Camlo Alban's page

Great stuff, folks! Thanks so much for these insights; there’s a lot of very useful ideas in here for how to make a wizard use actions more tactically.

I’ve been GMing a game of 2e recently, and the one thing I’ve found consistently is that my character who is playing a wizard seems to have less fun on his turns in regard to being creative and strategic with the three-action system. This is primarily due to the fact that virtually all spells are at least two actions, leaving the third action a little in the dust.

Please note this is not another “casters are weak” thread; nor is it necessarily just about optimization (although certainly some options are bound to be better). I just wanted to see how folks playing casters tend to use their actions in ways that are fun for the player and/or mechanically interesting.

Right now I’m seeing a few options:

Basic:
Strike
Stride
Step
Raise a Shield

Skill Actions:
Recall Knowledge
Trip
Disarm
Create a Diversion
Feint
Demoralize
Treat Wounds (with Battle Medicine)
Command an Animal (requires an animal)
Conceal an Object
Hide
Sneak
Palm an Object
Steal

Others?
Command a Familiar

Glad I asked! Thank you.

Just curious, but has anyone else received information about Geography Buff, etc.? Just wanting to make sure I didn't miss something...

I'd prefer to be something that steals, but hides his true identity. From everyone. In character and out.

An elven arcane trickster who uses alter self to become a female Orc every time he does something illegal. Deep cover/ alter ego kind of thing.

I'd imagine Alter Self would just really buff your disguise skill in PFO (perhaps with a visual rendering of your choosing to go along with it). So it sounds totally feasible! I think the only issue is your "alter ego" would have a procedurally generated name every time you stepped into him/her.

Camlo Alban wrote:

Sentences one and two seem unrelated to me?

I'd assume anyone could do them, but it'd be nifty if clerics of deities could perform special ceremonies for the happy couple.

Well, when it comes to any character with a non-combat-related primary occupation, that character is left quite vulnerable to bandits, assassins, and high-level griefers. It would just really suck to be dying all the time because of that. I definitely want to be a cleric and perform special rituals for couples!

This makes much more sense, sorry! I mis-parsed and was thinking you were worried about getting killed WHILE marrying people. But yes, I think Blaeringr has it on the nose. Be a farmer/cleric, or an aristocrat/cleric, or a crafter/cleric, or just a cleric who specializes in doing things that are more settlement-focused than exploratory. Sticking around a high-security settlement will let you play the game as you wish while ensuring safety as well. Eventually, you'll probably be able to move to a player-run settlement that is "as secure" (note the quotes) as an NPC settlement as well. Slightly higher risk/reward than just sticking around the NPC settlement though.

Sentences one and two seem unrelated to me?

I'd assume anyone could do them, but it'd be nifty if clerics of deities could perform special ceremonies for the happy couple. This is of course, not a high priority for the GW team's "minimum viable product", I'm sure.

I hope it's not too late to get in on this! I'd love to see what you had in the original manuscript, Jason.

Thank you in advance!

Name: Zi Mishkal
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Wizard 6
Adventure: Rivers Run Red
Location: Hargulka's Fort
Catalyst: A well-placed bead from his necklace of fireballs

The Gory Details: The party was working its way through Hargulka's fort following their militia's battle with the trolls outside, and were nearing the big bad's chamber itself - they were mid-battle with the rock troll when they see a little bead come flying out from behind a curtain of animal furs. Hargulka had been watching, and looking for an opportune moment to join the fight! This 8d6 fireball dropped the party cleric and the wizard to either negatives or very close; the rest of the party rushed up to Hargulka after killing the rock troll. Hargulka seized the opportunity to throw in one more bead and the wizard was down. Fortunately he had two hero points, so was able to be "stable and -11" rather than dead. The party barbarian then proceeded to crit on both of his next attacks, slicing off Hargulka's head before he could drop another fireball on the party, which would have likely killed the cleric too.

We're hoping that training becomes one of our incentives for established groups being inviting to newbies. At some point, a powerful settlement starts to notice that it has low-level training "rotting on the vine" and starts marking it down and setting up touts in starter areas to try to convince lower level players to come buy it to avoid it just going to waste. Ideally there are several settlements all fighting to get new players to come visit in this way.

This sounds great!

Also, clynx, you raise some good points. I'm still a little skeptical until I see it in action I think, but hopefully it'll work out. I just want training to be a viable economy in and of itself as well, and upkeep costs were the very first thing I thought of that made it different from crafting.

