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So, I'm trying out Pathfinder, and obviously the PhB races have been enhanced, with the conceptual reason of making them more appealing and balanced with some of the more powerful races in other books. Obviously, however, not all other races are equal, and so I feel that ideally a DM should make adjustments as necessary to non-core races to balance. It seems that the core races seem to follow the pattern of a bonus to a mental and physical score. My general rule of thumb was going to be 1) Reduce LA by one on LA races if it seems balanced to do so. and 2) Give LA 0 races that aren't significantly better than PHB races a +2 to on more score, typically a physical if they had a mental or a mental if they had a physical.
One of my player wants to be a Goliath. I feel like they are too good to be reduced to 0 LA. However, I'm not sure if they would stack up to a +2 LA equivalent, which is what they'd be if left where they are. I am contemplating giving them a +2 to Wisdom. What are your thoughts? Would this be a balanced addition? Should they be left as they are, as they are one of the races the PHB races are being balanced to? Thoughts?
I have a golaith barbarian PC in my ToEE game (using Pathfinder Beta) and he is, by far, a better front line combatant than the human fighter who is one level higher. Even with the +1 LA, the race seems a bit overpowered. I would not provide any boost to the race. One big thing that overpowers him is the variable size. When a race can be considered large in certain circumstances (with Mountainous Rage), that is a pretty big boost in combat (and is non-dispellable like enlarge person is) while the PC misses out on most of the non-combat problems of being large in a medium-sized world.