4E Drow in chainmail bikinis should get a +5 damage bonus.

[IGTN]

It's not that Elves don't benefit from their natural talent at being rangers, it's that any Dwarf ranger must also have the same talent inasmuch as RNG abilities go.

This ideal, simplified game might do away with Skill Focus, or might give it out for free in the skills that you need to be good at.

On seond thought, maybe I should have said "be able to have the same RNG" instead of "have the same RNG," and qualified it to allow specialization and circumstancial advantages (which can vary with specialization). Skill Focus is a form of specialization, as is having a race that trades ability elsewhere for improved skills in one area. Specializations might be better handled through non-RNG abilities, though.

Some people being better at spotting stuff than others is modeled by some people making spotting stuff their job and others doing it on the side, overall. Once you decide that your job includes spotting stuff, you should get the best spot modifier possible for your level, or, failing that, come close to it and have the option of spending additional resources to get the best modifier.

But you often have to roll skills (especially perception) even when it's not your primary job. If Rangers succeed at a Spot roll on a 10, Dwarven wizards on a 15 at best, and Elven wizards on a 13 at best, then Elves are noticeably better at perception. Yes, this means giving the Elf a racial ability that doesn't stack with a class feature in order to make them better at something. But, if the Elf takes a class that supercedes that racial RNG bonus, then you can give them a replacement ability (ability, not RNG bonus). It might even be "pick another ability from the Big List of Ranger Abilities," instead of anything related to the perception bonus they lost, so that the elven racial ability suite doesn't just shrink for rangers. Alternately, you have a Big List of Elf Abilities, from which all elves get some subset of their choice, and, if your class abilities supercede some of the racial abilities, then you take other Elf abilities. The important thing is that no class/race combination is getting more abilities or an inherently better RNG at their job than any other class/race combination.

Dwarven rangers are still survivable if they hit the target on a 10 when elves hit on an 8, but the issue isn't survival, the issue is making it so that, when you decide to play a ranger, every race that is allowed to have rangers is an equally-viable option. If your options are "Okay, Okay, Awesome++! and Okay," then, while the Okay options are survivable and can contribute to most parties, you'd have to be an idiot to not take the Awesome++! option. The viability of a choice is not set relative to an absolute standard, but comes from the opportunity cost.

You also haven't named any other core components of the Ranger role that Dwarves can be good at. A ranger's job is to scout (stealth and perception) and track (and fight, but everyone does that). If Elves are better at scouting and tracking, and dwarves are better at something else, then a dwarven ranger does not have the same job as an elven ranger, and so should probably not be the same class.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Elennsar, you see to be all over the place with this. It's like trying to follow the execution path of 5 mutually recursive functions.

Are you arguing that two options with different flavor can never be of equivalent power?

[Elennsar]

The important thing is that no class/race combination is getting more abilities or an inherently better RNG at their job than any other class/race combination.

I disagree. That ensures that there is no benefit to your spot checks to be from a race with good eyesight...which is dumb.

...the Okay options are survivable and can contribute to most parties, you'd have to be an idiot to not take the Awesome++! option.

If your goal ist he most powerful character? Yes. If your goal is to play a dwarven ranger because you think its a cool concept even if its only an "okay" concept power wise, then no. You do fine.

And if you can't roleplay without being the best, then you're missing a lot of perfectly interesting things to roleplay even if there is no racial inferiority issue.

then a dwarven ranger does not have the same job as an elven ranger, and so should probably not be the same class.

A dwarf can do the job of some other class. He does not have to have the ranger role covered as well as an elf to do well enough or to do stuff worth doing.

Seriously, if you would rather have a +2 to than "this is interesting and seems fitting", then you're not out to role play something at all until it is powerful "enough".

Catharz: No, I'm fine with that. But setting it up so there are situations when X is useful and Y is not useful and vice-versa and balancing accordingly is one thing...setting things up so that your AC and attack rolls and damage are the same numbers whether you pick rapier-and-no-armor or sword, board, and heavy armor is bad.

No one should be "better overall" at "adventuring". What parts of adventuring they're better at may or may not be enhanced by their race and class combining well.

[Crissa]

Bad design to make it necessary to be the best to be able to succeed often enough to be level appriopriate. If that margin is 45% of the time, that I beat it by 5% and you beat it by 10% (or even 15%) isn't too horrible, because the fact you could beat something I can't won't come up at that level.

Percentages again. No.

A character who is a plain level ahead, shouldn't be.

