Why no Classplosion in 5e?

[RadiantPhoenix]

Well, what do you consider a huge pile of dice? 1 per possible target?

That seems to be the consensus.

EDIT: Or to put it less weaselly: "for purposes of this question, 1 die per target is too many."

[Josh_Kablack]

Is there a convenient way of resolving Fireball against a crowd of basically identical elves that doesn't involve at least one of:

• Rolling a huge pile of dice
• Doing division at the table
• Either all the elves survive or all of them die

HERO's Explosion advantage might pass this, but that would consider what you considered a "huge" pile. The procedure is:

• Roll an attack against the center hex.
• If it hits, the Area of Effect is where you want it
• If it misses, you're off by a number of hex (in a random direction - roll another d6) equal to the difference between what you needed and what you rolled.
• Roll a pile of d6s for damage. In superheroic games, this pile is likely 6-10 d6s.
• Targets in the center hex take full damage
• For each hex away from the center hex, remove one die from the damage applied, starting with the highest rolled die and removing the highest remaining die for each additional hex away. It's possible to buy attacks where the damage drops off one die per multi-hex increment, giving you larger areas of effect.

That's a bit complicated and does still involve a pile of dice, but the basic idea of "subtract a die per each unit of distance away from a center point" could be streamlined into something that would more cleanly pass your criteria.

[Username17]

People want:

• Area attacks.
• Large groups of enemies.
• Their personal characters to be cool guys who don't look at explosions.
• To have the rules not work blatantly differently for their characters than for NPCs.
• To get attacks resolved in a short amount of time with a minimum amount of physical die rolling, accounting, and math.

Obviously, the answer to this difficult set of player-side requirements is "have a computer process it," but within the context of a TTRPG you're going to have to cut corners somewhere.

Anyway, the question of class/race determinism is actually pretty similar. At least in the sense that you can't really fulfill all the criteria people are asking of you. 4e went for hard race/class determinism because people wanted them to. Not everyone, maybe not even a majority of the player base, but there were in fact a lot of people who were sad that race choices didn't matter at high levels or that their choice to be an Elf didn't make them a fundamentally better Wizard than other Wizards (see Pathfinder favored class bonuses for some pandering to the same demographic).

Now, a lot of people do not like Race/Class Determinism. I'm one of them. But it's importantly true that you cannot fully satisfy the people like me who want to play Orcish Bards and have that not suck and the people who want their Dwarven Fighters to be the bestest Fighters because they are Dwarves at the same time. These are completely irreconcilable goals.

But if you are going to go the race/class determinism route, you should have a massive classplosion so that you still have choice within your determined class picks for each race, and you need to have the determined combos be things people actually want to play. Having the only allowed combo for Wood Elf be "Bow Ranger" is marginal, having the only allowed combo for Tieflings on release be "Feylock" is fucking unacceptable.

Also a lot of players are going to want to play Humans, so your Humans need to have several available classes that are thematically and tactically different. Having Humans be purple or black choices for all classes is a fundamental failure of game design. It's a failure so severe that 4rries refused to acknowledge that it had even happened. Most 4e class guides write in Humans as "sky blue" even though they are actually shit. Some of them give lame excuses like "It's sky blue relative to other PHB race choices" and some of them simply use the power of cognitive dissonance to simply hold Humans to a different standard than other races. Having Humans be playable in a bunch of classes is so important to the game that hardcore 4rries were physically incapable of acknowledging that WotC had failed that design challenge.

-Username17

[Aryxbez]

Do you think it is time to do away with class racial abilities to scores and do something more holistic like, pick a physical and a mental, pick 2 physical, pick 2 mental, etc?

In this day and age? Yes its best to do away with stat bonuses from races like that altogether. Now, if you do need the numbers from the race for the game, just make it a choice the players can make, with maybe suggestions in the description for what most races take (+2 to two stats, Most Dwarves are tough and wise, thusly take con & wis, etc.). Simply bake it into the character creation process independent of choosing your race.

In 4e, since +2/+2 were expected part of the game, have simply since just let players choose which ones (albeit certain races best for certain classes due to feat choices and junk). In 3.5 these days, if I'm going to have stat bonus at all, just make it a +2 to a stat of your choice, Done.


