Why the hell is this hobby so fucking retarded?

[Caedrus]

Yeah. It's worth noting that the argument in favor male/female adjustments uses pretty much the exact same "logic" as the argument for orcs having nonsense adjustments.

No they don't. I actually went (many years ago) and did the math. A proper male/female adjustment for a given adventurer based on modern sport types should result in a +0.6 stat adjustment for strength to men. (SAY WHAT?)

The definition of ORC, on the other hand is more akin to a race where everyone can be on the front line for a major NFL team. Thus the stat adjustment. (Note also that in 1E the half orc bonus was only +1 and adjustments were even less significant in 1E than in later editions where they made the min stat bump +2 so most of the time it didn't mean squat.)

This doesn't actually do anything meaningful to change the basic logical structure of the argument, and both arguments suffer from the same fundamental problems.

I'd like to point out that, while in game, race is the appropriate term, out of game you really should have said species, because race is basically just culture irl.

A bit more precisely, race is a culturally constructed concept, and science does not really support the racial identifications of any given culture as physical categorizations.

But yeah.

Also, looking at the biology, I suppose gender based stat differences are vaguely more defensible, given that they are about averages and, to some degree, maximums.

No, it's not defensible because the logic about "averages" as a defense for stat adjustments is NOT defensible, whether it's for sex, race, or species. Making you pay more character resources for the same power is just plain idiotic and comparable to pricing feats based on how likely a person is to have them. Maximums, however, ARE defensible, but you don't need to have stat adjustments work like D&D to have different maximums.

Yeah, I guess that counts as halfway there. But can you do the same for a wizard? I'm really not that familiar with 4e.

Yes you can. I'm not too familiar with 4e either (I stopped playing after the core playtest because I thought it was kinda sucky), but you bloody well can make traits that benefit wizards in meaningfully different ways.

[Josh_Kablack]

Dwarven Racial Traits

• Bonus Feat: Mason's Sense. All dwarves are ensconced within a society full of worked stone, cut gems, mining, and all manner of things concerning the earth and it's bones. A dwarf receives a +2 bonus to any check made concerning stone, gems, or the earth (including creatures of Elemental Earth). Furthermore, a dwarf is proficient in all picks and hammers, and makes attacks and damage with such at a +2 racial bonus.
• +3 HP/level. A dwarf's hardy immune system and iron stamina make them more difficult to kill.
• DR [1/2 Ch. Lv.]/Piercing. Long days spent before the fiery forge have toughened the dwarf's skin. Their stout and short bodies lower their center of gravity. They can weather blows and turn swords quite well, but arrows punch right through their natural defenses.
• -2 to social interaction. Dwarves tend to be gruff and mildly xenophobic. Regardless of an individual dwarf's composure, most still expect this from them, and remember the dwarven trade embargoes of old, and their days of aiding the Titans. As such, dwarves are at a slight disadvantage in social interaction, unless they've taking great pains to over come this.

With both the HP and DR scaling, that's a lot of durability. Not necessarily a bad thing, but even with HP & Damage not being the stuck on the D20 RNG, you'd still have to be careful to make sure that "attacks which threaten the dwarf" are not automatically "attacks which insta-gib the elf"

Elven Racial Traits

• Bonus Feat: Bow Mastery. Elves spend much of their 110 years before leaving the forest camps training in the use of all manner of bows. An elf is proficient in all bows, including bows they've never seen before (they can pick up a Gnoll Moon Bow, and practically instantly know exactly how to use it, even if their forest camp had never even heard of gnolls, for example). In addition, they receive a +2 racial bonus to all attack and damage rolls made with a bow. (whether this applies to crossbows would likely be a campaign setting decision. I can't see it being harmful, mechanically, but it doesn't exactly fit my conception of elves.)
• Grace of the Forest. Elves spend much of their time running amongst the trees and underbrush of the forest, evading foes and predators with movement, rather than weathering their blows. Elves receive a +1/4 char. levels deflection bonus to AC, and a +2 racial bonus to rolls made to move within a forest, or forest like environment. (An underground mushroom forest counts just as much as a terrestrial traditional forest, counts just as much as an aquatic coral forest, as much as a bizarre fellfrost forest of ice trees and brambles or a cloudscape with tall, tree like formations and "ground" cover that snatches at the feet.)
• Easily Whelmed. Elves bodies are delicate things, seemingly having more in common with birds than mammals, with their light bones. As such, elves are more easily injured than other races, and have -1 hp per level.

