Our Warglblasters Are Different

[Username17]

I'm not against background points in general, but I think it's a mistake to allow races to be created from a set of options.

I mean, you need to lock down the races or just give up on races altogether. You can't really have an option where being raised by elves gives you low-light vision and you get to pass as human whenever you want because you can't tell stories about that (or not very good stories, at least).

Ideally, you'd just give every race a bunch of meaningless bonuses. Human's might have a resistance to necromancy and disease and the ability to spot people in a crowd as compensation for elves getting low-light vision and resistance to enchantment and sleep.

The thing you can't do is give is stat bonuses or abilities that make one race the default race for a class. I mean, the instant you have a +2 Dex/-2 Con race, people are going to ask you why you aren't a Rogue instead of a Fighter or a Wizards and that sucks.

4e showed us that no matter how fucking stupid sounding the check boxes were, people were going to get put out of shape if they didn't have the check box that lined up with their class abilities the best. Even if you get rid of the stat mods, some race is going to be better at hiding or trap finding or some shit, and then people are going to ask why they aren't playing a rogue. Or worse yet, why the player is playing a rogue that isn't a member of that race.

By reducing the value of the racial packages, you're reducing the incentive to play specific race/class combinations. But you aren't actually making them go away. The incentive to play specific race/class combinations is still there, and that's still a penalty for playing a class with the "wrong" race.

You make the racial correlation with the abilities non existent. That is, you have some background points and people have enough of them that they can buy whatever the fuck ends up on the list that makes you a good Necromancer or Psion no matter what race they nominally are.

-Username17

[K]

You make the racial correlation with the abilities non existent. That is, you have some background points and people have enough of them that they can buy whatever the fuck ends up on the list that makes you a good Necromancer or Psion no matter what race they nominally are.

-Username17

Why?

Why even have racial abilities that make you better at a class? It's not hard to just set up the races where the things you get for your race are just not useful for classes.

The most unquestioned concept in game design is that players need to be able to make bad character design choices so that the game is mostly won or lost before you even start playing, and we could just choose to not do that.

It seems the ideal would be to give people customization choices that aren't power choices in any meaningful sense. Heck, most abilities that DnD hands out like Fire Resistance are honestly things that might NEVER come up in the campaign, and you can hand that crap out as racial qualities without ever disturbing game balance.

[Lokathor]

It is less than simple to come up with a collection of races that each have a set of features that are all entirely class neutral. Some feature somewhere on a race's list will help some class more than it helps another class. Then you've got a problem.

[Username17]

Why even have racial abilities that make you better at a class? It's not hard to just set up the races where the things you get for your race are just not useful for classes.

That is pie in the sky horse shit. There are absolutely no abilities you could give out that wouldn't be disproportionately advantageous to something. Let's consider your own fucking example:

Ideally, you'd just give every race a bunch of meaningless bonuses. Human's might have a resistance to necromancy and disease and the ability to spot people in a crowd as compensation for elves getting low-light vision and resistance to enchantment and sleep.

OK, now we concern ourselves with the Necromancer (Warhammer style), a bunch of his cooler abilities involve having to resist dark magic or tomb rot as part of the cost. So if you are a human and have the "meaningless" ability to resist necromancy and disease better, your high end powers actually cost less, which means that if you take that race and don't take that class you're leaving abilities unused and if you take that class and don't take that race, it's harder for you to use high end abilities.

Or we have the Sniper, who fucking uses his "spot people in crowds" rolls to kill enemies, which makes that roll something that he not only rolls several times a session (instead of maybe once in a campaign), but also a bonus that min/maxxers will assume for purposes of making the class go.

And so on. If your "flavor" abilities do anything at all, then they will synergize with some build somewhere. Or worse yet, some of the flavor abilities will synergize with some class builds and others will "suck" instead. And since seeing in the dark is an ability that does something, that is necessarily going to be the case.

Simply handwaving it away and say "oh, make sure that none of the abilities synergize meaningfully with any class build" sounds good on paper, but that has never been successfully carried out in the history of man. There is an actual way to make sure that people aren't required to have or not have cat ears if they want to play a fencer - and that's handing out sufficient numbers of background points that people can buy whatever the fuck turns out to be mandatory for fencers regardless of the status of their cat ears.

-Username17

[hogarth]

Why even have racial abilities that make you better at a class? It's not hard to just set up the races where the things you get for your race are just not useful for classes.

Is it? The first example of a racial ability off the top of your head was low-light vision, for instance. Isn't that more useful to a non-spellcasting dude who hides in shadows than a spellcasting dude who's not particularly sneaky?

