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This was touched on in the recent thread on race - but that was much more focused on politics around the calls. This is about having half-orc wizards, or halfling rangers, or gnome monks, and so forth. I can think of a few different approaches:

(A) In Basic D&D, there isn't a separate choice of race or class. Each race (except human) is its own class. (EDITED: removed OD&D, which has restricted combinations)

(B) In AD&D 1st edition, race and class are picked separately -- but many race/class combinations were banned. You couldn't play an elven cleric PC, because that combination wasn't allowed in the level limit chart. Other combinations were allowed but heavily discouraged by level limits, while a few were allowed unlimited.

(C) In D&D 3rd and later, those limits were dispensed with. However, because of ability score modifiers, some combinations result in less effective characters on average. Unless the GM rules it doesn't fit the setting, I can choose to play a half-orc wizard, but my PC is notably less powerful -- though a half-orc paladin works just fine.

(D) Other games don't have the equivalent. For example, in Fantasy HERO (4th) and I think in GURPS (4th), race doesn't change effectiveness much. So if I play a half-orc wizard, I still get my points worth of abilities. A GM can discourage some combinations as not fitting the setting ("I'd prefer you didn't play that"), but if a player does make such a character with GM permission, they're just as effective as other PCs.


Do people have a preference about this? Personally, I definitely preferred (C) to (A) and (B). However, as I think it, I am coming around that (D) makes more sense. Outside of race/class combinations, I've generally felt that using *power* to balance *unusualness* is a poor bargain, because it yields inconsistent results depending on the mindset of the player. Frequently, I'll see a party where half the players are power-gamers with optimized and boring characters, and the other half are experimenters/role-players trying out quirky options who all get overshadowed.

My preferred way to deal with unusualness is on a social level - especially by having a session zero where we come up with who the PCs are as a group, to avoid both too much unusualness overall, and also unlikely matchings of characters (i.e. paladin and assassin).

Like you, I am definitely more on the "D" front myself, and I agree that trying to make sure a party fits together by concept before character creation begins can avoid a lot of problems. I've come to see more value in classes as a game design element, as a fairly decent method of niche protection, but I was always the guy who wanted to tweak everything and I much prefer flexibility.

Purely to note the other side, though, there can often be a lot of fun, novelty and amusement factor in playing out how highly incompatible PCs actually interact and establish, despite themselves, cooperative working relationships. Whether a particular group seems likely to pull this off is entirely a case-by-case assessment, I think.

And one of the advantages to the race-class combo, as noted in the previous thread, is the basic advantage of all templates: it's a shortcut of character creation for those without the time or inclination to do the kind of point-by-point allocation systems like GURPS and HERO often require.

I basically have a type C history with RPG's, but I am starting to think it might be flawed in some regard. If you don't want to play an orc wizard, then I guess the -2 Int and +2 Str (or whatever we are using in the system or edition) doesn't matter to you. Though if you do choose to play that kind of character, should you be penalized by having your over all character power reduced? The answer that keeps coming back to me is "no" you shouldn't be penalized.

I actually had the same thought about sex based attribute adjustments. I'm not offended by the desire to give male characters +2 Strength, it would in fact be more realistic, but I would prefer not because it such a rule change encourages and discourages certain player choices. If females get +2 Cha and males +2 Str, then it punishes players who want to make male bards or sorcerers and players who want to make female fighters or barbarians. If someone wants a character that goes against type - like a female barbarian, or wizard, or whatever (regardless of how politicized it is or isn't) then why penalize them for that choice?

So, when it comes to removing racial modifiers, I can see a good argument. Not because I want to be politically correct or anything, but because I think that it would be better for players who player characters that break stereotypes not to be punished for doing so mechanically. Of course, people will say that they can still make the character and a few penalties here or there aren't the end of the world. This is kind of true, but being a wizard with a -2 Int when there is another wizard out there with a +2 Int is going to reduce enthusiasm somewhat and will effect many people's choices.

So, how would I do things? I guess it depends on the system. For just a point buy character creation method, you don't have to do anything. Just put your points where you want breaking or conforming to stereotypes as you desire. For a stricter sort of character creation system, like D&D, I could imagine that each race could have a set of bonuses and penalties and then you could choose the ones that you feel are appropriate to your character concept.

Orcs may be dumber than humans on average, but the orc IQ bell curve doesn't have to determine the abilities of your particular orc PC. Men are in fact stronger than women in real life, but those strength bell curves don't have to determine the physical abilities of your female barbarian.

I pretty much built my game system around a variant of D.

Specifically, I designed the classes with enough flexibility that every race/species/origin can be good at fighting or spellcasting in some fashion.

For example, the fighter includes options for a Strong, Swift and Berserker fighting style that each favors one of the physical attributes and a combat focus of Daring, Tactical or Wary that favors one of the mental attributes. So while a Gnome is unlikely to a Strong fighter, they could certainly be a swift one and a Giant wouldn't be that great as a Swift fighter, they would do well with the Strong or Berserker styles.

Similarly, spellcasting has classes; Gadgeteer, Mystic, Theurge and Wizard that each favor a particular mental attribute, but all of these have access to spellcasting paths of Abjurer, Benedictor, Empowered, Interdictor, Maledictor and Summoner. So an Elf is most likely to favor Theurgy while an Eldritch will more often favor Mystic, which makes some differences to how they cast (what implements they use, what non-combat options they can take), but both can still can use any of the common paths of magical effects.

QuoteDo people have a preference about this? Personally, I definitely preferred (C) to (A) and (B). However, as I think it, I am coming around that (D) makes more sense. Outside of race/class combinations, I've generally felt that using *power* to balance *unusualness* is a poor bargain, because it yields inconsistent results depending on the mindset of the player. Frequently, I'll see a party where half the players are power-gamers with optimized and boring characters, and the other half are experimenters/role-players trying out quirky options who all get overshadowed.

If I have a fantasy races like different species I want differences between them to be more than social. Otherwise I can play just with varieties of man.
Answer for powergamers - pick a race / roll in order / choose class that's viable based on results. That's for a start.

Besides overall my opinion is racial bonuses and penalties in D&D are not that much. I mean in best case Half-Orc vs. Halfling Figher randomly rolled differs by +2 to roll in D&D 3.5
That can matter sure, but it's hardly enough to make halfling unplayable, or crippled. (Only with unusual races that gets over +4/-4 modifiers that's really changes in weird way.)

QuoteIf you don't want to play an orc wizard, then I guess the -2 Int and +2 Str (or whatever we are using in the system or edition) doesn't matter to you. Though if you do choose to play that kind of character, should you be penalized by having your over all character power reduced? The answer that keeps coming back to me is "no" you shouldn't be penalized.

Why not? You play someone who by blood and natural potential is worse wizard than elf. Still can be very good wizard - those penalties are not that big for lord's sake.
You wanna see big differences - take Warhammer, where men use 2d10+20 for most of primary attributes, while elves have almost all 2d10+3- or 2d10+40.
I honestly as someone running D&D 3,5 cannot concieve how one can see those miniscule +2/-2 bonuses/penalties as in any way crippling for race/class combinations.
Especially when class power creep quickly becomes way more prominent over inherent attributes.
Oh look your female barbarian has +24/+19/+14 to strike, oh how crippled she is compared to male counterpart who thanks to +2 to Strength is now +25/+20/+15.
Oh, shame, oh humanity.

QuoteNot because I want to be politically correct or anything, but because I think that it would be better for players who player characters that break stereotypes not to be punished for doing so mechanically.

If you play dwarven wizard you play against stereotype, yet you are not punished. If you play halfling priest, you play against stereotype yet you are not punished. Damn gnomes get +2 Charisma in 3,5 but I cannot see they are archetypical bards and sorcerers... at least they were not till Scalan.

For me, there are two related questions which drives what I want in the game: 

A. How much setting do I want embedded in the class/race/etc. options? 
B. What do I need to do if I want to change the embedded setting?

For example, take the B/X elf class.  They are all magic users that can fight.  If as the GM I want a different elf class for the setting, I need to make a new class.  My personal objection to "race as class" (as opposed to any design advantages/disadvantages for the broader audience) is "I don't want all my elves to be magic users that can fight, and I don't want to write a new class every time my setting preference conflict with the mechanics."  Not because writing a new class is difficult in B/X.  It's very easy.  I just don't enjoy it.  I even less want to write a new class to help some player realizes their idea in the setting, but that's as much about the negotiation between player and GM as the work. 

This aspect, in fact, is what made me enjoy Fantasy Hero and GURPS so much.  However, I soon discovered that I didn't like that extreme, either--almost no setting embedded into the mechanics except for a few things that don't work very well so that people avoid them or perhaps in GURPS picking your default on how magic works.   This makes communication of the setting to the players more difficult unless you've got some common idea that you can use as short-hand (e.g. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser with spell casters).  I frequently don't, because many of the players don't read that much fantasy fiction and I don't watch much film.  I don't want to negotiate setting with the player every time they make a character any more than I want to write their character for them.

I rather like combinations that are allowed but don't necessarily work all that well.  It's a lot better than having a few combinations that are clearly better than everything else.  Any game is likely to have at least one or the other.  If an orc wizard is allowed but discouraged, that says something about the world. If 8 Str fighters are allowed but discouraged, likewise.  If all the "discouraged" options narrow the list down to the point where most of the casual players can pick from the 5, 10, 15 options that are most common and useful, that also says something about the setting.  But then, I like random character generation, not having very many oddballs, and players that can even pick up a random pregen and have fun with it.  Of course, there is something to be said for the game not cluttering itself up with bad options.

I do think it is very useful for the designers and writers of the game to have clear in their minds when restrictions are for mechanical reasons versus when restrictions are for the implied setting.  And then communicate that in the game.  Is there a mechanical reason why most elves that use magic are wizards instead of druids?  Or was that just a setting element that got thrown in there?  It makes a difference when I go to ignore the default setting and substitute my own.  Or it would if the designers and writers were clear in their own minds.


Finally, I have an extremely strong aesthetic preference for designs that use multiple combinations of short lists instead of long lists--provided that the short lists are designed to work well together instead of kludged off of past traditions or older lists.  You could say it this way:  All else being equal, I'd prefer human, elf, dwarf combined any old way with fighter, m/u, cleric.  But if half the combinations don't work, I'd rather have race as class and drop the pretense. 

I don't have a strong preference.

But I think C and D tend to lead to over-optimization. When you can mix race and class at will, or when you can pick individual abilities freely, there are always more and less optimal choices. Since there's a lot of pressure to pick the better choice, that effectively limits character options. Often, in practice, this limits options more severely than in A or B, even though, technically, you can pick anything you want.

A is an interesting choice, for several reasons. One, it's different. Aside from Basic D&D, there aren't a lot of examples. So it has novelty going for it. It also doesn't pretend all races are the same, underneath. Dwarves might literally be incapable of magic, for instance. Too many modern games treat races humans with pointy ears or stumpy legs, not as something fundamentally different or alien. I really like the idea that elves and dwarves are not humans, and race as class helps enforce that. And not just by limiting what options are available, but by customizing each class. Having a halfling race and then mixing it with thief and fighter classes seems pretty generic, because you're just slapping the same racial characteristics on the same classes. But with race as class, there's the opportunity to make each unique. A halfling sheriff and a halfling burglar might have unique skills, and express their halflingness in different ways. Of course the main problem is there aren't a lot of examples. The standard races in Basic D&D are just one class per race, which is a good way to establish a starting archetype, but quite limiting. The GAZ series added some new ones like dwarven priests or halfling wardens, but those were both iffy and only a start. So the idea's interesting, but running with it is a lot more work.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on January 27, 2021, 06:13:00 PM

Quote from: ShieldWife on January 27, 2021, 05:30:35 PM
If you don't want to play an orc wizard, then I guess the -2 Int and +2 Str (or whatever we are using in the system or edition) doesn't matter to you. Though if you do choose to play that kind of character, should you be penalized by having your over all character power reduced? The answer that keeps coming back to me is "no" you shouldn't be penalized.

Why not? You play someone who by blood and natural potential is worse wizard than elf. Still can be very good wizard - those penalties are not that big for lord's sake.
You wanna see big differences - take Warhammer, where men use 2d10+20 for most of primary attributes, while elves have almost all 2d10+3- or 2d10+40.
I honestly as someone running D&D 3,5 cannot concieve how one can see those miniscule +2/-2 bonuses/penalties as in any way crippling for race/class combinations.

No one in this thread is claiming that it is "crippling" -- the issue is whether it is penalized, and whether it should be penalized. If the +2/-2 modifiers aren't that big a deal, then the converse is what's the big deal about dispensing with them?

The argument about blood and natural potential doesn't seem to hold up, because *except* for race, these things don't affect game balance. Realistically, it would be much harder for an outlander or a street urchin to become a wizard than someone born into a noble or educated class. For example, let's say I want as my character background "My character is a human street orphan who applied to be in the wizard academy. He was tested and rejected three times for not having the aptitude. But he worked hard and eventually got in." Should this character also be less effective, because he's going against type?

The question is whether an unusual background like this means that the player should have a less effective character.

Quote from: jhkim on January 27, 2021, 05:11:26 PM
(A) In OD&D and Basic D&D, there isn't a separate choice of race or class. Each race (except human) is its own class.

That's true of B/X and BECMI, but only sorta true for original D&D. In original D&D without the supplements there aren't separate dwarf, elf, or hobbit classes, it's just that dwarves and hobbits are "limited to the fighting-man class" and elves "begin as either fighting-men or magic-users and freely switch class whenever they choose..." So there's still a sort of class/race separation of concepts (although in practice it's very similar to "race is a class").

Once original D&D's Supplement I was released , the separation became even more clear. The thief class was added, with dwarves, elves, hobbits, and half-elves all being allowed the thief class. "Normal" multiclassing was also added at this time, with things like elven F/MU/T or dwarf F/T. And this was carried on into AD&D 1e, of course.

QuoteDo people have a preference about this?

For D&D, I much prefer (B), as it is in AD&D or original D&D + supplements. I like a strong class/level approach in D&D, and I don't consider classes to be laws that govern how the world works: they're just useful game structures for managing PCs and their advancement. So my game world freely includes things demihuman priests (even if they aren't governed by the rules of the cleric class) and so on. The class/level rules are mainly for PCs, in my game.

Quote from: Pat on January 27, 2021, 06:40:00 PM
But I think C and D tend to lead to over-optimization. When you can mix race and class at will, or when you can pick individual abilities freely, there are always more and less optimal choices. Since there's a lot of pressure to pick the better choice, that effectively limits character options. Often, in practice, this limits options more severely than in A or B, even though, technically, you can pick anything you want.

Sorry - I realize in retrospect that it was not well-described, but my intent with option (D) was that it was covering cases where there was *not* this optimization of race. A player that chooses a half-orc wizard will be roughly as effective as a gnome wizard, rather than being weaker. That was my experience with Fantasy HERO, for example, where an 20 Intelligence character costs the same regardless of whether they are gnome or human - and in any case, stats have a weaker effect than in D&D. In D&D, I would think this could be accomplished by having attributes all generated by the same method, rather than differing based on race.

Quote from: Pat on January 27, 2021, 06:40:00 PM
(Regarding option A) A halfling sheriff and a halfling burglar might have unique skills, and express their halflingness in different ways. Of course the main problem is there aren't a lot of examples. The standard races in Basic D&D are just one class per race, which is a good way to establish a starting archetype, but quite limiting. The GAZ series added some new ones like dwarven priests or halfling wardens, but those were both iffy and only a start. So the idea's interesting, but running with it is a lot more work.

I think in practice, creating a full set of different classes for each race is giving up the flexibility of the race + class check-in. Many games trying to cover a range have just opted to go with a point system and possibly templates, like D6 and Shadowrun.

Quote from: jhkim on January 27, 2021, 07:22:24 PM

Quote from: Pat on January 27, 2021, 06:40:00 PM
But I think C and D tend to lead to over-optimization. When you can mix race and class at will, or when you can pick individual abilities freely, there are always more and less optimal choices. Since there's a lot of pressure to pick the better choice, that effectively limits character options. Often, in practice, this limits options more severely than in A or B, even though, technically, you can pick anything you want.

Sorry - I realize in retrospect that it was not well-described, but my intent with option (D) was that it was covering cases where there was *not* this optimization of race. A player that chooses a half-orc wizard will be roughly as effective as a gnome wizard, rather than being weaker. That was my experience with Fantasy HERO, for example, where an 20 Intelligence character costs the same regardless of whether they are gnome or human - and in any case, stats have a weaker effect than in D&D. In D&D, I would think this could be accomplished by having attributes all generated by the same method, rather than differing based on race.

Doesn't matter. It's still optimization, and leads to the same effects. If a 20 Intelligence character is the optimal choice for a wizard, then all wizards will tend to have I 20. Plus some additional weirdness, because if everything always costs the same in a point buy system, there's not much difference between races.

Quote from: jhkim on January 27, 2021, 07:22:24 PM

Quote from: Pat on January 27, 2021, 06:40:00 PM
(Regarding option A) A halfling sheriff and a halfling burglar might have unique skills, and express their halflingness in different ways. Of course the main problem is there aren't a lot of examples. The standard races in Basic D&D are just one class per race, which is a good way to establish a starting archetype, but quite limiting. The GAZ series added some new ones like dwarven priests or halfling wardens, but those were both iffy and only a start. So the idea's interesting, but running with it is a lot more work.

I think in practice, creating a full set of different classes for each race is giving up the flexibility of the race + class check-in. Many games trying to cover a range have just opted to go with a point system and possibly templates, like D6 and Shadowrun.

The flexibility comes with a certain same-sameiness. It's a trade off between that, and the work needed to add additional flavor by creating a unique halfling sheriff and a unique halfling burglar, instead of overlaying a standard racial template on fighter or thief.

Hi John.  Mark here.  And maybe this a better space to talk about this than on FB :P

Despite my defense of older systems, and further assuming we have not chosen to play such older systems, I would have to say D.  While I may want to control what racial backgrounds are available as a GM for the setting/campaign, the playing field should be equitable in terms of character creation.

QuoteIf the +2/-2 modifiers aren't that big a deal, then the converse is what's the big deal about dispensing with them?

Primo, to select over-optimisers and destroy them in fire. Second, to make not too big, but visible distinction between average members of different species, that will have some meaning in game.

QuoteThe argument about blood and natural potential doesn't seem to hold up, because *except* for race, these things don't affect game balance. Realistically, it would be much harder for an outlander or a street urchin to become a wizard than someone born into a noble or educated class. For example, let's say I want as my character background "My character is a human street orphan who applied to be in the wizard academy. He was tested and rejected three times for not having the aptitude. But he worked hard and eventually got in." Should this character also be less effective, because he's going against type?

Look I would most preferably order players to roll their race and social background, adjust both nature and nurture scores and then order them to pick a proper class for their rolls. So yes I'm all for social class adjustment. ADD IT.

QuoteThe question is whether an unusual background like this means that the player should have a less effective character.

what can I say privilege is real :P

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on January 27, 2021, 07:47:53 PM

Quote from: jhkimThe argument about blood and natural potential doesn't seem to hold up, because *except* for race, these things don't affect game balance. Realistically, it would be much harder for an outlander or a street urchin to become a wizard than someone born into a noble or educated class. For example, let's say I want as my character background "My character is a human street orphan who applied to be in the wizard academy. He was tested and rejected three times for not having the aptitude. But he worked hard and eventually got in." Should this character also be less effective, because he's going against type?