I'm up there with Frank, I want to play Orc Bards, Muscular-super-midgets, and Bear-Ninjas. Of course just getting rid of stats isn't going to go far enough, as can easily still have certain races moving towards certain classes based on their abilities. So then challenge comes in giving cool enough racial abilities that are nifty, or can apply to various types of classes. My best example of a race that provides "cool" abilities is the Elder Scrolls Lizardmen: The Argonian. Natural Weapons are whatever, Natural Armor/Temp-Regen is nice for anyone, and Waterbreathing is cool, but doesn't point to a specific class.


As for rolling explosions, not a great implementation, but at times I just roll 2 dice or such to represent half & half of the targets. So its possible that half of them possibly just survive the attack or not, but figure can be better than "all or none".

[ckafrica]

@Orion: So, what you're saying is, PCs should have WARF saves, while NPCs should have WARF defenses, with the conversion set to mathematically equivalent numbers?

That was my next thought, as well. If you want to keep everything the same for the players, have them roll everything, both attacks and defenses, and have the GM never roll except damage. The difference between the bonus and the static score is always just 10, so everything is reversible.

This runs into weird scenarios where a player is rolling fistfuls of dice and looking for 1s on their defense, and it's conceptually a bit weird because the GM would still likely roll for some things for the NPCs (like ending on-going status effects) but not attacks and spells, but other than that no immediate problems with it spring to mind. I don't know if those trade-offs really make it better than either the 3e or 4e method. Perhaps it's better to re-complicate things and have both passive and active defenses, but make spells and any effect coming from another combatant against passive defenses, while active defenses are generally only used against environmental effects. That's less conceptually weird, even if it does lose the uniformity.

This is what I've done. NPCs and monsters had BAB/AC/saves/spell DCs of 10+bonuses and PCs all rolled d20 +bonuses. The only issue was critical hits from the monsters, but I tried to stick to 20 only weapons for simplicity sake.

[MGuy]

I think that the best way to get races to mean something AND have it be that you can choose just about any race/class combinations is to give each race a number of traits you can choose right out the gate. 3.5 did this by basically having an elf for every day of the week. You want one that's good at being a woodland archer? Brown elves. You want one that's good at wizarding? Grey Elves. If the same is just done across the board for every race then you can have your cake (having Race mean something) and eat it too (be able to choose any race to fill any class).

[angelfromanotherpin]

re: large numbers of identical saves, I think you could do something approximate with one chart:

Roll+Bonus	% Succeed
TN +12+	100%
TN +11	90%
TN +10	80%
TN +8-9	70%
TN +3-7	60%
TN +/-2	50%
TN -3-7	40%
TN -8-9	30%
TN -10	20%
TN -11	10%
TN -12+	0%

[Username17]

I think that the best way to get races to mean something AND have it be that you can choose just about any race/class combinations is to give each race a number of traits you can choose right out the gate. 3.5 did this by basically having an elf for every day of the week. You want one that's good at being a woodland archer? Brown elves. You want one that's good at wizarding? Grey Elves. If the same is just done across the board for every race then you can have your cake (having Race mean something) and eat it too (be able to choose any race to fill any class).

That... has a lot of failure points. Basically you're asking a "raceplosion" to keep pace with the "Classplosion" to ensure that there is a complete breakfast of race/class choices available. To discuss the specific failure points, I'm going to start talking about the hypothetical Berserker specced Halfling subrace: the Jerren.