EDIT: ninja'ed by Frank

[shadzar]

The most unquestioned concept in game design is that players need to be able to make bad character design choices so that the game is mostly won or lost before you even start playing, and we could just choose to not do that.

this is just stupid.

Elf wizard player: HAHA i beat you because my wizard is already better being an elf than a human.

this is the kind of crap thinking that needs to be done away with.

thus why i said in my race thread, to have humans ONLY in core 5e to let people get used to playing the game, rather than competing with the other players to try to win against them.

ANY difference from one race to another will give an "advantage" in a specific class to those that think the game is a competition between players.

[Ancient History]

There is also, to a lesser extant, the issue of racial disadvantages. An Ent Ninja, while a fun concept, is going to face some major difficulties because of penalties to their Move Silently skill caused by size.

A subset of the issue are race-specific classes, feats, magic items, and the god-awful concept of "racial substitution levels" 3.5 introduced. The thing is that while being a gnome and getting some free cantrips seems cool at level 1, those innate abilities don't scale with level, so at level 10 (yes, yes. the game is already far past broken at that point, shuddup) their advantages can be almost inconsequential - in the best of circumstances. (Of course, they did try to get around that with bloodlines and crap.)

[CatharzGodfoot]

There is also, to a lesser extant, the issue of racial disadvantages. An Ent Ninja, while a fun concept, is going to face some major difficulties because of penalties to their Move Silently skill caused by size.

Unless they get some compensatory benefits, like being able to hide perfectly in plain sight. Nobody (but Macbeth) expects the tree!

[Maxus]

There is also, to a lesser extant, the issue of racial disadvantages. An Ent Ninja, while a fun concept, is going to face some major difficulties because of penalties to their Move Silently skill caused by size.

Unless they get some compensatory benefits, like being able to hide perfectly in plain sight. Nobody (but Macbeth) expects the tree!

Macbeth didn't even expect the tree! He was told straight-up to watch out for trees and went "Ah, not a forest for miles within the castle" and ignored.

If you're not going to take precautions against the tree-ninjas, you have no right to complain when they come for you.

[K]

Ideally, you'd just give every race a bunch of meaningless bonuses. Human's might have a resistance to necromancy and disease and the ability to spot people in a crowd as compensation for elves getting low-light vision and resistance to enchantment and sleep.

OK, now we concern ourselves with the Necromancer (Warhammer style), a bunch of his cooler abilities involve having to resist dark magic or tomb rot as part of the cost. So if you are a human and have the "meaningless" ability to resist necromancy and disease better, your high end powers actually cost less, which means that if you take that race and don't take that class you're leaving abilities unused and if you take that class and don't take that race, it's harder for you to use high end abilities.

Or you could just write a necromancer that doesn't get resistances to dark magic and disease that overlap or synergize with human racial bonuses and not have sniping involve a spotting checks.

This is a really trivial design problem and you are pretending its really hard. You do simple QA on each racial ability after the rest of the system is done and don't overlap or intertwine various mechanics when it's not necessary (and get the side bonus of a more streamlined system).

Low-light vision doesn't have to make you a better rogue if you have a stealth system where all characters get an advantage from spotting enemies in low light. Natural armor doesn't have to make you a better fighter if it doesn't stack with regular armor and everyone gets to wear armor. Fire resistance doesn't have to make your Wizard stuff cheaper if it works fundamentally different from the way a Wizard does damage mitigation.

Honestly, the "no bad choices at chargen" concept seems like it would produce a really clean system. At worst, it can't produce a worst system than the Gurps "infinite choices because we don't even pretend to be balanced."

[Stubbazubba]

Seemed relevant.

Some games are going the route of giving you a variety of ability bonus choices for each race. So an Elf gets +2 to Dex or Wis, and -2 to Str or Con, or what have you. Now, this is still a problem in D&D because some classes are MAD while others are SAD, but assuming you address that problem, then giving races +2 to a single physical ability and -1 to a single mental ability, or vice versa, or chop them up some other way, and have several different racial packages which represent different professional or regional cultures within that race.

For instance, if you're a Dwarf, you get +2 to any of Str, Con, Int, or Wis, and -2 to any of Nim, Int, Cha, or Wis, and take one of the following packages:

Dwarven Soldier:
Life as a Dwarven soldier is mostly about guard duty, so you get Darkvision, as well as Spot and Sense Motive +3. In addition, +1 racial bonus on attacks against goblinoids and Orcs, +2 racial bonus to Fort saves.

