Racial Stats and traits

It's interesting, during the course of the dev discussion while thread has been up we've come to a sort of compromise.

In addition to a class, a player also picks a theme/background, a loose set of abilities and fluff that gives them extra distinction and character customisation at first level. Our current plan is that, while races do have stat bonuses, these backgrounds will include the option to shift that stat bonus to something else.

We'll see how it pans out in practice, but it seems pretty good to me, conceptually, keeping the general idea of racial distinctions while also letting PC's choose otherwise, at the slight cost of limiting their choice of background. But it also makes sense, since they're devoting their choice towards highlighting how they diverge from the norm.

>People shouldn't have to choose to play a Goliath or some specific race to be an effective warrior.

And gms (or players by that logic) shouldn't treat statblocks as a given, but as an option. It boggles my mind how people theat a "handbook" as a "ruleset". This shit right there leads to minmaxing, and not actually enjoying a game.

This is somewhat reminiscent of how Pillars of Eternity (Baldur's Gate style RPG from 2015) handles it. They still have racial attribute bonuses, but individual racial abilities are less impactful and more flavorful sometimes.

If we take D&D 3.5 or 5e as an example, your dwarf might have Stonecutting (situational but useful when it comes up) and resistance to knock downs but not bonus to CON.

Then additional backgrounds could provide mastery of specific weapons, skills, and situational abilities. Kind of how D&D 5e handles it with backgrounds, I've always enjoyed that particular aspect.

The racial stat mods are fine. Just don't make ability scores so incredibly important, as they have escalated in importance with each D&D edition. People whinge and bitch about how "well then I can't play an orc sorcerer" are retarded, whining about a 5% difference in spell saves, you think maybe that's why most orcs are not sorcerers? It helps soft-enforce the archetypical race/class combos, so that a character who goes against that, is actually a bit of a rarity rather than "lol every race has tons of every class cause why not?" that rapes the races' identities.

Honestly, that

Outside of Baldur's Gate, the biggest deal of AD&D ability scores was mostly a) qualifying for classes and b) proficiencies if you played with them (in 1E your base percentage of success was based on adding up ability scores, in 2E it's straight up roll under). The bonuses were nice but mostly gravy.

That said even Gygax kinda expected a player character to have at least 2 15s.

I actually really liked PIllars of Eternity's take on a D&D style system in a digital context. The way race, class and abilities came together, along with every stat being useful for every class, even if some were moreso than others.

Perhaps do both? Races have stat mods, but then you can choose to be "exceptional" removing all your stat mods. This way an orc can feel stronger than a human but can also play a smart orc. Optimal choices arent bad, but restrictively bad choices are. If orcs are stronger you can still play human warriors, but if they are dumb its really hard to be an orc wizard.

>Playing games still carrying the archaic "class" and "race" limitations

POOR UNFORTUNATE SOULS

I like freeform pointbuy systems as much as the next guy, but class based systems have clear design advantages if used correctly. It's a matter of what mechanic is most appropriate to the game, rather than one being implicitly better or worse.

Honestly this is making me want to play without ability scores at all.

They thought it right, did it wrong. In the end each point increase in stat modify so little it impacts almost nothing.

>While races might have a tendency overall, player characters are by default exceptional, so I don't see it as important that they always conform to the racial norm.
>D&D style games generally imply a heroic setting, your characters are exceptional by default. If anything, perhaps classes/roles should have built-in ability modifiers in order to make them reasonably effective at what they do.
This doesn't make sense. If the average dwarf has a better constitution than the average human, that will stay the same whether or not they're player characters or not. It doesn't matter whether you're exceptional or not, your exceptional other-race equivalent will be better and worse at the areas that follow their racial traits.

Obviously both posts think distinct racial abilities are more interesting, so do that. You don't need to use racial stat modifiers, but the above reasoning as to why they should be removed is poor.

I think you're missing the point.

Being exceptional doesn't just mean the PC's might be exceptional in the ways the race is by default. They might be exceptional in how they diverge from the norm.

I think a system that doesn't have racial stat modifiers could be neat. As long as you flesh out the racial abilities enough to make each race have an identity.

Being exceptionally strong is already deviating from the norm. That's reflected by the roll, array score, or point-bought score you attribute. Just because you're exceptionally strong for a human doesn't mean you'll ever compete with an equally exceptional Orc, nor will an exceptionally hardy Elf ever get close to an exceptionally hardy Dwarf. Compared to the score, the racial bonus has a tiny impact.

