a world without magic, there's always that one player who wants to play the last mage. And you know what? That's okay."

Quote from: jhkim on January 28, 2021, 01:59:33 PM
But from my experience with superhero gaming, it's pretty easy to get a challenge even if the PC is stronger than the stronger person in history. Being the strongest or the smartest single person in history, there are still plenty of challenges - legendary monsters, demi-gods, armies, and so forth.

The traditional way to bring out bigger threats is to expand the scope. Make 11th level the toughest in a small kingdom. Then have them face a larger kingdom, an empire, a planar empire, and so on. You don't have to change the baseline assumptions of the starting point, just make the world bigger. The scope can also expand chronologically, with ancient threats from the past; i.e. not just the toughest sorcerer of today, but the toughest sorcerer of the century, or the millennium.

B/X D&D works well at the kingdom scale.

Quote from: jhkim on January 28, 2021, 12:26:45 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 28, 2021, 11:34:30 AM

Quote from: jhkim on January 28, 2021, 10:23:43 AM
I disagree that this is the fundamental question about racial bonuses -- because creating a PC isn't the same as reflecting the population distribution in a game-world. For example, I can have as part of the background of my world that halflings are rarely wizards, and that the most powerful halfling wizard in my game-world isn't in the top 15% of wizards overall. That's game-world background. But if a player decides to make a halfling wizard, that doesn't necessarily mean that I should necessarily make sure that his halfling wizard is less powerful than the other PCs.

Just like in my game-world, I can have that female NPCs are usually weaker than male NPCs -- and I don't need the change the PC generation rules to make this so.

A few people like Wicked Woodpecker prefer that players roll randomly for race, sex, and social class - then roll in order for attributes. But most people have players pick things that the PC has no choice over, and that doesn't represent the game-world distribution.

You totally missed the next few sentences, apparently.  The distinctions are not just population-based, they are distinctions at the margins, too.  A female can NEVER become as strong as the strongest male.  That's not a distribution issue; it's an issue at the maximums, based on biology.  So an argument based on PC special-ness is irrelevant, because, if these modifiers express true genetic differences, then they will hold true at the extremes as well.  Honestly, if there is any legit criticism of the system, it's that all races cap out at 20s.  Goliaths should cap out at 20+racial mod.  Ditto that for the others.  So WotC have managed to mangle the system at both ends...

So would you be satisfied if all races generated ability scores the same, but humans had an Intelligence maximum of 20, and half-orcs had an Intelligence maximum of 18? It seems to me that's a more minor difference than the current modifiers. And it's a difference that would be less noticeable in actual play.

Depends on what you are simulating.  If you are simulating something like a male-female intelligence comparison, then you want a higher cap, lower floor, and same mean (there are way more idiots and geniuses among the male population, but the mean intelligence is the same between sexes).  If you are simulating male-female strength, then you should have both the bonus and the higher cap (as the average male is stronger than the average female, and has a higher maximum).  If an orc is a fundamentally stronger race than humans and fundamentally less intelligent, you should have a racial bonus and higher cap for strength, with the reverse for intelligence.

Of course, if you want a thin goo of sameness, make all of your races have the same stats, give them all a choice of any racial abilities they want, and congratulate yourself on how you have slain racism in the real world by turning your games into a bland mess.  That appears to be the primary motivation for half of the proponents (the other half being irritated that it limits their optimization... which is a thoroughly "new" school concern)...

Quote from: jhkimI disagree that this is the fundamental question about racial bonuses -- because creating a PC isn't the same as reflecting the population distribution in a game-world. For example, I can have as part of the background of my world that halflings are rarely wizards, and that the most powerful halfling wizard in my game-world isn't in the top 15% of wizards overall. That's game-world background. But if a player decides to make a halfling wizard, that doesn't necessarily mean that I should necessarily make sure that his halfling wizard is less powerful than the other PCs.

Quote from: jhkim on January 28, 2021, 12:26:45 PM
So would you be satisfied if all races generated ability scores the same, but humans had an Intelligence maximum of 20, and half-orcs had an Intelligence maximum of 18? It seems to me that's a more minor difference than the current modifiers. And it's a difference that would be less noticeable in actual play.

Quote from: EirikrauthaThe distinctions are not just population-based, they are distinctions at the margins, too.  A female can NEVER become as strong as the strongest male.  That's not a distribution issue; it's an issue at the maximums, based on biology.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 28, 2021, 04:19:17 PM
Depends on what you are simulating.  If you are simulating something like a male-female intelligence comparison, then you want a higher cap, lower floor, and same mean (there are way more idiots and geniuses among the male population, but the mean intelligence is the same between sexes).  If you are simulating male-female strength, then you should have both the bonus and the higher cap (as the average male is stronger than the average female, and has a higher maximum).  If an orc is a fundamentally stronger race than humans and fundamentally less intelligent, you should have a racial bonus and higher cap for strength, with the reverse for intelligence.