• Obscurity. I'm not going to tell you why the Jerren are the Berserker specced Halfling subrace. I'm not going to tell you what they are, where they are from, or even why you should care. When I google Jerren, the first page has only one D&D related article on it (the rest is discussions of people named Jerren), and that article is a thing on the D&D wiki that is an alternate take on the Jerren written by our own Mr. Sinister. I take it as given that most D&D players have no idea that these guys even exist, and that state of affairs would likely continue if the game held them up as the guys you were supposed to play if you wanted to be a Halfling Berserker.
• Not in the PHB To even have a class specced variant of each race and class for a 12 class game with 6 basic races like 5e, that's still seventy two race variants just to cover the basic class/race combinations. At even one page per type, you probably won't get them all out in the basic book (on account of that being 72 fucking pages). So where do expect the Jerren writeup to be? The Cold Book (Frostburn)? The Desert Book (Sandstorm)? The Swamp Book (Banemires)? What?
• Hard to Expand As we mentioned, having six basic races and 12 basic classes required 72 racial variants. What if we add a class like the Psion? Do we need to add six more racial variants? What if we decide to let people play Goblins, do we need a dozen racial variants of Goblins? What if we do both those things in different books and then someone wants to play a Goblin Psion? That's a quadratic content requirement, and we're never going to be able to keep up.
• What if the Jerren are badly written? Imagine for the moment that the new writeup for the Jerren comes out, and it sucks. People don't want to play one, even though it's the thing you're "supposed" to play to be a Halfling Berserker. Do people who want to play Halfling Berserkers have to put up with bad fluff or play a race variant that is explicitly bad at handling their class?
• What if the Jerren are well written? Imagine for the moment that the new writeup for the Jerren comes out, and it's awesome. People want to play Jerren, even if they aren't enthused about playing a Berserker. So they want to play like Jerren Rogues and Jerren Druids and shit. Aren't we now basically just back at the "I want to play an Orcish Bard, why is the game punishing me?" situation we decried at the beginning?
• What if the Jerren are overpowered? Imagine a hypothetical situation where the Jerren comes out and for the Berserker class it isn't light blue, it's fucking gold. People are now basically just underpowered, comparatively speaking, if they play a Berserker that is anything other than a Jerren. Now all the Wild Elves and Feral Dwarves and shit are just trap options.
• What if the Jerren are mechanically bad? Just because something is written to be good at something, doesn't mean it actually is. For fuck's sake, 3rd edition spent much of its time telling us to play Half-Orc Barbarians. And we know how that turned out. If the Jerren end up being a trap option, then we're back to the game not really letting me play an Orc Bard, though just for that one class/race combination. And every other class/race combination that is similarly bad.

With so many race subtypes to write, it's actually hard for me to imagine the game not hitting all of those failure points.

-Username17

[MGuy]

I believe that avoiding at least half of these wouldn't actually be that hard. Obscurity and how well written each 'variant' is written can be avoided just by not doing write ups for each variant [Halfling]. Instead, just make the [Halfling] race, give them a general description, a single trait shared by all of them (short), then give them some optional traits. So all you need to do is get the fluff for the regular [Halflings] right and you don't have to worry about writing additional fluff for the race until you decide to expand on them. Then, if you do start making a "Races of [Halfling]" book or expansion options you can make additional traits for whatever subraces of [Halfling] you choose.

As far as writing 72 variants, I think that's unnecessary. Multiple classes can benefit from the same racial buffs. If you get something as generic as +1 Level 1 spell known that works well for any class that has that. Adding "Psion" onto the class list isn't even a problem because just about anything that helps a Wizard helps a Psion so you don't even 'have' to write new material if you don't want. At worst you might have to slightly tweak material you've already written.

As for the last two, not making the abilities over/underpowered is pretty much something you're going to concern yourself with either way.

[Seerow]

I believe that avoiding at least half of these wouldn't actually be that hard. Obscurity and how well written each 'variant' is written can be avoided just by not doing write ups for each variant [Halfling]. Instead, just make the [Halfling] race, give them a general description, a single trait shared by all of them (short), then give them some optional traits. So all you need to do is get the fluff for the regular [Halflings] right and you don't have to worry about writing additional fluff for the race until you decide to expand on them. Then, if you do start making a "Races of [Halfling]" book or expansion options you can make additional traits for whatever subraces of [Halfling] you choose.

As far as writing 72 variants, I think that's unnecessary. Multiple classes can benefit from the same racial buffs. If you get something as generic as +1 Level 1 spell known that works well for any class that has that. Adding "Psion" onto the class list isn't even a problem because just about anything that helps a Wizard helps a Psion so you don't even 'have' to write new material if you don't want. At worst you might have to slightly tweak material you've already written.