One of the big issues with racial stats, imo, is they very quickly result in 'X race is by far the best for Y class' as well as doubling up on themes. Halflings are good at throwing and sneaky? Cool, makes sense. They get decent speed for their size, a bonus to throwing weapons, a racial bonus to stealth...and a dex bonus which results in another bonus to stealth and bonus to throwing weapons? That's kinda redundant.

I am firmly against racial stat modifiers, because there's always gonna be a weak orc and dumb elf. Let the players not the race choose where to put their +2 modifier at character creation.

Another concept being discussed-

Racial stat minimums. Instead of every member of a race getting a stat bonus, instead every member of a race must have a minimum level in a certain stat. It still reinforces the races identity, as it pushes their average for that score significantly higher than the norm, without overly affecting player choice.

We're thinking the equivalent of a 14, in D&D terms, above average but not necessarily one of your key stats.

Or its reinforcing the theme. Halflings in general are dextrous, that's why they have the bonus, its just so happens they also excel at those weapons, having lots of training for them in their culture. The dex bonus has been exploited by their culture into giving more oomph to their training, resulting in far better knife throwers and sneaky gits. Elves also get a dex bonus, but aren't as great as halflings skills, due to not specializing in stealth or thrown weapons, instead opting for archery and light sword skills.

Both a get a general dex bonus which reinforces their theme which is expanded by specific training. Ones a body bonus and the other is cultural.

Stats give you a general idea of a races body and how it compares to humanity, whether a race is stronger ton average than a human or more dextrous or even more self confident. Traits give you an idea of that races general cultural focus, from dwarven smithing and stone cutting, to elven swordplay and archery, to halfling stealth and thrown weapons.

Throwing out stats makes no sense, and removes a huge aspect of what differentiates races from each other and humanity.

That's somewhat less relevant, since we're scrapping the idea of humans as a generic baseline.

So, going back to AD&D min requirement?

>higher than the norm
If it's required for that race, it's their norm, unless you're one of these old school 1e DMs who get assblasted about groups with more than one non-human.

Stat bonuses, I believe, are the worst way to do it, as it limits what a player is able to play.
It makes more sense to give passive abilities (orcs getting up on one, dwarves and Stone, elves resistance to charm or whatever for example)
This can be expanded with one possible active skill per class, but I'd say that's stretching it

Bump

My favorite way of expanding on it is having the core active thing that everyone of that race have (so all elves don't sleep) and a pick of 3-4 things that not everyone has but is common to the species (similar to subraces but without firmly tying to subrace), so some elves will be sneaky fuckers in the woods, some elves will have magic affinity, and so on.

A selection of traits you can choose from would make some sense

I think you're on to something with having more emphasis on racial abilities, but the real problem with racial stats (in DnD) is that they tend to increase a modifier, there shouldn't be a stat difference of more than 1.

That also sounds pretty neat, being able to customize your race in that sort of way.

I can see that making sense, although one of the other things we're trying to do is scrap attribute scores and just using the modifier, to get rid of a mostly unnecessary number.

I removed them when I made a homebrew system, for pretty much the reasons you have outlined. I felt that it was a better idea to give them abilities that made them all play differently.

Can you give examples of abilities you added?

For my homebrew system I spent awhile agonizing over how to do races, since I didn't want to have any race be ideal for any role, but I wanted them to still have the racial identity.

The way I ended up doing it is that, since the game is about building your own "class" out of a lot of different elements you collect through gameplay, race determines the starting set of options your character has available to you. So an elf and a human will start out different, but can both end up mechanically identical if the elf goes and tries to learn human skills and vice versa.

Any race that is so different from the standard that it requires certain options to match that fantasy, it fall into the monstrous character category which have pre assigned options to force them to match it, generally coming from the pool of options used to make monsters instead of PC's.

In something like dnd it can be really important because a +2/+1 in the right spots is an extra point or two, often considered enough to equalise or offset racial abilities that weren't conducive to the class role.

4e gave every race an encounter ability (or similar), that gave the races a unified feel. Regardless of class, your elf will be doing the Legolas shit like walking across the top of the snow drift or blending into the forest. Your dwarf will be a stubborn little bastard carrying far more on his back than his Str score.

Adding feats and parson paths etc only exemplified this (for better or worse spending on how you feel about the direction). The elf can take more feats to make everyone move like him through the forest. The eladrin fighter can find more ways to incorporate teleporting while the half Orc fighter always goes down swinging. The human can go all-in on ways that exemplify when the chips are down, he does the Big Damn Hero thing and comes out of it with another HFY story.

