Talking about racial level limits in the argument thread, lets look at the Human race in terms of game balance over the course of 1E thru 4E.

1E--The Human race was in and of itself mostly inferior to demihumans. The +1 to a specific stat generally outweighed the -1 penalty to the other, and demihumans got powerful racial abilities that really mattered, like the Dwarven bonus to saving throws to magic and poison, and Elves with +1 to attack rolls with bows and swords. In addition, Demihumans could become multiclass characters, which were generally very powerful and versatile. That being said, demihumans had limits to the character levels they could achieve, which in 1E were often very harsh limits. Only Humans could gain any level in any class, and some classes were Human only, like the Monk and Paladin. Before level limits, Demihumans were generally significantly more powerful, while Humans only exceeded them when they reached high levels inaccessible to Demihumans.

2E--This is probably the low point for the Human race. Demihumans got the same bonuses in 2E they got in 1E, and the same ability to multiclass. The main limit on them, level limits, were vastly increased and in most games never seen. Unless you were a Paladin or specialist Wizard who could only be Human, there were better mechanical choices.

3E--Holy shit what a difference. 3E's feat system added a twist to things. Feats could be insanely powerful, and they were precious since you only got seven of them over 20 levels. The fact that Humans got a bonus one made them the best race choice for almost every character. The CharOp community that arose during 3E swore by them.

4E--Possibly the closest thing to balance in the D&D era. Humans get +2 to only one stat, unlike the other races who get a pair of bonuses, but the +2 Humans get can be to any of the six stats. On balance, Humans are excellent at most classes(much more so than any other race), but are slightly weaker at classes that need two max stats or are dependent on 3+ ability scores(when you need decent scores in four stats, the loss of the second +2 hurts). They also get three solid racial abilities, which put them on par with the best of 4E's races. The extra feat isn't as powerful as it was in 3E(4E's feats aren't as game changing and is less valuable since you get more during the course of the game), its still pretty strong especially as more material is released. The +1 to Fort/Ref/Will is one of the most overlooked racial features, and is insanely powerful if subtle. The third At-Will attack is either worthless(on a class like Ranger who uses one attack 90% of the time) or fantastic(on a class like Wizard or Druid who rely on being versatile).

Why can't game designers ever let humans just be Humans! - with both their highs and their lows?


- Ed C.

Uh, what? Humans make very little sense in 4e. Yes, they are, sometimes, arguably, the second or third best race for a class, but they're never the best (a real problem in a game where optimization is critical).

They were weak when the game first came out, and have only gotten weaker as more powerful races have been released. This stuff has been discussed endlessly on the WotC forums, and pretty well established, even there.

+2 to any stat? Meaningless, there are plenty of races available, you can easily find a race with a +2 to the stat you want, AND a +2 to another stat you want. For a little while, human fighters and paladins kinda-sorta worked, if you didn't want to be a dragonborn, that was your only option if you wanted a strength bonus. But now? Shifters pretty much dominate that, so, nope.

The extra feat? Meaningless, since they don't get a 'base' feat like other races. More versatile, sure, but your character is only one character, not 20 characters, so as soon as you pick something, you fall behind.

Extra skill? Other races get bonuses to skills, and a bonus is worth more than an extra skill. In 4e, two skills at +7 is far better than three skills at +5, sorry.

NAD defense bonus? Almost meaningless, since other races get an attribute bonus that increase a NAD, and some races get a defense bonus. I do concede 'almost', since, you're right, 4e has such problems that "+1 to a defense is insanely powerful", as you say. But, monster and game design is such that NAD defenses fall behind anyway, making the bonus too little to matter.

Racial feats? Half-elves get all the racial feats humans get, and then some, so that can't work.

Extra at-will? Ok, for some classes, for a little while, that made sense. But, gnome wizards are the only option now, so, um, no, not anymore.

Haven't seen a human in my campaigns in over a year, and I don't blame my players for that.

At least in the old FASA STAR TREK game Humans were automatically luckier than all the other races. Which was great since the LUCK attribute could be used as last chance/miracle saving roll in the game.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Doom;376122Uh, what? Humans make very little sense in 4e. Yes, they are, sometimes, arguably, the second or third best race for a class, but they're never the best (a real problem in a game where optimization is critical).

That isn't quite true. They are the best Wizards hands down. Wizards could give a crap about a second stat, and the Human racials are almost perfect. I'd say they are arguably as good a race for Invokers and Druids as anything else as well.

Quote from: Doom;376122They were weak when the game first came out, and have only gotten weaker as more powerful races have been released. This stuff has been discussed endlessly on the WotC forums, and pretty well established, even there.

+2 to any stat? Meaningless, there are plenty of races available, you can easily find a race with a +2 to the stat you want, AND a +2 to another stat you want. For a little while, human fighters and paladins kinda-sorta worked, if you didn't want to be a dragonborn, that was your option. But now? Shifters pretty much dominate that, so, nope.