Look I would most preferably order players to roll their race and social background, adjust both nature and nurture scores and then order them to pick a proper class for their rolls. So yes I'm all for social class adjustment. ADD IT.

If it's what you like - you should add it. As I understand your preference, you want to simulate generating a random member of the population - so roll randomly for race, gender, and social background - and then have those modify attribute rolls (which are done in order with no re-arranging of rolls). That's how Harnmaster worked, and there were a few times when I generated characters that way in the old Harnmaster campaigns that I played in. (Actually, I generated three random characters this way and picked one of the three.)

What's your experience like doing this in actual campaigns? In my experience, it's vanishingly rare for players to roll for race and gender and social background, and most players strongly prefer to choose. Even in Harnmaster, it seemed like rarely-used optional rules to roll for those, and other games don't even have them as an option.

Quote from: Tyndale on January 27, 2021, 07:32:06 PM
Hi John.  Mark here.  And maybe this a better space to talk about this than on FB :P

Despite my defense of older systems, and further assuming we have not chosen to play such older systems, I would have to say D.  While I may want to control what racial backgrounds are available as a GM for the setting/campaign, the playing field should be equitable in terms of character creation.

Hey, Mark! (Mark played in some of the old Harn campaigns with me - though I think you joined only after we switched to Burning Wheel, right?) Yeah, that's where I'm coming to. Of course, all character creation is equitable among *players* since everyone uses the same rules and has the same opportunity. But I don't see the point of penalizing unusual race/class combos in power.

If as GM, you don't want those combos, then just disallow them. But allowing them but having the PC be weaker doesn't really solve anything. When players *do* exercise that option, no one is any happier.

Honestly.  I think a lot of the issues are to do with this whole idea of building a special character to play and the idea that the whole game should revolve around the special character.

It doesn't really matter so much in B/X if you can't play a Dwarf Thief, because if you rolled 5 for Dex then a thief was out of the question anyway.

Or in Warhammer you might be able to play a high elf, but you almost certainly won't.

Quote from: TJS on January 27, 2021, 08:39:12 PM
Honestly.  I think a lot of the issues are to do with this whole idea of building a special character to play and the idea that the whole game should revolve around the special character.

Exactly.  I can say that all of my 1e fighters started off as... fighters.  Then things happened.  Then they got magic items, made allies, got strongholds.  Then, suddenly (/s), they had become characters.  Their story grew out of play; it sure as hell wasn't written beforehand.  But, today, every special flower has to express themselves through their character.  How sad do you have to be when your imaginary character must be a reflection of who you are?

Part of the issue is that, as the mechanics have expanded to become more "universal." there is more in D&D to "optimize."  Bonuses that used to be small and only apply in a handful of cases now apply to every skill determined to relate to that attribute.  Bonuses pile on bonuses, rewarding those that plan characters accordingly.  We never "planned" a character's abilities (there was no such thing)!  We planned what they would do.

The fundamental question behind racial bonuses is this: are there some genetic traits that cannot be avoided?  You can see this in the argument over sex penalties to attributes.  The strongest woman alive is not even in the top 15% of the strongest men.  No amount of training, work, willpower, or dedication can ever change that.  Now, if you want sex to be irrelevant in your game, you can handwave that reality (and most of us do).  But you have to choose a level of verisimilitude that works for you and your players.  Some people cannot handle the concept that certain people, groups, etc. can be born irredeemably evil, flawed, or inferior to the norm.  If you are one of those people, feel free to reflect that in your game.  The problem arises when those same people demand that my game not include those concepts.  Which is what this argument is really about.

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...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 27, 2021, 09:14:20 PM

Quote from: TJS on January 27, 2021, 08:39:12 PM
Honestly.  I think a lot of the issues are to do with this whole idea of building a special character to play and the idea that the whole game should revolve around the special character.

Exactly.  I can say that all of my 1e fighters started off as... fighters.  Then things happened.  Then they got magic items, made allies, got strongholds.  Then, suddenly (/s), they had become characters.  Their story grew out of play; it sure as hell wasn't written beforehand.  But, today, every special flower has to express themselves through their character.  How sad do you have to be when your imaginary character must be a reflection of who you are?

I don't mind the special flower character if the player would have been happy to have played a random one.  More specifically, I don't mind a player having ideas of characters they would prefer to play as long as they aren't fixed on "this character" for "that campaign".  A player capable of playing any old character they are handed, playing it well, and making the journey enjoyable for the whole group--probably can handle the special character equally well or even better.  A player with a lot of ideas for characters they would like to try can probably find one they are happy with in any campaign that fits their preferences in style.

That is, the demand of the special flower is not a problem because of the character, per se, though it might add to the problem.  No, the problem is the player sucks as a player and is using the special character to try to work around, hide, or possibly mask insecurity.

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...

What?

Quote from: ShieldWife on January 27, 2021, 05:30:35 PM
I actually had the same thought about sex based attribute adjustments. I'm not offended by the desire to give male characters +2 Strength, it would in fact be more realistic, but I would prefer not because it such a rule change encourages and discourages certain player choices. If females get +2 Cha and males +2 Str, then it punishes players who want to make male bards or sorcerers and players who want to make female fighters or barbarians. If someone wants a character that goes against type - like a female barbarian, or wizard, or whatever (regardless of how politicized it is or isn't) then why penalize them for that choice?

So, when it comes to removing racial modifiers, I can see a good argument. Not because I want to be politically correct or anything, but because I think that it would be better for players who player characters that break stereotypes not to be punished for doing so mechanically. Of course, people will say that they can still make the character and a few penalties here or there aren't the end of the world. This is kind of true, but being a wizard with a -2 Int when there is another wizard out there with a +2 Int is going to reduce enthusiasm somewhat and will effect many people's choices.

That is not an unreasonable point of view.  There's a tradeoff though.  If you eliminate mechanical racial differences, then only the cultural/behavioral/appearance differences are left.  You get more freedom to be what you want to be without penalty, but you also lose the ability to make a mechanically meaningful racial choice for your character.  I'd rather go with the mechanically differentiated races for this reason.

That said, if the only difference between races is a +/- to stats, then all of your PC wizards will be elves, or whatever the advantageous combo happens to be.  I think it's better design to give races a mix of bonuses and penalties that are more complex than that and also situational, so that different choices of near equal value are offered. 

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.

Greetings!

I think that stat-based mechanical modifiers--both bonuses and penalties--are excellent aspects of differentiating entirely different races, and reflective of particular racial strengths and weaknesses. Half Orcs can *be* Wizards--but since Half Orcs have challenges with deeper mental attributes, they suffer penalties, like negatives to Intelligence, because they tend to be stupid.

That's entirely appropriate.

Half Orcs make sub-optimal Wizards, and are unlikely to ever be the equals of humans in Wizardry, let alone the majestic Elves. If a player doesn't like that, well, too bad. Play a human or Elf Wizard then. Otherwise, embrace the diversity. ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

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.

I agree. Stat bonuses are blatantly gameable, and directly impact class selection. Racial features a lot less so.

I like racial adjustments to ability scores a lot more when there is random ability score generation.  It seems rather pointless in most point buy methods, especially if the point buy method is generous.  Using the 5E array (or a similar earlier mechanic) is admittedly a mixed bag.

For my game, all ability score adjustments are conditional (e.g. roll a d20.  If higher than your current ability score, you can get 2-4 points in the ability score.  Otherwise, get 1 point).  That is also true of the racial adjustments, but these usually have further limitations.  Now, I'm using different ability scores, but translated to D&D, an example would be something like an elf getting an ability score improvement to either Int or Dex, whichever is lowest.   There, now elves are generally smarter and more graceful than humans, but the upper end doesn't move much.

Meanwhile, I've got elves with a conditional racial ability that gives them more "spell power" (think a few more spells per day) as long as they aren't carrying a lot of cold iron on their person and gives them less when they do carry the iron.  Non-elves with magic have reasons for not wearing heavy armor (usually), but the effect is more subtle.  With elves, it is a stark choice on equipment.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 27, 2021, 09:14:20 PM
The fundamental question behind racial bonuses is this: are there some genetic traits that cannot be avoided?  You can see this in the argument over sex penalties to attributes.  The strongest woman alive is not even in the top 15% of the strongest men.  No amount of training, work, willpower, or dedication can ever change that.  Now, if you want sex to be irrelevant in your game, you can handwave that reality (and most of us do).  But you have to choose a level of verisimilitude that works for you and your players.  Some people cannot handle the concept that certain people, groups, etc. can be born irredeemably evil, flawed, or inferior to the norm.  If you are one of those people, feel free to reflect that in your game.  The problem arises when those same people demand that my game not include those concepts.  Which is what this argument is really about.

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.

Quote from: SHARK on January 28, 2021, 03:13:03 AM
Half Orcs make sub-optimal Wizards, and are unlikely to ever be the equals of humans in Wizardry, let alone the majestic Elves. If a player doesn't like that, well, too bad. Play a human or Elf Wizard then. Otherwise, embrace the diversity. ;D

Similar to Eirikrautha, you're talking here in part about what half-orcs are like as a population in the game-world, which is a different question than how to handle PC creation.

Quote from: jhkim on January 28, 2021, 10:23:43 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 27, 2021, 09:14:20 PM
The fundamental question behind racial bonuses is this: are there some genetic traits that cannot be avoided?  You can see this in the argument over sex penalties to attributes.  The strongest woman alive is not even in the top 15% of the strongest men.  No amount of training, work, willpower, or dedication can ever change that.  Now, if you want sex to be irrelevant in your game, you can handwave that reality (and most of us do).  But you have to choose a level of verisimilitude that works for you and your players.  Some people cannot handle the concept that certain people, groups, etc. can be born irredeemably evil, flawed, or inferior to the norm.  If you are one of those people, feel free to reflect that in your game.  The problem arises when those same people demand that my game not include those concepts.  Which is what this argument is really about.

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...

In terms of population distributions; one of the things I actually go into in my system is how rare PC-quality individuals are;

"While those trained as warriors (about 1-in-100 people in most places) can be more capable, even among their numbers those capable of matching even a low level PC are the elite top 1% (so one-in-ten-thousand overall). PCs who reach the expert tier (level 6+) are one-in-a-million paragons and those who reach the master tier (level 11+) are once-in-a-century heroes remembered in story and song for centuries if not millennia."

So a starting character in the system is basically 1-in-10,000 among the population (they tend to congregate though so an important city of 15,000 might have 12 while the surrounding area with a population of 150,000 has none). By level 6 they're literally one-in-million and you'll see only a handful of 11+ heroes in the world during an entire century.

I don't have hard caps on attributes like 5e, but they also don't improve as much after character creation either (+1 at level 6, +1 at 11) so I don't need 5e's bounds to keep scores from getting too high. I also have size-based modifiers too so that even a scrawny giant* (Str 0; a 10-11 in D&D) can carry as much as a beefy human (Str 3; a 16-17 in D&D) while a strong high-level giant and a human paragon of strength both could have Str 7 (a 24-25 in D&D), the giant will be able to lift four times what a human could (unless the human has a magic item that improves their lifting capacity, but that's magic).

* most giants in my setting are between 8-10' tall with elders reaching 16-20' (which is HUGE compared to a 5-6' human who maybe reaches a normal giant's navel and an elder's knee... still only 4x the lifting capacity despite 30x the volume though because square-cube law is a thing).

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.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 28, 2021, 12:00:59 PM
In terms of population distributions; one of the things I actually go into in my system is how rare PC-quality individuals are... a starting character in the system is basically 1-in-10,000 among the population (they tend to congregate though so an important city of 15,000 might have 12 while the surrounding area with a population of 150,000 has none). By level 6 they're literally one-in-million and you'll see only a handful of 11+ heroes in the world during an entire century.

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?

Ultimately, the whole point of accumulating more power in most RPGs is to beat foes you couldn't beat before; rendering that power irrelevant, either by running out of challenges for it or by sidestepping it with challenges you need something other than raw power to beat, tends to undermine much of the game.

This also leads to another reason to keep race-class (or other relatively static-template) combos: one of the most popular elements in gaming is the tactical element, and one of the most important things in tactical play is (to quote Brian Gleichman) combination of dissimilar assets. If you can't meaningfully mechanically differentiate game elements in ways that the players themselves have to take into account (i.e. can't redefine by choice), then the challenge of figuring out exactly how to combine what your characters can do for best effect tends to go by the wayside.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 28, 2021, 12:47:17 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 28, 2021, 12:00:59 PM
In terms of population distributions; one of the things I actually go into in my system is how rare PC-quality individuals are... a starting character in the system is basically 1-in-10,000 among the population (they tend to congregate though so an important city of 15,000 might have 12 while the surrounding area with a population of 150,000 has none). By level 6 they're literally one-in-million and you'll see only a handful of 11+ heroes in the world during an entire century.

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?

Personally, nearly all of my D&D experience has been level 10 and under. Once we get there, we start a new campaign. 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.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 28, 2021, 12:47:17 PM
This also leads to another reason to keep race-class (or other relatively static-template) combos: one of the most popular elements in gaming is the tactical element, and one of the most important things in tactical play is (to quote Brian Gleichman) combination of dissimilar assets. If you can't meaningfully mechanically differentiate game elements in ways that the players themselves have to take into account (i.e. can't redefine by choice), then the challenge of figuring out exactly how to combine what your characters can do for best effect tends to go by the wayside.

You're generalizing here to all tactics, but what we're talking about is just choice of race/class combo. I would say that at best, it is a strategic choice - not a tactical one. And even among strategic play, I think that's one of the less interesting strategic elements. I could do without strategic race/class combinations, and still have lots of both strategy and tactics in my game.

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.

Quote from: Pat on January 28, 2021, 11:51:54 PM

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.

What bard list?

As far as I'm aware there was never a bard list that is compatible rules wise with basic D&D.

Quote from: TJS on January 29, 2021, 12:51:34 AM

Quote from: Pat on January 28, 2021, 11:51:54 PM

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.

What bard list?

As far as I'm aware there was never a bard list that is compatible rules wise with basic D&D.

There wasn't an illusionist spell list for Basic D&D, either. But it's not hard to adapt one from AD&D1, AD&D2, or D&D3. Pick correctly, and you'll end up with a Tom o' Bedlam / knight of ghosts and shadows feel.

So if we are trying to create some kind of statistical model of different races in a fantasy world, then I could see modifiers serving that purpose. In some setting, orcs may be stronger on average than humans but not as intelligent, our +2/-2 models that. But should character generation be based on representative population statistics? I would say no. I would fully acknowledge that men are stronger than women on average and that the strongest men are stronger than the strongest women. Can strength bonuses or penalties model this difference? I guess it can to some degree, but does that mean that in a game where somebody wants to have a super strong barbarian, that they should only be able to have a 16 strength for a female character and can have an 18 strength for a male? I would say no, not for any real world sort of agenda, but just because if people want to play a certain character type, and it isn't disruptive, then why penalize that? If a certain character type is disruptive or if it undermines important themes in the game or setting, then having -2 to your key attribute probably won't help - it would be better in that case just to tell the player that x, y, z doesn't exist in that game world or isn't allowed in this particular campaign. If orcs can't be wizards in this setting or only elves can be bards, fine, I'm alright with that.

One issue that some people brought up is optimization. But I feel that racial bonuses actually create a stronger push to optimize or min/max than not having such modifiers. Players who are all into optimizing every single bonus won't be bothered by suboptimal choices, they will simply avoid them. It is the players who care less about optimization and are interested in a certain character type who will make those suboptimal choices and so will be less effective than the optimizers. Having those racial bonuses and penalties just ends up creating a greater mechanical divide between the optimizers and the non-optimizers, or it encourages people who are the fence between theme and optimization to choose optimization and so diminishes their playing experience. Of course, one could argue that a small bonus or penalty doesn't mean much in the long run, there is some case for that but many of us play mostly low level games where a +1 or +2 makes more of a difference, but even a small bonus really can cause a disproportionate amount of pressure on players to make certain choices. If you have a bunch of different one handed weapons with maces doing 1d6, axes doing 1d8, and arming swords doing 1d10 (assuming no other mechanical advantages or disadvantages) then you're be mazed at how many adventurers there are using arming swords and how few there are using maces. It's also already been said, if those bonuses or penalties don't matter, then why is it so important that player characters are subject to them? You can still run a campaign where your orc NPCs have higher strength and lower intelligence than human NPCs without rewarding or punishing certain race/class combinations.

Another issue that is brought up is that the racial bonuses and penalties add to the flavor and theme of races and the setting. I would contend that attribute bonuses and penalties are actually quite bland and if you have to rely on them then there are bigger problems. Let me give an example:

Let's say that we have a certain group in a fantasy setting. A race, a nation, civilization, something like that. These creatures have an extremely violent society, most men are warriors or were at some point in their lives. Strength and bravery in battle is held in high regard and war and conflict is a part of their religion. Weakness is despised and small or sickly infants are slain, adult men who cannot or will not fight are made into slaves. This a patriarchal society, ruled by the most deadly male warriors, often having harems in proportion to the glory they have gained in battle, though as a society that values strength there are cases of female warriors who have gained great renown for their prowess in battle and are respected in proportion to their combat ability. The warriors go into battle clad in red garments to represent blood in battle and to hide their own wounds, to show pain or fear causes much shame among the warriors of this society. They like to collect souvenirs from their defeated enemies - bones and body parts, sometimes heads. Their villages often have huge piles of skulls of their defeated foes, sometimes the skull of an enemy leader is turned into a drinking cup. In some cases, a victorious warrior may eat the heart of a particularly brave foe, thus gaining a portion of his courage and even soul. Captured enemies are turned into slaves, who do much of the manual labor. This is an extremely violent society that many would regard as evil, but they also have a deep sense of honor and obligation, they believe in honoring their word and obeying their ruler.

So, what are the attribute bonuses of this culture? How important is that to providing flavor? Maybe these are what orcs are like in this setting. Maybe they aren't orcs, maybe these are humans and they are fantasy vikings, maybe they aren't vikings, maybe they are fantasy steppe archers or fantasy Spartans - biologically completely human. Whether or not they are biologically humans or orcs does provide a thematic difference, but I don't think that an attribute bonus makes that much of a difference. Let's take the above group and say that they get +2 strength. Okay, that's kinda cool, it makes sense if they are a such a violent civilization that values combat, but they still work even if they humans with no modifiers. Okay, instead of (or in addition to) adding +2 strength, what if give them -2 intelligence. Well, so, these guys are kinda dumb them. I kinda feel like that makes them less cool, but maybe that fits with how you want to make this group. The +2 seems to fit but doesn't really make that much of a difference, they -2 seems to detract, at least to me.

So this group described above have +2 strength and -2 intelligence. They are stronger but dumber than normal humans. So, I guess they don't have many wizards or wizards among them are weaker and less competent than in other groups. Well, does that make this group more fun? Maybe it would be more fun and thematic to say that spell casters are rare among this society but when they appear they are fearsome war wizards who are known for striking down their foes with lightning or releasing a battle cry that strikes terror into the hearts of the enemy while giving courage to friends, that the wizard seldom becomes the king or warlord within this civilization but is often a high ranking adviser or, some whisper, power behind the throne.