Dwarven Craftsman:
Stonecunning (as per PHB), Appraise, Craft (Stone or Metal-related), and Profession (appropriate Craftsman) +3. In addition, you begin the game with no more than 2 pieces of Masterwork equipment.

Dwarven Scholar:
Decipher Script, Spellcraft, and two different Knowledges +3. Some other ability which synergizes with casters.

Or something like that. You can have a long list of background packages for each race, maybe 4-6, if so desired. Possibly a way to build your own background kit from a list of skills and abilities.

In fact, you could expand it so that fully half of your statistics comes from Race + Racial background (i.e. Dwarven Scholar), and then half come from your Class + Professional background (i.e. Cleric of Thor, Healer). With just a small handful of free skill points and a feat to wrap it up. Then you could build a very synergistic build with most any race/class combination, and while it may not be completely open, it opens up a lot of options in any given race while avoiding the strangeness of completely divorcing your race from your character except for aesthetic.

[hogarth]

This is a really trivial design problem and you are pretending its really hard.

I also have a trivial solution to all of these problems but the margins of this message board are too small to contain it.

[Username17]

It's not a trivial design problem. It's an impossible design problem. If the racial traits do something, then they have a benefit or a penalty which disproportionately affects another choice you make, provided that choice also does anything at all.

I mean let's consider the merest concession of Low Light Vision. It lets you see farther. It is therefore by definition a boost that is more useful to ranged attackers and precision fighters and less useful to melee fighters and artillerists. Now repeat that consideration for every single available ability and every single available class and character build and come back and tell me that you won't have combinations that are "better" and "worse". For fuck's sake, you've already lost this argument the very moment you let cat girls see farther and you give one character a crossbow and another character a battle axe.

-Username17

[erik]

Yah, it's essentially impossible to not have some situational advantages inherent in any choice, otherwise they are meaningless choices.

Some races will undoubtedly be better leveraged towards some classes. I just feel that attribute bumps are probably a bit too much leverage- especially in a game like 4e where everyone is on the rails and their attack modifier is the most critical component in they interact with combat, having a difference of +2 is better than many feats that sadly, are sought after. That really forces the issue that some races aren't just better for classes in 4e, they are nearly mandatory.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Fire Resistance is only a flavor ability until the PC starts heating up his/her weapons in the campfire before going into battle. There are all sorts of ways that situational bonuses can be disproportionately useful simply because the PC is looking to create those situations.

Even a bonus to fighting orcs might disproportionately benefit fighters if orcs are more likely to have magic warrior gear than wands and scrolls. And it would probably be a terrible choice for summoners.

[Ancient History]

Heh. This reminds me of racial level limits in oD&D.

There are, I think we agree, at least four different things at work here:

1) Monoculturalism - fantasy races (and hell, sci fi alien races) tend to be one-trick ponies without anything approaching the breadth of cultural variation apparent in humanity
Example: All Dwarves Are Scottish, All Elves Are Proficient With Bows

2) Inherent Advantages/Disadvantages - racial characteristics make them more or less suited to certain classes, giving them an advantage (or putting them at a disadvantage) compared to other classes; in a highly competitive environment, characters of matching race/class are going to dominate.
Example: All Half-Elves are Bards (Charisma bonus), all Elan are Psions (innate power points)

3) The Special Snowflake Problem - something we haven't quite addressed, but the tendancy of players to nudge their characters to go in different directions than written for their race - either out of a desire to be "special" or to copy some writer's Mary Sue "special" character.
Example: Drizzt clones, albino elves, etc.

4) More ___ Than Thou - Classes, feats, prestige classes, equipment, spells, skills, etc. which are exclusively available or useful to a specific race, which tends to exacerbate the inherent racial advantage/disadvantage issue into higher levels, and encourages game-mastery work-arounds, particularly by Special Snowflakes
Example: Quarter-elves, racial substitution levels, etc.

[K]

It's not a trivial design problem. It's an impossible design problem. If the racial traits do something, then they have a benefit or a penalty which disproportionately affects another choice you make, provided that choice also does anything at all.

I mean let's consider the merest concession of Low Light Vision. It lets you see farther. It is therefore by definition a boost that is more useful to ranged attackers and precision fighters and less useful to melee fighters and artillerists. Now repeat that consideration for every single available ability and every single available class and character build and come back and tell me that you won't have combinations that are "better" and "worse". For fuck's sake, you've already lost this argument the very moment you let cat girls see farther and you give one character a crossbow and another character a battle axe.