A character who is ahead on one and behind on another, that's okay.

If the elf is always +2 to his ranger attacks, and other classes aren't, that's not okay. That means a team with a ranger that isn't an elf is at a disadvantage.

And no, not even a 5% difference on a die is appropriate. And since you like percentages - if they get that 5% some 20% of the time and every other ranger gets a 10% bonus some 10% of the time, that's awesome, cool, and it's also not the same.

Got it yet?

-Crissa

[Elennsar]

An elf being better at spotting than a human, or a dwarf, assuming both can meet the same DCs within the "appriopriate for level" range, is a good thing, if elves are supposed to spot things better.

To use "the three hunters" (Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn)...Aragorn is a better tracker, but he asks Legolas to make a Perception check because Legolas is better at that.

Now, you might argue Gimli doesn't have any useful skills, but the point is, the fact Legolas has an advantage does not mean that Aragorn's Perception is useless.

If an elf gets +2 to one skill, then a that is equal race should get an equivalant bonus somewhere else, but it may be a something else not related to the class...it may be just as useful overall to have +2 to Mechanical Stuff, but it won't help at being a ranger.

[Crissa]

A game is not a story.

-Crissa

[Maj]

You don't have bad roles in the group, but you have bad roles because different races have different traits, some of which becoming actively unbeneficial if they pick certain classes.

I'm still not quite getting this whole racial stereotype thing. If we're defining an elf as a thin, kinda tall humanoid that lives in the forest, likes to study magic, and <insert elven something here because I don't really know the stereotypes>, then why aren't there an assortment of abilities that are stereotypical, but can be chosen to suit your particular character (I'm not trying to present something balanced, so please take these as examples of my point, not literal suggestions):

• Can find a source of clean water within x miles of location (where x is approximately one day's travel).
• Always knows their general location (doesn't get lost)
• Has an excellent knack for recalling arcane information
• Grows x plant particularly well
• Can pray to Nature, rather than a deity
• Identifies poisons
• Ignores forest terrain
• Can discern the difference between a 2006 merlot and a 2001 merlot
• Can name all equipment "elven x," thus making it superior to anyone else's version of the same thing

And you can choose something like two abilities off the list and set your character up that way. Dwarves get a similar list. Kobolds get a similar list. Or whatever. That way, you can keep your racial stereotypes, but choose racial abilities that synergize with your class and/or character concept. It would also allow for a player to be able to take things like a stat bonus and put it where it would have the best effect - if you're an elven rogue, give yourself a +2 in Dex. If you're an elven wizard, add it to Int. And thus, you would have a mechanical difference between races instead of just having to roleplay when the DM says, "You're an elf. You're surrounded by orcs. Have a nice day."

[ckafrica]

No he doesn't got it yet.
We'd have had Tzor drowning healthy babies himself by now if this were abortion but as far as I can tell you cannot get through to this guy. He never listened to anyone on BG and now he's coming over here to start arguing the same thing over and over again in a circular pattern.


You see idiocracy where they Luke Wilson tries to ask why they're putting gatoraid on the plants?.... yeah something like that.


Forget it Maj, we already suggested basically the same thing and he didn't even address it he just kept rambling on

[Elennsar]

Since we are talking about a roleplaying game, in which we are presumably interested in roleplaying and doing interesting people doing interesting things, the fact that character X is better than character Y at task 2 is not a problem if that doesn't lead to doing more interesting stuff (either because task 2 is vital or because Y has nothing equivalant or both).

No, this isn't about "role" vs. "roll". Its about the fact that we're interested in the roles, and the importance of having something fun and interesting is greater than the importance of something with the same power in the same area.

Maj:

I'm still not quite getting this whole racial stereotype thing. If we're defining an elf as a thin, kinda tall humanoid that lives in the forest, likes to study magic, and <insert elven something here because I don't really know the stereotypes>, then why aren't there an assortment of abilities that are stereotypical, but can be chosen to suit your particular character (I'm not trying to present something balanced, so please take these as examples of my point, not literal suggestions)

Personally, I think that's a great idea. However, one of those things might be "really good at spotting stuff at a distance (ignores up to -X in penalties to spot checks or from range)", or "+1 with bows", or something else. Those might even be "in addition to what you can pick from this list", just as having equivalant bonuses (but to different things) would be on any other playable race's list. For instance, dwarves would get +1 with axes and humans would get +4 to ride checks (ignoring balance for the same reason you did).

