Should characters even have different combat numbers?

[spongeknight]

I really can't see a reason why Whisper Gnome Rogues should be throwing daggers with a +3 bonus over Gold Dwarf Rogues. Like, I can kind of understand that it feels cool when you figure out the best race/class/feat combinations to fulfill a particular role, but then you run into the problem of there being a best combination that never goes away. Every single time you make a rogue from then on you'll either roll a Whisper Gnome or purposefully take a hit to your effectiveness for some reason, and that sucks balls. So why have derived combat stats that can differ between two characters that should be fulfilling the same roll? Why can't the Rogue class just have an attack bonus of +2 at level 1, and that's what your attack bonus is?

Maybe you could have an overall attack bonus of +2 and have a choice of weapon specialization for a +1 to a set of weapons, or perhaps you could have a larger bonus when flanking or when your opponent's prone or something for a little differentiation, but I see no benefit at all for having some members of a class just straight up out perform others in their primary schtick based on stacking bonuses from out of class sources. I could definitely see an argument that Warriors should be way better at melee and Wizards should be way more accurate flinging ice bolts, but why should Warrior #1 be better than Warrior #2 at stabbing people? Is the joy of playing the best combinations really worth being locked out of 95% of race/class/feat combinations?

[Night Goat]

D&D races need different stats because there's no other reason to play them. They're not interesting enough to stand on their own. Every dwarf is Gimli, every elf is Legolas, every halfling is Bilbo, and most other races have no personality whatsoever. You could say that D&D really doesn't need whisper gnomes or gold dwarves, and you'd be right, but the people running the show have never been that sensible.

[OgreBattle]

Ideally you'd have mechanics where a dorf/elf/orc's stat bonuses are valid for warrior and wizard concepts alike like the elf is more accurate and the dorf is more durable and the orc hits harder and all are valued.

but why should Warrior #1 be better than Warrior #2 at stabbing people? Is the joy of playing the best combinations really worth being locked out of 95% of race/class/feat combinations?

Well what are the components of stabbing? It could be...
-getting into a position to stab (mobility)
-accurate stabbing
-hard hitting stabbing
-stabbing more than one guy at once
-stabbing at range
-getting a flanking/sneak attack bonus to stabbing
-getting a charging bonus to stabbing

then you could have them be 'good at stabbing' but focused in different ways.

When it comes down to it though some people just like having different numbers on their character sheets. It's not 'logical' to think that one guy having an inferior strength score to another is a good kind of 'variety' to have, but it is something that makes people feel different.

Ideally you have a game where being effective at stabbing can be implemented in mechanically diverse ways, but most games are not designed so precisely and DM fudging makes up for disparity.

[spongeknight]

D&D races need different stats because there's no other reason to play them. They're not interesting enough to stand on their own. Every dwarf is Gimli, every elf is Legolas, every halfling is Bilbo, and most other races have no personality whatsoever. You could say that D&D really doesn't need whisper gnomes or gold dwarves, and you'd be right, but the people running the show have never been that sensible.

Well, D&D 4th edition almost solved that problem by giving the races cool little flavor powers that did things like let them reroll a save once per day or get a little bonus move action. That and flavor text really seems like all you'd need to get people to enjoy different races. Even MMOs nowadays don't give you stats based on your race, because even though WOW is popular people still bitched about gnome warriors not being able to compete with orc warriors evenly in PVP. Of course, 4th then dropped the ball by giving all races two stats and therefore locking them into even smaller niches than the 3e counterparts, but it was almost a good idea.

[Ghremdal]

Or you can just let the races keep their piddly little bonuses and have ways of getting real, meaningful bonuses via feats, teamwork and/or positioning.

[ishy]

Even MMOs nowadays don't give you stats based on your race, because even though WOW is popular people still bitched about gnome warriors not being able to compete with orc warriors evenly in PVP.

Pretty sure you're wrong. WoW does have different statistics for each 'race' (though the difference is so minor you probably don't care). And a couple of years ago the main wow developer was whining that they needed different bonuses for each race because D&D had it. And everybody in pvp is / was human since the human race bonus was better.