-Username17

Actually, you lost this argument the moment you decided that ranged attackers were disproportionately better than melee fighters and they get even better with senses that go further. You gave up even pretending that various classes or abilities were going to be balanced when you did that.

If your system doesn't include ranged attacks that work perfectly well at the theoretical maximum range of the ranged weapon and are more on par with melee attacks, then low-light vision is not even a deal. Maybe you use an abstract positioning system where ranged attacks outside of combat range can only be used as indirect fire on large groups.

Your problem is that you are thinking about this problem like you were designing a subsystem for 4e or 3.x DnD or even SR and all the assumptions built into those systems and not thinking about a new set of assumptions for a new system.

It's actually more useful to look at the abilities you want in the system first before coming up with the core system since it allows you to shake-out the unworkable assumptions like "ranged attackers are superior to melee attackers because they can't be hit by melee attacks but get the same-sized or better attacks."

It's no different than deciding that natural armor doesn't stack with regular armor. Change the assumption that all forms of armor must stack to non-stacking and suddenly giving out natural armor becomes workable.

[Stubbazubba]

Heh. This reminds me of racial level limits in oD&D.

There are, I think we agree, at least four different things at work here:

My suggestion to have sub-Racial background packages nicely addresses at least the first two of those. The flexibility in Ability bonuses and the background packages create a wide range of diversity within a given race. For instance, a Dwarven Barbarian would take the +2 to Str or Con, and the -2 to Int or Wis, and take the Soldier package. A Wizard, on the other hand, would take +2 to Int, and -2 to Nim or Cha, and take the Scholar package. Thus, these two Dwarves simply do not resemble each other in any way even before classes are chosen.

Races are not pigeonholed into any one class. The Dwarf example I gave above could be geared towards Cleric, Wizard, Fighter, Barbarian, Druid, and possibly Paladin. That only leaves out Rogue, Sorceror, Bard, and Monk (who?), but note that they're not necessarily any worse off in these classes, either.

Basically, it's way more forgiving and flexible than the traditional race paradigm without reducing the meaning of a race to strictly aesthetic only.

[Foxwarrior]

Yes, K, you can change the rules so being able to hit things is not dependent on your ability to see, and then low-light vision is only better for people who like to wander around at night (See: Rogues) or don't have Rope Trick.

So you change the rules for Natural Armor, and suddenly nobody who wants to wear heavy armor takes a race that grants moderate amounts of natural armor.

Your problem is that you're changing the rules to confuse yourself.

You could make the abilities even more minor: things like "has green eyes", or "smells with tongue instead of nostrils". It's a bit harder to figure out how to abuse them, since they don't have any straightforward listed mechanical effect. But if you argue convincingly enough, I'm sure it's possible to use "smells with tongue" to get the DM to let you use Scent while you're holding your breath, suddenly making it into an ability people who get Scent want.



My preference is to make sure every race/class combination has something they do better than any other race would with that class, so even the somewhat inferior race/class combinations can prove their unique worth if the player uses them properly. Take the Human Rogue and Gnome Rogue, for example: the Gnome is better at sneaking and can see in the dark; but the Human's bonus feat keeps them a couple levels ahead in blenderhood. This goal is, of course, somewhat unattainable, but you can at least ensure that every race should be able to do well in several functionally distinct classes, and every class should have multiple distinct viable races to support it.

Stubbazubba's racial packages are a decent cheat for that goal.

[JonSetanta]

You could have races provide only defensive abilities, which usually don't synergize with class abilities.

They only work when in certain encounters. Players can't generally choose the encounters they find, so having things like +2 to saves against Fear or nonmagical Fire aren't racial traits one focuses on for combat viability.

[Username17]

Actually, you lost this argument the moment you decided that ranged attackers were disproportionately better than melee fighters and they get even better with senses that go further. You gave up even pretending that various classes or abilities were going to be balanced when you did that.

Could you at least pretend to be making any sense?

I didn't say word one about whether ranged attacks were better or worse than melee attacks. All I said was that the ability to "see farther" was going to benefit ranged attacks more than it benefits melee attacks. Because ranged attacks have a limited range based on how far they go or how far you can see (whichever is less), while melee attacks have a more limited range of how far they go and thus the "how far you can see" restriction means comparatively less.

For fuck's sake, this is first principles shit. Seeing farther makes more of a difference to attacks that go farther than the ends of your arms than it does for attacks that do not. Ranged attacks could be better, worse, or the same in overall power to melee attacks, but they still get relatively more benefit from "seeing farther". That should be the end of the discussion, because if you're seriously claiming that "seeing farther" isn't more of a benefit to a longer ranged attack than it is to a shorter ranged attack, you are not arguing honestly or coherently.

