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

[Maj]

PCs are exceptional does not and should not mean that PCs get to break all the rules and be totally unique individuals.

The PCs are playing an orc. One. Not the entire orcish race. And that absolutely does mean they get to be unique individuals.

In plain English: If you can't tell a good story about a person who is like most of their kind, you can't tell a good story to begin with!

I really don't understand this because most of the fantasy literature I read isn't about a hero who is just like everyone else. Would you please provide me with some examples of your types of stories so I may go out and enlighten myself?

And I'd much prefer it to be an actual racial characteristic. If "being an orc" has no impact either on the kind of person you are or the kind of things you do well or poorly or sometimes merely differently, then there is no purpose in writing it on the character sheet.

I don't understand. You seem to want to encourage roleplaying by forcing mechanical differences on characters, but then you go and say that people who want to roleplay things that aren't stereotypes don't get a fair chance to play.

Furthermore, you seem to want to encourage roleplaying by forcing mechanical differences on characters so it's reflected on a character sheet, but you can't seem to accept roleplaying as a reason why you'd choose a specific race in a game with no mechanical differences between the races.

So you support the mechanics for half the argument, but not for the other half, and you pull the same division of support with roleplaying. What kind of game is it that you actually want to play? Why do you want to punish people who play something different?

[Elennsar]

I really don't understand this because most of the fantasy literature I read isn't about a hero who is just like everyone else. Would you please provide me with some examples of your types of stories so I may go out and enlighten myself?

Its not fantasy, but its an excellent example of my point. Take Beowulf. Is Beowulf a unique individual nothing like most warriors in the poem? No. He's better, but he's not (for the most part) different in the sense that he uses different weapons or has a remarkably different personality or anything else.

Thus my comment.

As for different:

If you want to roleplay an orc wizard even though orcs make worse wizards, then I wish you much fun and good roleplaying experiences...but I don't want to make that a perfectly valid choice in terms of "you suffer nothing from the fact orcs are stupid".

You chose an orc because it would be a good roleplaying experience and you should get a good roleplaying experience. See below.

As for roleplaying as a reason to choose a specific race:

Do you want it to be as meaningful that you put "orc" on your sheet as that a character sheet of the person typing this would have "brown" for hair color?

Because if being an orc doesn't influence you as an individual and doesn't influence your strengths and weaknesses, that's what it does.

"Victim of unfounded prejudice." is not necessarily illegitimate, but making it so that "orcish traits" are totally made up garbage is basically making it so that assuming that being X (whatever X is) has anything to do with anything is garbage.

No thanks. If you put "orc", I'd like to have an idea what that means. If you put "orc" and expect me to think that means nothing, I'm not sure why you're making me spend brain cells remembering it.

In brief, thusly, the kind of game I want to play:

Your species matters. Your culture matters, though perhaps far less than outsiders think. Your class matters. Your moral stance (alignment in D&D) matters.

You can go with what your group is good at and do well because of it, do what your group is normal (+/-0) at and do no better or worse as a consequence, though you'll have areas of being different, or do what your group does not do well at and have a more difficult time.

You should never have to be maxed out to do well enough to deal with things at your level, however.

That's my wish, and my dislike of D&D is increased by anything that makes it so that if you're not optimal, you're incapable.

[angelfromanotherpin]

If a race combos poorly with a few classes, that's fine. I mean, everything else aside, it's very clear that the 3.x design team wanted Half-orcs to not be arcane casters. Halflings and Gnomes are similarly steered away from being melee-style Fighters, and that's fine too. Actual thematic choices that are reinforced by rule tendencies is a sign of competent design.

The problems really come when a race combos too well with a specific class, so that you are totally incentivized to play any character of that class as a member of that race. This can lead to unintentional themes in a game, e.g. if all clerics are elves and all elves are clerics, then the campaign landscape is highly divergent from most people's headspaces.

In general, I feel that if when you pick your race you cut down your viable class selections by two out of ten, thats probably okay. If you cut down your viable class selections to two out of ten, that's probably retarded. The same goes for picking your class first and then having your race selections restricted.

[Elennsar]

Agreed. Having it be so that (roughly) two out of ten choices are good, two out of ten are terrible, and the other six are roughly average for your race is probably a good thing.

By "good", I mean that you have a bonus to something that you will be using a lot. +2 Strength for fighter friendly is probably fine.