That brings us back to the question of whether we're simulating population-distribution. Do we need to know the population distribution of stats for each race, and bake all those into the character creation rules? Should we use different sort of dice to roll for male intelligence and female intelligence? Or do we just have the population distribution as background knowledge of the world, and have character creation that create possible-but-not-average beings as player characters?

In the case of Wicked Woodpecker, I understand that he really is trying to simulate the population distribution. He prefers that players roll randomly for race, sex, and social class - and then roll in order for attributes based on these. So the player characters are a representative sample of average people in the world. Is that what you want to simulate too?

I'd prefer to frame this first as "what do you want to get out of character creation"? Then we can choose rules and judge how well they achieve that goal.

Quote from: jhkim on January 28, 2021, 05:04:19 PM

Quote from: jhkimI disagree that this is the fundamental question about racial bonuses -- because creating a PC isn't the same as reflecting the population distribution in a game-world. For example, I can have as part of the background of my world that halflings are rarely wizards, and that the most powerful halfling wizard in my game-world isn't in the top 15% of wizards overall. That's game-world background. But if a player decides to make a halfling wizard, that doesn't necessarily mean that I should necessarily make sure that his halfling wizard is less powerful than the other PCs.

Quote from: jhkim on January 28, 2021, 12:26:45 PM
So would you be satisfied if all races generated ability scores the same, but humans had an Intelligence maximum of 20, and half-orcs had an Intelligence maximum of 18? It seems to me that's a more minor difference than the current modifiers. And it's a difference that would be less noticeable in actual play.

Quote from: EirikrauthaThe distinctions are not just population-based, they are distinctions at the margins, too.  A female can NEVER become as strong as the strongest male.  That's not a distribution issue; it's an issue at the maximums, based on biology.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 28, 2021, 04:19:17 PM
Depends on what you are simulating.  If you are simulating something like a male-female intelligence comparison, then you want a higher cap, lower floor, and same mean (there are way more idiots and geniuses among the male population, but the mean intelligence is the same between sexes).  If you are simulating male-female strength, then you should have both the bonus and the higher cap (as the average male is stronger than the average female, and has a higher maximum).  If an orc is a fundamentally stronger race than humans and fundamentally less intelligent, you should have a racial bonus and higher cap for strength, with the reverse for intelligence.

That brings us back to the question of whether we're simulating population-distribution. Do we need to know the population distribution of stats for each race, and bake all those into the character creation rules? Should we use different sort of dice to roll for male intelligence and female intelligence? Or do we just have the population distribution as background knowledge of the world, and have character creation that create possible-but-not-average beings as player characters?

In the case of Wicked Woodpecker, I understand that he really is trying to simulate the population distribution. He prefers that players roll randomly for race, sex, and social class - and then roll in order for attributes based on these. So the player characters are a representative sample of average people in the world. Is that what you want to simulate too?

I'd prefer to frame this first as "what do you want to get out of character creation"? Then we can choose rules and judge how well they achieve that goal.

Actually, no.  Once again, this has nothing to do with population distribution.  You keep gnawing on that bone as if it going to suddenly sprout meat.  All we need to know is if a race tends to be superior or inferior to other races with respect to certain attributes.  Do you want to differentiate your races by capabilities?  Or do you want your races to just be humans with make-up, Star Trek style?  Population distributions are irrelevant.  The only reason I'm even talking about populations is because most people here don't understand why racial stat bonuses might serve a purpose, either aesthetically or for simulationist purposes.  But I don't need to know what the bell curves for various races are to justify racial stat bonuses.  But I can use those bonuses to simulate those curves if I wanted to.

Someone brought up the "I'll play an Elven Barbarian engaging rage-porn completely in opposition to normal Elven culture." Then they get offended when a GM tells them that character doesn't fit the setting.

It's more SJW, over-entitled tablespeak that "the GM is a railroady bore with old-school, racist ideas of what D&D is." They want their snowflake PC despite your setting and the group dynamic. People talk about D&D 6e being a twisted monster, but we've already got there with 5e.

This isn't Gary, Dan and Tim's game. It's why I stopped with the RC. I ran 5e and the players were offended when I presented challenges that led to failure. It's like they never considered failing a scene and I've seen how hyper& proficient 5e PCs can dominate the game. So. I adjusted to create real challenge. But, the veteran 5e players EXPECTED success.