As for the last two, not making the abilities over/underpowered is pretty much something you're going to concern yourself with either way.

Is it just me or is this describing the Pathfinder favored class mechanic, except where any race can pick whatever favored class bonus they want?

[codeGlaze]

I believe that avoiding at least half of these wouldn't actually be that hard. Obscurity and how well written each 'variant' is written can be avoided just by not doing write ups for each variant [Halfling]. Instead, just make the [Halfling] race, give them a general description, a single trait shared by all of them (short), then give them some optional traits. So all you need to do is get the fluff for the regular [Halflings] right and you don't have to worry about writing additional fluff for the race until you decide to expand on them. Then, if you do start making a "Races of [Halfling]" book or expansion options you can make additional traits for whatever subraces of [Halfling] you choose.

As far as writing 72 variants, I think that's unnecessary. Multiple classes can benefit from the same racial buffs. If you get something as generic as +1 Level 1 spell known that works well for any class that has that. Adding "Psion" onto the class list isn't even a problem because just about anything that helps a Wizard helps a Psion so you don't even 'have' to write new material if you don't want. At worst you might have to slightly tweak material you've already written.

As for the last two, not making the abilities over/underpowered is pretty much something you're going to concern yourself with either way.

I was thinking something similar.

Have a default [Halfling] race. That racial write-up provides a "default" halfling representing generic halfling NPCs, thereby doubling as a standard monster entry.

PCs could build their [Halfling] character out with background swaps or something.
ie:

Code: Select all

Rockbiter the wild halfling orphan
Background:
Orphan, raised by dwarves : switch one positive trait for dwarven +con ( dex to con )
Wild : replace one negative trait with -cha ( str to cha )

I'm sure the den could come up with much better examples, but I'm relatively certain that at least shows my train of thought.

Compared to a "normal" halfling your wild orphan is "different", but still a halfling; AND not gimped by racials if you want to be a berserker. The process also potentially helps build out a barebones background for a character.
It could also be easily adjusted for a system that doesn't dole out negative adjustments.

[MGuy]

I wasn't exactly thinking about Attribute Scores. Nor was I thinking about PF's Favored Class thing (see the bit about not needing to create an ability specifically tailored to each class). Really it'd be more like alternate racial traits.

[Pedantic]

I believe that avoiding at least half of these wouldn't actually be that hard. Obscurity and how well written each 'variant' is written can be avoided just by not doing write ups for each variant [Halfling]. Instead, just make the [Halfling] race, give them a general description, a single trait shared by all of them (short), then give them some optional traits. So all you need to do is get the fluff for the regular [Halflings] right and you don't have to worry about writing additional fluff for the race until you decide to expand on them. Then, if you do start making a "Races of [Halfling]" book or expansion options you can make additional traits for whatever subraces of [Halfling] you choose.

As far as writing 72 variants, I think that's unnecessary. Multiple classes can benefit from the same racial buffs. If you get something as generic as +1 Level 1 spell known that works well for any class that has that. Adding "Psion" onto the class list isn't even a problem because just about anything that helps a Wizard helps a Psion so you don't even 'have' to write new material if you don't want. At worst you might have to slightly tweak material you've already written.

As for the last two, not making the abilities over/underpowered is pretty much something you're going to concern yourself with either way.

What if you just ran race as a secondary class and had ability trees you could pick from at specific level intervals, like Radiance does? Then you can expand those trees if you need to as time goes on and new classes are introduced, or avoid it altogether by tying specific kinds of utility exclusively to race instead of class.

You can assign some mechanism for those traits to show up with age or randomly, so PCs aren't the only people growing wings or headspikes or extra poison sacs. That means your Dwarven Fighter might not get an edge for his Dwarf heritage, but as the game continues he will feel progressively more significantly Dwarf-like, so race doesn't feel like a one-off choice.

[erik]

I think that the best way to get races to mean something AND have it be that you can choose just about any race/class combinations is to give each race a number of traits you can choose right out the gate. 3.5 did this by basically having an elf for every day of the week. You want one that's good at being a woodland archer? Brown elves. You want one that's good at wizarding? Grey Elves. If the same is just done across the board for every race then you can have your cake (having Race mean something) and eat it too (be able to choose any race to fill any class).