Not to speak for Camlo, although I think I understand him.

The problem is that once a majority of the player base has purchased a particular Skill/Tier, then the demand falls off dramatically, causing the price to plunge. It's similar to the problem with lower-level gear in most games - once most players are level 50, the market for level 20 gear is really distorted since most level 20s at that time are actually alts who can afford prices much higher than a "natural" level 20 could.

Camlo is looking for ways to ensure the demand is more or less constant, the same way the demand for adventuring gear will be constant.

This was exactly my point, Nihimon.

I also like the skill decay concept, at least for newly-acquired or top-of-the-pyramid skills. Once you have a skill that has it as a prerequisite, perhaps you are assumed to have mastered that skill, and it no longer decays (at least not until the skills above it decay, but that's a whole separate can of worms).

This would also disincentivize people to play characters that are TOO varied. Having one level in every role might be interesting, but unless there are synergies between skills you're going to have a hard time keeping them all useful. Another point that could be a whole other discussion topic, lol.

Personally, I like Nihimon's option 2... the more complex the better :) It would also differentiate settlements. Perhaps one settlement is really good at training blacksmiths at making plate armor, but another is very good at training blacksmiths who make axes. Or magic academies that are specialized in certain schools. Super cool to think about.

I also hope that settlements aren't restricted too much in terms of numbers of Training Halls... but I think we're in the same boat in this one, Nihimon.

I understand that players already set the cost and can adjust it as they see fit. The difference between training and anything else though, is that it is a one-time fee as far as I can tell, and this might present a problem economically for training centers.

Unlike items that require upkeep to remain viable, skills just "are", and once you have them, you have them. Basically, you are much less likely to have repeat customers as a training center than as a merchant or crafter, unless a character wants a new skill, in which case you better have it ready. Crafters on the other hand can simply repair broken items. It will make the training economy fundamentally different from the crafting economy, which I think might be a bad thing, like I addressed above.

Yes, yes, yes, I think it will still be Pathfinder.

Personally, I could care less about the system as long as I can roleplay the types of characters available to me in Pathfinder. Who cares if it's implemented differently, as long as it's true to spirit of the source material (which I believe it will be).

Training costs just make sense. And the way I think it's going to be implemented, I think it'll feel much more like you achieved a new rank, rather than it just happened while you were playing. It also gracefully solves a lot of the problems inherent in characters that are logged off for two months, and can come back as super beefed up characters. They need to get some gold before they can spend those XP's. In PnP, it's often assumed you went to a library or had a tutor for that rank in linguistics, so I don't think it's unreasonable for that to be the case in PFO. Plus, monetizing training increases player interaction, which is always good imo.

With the newest GW Blog post, I'm really excited to see that training is becoming a finite resource that can be bartered and sold. I do have a concern though, namely that it will not be on par with trading physical goods. This is for one reason:

Upkeep.

Upkeep is what drives any economic system. As items leave the market after being used to the point of no longer being usable, crafters are there and ready to supply a brand new - and possibly improved - version. Or alternatively, are there to "reforge" the sword or "patch holes" in the wizard's robe. Either way, you're paying upkeep on the gear you own, and this upkeep continually keeps money flowing through the economy.

Yet with training, I'm worried that it will be a system where, once you've purchased the training, you do not need anything else. Sure, you'll need to return to train better skills/abilities/feats (I'm just going to say skill from now on for simplicity), but once you have a skill, it's yours forever. You theoretically never need to return to that place of skill training.

There are upsides and downsides to this. The upsides are for the consumer, the downsides for the training establishment. So what will keep the training establishment in business? Is it new customers, purchasing skills as they gain XP? Or is it old customers returning as they continue to advance (assuming the training facility keeps pace their advancement)?

While I'm not sure what the best way is to resolve what I see as a problem, I can offer a few opinions.

Solution 1:
This is largely a player-based solution. Training is expensive. Since you get to keep it forever, there should be a high fee for learning a skill, especially at upper tiers of play. Training facilities would subsist off of the large(r) payments of upper-tier players as they wait for lower-tier players to reach a similar level of skill. Rinse repeat. Additionally, larger fees are likely required of upper tier characters because by necessity, a significant portion of income will need to go into improving the facility. This is because if they want upper-tier characters as a significant source of income, they will need to be able to continually offer upper-tier skills.

