"Useless" Ability Scores - suggested alternative

[BrokenShade]

Hi again.

Why not have two sets of racial abilities per race, loosely based on which of the two favoured classes you choose. Then you could choose which of the two sets you wanted for your character.

There would always be the common abilities, of course, but for elves you could choose between e.g. spell penetration (Wizard) and weapon focus with a racially familiar weapon (Ranger).

It wouldn't help those choosing a class that was not favoured, but then that is the price you pay. Thoughts? ^_^

[Andrew Betts]

I think it would over complex things. In your example Elven Rangers would still get use out of the +2 to CL checks, since they are still spellcasters, albeit not as big of ones as wizards, but it still helps both favored classes already.

[hogarth]

I like the idea of having choices for the "cultural" portions of the different races. For instance, elves could choose between "Elven Magic" OR "Weapon Familiarity", gnomes could choose between "Hatred" OR "Defensive Training" OR "Gnome Magic", etc.

I realise that would reduce the usefulness of the demi-human races, though.

[Montalve]

racial feats woudl solve that
lets not OVER commplicate the races

my players already took more than week making characters, if you givethat they will took the double fo the time... yes they will...

i say the races are alright, maybe something like the hatred for orcs/goblins/etc from dwarves and goblins would work better a s aracial feat or a trait

[Dennis da Ogre]

BrokenShade wrote:

There would always be the common abilities, of course, but for elves you could choose between e.g. spell penetration (Wizard) and weapon focus with a racially familiar weapon (Ranger).

An elf has Spell Penetration but he's a ranger... Wizards don't use weapons much so racial weapons don't mean much to them already. Why make the races and character creation more complicated when there is already a natural mechanism in place?

Edit: Maybe that isn't so clear. This whole concept is self policing. Some abilities are geared towards martial characters, some towards casters, the racial abilities geared towards one are not very useful to the other. A mechanism would just complicate the situation without adding any benefit to the game.