In short, you could run 4e with every race's +2/+2 being versatile and races would keep their identity because of the way racial features are used and given room to improve on. There's tentative evidence of this in that later on races were revised and got a set +2 and a choice of two for the second +2.

>Make races into classes. Go a step beyond. Give each race a different subsystem. Give each race a different resolution system.
These sound like the faggiest ways possible to run races.

>How important are racial stat modifiers in D&D and other fantasy games?

The significance of racial stats is to provide some tangible gameplay difference to the other various fantasy races. It doesn't 'have' to be stat modifiers or whatever, that's just the go to, the only thing that 'really' matters is that a Gnomish Wizard play differently than an Orcish Wizard.

While we're on the topic, I unironically don't think that "balance" has any place in a tabletop game run by human-beans, it obviously needs balanced rules and consistent structure that makes sense, but if a 'smart' race is a better caster than a 'dumb' race, that's just how it should be. 'role'playing, not 'roll'playing, etc, you know what I mean?

My main problem with people that are in favour of racial abilities, is that they tend to be hard to balance in relation to class abilities and each other.

Agreed. Definitely over ambitious. I can't think of any system that has done that, and it sounds like alot more work for the players, gm and designer than it would realistically be worth.

Races are low-priority for creating a system. You can easily have 2 different settings and have each one have a different set of races and different differences between them.

Also, I agree that stats bonuses are lame. Resistances, abilities, bonuses that don't help any specific playstyle, context of the race in the world, starting items etc. are the way to go.

Bump

I have multiple times spent hours designing settings, most of the time starting with the races.
Some of the ones I made that I still kinda like are amphibians with a hive-like society, where the females are these big crocidiletaurs type things, and the males are tiny and bipedal.
Men who resemble the animal they herd. Their default way of life is solitary with one or two relatives such as a spouse or child, but in many places they've been overrun by other races, some choosing to to flee to more dangerous areas where the other races are less likely to follow, or having to integrate with settled society.
Mosquito-bats that eat moss. I'm pretty sure I only came up with that one since I liked the pun.
Thin nocturnal albinos who vary from a more sympathetic version of goblin that lives underground, to the origin of stories of vampires fairies and monsters that steal babies.
Gorillas who are physiological and neurological tied to a symbiote that is mostly found in or on the exterior of the spine, with different individuals being hooked up to different partss in different ways. The downsides to the gorillas being that they now need more food, and now they need some of that food to have protein and saturated fats, causing conflict with the more established races; and them and the symbiote not always agreeing on when to sleep or what is or isn't dangerous, and more importantly once they've lived with a symbiote if theirs dies they need it to quickly be replaced by another one or have a serious problem such as becoming vegetatic or psychotic depending on what their symbiote was like.

I would always think about how they interacted with eachother and their world, but didn't put much thought into whether a person would want to play then or how to translate them mechanically into something that isnt annoying to play.

This is probably worse. Forces an investment in a stat that may be useless for the class you want, making the race even more undesirable. At least the stat bonuses are free extras.

Yeah, we move away from it again after thinking more deeply

Huh, OD&D did that. It was shit but then again OD&D had weird assumptions, like elves having to go to fucking human priests to worship their own gods

I liked the idea of racial traits and abilities.

But those too tend to lead to some pretty automatic combos with certain classes/builds.

Or not. Take the 4e Eladrin Fey Step. A Fighter may use it to close an threatening enemy. The Rogue will use it to get to the squishy enemy mage. The Wizard will use it to better position himself for maximum AoE damage. The Cleric will use it to get near an injured ally. And all can use it to escape.

This is the ideal we're aiming for, although it'll still tend in one direction or another

Generally I consider them best when they're just more of a token component, barely prominent enough to reinforce their cliches but not felt to the point where playing less obvious race/class combos feels like you're being penalized.

It's often more fun and interesting when they give you elements other than a simple numerical bonus.

>How important are racial stat modifiers in D&D
Stats in D&D are everything, so racial modifiers are pretty fucking important. In other games? Dunno, I didn't play all, but for example in Anima stats aren't that important, at char creation they give you around 5% of your total bonus to attack/defense, and probably a 10% at best of your secondary skills (climb and shit), the more you level the less it affects you.

>Stats in D&D are everything, so racial modifiers are pretty fucking important.
That doesn't really follow.

You could easily drop all stat modifiers and still have unique races.