Here I have some issues. This nicely captures the flavor of elves, but

• Wouldn't it make more sense to just give them a bonus to any sort of ranged attack and let them be dagger-chuckers, ray wizards, or muskeeters as well as archers. You can just make bows a serious contender for best ranged weapon and have the elves in the game world make neat magic bows and you'll get elven archers.
• I'd prefer for "forest" wording to be abstracted and generalized even further. Sure they get their agile grace from running around in the woods, but they should be able to use it just as well in a crowded tavern as in dense underbrush - that saves the MC having to define each square on any battlemat as forest or not-forest. 4e's "Elves get to shift over difficult terrain" did this. In 3e terms, giving elves a minor movement bonus or ability to ignore some movement penalties and/or a sizable Tumble bonus would handle it.
• The -1 HP/level contrasts very starkly with the +3 HP/level dwarves get. If this is like 3.0 D&D where HD are d4 through d12, the average dwarf is gonna have like triple the HP of the average Elf, which likely means you have both rocket launcher tag and padded sumo in the same game.. If it is however like 4.0 where everyone starts with ~25 HP and then scales up by a class-based constant per level, this is probably workable until the per level add is notably more than the starting HP.

Orc Racial Traits

• Bonus Feat: Brawler. Orcs are accustomed to a cultural milieu in which one does not always have a preferred weapon at hand, and is more likely to have to make do with whatever they can pick up. As such, orcs not only ignore non-proficiency penalties, they receive a +2 racial bonus to attacks made with improvised weapons.
• Thunderous Blows. Orc bodies are corded thick with muscle and sinew, with heavy bones that act as brutal, efficient levers, to a degree more honed than any other race's. They deal +1/3 character level damage with all melee weapons they weild.
• Bestial Endurance. Orcs live savage lives more akin to that of an animal than a person. While they do group together in tribes and warbands, life in such is a brutal affair full of casual assault, murder, cannibalism, and even rape. They often as not must run vast distances and chase down prey like primitive races or animalistic predators, and they must be able to survive the abuse and neglect that all orcs face as a simple matter of course in growing up in the culture, such as it is. As such, Orcs may move for twice as long as normal before having to make endurance checks against fatigue, exhaustion, or subdual damage. They receive DR (1/4 char level)/magic, and are immune to poison.
• Uncouth. Orc culture, for lack of a better term, focuses on survival and combat rather than art, literature, or even music more advanced or elevated than beating a drum to communicate over distances or signal to the warband in battle. As such, orcs are Illiterate at character creation, and must spend a skill point to be able to read and write (only 1, covers all known languages), and must spend one additional skill point on all knowledges and performance forms except Kn. Nature, and Perform (Drum).

The improvised weapon damage bonus is potentially problematic if you want orcs to wield actual weapons. When they can pick up a piece appropriately sized furniture to use one handed as a 1d6+bonuses throwable club or twohanded 1d10+bonuses greatclub, just using a 1-for-1 Power Attack to turn the +2 to hit into damage gives them a onehanded weapon with the same average damage (but worse crit range) as Bastard Sword and a two handed weapon with better non-critical damage than a Greatsword. If they have access to a better than 1-for-1 Power attack (everything in Tome, 2handed weapons in 3.5, 2handed weapons and paragon+ tier in 4e) or if you actually run the complete average damage for all likely ACs, they come out even better than that, meaning that unless they have a crit-centered build or weapons have other bonuses the mathematically right answer for orcs is to always use something improvised.

[Prak]

On the hp, yeah, I was thinking a "set number per level" thing, since random hp is balls. (and not just because my rolls suck!).