...

I wasn't exactly thinking about Attribute Scores. Nor was I thinking about PF's Favored Class thing (see the bit about not needing to create an ability specifically tailored to each class). Really it'd be more like alternate racial traits.

Alternate racial traits... related to classes? That's the PF Favored Class thing. Or just subrace traits that make you excel at certain classes?

The first quoted bit sure sounded like it was indicating attributes or a PF favored class trait since those are how certain races become uber for classes. But however you do it, you don't want to make certain races or subraces ideal for certain classes. It's the same problem as certain races being uber at classes except now you have pushed it onto specific physical appearances and societies determining the bonus, which is at least as sketchy ground.

I'm not comfortable saying "Oh, you want an elf who does archery? Then you want a blond one who lives in the xenophobic elven forests of the north. A wizard? Then an almond eyed one with silver hair with a scholarly society. Sorcerer? Pick the black skinned ones from the underdark who have an unhealthy fixation on spiders."

Just give horizontal abilities instead of vertical ones for races. They can still matter at least early on, especially if they are something roughly on par with up to level 2 spell abilities: ability to create darkness, amphibious, climb speed, create fire, create ice, sculpt wood, levitation, resist element, etc. etc. etc.

[Orion]

MGuy, what I don't understand is why you think your proposal would even be satisfying to the "race matters" crowd. I don't think it would be; at least, I'm a "race matters" player and it wouldn't be satisfying to me. At the end of the day, you've just come up with a convoluted way to say "every race is good at every class," which is the opposite of what I would want to do.

One of the main benefits of forced race/class combos is that it enables you to make classes mean something in the world. Let's take Beguilers as an example. Beguiler is a mechanical patch class that exists to give people a different set of mechanics to access mind control magic with. A Beguiler is really not different from an Illusionist wizard, a Sorcerer with a pile of illusion spells, and Arcane Trickster, or even some kind of Bard in any way that would be obvious to an outside observer; therefore, beind a beguiler doesn't "mean" anything. Now, suppose we declare that beguiler powers are "fairy magic," and therefore only elves and gnomes are allowed to be beguilers, either because only they inherited the needed power by blood or because they learn from spirits who won't deal with anyone else. Now being a beguiler means something, and as a side effect being an elf means a little more than before. You don't want to lock orcs into being just a "dumb bruiser" race or elves into being a "casters only" race, but one of the benefits of classplosion is that you can give each race a character class for each role while also giving each race its own slate of classes. For instance: suppose that Halflings are allowed to be Knights, Clerics, Rogues, or Warmages; Gnomes are allowed to be Paladins, Assassins, White Mages, or Illusionists; Elves are allowed to be Samurai, Rangers, Druids, or Beguilers; Dwarves are allowed to be Marshals, Rogues, Fire Mages, or Necromancers; and humans are allowed to be Monks, Elementalists, Sorcerers, or Samurai.

The goal on release would be for each race to have 3-4 classes and each class to have 2-3 races.

[MGuy]

I think that the best way to get races to mean something AND have it be that you can choose just about any race/class combinations is to give each race a number of traits you can choose right out the gate. 3.5 did this by basically having an elf for every day of the week. You want one that's good at being a woodland archer? Brown elves. You want one that's good at wizarding? Grey Elves. If the same is just done across the board for every race then you can have your cake (having Race mean something) and eat it too (be able to choose any race to fill any class).

...

I wasn't exactly thinking about Attribute Scores. Nor was I thinking about PF's Favored Class thing (see the bit about not needing to create an ability specifically tailored to each class). Really it'd be more like alternate racial traits.

Alternate racial traits... related to classes? That's the PF Favored Class thing. Or just subrace traits that make you excel at certain classes?

The first quoted bit sure sounded like it was indicating attributes or a PF favored class trait since those are how certain races become uber for classes. But however you do it, you don't want to make certain races or subraces ideal for certain classes. It's the same problem as certain races being uber at classes except now you have pushed it onto specific physical appearances and societies determining the bonus, which is at least as sketchy ground.