-Username17

[K]

Yes, K, you can change the rules so being able to hit things is not dependent on your ability to see, and then low-light vision is only better for people who like to wander around at night (See: Rogues) or don't have Rope Trick.

So you change the rules for Natural Armor, and suddenly nobody who wants to wear heavy armor takes a race that grants moderate amounts of natural armor.

Your problem is that you're changing the rules to confuse yourself.

I hate to break it to you, but all adventurers wander around at night and other low-light situations. It's not like the Rogue goes on solo missions while everyone else at the table is hanging out for an hour or two and plays Smash Bros.

As for your issue with natural armor, I don't really think any race should get someone that can't be duplicated with basic equipment. This means that any racial advantage can be rendered redundant and thus no one race is better than some other except in weird edge cases.

And who cares about edge cases? Of course, the lizard man is going to be better than the human in the "we're prisoners and they took our armor" scenario, but since that comes up once a campaign its not a meaningful balance issue.

[K]

Actually, you lost this argument the moment you decided that ranged attackers were disproportionately better than melee fighters and they get even better with senses that go further. You gave up even pretending that various classes or abilities were going to be balanced when you did that.

Could you at least pretend to be making any sense?

I didn't say word one about whether ranged attacks were better or worse than melee attacks. All I said was that the ability to "see farther" was going to benefit ranged attacks more than it benefits melee attacks. Because ranged attacks have a limited range based on how far they go or how far you can see (whichever is less), while melee attacks have a more limited range of how far they go and thus the "how far you can see" restriction means comparatively less.

For fuck's sake, this is first principles shit. Seeing farther makes more of a difference to attacks that go farther than the ends of your arms than it does for attacks that do not. Ranged attacks could be better, worse, or the same in overall power to melee attacks, but they still get relatively more benefit from "seeing farther". That should be the end of the discussion, because if you're seriously claiming that "seeing farther" isn't more of a benefit to a longer ranged attack than it is to a shorter ranged attack, you are not arguing honestly or coherently.

-Username17

Sight and range only matter if the fucking rules say they matter. That's first principles shit.

Construct your ranged rules differently and the issue goes away. Maybe you use a zone combat system where ranged attacks can't be effectively used outside of a zone and melee attacks and ranged attacks only happen in the same zone. In that case, sight and the maximum effective range of the weapon is meaningless because everything takes place at very close ranges.

Of course, if you use DnD or SR ranged rules then range and sight matter a lot because those designers are weird simulationists that also seem to have never fired a ranged weapon at a real target and they have a lot of frankly bizarre assumptions about the way ranged fire works. Under those systems, you can hit a target effectively at the maximum range that the weapon can send a projectile and that you can see, and targets act like stationary targets that can't see the projectile or might move in the several seconds it takes an arrow to actually reach them. Under that system, low-light vision would be a big deal and the game can't be balanced if anyone gets low-light vision.

There are lots of ways to set up the rules to make the game work the way you want it to work, but you have to decide which assumptions you are going to adopt or reject first.

[shadzar]

Sight and range only matter if the fucking rules say they matter.

how fast do you have to run to not get eaten by the hungry lion? only faster than the next guy.

PC#1: OMG do you see what is coming after us?
PC#2: No, what?
~pause~
PC#2: Hello?
PC#1 (yelling back): BYE SUCKER!
PC#2: oh fuc~crunch~

or if you have any common sense at all....

[Lago PARANOIA]

Sight and range only matter if the fucking rules say they matter. That's first principles shit.

Construct your ranged rules differently and the issue goes away. Maybe you use a zone combat system where ranged attacks can't be effectively used outside of a zone and melee attacks and ranged attacks only happen in the same zone. In that case, sight and the maximum effective range of the weapon is meaningless because everything takes place at very close ranges.

It's getting really irritating watching you argue in such a manner where you focus on pissant case-specific shit and offer fixes without seeing the underlying problem. Especially when the fixes are extremely specific and convoluted. I mean, honestly, what the fuck are you going to do if we do implement your stupid argument-dodging zone system and then we make the entirely reasonable assumption that zones should model, oh, darkness, people make a similar assumption that darkness should be a common condition for the game, and then people also make the entirely reasonable assumption that certain player-available races should be able to see in the dark better than others?

Unless you're proposing that racial abilities be no more interesting or complicated than 'shit a peasant can replicate by making a trip at the flea market' (which would exclude every racial ability ever proposed in 3E or 4E D&D) your approach just plain does not work. Get a new argument.