That being said, that has to work with "average" being just fine for meeting the requirements, instead of having it wind up as 8 poor choices when you meant to have only two.

And as of now, that's not what we have (in either edition).

[ckafrica]

That's my wish, and my dislike of D&D is increased by anything that makes it so that if you're not optimal, you're incapable.

Except everything you're saying about race makes you less capable as it renders valid character design choices essentially incapable.

If you really think that certain race/class combinations shouldn't exist than you, as a DM, do have the prerogative to ban them, that's what they did in 1st and 2nd ed.. But allowing a player to make a certain choice and then make that choice suck is a douchebag thing to do.

It's like encouraging a player to play a bard and then actively ensuring he has no chance to shine. I don't like bards (due to the flavor as much as anything else) so I just rule them out. I don't fuck the player for making a choice I don't wish to support

[Kaelik]

Agreed. Having it be so that (roughly) two out of ten choices are good, two out of ten are terrible, and the other six are roughly average for your race is probably a good thing.

By "good", I mean that you have a bonus to something that you will be using a lot. +2 Strength for fighter friendly is probably fine.

That being said, that has to work with "average" being just fine for meeting the requirements, instead of having it wind up as 8 poor choices when you meant to have only two.

And as of now, that's not what we have (in either edition).

Um, 1) That's the exact opposite of what he said.

2) The reason that's the opposite of what we have is because the developers make the same mistake you did.

Average is inferior if there is a better.

4E took away negative modifiers so that all races could perform all functions. Turns out, you still need a bonus in your attack stat. Because you can't balance it so that some people are good and some people are average without one of the following:

1) The average people suck.
2) The good people are too good.

You have to balance based on the good or the average, and then the other one is unbalanced.

There are two levels, good and bad. what angel was saying is that you need to have 8 good choices for your class, given a specific race, not two good, 6 bad, 2 really bad.

[Elennsar]

Average is inferior to better, it is not necessarily inferior to the requirements of the level.

So if you need to be able to hit AC 25 to beat CR 7 things, being able to hit AC 25 on a 7 instead of a 9 is an advantage, but being able to hit on a 9 is still "able to do so".

So you'd have two things you do well, eight things you don't do as well but are able to do well enough to face it at the right level, and two things you should avoid.

Sounds sound.

If everyone has an equal set of such options, then the fact that an elf is a better tracker and a halfling better at stealth are perks, because the alternative is "everyone has identical numbers so no one ever able to beat someone of their level other than by inevitable loopholes or the dice (the d20) giving better numbers."

Borrrrringgggg.

[name_here]

But, being able to hit on a nine is WORSE than being able to hit on a seven.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Average is inferior to better, it is not necessarily inferior to the requirements of the level.

So if you need to be able to hit AC 25 to beat CR 7 things, being able to hit AC 25 on a 7 instead of a 9 is an advantage, but being able to hit on a 9 is still "able to do so".

So you'd have two things you do well, eight things you don't do as well but are able to do well enough to face it at the right level, and two things you should avoid.

Sounds sound.

If everyone has an equal set of such options, then the fact that an elf is a better tracker and a halfling better at stealth are perks, because the alternative is "everyone has identical numbers so no one ever able to beat someone of their level other than by inevitable loopholes or the dice (the d20) giving better numbers.

I'm glad to see that you've come around.

[Talisman]

Elennsar, although I sympathize with a lot of what you're saying, you just lost me.

If there are 2 good, 6 average and 2 bad choices for any given race, the majority of players will choose one of the "good" options. They may be no-RP powergamers; they may be combat-lite roleplayers who happen to like the archetypes; they may be people who combine RP and powerful PCs and want to be cool; they may just randomly pick the right combo.

The point is, if 75% of PCs arew playing at a given power level, that level becomes the average. If you have 4 players, and 3 have picked one of the two optimal race/class combos (highly likely), they're not "better," the poor sap who's play a half-orc sorcerer is objectively worse. This will happen unless you somehow enforce the "average" options, in which case we're right back to "dwarves can't be wizards," i.e. 1e and 2e.

A GM can bump the power level of the bad guys up or down to compensate. As a GM, I can run a game for a party of commoners or a party of druids. I cannot run a game for a half-orc bard, an elf barbarian and a dwarf wizard (without serious rewriting of classes and races), becausen the three PCs are in utterly different power bands. A challenge that would threaten the wizard will cream the bard and likely kill the barbarian. An encounter that will challenge the bard will be a cakewalk for the barbarian and won't even be noticed by the wizard.