[OgreBattle]

I could see the difference in race/species/cultural background affect secondary skills like "+2 acrobatics, +2 endurance", while not affecting combat stats like getting a +1 to hit or damage.

Having a piddly +1 bonus to a defensive stat like your FORT/REF/WILL seems like something that would make your characters feel different yet not affect their offensive output much.

So the dorfs and orcs get +1 Fort and the city elves get +1 Wil. Your dwarven warrior will be more resilient to poisonous bites while the elven warrior is slightly better at dodging a hellhound breath attack.

[Korwin]

IMHO races should be different by more than estetics.
If you only manage that by different stat modifiers, thats sad. But better than nothing...

[PhoneLobster]

This seems like less of a place to have the usual old "D&D style race mechanics are bad, heres how it should be..." discussion and more of the place to have a "D&D style attribute mechanics are bad and no one can agree on that" discussion.

Because ultimately what the OP is complaining about is basically a product of the whole thing where D&D and waaaaay to many games frequently intended to be major departures from it do the whole "16 Str is different to 18 Str" thing.

There are reasons to have attributes in some RPGs. There are reasons to have differentiations in important derived bonuses from attributes down to that sort of granularity.

But it is actually a remarkably difficult argument to make that attributes need to exist in that form and that granularity in every RPG and even D&D in particular. Having a rogue differentiate themselves from another rogue simply because they have 20 Dex instead of 18 Dex is... both not good enough and simultaneously a gigantic problem.

And various common major sticking point issues for RPGs, things like the creation of "must have" race/class combos, are only made worse by having a traditional attribute system and races and classes permitted to interact with it. And in all honest if you DO have an attribute system... your races and classes probably are, and possibly should interact with it. Unfortunately.

I chucked attributes right out the fucking window for my own homebrew heart breaker and I keep on telling people, of all the crazy things I've done with RPG rules it remains the craziest one... that was immediately accepted and liked by everyone in practice. Crazy ideas rarely get the sort of acceptance it got, I sure as hell expected "no you don't get to roll for your god damn Wisdom score" to be responded to with anything other than disappointment, anger and confusion. But people actually seem to like it. Which is great because being able to remove the traditional attribute system has resulted in lots of nice benefits for the function of the system.

[maglag]

I chucked attributes right out the fucking window for my own homebrew heart breaker and I keep on telling people, of all the crazy things I've done with RPG rules it remains the craziest one... that was immediately accepted and liked by everyone in practice. Crazy ideas rarely get the sort of acceptance it got, I sure as hell expected "no you don't get to roll for your god damn Wisdom score" to be responded to with anything other than disappointment, anger and confusion. But people actually seem to like it. Which is great because being able to remove the traditional attribute system has resulted in lots of nice benefits for the function of the system.

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim threw attributes out the window years ago and was pretty popular. You simply had skills by themselves and HP/mana/stamina as their own independent stats, with each race granting bonus to certain sets of skills and one or two minor powers or passives.

[OgreBattle]

I chucked attributes right out the fucking window for my own homebrew heart breaker and I keep on telling people, of all the crazy things I've done with RPG rules it remains the craziest one... that was immediately accepted and liked by everyone in practice. Crazy ideas rarely get the sort of acceptance it got, I sure as hell expected "no you don't get to roll for your god damn Wisdom score" to be responded to with anything other than disappointment, anger and confusion. But people actually seem to like it. Which is great because being able to remove the traditional attribute system has resulted in lots of nice benefits for the function of the system.

So in Mouse Trap is an orc and 'strong human guy' potentially the same mechanically?

[spongeknight]

Because ultimately what the OP is complaining about is basically a product of the whole thing where D&D and waaaaay to many games frequently intended to be major departures from it do the whole "16 Str is different to 18 Str" thing.

That is indeed part of the problem. I can immediately see why people want to have movable stats that can produce characters with slightly different areas of competency, but D&D stats go way too far in that function. Not only do they combine with other bonuses (size, feats, racials, circumstantial) to the point where a starting character can be off the RNG to another character, but they get even stupider when you have massive bonuses late game (+16 strength from Bite of the Werebear) that set the haves and the have-nots completely apart.