Oh, but those wizards aren't as good or as smart as humans (or standard humans) because of the -2 intelligence. Your wizard character will be doing 1d4 with his dagger instead of 1d4-1 if you had made him a standard human. I feel like trying to actually describe this group (be it a race, a species, a civilization) seems interesting and the bonuses and penalties aren't. So, if that group are in fact our setting's version of orcs, maybe we can add a few things based on that which could be thematically interesting and have some mechanical effect. They're orcs, they can see in the dark, that adds a benefit that could apply to any class and is thematic - it affects how they might live or fight, they attack at night, they can live in caves or castles with no windows. You give have a number of different racial (or cultural?) bonuses or penalties that could be useful for any class or character type. +1 hit point per level, a bonus to save against fear, something like that.

The above warlike race I briefly described above would be radically different from, for example, a kind of gentle giant race of simple minded but peaceful forest dwellers who only eat plants, avoid outside contact or conflict, and who also have +2 strength and -2 intelligence.

Anyway, I much prefer a point distribution character creation to rolling for attributes, so coming from that perspective it isn't that helpful when you're assigning points anyway, except that it changes the maximum attribute value or decreases overall attribute totals if attribute costs increase non-linearly as they get higher.

I don't say any of this with any kind of real world political agenda in mind regarding race or anything like that, I just think it might be more fun not to be penalized for certain character design choices. I could even apply that thought to other kinds of games, like what if I wanted a Malkavian with Potence but I have to pay more experience points to get it than a Brujah does. The longer I am in the hobby, the more I think that those atypical choices shouldn't be penalized and that in setting statistical trends shouldn't necessarily confine character design.

Quote from: BronzeDragon on January 29, 2021, 12:07:14 AM
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.

...

I agree. Then the question becomes, how much of the setting is embedded into the mechanics, how much is presented elsewhere in the rules but not embedded in the mechanics, and how much is left for the GM to decide? 

I don't want the game to embed the setting into the mechanics because, frankly, I so rarely enjoy the choices made by the authors of the game.  To use their game to produce a setting I like, I must first reverse-engineer their setting choices out of the game and then put them back together again.  Of course, race as class isn't the only way to embed (too much?) setting into the game.  5E's problem in that regard is arguably that the class, race, and background combinations are ill-chosen in some respects.  Namely, some of them are done well, some not so well, but the overall problem is that they don't deliver options nearly as well as they could given the number, complexity, and page count devoted to them. 

I suppose if I'm going to be consistent about this approach, then I need to consider the point made by Trinculoisdead above about blandness.  Suppose you go with mostly generic mechanical elements (e.g. race, culture, class, etc.) as I am.  I had assumed that the GM would limit the combinations allowed to fit the setting.  It would be very reasonable for the GM to turn the allowed combinations into "setting classes" that already had race and culture embedded.  However, ideally what makes more sense is that there would be some mechanical flavor attached to each combination, as supplied by the GM to really make that particular option stand out.  The game would need to supply examples, both as examples for the GM to get the sense of the thing as well as ready made play options for a GM that didn't care.  More or less the D&D equivalent of templates (not in the 3E use of the term but from other games that use templates to condense the complexity of character generation).

As an example, assume you were starting with the raw elements of BEMCI/RC broken out mechanically.  So you've got fighters, magic users, and elves as distinct things.  The GM decides that for setting X, the elf class is a particular elf with fighter and magic/user combinations.  Then the GM decides that elves can wear armor and still cast magic user spells but can only advance so far as fighter and magic user.  You end up with the BEMCI/RC elf. 

QuoteIf it's what you like - you should add it. As I understand your preference, you want to simulate generating a random member of the population - so roll randomly for race, gender, and social background - and then have those modify attribute rolls (which are done in order with no re-arranging of rolls). That's how Harnmaster worked, and there were a few times when I generated characters that way in the old Harnmaster campaigns that I played in. (Actually, I generated three random characters this way and picked one of the three.)

What's your experience like doing this in actual campaigns? In my experience, it's vanishingly rare for players to roll for race and gender and social background, and most players strongly prefer to choose. Even in Harnmaster, it seemed like rarely-used optional rules to roll for those, and other games don't even have them as an option.

Not much unfortunately. Aside of early uni episode with very weird D&D and very large groups that quickly was devoured by entropy, I started regular RPGs with D&D and WH with rather build, chosen characters, so when I started running my D&D I followed this way. My fascination with randomness started bit later. I applied it to my planned Warhammer campaign - but it fizzled out because it started because some players could not make their characters for some reason, and due to me being to lenient with them everything just imploded - though players were fine with randomness then. Now I'm planning something new, and I randomized all my last character creations endeavours - for Call of Cthulhu, for Blades in the Dark, PBTA hack of Warhammer I was helping to test and for Fading Suns, and I'm very very happy with it. It goes much more interesting, and I'm even more into running whole campaign based on such premise.

Also: I don't have ambition of making perfect representation of society. Random profession roll in Warhammer definitely promotes unusual professions over peasants, and I'm fine with it.

QuoteExactly.  I can say that all of my 1e fighters started off as... fighters.  Then things happened.  Then they got magic items, made allies, got strongholds.  Then, suddenly (/s), they had become characters.  Their story grew out of play; it sure as hell wasn't written beforehand.  But, today, every special flower has to express themselves through their character.  How sad do you have to be when your imaginary character must be a reflection of who you are?

Now TBH at least from my experience those "special flowers" characters are not necessarily relfections of players, there are special-flowerers who do very diverse characters based on vastly different things - I'd put it more in "oversaturation with popculture" basket - you have dozens different fictional characters and you want emulate them. Lots of people go into RPG, with thought they shall be able to be like those characters and have stories like they.

QuoteIf an elf can be anything, just as well as any other race, then being an elf is meaningless.

It's like saying human culture is meaningless in D&D 1e because every human from every culture can be any human class. Just because in terms of life-paths elves being generally species simmilar to human (unless we talk about plant-elves from Glorantha) have well simmilar possibilities of acting (both elf and man can be archer, I mean any humanoid can be archers, even hobbits in Shire had bloody archers with small puny bows, and so on). Especially with non-magical classess there really is not much reason to restrict them.

QuoteThat said, if the only difference between races is a +/- to stats, then all of your PC wizards will be elves, or whatever the advantageous combo happens to be.  I think it's better design to give races a mix of bonuses and penalties that are more complex than that and also situational, so that different choices of near equal value are offered.

Depends. Let's say you roll old school but pick elf or orc beforehand. And then you pick profession based on what you're character is able to do.
You can roll half-orc and he will have like 7 STR and 15 INT, and then sure you go with wizard, why not.

QuoteA 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.

Yes, but it changes from societal perspective proportions of various classes in races.
Halflings will have less melee tanks, elves will have more wizards and alchemists, orcs will have less wizards.

QuoteI like racial adjustments to ability scores a lot more when there is random ability score generation.  It seems rather pointless in most point buy methods, especially if the point buy method is generous.  Using the 5E array (or a similar earlier mechanic) is admittedly a mixed bag.

I definitely agree. That's what I desire - players coming to game without pre-convieved notions and desires about characters to play and crafting chracters from rolls.

QuoteBut 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.

If you roll randomly - halfling wizard can be better than characters with more optimised race+class combo.

QuoteIn 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?

As I said - no not really. I do not desire simulationism here. It's more on... putting your fate in hands of dice, about being surprised, about not having much expectation about who you are, and special plans for special character that will emulate your favourite fiction or smth.

QuoteSomeone 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.

I see no problem with characters engaging in activities completely opposite to their normal culture. Humans do it all the time.
Unless barbarianism is some supernatural shamanistic thing in specific verse and elves dunno cannot commune with spirits - then why not. There's nothing special in being angry durable fighter that should be really race specific. As long as elf has two hands to hold big axe or sword, and as long as elf is able to be very angry (have you ever heard about tragedy of King Feanor the Wise) then... it seems quite normal concept. Nothing game breaking.

QuoteThey want their snowflake PC despite your setting and the group dynamic.

Maybe. But just wanting to have unconventional combination of race/class does not need to destroy neither of those two.

QuoteI 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.

Well that depends of what you've done. Games have rules. If you make challenge that was clearly GREATER in game than usual, then players were assholes. If it was usual challenge but you just raised DC levels +10 from normal description to punish proficient players then you are asshole, just like you'd randomly double monster hp while generally leaving it the same beast.

QuoteI 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.

Different classes for races... sure. Race as class makes most elves and dwarves the same - because well class, especially in times when classes were not customizable.
And that's just off compared even to basic Tolkienian lore we talk about - when various elves and dwarves could be quite different within their races - sure dwarven and elven spellcaster would be different beings - but they would also be different from dwarven soldier or elven archer.

And then heavy armoured Noldorin elf fighter and Numenorean human fighter would be mechanically quite simmilar beasts to keep comparisons in Tolkienian lore (and well we all know demihumans appeared in D&D a little bit despite Gary's because he had lot of Tolkien-loving players) - and then high Edain cultures were probably closer to elven cultures, than to lesser human ones.

QuoteI'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).

Well sure if elves and dwarves are unknown forgotten beings in your world - don't play one.
I mean you may craft setting where orcs, goblins and kobolds are living alongside men as civilised more or less folk and they together colonised forgotten lands full of mythical elves, dwarves, halflings and dragonborn, whole kobold peasants growing dragonweed or something are utterly common.

TBH it sounds now way more sensible than otherwise - mysterious elves and greedy dwarves hidden in mysterious lands, while goblins and kobolds are building reneissance civilisation alongside mankind ;)

QuoteConversely, 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).

If it was just attribute modifier I'd agree with that. If it is modifier alongside 10 other minor changes then it's bit different.
Besides demihumans do not have to be utterly alien and non-human. They are demiHUMANS after all - not space aliens. They are humans with something bit more, something bit less.

QuoteAmong 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.

Yes, but if you generate randomly elven and orcish village, you'll get maybe one wannabe adept among orcs, and three elven wizards, so on this level +2/-2 is enough to do differences in societies.

QuoteIn 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.

It's true. But also it's terrible anathema - that dwarves crafted as proxy for Semitic people - for Jews, Akkadians, Assyrians, Arabs - for all those lands from which concept of wizard really came, the dwarves about which song says "the dwarves of yore know mighty spells" - it's terrible they cannot be wizards. They should be like source of wizardry, with elves being puny sorcerers :(

QuoteFR 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.

True. That's why too many playable species is also anathema. I mean what the fuck is even loxo. Give me max ten mortal races + planetouched templates that can be added to any mortal race - that's it. I'm done. Rest is resolved in culture aspects - I do not need every subrace of elves to have different modifiers dammit.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 29, 2021, 07:50:18 AM
I agree. Then the question becomes, how much of the setting is embedded into the mechanics, how much is presented elsewhere in the rules but not embedded in the mechanics, and how much is left for the GM to decide? 

I don't want the game to embed the setting into the mechanics because, frankly, I so rarely enjoy the choices made by the authors of the game.  To use their game to produce a setting I like, I must first reverse-engineer their setting choices out of the game and then put them back together again.  Of course, race as class isn't the only way to embed (too much?) setting into the game.  5E's problem in that regard is arguably that the class, race, and background combinations are ill-chosen in some respects.  Namely, some of them are done well, some not so well, but the overall problem is that they don't deliver options nearly as well as they could given the number, complexity, and page count devoted to them. 

I don't think you can avoid putting setting details into race design.  I recently tried to do this and found that races play a large part in defining a setting, and that to get an acceptable setting for the game I had to design the races correspondingly.

Quote from: ShieldWife on January 29, 2021, 03:40:01 AM
I don't say any of this with any kind of real world political agenda in mind regarding race or anything like that, I just think it might be more fun not to be penalized for certain character design choices. I could even apply that thought to other kinds of games, like what if I wanted a Malkavian with Potence but I have to pay more experience points to get it than a Brujah does. The longer I am in the hobby, the more I think that those atypical choices shouldn't be penalized and that in setting statistical trends shouldn't necessarily confine character design.

Thanks for bringing specifically back to the atypical choices. There are some people that want race/class combo to be a tactical choice - where the challenge is properly min-maxing character design. But most GMs here don't favor that - and I think character creation is a poor place for tactics in an RPG, since there's little opportunity to improve and make new choices.

There are people who think atypical choices are bad for the flavor of the game and don't fit the game-world. But the more I think about it, I think addressing this by making the character weak is passive aggressive game design. "I'm fine with you playing a half-orc wizard, really. You just get a weaker character." If someone doesn't want such characters, it's better to just disallow them.

There are players that enjoy the challenge of playing a mechanically weaker character.  I also see it quite a bit when experienced players are mixed in a group of beginners.  It is done deliberately so as to let the new players more fully experience the game without being overshadowed.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 29, 2021, 04:17:15 PM
There are players that enjoy the challenge of playing a mechanically weaker character.  I also see it quite a bit when experienced players are mixed in a group of beginners.  It is done deliberately so as to let the new players more fully experience the game without being overshadowed.

Sure, some players may do this -- but as far as I've seen, it's much more common for a beginner to take a suboptimal race/class combo than it is for an experienced player to do so.

If an experienced player wants to deliberately take a handicap, then it's easy to accomplish. Just deliberately take lower stats, or suboptimal stat placement, or similar. If I wanted to, I could play a suboptimal elven wizard just as easily as a suboptimal half-orc wizard.

Quote from: jhkim on January 29, 2021, 12:03:48 AM
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.

Yes.  Well designed they would be (but I don't see why they wouldn't necessarily include some kind of Strength bonus for characters that are really big - There's something ultimately weird about a concept behind a race that is "bigger and stronger than everyone else" and not have them interface at all with the rules that measure Strength".)

In any case the point is not that the rules as they exist are good, it's that they are load bearing.  They should be replaced with something rather than nothing.

Quote from: Pat on January 29, 2021, 02:07:03 AM

Quote from: TJS on January 29, 2021, 12:51:34 AM

Quote from: Pat on January 28, 2021, 11:51:54 PM

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.

What bard list?

As far as I'm aware there was never a bard list that is compatible rules wise with basic D&D.

There wasn't an illusionist spell list for Basic D&D, either. But it's not hard to adapt one from AD&D1, AD&D2, or D&D3. Pick correctly, and you'll end up with a Tom o' Bedlam / knight of ghosts and shadows feel.

Well yes.  I meant the AD&D one.  But there's also the illusionist spell lists from Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials which are compatible with B/X or BECMI.

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.

Quote from: jhkim on January 29, 2021, 12:03:48 AM
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.

Quote from: TJS on January 29, 2021, 05:12:19 PM
Yes.  Well designed they would be (but I don't see why they wouldn't necessarily include some kind of Strength bonus for characters that are really big - There's something ultimately weird about a concept behind a race that is "bigger and stronger than everyone else" and not have them interface at all with the rules that measure Strength".)

In any case the point is not that the rules as they exist are good, it's that they are load bearing.  They should be replaced with something rather than nothing.

I disagree. Rather than trying to enforce the flavor of the races by the rules, you can explicitly put that job in the hands of the GM and players. That may be a better choice, especially if the rules do a piss-poor job of it.

This is how point-based systems like GURPS and HERO generally work, for example. Players choose their attributes and abilities, and it's up to them (and the GM) to make sure that their stats match the character that they're supposed to describe.

Some groups might not like it, there's nothing inherently wrong if a given PC is an atypical member of their race / species. For example, hobbits are usually shy and sneaky - but maybe in one Middle Earth game, I decide to play Bullroarer Took, an exceptional hobbit who goes for mounted combat. Maybe the GM agrees that it's cool, even though it's unusual for hobbits.

Rather than mechanical modifiers (i.e. +2 Str), the races could just have description of how common a given range of stats are for that race. ("Goliaths are generally hugely strong, with average strength being 16, though particularly weak and/or crippled ones could have Strength as low as 8.") Then someone could decide to make a low-strength Goliath who learns magic to compensate for his disability relative to his kind. Perhaps that's a highly unusual goliath, but the character doesn't have to be penalized any more than any other player choosing an unusual background for their PC.

For that to work there needs to be a setting.

And it is the job of the rules to say that if you are able to play an 8ft tall mini-giant or a 3 foot halfling, to say how these concepts interface with the game rules.

Even Fate has the means to handle this.

Otherwise it's basically just the game saying "you can be whatever you want as long as it doesn't mean anything"

I don't care about atypical or atypical characters.  What I care about is that decisons the game presents as meaningful actually are.

QuoteBut the more I think about it, I think addressing this by making the character weak is passive aggressive game design. "I'm fine with you playing a half-orc wizard, really. You just get a weaker character." If someone doesn't want such characters, it's better to just disallow them.

I disagree. This statistics is meant to reflect on species as whole. And give us notion - considering each person is 3d6 rolled in order (even if heroes get leeway) what half-orc society will look like.
Also in random attribute role it reflects it's harder to be born as half-orc with talent to wizardry compared to elf with talent to wizardry. That's it. If you have point buy - you can overcome it anyway making 16 Int half-orc which is more than fine for a 1st level wizard. The point is not to make half-orc wizards impossible, it's to make them less likely both among society and players. And it does exactly this - either by random rolls, or by optimisers choosing elves.

QuoteI disagree. Rather than trying to enforce the flavor of the races by the rules, you can explicitly put that job in the hands of the GM and players. That may be a better choice, especially if the rules do a piss-poor job of it.

Rules are making good job with it - especially if you roll randomly as D&D was born to be played.

QuoteFor example, hobbits are usually shy and sneaky - but maybe in one Middle Earth game, I decide to play Bullroarer Took, an exceptional hobbit who goes for mounted combat. Maybe the GM agrees that it's cool, even though it's unusual for hobbits.

Sure. And Bullroarer Took will still has -2 to Strenght which tbh won't stop him from being very good PF cavalier.

QuotePerhaps that's a highly unusual goliath, but the character doesn't have to be penalized any more than any other player choosing an unusual background for their PC.

Only if you consider it a penalty, that smartest goliaths are not as smart as smartest elves.

QuoteI don't say any of this with any kind of real world political agenda in mind regarding race or anything like that, I just think it might be more fun not to be penalized for certain character design choices. I could even apply that thought to other kinds of games, like what if I wanted a Malkavian with Potence but I have to pay more experience points to get it than a Brujah does. The longer I am in the hobby, the more I think that those atypical choices shouldn't be penalized and that in setting statistical trends shouldn't necessarily confine character design.

Oh, dear, while in D&D I can agree it's penalty of some form as it goes down from basic level to basic level -2, how on Earth is this a penalty.
It's not. Not at all. Similarily with skills and talents in Warhammer.
It's double-price in XP for skill/talent or for dots in Vampire that's default. That is common price in world.
You just get three Disciplines for each clan for which you have bonus to learn them and they are cheaper. Just like in Warhammer - if you're shopkeeper want to advance knife-throwing you pay normal price, if he wants to advance accounting he pays half - because that's easier for him as it's his full-time job.

Allowing everyone to have everything takes out any meaning from choosing races/backgrounds/classes/clans/sects or whatever.
And this choice have to matter.

QuoteI kinda feel like that makes them less cool,

Yes. Everyone is cool in something and less cool in something else. Everything being fun and cool is just absolutely absolutely boring from mechanic and setting perspective.

I'm certain someone already hit this, but, SJWs are all about cultural diversity behaving true meaning in a sociol-economic sense. They translate it to being "Orcs, as black people, are just as, if not more, capable than normal white humans because OBVIOUSLY you can't play a black human in D&D.

So, according to the mouth-breathing SJW populace, the way to improve racial balance is to remove racial mods that were designed to balance how Orcs are stronger and Kobolds were sneakier.

Pure. 100%. Bullshit. They want their cake and eat it too.

