SoFM wrote: The right way would be to ask questions like “Is it possible to create rules for non-humanoid Pc’s without breaking game balance?"
No, that's not a helpful way of looking at things. Because the thing is that it is impossible to add
anything to the game without
changing game balance. Even if you're adding a group that has abilities that are already in the game you've just changed the expected
ratios of encountering those abilities and thereby changed the relative value of specialized attacks and defenses. Which really means that except in the cases where one thing is literally able to do everything another is and more, there really aren't examples of things you can present that aren't possibly balanced.
Example: let's say you add in a demographic group that is all around less capable in combat, but it's good at making cakes. If you're facing Lex Luthor a lot, that might well be balanced. The answer to the question "Is it possible to create rules for dedicated pastry chefs without breaking game balance?" is
yes. The answer to
any question like that is yes. You just have to write the rules such that the value placed on making delicate icing flowers is sufficient to make up for your reduced ability to fight with knives.
And that's a trivial example, because literally
all such examples are trivial. Centaurs have no place in winding tower staircases, cramped sewers, and crumbling ruins but you
could write a setting where people didn't do any of that shit and everything was carried out Mongol style. And then Centaurs would be fine. The thing that Centaurs break is not "the game" it's "any game I want to write with." I want the option of having things take place in recognizable human architecture, and Centaurs invalidate that.
Frankly, I want castles here and there, which puts
heavy constraints on what kind of ability matchups can exist. 10m/round burrowing is
cool but I don't think it fits into any setting I want to write with, and so on.
SoFM wrote:Rules = Setting.
True.
The problem is that picking actual rules out of a hat until you figure out what the generated setting is will almost certainly give you a setting you don't like. You don't just select puzzle pieces from an infinite pool and stick them together to see whatever random picture that forms - because that picture is basically going to just be disjointed colors in a static pattern every time. You select a picture you want to make, and then you select the puzzle pieces that happen to fit together to make that picture.
-Username17