That's not the whole of my argument though- you can have 16 strength or 22 strength and still only have a +2 to hit at level one. My gripe is simply why all the bullshit from everywhere affects the final combat numbers your character has. Because, quite obviously, it encourages anyone who cares about the effectiveness and survival of their characters to use the most effective builds and not necessarily what they want to play the most or what would make the best story. So, is there any reason why we should keep the paradigm that things other than your class add to your combat ability in a class system, or should your entire to hit and damage and saves and AC and excetera be solely derived from your class? I can't think of a single good reason why they shouldn't be, especially if your classes have actual cool powers that can differentiate characters (one Rogue takes brutal strike and another takes feathertouch daggerdeath or whatever).

[Kaelik]

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim threw attributes out the window years ago and was pretty popular. You simply had skills by themselves and HP/mana/stamina as their own independent stats, with each race granting bonus to certain sets of skills and one or two minor powers or passives.

I personally hate the fuck out of the loss of attributes in Skyrim. Maybe you didn't need all the different attributes you had in Morrowind/Oblivion, but honestly, it is a computer game, that shit is totally worth having in the game.

That said, no PnP RPG should have that many attributes under any circumstance.

[PhoneLobster]

So in Mouse Trap is an orc and 'strong human guy' potentially the same mechanically?

Unless orcs have a special powa, and as long as the orc is 'strong orc guy' instead of 'fast orc guy' or something, then yes.

[K]

Races really shouldn't have numerical bonuses over other races. It's really just a throwback to old racist remnants from the dark ages of RPGs. It persists because it's tradition, not because it's good for the game mechanically or flavorwise.

Ideally races should be differed by actual abilities. For example, you could preserve the martial feel of orcs by giving them a rage ability that was as useful to spellcasters as it would be to rogues and warriors.

I've been looking at a lot of non-DnD RPGs recently and come to conclusion that the easiest and laziest design is always going to be "assigning bonuses and penalties" instead of making real abilities. Math models have always been a form of abstraction that feels very "game-y" but can be much more easily designed than Incomparables (but yes, lots of games fuck up math models as well).

[Chamomile]

Giving each race multiple abilities of which players get to pick one, with each class benefiting from at least one of those abilities, is much easier than giving each race one ability that works well for every class, even after accounting for the fact that this increases the total number of abilities you have to write.

[Maxus]

So, Skyrim-type abilities where the catpeople are sneaky and see in the dark, the lizardfolk can breathe water, the orcs all can rage, and so on.

That is sort of intriguing. And showed up, oh, with some of Koumei's stuff, I know.

[silva]

So, Skyrim-type abilities where the catpeople are sneaky and see in the dark, the lizardfolk can breathe water, the orcs all can rage, and so on.

That is sort of intriguing. And showed up, oh, with some of Koumei's stuff, I know.

I think its more or less how The One Ring works too.

[czernebog]

Ideally races should be differed by actual abilities. For example, you could preserve the martial feel of orcs by giving them a rage ability that was as useful to spellcasters as it would be to rogues and warriors.

Ideally races should be differed by actual abilities. For example, you could preserve the martial feel of orcs by giving them a rage ability that was as useful to spellcasters as it would be to rogues and warriors.

I've been looking at a lot of non-DnD RPGs recently and come to conclusion that the easiest and laziest design is always going to be "assigning bonuses and penalties" instead of making real abilities. Math models have always been a form of abstraction that feels very "game-y" but can be much more easily designed than Incomparables (but yes, lots of games fuck up math models as well).

Burning Wheel's use of special attributes for comes to mind. Whatever problems it has as a system, the Grief of Elves, Greed of Dwarves, Hatred of Orcs, and Faith of Men are evocative and encourage players to play to type. This is not a perfect fit for the question of numerical bonuses in D&D --- Burning Wheel doesn't lend itself very well to mixed-race parties and is skill-based rather than class-based. But it might be worth looking at for inspiration.

One idea I have played around with but couldn't get to work well was to have racial attributes determine what character skills are correlated. That's kind of what abilities are supposed to represent; they are abstractions over task- or situation-specific character competencies. So Elves might get the Grace ability, and they may be able to choose a Dexterity-based skill and a Wisdom-based skill for which they can use their Grace bonus instead of the usual ability bonuses.