And this is where you fall down. Shifters are garbage. Razorclaw Shifters don't hold a candle to Elves(or Githzerai or Wilden), and Longtooth Shifters have a racial ability they can't rely on, almost zero racial abilities besides that and zero feat support, and are blown away by the Minotaur from PHB 3 as the best Str/Wis race.

Quote from: Doom;376122The extra feat? Meaningless, since they don't get a 'base' feat like other races. More versatile, sure, but your character is only one character, not 20 characters, so as soon as you pick something, you fall behind.

If you're using all the supplements, there are now enough good feats that you run out of them, and having an extra means something. If anything, more supplements has improved Humans by making the extra feat more useful.

Quote from: Doom;376122Extra skill? Other races get bonuses to skills, and a bonus is worth more than an extra skill. In 4e, two skills at +7 is far better than three skills at +5, sorry.

You got me there with skills, but this is a small thing.

Quote from: Doom;376122NAD defense bonus? Almost meaningless, since other races get an attribute bonus that increase a NAD, and some races get a defense bonus. I do concede 'almost', since, you're right, 4e has such problems that "+1 to a defense is insanely powerful", as you say. But, monster and game design is such that NAD defenses fall behind anyway, making the bonus too little to matter.

Its bigger than you think. I create characters for kicks(in the past month I've created about 53 characters, leveled all the way to 30), and that defense bonus has a bigger effect on the base numbers than you'd expect. When you run a Human character for a while and then start running a different character, you notice a significant difference.

Quote from: Doom;376122Racial feats? Half-elves get all the racial feats humans get, and then some, so that can't work.

Half elves don't work for everything. Humans do. Half-Elves make better use of Action Surge as Paladins and Bards, but they aren't as good at Wizard or Barbarian.

Quote from: Doom;376122Extra at-will? Ok, for some classes, for a little while, that made sense. But, gnome wizards are the only option now, so, um, no, not anymore.

You're a bit out of date there. The last errata eliminated the Gnome Wizards thing. I did say that the extra At-Will was a case-by case thing.

Quote from: Doom;376122Haven't seen a human in my campaigns in over a year, and I don't blame my players for that.

I see them fairly frequently, both in my home game and at the RPGA. One of the more played races, IMO.

Basically I'd agree with the OP's assessment of humans strength in the earlier editions, though I can't comment on this aspect of 4th in any detail.

1st ed- humans have the highest Strength maximum of the non-strength-bonus races (at 18/00), also. Could be handy.

2nd ed- yep not such a great time for humankind. Later in the edition they start further behind as racial handbooks start to appear.

3rd- the extra favoured class is pretty useful in 3rd as well. This gets more useful as time goes on and new classes appear (Beguiler, samurai, swashbuckler, whatever), since most of these - apart from the psionic and incarnum classes - don't have matching races.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;3760942E--This is probably the low point for the Human race. Demihumans got the same bonuses in 2E they got in 1E, and the same ability to multiclass. The main limit on them, level limits, were vastly increased and in most games never seen.

Throwing out the major limitation of non-humans, and then complain that humans were underpowered in 2E? Way to mount an argument.

Take a look at the cleric spell list. No one except humans could cast high level cleric spells. The whole shebang with "if you cast this spell, you age 5 years" was specifically geared to the only race that could cast them. Elves (and clerics of similarly long-lived races) would laugh at the "severe penalty" of aging a couple of years. So 2E never even got these races close to be in a position to laugh about these things... by capping their cleric class progression early.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;3760942E--This is probably the low point for the Human race. Demihumans got the same bonuses in 2E they got in 1E, and the same ability to multiclass. The main limit on them, level limits, were vastly increased and in most games never seen. Unless you were a Paladin or specialist Wizard who could only be Human, there were better mechanical choices.

Actually, with the dual class rules humans blow up every race in 2E, the ability to mantain all the class bonuses from the first class once you surpassed it with your second was insane.
An Fighter 7 dual class anything was scary, granted you needed great attributes to pull it off but no beter than what was needed to play a paladin so.

Y'know, for me (and this is only half on topic, sorry), but I always thought it made more sense to give humans multiclassing and demihumans dualclassing.

It just made more sense to me that a human would try to juggle a couple of different pursuits, whereas an elf would get bored being a Mage after a while and decide to spice things up with some thievery (and so on).

Anyone ever play with the Humanoids Handbook and the awesome races (like orcs) who had an even smaller lifespan than humans?

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;376126That isn't quite true. They are the best Wizards hands down. Wizards could give a crap about a second stat, and the Human racials are almost perfect. I'd say they are arguably as good a race for Invokers and Druids as anything else as well.



And this is where you fall down. Shifters are garbage. Razorclaw Shifters don't hold a candle to Elves(or Githzerai or Wilden), and Longtooth Shifters have a racial ability they can't rely on, almost zero racial abilities besides that and zero feat support, and are blown away by the Minotaur from PHB 3 as the best Str/Wis race.

I think you underestimate how game-breaking built-in regeneration is in a game that already has massively excessive healing. It certainly cancels a +1 to a defense, since the 1/20 extra chance of being hit is more than countered by the 100% chance of healing 2/4/6, at least until you get to monsters that expect to hit for more than 40/80/120 damage a hit (hint: there are no such monsters).