I believe 80% viable class/race combos is as close to perfect as an RPG is likely to get. The remaining 20% can be discouraged or forbidden except in a RP-heavy campaign where combat stats don't matter as much. But when balancinh classes and class/race combos, you have to balance assuming maximum competency or the poweful people will dominate.

[Elennsar]

I'm (not) glad to see that you've failed to recognize what I think until now.

I don't know if that's me typing unclearly or you listening poorly or the gremlins.

I blame the gremlins.

Regardless, if the goal is to have everyone be equal to the point that there's no advantage to being an elf over being a dwarf at anything...then boo and hiss.

Equality through uniformity is boring at best.

Name: Yes. That's the point. The guy who can hit on a seven is (somewhat) better than you, but since you both are aiming for the same AC range, both of you can compete against the same monsters.

[shau]

I honestly don't think we are ever going to see races that are both balanced and interesting in DnD. Either all races are going to be mechanically identical, in which case you might as well be offering people the choice to play as any monopoly piece they want to be, or certain race/class combinations will work better than others. The only real way around that would be a much more involved system in which people care enough about their ability to charm people that they are willing to take a hit to their stabbing fools in the face attribute. I think Shadowrun comes close to this in that people are really encouraged to cover a wide variety of skills, though that system still has dump stats.

[name_here]

And everyone else's point is that if someone wants to be the guy who hits on a seven because of whatever reason, and someone else wants to be the guy who hits on a nine because he wants to not be a stereotypical elf, the guy who is hitting on a nine is being punished for not staying in strict class roles. even a +1 is a five percent bonus, and that matters.

[Elennsar]

Personally, I think dump stats are inevitable unless you only have the stats that are actually useful.

What is a dungeon crawling game doing with Charisma, anyway?

No, seriously. It literally serves no purpose to have social skills at all when your goal is purely to kill stuff and loot it.

So if we want to get rid of dump stats, we need to ensure that there are no stats you can afford to neglect. Doing that requires a lot of game redesign though.

As for certain race/class...I'm fine with that as long as "elven ranger" isn't more useful than "Dwarven fighter". It being more useful than dwarven ranger doesn't bother me at all (as stated in several posts).

If I want to play a dwarven ranger in this world, its because dwarves don't do badly, so I'd be able to do whatever the normal stuff is, I'd just lose versus an elf.

Which is okay. If I wanted to be the best woodsman in the game, I would be concerned with whether or not being a dwarf was the best choice there. If I'm not so concerned, it won't bug me if the difference isn't too big.

[name_here]

And everyone else is not fine with that. But this is not even going to go as well as the WH40K thread, so i suggest we just ditch the argument and work on ways to implement the way that is different from the current way.

[Elennsar]

As for the WH40k thread...right. Uh huh. Sure. Whatever. Etc.

So, do you (plural) want every race to be identical except for cosmic fluff that will mean literally nothing whatsoever except possibly which minature (for those who use minatures) you use?

That's what it would take to have no one ever superior to anyone else of their level. Everyone would be absolutely identical except for the dice rolls.

"But we can give them different but equal abilities!"

And you can discover that when you're underground, having the dwarf abilities is an advantage over being an elf. Damn, now we have dwarves making better rangers than elves! Must rebalance things so that there's no advantage to being a dwarf!

Better to make sure that no race is better overall than any other race, no class than any other class, and that the two combine so that even if elven rangers are better than dwarven rangers, that being an elven ranger is not superior to the dwarven fighter in the group. Or dwarven cleric. Or the human bard. Or half-orc monk.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Didn't we already cover this argument in one of these threads? Situational advantages are okay; having a given race suck at everything a class does isn't.

[Elennsar]

Why? Why should a Minotaur be able to make a good wizard instead of "Well, you could be a wizard, but you'd suck."?

If a race just plain sucks, that's one thing, but having some things it does poorly is only a bad thing if those things are vital to do well.

To use the current half-orc, if being a barbarian was actually a decent choice, he would be an okay race.

Limited, but not weak.[/i]

[name_here]

A minotaur wizard should be a viable option because it happens to be an option, and it should be viable because since it is an option and some people want to be a minotaur wizard because that actually bucks the trend of them saying, "me thog. me like ice cream"

Drizzt is ripped off for a reason

that reason is that a drow who isn't basically a mirror match for the party with magic items that melt if you try to take them elsewhere is interesting. as is an orc wizard who battles through the dungeons of doom and recovers the amulet of yendor over the dead bodies of hundreds of orc barbarians who died fighting mind flayers or gnomes with improbable wands failed.