A particular difficulty with this approach is that of coming up with sufficiently descriptive and mechanically differentiating racial abilities, while still retaining game balance and not typecasting the races too strongly. You need to come up with something that differentiates Halflings from Humans and Elves, but you also need to find something that differentiates Halflings from Gnomes, without resorting to "Halflings are thieves who are sneaky, while Gnomes are mages who are sneaky," as that just pushes all sneaky wizards to be Gnomes and all sneaky thieves to be Halflings.

The brokenness that is d20's skill system also hampers this. This sort of approach is more feasible in a skill-based system or maybe with the Tome of Prowess.

Giving each race multiple abilities of which players get to pick one, with each class benefiting from at least one of those abilities, is much easier than giving each race one ability that works well for every class, even after accounting for the fact that this increases the total number of abilities you have to write.

You could also have race-specific bonuses that key off of general character options, so a Weapon Finessing Half-Orc gets to use Intimidate in combat as a move action, whereas a Weapon Finessing Halfling gets to share the result of their successful feint maneuver with one ally who is flanking the same target. Balancing these options might be difficult, though, as it's necessary to keep each race's bonus option (and any combination of bonus options) as generally applicable as those of all the others.

[PhoneLobster]

So really keen on sticking to the usual "race mechanics are bad" discussion.

Well, then I'll point out the usual stuff.

Race options should be split into physical and cultural. So you can have stuff like "elf raised by dwarfs" and have that mean something sensible and less racist.

Both options for "races" should simply be "common stereotypes" and individuals should be able to defy them and pick from a range of non-standard physical and cultural "race" options. This lets you have "the weakling wizardy orc" and "the half elf half goblin guy" and "that one human who is a mutant and has four arms" and other savory goodness. This ALSO means that you no longer have specific "race" backgrounds be must have matches for specific classes, and you can write up "race" or physical (or even cultural) options that ARE useful and interactive with classes because you CAN just be that one orc who studied hard for his wizard tests.

"Race" options should share a common cost with at least some other character advancement options. So you don't HAVE to actually take any "race" options, and in return you just have more of the common resource to spend on directly equivalent equally powerful options. But if you want a race that is MORE costly than "elf that gets a sharp pointy ear hearing bonus or some junk but is mostly human" you just can, by spending more of a common resource on having eight arms and shooting lasers out of your eyes.

The common costing methodology means you can have diverse races of diverse power levels ranging from "humans who get pretty much nothing special" to "monster characters with actual rafts of monster powers god damn it". It means you don't NEED to try and write magic worthless/neutral race powers, they CAN in fact have real value.

This unfortunately means that some foundational aspects of your RPG mechanics need to be built to support it.

That means you do what I do (points based advancement in general), or you build a significantly better equivalent to the d20 feats system that amounts to a large and deep points based option system running parallel to your class based advancement.

Race based classes, race based specialist "bonus class levels", or any sort of "negative level" penalty for "better" race abilities are not particularly good solutions for anything ever unless you are already stuck working with them or the legacy bullshit that spawned them.

Pretty sure that covers the usual.

It still however doesn't hold all that much relevance to preventing the "thief with +3 attack vs thief with +5 attack, because attributes and bonus stacking stuff". Which while marginally alleviated by implementing even just the "just because you are an orc doesn't mean you ALWAYS have to take bonus str and can't take bonus int" thing, still doesn't solve the problem of the other basic foundations of the system producing such outcomes. It just means you don't HAVE to write orc on your barbarian sheet before stacking all the barbarian options together to get to be the +5 barbarian instead of the +3 barbarian.

[Korwin]

Race options should be split into physical and cultural. So you can have stuff like "elf raised by dwarfs" and have that mean something sensible and less racist.

The Dark Eye, is doing that. (But badly.)

Not so much on the dwarf front, but on the human front.
Like there are multiple human races and if you want to be an demon summoner, it pays to be an Viking who was raised in not-South America.

Hmm, maybe they did it better in the new (5th) Edition?