That was my experience, anyway.

I feel "Race as Class" works. An Elf or Dwarf is something different from a Human. The Demihumans live so long. Their culture is different. Those things create characters completely different from Humanity.

"But, I can play my Gnome Paladin the same as Human, because I want to."

Good luck with that.

I started with 5e but now vastly prefer race-as-class. You need some restrictions, some guiding hand for creativity, or you end up with a stodgy cast of creatures in your adventures: equally boring in their sameness.

Similarly, I find very little joy in peopling a game world in a manner that consists of plopping humans-in-costumes in the shops, on the throne, or patrolling the city walls. Monsters should live out there somewhere, in the forests, in the mountains, under the earth. Don't put them in your tavern, and certainly not in your adventuring party!

Quote from: jhkim on January 28, 2021, 02:52:07 AM
A couple people commented on attribute shifts eliminating differences between races - it seems to me that the +2/-2 attribute shifts cause much of a *feel* in difference in play. It's a minor stat shift that isn't very noticeable from the outside. A half-orc fighter isn't significantly more distinctly half-orc because of the attribute difference. I think special racial features make far more of a difference in feel.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 27, 2021, 09:37:36 PM
Lamborghini makes an SUV.  And you'd have to be a total retard to want one.  You buy a Lamborghini to own an expensive sports car.  Sure, some special flower might want to spend $100K+ for an SUV, just to prove that they are "different."  And they deserved to be relentlessly insulted and mocked.  If every car is a Lambo, the the brand loses its meaning.  If an elf can be anything, just as well as any other race, then being an elf is meaningless.  Go buy a Ferrari truck, then...

If you don't want a Lamborghini SUV - don't buy it! But it's a different thing to insult everyone who did buy it. And a lot of people did - from what I read, SUVs are over half of Lamborghini's sales.

QuoteUrus sales totaled 4,962 units in 2019, accounting for more than half of all the Lamborghinis sold — and, at its starting price, Urus customers spent more than $1 billion on the SUV in 2019.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/lamborghini-urus-lambo-sales-year-photos-specs-supercar-2020-3

In terms of game mechanics - GMs can feel free to disallow half-orc wizards if they think those suck. But I don't think it makes sense for the game to build into the game mechanics that they're penalized for those who do like them. It just makes the game less balanced when they are in play.

To some extent the ability bonuses represent a difference that is not simulated.

Goliaths and Half-orcs have +2 to Strength and Halflings don't.  From a simulationist point of view this is neglible difference and fails utterly. But it at least represents the fictional intention that the former races are bigger and stronger than others.  This works precisely because it funnels PCs of those races towards classes that would benefit fictionally from being big and strong and, therefore, helps to give the impression that the bonus is more impactful than it is.

I don't even particularly like this approach, but it seems to me that this is something that gets ignored.  They do serve a design purpose and taking them away means that design purpose is no longer served.

Quote from: Theory of Games on January 28, 2021, 10:19:44 PM
Someone brought up the "I'll play an Elven Barbarian engaging rage-porn completely in opposition to normal Elven culture." Then they get offended when a GM tells them that character doesn't fit the setting.

It's more SJW, over-entitled tablespeak that "the GM is a railroady bore with old-school, racist ideas of what D&D is." They want their snowflake PC despite your setting and the group dynamic. People talk about D&D 6e being a twisted monster, but we've already got there with 5e.

This isn't Gary, Dan and Tim's game. It's why I stopped with the RC. I ran 5e and the players were offended when I presented challenges that led to failure. It's like they never considered failing a scene and I've seen how hyper& proficient 5e PCs can dominate the game. So. I adjusted to create real challenge. But, the veteran 5e players EXPECTED success.

That was my experience, anyway.

I feel "Race as Class" works. An Elf or Dwarf is something different from a Human. The Demihumans live so long. Their culture is different. Those things create characters completely different from Humanity.

"But, I can play my Gnome Paladin the same as Human, because I want to."

Good luck with that.

I feel there's something a bit weird about this internet culture that says that the GM has to cater to everything.

I've always seen D&D as about exploration.  I may not want you to play a member of race X because then it is not something you can encounter and explore in play.

I don't know.   I't weird.  If I was running a noir style game in a run down dystopian modern setting I can't imagine anyone would ask to if their detective could be a vampire from another world seeking vengeance on the demonic entity that killed their father.  (And even less could I imagine that anyone would argue I should entertain that request).