Ckafrica: I don't "see it" because there is nothing to see but ensuring no one ever gets a bonus to anything from their race that can't be countered by someone else getting a bonus so that you wind up with identical modifiers even though one race is supposed to be keen eyed and the other is supposed to be short sighted.

That is bland. Elves beating dwarves at archery just means dwarves need to beat elves at something else. It does not mean we need to make it so elves can't beat anyone at archery at the same level.

What I'm not addressing is "let's remove the ability for elves to be better archers or better at anything else and that ever benefits elven (class) and dwarven bonuses don't benefit it as much".

Next time, learn what I'm looking for, then criticize it, not criticize the parts that are immediately obvious (dwarves being inferior rangers) and miss how that would be worked out.

[Maj]

Since we are talking about a roleplaying game, in which we are presumably interested in roleplaying and doing interesting people doing interesting things, the fact that character X is better than character Y at task 2 is not a problem if that doesn't lead to doing more interesting stuff (either because task 2 is vital or because Y has nothing equivalant or both).

No, this isn't about "role" vs. "roll". Its about the fact that we're interested in the roles, and the importance of having something fun and interesting is greater than the importance of something with the same power in the same area.

You stopped being able to use a desire to roleplay as a justification for anything when you said that choosing a race needed to have a mechanical difference on your character sheet or else it wasn't important. You can roleplay being a snobbish prick or a generous flake who has pointy ears, but you cannot roleplay a +2 Dex or +2 Perception.

[Elennsar]

The point is that I can roleplay anything I can roleplay in an elf in a human.

Any personality trait that elves can have has to be something humans (on Earth) can have or I can't roleplay it.

So unless "human" in that setting either A) doesn't exist or B) has a more limited range than on Earth so that everyone has their own zones instead of the human zone be "anything they want", flavor is meaningless.

Particularly when you can roleplay a generous flake dwarf as easily as a generous flake elf because the flavor isn't even attached to the race.

So if it doesn't have an effect on my character sheet that I will actually care about at some point, its not worth recording. It doesn't have to be a bonus and it doesn't have to be a penalty, but if I will never, ever care that my character is blonde haired, I see no reason to state it.

Note: You can say "I'm roleplaying a guy jaded by ten centuries of experience in pleasures you can't even imagine"...but unless you've experienced that, you're really not. You're roleplaying your closest impression to it, but you can't actually roleplay something you can't imagine.

[ckafrica]

So you completely agree with pretty much everyone here and pretty much everyone here completely disagree with pretty much everything you have ever said.

Ummm, why exactly are you here? You're not honing your argument because it has changed. We have dismissed your opinion as irrelevant and detrimental to what we, as a collective generally, seek from a game

This is seriously like going to an ACLU convention and pretend to want to honestly debate the reinstitution of segregation as a good thing.

Oh and you can correct the spelling in your sig. it's been fuciing annoying me for weeks now

[Elennsar]

My arguement is that elves should be, for instance, better rangers (meaning for instance +2 to Perception and Survival, which are big things for rangers). That does not mean "elves are the only ones able to make Perception and Survival checks and dwarves suck."

Elves do some things well, some of those things combine well with a certain class or classes. Dwarves do other things well which combine well with a different class or classes.

Both sets of classes and racial features are useful in their own domain.

I could. I could ask you to start reading what I type and seeking to understand instead of attacking anything that ever limits anyone's ability to do anything and means that no race has "every class printed" as "things we can do well", though most things are either good or good enough.

That's also been annoying me. Want to exchange favors?

One thing to note on flavor that could easily be done.

Let's say that dwarves pray on the seventh day of the week and elves on the sixth.

If it actually matters when we pray, as opposed to it being skipped over to get on with more hacking and slashing (or something else), then even though it won't make either of us stronger, the difference is interesting, because it influences what we do.

At the bare minimum, the difference has to be that great, or there isn't a difference at all.

[ckafrica]

Reading what you write is not like reading aristotle, perhaps you are not writing what you mean.

I am getting:
1. Certain races should have certain abilities that would make them naturally good a certain class roles and bad at others.
2. Some races should simply suck at certain things
3. because they suck people should know not to use these combinations
4. These numerical bonuses are ok because the percentage is not enough to make a difference playing a level appropriate encounter
5. Characters don't need to be the good at what their role is (because it's good for role playing? This one is not clear. why we should have sub optimal options?)

Where am I understanding you wrong?

[Crissa]

Arguing with Elennsar is like arguing with Eliza, I swear.