Solution 2:
This is more of a GW-based solution. Training is not as expensive, but skills require upkeep (practice) to stay sharp. Over time (personally I would say time logged in, as that's when you're "using" your skills, but there are other solutions), a skill gradually decreases in efficacy. If this is the solution enacted, I think this should be a very slow decrement, such that you only need to really re-up your training once or twice a month or so, or it will get annoying quickly. And after a while, skills near the bottom of the pyramid stop needing to be re-upped as you become an expert or master at them. So, recently-acquired skills need continual training until mastery. This would allow for training establishments to charge more of a constant, low fee for training (perhaps with a larger installment for the initial skill purchase), rather than have to gouge trainees with a one-time fee. I think it would also allow the "training economy" to operate more smoothly and similar to the crafting economy.

Any thoughts on this? I love the idea of monetizing skill training, but I think it does need to be more than a one-time purchase to keep the training economy afloat (thus I like option 2 better). What do others think? Do you think this is even a problem?

I plan on playing a TN druid/aristocrat as my Destiny's Twin. The concept is sort of "nature's architect", ensuring sustainable development of my chosen settlement, or perhaps the development of a nature-oriented settlement. So, I will be involved in settlement management / upkeep of some kind.

I'm really liking the idea of a druidic pact though. Us nature-types need to stick together!

But training takes a LONG time. So if you want to get healing abilities, and be good at it... you'll be spending a lot of time working your healing up. And then there's whatever alignment restrictions etc are in play.

Sorry, this was what I was trying to say in my post, but you've said it better. Anyone CAN get healing spells, but you'll have to devote serious time getting access to spells in the first place. Basically, unless you plan on following a skill tree that emulates a class with healing spells, you're effectively multiclassing to get these healing spells, making you less likely to be as good at your primary profession as the person who doesn't have these spells. Is that a good trade off? Up to you.

Is this going to be one of those games where everyone trains for healing spells because there's no reason not to?

Doubtful. Magic itself is the purview of only a few classes, and cross training can mean you lose your capstone ability.

@Aou - Not 100%, but I believe they do plan on having a time mechanic in play, so that each minute of real time equates to a certain amount of game time. So you will actually have to wait to get those spells back.

That is something I dont think many people really grasp. Whenever you do X, X skill goes up. Whenever you use Y, your Y skill goes up.

Not even that as I understand it. You will train X skill for Y amount of real time and it will go up. Playing the game will unlock other things, and grant certain rewards, but skills do not go up "with use", they go up with real time training.

That aside, I think I agree with the original intent of this post if not all the particulars. Each "class path" should get a few interesting things along the way to capstone, not just the capstone. Of course, anyone can get these with enough training, but then you're a multiclassed character. The capstones however are reserved for characters with training nigh-exclusively in one class.

Personally I sort of envision each class path as an amalgam of different ability tracks, with some overlap between classes. Like both the sorcerer and wizard paths go down the "arcane magic" tree, but sorcerers pursue the "spontaneity tree" while the wizards pursue the "hermetic magic" tree. Same kinds of magic, different skill trees taken to implement it.

Hooray, we funded! Can't wait to see you guys in-game!

Seems like a good implementation, if the races themselves aren't too code intensive. I'm guessing NPCs will react differently to different races, so this may be one aspect of not putting them all in initially. Perhaps the "Halfling" flag would read as gnome in all respects until release if that is less code-intensive? That might work.

It seems a little spiteful to not fund because it's not ONLY for Emerald Spire. Back for just the book, and everybody wins.

He's playing in PFS so Antipaladin isn't an option.

Blistering Invective is a great spell, too. You could perhaps take a level of Sorcerer (Undead) to get by the immunity to mind-affecting many undead have, and Grave Touch is a nifty debuff to boot.

How did you meet the pre-req for Arcane Archer with only one level of bard? Don't they require at least level 2 arcane spells?

Nope, it only requires level one spells.

If you do go straight paladin, you might consider the Greater Mercy and Ultimate Mercy feats. They'd slow your archer feat progression to take them early, but that just brings up the question of how important is it for you to do more damage. If the rest of the party are good damage dealers, then taking on more of a healing role, and being able to raise people from the dead, could be useful.

As for the Divine Hunter archetype, we had a conversation about that here maybe a week ago. I'm too lazy to look up the thread, but you should be able to find it pretty easily. I think we all pretty much agreed that the archetype isn't worth it, and that Oath of Vengeance is nice if you're focused on damage dealing.

Yeah, I saw that thread, and I agree. I think DH is only worth it in the second case where some of the later abilities like Aura of Justice aren't replaced because I'm taking Arcane Archer with that build.