I'm not comfortable saying "Oh, you want an elf who does archery? Then you want a blond one who lives in the xenophobic elven forests of the north. A wizard? Then an almond eyed one with silver hair with a scholarly society. Sorcerer? Pick the black skinned ones from the underdark who have an unhealthy fixation on spiders."

Just give horizontal abilities instead of vertical ones for races. They can still matter at least early on, especially if they are something roughly on par with up to level 2 spell abilities: ability to create darkness, amphibious, climb speed, create fire, create ice, sculpt wood, levitation, resist element, etc. etc. etc.

? Your response confuses me. My suggestion is that you have some generic racial description that covers a race, then a bunch of optional abilities that a person can choose from at character generation. I explicitly said to "not" tie the abilities to specific classes and that writing a bunch of subraces/racial variants was unnecessary. I certainly haven't pushed any ideas about awarding each race numeric bonuses at all.

[MGuy]

MGuy, what I don't understand is why you think your proposal would even be satisfying to the "race matters" crowd. I don't think it would be; at least, I'm a "race matters" player and it wouldn't be satisfying to me. At the end of the day, you've just come up with a convoluted way to say "every race is good at every class," which is the opposite of what I would want to do.

One of the main benefits of forced race/class combos is that it enables you to make classes mean something in the world. Let's take Beguilers as an example. Beguiler is a mechanical patch class that exists to give people a different set of mechanics to access mind control magic with. A Beguiler is really not different from an Illusionist wizard, a Sorcerer with a pile of illusion spells, and Arcane Trickster, or even some kind of Bard in any way that would be obvious to an outside observer; therefore, beind a beguiler doesn't "mean" anything. Now, suppose we declare that beguiler powers are "fairy magic," and therefore only elves and gnomes are allowed to be beguilers, either because only they inherited the needed power by blood or because they learn from spirits who won't deal with anyone else. Now being a beguiler means something, and as a side effect being an elf means a little more than before. You don't want to lock orcs into being just a "dumb bruiser" race or elves into being a "casters only" race, but one of the benefits of classplosion is that you can give each race a character class for each role while also giving each race its own slate of classes. For instance: suppose that Halflings are allowed to be Knights, Clerics, Rogues, or Warmages; Gnomes are allowed to be Paladins, Assassins, White Mages, or Illusionists; Elves are allowed to be Samurai, Rangers, Druids, or Beguilers; Dwarves are allowed to be Marshals, Rogues, Fire Mages, or Necromancers; and humans are allowed to be Monks, Elementalists, Sorcerers, or Samurai.

The goal on release would be for each race to have 3-4 classes and each class to have 2-3 races.

The way you want race to matter and the what I'm talking about when I say race matters seems to differ. What I mean when I say it is that your race gives you some ability that you care about mechanically. I don't have any particular desire to have specific races tied to specific classes. What you're talking about sounds like what they did in 2E and to a lesser extent in 4E and that's not at all what I'd want.

[Orion]

The problem with 4E, in my opinion, was that the race/class pairings didn't make any sense. Also, because they launched with only 8 classes, and they gave some races really weird stat mods, there were seriously races with 0-1 good class options, which was obviously bullshit.

[MGuy]

Well yea, I don't disagree. In the short time I tried it out I didn't even fight it. It still wasn't interesting and other things bothered me about the system more than optimizing the attribute bonuses I got. I'd honestly be willing to ignore being short changed a +2 on an attribute.

[Seerow]

MGuy, what I don't understand is why you think your proposal would even be satisfying to the "race matters" crowd. I don't think it would be; at least, I'm a "race matters" player and it wouldn't be satisfying to me. At the end of the day, you've just come up with a convoluted way to say "every race is good at every class," which is the opposite of what I would want to do.