Yes, and lot of people will end up with trait priority lists, to be used over and over.
You need amazingly good balance in the traits not to have some automatic class with trait choices.

That's has absolutely nothing to do what to what I answered.
>How important are racial stat modifiers in D&D
Very, because stats are very important, so the highest you have your class's main stats the better, so a +2 is good while a -2 is literally trash

>Playing 5e
>"It's bounded accuracy user, so stats aren't important"
>Me "ok"
>Pick tiefling
>Pick monk
>Start with 14 AC
>Die
>Me "mmm"
>Do the same
>Die
>Me "mmmmmm"
>Do the same
>Die
>Me "Didn't you say that stats weren't important?"
In D&D since 3.0 stats are everything, don't be fooled by what others say

Could be worse
>GM wants to translate chars from previous game to 5e
>In previous game I was a divine infused martial artist
>The only way I can accomplish that is with Paladin/Monk
>Stats have to be all 13
>Be fucking useless in everything ever plus my stats are 13 forever because I don't get ASI (stat increments) due multiclassing

Sorry, OP here, will clarify my statement in the OP.

The question was less 'Are stats significant in D&D?', because they obviously are, but 'How much do racial stat modifiers matter to you?'. I should have phrased it better, my bad.

>How much do racial stat modifiers matter to you?
They're as important to me as are important in the game
If the game makes stats essential, racial bonuses are improtant to me. If the game makes stats not that significant then stats are less important and I don't mind "gimping" them for flavor

> Miseries and misfortunes of war: pillaging
> Here are the great feats of those inhuman hearts:
> They ravage everywhere, nothing escape their hands
> One to obtain gold, invent torments
> Another toward thousands infamies stirs his accomplices
> And all together maliciously commit
> Thief, abduction, murder and rape.

Yeah and that doesn't really make it an important part of races as a mechanic unless you absolutely demand that they be shoehorned in 2-3 builds

It just means that the stats have an important impact.

I honestly would like an edition of D&D that goes back to AD&D style "stats don't really do anything unless they're extremes"

Hell, maybe even pre-Moldvay where exceptional stats only capped at +1/-1

If stats were significant, but races didn't give any stat bonuses, would that detract from your experience?

Neat

>Yeah, racial stat bonuses are dumb.
>Having a orc with the same STR as a halfling
KYS

That may not be an issue if there are other factors in your system, for example mine uses size class as a modifier for many actions. To use your example, a size 6 orc with high strength could reasonably wrestle a size 7 troll or size 8 ogre to the ground but a size 4 elf or size 3 goblin (no halflings in my setting) would struggle to do more than latch on to the same troll or ogre.

>want to play freeform
>"Freeform is cringy user"

I guess they really like the D&D combat and math.

Agree on an indetermined bonus for each character.

Then each player makes his own character, and based on the character made and all things like race, background, personality etc... you spend that predetermined bonus on stats that fit that description.

This allows players to make whatever they want without thinking of powergaming

Absolutely not, and if you do, it's not a necessity of establishment.

I dont think about it at all, and I make the characters as weak or strong as I desire anyways as DM.

You shouldnt talk about stats in a good roleplay game imo if you're playing. Stats are mostly for the DM for orientation, the meaning they have to the player is not mechanical, it's just related to story and roleplay.

That's how I do it anyways

There's a ton of space between freeform and D&D user, maybe you should have gone with something rules light instead of trying to push them into the deep end right away.

The point isn't that there's no difference, but we can create the difference through things other than raw stat points.

At that point it sounds like you're playing such a different system they're not really worth comparing.

technically it's just making powergaming easier by making mechanics more flexible.

Lurker here. This is a great topic.

It makes me sad to see races so mechanically focused. It makes DnD seem like even more of a spreadsheet.

My personal take is that race should not have any mechanical features unless super significant (like an eagle flying). And even then,the racial difference should be only what is required. Adding abilities, unless necessary like the eagle example, make the game feel like a spreadsheet.

Race shines through roleplaying and interacting with NPCs. It gives players motivation and allows them to adopt a different culture.

Someone should roll a Dward because they like drinking and stuff, not because they want a con bonus and hardiness vs spells. One shohld be an orc because they want to be an outcast in civilized lands, not because they want to play a fighter and the Str bonus results in the most powerful fighter.

I believe we are at the culmination od DnD WoTC shittiness that becan in 3e. There, they introduced far morr player choice and optimization (2e proficiencies dont count). Now, your character choices directly determine how powerful you are, with a large optimization gap. There is an optimal solution, so everyone wastes time finding it. This doesnt create REAL choice.