I'll wait for the Adventure League posts on Reddit where the Kobold Paladin with 17 Strength pisses off the group by dominating combat. Or how the Orc Wizard dominates everything with high Strength and Spellcasting.

For random character generation and racial modifiers, there is yet another way to do it:  Every player rolls their random stats, then they only pick the races they qualify for.  Might be something similar to how the AD&D paladins and rangers were restricted to particular stats.  Nothing says you have to do that only on the high end either.  Roll a 17 or 18 Str, you can't play a hobbit. 

Again, I think what works and why it works for random character generation is a different thing than using point buy or something approximating it.  I never found, for example, the racial templates in Fantasy Hero to be terribly useful.  It was easier to merely set the agreement on what made a good elf or hobbit or whatever and let the players model within that agreement. 

I also like the Dragon Quest approach, where the player's stats are a mix of random and point buy.  Your total points and maximum stats are determined randomly, then you get to buy within those limits.  You must fully assign your stats before rolling for race.  Race is you can be human for free.  Or you can try to roll for up to 3 other races, with the highest chances being in the 25% to 30% range.  If you succeed on one of those rolls, you take some pretty draconian racial adjustment.  For example, stats normally run in the 5 to 25 range, with most centered near 15.  A hobbit gets a -6 to strength.  It's an interesting mix of choice, gambling, and living with how the gambles play out.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on January 29, 2021, 06:10:50 PM

QuoteBut the more I think about it, I think addressing this by making the character weak is passive aggressive game design. "I'm fine with you playing a half-orc wizard, really. You just get a weaker character." If someone doesn't want such characters, it's better to just disallow them.

I disagree. This statistics is meant to reflect on species as whole. And give us notion - considering each person is 3d6 rolled in order (even if heroes get leeway) what half-orc society will look like.
Also in random attribute role it reflects it's harder to be born as half-orc with talent to wizardry compared to elf with talent to wizardry. That's it. If you have point buy - you can overcome it anyway making 16 Int half-orc which is more than fine for a 1st level wizard. The point is not to make half-orc wizards impossible, it's to make them less likely both among society and players. And it does exactly this - either by random rolls, or by optimisers choosing elves.

QuoteI disagree. Rather than trying to enforce the flavor of the races by the rules, you can explicitly put that job in the hands of the GM and players. That may be a better choice, especially if the rules do a piss-poor job of it.

Rules are making good job with it - especially if you roll randomly as D&D was born to be played.

QuoteFor example, hobbits are usually shy and sneaky - but maybe in one Middle Earth game, I decide to play Bullroarer Took, an exceptional hobbit who goes for mounted combat. Maybe the GM agrees that it's cool, even though it's unusual for hobbits.

Sure. And Bullroarer Took will still has -2 to Strenght which tbh won't stop him from being very good PF cavalier.

QuotePerhaps that's a highly unusual goliath, but the character doesn't have to be penalized any more than any other player choosing an unusual background for their PC.

Only if you consider it a penalty, that smartest goliaths are not as smart as smartest elves.

QuoteI don't say any of this with any kind of real world political agenda in mind regarding race or anything like that, I just think it might be more fun not to be penalized for certain character design choices. I could even apply that thought to other kinds of games, like what if I wanted a Malkavian with Potence but I have to pay more experience points to get it than a Brujah does. The longer I am in the hobby, the more I think that those atypical choices shouldn't be penalized and that in setting statistical trends shouldn't necessarily confine character design.

Oh, dear, while in D&D I can agree it's penalty of some form as it goes down from basic level to basic level -2, how on Earth is this a penalty.
It's not. Not at all. Similarily with skills and talents in Warhammer.
It's double-price in XP for skill/talent or for dots in Vampire that's default. That is common price in world.
You just get three Disciplines for each clan for which you have bonus to learn them and they are cheaper. Just like in Warhammer - if you're shopkeeper want to advance knife-throwing you pay normal price, if he wants to advance accounting he pays half - because that's easier for him as it's his full-time job.

Allowing everyone to have everything takes out any meaning from choosing races/backgrounds/classes/clans/sects or whatever.
And this choice have to matter.

QuoteI kinda feel like that makes them less cool,

Yes. Everyone is cool in something and less cool in something else. Everything being fun and cool is just absolutely absolutely boring from mechanic and setting perspective.

Greetings!

Excellent commentary, Woodpecker! I agree entirely. Having different sets of racial ability modifiers--and or penalties--strongly reinforces the representative of the racial membership. At a glance, such distinctions are very useful when looking at player characters or NPC's. Such attribute profiles provide the foundation that distinguishes each race from another.

Conversely, getting rid of such racial profiles and allowing player characters to simply assign whatever attributes they desire--and also while having no penalties what so ever--essentially makes all of the races into the same bowl of goo. If every race must have the same equality in everything, and no penalties, what is the point of even having races beyond humans? They become simply humans with different masks on.

That is not the kind of game design that interests me in the slightest.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Theory of Games on January 29, 2021, 08:35:14 PM
I'm certain someone already hit this, but, SJWs are all about cultural diversity behaving true meaning in a sociol-economic sense. They translate it to being "Orcs, as black people, are just as, if not more, capable than normal white humans because OBVIOUSLY you can't play a black human in D&D.

So, according to the mouth-breathing SJW populace, the way to improve racial balance is to remove racial mods that were designed to balance how Orcs are stronger and Kobolds were sneakier.

Pure. 100%. Bullshit. They want their cake and eat it too.

I'll wait for the Adventure League posts on Reddit where the Kobold Paladin with 17 Strength pisses off the group by dominating combat. Or how the Orc Wizard dominates everything with high Strength and Spellcasting.

Greetings!

So true, Theory of Games! I agree, it is all some bullshit for sure.

The whole "Orcs are black people!" is such racist bullshit. All of this stuff grinds my teeth nine ways to Sunday. I have black friends that play, as well as in past gaming groups and campaigns. If they so chose, and they often did--to play a black human, they could easily do so. Imagine that? All humans have the same attributes in the game rules. None of them have ever noticed or maintained that there was somehow "Racism" in the game rules, or the various races. And, well, I don't recall any gamer or friend of whatever colour come to the idea that "Orcs are black people!" Everyone sees them as what they are--savage, warlike, and typically tribal monstrous humanoids.

And, amazingly enough, in my campaigns I have different ethnic groups of monstrous Orcs--some are black skinned, which live in hot, blasted wastelands and harsh mountains; Then, there are white coloured Orcs which live in cold, alpine-like forest regions and unforgiving Taiga; Then, there are two larger ethnic groups of Orcs--one branch having cement gray colouring, and the second branch having a lime green colouration. All of them have monstrous features and attributes, and while Orcs in general possess some superficial similarities culturally and socially with Humans--they are inhuman and savage monsters, and no one in their right mind would suggest they are stand-ins for Humans. Such an idea that "Orcs are black people!" is absolute nonsense.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Can we not have the political discussion here, and take it up in the other thread (https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/wotc-strips-dd-races-of-all-meaning-sjws-say-not-enough-bigot/)? We previously tried a "(no politics)" tag on some threads to avoid it spreading everywhere.

My option (D) isn't some new politically-correct approach - lots of games have worked like this for decades, like Savage Worlds as well as GURPS and HERO as I mentioned. I've seen lots of aliens and fantasy races in these systems. Not saying that people should necessarily like it, but it's weird to speak about option (D) as if it's some wacky new thing never before used in RPGs.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on January 29, 2021, 06:10:50 PM

Quote from: jhkimBut the more I think about it, I think addressing this by making the character weak is passive aggressive game design. "I'm fine with you playing a half-orc wizard, really. You just get a weaker character." If someone doesn't want such characters, it's better to just disallow them.

I disagree. This statistics is meant to reflect on species as whole. And give us notion - considering each person is 3d6 rolled in order (even if heroes get leeway) what half-orc society will look like. Also in random attribute role it reflects it's harder to be born as half-orc with talent to wizardry compared to elf with talent to wizardry. That's it.  If you have point buy - you can overcome it anyway making 16 Int half-orc which is more than fine for a 1st level wizard. The point is not to make half-orc wizards impossible, it's to make them less likely both among society and players. And it does exactly this - either by random rolls, or by optimisers choosing elves.

You're conflating two things here:

(1) making half-orc wizards uncommon among game-world society and NPCs
(2) making half-orc wizards uncommon among PCs

These aren't the same thing. In D&D, PCs have basically never been representative of broad society. If 1 in 4 of a typical party are wizards, would you want society where 25% of everyone are wizards? Conversely, if there's only one wizard in a town of 200, would you only want 0.5% of party members to be a wizard? I don't think it's actually a useful goal to make PC professions have the same proportions as NPCs.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on January 29, 2021, 06:10:50 PM
Allowing everyone to have everything takes out any meaning from choosing races/backgrounds/classes/clans/sects or whatever.
And this choice have to matter.

In practice, in D&D, I've seen multiple players who genuinely forgot their own character race in play. The reason was because they only chose that race because it optimized their class build, and they treated race like it was just a bag of points for build.

I feel like your approach of emphasizing points and saying "only attribute optimization matters" is responsible for making race a *less* interesting choice.

I prefer if players choose a race and background based more on how they want to role-play. I think it makes the choice more interesting and meaningful.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not criticizing D&D here. I'm criticizing the "optimized build" approach to character creation, where the only thing that matters about being an elf is the stat adjustments you get to optimize your class build. I'd prefer to see less of that in my D&D games.

I think it is better to have an option you might not use, than to not have an option that you might want, so I'd er on the side of the 3e approach but would still say that most members of a given race prefer x or y class, allowing for potential exceptions.

ETA

yes you there above me you mention players treating race as a package of points, that was in my experience the origin point of most complaints about 3e, a computer logic magic the gathering mindset approach, the approach itself being largely responsible for the complaints and said complaints being largely absent from those who did not approach it with that mindset.

I'd rethink character creation entirely.

You're never going to get away from some version of this issue as long as you have a point buy system AND ability scores are as important as they are.

And even if you want to maximise player choice you can still probably find a way around it.

Really we're still living with the fact that 3E redesigned D&D at the point in time in which class and level based systems were considered old pretty old hat and brought in a lot of elements that somewhat undermined the importance of class.  (Or rather took the elements that were already there and greatly increased their importance.)

Not all ability scores are of equal importance, and some of them are of very little importance for some classes.

And you're never going to stop optimisation unless character creation is random. 

Take away ability score increases and some races are still better suited than other classes.  Sure the difference will be smaller - but the difference is already small - the problem is pyschological.

I remember when 3e first came out we were all "awesome now we can play Halfling Paladins and Half-Orc Wizards."  And then 4E got rid of penalties to ability scores and people said "awesome now we can play Halfling Paladins and Half-Orc Wizards" and now 5e gets rid of bonuses and people say "awesome now..." well you get the picture.

No doubt in 6e they'll get ride of the Elven Accuracy feat and people will go "Awesome, finally rogue archers don't need to be elves".

QuoteFor random character generation and racial modifiers, there is yet another way to do it:  Every player rolls their random stats, then they only pick the races they qualify for.  Might be something similar to how the AD&D paladins and rangers were restricted to particular stats.  Nothing says you have to do that only on the high end either.  Roll a 17 or 18 Str, you can't play a hobbit.

That's also an option though it discards chances for some races to have cap above 18 - which makes best humans as good in any attribute as best members of other races.
Then as simulationist I ultimately want to have biological species (nature), social background (nurture) and professional career choices as separate elements.

And ultimately I just like idea of halfling paladins (hey Mazzy), orc wizards, and dwarven sorcerers (I really really hate anti-magical dwarf stereotype).

QuoteConversely, getting rid of such racial profiles and allowing player characters to simply assign whatever attributes they desire--and also while having no penalties what so ever--essentially makes all of the races into the same bowl of goo. If every race must have the same equality in everything, and no penalties, what is the point of even having races beyond humans? They become simply humans with different masks on.

I definitely agree. More stuff differentiating non-humans from humans the better.

QuoteYou're conflating two things here:

(1) making half-orc wizards uncommon among game-world society and NPCs
(2) making half-orc wizards uncommon among PCs

These aren't the same thing. In D&D, PCs have basically never been representative of broad society. If 1 in 4 of a typical party are wizards, would you want society where 25% of everyone are wizards? Conversely, if there's only one wizard in a town of 200, would you only want 0.5% of party members to be a wizard? I don't think it's actually a useful goal to make PC professions have the same proportions as NPCs.

Well in times were attributes were by default rolled in order and you had to have 14 Int to even qualify as wizard, I guess - yeah there was much less wizards in average party.
But ultimately - that depends on edition - edition 2 and especially 3 were big on how PC and NPC are the same, and how PC's of level 1-5 are nothing special in their worlds, in this game IIRC PC's get in basic rules attribute bonus 4d6 drop lowest to fit - that they are exceptionally talented by birth to even survive levelling up to heroics.
In older and newer games they are build from the different rules, and are more special from the start. So I'd say more or less in 3.0 in 2.0 heroes were more or less at level 1 representatives of society maybe bit better.

And there is another element - world-centrism of old D&D vs character/story centrism of new one.
In old D&D you are dropped in cruel unforgiving world and have to survive and fluorish. No rights to make special characters really.

QuoteIn practice, in D&D, I've seen multiple players who genuinely forgot their own character race in play. The reason was because they only chose that race because it optimized their class build, and they treated race like it was just a bag of points for build.

That's why you pick race first, and then roll in order my friend. And banish optimisers to uranium mines, like uncle Joe did with trockyist.

QuoteEDIT: To be clear, I'm not criticizing D&D here. I'm criticizing the "optimized build" approach to character creation, where the only thing that matters about being an elf is the stat adjustments you get to optimize your class build. I'd prefer to see less of that in my D&D games.

Well as I said - answer is to discourage builds. Randomness is great way to do it.
How-character-will-be-roleplayed is often better forged within first level of game, than meticulouslly preplaned - because oh, I dreamed about playing this half-orc alchemist that's mixed between Walter White and Saruman and speak with Hungarian accent. :P TBH such "narrative" optimisers are for me no better than "gamism" optimisers.

Next time you have idea for a campaign, sent players a mail and start it with NO PREPLANNED CHARACTER. SHUT OFF IMAGINATION NOW, OR SEEK ANOTHER CAMPAIGN. TIME FOR IMAGINATION WILL CAME AFTER ROLLS.

QuoteI think it is better to have an option you might not use, than to not have an option that you might want, so I'd er on the side of the 3e approach but would still say that most members of a given race prefer x or y class, allowing for potential exceptions.

Well 16 INT member of any race, even elf is quite an exceptional specimen. It's just half-orcs shall be such exception more rarely than elf.
Half-orc starting with 15 INT on 1st level is still perfectly fine wizard in 3,5

QuoteAnd you're never going to stop optimisation unless character creation is random.

Yes. Unfortunately.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on January 30, 2021, 07:42:25 AM

Quote from: jhkimYou're conflating two things here:

(1) making half-orc wizards uncommon among game-world society and NPCs
(2) making half-orc wizards uncommon among PCs

These aren't the same thing. In D&D, PCs have basically never been representative of broad society. If 1 in 4 of a typical party are wizards, would you want society where 25% of everyone are wizards? Conversely, if there's only one wizard in a town of 200, would you only want 0.5% of party members to be a wizard? I don't think it's actually a useful goal to make PC professions have the same proportions as NPCs.

Well in times were attributes were by default rolled in order and you had to have 14 Int to even qualify as wizard, I guess - yeah there was much less wizards in average party.
But ultimately - that depends on edition - edition 2 and especially 3 were big on how PC and NPC are the same, and how PC's of level 1-5 are nothing special in their worlds, in this game IIRC PC's get in basic rules attribute bonus 4d6 drop lowest to fit - that they are exceptionally talented by birth to even survive levelling up to heroics.
In older and newer games they are build from the different rules, and are more special from the start. So I'd say more or less in 3.0 in 2.0 heroes were more or less at level 1 representatives of society maybe bit better.

And there is another element - world-centrism of old D&D vs character/story centrism of new one.
In old D&D you are dropped in cruel unforgiving world and have to survive and fluorish. No rights to make special characters really.

In basically every edition of D&D, a magic user or wizard has been about 1 in 4 of the typical party. There has never been a requirement of 14 Int for a wizard. In 1E and 2E, the requirement was 9 Int, and in later editions that requirement was dropped. Plus, 3E and later never had roll attributes in order - it was always make six rolls and assign. In 1E and 2E, most NPCs were zero level -- while in 3E most NPCs had NPC classes like Commoner.

Look - if you prefer a character generation method where starting PCs come out as average representatives of society, then that's fine. I mentioned doing this in Harnmaster - roll for race, roll for sex, roll for social class, and then roll for attributes in order. In Harnmaster, wizard characters (Shek-Pvar) are less common - many parties don't have one, in my experience. Your D&D can absolutely do this - have only roll in order attribute generation, and a 14 Int requirement for wizards.

But claims like that 14 Int was always a thing -- that's projecting a false past.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on January 30, 2021, 07:42:25 AM

Quote from: jhkimEDIT: To be clear, I'm not criticizing D&D here. I'm criticizing the "optimized build" approach to character creation, where the only thing that matters about being an elf is the stat adjustments you get to optimize your class build. I'd prefer to see less of that in my D&D games.

Well as I said - answer is to discourage builds. Randomness is great way to do it.
How-character-will-be-roleplayed is often better forged within first level of game, than meticulouslly preplaned - because oh, I dreamed about playing this half-orc alchemist that's mixed between Walter White and Saruman and speak with Hungarian accent. :P TBH such "narrative" optimisers are for me no better than "gamism" optimisers.

Next time you have idea for a campaign, sent players a mail and start it with NO PREPLANNED CHARACTER. SHUT OFF IMAGINATION NOW, OR SEEK ANOTHER CAMPAIGN. TIME FOR IMAGINATION WILL CAME AFTER ROLLS.

Back in reply #49 (https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/atypyical-race-class-combos/msg1161981/#msg1161981), you said you don't actually have much experience with pure random-roll in order. I'd encourage you to try it out more - I've had fun with it at times. But claiming it as the ONE TRUE WAY when you haven't actually used it much seems like jumping the gun. For me personally, I'm usually happy to play anything from a human fighter to an elven druid -- but I find a lot of players aren't like that. Give them a random character, and they won't necessarily like it that much. It's a matter of preference. What is more fun for *me* isn't necessarily more fun for other players.

As for how to deal with optimization...  In general, I don't have a problem with tactical play. After character creation, I often enjoy players who engage in tactical play. But I dislike running *character creation* as a tactical exercise. My usual solution is to assure players that whatever they choose, they'll come out with a character that is roughly equal in power to the others. If the system is flawed and an option comes out as overpowered, then I'll make a ruling to adjust it down. And if an option is underpowered, I'll adjust that character up.

QuoteIn basically every edition of D&D, a magic user or wizard has been about 1 in 4 of the typical party. There has never been a requirement of 14 Int for a wizard. In 1E and 2E, the requirement was 9 Int, and in later editions that requirement was dropped. Plus, 3E and later never had roll attributes in order - it was always make six rolls and assign. In 1E and 2E, most NPCs were zero level -- while in 3E most NPCs had NPC classes like Commoner.

Oh, I was mistaken about 2ed then. Well fine then. I thought I take this mistake from Baldur's Gate but no - it also has 9. (I had to mistake it with some other classes - dear lord 15 Cha for Druid).
As for D&D 3,5 - well technically most of NPCs should be like that - but ultimately from my experience with published material, most meaningful in any way were of PC classes even if they were not adventurers of any kind.