-Crissa

[ckafrica]

I remember Eliza, is that what has happened? Some kind of cruel trick some of setting a repetitive circular argument bot on us?

[Leress]

Arguing with Elennsar is like arguing with Eliza, I swear.

-Crissa

Wow, it's been a long time since I've seen someone use that reference before.*


*assuming that Eliza in the quote is the computer program.

[Orion]

Some Thoughts:

Elennsar, if you define "being a ranger" simply as a certain subset of "rangery" thigns, it is indeed permissable for some races to be more effective at it.

Take Clerics. Maybe Dwarf Clerics have more BAB and human clerics have more spells per day. Humans are probably "better clerics," but you could set things up so that such that a Human Cleric and Dwarf Cleric contribute equally to a group.

However, in a game which looks anything like D&D this is just not viable. Consider the Minotaur Wizard. Wizards use magic. That is in D&D literally all they do after like level 3. There is seriously no benefit you could possibly give that would make up for the penalty to intelligence. You could give +2 STR or you could give +8 STR and it would still not be worth taking a -2 to INT.

Similarly, if elves get bonuses to Rangery things like tracking, that's probably acceptable. If they get bonuses to rangery things like shooting people in the face, that's probably not acceptable.

---

Honestly, the whole idea of D&D statistics is stupid. It's stupid that there's one score that matters so much, and honestly it's kinda stupid that magic requires "mental power" in the first place. I mean, sure, in some fantasy settings the big magic-users are eggheads. In others they're charismatic, and in others they're neither. Fantasy Fiction has stupid wizards, clueless wizards, and social retard wizards. The only thing characters who are good at magic have in common in the literature is being good at magic. Full stop.

More after my class

[Elennsar]

1. Certain races should have certain abilities that would make them naturally good a certain class roles and bad at others.
2. Some races should simply suck at certain things
3. because they suck people should know not to use these combinations
4. These numerical bonuses are ok because the percentage is not enough to make a difference playing a level appropriate encounter
5. Characters don't need to be the good at what their role is (because it's good for role playing? This one is not clear. why we should have sub optimal options?)

#1: Correct.
#2: All races should suck at certain things. In addition, they should have a list of things they don't do poorly and don't do especially well. They're not bad at these things, but you could get an elf or a dwarf as a cleric and it would be even.
#3: Correct. If you need to be told that a low Int race and a Int dependent class don't mix to the point of "you're not allowed to play, period. We don't trust you're intelligent enough to recognize this is a bad idea.", you really, really should not be playing a game involving intelligence.
#4: Both are able to beat a level appropriate encounter, but it is slightly easier in the area you have a bonus from your race, so an elven ranger is a little more likely to succeed at Perception and Survival and a dwarf rune mage a little more likely to do rune magic things than someone without the positive modifiers.
#5: Characters need to be good enough to be level appropriate, assuming being level appropriate is important (if not, you can gimp yourself and we can deal with the people who want to play the Gimp Campaign with whatever combination of laughter and advice we desire).

So an elf would be a better archer-ranger than anyone else, within the areas of "being a archer-ranger" elves get a bonus at.

However, a human archer-ranger is still level appropriate...its a little harder, but both are able to succeed a sufficient amount of the time to win about the right amount of the time.

A dwarf archer-ranger would be at a disadvantage, assuming this is a dwarven weak point, though not necessarily unplayable so (if he finds something to overcome his racial weaknesses he might be able to get up to neutral racial modifier land...there's a reason bad sighted races are likely to invent glasses).

If you want to roleplay a dwarf, unless he is actively unable (too weak to be level appropriate), you can roleplay him just fine even with a penalty to archer-rangery. If anything, roleplaying him struggling with his limitations might be more interesting than roleplaying someone who has it easy would be.

And if dwarves have such poor archery skills that they can't be archer-rangers at all, this is noted clearly so that you only do it for the gimp campaign, in which you look for the guy who sucks in the same spirit the competition campaign looks for the best.

Naturally, if dwarves have a penalty to archery-rangery, they need something else equivalantly good, but not necessarily in the same area, to compensate.

Similarly, elves need a penalty to something to compensate for being good archer-rangers, or they're an LA >0 race (which currently we do not have a good system for).

It's stupid that there's one score that matters so much, and honestly it's kinda stupid that magic requires "mental power" in the first place. I mean, sure, in some fantasy settings the big magic-users are eggheads. In others they're charismatic, and in others they're neither.

