Keen Senses seems like it grants unnamed bonuses. It really should grant Racial bonuses.
Director of Games
|
Keen Senses seems like it grants unnamed bonuses. It really should grant Racial bonuses.
Well, they have always just been an unnamed bonus in the past and since unnamed bonuses stack, this has never been an issue. I am hesitant to start naming every bonus that pops up (although that has been the trend in 3.5).
Thoughts? Do they need to be called out as racial?
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
Well, they have always just been an unnamed bonus in the past and since unnamed bonuses stack, this has never been an issue. I am hesitant to start naming every bonus that pops up (although that has been the trend in 3.5).
Thoughts? Do they need to be called out as racial?
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
I am in favor of labeling racial bonuses as such for the following reasons:
1) I believe that bonuses should be categorized whenever possible to prevent players from gaining excessive bonuses from overly vague spells, items, or class abilities. There are some cases where it is desirable to allow an unnamed bonus to remain (such as the speed bonus granted by the Barbarian's Fast Movement ability), but these are very rare indeed.
2) Everyone made the assumption that these were racial bonuses already and have treated them as such throughout the life of the OGL SRD.
3) Labeling them as racial bonuses discourages people from abusing the Reincarnate spell. But truth be told, this is more of an indictment of the Reincarnate spell then anything else - it's a very poorly designed spell that either needs to be completely revised or dropped from the game altogether. But if Reincarnate is going to be left in the game as is, changing untyped "racial" bonuses to actual racial bonuses will give GMs a little more ammunition to fight against the munchkin rules lawyers that will try to exploit this spell for their own personal gain.
All that being said, I also believe that you should make it clear that racial bonuses stack with each other. This is especially important when applying templates to characters that offer racial bonuses (such as the Lich and Vampire templates). As it stands in the SRD, racial bonuses do not stack.
Thank you taking this under consideration.