QuoteLook - if you prefer a character generation method where starting PCs come out as average representatives of society, then that's fine. I mentioned doing this in Harnmaster - roll for race, roll for sex, roll for social class, and then roll for attributes in order. In Harnmaster, wizard characters (Shek-Pvar) are less common - many parties don't have one, in my experience. Your D&D can absolutely do this - have only roll in order attribute generation, and a 14 Int requirement for wizards.

But claims like that 14 Int was always a thing -- that's projecting a false past.

Indeed, that's my mistake. I had to conflate it with minimal rational Inteligence score for wizard character in later games really.

QuoteBack in reply #49, you said you don't actually have much experience with pure random-roll in order. I'd encourage you to try it out more - I've had fun with it at times.

I will. As I said - I'm using it basically everywhere now - even in games that are clearly not meant to be random-rolled like Blades or Fading Suns.

QuoteBut claiming it as the ONE TRUE WAY when you haven't actually used it much seems like jumping the gun. For me personally, I'm usually happy to play anything from a human fighter to an elven druid -- but I find a lot of players aren't like that. Give them a random character, and they won't necessarily like it that much. It's a matter of preference. What is more fun for *me* isn't necessarily more fun for other players.

I do not claim it's ONE TRUE WAY, though considering how more and more games seems to prefer more volunarist and less random/hand of fate creation these days, I'm quite defensive about those elements that still makes choices unequal, more random, less the same. Superior modifiers of Warhammer elves, -2/+2 in D&D, different Disciplines as preferable for various clans - higher cost of being special snowflake, overall. I mean I think it's easier for DM to drop them if he wants to be more generous, than implement them in games that assumed from the get go - will of a player is absolute in terms of playable character.

QuoteAs for how to deal with optimization...  In general, I don't have a problem with tactical play. After character creation, I often enjoy players who engage in tactical play. But I dislike running *character creation* as a tactical exercise. My usual solution is to assure players that whatever they choose, they'll come out with a character that is roughly equal in power to the others. If the system is flawed and an option comes out as overpowered, then I'll make a ruling to adjust it down. And if an option is underpowered, I'll adjust that character up.

Well as I said - random roll eliminates at least a bit of optimisation problem.
About the other thing... I'd say I never was much for balance of PC's - though I agree GM should make everyone useful in a way. But then total equality of options - while optimisation and crazy builds from the get go is iffy, such equality seems also bit... pointless, taking any meaning from such choices really. Oh, well. Ultimately I think it's hard on equal PC level even with gap in atribbute scores to do character who can replace whole team, and need no help - to much options, powers, skills to cover, even if not everybody is direct combat beast.

They mean to destroy D&D as a game with their race war. It becomes smart Orcs, strong Goblins, and charismatic Drow.

Can I quote Amidala?

Padmé Amidala: "So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause."

The OSR didn't appear out of thin air. It appeared because D&D became a different game. OSR is the focus. There has to be "true" D&D games to oppose WotC's nonsense.

I should probably add (E) as another choice in my original post of race/class picks, where race is selected first and stats are random in order, so there's no optimizing of race to class.

Actually, it occurs to me that with this approach will most likely result in a lot *more* half-orc wizards than the later edition approach. In AD&D 1st edition, half-orcs had +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha. If the player picks race and then rolls attributes in order, there's a 45% chance that a half-orc character will have a higher Intelligence than Strength. This method is likely to lead to a lot more half-orc wizards than Method V which is used by default in 3E/4E/5E where attribute rolls are assigned.

As an aside, I forgot until now that the -2 Intelligence for half-orcs was something that was introduced in 3rd edition, and wasn't a part of original AD&D. Then it was taken back out for 5th edition.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on January 30, 2021, 05:46:36 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 30, 2021, 11:09:10 AMAs for how to deal with optimization...  In general, I don't have a problem with tactical play. After character creation, I often enjoy players who engage in tactical play. But I dislike running *character creation* as a tactical exercise. My usual solution is to assure players that whatever they choose, they'll come out with a character that is roughly equal in power to the others. If the system is flawed and an option comes out as overpowered, then I'll make a ruling to adjust it down. And if an option is underpowered, I'll adjust that character up.

I'd say I never was much for balance of PC's - though I agree GM should make everyone useful in a way. But then total equality of options - while optimisation and crazy builds from the get go is iffy, such equality seems also bit... pointless, taking any meaning from such choices really.

I think you have contradictory goals here. On the one hand, you claim you hate the behavior of character build optimization. On the other hand, you want player choices in creation to make a difference in character power. If players are going to lose out based on their choices in character creation, then that's naturally going to encourage more optimization.

I think tactical player choices should begin after game start - not in character creation.

Well, as stated previously; my general approach is a variation of D.

The default stat bonuses in my system are +1 to Stat A or Stat B and +1 to Stat C or Stat D. One of these is always either Strength or Reflexes, another is always a mental score (Intellect, Wits or Presence).

The Fighter class can use your choice of STR or REF for its primary stat (gaining other benefits as well from the choice), and your choice of one mental stat for it's secondary stat (which also provides extra benefits). Thus, every race can be an effective fighter if they choose to be... though each species will have its own preferred fighting style because of their stat bonuses.

Similarly, each magic class uses a different mental stat (gadgeteers and wizards use Intellect, mystics use Wits, and theurges use Presence). Each can also use any of the other stats as their secondary for the class (ex. Lore wizards use WIT, Social wizards use PRE, and War Wizards use STR or REF).

While the spellcasting classes do have differences in implements and supporting traits, they all have access to the spellcasting paths... so all the species can be some flavor of spellcaster.

And if you want to play against type, the penalties aren't THAT severe. By default players have a choice of three stat arrays; balanced (3, 2, 2, 1, 1, -1), strong (3, 3, 1, 1, 0, -1) and focused (4, 2, 1, 0, 0, -1). The species stat bumps go atop these.

While this does mean a 5 is possible, in practice, the increase in performance over a 4 is marginal and the cost to your defenses and breadth of skill performance generally aren't worth it. Worst case for a suboptimal species/class combo is going to be a 3 in your primary and stronger than typical other stats. Basically -5% from the presumed 4 in your primary and only -10% from the peak PC performance.

You'd have to deliberately gimp yourself to get results worse than that, even with a suboptimal combo (ex. a gnome who uses a strong rather than a swift fighting style) and the shortfall can be at least partially mitigated by things like superior quality weapons and certain talent picks.

Basically, it's nearly impossible to make a PC too gimped to play in my system by accident. Regardless of species, class, background or even attribute array chosen... as long as you put your best available score (be it a 3, 4 or 5) into your class primary and put your next best into a class secondary, you'll be able to meet the expected difficulty.

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2021, 03:38:16 PM
I should probably add (E) as another choice in my original post of race/class picks, where race is selected first and stats are random in order, so there's no optimizing of race to class.

Actually, it occurs to me that with this approach will most likely result in a lot *more* half-orc wizards than the later edition approach. In AD&D 1st edition, half-orcs had +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha. If the player picks race and then rolls attributes in order, there's a 45% chance that a half-orc character will have a higher Intelligence than Strength. This method is likely to lead to a lot more half-orc wizards than Method V which is used by default in 3E/4E/5E where attribute rolls are assigned.

That's a good point. A lot of people have commented that +1/-1 or +2/-2 doesn't amount to a lot, and if the distribution is treated as representative of the population, there really isn't a huge difference between halflings and humans. Their strengths vary much less than real life differences between the sexes, for instance. But the attribute bonuses are primarily aimed at PCs, and when player behavior is considered, there's a huge difference. If you're creating a fighter, you go with the half-orc not the halfling. Not just most of the time, but almost all the time. The distribution of racial ability scores among PCs is much more tightly constrained that suggested by a naive assessment of the probabilities.

Quote from: Pat on January 31, 2021, 05:08:07 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2021, 03:38:16 PM
I should probably add (E) as another choice in my original post of race/class picks, where race is selected first and stats are random in order, so there's no optimizing of race to class.

Actually, it occurs to me that with this approach will most likely result in a lot *more* half-orc wizards than the later edition approach. In AD&D 1st edition, half-orcs had +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha. If the player picks race and then rolls attributes in order, there's a 45% chance that a half-orc character will have a higher Intelligence than Strength. This method is likely to lead to a lot more half-orc wizards than Method V which is used by default in 3E/4E/5E where attribute rolls are assigned.

That's a good point. A lot of people have commented that +1/-1 or +2/-2 doesn't amount to a lot, and if the distribution is treated as representative of the population, there really isn't a huge difference between halflings and humans. Their strengths vary much less than real life differences between the sexes, for instance. But the attribute bonuses are primarily aimed at PCs, and when player behavior is considered, there's a huge difference. If you're creating a fighter, you go with the half-orc not the halfling. Not just most of the time, but almost all the time. The distribution of racial ability scores among PCs is much more tightly constrained that suggested by a naive assessment of the probabilities.

Do you?  I had a halfling barbarian in a game not long ago.  The PC was absolutely fine and never really felt inneffectve.

Quote from: TJS on January 31, 2021, 10:16:34 PM

Quote from: Pat on January 31, 2021, 05:08:07 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2021, 03:38:16 PM
I should probably add (E) as another choice in my original post of race/class picks, where race is selected first and stats are random in order, so there's no optimizing of race to class.

Actually, it occurs to me that with this approach will most likely result in a lot *more* half-orc wizards than the later edition approach. In AD&D 1st edition, half-orcs had +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha. If the player picks race and then rolls attributes in order, there's a 45% chance that a half-orc character will have a higher Intelligence than Strength. This method is likely to lead to a lot more half-orc wizards than Method V which is used by default in 3E/4E/5E where attribute rolls are assigned.

That's a good point. A lot of people have commented that +1/-1 or +2/-2 doesn't amount to a lot, and if the distribution is treated as representative of the population, there really isn't a huge difference between halflings and humans. Their strengths vary much less than real life differences between the sexes, for instance. But the attribute bonuses are primarily aimed at PCs, and when player behavior is considered, there's a huge difference. If you're creating a fighter, you go with the half-orc not the halfling. Not just most of the time, but almost all the time. The distribution of racial ability scores among PCs is much more tightly constrained that suggested by a naive assessment of the probabilities.

Do you?  I had a halfling barbarian in a game not long ago.  The PC was absolutely fine and never really felt inneffectve.

First of all, Pat did specify Fighter. Barbarians get more out of Dex than Fighters do, because of the "Unarmored Defense" feature, so halfing is a closer fit. And whether it's "most of the time" vs "almost all the time" is subjective and depends a lot on how much the players are into mini-maxing.

Quibbling aside, the idea is that if everyone had to first chose halfling and then rolled their stats in order, there would be more of a variety of classes among halfling characters. Since halfling get +2 Dex, then if the player can arrange attribute rolls, they will get much more out of that by choosing high Dex and/or picking a class that gets the most out of Dex. That strongly encourages system-minded players to focus on Dex. But if the system is roll attributes in order, they're likely to get a middling or low roll for Dex even with the +2.

Do you disagree with that more general point?

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2021, 10:48:39 PM

Quote from: TJS on January 31, 2021, 10:16:34 PM

Quote from: Pat on January 31, 2021, 05:08:07 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2021, 03:38:16 PM
I should probably add (E) as another choice in my original post of race/class picks, where race is selected first and stats are random in order, so there's no optimizing of race to class.

Actually, it occurs to me that with this approach will most likely result in a lot *more* half-orc wizards than the later edition approach. In AD&D 1st edition, half-orcs had +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha. If the player picks race and then rolls attributes in order, there's a 45% chance that a half-orc character will have a higher Intelligence than Strength. This method is likely to lead to a lot more half-orc wizards than Method V which is used by default in 3E/4E/5E where attribute rolls are assigned.

That's a good point. A lot of people have commented that +1/-1 or +2/-2 doesn't amount to a lot, and if the distribution is treated as representative of the population, there really isn't a huge difference between halflings and humans. Their strengths vary much less than real life differences between the sexes, for instance. But the attribute bonuses are primarily aimed at PCs, and when player behavior is considered, there's a huge difference. If you're creating a fighter, you go with the half-orc not the halfling. Not just most of the time, but almost all the time. The distribution of racial ability scores among PCs is much more tightly constrained that suggested by a naive assessment of the probabilities.

Do you?  I had a halfling barbarian in a game not long ago.  The PC was absolutely fine and never really felt inneffectve.

First of all, Pat did specify Fighter. Barbarians get more out of Dex than Fighters do, because of the "Unarmored Defense" feature, so halfing is a closer fit. And whether it's "most of the time" vs "almost all the time" is subjective and depends a lot on how much the players are into mini-maxing.

Quibbling aside, the idea is that if everyone had to first chose halfling and then rolled their stats in order, there would be more of a variety of classes among halfling characters. Since halfling get +2 Dex, then if the player can arrange attribute rolls, they will get much more out of that by choosing high Dex and/or picking a class that gets the most out of Dex. That strongly encourages system-minded players to focus on Dex. But if the system is roll attributes in order, they're likely to get a middling or low roll for Dex even with the +2.

Do you disagree with that more general point?

I believe that if you're rolling and then assigning scores in order then you're wasting your time rolling because it's still essentially point buy.

You're just running around in a circle to end up in the same place you started.

Quote from: TJS on February 01, 2021, 02:47:44 AM
I believe that if you're rolling and then assigning scores in order then you're wasting your time rolling because it's still essentially point buy.

One variation I've used that works well is 3d6 (or 4d6 best) 3 in order, then swap any two. That removes most of the frustration of players who really want to play a fighter or magic-user, because they can always put their best score in the ability of their choice. But they can't chose the specific scores, the long tail of less important attributes is random, and they might end up with an unexpected bad score. In other words, they can choose their characters prime focus, while still having the serendipitous feel of random generation.

Quote from: Pat on February 01, 2021, 08:48:51 AM

Quote from: TJS on February 01, 2021, 02:47:44 AM
I believe that if you're rolling and then assigning scores in order then you're wasting your time rolling because it's still essentially point buy.

One variation I've used that works well is 3d6 (or 4d6 best) 3 in order, then swap any two. That removes most of the frustration of players who really want to play a fighter or magic-user, because they can always put their best score in the ability of their choice. But they can't chose the specific scores, the long tail of less important attributes is random, and they might end up with an unexpected bad score. In other words, they can choose their characters prime focus, while still having the serendipitous feel of random generation.

I do this too, for the same reason.  I made it the default generation method for primary PCs in my own design. 

What I didn't expect to happen as much as it does is that sometimes the player doesn't swap the highest number into the primary ability score. If the primary is good enough and the swap will address something secondary but still important, it becomes an interesting decision for the player.  Consider a character in early D&D that really wants a fighter and gets, say, 8 Str, 16 Dex, and 13 Int.  The Str/Int swap looks attractive, even without all kinds of ways to turn Dex into the attack stat.

There is also a "companion" generation process that follows the primary PC generation process, except the players have fewer choices, including no ability score swap.  The companion is not always available and is the backup character for the player if the primary PC dies. There's really not that much difference in the process, but a few choices in the PC generation heightens the feel that the player is more in control by comparison.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 01, 2021, 10:03:24 AM
I do this too, for the same reason.  I made it the default generation method for primary PCs in my own design. 

What I didn't expect to happen as much as it does is that sometimes the player doesn't swap the highest number into the primary ability score. If the primary is good enough and the swap will address something secondary but still important, it becomes an interesting decision for the player.  Consider a character in early D&D that really wants a fighter and gets, say, 8 Str, 16 Dex, and 13 Int.  The Str/Int swap looks attractive, even without all kinds of ways to turn Dex into the attack stat.

There's also an interesting dynamic with the worst score. For a fighter, sometimes shifting a 7 out of Con is more important than putting a 15 into Str, for instance. It creates more organic feeling characters -- in fact, I think that was the name they used for the method in 3.X. The characters are optimized, but not perfectly optimal.

I'm almost sold on the no racial modifiers, put a +2 and +1 wherever you want system, the only issue I have is where it interacts with the standard array so that every character looks about the same come level 8 or so. You've had at least two stat-ups by that time which means you can be at or approaching 20 in your main attribute.

Which means all characters play about the same mechanics wise, a half-orc wizard is indistinguishable from an elf except for the tusks and the pointy ears.

With randomly rolled stats the problem goes away quite neatly.

I think the issue comes from the order people do things. We used to roll stats and see what we could be, now we decide what we want to be and arrange the stats accordingly which frequently leads to effective, dull, repetitive characters.

Didn't one game or another invent a mechanic where instead of the races being a single template, you selected from a pool of benefits and drawbacks that were flavorful for that race?

Or, I don't know, aren't there race-specific archetypes/kits/whatever to make the same class feel different depending on what race you play?

Like, I don't expect an orc wizard to play the same way as an elf wizard as a human wizard ad nauseum.

Regarding random-roll in general:  I think the combination of attribute selection and class-based inherently results in a lot of sameness. In pure point-buy skill-based systems, there is often more variety in characters than in class-based (at a cost of slower and more complicated chargen). When I'm doing pure random-roll (like in Harnmaster), if I'm going to add choice, I prefer to roll three complete sets and then pick which one I prefer - rather than re-arranging. That also has a clear simulationist meaning - each is a real character, and I'm picking which one I want to play.

Quote from: Altheus on February 01, 2021, 10:59:04 AM
I'm almost sold on the no racial modifiers, put a +2 and +1 wherever you want system, the only issue I have is where it interacts with the standard array so that every character looks about the same come level 8 or so. You've had at least two stat-ups by that time which means you can be at or approaching 20 in your main attribute.

Which means all characters play about the same mechanics wise, a half-orc wizard is indistinguishable from an elf except for the tusks and the pointy ears.

If you want a half-orc wizard to be mechanically distinct from an elf wizard, I think it's better to have unique racial abilities - like Relentless Endurance and Fey Ancestry. The ability score modifiers do very little for this. Does it really matter that the half-orc wizard is Str 10 Dex 12 while the elf wizard is Str 8 Dex 14? That seems pretty hard to notice at all.

Also, with either point-buy or arrange-rolls, I think the fixed attribute mods means more sameness of characters overall -- you get more elven or halfling Rogue, more gnome wizards, and so forth -- and less of the atypical combos. If the goal is more variety of characters overall, I think supporting atypical combos adds more variety.

Quote from: Altheus on February 01, 2021, 10:59:04 AM
I think the issue comes from the order people do things. We used to roll stats and see what we could be, now we decide what we want to be and arrange the stats accordingly which frequently leads to effective, dull, repetitive characters.

Arranging ability scores has been around ever since the DMG first came out in 1979 and gave alternate rolling methods (Methods I to V), and even if it wasn't the default, it was very common. I know in my school groups in the 1980s, arranging rolls was standard. I think it's pretty clear that most D&D players prefer more choice over their character, rather than just roll-in-order and accept the results.

But random-roll isn't the only way to get variety. I think the real problem is that the point-buy choices are such that only a few selections are clearly optimal over others -- like only a particular attribute distributions, and only certain race/class combos. There are ways to make things more balanced, so that more variety of choices are interesting to players.

Really good inherent abilities would be better than ability score adjustments - but the problem right now is that they're secondary additions to the main acts.  Just taking away the ability scores leaves a hole in the design.