With the straight paladin though, I like where your head is at with Greater / Ultimate Mercy. They are certainly feats I'd like to take. Possibly in place of Deadly Aim (pushing it back to 9th?) and then Ultimate Mercy later on.

The rest of the party is a sword-and-board paladin with the Warrior of the Holy Light archetype, a melee archivist bard, a dwarven fighter specializing with a longhammer, and an oracle planning on going mystic theurge. It'd probably be the fighter and I doing most of the damage, I'd imagine, but I certainly don't need to be completely optimized for damage for the character to work.

So I'm building an archer paladin of Shelyn for a Carrion Crown campaign, and I'm looking for some advice on which build to pursue. Both are using a human paladin as a base for roleplay reasons. I've poked around the boards a bit, but still having trouble settling on an option.

The first is straightforward - either straight paladin or divine hunter. Likely vanilla paladin, possibly with Oath of Vengeance.

Feats:

H): Point-Blank Shot
1): Precise Shot; Smite 1/day; Detect Evil
2): Divine Grace; LoH
3): Rapid Shot; Mercy (Shaken or Fatigue); Aura of courage; Divine Health
4) Channel; Smite 2/day; Spells
5): Deadly Aim; Divine Bond (Weapon)
6): Mercy (Diseased?)
7): Manyshot; Smite evil 3/day
8): Aura of Resolve
9): Weapon Focus: Longbow; Mercy (Frightened / Exhausted)
10): Smite evil 4/day
11): Improved Precise Shot; Aura of justice

With divine hunter, I'd probably just put Weapon Focus in at level 3 or so.

The second option is a paladin/bard/arcane archer build that I like because it seems a little more versatile and fits with the flavor of the character. It sacrifices LoH progression and Smite damage/use per day progression but gains lots of skills, some spells, and the Archaeologist's Luck ability (which makes up for some of the loss in BAB and Smite).

Paladin (Divine Archer) 6 / Bard (Archaeologist) 1 / Arcane Archer 10

H): Point-Blank Shot
DA): Precise Shot
1): Rapid Shot; Smite evil 1/day; detect evil
2): Divine Grace; LoH 1d6
3): Weapon Focus: Longbow; Divine Health; Aura of care; Mercy (Fatigue or Shaken)
4): Channel energy; Smite Evil 2/day; Paladin spells; LoH 2d6
5): Deadly Aim; Divine Bond (Longbow)
6): Ranged Mercy; LoH 3d6; Second attack
7): Manyshot; Archaeologist's Luck +1; Bard Spells
8): Enhance Arrows (magic)
9): Lingering Performance; Imbue Arrow; +1 Bard casting
10): Enhance arrows (Elemental); +1 Bard casting
11): Improved Precise Shot; Seeker arrow; +1 Bard casting

etc

Thoughts?

I used Carnival of Tears also to great effect after the kingdom started to get on its feet.

Cold Rider = Stag Lord reanimated by the big bad.

Rigg from RRR = Prig as written in module
Nymph in module = The Dancing Lady from RRR
Grim stalker in RRR = Grimstalker guarding the machines tent in the module
Friendly dryad in the module = Tyressia from RRR
And I had them all escape to be re-encountered at the Fey Keep in RRR (an Rigg is still out there somewhere!)

I also had Tyg be enchanted and playing the fiddle during the "grand finale" so the PC's knew many of the fey had been enchanted into doing these bad things. A couple of other touches really personalized it, I think.

DeciusBrutus wrote:

If there are a lot of racially-themed organizations in PFO, I'd like to see the players agree on what the racial stereotypes are and agree to play them straight 60%-80% of the time and subvert them the rest of the time. I don't think that would be fun for enough players to make it happen though.

While people can base their characters on whatever they want, I know I would be very offended if people told me to change it based on meeting or avoiding stereotypes. I will be playing a straight white male in a position of authority. This is because I am a straight white male in real life, and I like to base my characters loosely off myself. I generally make them tall bearded characters with blue eyes as well. And I am an experienced leader who enjoys being one, so that is why I am in a position of authority. That and the work I have put in to creating and promoting the idea of GL.

I'm not going to avoid who I am or what I want to play as in PFO just to send a social message. I hope many minorities rise to authority inside and outside my organization but I will not do anything to actively promote this any more than I would try to discourage it. That would be unfair to other straight white males.