The thing with the bonus feats, all of them, is that while I was writing the Elven one, I realized that it was "What you get for growing up in that culture" and thus makes sense as a feat, and that if I'm giving one race a bonus feat to represent culturization, they should all get it, especially since I'm not taking the human bonus feat away from them. But, yeah, it might make some sense to just say that elves have a bonus with all ranged weapons. But really, those bonus feats would actually be feats, with prereqs of "grow up amongst [x]."

With the Orcs... yeah, just ignoring non-proficiency is probably enough, unless these go into a system where improvised weapons are always just treated as the closet approximate weapon, rather than getting damage based on size.

[tussock]

Uh, topic? Hey, yeh, just me.

So, people aren't retarded, in general, they just notice that racial stat mods are a bad idea on top of anything like 3e's stat system, but don't know how to fix it without throwing out the baby too.

Though you can fix that with racial stat caps, instead of mods. So Orc PCs are limited to 22 Str, 16 Wis, 16 Int, and 16 Cha at 1st level, and you buy or roll your stats the same way everyone else does. Every character gets +2/-2 or +4/-2/-2/-2 to put where they please within their own racial caps. Problem solved.


But yeh, solving problems is hard, and ignoring them is easy.

[ishy]

How does that work Tussock?

How do I generate a 22 str in a point buy system or with dice rolling (and it being racial caps not mods)

Or do you also need a complete new system for it?

[Username17]

How does that work Tussock?

How do I generate a 22 str in a point buy system or with dice rolling (and it being racial caps not mods)

Or do you also need a complete new system for it?

If you had variable stat caps, you would presumably just buy up to a 22 Strength. The normal rules cap all stats at 18 and apply modifiers after purchase. A variable caps system would cap some attributes at numbers lower than 18, so presumably other stats would be capped at numbers higher than 18 as well.

-Username17

[ishy]

Well yes, but the normal rules also have higher stat as more expensive. So if you'd wanted a 22 str orc you're going to look at, at least 28 points spend (probably slightly more) of your point buy pool. And only the most generous campaign types give you enough points to actually do that.

Imho you've only inverted the problem, the -stats still hurt but not as much while the higher stats are a marginal benefit.
You'd be better off not handing out stat bonusses at all.

[tussock]

Point buy is another problem that can be solved, but is easier to ignore. Make the costs flat, but randomise a minimum score for each stat, tada (also, give the MAD classes some class stat bonuses, poor things).

Now, if you want to buy 22 Str, it has to cost something, either by eating up your points (ideally not on a highly punitive scale), or your freely allocated positive stat mods, or both. You also have to be an Orc, or other "very strong" race.

The very good races (like 3.0 female dark elves) you end up as more of an "average" (or even below) member of the race. Hobgoblins and Bugbears no problem. Allocating a cost to large (or half-large) size is trickier, probably a neutral set of mods that Wizards can take for style and optional bonuses like Reach as racial feats. Then you build anything you like. Want racial spells? Take a level of some caster or another and buy them, all NPC Drow are War1/Src1.

[Caedrus]

Point buy is another problem that can be solved, but is easier to ignore. Make the costs flat, but randomise a minimum score for each stat, tada (also, give the MAD classes some class stat bonuses, poor things).

Now, if you want to buy 22 Str, it has to cost something, either by eating up your points (ideally not on a highly punitive scale), or your freely allocated positive stat mods, or both. You also have to be an Orc, or other "very strong" race.

The very good races (like 3.0 female dark elves) you end up as more of an "average" (or even below) member of the race. Hobgoblins and Bugbears no problem. Allocating a cost to large (or half-large) size is trickier, probably a neutral set of mods that Wizards can take for style and optional bonuses like Reach as racial feats. Then you build anything you like. Want racial spells? Take a level of some caster or another and buy them, all NPC Drow are War1/Src1.

I made a post about something like this years ago on WotC before they nuked everything for 4e.

I've always avoided LA in 3e by folding the essential features of "strong" races into more conventional areas of player investment. The only thing that ever came up as being tricky to fold in like that was size modifiers.