One of the main benefits of forced race/class combos is that it enables you to make classes mean something in the world. Let's take Beguilers as an example. Beguiler is a mechanical patch class that exists to give people a different set of mechanics to access mind control magic with. A Beguiler is really not different from an Illusionist wizard, a Sorcerer with a pile of illusion spells, and Arcane Trickster, or even some kind of Bard in any way that would be obvious to an outside observer; therefore, beind a beguiler doesn't "mean" anything. Now, suppose we declare that beguiler powers are "fairy magic," and therefore only elves and gnomes are allowed to be beguilers, either because only they inherited the needed power by blood or because they learn from spirits who won't deal with anyone else. Now being a beguiler means something, and as a side effect being an elf means a little more than before. You don't want to lock orcs into being just a "dumb bruiser" race or elves into being a "casters only" race, but one of the benefits of classplosion is that you can give each race a character class for each role while also giving each race its own slate of classes. For instance: suppose that Halflings are allowed to be Knights, Clerics, Rogues, or Warmages; Gnomes are allowed to be Paladins, Assassins, White Mages, or Illusionists; Elves are allowed to be Samurai, Rangers, Druids, or Beguilers; Dwarves are allowed to be Marshals, Rogues, Fire Mages, or Necromancers; and humans are allowed to be Monks, Elementalists, Sorcerers, or Samurai.

The goal on release would be for each race to have 3-4 classes and each class to have 2-3 races.

That sounds like rehashing one of the worst things to come out of AD&D. No thank you.

[erik]

I think that the best way to get races to mean something AND have it be that you can choose just about any race/class combinations is to give each race a number of traits you can choose right out the gate. 3.5 did this by basically having an elf for every day of the week. You want one that's good at being a woodland archer? Brown elves. You want one that's good at wizarding? Grey Elves. If the same is just done across the board for every race then you can have your cake (having Race mean something) and eat it too (be able to choose any race to fill any class).
...
My suggestion is that you have some generic racial description that covers a race, then a bunch of optional abilities that a person can choose from at character generation. I explicitly said to "not" tie the abilities to specific classes and that writing a bunch of subraces/racial variants was unnecessary. I certainly haven't pushed any ideas about awarding each race numeric bonuses at all.

Okay... first bit on top. I keep quoting it because you wrote it and it contradicts what you are saying now. You said you wanted to have races mean something and be viable for all classes, and cited 3.5 elven subraces as an example proceeding to describe how 3.5 had a bevy of elf subraces with different attribute bonuses that favored certain classes... and recommended doing the elven-subrace solution for every race to solve the problem.

Frank already listed so many of the ways that idea is horrible, I just wanted to state that it doesn't even solve anything. Since every race gets "every day of the week", then on that level races mean even less. And since every subrace has a specific niche it just replaces the ickiness of certain races of being better at classes with certain subraces each being better (so every rogue is X Elf, X Halfing, X Dwarf, every wizard is Y Elf, Y Halfing, Y Dwarf). I also wanted to offer a worthwhile way to make races interesting without making them tilted towards particular classes (give horizontal racial abilities).

Your response confuses me

If you don't like subraces "for every day of the week" (i.e. class)... then I don't know why you said it. You explicitly gave examples of tying specific subraces to classes with attribute bumps and have explicitly said not to do that either. So I agree, you are confused.

[Username17]

The goal on release would be for each race to have 3-4 classes and each class to have 2-3 races.

The CYOA setup in the first post meets these criteria. There are 12 races and 18 classes and each class has two races attached to it and each race appears on three classes. That's 36 available options. And this is quite an ambitious lineup for a board game. But for an RPG, it's rather poor. It's literally not even as good as AD&D, which offered 34 single classed Race/Class options and 24 Multi-class or prestige options.

But more importantly, you're essentially asking us to roll back the "Dwarves Can Be Wizards" change from 2nd edition AD&D to 3rd edition D&D. Is there really a single person anywhere who wants to roll back that change and is worth listening to on that or any other subject? You are literally suggesting that we cave in to an incoherent shadzar demand. What the hell man? What the actual hell?