Responding to this now and the rest when you finish it.

Its not kinda stupid that magic requires mental power if the setting is one of those where big magic users are eggheads.

Whether the system should have one of those settings is another story.

And Frank has explained better than I can how and why rules and setting need to relate.

But if that is the requirement, then there ought to be a way to convert it so something else (there is usually something else) without changing things past the point we can use the system at all, even if in say Faerun we get bookishness encouraged in wizards and the willpower driven magic is not an option.

[Kaelik]

The point is, you can roleplay a human with exactly the same attitude.

"All those I grew close to have died. Over and over again."

You would not need to be an alien race to feel that.

No, that would be stupid. An essential part of the character is that he has outlasted people who did not tragically die of sudden causes, and that, no matter what happens, he's going to outlast the next several generations of friends he makes to.

You can't do that unless you live much longer then normal people.

See, now if you were a reasonable person instead of a stubborn ass who refuses to admit fault ever for any reason, you would say, "Yes, age length clearly produces different personalities not producible in humans. But that's still not enough to make the differences I care about, which are mechanical."

Instead, you are going to make up some bullshit excuse why a human who had his friends tragically die in front of him several times over would reject anyone he has feelings for because of the inevitable death before him (despite the fact that said death is in no way inevitable) instead of just trying harder to protect them.

That's why dieing of old age is different then dieing when a dragon eats you, not to mention the fact that one of those can be brought back, and it's not the age one.

As for all elves are rangers and all rangers are elves:

So...people are more interested in having the highest possible bonuses than doing something with a different flavor, because they feel that if they don't have the highest possible bonuses they'll be too weak.

Bad design to make it necessary to be the best to be able to succeed often enough to be level appriopriate. If that margin is 45% of the time, that I beat it by 5% and you beat it by 10% (or even 15%) isn't too horrible, because the fact you could beat something I can't won't come up at that level.

When people see that they are punished for making a non Elf ranger, they will not make non-Elf rangers. Because people don't like being punished.

[Elennsar]

See, if you recognized that you literally have no idea how it feels to lose generations of friends then you would recognize my point. Nor do you have any idea to be a being with an alien thought process to humanity (unless you do, in which case you have no idea how to have a thought process that is alien to that mindset).

When people see that they are punished for making a non Elf ranger, they will not make non-Elf rangers. Because people don't like being punished.

When people define "punished" as anything other than "given the best", then people are assuming that having the best stats is the goal.

Not everyone wants the best stats they can get, and designing the game so that thsoe people are happy whether they carefully select race and class to ensure they work together or roll dx where X = the number of races, and then dY, where Y equals the number of classes, and generaet something randomly is not superior to designing it some other way unless that's your target audiance and only that.

[Username17]

Holy crap, this has gone circular and retarded. Elennsar: you are wrong. I will use short words:

A Ranger contributes to many things in a D&D party. He finds stuff, he sneaks around, he scouts ahead, he does big DPS, he talks to birds like a Disney character, he soaks damage, and he helps the team survive away from civilization. It is entirely permissible for a Ranger to be "different" in one or more of those ways and still be "playable."

For example: Forest Gnomes are specifically better at sneaking around and talking to animals like a Disney character. They are smaller and have a Strength penalty, so it's not unreasonable to suspect that they might do less DPS. One could easily imagine a system in which over all this made them balanced as a player character. The Dwarf on the other hand might be personally tougher, is good at finding things, and does decent DPS. Even without special bonuses to sneaking around or talking to animals he can still plausibly be expected to draw enough fire that his bonus defenses against magic come through to make him a character balanced with the Forest Gnome.

And that's what everyone with sense is talking about here. Rangers don't just spot things or just shoot arrows or even just adventure in the forest. They accompany a team of adventurers on a long list of quests being opposed by a long list of challenges and so on and so forth. A Ranger character can be a balanced character even if he gets a penalty to every single traditional ranger strength - if he gets sufficient bonuses to fill in for traditional ranger weaknesses that normally drain the party's resources such that his overall contribution and cost is about the same.

---

There are a couple of things that you are getting your underwear tied up about for nothing:

• Not every class/race combo has to be in the game. Heck, very few games even allow any classes for Hill Giants. But the fact that you didn't have to allow a race/class does not entitle you to make it unbalanced in the positive or negative direction if you do allow it.
• Making player characters objectively worse than other player characters is objectively bad for the game. The game is not improved by the fact that Clerics are better than Monks.
• Characters are there for encounter after encounter, even when those encounters don't show off their major class features. A ranger is still there when the deep underground throne hall has several massive jelly monsters in it, so if he has some kind of bonus relevant to that, then that goes into the overall equation of how good the character is just as much as their relative ability at tracking goblin war parties back to their forest camp.

