I just went down through the list of posts, and I couldn't find anything regarding this subject. I'd bet that this has come up previously, but I didn't see anything. If there is another thread about this, just let this post die and I'll repost it over there.
What's the deal with adding another +2 to the races?
Setting aside the half-elf and the half-orc, the races of 3.5 weren't a broken aspect of the game. Don't get me wrong, just adding more little bonuses here and there will make a lot of people happy and get them to jump on the band-wagon and defend the choice. Many people like bigger bonuses.
However, reading the intro to Pathfinder, there seems to be little need to grant all the races a net total of +2 to their scores from either a balance or compatibility standpoint. While there are certainly areas of the game that actually were broken (spells!), the racial layout wasn't one of them. So, is it merely to be different and/or to increase the bonus total? If so, that's cool. I don't mind that explanation; at least it's honest.
Honestly, it comes off as yet another change that ignores their design goals of backward compatibility and a re-balanced game. (That doesn't mean this change is unbalanced. Just that the change wasn't really needed to re-balance the game. The only races that actually needed to change were the half-elf and the half-orc, and there were plenty of suggestions floating around to balance those two better with the v3.5 races.)
Anyway, I'm mostly interested in one of the previous threads on this subject, but couldn't find one with a scan of the boards. Like I said, I highly doubt I'm the first one to question this issue.
I think the general opinion about the extra +2 is: "I don't really care, because I can just lower the point buy anyways."
Personally, I find it a little refreshing that bonuses to mental stats are no longer the province of gray elves only. And I like the new half-elf. But I agree that the new race stuff is change for change's sake, for the most part.
Otto the Bugbear wrote: No? Nothin'? I'm guessing its just to be different. Its changed how I look at some races for some classes, which may or may not be a good thing. It may be to the point where race is contributing too much to power.
Otto the Bugbear wrote: I just went down through the list of posts, and I couldn't find anything regarding this subject. I'd bet that this has come up previously, but I didn't see anything. If there is another thread about this, just let this post die and I'll repost it over there.
What's the deal with adding another +2 to the races?
Setting aside the half-elf and the half-orc, the races of 3.5 weren't a broken aspect of the game. Don't get me wrong, just adding more little bonuses here and there will make a lot of people happy and get them to jump on the band-wagon and defend the choice. Many people like bigger bonuses.
However, reading the intro to Pathfinder, there seems to be little need to grant all the races a net total of +2 to their scores from either a balance or compatibility standpoint. While there are certainly areas of the game that actually were broken (spells!), the racial layout wasn't one of them. So, is it merely to be different and/or to increase the bonus total? If so, that's cool. I don't mind that explanation; at least it's honest.
Honestly, it comes off as yet another change that ignores their design goals of backward compatibility and a re-balanced game. (That doesn't mean this change is unbalanced. Just that the change wasn't really needed to re-balance the game. The only races that actually needed to change were the half-elf and the half-orc, and there were plenty of suggestions floating around to balance those two better with the v3.5 races.)
Anyway, I'm mostly interested in one of the previous threads on this subject, but couldn't find one with a scan of the boards. Like I said, I highly doubt I'm the first one to question this issue.
Just to add my 2 cents...
I'm not fond of the added +2 to ability scores. It appears that the racial bonuses have less to do with racial flavor (conceptually) and more to do with crunch (i.e. what classes should a character of a given race choose to play?). The ability scores, as listed, paint a few of the races in a different light from previous incarnations seen in D&D and/or AD&D.
I was hoping that the focus of the Pathfinder RPG would be to clean up the messier aspects of 3rd edition (grappling, polymorph, stacking effects, slow high-level game play, etc) and provide for an adaptable, fairly generic rule set. The more I see, the more it looks like Pathfinder races will be campaign-specific in flavor and that the setting will be hardwired into the PHB.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
I think the reason is similar to the reason WotC gave for the change in 4e. The previous races had very little room for flexibility before they become so much better than they needed the dread level adjustment.
By making all the core races essentially about as powerful as the 3.5 +1 la races its gives them a great deal more room for creating dynamic races in the future.
Ok, those are some pretty fair answers. Sounds like more of an arbitrary change than something that was absolutely needed. (Except, as I mentioned, the half-elf and half-orc.)
What Chris Perkins 88 says about cleaning up the messier aspects of 3.5 is what I was expecting as well. The races weren't really that messy and in need of this sort of change.
Otto the Bugbear wrote: Ok, those are some pretty fair answers. Sounds like more of an arbitrary change than something that was absolutely needed. (Except, as I mentioned, the half-elf and half-orc.) There's one more item that should be noted: in version 3 of the Alpha rules, the point buy they propose makes it more expensive to buy a score of 16 (and quite a bit more expensive to buy an 18). So characters using a point buy aren't really any better than their corresponding 3.5E point buy counterpart (and may be worse in some cases).
hogarth wrote:
There's one more item that should be noted: in version 3 of the Alpha rules, the point buy they propose makes it more expensive to buy a score of 16 (and quite a bit more expensive to buy an 18). So characters using a point buy aren't really any better than their corresponding 3.5E point buy counterpart (and may be worse in some cases).
Ok. That may balance it out better. I'll keep that in mind once I download Alpha3 and look it over.
It also seems to me that it was done to rebalance things so that the core races are more on par with some of the level-adjusted races that were popping up.
Kaelen wrote: It also seems to me that it was done to rebalance things so that the core races are more on par with some of the level-adjusted races that were popping up. I see that as a major plus. A lot of LA+1 races (Hobgoblins, Tieflings, Genasi) were hardly worth a level-adjustment, and this brings a bunch of 'coulda been contenders' into LA+0 range.
On the other hand, I also like that giving each race two stat bonuses doubles the amount of 'optimal' classes available. Instead of *all* Halflings being optimized Rogues, and getting stared at if they take a different path, they now have another set of class options available that aren't 'sub-optimal.'
Freeing up some mental ability score bonuses is also nice. 3.0/3.5 was awful stingy on them, and it was feast (Aasimar, with *two* mental score bonuses) or famine (the core races, with three mental score *penalties,* two of them in a single race!).
Recent threads in Races & Classes
|