-Username17

[MGuy]

I think that the best way to get races to mean something AND have it be that you can choose just about any race/class combinations is to give each race a number of traits you can choose right out the gate. 3.5 did this by basically having an elf for every day of the week. You want one that's good at being a woodland archer? Brown elves. You want one that's good at wizarding? Grey Elves. If the same is just done across the board for every race then you can have your cake (having Race mean something) and eat it too (be able to choose any race to fill any class).
...
My suggestion is that you have some generic racial description that covers a race, then a bunch of optional abilities that a person can choose from at character generation. I explicitly said to "not" tie the abilities to specific classes and that writing a bunch of subraces/racial variants was unnecessary. I certainly haven't pushed any ideas about awarding each race numeric bonuses at all.

Okay... first bit on top. I keep quoting it because you wrote it and it contradicts what you are saying now. You said you wanted to have races mean something and be viable for all classes, and cited 3.5 elven subraces as an example proceeding to describe how 3.5 had a bevy of elf subraces with different attribute bonuses that favored certain classes... and recommended doing the elven-subrace solution for every race to solve the problem.

Frank already listed so many of the ways that idea is horrible, I just wanted to state that it doesn't even solve anything. Since every race gets "every day of the week", then on that level races mean even less. And since every subrace has a specific niche it just replaces the ickiness of certain races of being better at classes with certain subraces each being better (so every rogue is X Elf, X Halfing, X Dwarf, every wizard is Y Elf, Y Halfing, Y Dwarf). I also wanted to offer a worthwhile way to make races interesting without making them tilted towards particular classes (give horizontal racial abilities).

Your response confuses me

If you don't like subraces "for every day of the week" (i.e. class)... then I don't know why you said it. You explicitly gave examples of tying specific subraces to classes with attribute bumps and have explicitly said not to do that either. So I agree, you are confused.

You don't know why I said "3.5 did this with subraces"? The reason I brought up subraces is because that's what they did in 3.5. I'm not sure how I could make that anymore clear. You seem to be the one confused here which is why your responses continue to confuse me. Even if you got tripped up by that I explicitly say that there's no reason to use subraces in response to Frank mentioning that writing a bunch of variants would be problematic.

Obscurity and how well written each 'variant' is written can be avoided just by not doing write ups for each variant [Halfling].

So it seems you read what Frank said then missed the part where I said "You don't even need to do that and in fact it's better if you do it this other way".

[Koumei]

If this is some new game, you could make the ability scores mean a whole lot less* such that the +2 Dex for being an Elf means about as much as "Weapon Proficiency: Elf", and then each race is offering a bunch of little things, each of which potentially synergising (in a minor way) with a bunch of choices without merely being the obviously best choice. Or you could possibly do away with ability scores altogether. I dunno.

If you're nailing it onto an existing one, where even paring the ability scores down to four is more trouble than it's worth, then you might just have to rewrite the races to not actually have ability score modifiers. And what you then do is simply load them up on 5-6 things, each being worth a bonus proficiency or +2/+2 Skill Feat or 5 points of Energy Resistance.

*For instance by pulling them back to an AD&D/Palladium type deal where the difference between a 3 and a 20 is like 5-6 points (and thus the +2 racial bonus sometimes equals +1 to rolls). Or maybe you find there are about four different things that each ability score you keep covers, so you stagger the benefits out (12-13: +1 to A, 14-15: +1 to A and B, 16-17: +1 to A, B and C, 18-19: +1 to A, B, C and D, 20-21: +2 to A, +1 to B, C and D). In which case your Elf Bonus gives you +1 to one aspect of the ability score. Basically the way ability scores hand out bonus spells.

[erik]

So, the example of what could allow you to have your cake and eat it too is not at all what you wanted to suggest and in fact you say it should not be done. You no longer recommend nor ever recommended 3.5's elven subraces as an example of a way to have make races relevant and good across the board for all classes. Okay. Clear as day. I can swallow the cognitive dissonance and be fine with that.

Burying that goat and moving onward, I just wanted to note that 3e's elven subraces did not work at all for the goals of making races relevant and good across the board. An elf for every day of the week was largely derided as bullshit. Buttering that bullshit onto every race would've been just as bad if not worse. 3e's elven subraces were a failure. It let no one have cake. The cake was a lie.

If anyone wants to make the argument that mechanically the elven subraces in 3e/3.5 were a good thing, then they can bring it.