All Police And Detectives Are Furious
Jun. 18th, 2010 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amnesiackThe more I play D&D, the more I dislike the racial ability bonuses. More often than not, the race/class parings I'm really interested in are completely sub-optimal because the ability bonuses don't line up with the necessary abilities for the class. While it would be completely possible to just build the character that way anyway, I find it really difficult to divorce my thinking away from the tactical nature of the game, and that +2 to two abilities can end up making a pretty big difference in a character's effectiveness.
One Bad Egg (RIP) addressed this problem via their Hard Boiled Cultures supplement, suggesting subcultures within each race that had their own unique ways and corresponding bonuses. That's fine, if the players/DM accept it and someone wants to put in the work to create it. But what I really want is to just do away with race-based ability bonuses all together and just let players assign a +2 to two abilities at character creation, just like they do at levels 11 and 21. The races would still be diverse mechanically via their racial attributes and feats, but it would be way easier to play a wide variety of race/class combinations without sacrificing effectiveness.
One Bad Egg (RIP) addressed this problem via their Hard Boiled Cultures supplement, suggesting subcultures within each race that had their own unique ways and corresponding bonuses. That's fine, if the players/DM accept it and someone wants to put in the work to create it. But what I really want is to just do away with race-based ability bonuses all together and just let players assign a +2 to two abilities at character creation, just like they do at levels 11 and 21. The races would still be diverse mechanically via their racial attributes and feats, but it would be way easier to play a wide variety of race/class combinations without sacrificing effectiveness.
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Date: 2010-06-20 10:23 pm (UTC)I don't spend a huge amount of time worrying about game balance. If the party as a group tends to operate at level + 2 effectiveness, ok, fine, throw that level of monster at them.
I'm usually a lot more worried about the "fun" being spread around the table. It's the one person plays Buffy, one person Xander problem - what makes it fun for Xander?
In my experience, the +2 here or there are nice, but it's the party blowing it from a strategy standpoint that actually loses a fight (as opposed to, say, just having the fight drag on). Of course, I always know what happens if the party loses any given fight before starting the fight. ;)