No one's telling you to do otherwise, Andius - you don't need to defend your choice to play a straight white male character. That's not the issue at hand here. Decius was just speculating that it would be nice if not all PCs played elves, dwarves, or half-orcs stereotypically, as far as I can tell. And yes, I think it would be nice to see some subverted tropes in PCs' roleplay, but this is obviously not something we can control, or would want to. Back on topic:

Camlo Alban, I appreciate and agree with your original post. I'm curious if you have examples to recommend where this has been handled well in other games? For reference, what are your thoughts on how these issues where handled in Dragonage Origins? Cheers

Hi Jim, I appreciate your taking the time to respond. Really, Decius and The Doc CC have said mostly everything I would want to. Mass Effect 3 is a good recent example of things done fairly well in a video game, like Doc says.

It's honestly so much easier to think of bad examples than good ones, particularly when it comes to portrayals of women. I'd recommend watching some of "feministfrequency"'s videos on YouTube for examples of tropes many video games fall prey to.

Golarion in many ways is already fairly egalitarian, at least from what I've read of the setting (which though not complete, is quite a bit). And Doc is right, the art for the game is substantially better in terms of representing a diverse group of people than many games to begin with. Seelah is one of my favorite iconics for this very reason; a black female paladin is something that's unheard of in many games. But in Golarion, it's a possibility. Not leaving out representations of people of color, LGBT individuals, and accurately portraying women goes a long way toward making a game come to life, and does a lot toward drawing in a broader audience of gamers.

Really, I'm just asking that you keep up the good work that Paizo has begun with its Pathfinder setting and characters.

Since players are going to use whatever color they want for their characters, the question for NPC's becomes this: What is the ethnic composition of the River Kingdoms (that still is the setting for PFO, right?)?

True. The thing to think about is: Which ethnic groups are common in the region? What ethnic groups are likely to immigrate to the region? Why? For example, I'd imagine there are a number of escaped halfling slaves (and slaves in general) in the region due to the Six Freedoms that prohibit slavery. I'm less sure about why some of the human ethnic groups might be in the region, however. The RKs are rather Slavic in nature from what I've gathered, although Casamaron is quite nearby...

The socially conscious aspect of making the Fantasy Races non-normative is that it negatively reinforces the meta-notion that people should be defined by factors of their birth, and not by their choices in life.

Great point, Decius.

I can see the political stakes for representations that map over to reality, but not so much for fantastic representations.

If the designers made PFO completely heteronormative, I can see how that has some impact on real people. Dwarves being smiths, dragons being greedy, etc., sort of hard to see how that is a politically meaningful representational choice.

Because those things are made up and not real.

Agreed. But it does increase the verisimilitude of the setting if not all of the NPCs are caricatures of fantasy tropes. That sentiment is borne more out of a desire for non-lazy character development than any sense of social justice.

It's socially conscious and good for business, but requires a skillset not always part of the game development pipeline.

Very true, which is really all I'm trying to get across here is "please, keep this in mind". Just being aware of these issues can do a world of good.

It's also important to note that I'm not saying all of these minorities have to get along or always be examples of good people - just they they be represented as real characters, not two-dimensional cutouts.

Sorry that did come off a bit harsh before I edited in the bottom portion.

No worries. I'm just requesting it of the GW staff because NPCs are obviously something under their control, and often set the tone for the game as a whole. Posting something requesting players to "ensure minorities are represented" doesn't really make sense, nor would I want to do that.

And like V'rel Vusoryn said, I do hope the GW staff makes a conscious effort to make skin palettes and things available to players so that we can play the character we'd like to make (within the parameters of the game, of course.)

I understand that, Andius. But there will also be a not-insignificant proportion of NPCs. There's no need to be dismissive.

As I said, Paizo and Pathfinder have a good history with this. I just want to ensure that GoblinWorks keeps up the good trend.

Long-time lurker, first time thread-starter, yadda yadda...

So I know Paizo is pretty good about this in their APs and modules, but after doing a few searches of this forum I hadn't seen anyone else request this: I really hope that PFO does a good job of representing minority groups in the game.

I for one get a little tired at seeing time and time again Straight White Men speaking to other Straight White Men about this and that... I beg you to please try to ensure within the framework of the stories you want to tell that there's a good mix of diversity to the game in terms of NPCs and story / quest lines. I certainly appreciate it when it does occur in video games. Of course, this being a fantasy setting, this also applies to other races as well.