Quote from: Theory of Games on January 28, 2021, 10:19:44 PM
I feel "Race as Class" works. An Elf or Dwarf is something different from a Human. The Demihumans live so long. Their culture is different. Those things create characters completely different from Humanity.

Apparently not completely different. They're still fighter/mages or warriors or rogues with a handful of special abilities as spice.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 28, 2021, 11:28:52 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on January 28, 2021, 10:19:44 PM
I feel "Race as Class" works. An Elf or Dwarf is something different from a Human. The Demihumans live so long. Their culture is different. Those things create characters completely different from Humanity.

Apparently not completely different. They're still fighter/mages or warriors or rogues with a handful of special abilities as spice.

I use the illusionist spell list for elves to give them more of a 'faery magic' feel.

Quote from: TJS on January 28, 2021, 11:38:12 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 28, 2021, 11:28:52 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on January 28, 2021, 10:19:44 PM
I feel "Race as Class" works. An Elf or Dwarf is something different from a Human. The Demihumans live so long. Their culture is different. Those things create characters completely different from Humanity.

Apparently not completely different. They're still fighter/mages or warriors or rogues with a handful of special abilities as spice.

I use the illusionist spell list for elves to give them more of a 'faery magic' feel.

The bard list works pretty well.

If the *goal* is for elves and dwarves to *feel* very different from humans -- then I think race-as-class is probably the best way to accomplish that in a D&D-like system. Among skill-based systems, I found that (for example) Traveller's alien modules made alien PCs feel very different from humans.

Conversely, I think the standard attribute modifiers are a *terrible* way to accomplish that. It's a minor shift that highlights more than anything how much the races are just humans. In practice, I frequently find D&D players forgetting - "Oh, is your fighter a human or some other race?"  The main thing that helps them distinguish is whether the character has infravision/darkvision or not, plus sometimes other unique abilities (like breath weapon).

Quote from: TJS on January 28, 2021, 11:09:17 PM
Goliaths and Half-orcs have +2 to Strength and Halflings don't.  From a simulationist point of view this is neglible difference and fails utterly. But it at least represents the fictional intention that the former races are bigger and stronger than others.  This works precisely because it funnels PCs of those races towards classes that would benefit fictionally from being big and strong and, therefore, helps to give the impression that the bonus is more impactful than it is.

I don't even particularly like this approach, but it seems to me that this is something that gets ignored.  They do serve a design purpose and taking them away means that design purpose is no longer served.

If the design purpose is to make the races seem different, I think it is a negligible difference and fails utterly -- as you say. The extent to which it funnels depends strongly on the personality of the player. Among a group of players who are die-hard rules optimizers, you'll *never* have half-orc wizards or halfling fighters. But conversely, this is the same set of players who typically don't give a shit about whether the races feel distinct anyway. Among the players who care more about character and setting than rules, you're more likely to have someone who will take an atypical combo - and when they do, the rules will highlight how little difference it makes.

If you're not going to do race-as-class, then I think unique racial abilities are much more useful to make the races feel distinct than standard attribute modifiers.

To me the setting should dictate limitations or combinations.

So, in Birthright Elves can't be Clerics, because they're immortal and never worship anything as "a higher power" (they arrogantly believe they're the equals of the human/dwarven gods). However, they're naturally magical, and thus can advance as Magic-users without any limits.

In most settings Dwarves are either magically resistant or lack aptitude for magic use, therefore they either can't be Magic-users or are severely limited.

Dragonlance establishes early on that elves like to dabble in magic, even when they are training to become something else. So Qualinesti or Silvanesti Fighter/Mages are relatively common.

I absolutely hate settings where anything goes. They make no sense to me, since the races are different in nature, have different preferences and aptitudes. Even in Planescape some limits apply.

Limits make for interesting situations and cultures. If Dwarves are unmagical, or even resistant to magic, then their society will be substantially different from those of other races that can count on magic-users to do certain things.

Having said that, if the DM then decides to make an exception for a player character, that exception then acquires an aura of uniqueness. If any Drow can be good-aligned and live on the surface, then Drizzt is no longer anything special (note that I hate the character, just using him to make a point) and becomes a cliché. A Forgotten Realms populated with Tieflings and Dragonborn as common races walking around in Cormyr or Neverwinter is a very different world than the one described in the early versions of the setting, and you're forced to make sweeping changes and create major events to justify these alien creatures suddenly being considered normal in the streets of your campaign setting. FR is notorious for the amount of fuckery that went on with the setting every time D&D changed editions, mostly to accomodate these mechanical changes (new PC races) with retarded and contrived lore changes.