System optimization takes time away from the real game of exploring a weird world. If you want to play a card game like a faggot than play MTG.

If you want to play DnD, then remove all racial traits and abilities except foe the bare bones and have at her.

Maybe you just suck.

PC are, by default, not the standard of each race. They are heroes.
So a PC halfling might be strong as an orc.

Racial attributes add nothing to the game. They destroy diversity and creativity by creating optimal solutions that players will feel obligated to pursue.

We are all happier without them.

>Someone should roll a Dward because they like drinking and stuff
Or play a human and do the same.
>One shohld be an orc because they want to be an outcast in civilized lands
Or play a human and do the same.

If you want to be boring, sure.

Youre totally right.
Fantasy races are really just portrayals of human archetypes. We cannot comprehend anything truly foreign to us.

Try roleplaying... a dog. An actual dog.

...What?

>Make races into classes.

While I agree that almost every instance I've seen this it was executed quite poorly: I think races 'as' classes is an extremely interesting concept that I think 'could' potentially be done really well.

Wakfu?

Honestly, I think D&D style racial stat bonuses are too lax. The fact that a halfling has only a 5% less chance at busting a door down than a human is too little to me (yes, I'm aware that's partially the d20's fault, that's beside the point).

I think races should be dealt with like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, where race can have a massive impact on how you play the game depending what you choose (though with some options like high elves and halflings that still play mostly like baseline humans), and class is instead the secondary choice that only affects small things.

>Wakfu?

Shit, that's a good example.
I hadn't even thought of Wakfu, but Wakfu is totally a perfect example of race=class in a functional way.
For anybody that doesn't know: In the Wakfu universe there is only 1 'race' and it's humans, everyone is born a human, but the god you choose to worship and devote yourself to will physically change your race/appearance.
How serious the changes are depend on how much you, personally, reflect the personality and ideals of the god you've identified with; progressively becoming more like them in appearance, etc.

Pic related is an example.
Alibert and Ruel are both "Eliatropes", Humans who worship a god of greed, commerce, etc, but Ruel is an extremely cheap, greedy, miserly man and has thus has devolved into an old man while Alibert is still quite young looking despite the two being comparable in age.

A real Wakfu RPG would be great

They're Enutrofs, Eliatropes are the portal hax characters

Enutrofs. Not Eliatropes
Eliatropes are the one exception, they are NOT humans, they're dragons. But there's only like... 3 of them right now
EliOtropes are human though. The reason is a bit convoluted
Oh, and Enutrof doesn't like Ruel, since while Enutrof wants his disciples to make loadsamoney, he also wants them to spend a lot too, and Ruel's a rather notorious miser Who literally bought his entire home villiage IIRC
Also, I THINK Ruel's like, several hundred years old. Death from old age doesn't really seem to be a THING in that setting.

A standard orc sure, but given equal investment, a PC halfling will never be as strong as a PC orc unless you have bounded accuracy. That's the whole premise between racial bonuses in the first place.

Sounds like a player problem

Huh.
I actually did the exact same thing in a homebrew I'm still working on. You start human, but instead of aligning with a God, you become chimeric with the monsters you kill and absorb into yourself. So if you kill Dragons, Rocs, or Phoenixes, you can grow wings enough to fly.

That reminds me of the time he begged Enutrof to save him and promised he'd double his offerings in return. Enutrof promptly shows up...

...to tell him that zero times two is still zero and that he can go fuck himself.

>Someone should roll a Dward because they like drinking and stuff, not because they want a con bonus and hardiness vs spells. One shohld be an orc because they want to be an outcast in civilized lands
I'm not fond of typecasting whole races. That makes them get stale and even annoying in very short time. Every dwarf being Gimli is the reason I've come to detest dwarves whenever presented.

But does 'Strong' have to mean 'Has the same Strength' stat? What if there are traits that still give the Orc advantages in that area?

Since we're talking about ability scores, then it does mean Strength stat. If we're talking strong as "similar DPR" or "equal performance in niche", then that's a whole other discussion with many more factors.

Not necessarily? In terms of interacting with the setting, your Strength attribute is only one factor in how much impact you actually have.

A Strong race might have, for example, a trait that says 'When you would take 10 on a Strength based check, instead take 12'. In terms of physical labour and other such tasks, they're innately superior to a member of another race, even if they had the same Strength score.