[OgreBattle]

Races really shouldn't have numerical bonuses over other races. It's really just a throwback to old racist remnants from the dark ages of RPGs. It persists because it's tradition, not because it's good for the game mechanically or flavorwise.

Ideally races should be differed by actual abilities. For example, you could preserve the martial feel of orcs by giving them a rage ability that was as useful to spellcasters as it would be to rogues and warriors.

Something around the power level of a feat you can take at level 1 then?

There's also a matter of scaling. I figure that it's fine for species abilities to be pretty big at the point you're fighting orcs, but once you're planar traveling everyone's class abilities are more important. So an orc and elf mage will be fairly distinct at level 1-5 but at level 10 the mage part of the character is a bigger deal.

I figure some tolerable abilities would be...

* small movement bonus
* gliding ability
* low light vision
* resilience to poison/illusion/etc.
* cooldown based short distance teleportation? Ala 4e Eladrin

and so on.

[crasskris]

I personally hate the fuck out of the loss of attributes in Skyrim. Maybe you didn't need all the different attributes you had in Morrowind/Oblivion, but honestly, it is a computer game, that shit is totally worth having in the game.

I particularly loved the way the attributes in these games implicitly told us that the in-game race of black people (and especially their men) were genetically disposed to be stupid and weak-willed, but really strong and dextrous and good at brutalizing white people hitting stuff.

Now, I know that they were supposed to be a proud warrior race, and I know what dump-stats are, so the implications were probably not intended. Still it was hilarious to point that implication out to fans of the game, though.

[Kaelik]

I personally hate the fuck out of the loss of attributes in Skyrim. Maybe you didn't need all the different attributes you had in Morrowind/Oblivion, but honestly, it is a computer game, that shit is totally worth having in the game.

I particularly loved the way the attributes in these games implicitly told us that the in-game race of black people (and especially their men) were genetically disposed to be stupid and weak-willed, but really strong and dextrous and good at brutalizing white people hitting stuff.

Now, I know that they were supposed to be a proud warrior race, and I know what dump-stats are, so the implications were probably not intended. Still it was hilarious to point that implication out to fans of the game, though.

I don't give two fucking shits if there are races with different stats, I'm just saying the game is noticeably less good without Willpower/Int/Strength/Speed/Agility. Luck could go either way, and Endurance was at least implemented poorly, but could work out, and who gives a flying fuck about Personality, but the game didn't get better when they took out those stats.

But hey, while you are complaining about filthy racism, you are also full of shit, because the fucking Nords are literally exactly as dumb as the redguards, and have on average worse personality (Black women are considered nicer than scandanavian women).

So if you want to be a stupid shithead about it, you aren't even doing a good job. Yes, you can make up all kinds of stupid complaints because starting stats vary based on race and gender, but none of those are even going to count. 1) Because you are stupid and don't bother to actually look this up and come up with good complaints, and 2) Because literally no specific combination of stats could possibly be on it's own as racist as the idea that black people are their own race, as different from white people (well, the three different races of white people, Germans, Italians, and English) as they are from Cat people and Fish People.

[maglag]

I personally hate the fuck out of the loss of attributes in Skyrim. Maybe you didn't need all the different attributes you had in Morrowind/Oblivion, but honestly, it is a computer game, that shit is totally worth having in the game.

I particularly loved the way the attributes in these games implicitly told us that the in-game race of black people (and especially their men) were genetically disposed to be stupid and weak-willed, but really strong and dextrous and good at brutalizing white people hitting stuff.

Now, I know that they were supposed to be a proud warrior race, and I know what dump-stats are, so the implications were probably not intended. Still it was hilarious to point that implication out to fans of the game, though.

I don't give two fucking shits if there are races with different stats, I'm just saying the game is noticeably less good without Willpower/Int/Strength/Speed/Agility. Luck could go either way, and Endurance was at least implemented poorly, but could work out, and who gives a flying fuck about Personality, but the game didn't get better when they took out those stats.

Why exactly do you say it didn't get better?

In Oblivion if I had the choice between building/buying a +X item to Int or a +Y to mana, I had to pause the game, go to the wiki and grab a calculator to check which one would give the better boost.

In Skyrim only the mana stat boosts mana so crafting and gear management goes a lot smoother.