I think a lot of the issue with off class race picks is not so much the ability score (unless you're overly fixated on it) but that you gain nothing for the tradeoff.  This frustration will continue.  A half-orc wizard will get something out of Relentless Endurance, but it's not anything they really want (As they want to stay out of melee combat as much as possible), and they will get nothing at all out of Savage Attacks.)  In my experience, the players who fixate the most on having the right optimal combination are often more bothered and frustated by the features they can't use.

Will it become less restrictive?  Yes.  But the last 20 years have shown the process of these issues becoming less restrictive.  A half-orc wizard has become far less restrictive than it was when they had an intelligence penalty in 3e or in 4e when ability score increases were far more important, but people still speak as if they are completely unviable.  (My first experience of the overpowered wizard in 3e that completely broke the game - that was a Half-Orc wizard.)

It is no doubt possible to come up with non ASI abilties that are much more widely applicable but this requires a complete rethink of their approach to races both mechanically and fictionally.  (I'm also sceptical that WOTC has either the design chops to do this or the processes in play to make changes of this kind - they're 'playtesting' process is one that inherently reinforces a certain conservatism of approach').

QuoteThey mean to destroy D&D as a game with their race war. It becomes smart Orcs, strong Goblins, and charismatic Drow.

Weren't Drows like always full of wicked and seductive Charisma? (I must say I deeply hate Charisma attribute as "humans distrust you - take -2 to Charisma".)

QuoteI should probably add (E) as another choice in my original post of race/class picks, where race is selected first and stats are random in order, so there's no optimizing of race to class.

Actually, it occurs to me that with this approach will most likely result in a lot *more* half-orc wizards than the later edition approach. In AD&D 1st edition, half-orcs had +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha. If the player picks race and then rolls attributes in order, there's a 45% chance that a half-orc character will have a higher Intelligence than Strength. This method is likely to lead to a lot more half-orc wizards than Method V which is used by default in 3E/4E/5E where attribute rolls are assigned.

As an aside, I forgot until now that the -2 Intelligence for half-orcs was something that was introduced in 3rd edition, and wasn't a part of original AD&D. Then it was taken back out for 5th edition.

Even with Int penalty, chances for smarter than stronger HO are not insignificant.
I like this method very much.

QuoteI think you have contradictory goals here. On the one hand, you claim you hate the behavior of character build optimization. On the other hand, you want player choices in creation to make a difference in character power. If players are going to lose out based on their choices in character creation, then that's naturally going to encourage more optimization.

I think tactical player choices should begin after game start - not in character creation.

Way of balance is a rocky and trecherous ones. There is optimisation, there is powergaming, there is munchkinism.
For me rolling randomly INT 15 STR 9 Half-orc and making him wizard is optimisation - but also sort of valid career choice from character perspective.
How you were born is not a choice - what career you have chosen I'd say is valid character choice in character creation. Not always ofc - this is D&D with heroic classes, for let's say Warhammer - rolling random profession and stats not fitting this profession is quite fine considering social dynamics partially emulated here, and leads to good storytelling possibilities.

QuoteIf you're creating a fighter, you go with the half-orc not the halfling. Not just most of the time, but almost all the time. The distribution of racial ability scores among PCs is much more tightly constrained that suggested by a naive assessment of the probabilities.

And rolling in order after choosing race is an answer for this abomination ;)

QuoteI believe that if you're rolling and then assigning scores in order then you're wasting your time rolling because it's still essentially point buy.

You're just running around in a circle to end up in the same place you started.

To some degree yes indeed, but of course you can get lucky or unlucky with rolls beyond diversity you'd get from point buy.

QuoteRegarding random-roll in general:  I think the combination of attribute selection and class-based inherently results in a lot of sameness. In pure point-buy skill-based systems, there is often more variety in characters than in class-based (at a cost of slower and more complicated chargen). When I'm doing pure random-roll (like in Harnmaster), if I'm going to add choice, I prefer to roll three complete sets and then pick which one I prefer - rather than re-arranging. That also has a clear simulationist meaning - each is a real character, and I'm picking which one I want to play.

That's very cool idea. (Especially if other two land in big pool of spare character in case any of chosen ones dies ;)

QuoteAlso, with either point-buy or arrange-rolls, I think the fixed attribute mods means more sameness of characters overall -- you get more elven or halfling Rogue, more gnome wizards, and so forth -- and less of the atypical combos. If the goal is more variety of characters overall, I think supporting atypical combos adds more variety.

I generally agree, yes.

QuoteThere are ways to make things more balanced, so that more variety of choices are interesting to players.

But then as noticed, sameness of choices becomes a problem.

Quote from: TJS on February 01, 2021, 04:57:42 PM
I think a lot of the issue with off class race picks is not so much the ability score (unless you're overly fixated on it) but that you gain nothing for the tradeoff.  This frustration will continue.  A half-orc wizard will get something out of Relentless Endurance, but it's not anything they really want (As they want to stay out of melee combat as much as possible), and they will get nothing at all out of Savage Attacks.)  In my experience, the players who fixate the most on having the right optimal combination are often more bothered and frustated by the features they can't use.

That's one advantage of race as class. You don't have to come up with some theoretical orc racial ability that's equally good for all classes. Instead, you can have orc druids and orc gedriht who express the nature of their race in different ways.

Quote from: Pat on February 01, 2021, 07:56:15 PM

Quote from: TJS on February 01, 2021, 04:57:42 PM
I think a lot of the issue with off class race picks is not so much the ability score (unless you're overly fixated on it) but that you gain nothing for the tradeoff.  This frustration will continue.  A half-orc wizard will get something out of Relentless Endurance, but it's not anything they really want (As they want to stay out of melee combat as much as possible), and they will get nothing at all out of Savage Attacks.)  In my experience, the players who fixate the most on having the right optimal combination are often more bothered and frustated by the features they can't use.

That's one advantage of race as class. You don't have to come up with some theoretical orc racial ability that's equally good for all classes. Instead, you can have orc druids and orc gedriht who express the nature of their race in different ways.

What games have multiple classes per race like this, though? As far as I know, there are vanishingly few examples. It seems like it's huge burden on game design to come up a set of varying classes for each race - especially that there is likely to be huge overlap. I think it would be easier to develop classes independently, and then have restrictions based on setting. ("In this setting, only half-orcs can be barbarians." or at least "Only half-orcs can be Beast Path barbarians.")

Also, I think Relentless Endurance can be quite useful for wizards. In my experience, wizards are often the first to be dropped - despite efforts of the others to shield them. I often put a decent stat in Con for wizards, because they're likely targets especially of ambush and ranged attacks.

Quote from: jhkim on February 01, 2021, 08:08:09 PM

Quote from: Pat on February 01, 2021, 07:56:15 PM

Quote from: TJS on February 01, 2021, 04:57:42 PM
I think a lot of the issue with off class race picks is not so much the ability score (unless you're overly fixated on it) but that you gain nothing for the tradeoff.  This frustration will continue.  A half-orc wizard will get something out of Relentless Endurance, but it's not anything they really want (As they want to stay out of melee combat as much as possible), and they will get nothing at all out of Savage Attacks.)  In my experience, the players who fixate the most on having the right optimal combination are often more bothered and frustated by the features they can't use.

That's one advantage of race as class. You don't have to come up with some theoretical orc racial ability that's equally good for all classes. Instead, you can have orc druids and orc gedriht who express the nature of their race in different ways.

What games have multiple classes per race like this, though? As far as I know, there are vanishingly few examples.

You have to make your own. It's not really that hard, in B/X.

So.

What if you ran a "D&D 6e" game?

• roll 1d8+10 for stats and place where you want
• It's Bio-Diverse, so choose two racial abilities from ANY "race/species"
• it's Classless, so choose any three abilities from ANY of the 5e Classes
• It's Culturally-diverse, so take any two Background traits/feats
• You need coin: roll 5d20 x 100 for starting gold (so Martials can get good armor & everyone can maybe get a mount)
• It's Spell Points (INT or WIS in points): access to ALL level-appropriate spells. Divines must pray, Arcanes must cast (verbal & gestures)
• Short Rest (around an hour) = +1d4 HP & Spell Points regained. Long Rest (closer to eight hours) = +1d10 HP & Spell Points regained

Whys nots?

Race and class only really seems to have a purpose if it keeping the races focused on one thing is to meet the goal of humanocentrism and have the races basically be reasonably rare and unique setting wise.

It justs seems overly redundant to have Dwarf Fighters, and Dwarf Clerics and Dwarf Thieves all as separate classes.

It's not that you couldn't have more than one class as race for a single race, but they should ideally be really clear and very distinct setting archetypes.

Quote from: TJS on February 01, 2021, 08:42:05 PM
Race and class only really seems to have a purpose if it keeping the races focused on one thing is to meet the goal of humanocentrism and have the races basically be reasonably rare and unique setting wise.

It justs seems overly redundant to have Dwarf Fighters, and Dwarf Clerics and Dwarf Thieves all as separate classes.

It's not that you couldn't have more than one class as race for a single race, but they should ideally be really clear and very distinct setting archetypes.

Yeah, but "Race" is a mutable container with 6e: it's what you make it. So smart, Culturally-diverse Orcs. Dumb, culturally-bankrupt Elves. Kobold spell-casters wielding Great swords. Furry Rangers with Druidic power.

6e isn't limited by anything. But .... would it work?

Call this my WotC Pre-Playtest.

Quote from: Pat on February 01, 2021, 08:14:31 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 01, 2021, 08:08:09 PM

Quote from: Pat on February 01, 2021, 07:56:15 PM

Quote from: TJS on February 01, 2021, 04:57:42 PM
I think a lot of the issue with off class race picks is not so much the ability score (unless you're overly fixated on it) but that you gain nothing for the tradeoff.  This frustration will continue.  A half-orc wizard will get something out of Relentless Endurance, but it's not anything they really want (As they want to stay out of melee combat as much as possible), and they will get nothing at all out of Savage Attacks.)  In my experience, the players who fixate the most on having the right optimal combination are often more bothered and frustated by the features they can't use.

That's one advantage of race as class. You don't have to come up with some theoretical orc racial ability that's equally good for all classes. Instead, you can have orc druids and orc gedriht who express the nature of their race in different ways.

What games have multiple classes per race like this, though? As far as I know, there are vanishingly few examples.

You have to make your own. It's not really that hard, in B/X.

ACKS has it and the Player's companion codifies it so they are even easier to build. 
My old 2e group used to build our own with those class construction rules as well.

QuoteWhat games have multiple classes per race like this, though? As far as I know, there are vanishingly few examples.

I have to look for it - but I've read a game where you have 3 races vs 3 roles combo - and each race have it's own different role class - but I cannot remember the name one.

QuoteRace and class only really seems to have a purpose if it keeping the races focused on one thing is to meet the goal of humanocentrism and have the races basically be reasonably rare and unique setting wise.

It justs seems overly redundant to have Dwarf Fighters, and Dwarf Clerics and Dwarf Thieves all as separate classes.

It's not that you couldn't have more than one class as race for a single race, but they should ideally be really clear and very distinct setting archetypes.

Indeed. And that's TBH why I dislike them :P

Quote6e isn't limited by anything. But .... would it work?

First and foremost your assumptions what 6e shall be are almost certainly doomed to failure. :P

QuoteACKS has it and the Player's companion codifies it so they are even easier to build.
My old 2e group used to build our own with those class construction rules as well.

But then why even bother if you can play dwarven thief and just suit him to be very dwarvish by choose of skills

Nothing is ever this pure in a game model, but the purist view of "race in class" would be that every such class consists of at least 3 things:  The race, the class, and the thing that is special for that combination of race and class.  That is, a dwarven thief isn't simply the same as an elven thief for more than just the differences in race.  Presumably, since a big part of the purpose of "race in class" is to make it easier to get into play and embed something about the setting into the mechanics, that extra third thing in the combo would reinforce the setting without being terribly complicated.

Using that thought, I might replace the BEMCI/RC elf with a fighter/magic-user hybrid that has a different spell list--perhaps radically cut down version of the magic-user list with a few druid spells thrown in to compensate (and maybe even remove the need for elven clerics in the setting).  Though being able to cast in armor is already a distinction that is much easier to explain.  A dwarven thief might not be that great at stealth in return for increased toughness or other combat ability--something most players would intuitively get.

Without that third thing to make the combination distinctive, might as well split race and class into separate pieces. 

The other problem with race-as-class is that it forces a lot of world-building assumptions onto the game.

You want magical dwarves in your world? good luck in BECMI. In 3e no default race gets an INT bump, so a dwarf can be a wizard as easily as a human, elf or halfling.

Even the "idealized" race-as-class where each has options for various roles, doesn't guarantee an alignment with anything but the developer's ideas for the class; at which point I may as well play a CRPG where such things are commonplace, but the play is smoother and prettier to look at.

If I'm playing tabletop I at least want the freedom to explore my own concepts, not those the developer insists on.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 02, 2021, 08:32:56 AM
If I'm playing tabletop I at least want the freedom to explore my own concepts, not those the developer insists on.

Rules are oppression! Only a blank sheet of paper is freedom!

Less facetiously, everything you just said applies as much to race and class separately, as it does to race as class. You've drawn an arbitrary line based on personal preference, nothing more. Which is fine, you can like what you like. But it's not a straightjacket.

Well, part of this discussion is the "simple game" versus "game toolkit" conundrum, right?  If you are making a toolkit, one of the things you really ought to do (despite so many designers that don't) is have lots of examples.  Preferably, examples that show different ways of doing the same thing and different slants on similar things.  It would, for example, be a whole lot easier to get a BEMCI magical dwarf class close to good enough on the first pass if there were 3 dwarf options in the game instead of 1.  You could infer some boundaries that way.  Not that it is all that difficult as is, but easier is relative.  Whether or not that would be worth the added complexity in the BEMCI rules is another question.

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 08:46:45 AM
Less facetiously, everything you just said applies as much to race and class separately, as it does to race as class. You've drawn an arbitrary line based on personal preference, nothing more. Which is fine, you can like what you like. But it's not a straightjacket.

Eh, my own system has species (with options), class (with a focus and a path to further differentiate them) and background (with options) precisely because I do find D&D-style classes to be too restrictive... particularly in connecting combat to non-combat features.

A prime example of it that got me started down that path was actually a recurring issue that came up with the 4E Fighter and Ranger. Specifically, someone would want to play an archer type character, which in 3e could be done easily with a fighter, but the only archer concept in 4E was the ranger, which carried with it built-in background non-combat abilities with a flavor that only fits with wilderness themes.

That was the primary impetus for splitting off combat abilities from background elements. Doing so just made it so much easier for players to model their characters without going full GURPS/HERO style point buy (because there's a sweet spot in options vs. complexity and full point buy is a little too far into complexity for most).

That also led me to a decision to nest various choices to keep it from being nothing but a pile of building blocks (you pick a species, then one or more options for that species; you pick a class, then a focus and path for the class; you pick a background, then particular boons from that background).

This was something 5e learned too with its focus on sub-classes instead of adding countless new classes like 3/4e did. Choose a class, then choose a sub-from a smaller list (whereas in 3/4e each of those would be a separate class from a massive list).

You can see it too in the character creation of the only other game that was once a serious competitor to D&D; Vampire the Masquerade. While technically "classless" it used nested choices to keep character creation on track; prioritize attribute categories, then assign points in those categories; the same for abilities; select a clan and split three dots between the clan's three disciplines. Only 15 points at the end are available to be freely assigned.

Now, you could easily reverse engineer the freebie point costs to the nested options and have the build system just be "distribute 184 freebie points as desired" but, as I've seen in practice... players in general had a much harder time building in that way (it was much easier to completely miss certain sections without realizing it) than having those nested and guided options.

Research backed by playtesting confirmed this for me with my own system; a number of nested choices is the best of both worlds on the options vs. complexity scale. You get plenty of choices but are only picking from a list of less than ten things for most of your individual choices (10 species, 6 classes, 3-4 class focuses, 6-8 class paths, 10 backgrounds, etc.) to keep the potential options manageable.

This lets you define your character as a unique figure in a way that ensures you're not overlooking some critical part of the PC that will be important for the game (i.e. you've assured of having both combat and non-combat mechanical abilities and the combination of species and background fluff will give you a lot of hooks to build your character's personality and backstory from) in the way that pure point might allow and without the straightjacket of more rigidly defined classes or race-as-class.

QuoteUsing that thought, I might replace the BEMCI/RC elf with a fighter/magic-user hybrid that has a different spell list--perhaps radically cut down version of the magic-user list with a few druid spells thrown in to compensate (and maybe even remove the need for elven clerics in the setting).  Though being able to cast in armor is already a distinction that is much easier to explain.  A dwarven thief might not be that great at stealth in return for increased toughness or other combat ability--something most players would intuitively get.

I think Dwarf Thief - should be some Engineer or Inventor guy, tbh ;)

QuoteIf I'm playing tabletop I at least want the freedom to explore my own concepts, not those the developer insists on.

While I'm not gonna defend developers using some weird limits for limits sake, then well it's basically developer job to make clear what concepts are playable in his game, and which are - are not, and in many ways limits of choice shapes game as much or even more than multiplicity of options.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 02, 2021, 10:29:09 AM
Eh, my own system has species (with options), class (with a focus and a path to further differentiate them) and background (with options) precisely because I do find D&D-style classes to be too restrictive... particularly in connecting combat to non-combat features.

A prime example of it that got me started down that path was actually a recurring issue that came up with the 4E Fighter and Ranger. Specifically, someone would want to play an archer type character, which in 3e could be done easily with a fighter, but the only archer concept in 4E was the ranger, which carried with it built-in background non-combat abilities with a flavor that only fits with wilderness themes.

That was the primary impetus for splitting off combat abilities from background elements. Doing so just made it so much easier for players to model their characters without going full GURPS/HERO style point buy (because there's a sweet spot in options vs. complexity and full point buy is a little too far into complexity for most).

That also led me to a decision to nest various choices to keep it from being nothing but a pile of building blocks (you pick a species, then one or more options for that species; you pick a class, then a focus and path for the class; you pick a background, then particular boons from that background).

This was something 5e learned too with its focus on sub-classes instead of adding countless new classes like 3/4e did. Choose a class, then choose a sub-from a smaller list (whereas in 3/4e each of those would be a separate class from a massive list).

You can see it too in the character creation of the only other game that was once a serious competitor to D&D; Vampire the Masquerade. While technically "classless" it used nested choices to keep character creation on track; prioritize attribute categories, then assign points in those categories; the same for abilities; select a clan and split three dots between the clan's three disciplines. Only 15 points at the end are available to be freely assigned.

Now, you could easily reverse engineer the freebie point costs to the nested options and have the build system just be "distribute 184 freebie points as desired" but, as I've seen in practice... players in general had a much harder time building in that way (it was much easier to completely miss certain sections without realizing it) than having those nested and guided options.

Research backed by playtesting confirmed this for me with my own system; a number of nested choices is the best of both worlds on the options vs. complexity scale. You get plenty of choices but are only picking from a list of less than ten things for most of your individual choices (10 species, 6 classes, 3-4 class focuses, 6-8 class paths, 10 backgrounds, etc.) to keep the potential options manageable.

This lets you define your character as a unique figure in a way that ensures you're not overlooking some critical part of the PC that will be important for the game (i.e. you've assured of having both combat and non-combat mechanical abilities and the combination of species and background fluff will give you a lot of hooks to build your character's personality and backstory from) in the way that pure point might allow and without the straightjacket of more rigidly defined classes or race-as-class.