Speaking of which, tokenism (not to be confused with Tolkienism...) is also something to be avoided. Is the only dwarf in town the blacksmith? Is the only elf in town the wizard? Are women consistently portrayed in domestic roles, or roles that rely largely on men? (See the Bechdel Test for movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLF6sAAMb4s) Are there people of color represented in a non-stereotypic way? (Ameiko is of course a pretty good example of this.) Are LGBT people visibly represented at all?

I'm not saying women can't be mothers, housewives, or vamps, and dwarves can't be or even typically are blacksmiths, but it goes a long way when games try to portray characters as real people and not just as sum of tropes. Though tropes can be great at times, they can also be a little tiresome and expected. I'm not looking for anything specific to come out of this post, other than I hope that the developers take things like this into consideration when building and designing the game. I'm looking hugely forward to the game, and would be disappointed if it were prone to the same types of things that make me roll my eyes at other games.

Thanks for the feedback, TarkXT!

I like your ideas - definitely will be adopting some of them.

The base speed of 40' is explained by the Trade subdomain; the Travel domain (Trade's parent domain) grants +10' of movement.

I have the Childhood Crush trait from the campaign, and Extremely Fashionable (currently selected Intimidate because I was working with Dazzling Display).

I was planning on going as primarly a supporter with passable melee abilities. Rapier isn't the best melee weapon, but it's flavorful. It could probably be beefed up with some of the Critical-related feats, but those would be rather late-game.

Ah, good catch. That throws things off a bit.

Perhaps just swap the third and fifth level feats for 1st and Human, then?

That's a little disappointing.

Hey guys! I'm hoping some of you might be able to help me optimize this build I've been working on of a cleric of Cayden Cailean for the Jade Regent AP.

The flavor I'm going for is charismatic and a bit rascally; for his background I'd imagine he's a brewer or perhaps a liquor merchant.

Here's a link to the character sheet at first level:

And here are my feat plans for the subsequent levels:

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I for one am in love with Forencith's idea of having all player names be initially blank to you, and to make you the player fill in names as you meet people. For me, this would increase immersion by a *lot*, and would solve pretty much the entire problem. How this would be implemented might be a little difficult, but I could see a system where the true "ID" is hidden from the player, and the player only sees a person's name only as the player has identified them. This would make it so you actually have to *meet* a person to find out their name! I love the concept.

Sounds yummy! I actually meant kale chip (which are phenomenal FYI) - but potato wedges sound deliciously unhealthy!

I can't wait to drop by the inn, Kale! Will you be having you-chips on the menu? :-)

The gods will certainly have an impact on the river kingdoms, but the Great Beyond will almost certainly not be an explorable place.

Back to the original topic of the post, I think that one of the better solutions to the problem of "diverse humans" is to allow for presets that define the character visually, and as long as a character falls within certain ranges of values for the visual aspects, the character is stamped by the game as "Varisian" or "Chelaxian" - or if you fall between these two, perhaps the game stamps you as both. This would accurately model how NPCs could then perceive your character based on his/her visual properties, and perhaps the old Varisian Harrower reacts better to Varisian PCs than non-Varisians. All of this would be on an RP-and-immersion-promoting level. It also makes sense, because NPCs will have generally only appearance as a first measure of a person. A PC may be an Ulfen born and raised in Absalom, but how is the NPC to know that without interaction?

As for statistical differences between human ethnicities, I think that's not necessary. I think that could be handled beautifully with a trait or "background wizard" system like the one that's already been suggested. You want your half-orc to be erudite and aloof? No problem. Pick out a couple of characteristics in the background wizard and NPCs will react accordingly. What's great is that some of these things might change over time through interaction with NPCs - maybe this half-Orc becomes a bit more personable, and the "aloofness" value lowers over time. Other traits may be less malleable, like country of birth or parentage. Some of the traits may be mutually exclusive, to prevent nonsensical characters (my half Orc is erudite, aloof, illiterate, and very personable... Not all those things go together.) There would also be perhaps a cap of five traits that define the character (just to make it easier for NPCs.) They could be... Country of Origin, Demeanor, Self-Esteem, Religiosity, and Inquisitiveness, for example (just making things up.)

Anyway... Rant over. I think if they separate the visual look of a character from his or her background, it would lead to a greater variety of characters and make for a very interesting game. No one would be cookie-cutter, and it would provide a greater deal of richness. Other accommodations could be made for other races: Elves come in regular and forlorn perhaps, half Orcs and half elves would break down along the type of society that raised them, the ethnicity of their human side, Gnomes might vary by stage of bleaching, halflings by whether they come from slave populations, etc. There's tons of lore to work with here.