Ok, you've conceded Minotaurs dominate all for strength and wisdom, so for those stats, humans can't cut it in any event.

QuoteIts bigger than you think. I create characters for kicks(in the past month I've created about 53 characters, leveled all the way to 30), and that defense bonus has a bigger effect on the base numbers than you'd expect. When you run a Human character for a while and then start running a different character, you notice a significant difference.

But, do the math. By high level, RAW monsters don't do enough damage to matter anyway, making the bonus irrelevant, even if regeneration didn't already make it irrelevant.

Even if the two reasons it's irrelevant didn't exist, non-humans get a +1 due to the second +2 to attribute, now we're at 2/3s of relevant.

If that WAS still relevant, it's only applying to two of the four defenses, now we're looking at 1/2 of whatever minor relevance there might arguably be in some special cases.

Even if it was STILL relevant, it's not helping against AC, which by far is the most often attacked stat. So it's more like 30% of whatever minor relevance there might arguably be in some special cases.

So, no.

QuoteHalf elves don't work for everything. Humans do. Half-Elves make better use of Action Surge as Paladins and Bards, but they aren't as good at Wizard or Barbarian.

You're looking at 'everything'...look at one class. No matter what character you pick, sooner or later, that character is going to have a class. This should happen fairly early on in chargen, unless you're doing things very strangely. As soon as you do so, 'work for everything' no longer is relevant.

Ok, now charisma is gone, too. That's half the ability scores right there, annihilating everything but intelligence, con, and dexterity based classes. Since elves pretty much have the lockdown on dex classes, and humans fall way behind on Con classes, so that pretty much leaves one class left.

QuoteYou're a bit out of date there. The last errata eliminated the Gnome Wizards thing. I did say that the extra At-Will was a case-by case thing.

Fair enough, although still you need intelligence and wisdom to get the most out of non-dex wizards.

Your own arguments have ruled out almost all classes already, just leaving the wizard, in fact, and then only a certain type.

We're now down to 'humans make very good wizards and nothing else', which is pretty far back from the initial claim that 'humans are balanced'.

I'm still not convinced that humans are clearly best at wizards. You've only got one advantage there, and you're giving up alot for it: one more at will, in a class that can change its at-wills around with a feat (it's one that humans can't access easily due to the ability score penalty they get, so this is closing in on a wash, if at-wills were necessarily game-breaking).


So, other than starting with 3 at-wills rather than 2, what exactly makes it possible that, in one particular case for one particular class, humans make sense? Is there a way to consistently fire off three at-wills in a round that I don't know about?

I... think the OP's analysis is all but accurate, actually. If you are thinking on the scale of a campaign, with multiple characters for multiple players, which each have a shot at growing, gaining experience, reaching their caps, and so on, so forth, then Humans sooner or later become the focus of the game in First Ed. Isn't that "game balance", too? Sure, demi-humans are originally more able at some things than humans, but humans are versatile, and more able to grow into their specialty.

How is "game balance" defined here, exactly?

This analysis doesn't make any sense, to me, because it compares all these elements as if they were played in the exact same way, regardless of the particulars of the game, with a concept of campaign that is exactly the same, and adventures that focus on exactly the same things. It completely excludes the wider picture of the particular game and assumes that they are all the same. They aren't. I just don't get the comparisons, here.

Y'all realize that this is just another "4e Roxxorz" thread, right?

Quote from: Angry_Douchebag;376207Y'all realize that this is just another "4e Roxxorz" thread, right?

If you understand the term "game balance" with the bent it took in 3.x up to 4e, sure.
It can only be such a thread.

Quote from: Benoist;376203If you are thinking on the scale of a campaign, with multiple characters for multiple players, which each have a shot at growing, gaining experience, reaching their caps, and so on, so forth, then Humans sooner or later become the focus of the game in First Ed. Isn't that "game balance", too?

In actual play, how many 1E campaigns featured multiple players each running multiple characters who routinely reached cap level? You have to play an enormous amount of time, with a different configuration of players several times a week to satisfy the requirements for that format.

Sure, that's the way Gygax ran his games. But we know that his assumptions of how people played D&D no longer held up as soon as the game went commercial.

Quote from: Haffrung;376218In actual play, how many 1E campaigns featured multiple players each running multiple characters who routinely reached cap level? You have to play an enormous amount of time, with a different configuration of players several times a week to satisfy the requirements for that format.

Sure, that's the way Gygax ran his games. But we know that his assumptions of how people played D&D no longer held up as soon as the game went commercial.

Assuming that everyone played a particular game the same way sure seems like a misguided premise to me, and if we follow that logic, assuming that people over a thirty-years time period would play different games the same way would seem to be even more of an erroneous premise. Which is exactly my point, actually: one cannot just compare these games in terms of "game balance" as if their context, the logic underlying their rules, and their assumed game play were exactly the same, because they just are not.