[Elennsar]

Talisman: If you set things up so that +2 vs. a -2 is enough to make the difference between a power band (a +/-2 modifier, not a +2 to an ability score), then the power bands are too narrow.

As for second edition: I don't see what's wrong with that unless you want to allow every possible race-class combo.

Name: So why should it be an option? Because someone wants to do something "different"? That sound will hear at the end of this post (postponed through sheer willpower) is my head exploding.

If you want to play a swashbuckler, saying "and he's a Puritan" only makes him interesting the first time. If at all.

Drizzt being every other drow just leads to the "CG Ranger who worships Mielikki and has a big cat for an animal companion." stereotype to break out of.

Drizzt is not fundementally more interesting for being atypical than a typical drow written by an author with the same ability to create interesting characters would be unless the author makes the "norm" boring to begin with.

So you basically wind up with the tiresome "yet another rebel" or "yet another nonrebel" if "rebel" or not is treated as why Drizzt is cool but his brother isn't or vice-versa.

[Judging__Eagle]

It's like encouraging a player to play a bard and then actively ensuring he has no chance to shine. I don't like bards (due to the flavor as much as anything else) so I just rule them out. I don't fuck the player for making a choice I don't wish to support

I was once the same way with Paladins.

I didn't like anything about the idea, because I didn't feel that Paladin was a class that a player should ever be. This was mostly because often a Paladin would completely not-mesh with the party, and would thus slow the game sessions down into more morality arguments than normal (our group tends to get into them a lot).

It wasn't a big deal for the most part since everyone at the group could understand what it meant to add a pally to a group that was almost entirely two wizards, a war cleric, a rogue, a bard, were-bear barbarians and their goblin and kobold minions and general henchcreatures.

I did have a new player that did want to play a pally, and I told him flat out no, and why. He didn't like it, but I didn't want a new character suddenly fucking with the group's dynamic, plus I had several in-game reasons for why a paladin was impossible.

The group was in completely wild mountain territory, with a goblinoid empire to one side, nomadic humanoid and gian barbarian territory to the north and a massive chain of mountains south and to the other side, likelyhood of a human Paladin that wasn't some ridiculously powerful character surviving on his own in that territory was nil.

That and the fact that what a Pally can or can't do has always been vauge, and I've never really felt that most players can role play a "Paladin". I guess I was afraid that I'd just see a "card-carrying" Lawful Good character.

I was only when I read the paladin's code in Tome of Fiends, and then Iaimeki's Kantian Pally did I finally allow a player to take the class.

The funny thing is that the player who plays evil wizards that have no qualms about team-killing and blood-thirsty raccoon druids (I'd let him play a squirrel, but he says that raccoons have actual hands so w/e) is also the only player that I've seen play a paladin well.

Which pissed me off b/c I want to homgkill an ogre that had pretty gibbed one of our party members in one hit, and then surrendered b/c we were about to faecstabb it.

[Judging__Eagle]

>_>

[Leress]

Here is my question, why does an option have to suck? It's one thing to be "not the best" but having an option that isn't good makes it an option that won't be taken.

[Judging__Eagle]

.... sorry about that, the boards keep telling me "no such post exists for the thread" when I try to preview, so I have gone back and posted again. That or my poor elimination of excess quote tags screwed things up.

"No posts exist for this topic" was the error message that I got

[Elennsar]

Presumably, if minotaurs "never become wizards", there's a reason.

One very good reason is "minotaurs are not intelligent enough".

Beats "Because , um, I said so.", which appears to be why second edition eliminated dwarven wizards (nothing mechanically or in any fluff I'm aware of...which isn't much...would mean that the race is incapable of producing some. It might well kill any it finds who try so you might have to be a clanless exile, but that's different from "impossible".)

So you'd Minotaurs make poor wizards. Technically, it isn't impossible (you could manage to get 10+ Int either with good rolls or sufficient point buy), and if you did you'd do as well as anyone else with 10+ Int, but since spending 16 points to get a 14 Intelligence sucks, no one would take it.

Thusly, no minotaur wizards.

Now, if you did say "sure, you could be a minotaur wizard." and snuck a -2 in all stealth rule like, you suck and need to be beaten to death by handless hobos, but that's different.