"Less Good" is just another word for "Bad." But no one is telling you that you have to make things "As Good" at every individual action, just that the character has to be "As Good" when averaged across all the encounters of their career. Or at least potentially so given a variety of quests.

We all understand that if you are playing a deeply monotonous campaign like "Against The Giants" that anyone who isn't a Dwarf is racially inferior at all tasks. But the assumption here is that you are going to be facing owlbears one day and mindflayers the next, so that having one set of skills is as likely to be today's killer app as another is.

But what you keep saying, namely that it's OK, even desirable for individual playable characters to be sub par by design - that's bullshit. You're not even half right on that, you're just completely full of shit. And the fact that you've gone to 10 pages ranting on this subject just shows that you are a stubborn asshole in addition to being wrong on this point.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

But what you keep saying, namely that it's OK, even desirable for individual playable characters to be sub par by design - that's bullshit. You're not even half right on that, you're just completely full of shit.

It is total bullshit that in order for you to be level appriopriate to a dwarf you have to gain the same bonuses that he does versus the same things.

You need to be able to contribute an equivalant amount, more or less (exactly when we have the dice randomizing is pretty damn hard to measure, particularly without a bell curve), but you do not need to be able to equal the elven tracker and scout at tracking and scouting to be able to track and scout well enough to keep up with things at your level.

Otherwise, you might as well say all rangers get +10 to all ranger things forever and all DCs are 12-30 forever. If anyone improves, then they all have to, because we don't ever want any ranger having an advantage anywhere over any other ranger of the same level, even if he chose to specialize (or his race specializes in) some part of it.

Goodbye racial modifiers, hello total uniformity.

Having monks be unable to do anything to pitch in because the cleric is more powerful and more adaptible (including being able to do whatever it is monks are supposed to be able to do) sucks. Having the ranger be worse in a pure straight out toe to toe than the barbarian or fighter does not, because that's their strength and his weakness.

So if you have to be at the highest possible bonus for your level or you suck, then you have no room whatsoever for any "I'll lower this a tad so I can boost this other important thing up a tad.", which sucks as game design goes.

Everyone needs to be good enough to contribute, but insisting that the dwarf must be as good at being a ranger or we yank the class away because he might as well not bother because he succeeds less of the time than the optimal ranger is eliminating any possibility of people who deal with a lack of natural talent at X by doing Y.

[ckafrica]

Right so it's not that I'm misunderstanding you(or the rest of us) it's that we disagree.

1. I want any possible combination of race and class possible to be worth playing. I do not want to feel like I've lost something because I chose to follow a authorized choice

2. races in general might not be known for a certain characteristic but that should not curtail the individual from being successful at it. Just because few whites guys can rap doesn't mean we should prevent a player from making an Eminem character.

3. Fcuk you for presuming to judge anyone's worthiness to play a game. RPGs are not games to exercise one's intellectual superiorities. As I said before, if you are intentionally setting up traps for your consumer, you are an asshole.

4. Each +1 is equivalent to a 1 level increase in ability so by giving +1s you are making characters level inappropriate under the strictest of senses

5. Obviously for people like us who care about balance, being level appropriate is not important

[Elennsar]

#2: "Being successful" doesn't require "being as good as you can get'. There are plenty of architects who are not the best, but they're good enough to get the paid (however much architects make).

#3: I am serious. If you cannot tell that "playing a stupid wizard when magic requires brainpower" is going to probably lose, then you cannot be expected to play something with any intelligence in the first place.

That is not a trap in any meaningful sense. It is the assumption that people know how to think.

#4: At first level, assuming an ability score of 10, you have up to +4. So you have +2 for your race. +6. If you have 12 because of your race, you have +5. What's the problem again?

Should we make ability scores identical so that everyone has the same modifier from those, too? A 18 is worth +1 over a 16.

#5: If you can be level appropriate, you do not need to be equally good. If you are not level appropriate, the fact that a elven and a dwarven a fighter are equal still means both are too weak...it doesn't help at all to be equal.

If the PCs were competing against each other or against people who are optimized fully, it would make more sense to avoid having any options ever be inferior to any other options in any respect, but that is not the case.