That's all pretty reasonable. Sounds like you've put some thought into what you like. It looks like you want a relatively complex character creation system that allows you define a lot of aspects of your character. You don't want completely free-form character creation, like a pure point buy system, but you want more flexibility than you'd get if everything is hard-coded into a single, complex package. So you're considering various ways that have been used to split up the hegemony of that single package, and which allow you to reassemble it in different ways that provide an interesting level of variety without too much effort.

But almost all of that is orthogonal to race as class, because when people use that term, they're usually thinking of B/X or BECMI. Which are fundamentally different games than the version you cited (3e, 4e, and 5e). There are a lot less moving bits, especially in character creation options. You could literally roll 3d6 six times, pick a class, roll for hp and gp, buy some equipment, and enter the dungeon. Furthermore, look at the design of the classes: They're much simpler as well. When I said earlier in the thread that it's not hard to make your own, I wasn't kidding. The hardest part is coming up with a concept. There just aren't a lot of moving bits.

That's what race as class is intended for. Having a fixed set of races (r) and profession/classes (c) gives you r x c options. Many of which will be less than optimal, because the racial bonuses or traits won't always align as well with every possible class. So you gain O(n^2) options, but many will be avoided, and they can end up feeling a bit samey, because all elves will be elves in the same way. There are ways to break up the sameyness, like adding roles (not sure if I'm using the term correctly), so your elf can pick from different ways of expressing their elfyness. But that adds more complexity, more design overhead, more work to make sure all the pieces are balanced so nothing breaks, and you'll still end up a usable set of practical options that are far small than all the theoretical possibilities.

With race as class, on the other hand, you don't have to create all the pieces and make sure they all work together. Instead, you just create one thing: The class you want. This is a bit like point buy, but with judgment calls instead of bean counting. You don't have to design all these little pieces and make sure they're all inter-operable and hope the players find one that they like. Instead, you can just design directly for each player. It's bespoke character creation.

Most of the time, it's pretty straightforward. Dwarf mage? Ask the player what they think makes a dwarf mage different from other mages. You might tweak the spell list, and then figure out what kind of racial traits would fun for a dwarf wizard, and then you're done. There are certainly other concepts that can be much harder to express, like a vampire or balrog class (it's much trickier to balance), but those concepts would be even more difficult to express in system like those you favor. But those are exceptions. Most of the time, the core is fairly obvious, and then you just tweak a few bits here and there, and run with it.

You only think of race as class as a straightjacket because you're trying to apply it to a very different set of systems than it's intended for. It's not constraining at all, it's liberating. You just see if that way because you're importing your preconceptions from other systems. It's a sandbox method of character creation.

Just to emphasize how easy class building is in B/X, here's the fighter:

Prime requisite: Strength
XP: As fighter
HD: d8
Armor: Any
Weapons: Any
Saves: As fighter
Attacks: As fighter

That's literally it, the entire class in the Basic set. And here are the changes needed to convert that fighter into a dwarf:

XP: As dwarf
Ability score minimum: Con 9+
Maximum level: 12th
Weapons: Any of normal or small size (no long bows or two-handed swords)
Saves: As dwarf
Special abilities
* Infravision 60'
* Expert miner 2 in 6
* Bonus languages: Dwarvish, gnome, halfling, goblin

A dwarf is just a fighter with the additional restrictions of an ability score min, a maximum level, and minor weapon limitations based on size. In exchange, the dwarf is more resistant to magic and other attacks, has special abilities related to being a miner adapted to the underground, and speaks a ton of extra languages, for whatever reason (are humans assumed to be Americans?).

There are some additional abilities and limits that appear in the Expert set (setting spears, using lances, and at name level the bonus hp and how the XP/save/attack progressions change), but those aren't a concern until higher levels, so we can ignore them for a starting class.

That's worth reiterating as a general principle: Don't design too much ahead. It's a variation on the same principle often espoused for world and adventure creation, in a sandbox setting.

Magic-using classes require a little more effort because of the spell lists, but if we adhere to the principle I just espoused, we only need to worry about a couple spell levels for a starting character. The Basic set only has 1st spells for clerics (8 ), and 1st and 2nd level spells for magic-users (12 and 12). (Yes, there are a handful of 3rd level spells for MUs and 2nd level spells for clerics in the Basic set, but those are explicitly for the DM to help running NPCs, not for PCs.) Since variant classes tend to have less spells per level, a dwarf mage, for instance, might only need 8 and 8. You could even drop that to 4 and 4, and expand the spell list later. And most of the spells will be repeats or minor variations on existing spells, and others can be easily adapted from AD&D1e, the SRD, the 2e spell compendiums, or wherever. That's still pretty simple.

More unique concepts, like the balrog or dragon of OD&D, the monk of 1e, the marshal or warlock of 3e, and so on can be more work, but it's still simpler than in later editions.

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 01:36:23 PM
With race as class, on the other hand, you don't have to create all the pieces and make sure they all work together. Instead, you just create one thing: The class you want. This is a bit like point buy, but with judgment calls instead of bean counting. You don't have to design all these little pieces and make sure they're all inter-operable and hope the players find one that they like. Instead, you can just design directly for each player. It's bespoke character creation.

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 02:50:13 PM
Just to emphasize how easy class building is in B/X, here's the fighter:
...
A dwarf is just a fighter with the additional restrictions of an ability score min, a maximum level, and minor weapon limitations based on size. In exchange, the dwarf is more resistant to magic and other attacks, has special abilities related to being a miner adapted to the underground, and speaks a ton of extra languages, for whatever reason (are humans assumed to be Americans?).

Thanks, that clarifies a little more some previous comments. I'd note that bespoke is possible within point systems as well -- the GM can just make rulings about how to balance the PCs rather than insisting on exact point totals. I used to do this frequently in Champions. Newbie players would just say what they wanted and I'd hand them a character sheet.

Apropos the topic, the question would be -- how does the GM handle atypical requests like a dwarf wizard or a halfling mounted fighter? That answer would of course vary from GM to GM, but it is something to consider.

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 01:36:23 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 02, 2021, 10:29:09 AM
Eh, my own system has species (with options), class (with a focus and a path to further differentiate them) and background (with options) precisely because I do find D&D-style classes to be too restrictive... particularly in connecting combat to non-combat features.

A prime example of it that got me started down that path was actually a recurring issue that came up with the 4E Fighter and Ranger. Specifically, someone would want to play an archer type character, which in 3e could be done easily with a fighter, but the only archer concept in 4E was the ranger, which carried with it built-in background non-combat abilities with a flavor that only fits with wilderness themes.

That was the primary impetus for splitting off combat abilities from background elements. Doing so just made it so much easier for players to model their characters without going full GURPS/HERO style point buy (because there's a sweet spot in options vs. complexity and full point buy is a little too far into complexity for most).

Having a fixed set of races (r) and profession/classes (c) gives you r x c options. Many of which will be less than optimal, because the racial bonuses or traits won't always align as well with every possible class. So you gain O(n^2) options, but many will be avoided, and they can end up feeling a bit samey, because all elves will be elves in the same way. There are ways to break up the sameyness, like adding roles (not sure if I'm using the term correctly), so your elf can pick from different ways of expressing their elfyness. But that adds more complexity, more design overhead, more work to make sure all the pieces are balanced so nothing breaks, and you'll still end up a usable set of practical options that are far small than all the theoretical possibilities.

Regarding mathematical balance of a character design system (non-random-roll)...

In general, I think adding more complexity makes it *harder* to balance all of the pieces so that nothing breaks. Usually it's easier to improve balance by making things simpler. One way is by separating concerns. In Chris24601's system, he separates combat function from non-combat -- so this allows a fighting archer without the wilderness skills of a ranger, for example. That increases the variation possible with fewer problems of suboptimal combinations, because combat balance is mostly independent of non-combat balance. The more the same concerns are touched on with the same choices, the more likely that there will be over-optimal or sub-optimal combinations.

Within D&D, if the goal is to make more of the (R x C) options closer to optimal, the simple solution is to have all races use the same generic attribute generation -- like how it's done in Savage Worlds (among other systems). The posters who oppose this mostly *want* a halfling fighter or half-orc wizard is suboptimal. i.e. It's not an accident, it's that they intentionally want those combinations to be unbalanced.

Of course, a character design system isn't just a mathematical exercise -- it's also about flavor and other priorities. I think the better way to get at this is to separate out what we want character creation to accomplish versus how to design for that.

Quote from: jhkim on February 02, 2021, 03:39:13 PM
I'd note that bespoke is possible within point systems as well -- the GM can just make rulings about how to balance the PCs rather than insisting on exact point totals. I used to do this frequently in Champions. Newbie players would just say what they wanted and I'd hand them a character sheet.

Yep. In fact, some degree is necessary even within point buy systems. With games like GURPS, depending on what's allowed and the focus of the game, it's often fairly easy to make a hyper-specialized character who's far too effective, even without explicit searching for exploits or synergies. And if you don't know what you're doing, it's easy to miss essential components that will end up hurting you later. Having a GM who can look things over and tell certain players to tone things down or make suggestions to other players is essential. HERO is effects-based, so they built in some guidelines and rules to prevent certain bonuses from getting out of hand, but even there I imagine some level of tweaking is necessary (it's not a game I've played). And in general, bespoke is my favorite way to make super hero characters. That comes up naturally in the Marvel RPGs, where it's more fun to start with a concept, and then only later worry about balance between the PCs.

And balance isn't about perfectly matching positives and negatives so everyone comes out equal based on subjective point assignments. It's more about spotlight time and effectiveness. Does everyone have something they're good at? Can everyone contribute in different ways? It's okay if characters aren't equally good at combat, but if combat is really important, then all characters should be able to contribute in significant ways, and nobody should be able to completely outshine the rest. It's a group activity; ensure everyone gets to play. And if social or investigation rolls are important, then everyone should have a niche or a way to help, because otherwise large portions of the game will be spent with half the players twiddling their thumbs while the rest are engaged.

Quote from: jhkim on February 02, 2021, 03:39:13 PM
Apropos the topic, the question would be -- how does the GM handle atypical requests like a dwarf wizard or a halfling mounted fighter? That answer would of course vary from GM to GM, but it is something to consider.

First off: It's a social issue. It should be dealt with at the social level. It really depends on the player and GM. It's fine if the GM has some specific ideas about the setting (dwarves can't use magic), but it's also fine if the player wants to play an atypical character, like a dwarf wizard. They should talk, and figure something out. That might be a hard line, no dwarf wizards. If the player really has a problem with that, that might be a sign the player and GM aren't compatible. Which is fine, there are other groups. Or the player could become a GM. Or the GM might work the idea in, somehow. Are dwarf wizards rare? Is the PC unique?

I throw a lot of this back on the player. What do they want? And then tunnel down from there, because the first answer is always pretty vague. Sure they want a dwarf wizard. But do they want to be the only dwarf wizard? What makes their character so unique? Answers to those kind of questions can start fleshing out not just the social context, but the class details. Maybe the dwarf wizard was born with an infirmity, and lacked the natural dwarven resistance to magic. So terrible saves, but they discovered they can cast spells. This becomes part of the trade off the class, having a significant limitation like losing the standard dwarven saves allows some room to add some new bonuses elsewhere. And the background, like who taught them spells, helps define other traits like the spell list.

Though one caveat: In old school D&D, death is common and characters are cheap. Tunneling too far down is wasted time, if the character dies in the first adventure. It's good to get a general idea, throw something out, tweak it as necessary, and then run with it. And while special snowflake classes are fine, making it a bit more general also makes it less likely the work will be wasted, because it allows Wizdwarf 2 to replace Wizdwarf 1.

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 02:50:13 PM
Just to emphasize how easy class building is in B/X, here's the fighter:

Yeah, I can't do rules-lite like that. I'd be immensely frustrated by having to rely almost entirely on "GM May I" to accomplish anything. I HATE "GM May I" with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

I've told the story before, but the short version is that my initial experience with AD&D was via one of the most God-awful dick DM's to every sit behind a screen. If you weren't doing exactly what he wanted to happen in the story in his head the answer to "GM May I" was universal failure.

The residual loathing was sufficient to poison all things pre-WotC D&D for me pretty much forever (and of the D&D editions 4E is far and away my favorite, quite possibly because it so unlike all the other editions). If I hadn't discovered the Robotech RPG ad in the back of the Dragon Magazine subscription my parents got me, I would have given up on RPGs thirty years ago (combat with strikes, parry, dodge, roll with impact, called shots, burst fire and hit locations, plus an actual skill system... wow did that hit JUST the right spot for that point in my rpg development).

Basically, any system without clear "Yes, your character can do this (even if it requires a check to determine the outcome)" level rules for character actions is an immediate turn off for me. There will always be edge cases, obviously, but there's a LOT of actions you can predict being attempted given the genre of the game and I have better things to do with my time than deal with system that can't even be bothered to cover those basics.

It may not be rational, but the experience was so formative (coming in early teens) that its not even something I have an interest in getting over; particularly when there are so many options out there that DO cater to my preferences in terms of game design.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 02, 2021, 04:12:34 PM

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 02:50:13 PM
Just to emphasize how easy class building is in B/X, here's the fighter:

Yeah, I can't do rules-lite like that. I'd be immensely frustrated by having to rely almost entirely on "GM May I" to accomplish anything. I HATE "GM May I" with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

It's not mother may I, that's a bad mischaracterization of how it works. The rules are objective, and once set they're set. What you're doing is collaboratively designing the rules by which your character will be played. Which is no different than saying let's play OD&D, or let's play Traveller. Or saying no to magical flying pixies in a Star Trek game.

Sounds like you just had a bad DM.

Again if we are going back to race as class and where it fits...

No it doesn't let you play a Dwarf Wizard.  But odds are you wouldn't get to play one anyway.  You roll to see what you get, and you play something from the options available to you.

You don't design a unique character.

This is absolutely crucial to understand the shift in paradigm.

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 04:15:18 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 02, 2021, 04:12:34 PM

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 02:50:13 PM
Just to emphasize how easy class building is in B/X, here's the fighter:

Yeah, I can't do rules-lite like that. I'd be immensely frustrated by having to rely almost entirely on "GM May I" to accomplish anything. I HATE "GM May I" with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

It's not mother may I, that's a bad mischaracterization of how it works. The rules are objective, and once set they're set. What you're doing is collaboratively designing the rules by which your character will be played. Which is no different than saying let's play OD&D, or let's play Traveller. Or saying no to magical flying pixies in a Star Trek game.

Sounds like you just had a bad DM.

It's funny.  I have a reaction similar to Chris but on this issue it is from the other side of the screen.  I intensely dislike doing that kind of thing, whether you call it "Yes, Player you May" or collaborative one-off character design.  If it was a bad experience with the DM that caused it, I have no one but me to blame. :D

It's not as if I don't enjoy working with players on rules and system and setting design.  I do that all the time.  It's only that when I do it, I want to do explicitly that.  By the time we are into character generation, my head is in another space.

Perhaps it is related to my tastes in character modeling.  I really dislike the idea that a character from a fantasy novel is lifted as is and made an archetype with little discernment.  It's why so many of the D&D versions of the ranger rub me the wrong way.  Because Aragon isn't merely a ranger.  He is a leader of the rangers with an unusual background and the abilities that go with that.  Not to mention the whole, "Hands of the Healer" thing is a very specific prophecy property of his character, not a ranger thing.  So I'm just not wired to enjoy having the conversation of, "I want to play Samwise Gamgee except as a female nature priest."  At least not mixed with rules design at the same time.  "Female hobbit druid" may sound like close to the same thing but somehow isn't in my head.

I get that other people are wired differently.  For them, having the conversation about the concept and the mechanics at the same time is a highly useful shortcut.

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 04:15:18 PM
Sounds like you just had a bad DM.

No, I had quite possibly one of the worst DMs to ever attempt to DM. One so bad I almost gave up on RPGs entirely in my early teens and so formative in my experience with role-playing that it utterly poisoned even the IDEA of playing D&D to the point that I didn't touch it again for DECADES, and even then it was 3e and I dumped that for 4E as soon as it was available (and 4E remains the ONLY version of D&D I actually enjoy playing).

To be plain... I despise OSR-style play. I can't stand even the thought of playing Basic or AD&D, much less OD&D. I know its residual to my experiences. I don't care. It's a visceral reaction and I have better things to do with my time than try to get over those feelings about a type of entertainment I can easily avoid (just like I haven't gone ATVing since I had a rollover that nearly cost me a leg... some things just aren't worth the time to revisit).

Give me any Palladium game, Mekton, WEG Star Wars, Mechwarrior (any edition), Champions, the World of Darkness (oWoD preferably, but I've played some nWoD and didn't hate it), LUG Star Trek, Mutants & Masterminds, 4E D&D or Ruins & Realms (the system I wrote; so obviously is right up my alley)... and I'm game.

But I would rather go watch the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy (the one so bad I STILL haven't seen Rise of Skywalker) followed by a full binge of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power than touch anything based on TSR-era D&D.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 02, 2021, 04:12:34 PM
Yeah, I can't do rules-lite like that. I'd be immensely frustrated by having to rely almost entirely on "GM May I" to accomplish anything. I HATE "GM May I" with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 02, 2021, 05:01:07 PM
I have a reaction similar to Chris but on this issue it is from the other side of the screen.  I intensely dislike doing that kind of thing, whether you call it "Yes, Player you May" or collaborative one-off character design.  If it was a bad experience with the DM that caused it, I have no one but me to blame. :D

It's not as if I don't enjoy working with players on rules and system and setting design.  I do that all the time.  It's only that when I do it, I want to do explicitly that.  By the time we are into character generation, my head is in another space.

This seems like it's a different topic than atypical race/class combos -- maybe it should be broken out into its own thread? Are y'all interested in discussing the issue further (of bespoke chargen vs by-the-book)?

Quote from: jhkim on February 02, 2021, 05:55:36 PM
This seems like it's a different topic than atypical race/class combos -- maybe it should be broken out into its own thread? Are y'all interested in discussing the issue further (of bespoke chargen vs by-the-book)?

If there is such a topic, I'll probably have something to say about it.  At the moment, I can't say what that might be beyond what I already said.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 02, 2021, 05:36:37 PM
To be plain... I despise OSR-style play.

That's fine. People like different things.

AD&D was the first version of D&D I played, so I'm used to separate-race-and-class.  (Holmes Basic was the first D&D I owned.) But I also like race-specific classes like Adventure, Conqueror, King System (ACKS) uses, where there instead of just a Dwarf race-as-class there are Dwarven Vaultguards, Dwarven Craftpriests, Dwarven Delvers, Dwarven Furies, and Dwarven Machinists.   Where instead of an Elf race-as-class there are Elven Spellswords, Elven NIghtblades, Elven Courtiers, Elven Enchanters, and Elven Rangers.  And there is, in the Players Companion, a reasonably complete but not onerously complicated system for coming up with more for your specific campaign/setting. (And of course you can use the same system to come up with more human classes as well.)  That way all the different races feel different.

I had forgotten that orcs in AD&D didn't have an intelligence penalty. If they have +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha then they actually make better wizards than humans assuming you don't use maximum level limits, which was a ridiculous way to balance races.

Anyway, instead just having a standard set of racial modifiers or having a different set of classes for each race, maybe it would both be cooler and allow for more diverse options to have a different racial ability or abilities (or even disadvantages) based on class. For example, an orc wizard might get +1 damage per die for spells, a elven wizard might be able to cast an extra enchant/charm spell each level per day, a dwarf wizard could cast in light armor, and so on. This way you could have a thematic advantage for each race and class. Personally, I don't even like rolling for attributes, so if I wanted to tie race to attributes, I would probably just change attribute maximums. Elves could have at most 20 Dex and 16 Con, for example.

I suppose that attribute bonuses or penalties could be tied to a combination of race and class - so orc wizards get -2 Cha. Orc sorcerers could get -2 Wis. Orc clerics could get -2 Int. This could allow for a mental attribute penalty that didn't affect a casting stat.

On the racial modifiers, one of the things I don't like about them in WotC D&D is that the stats have remained static as the game has changed out from under them.  Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha isn't the perfect set, but it works pretty darn well on a rare mod for Basic/Expert or (near as I can tell) OD&D.  When stats begin to inflate and more classes get introduced, it shows a little strain.  By the time WotC gets a hold of it, it really doesn't fit the game anymore.

If the tradition is so strong that the ability score modifiers must remain the same, then the things that make them work should also stay the same.  Or if the other things can change, so can the ability scores.  If we are to have racial mods, then they should be mods to something that isn't already having its own issues unrelated to the races.

Quote from: ShieldWife on February 02, 2021, 10:20:33 PM
I had forgotten that orcs in AD&D didn't have an intelligence penalty. If they have +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha then they actually make better wizards than humans assuming you don't use maximum level limits, which was a ridiculous way to balance races.

No level limits, half-orcs just aren't allowed to be magic-users. AD&D1 specified which races were allowed to take which classes, and even which class combinations were possible for multi-classed characters of each race. Half-orcs were only allowed to be clerics, fighters, thieves, assassins, or the combos of C/F, C/T, C/A, F/T, or F/A. And yes, they all had racial level limits (C4, F10, T6-8 depending on Dex), with the exception of assassin, which was limited to 14th (15th) level anyway. And that doesn't get into other factors, like racial mins and maxes. Half-orcs, for instance, had a max Int of 17. Which means no wishes, even if they were allowed to be magic-users. At least not without ability enhancing help, which is another complicated topic.

AD&D has a very complex set of racial restrictions.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 02, 2021, 11:23:42 PM
On the racial modifiers, one of the things I don't like about them in WotC D&D is that the stats have remained static as the game has changed out from under them.  Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha isn't the perfect set, but it works pretty darn well on a rare mod for Basic/Expert or (near as I can tell) OD&D.  When stats begin to inflate and more classes get introduced, it shows a little strain.  By the time WotC gets a hold of it, it really doesn't fit the game anymore.

If the tradition is so strong that the ability score modifiers must remain the same, then the things that make them work should also stay the same.  Or if the other things can change, so can the ability scores.  If we are to have racial mods, then they should be mods to something that isn't already having its own issues unrelated to the races.

I don't think that the standard six attributes are bad. They have a few flaws but I think over the years the systems have been tuned to improve things. I honestly might combine Strength and Constitution, as Strength is so often a worthless attribute if you're not a close combat character. Also, it's hard to imagine an incredibly strong character who isn't tough as well. Intelligence in 3.x was good because anybody could benefit from more skill points, but it seems like it's worthless for almost any class aside from the wizard now.

What ever imperfections that the traditional six attributes have, fixing them is probably not worth going against tradition for.

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 11:29:03 PM

Quote from: ShieldWife on February 02, 2021, 10:20:33 PM
I had forgotten that orcs in AD&D didn't have an intelligence penalty. If they have +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha then they actually make better wizards than humans assuming you don't use maximum level limits, which was a ridiculous way to balance races.

No level limits, half-orcs just aren't allowed to be magic-users. AD&D1 specified which races were allowed to take which classes, and even which class combinations were possible for multi-classed characters of each race. Half-orcs were only allowed to be clerics, fighters, thieves, assassins, or the combos of C/F, C/T, C/A, F/T, or F/A. And yes, they all had racial level limits (C4, F10, T6-8 depending on Dex), with the exception of assassin, which was limited to 14th (15th) level anyway. And that doesn't get into other factors, like racial mins and maxes. Half-orcs, for instance, had a max Int of 17. Which means no wishes, even if they were allowed to be magic-users. At least not without ability enhancing help, which is another complicated topic.

AD&D has a very complex set of racial restrictions.

AD&D was great in a number of ways, but the rules were also a convoluted arbitrary mess. 

Quote from: ShieldWife on February 03, 2021, 12:37:24 AM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 02, 2021, 11:23:42 PM
On the racial modifiers, one of the things I don't like about them in WotC D&D is that the stats have remained static as the game has changed out from under them.  Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha isn't the perfect set, but it works pretty darn well on a rare mod for Basic/Expert or (near as I can tell) OD&D.  When stats begin to inflate and more classes get introduced, it shows a little strain.  By the time WotC gets a hold of it, it really doesn't fit the game anymore.

If the tradition is so strong that the ability score modifiers must remain the same, then the things that make them work should also stay the same.  Or if the other things can change, so can the ability scores.  If we are to have racial mods, then they should be mods to something that isn't already having its own issues unrelated to the races.

I don't think that the standard six attributes are bad. They have a few flaws but I think over the years the systems have been tuned to improve things. I honestly might combine Strength and Constitution, as Strength is so often a worthless attribute if you're not a close combat character. Also, it's hard to imagine an incredibly strong character who isn't tough as well. Intelligence in 3.x was good because anybody could benefit from more skill points, but it seems like it's worthless for almost any class aside from the wizard now.

What ever imperfections that the traditional six attributes have, fixing them is probably not worth going against tradition for.

Quote from: Pat on February 02, 2021, 11:29:03 PM

Quote from: ShieldWife on February 02, 2021, 10:20:33 PM
I had forgotten that orcs in AD&D didn't have an intelligence penalty. If they have +1 Str, +1 Con, and -2 Cha then they actually make better wizards than humans assuming you don't use maximum level limits, which was a ridiculous way to balance races.

No level limits, half-orcs just aren't allowed to be magic-users. AD&D1 specified which races were allowed to take which classes, and even which class combinations were possible for multi-classed characters of each race. Half-orcs were only allowed to be clerics, fighters, thieves, assassins, or the combos of C/F, C/T, C/A, F/T, or F/A. And yes, they all had racial level limits (C4, F10, T6-8 depending on Dex), with the exception of assassin, which was limited to 14th (15th) level anyway. And that doesn't get into other factors, like racial mins and maxes. Half-orcs, for instance, had a max Int of 17. Which means no wishes, even if they were allowed to be magic-users. At least not without ability enhancing help, which is another complicated topic.

AD&D has a very complex set of racial restrictions.

AD&D was great in a number of ways, but the rules were also a convoluted arbitrary mess.

D6 Fantasy utilizes Physique as a sort of combination of str/con; while splitting dex into agility for general mobility and coordination for hand/eye and fine motor skills, thus shooting a bow is coordination while backflipping through swinging blades is agility. This is mostly a result of D6 system being skill based and thus needing enough skills under an attribute to justify its existence as an attribute. I think in D20 system there is only a single constitution skill, concentration or something.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 03, 2021, 01:06:38 AM

D6 Fantasy utilizes Physique as a sort of combination of str/con; while splitting dex into agility for general mobility and coordination for hand/eye and fine motor skills, thus shooting a bow is coordination while backflipping through swinging blades is agility. This is mostly a result of D6 system being skill based and thus needing enough skills under an attribute to justify its existence as an attribute. I think in D20 system there is only a single constitution skill, concentration or something.

I use a similar set for my d20-based game for the same reason:  Might, Lore, Will, Dexterity, Agility, and Perception. 

The moment you introduce skills (or something like them) to the classic D&D six characteristics, they start to show problems.  WotC keeps introducing things into the rules to try to make them continue to fit but this is the tail wagging the dog.  Extra skill points from Int in 3E is a perfect example.  It doesn't work very well (because the math is wonky and the scaling of skill points is off among other reasons related to how cumbersome it becomes) and is only in there for some misplaced sense of simulation and to try to make Int more important than it is.  Of course, the scale of the bonuses and when you get them also screws things up.  Racial modifiers to Int monkeying with atypical combinations is just the cherry on top, really.

That goes to show, if you want the game to readily support atypical race-class combos, then that needs to be a design consideration from the get go.  That's why people in this topic keep coming back to "race in class" as a solution.  A lot of people don't prefer it (me included), but it does solves that design issue as long as the GM is willing to produced new classes for the campaign or setting.  Because that is the way the game was designed to accommodate such changes. Chris is solving it a different way in his game.  I'm solving it a different way in my game.  There are numerous ways to solve it.  In a 5E game, probably the easiest way for a GM to solve it is to remove the racial modifiers entirely and then also limit the class/race combinations that are allowed in the setting.  You could even take the next step and package those together into templates to make it easier for new players to get into the game ... :)

As an aside to the previous point, if someone had the unenviable task of rewriting 3E to support more atypical race-class combos while being as true to tradition and to the 3E model as possible (and I couldn't convince them to run away), I suggest that the following strategy would be worth pursuing:

• Drop skills entirely.
• Rework feats to cover what skills used to, except in a few places put the skills back into the classes.  Of course, make feats meaningful in the process, which will be easier now that they aren't competing with skills for useful things to do.  Will also result in a reasonably short feat list.
• Tie the races and feats just a little. Could be a simple as races getting certain feats for free or more complex like qualifying for them notably sooner.  (This is 3E we are talking about after all.)
• If you want the gold medal, build in multi-classing from the start of your design instead of tacking it on as a half-thought, untested idea driven by narrow ideas about simulation and the mistaken assumption that all the fun in Hero and GURPS is the character building. That's not strictly necessary to accomplish the goal, but will make your users happier.  With all the time you save not trying to fit skills into a class-based game, you can at least make the attempt.

As a bonus, the resulting game will be marginally more acceptable to fans of AD&D.  Barely enough to move a small slice of them into willing to give it a try, but that's the way bonus marginal stuff works.  There, that's the hard way you keep the classic D&D characteristics in place and accomplish the goal.  Well, hard now that you've got the baggage of previous WotC attempts to overcome. If they hadn't made "feat" into a game design curse, your job would be easier.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 03, 2021, 01:06:38 AM
D6 Fantasy utilizes Physique as a sort of combination of str/con; while splitting dex into agility for general mobility and coordination for hand/eye and fine motor skills, thus shooting a bow is coordination while backflipping through swinging blades is agility. This is mostly a result of D6 system being skill based and thus needing enough skills under an attribute to justify its existence as an attribute. I think in D20 system there is only a single constitution skill, concentration or something.

Traditionally in D&D, Strength can still be pretty useful since melee combat is a popular choice, even though there aren't many Strength based skills and almost no Constitution based skills. In 5th edition D&D, both Intelligence and Strength became less useful since Dexterity based fighters and archers can just use Dexterity now for both damage and attack without jumping through the hoops that previous editions required.

In some games, Dexterity (or the equivalent) is the overpowered combat attribute, adding to all attacks and damage, to defense, and also all sorts of skills. In those games, combining Constitution and Strength makes a lot of sense. 

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 03, 2021, 09:04:06 AM
snip

I kinda like 3.x skills though. In fact, I that Intelligence adds to skill points. It emphasizes that being intelligent actually is important to everybody, even if you aren't studying a book or using alchemy to make a potion. I also would prefer a system where there weren't attributes which are entirely useless for certain classes. It seems like in recent editions there has been a push to focus on Charisma, perhaps the traditional dump stat going back decades, but now both Intelligence and Strength are nearly useless for anybody that doesn't have a class based primarily on those attributes.

I don't particularly like race as class either, though I think that it might be thematically appropriate to limit certain classes to certain races. I was once in a campaign where only elves could be bards, because the elven style of magic was to sing to create the magical effects, hence bard magic.

My solution to the stat issue was to try and ensure they all had fairly equal weight and use across all the classes. Part of this too involved drastically cutting down the number of skills in the system to just a dozen.

So Strength gets used as a primary attribute by fighters and secondary attributes for Big Lug gadgeteers, Potent Spirit mystics, Militant theurges and War wizards. It is used for all melee attacks unless a class ability allows otherwise (and those a limited to lighter weapons; note too that fighters have an option to use Str for attacks with bows; it's easier to aim when you have the strength to hold the drawn back arrow for a bit before you release than a weakling who has to basically snap shot it because they lack the strength to hold and aim).

Strength also determines your climb, jump and swim speeds (a base level of performance where no check is needed; a human weakling with a STR -1 can only manage a single pace and would need a check just to move through difficult climbing, jumping or swimming terrain; a mighty STR 4 human hero can make progress on anything but blocking terrain for climbing, jumping and swimming without needing a check), your base load and may determine your Armor (medium and heavy armor also has a strength requirement to avoid penalties) and Fortitude defenses.

Endurance's primary use is detemining your heroic surges (if you're familiar with 4E think of them as a combination of healing surges, action points, daily power uses and death saves) and how quickly they recover (ranging from 1/hour of rest to 3/hour if you had the D&D equivalent of an 18-20 Con). It also may determine your Fortitude defense (if it's higher than your STR) and is the key stat for the Fitness skill (which is used for pushing past your normal STR-based limits and to resist things like fatigue and disease).

Reflexes are the primary attribute for fighters focused on lighter weapons and the secondary attribute for Monkeywrencher gadgeteers, Swift Spirit mystics, Zealous theurges and War Wizards. It is the default for ranged weapon attacks unless a class ability allows otherwise. It determines initiative, may determine your Armor and Dodge defenses and governs the Acrobatics and Stealth skills (the latter of which includes sleights of hand/pick pocketing).

Wits are the primary attribute for Mystics and the secondary attribute of Wary fighters and masterminds, Troubleshooter gadgeteers, Faithful theurges and Lore Wizards. It may determine your Dodge defense (if it's higher than your Reflexes) and governs the skills of Insight (which includes D&D style perception; you perceive what you perceive, it's your training in Insight that lets you interpret what you're perceiving), Medicine and Nature.

Intellect is the primary attribute of Gadgeteers and Wizards and the secondary attribute of Tactical fighters and masterminds, Logical Spirit mystics and Faithful theurges. It may determine your Willpower defense and governs the skills of Arcana (which anyone trained can use to perform ritual magic), Culture (including history and language) and Engineering (building and disabling devices).

Presence is the primary attribute of Theurges and a secondary attribute for Daring fighters and masterminds, Mad Genius gadgeteers, Clever Spirit mystics and Social wizards. It may determine your Willpower defense and governs the skills of Deceit, Intimidate and Persuade (which is primary used to influence reaction rolls).

This means that every class has a potential use for every attribute (END being universally valuable to everyone regardless of class) so while a giant and a gnome have very different species attribute bonuses, each could be an effective member of any class, just in different ways (i.e. a strong wary giant fighter vs. a swift daring gnome fighter).

Also, for the few cases where a species attributes just didn't align with a primary class attribute, I added species traits to compensate;

- Beastmen don't get a PRE bump option, but do get a trait called Astral Alliance which grants a bonus spellcasting talent if they choose the Theurge class.

- Dwarves also don't get a PRE bump option, but get Astral Quality which allows them to treat their theurge spellcasting implements as one quality grade higher.

- Golems don't get a WIT bump option, but gets Deus Ex Machina which gives them a bonus spellcasting talent if they worship the Great Machine (their term for the monotheistic god in the setting) and select the Mystic class.

- Malfeans don't get a WIT or INT bump option, but get Spirit Kin which gives them a bonus primal boon if they select the mystic class, and Infernal Implements which lets them add a chosen additional quality to gadgeteer or wizard implements they wield.

So even when your primary stats don't quite line up, there's always a potential benefit to choosing any of the classes.

Also of note in the setting fluff is that the Beastmen and Elves have strong devotion to their astral faiths, making theurges the most common spellcasters among their numbers... the Beastman trait ensures that there's a bit of difference between Elven and Beastmen Theurges.

Likewise, the Malfeans and Eldritch are by far the most devoted to The Old Faith where mystics are the standard practitioners of magic. Eldritch come by it naturally (species bonus to WIT) because they're exiled primal spirits. Malfeans follow it based on a theological belief in The Promise despite a lack of innate ability, but get an extra bit of help if they're on the path from their primal spirit "cousins" (represented by the bonus primal boon)... again, same class with different species-based flavors.

So that's how my system handles the atypical race/class combos... first by making every attribute something each class can use, second by giving each species a range of options for their species attribute bonuses, and third by giving those few species that couldn't get a primary attribute bump for a class instead got another benefit that improved the class in a different way.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 03, 2021, 09:04:06 AM
As an aside to the previous point, if someone had the unenviable task of rewriting 3E to support more atypical race-class combos while being as true to tradition and to the 3E model as possible (and I couldn't convince them to run away), I suggest that the following strategy would be worth pursuing:

• Drop skills entirely.
• Rework feats to cover what skills used to, except in a few places put the skills back into the classes.  Of course, make feats meaningful in the process, which will be easier now that they aren't competing with skills for useful things to do.  Will also result in a reasonably short feat list.
• Tie the races and feats just a little. Could be a simple as races getting certain feats for free or more complex like qualifying for them notably sooner.  (This is 3E we are talking about after all.)
• If you want the gold medal, build in multi-classing from the start of your design instead of tacking it on as a half-thought, untested idea driven by narrow ideas about simulation and the mistaken assumption that all the fun in Hero and GURPS is the character building. That's not strictly necessary to accomplish the goal, but will make your users happier.  With all the time you save not trying to fit skills into a class-based game, you can at least make the attempt.

This seems like a radical change that is mostly unrelated to atypical race/class combos. I didn't play much of 3E, but I played and ran for a number of atypical race-class combos. They were slightly suboptimal, but at the time it seemed like a big and cool change that any race could be any class.

I think just changing the attribute adjustments would be fine.

Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2021, 02:04:48 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 03, 2021, 09:04:06 AM
As an aside to the previous point, if someone had the unenviable task of rewriting 3E to support more atypical race-class combos while being as true to tradition and to the 3E model as possible (and I couldn't convince them to run away), I suggest that the following strategy would be worth pursuing:

• Drop skills entirely.
• Rework feats to cover what skills used to, except in a few places put the skills back into the classes.  Of course, make feats meaningful in the process, which will be easier now that they aren't competing with skills for useful things to do.  Will also result in a reasonably short feat list.
• Tie the races and feats just a little. Could be a simple as races getting certain feats for free or more complex like qualifying for them notably sooner.  (This is 3E we are talking about after all.)
• If you want the gold medal, build in multi-classing from the start of your design instead of tacking it on as a half-thought, untested idea driven by narrow ideas about simulation and the mistaken assumption that all the fun in Hero and GURPS is the character building. That's not strictly necessary to accomplish the goal, but will make your users happier.  With all the time you save not trying to fit skills into a class-based game, you can at least make the attempt.

This seems like a radical change that is mostly unrelated to atypical race/class combos. I didn't play much of 3E, but I played and ran for a number of atypical race-class combos. They were slightly suboptimal, but at the time it seemed like a big and cool change that any race could be any class.

I think just changing the attribute adjustments would be fine.

Well, if it wasn't clear from my editorial comments, I don't think it would be a good use of someone's time.  I certainly wouldn't waste my time on it.  I'm more listing it as a thought exercise for what would need to be done if someone was really serious about solving it at a system level.  Also as to why focusing on racial abilities is barking up the wrong tree on this topic.  Any GM worth their salt can take a group of reasonable players and address issues as they arise with a whole lot less effort.