I personally think gnomes should get an Int bonus instead of Cha bonus to better differentiate them from halflings, although in Golarion both seems to fit due to the gnomes fey heritage. Maybe an optional racial feature where you could exchange the Cha bonus for an Int bonus. But yeah, Int based races are far and few in between.
(because wizards)
and most of those 13 are rather unusual choices. If you're looking for Medium-Humanoid-doesn't look like a monster-not kill on sight for normal villages, your picks are Elf, Human, or Half-n-half.
No alternate Assimar with Int bonuses?
Makes sense I guess... between spells and skill checks, Intelligence does a LOT for the game.
Wisdom and Chr? Less so.
It gets weirder when you start looking at penalties. How many with a drop in dex?
Only 4 (11 with aasimar, tiefling and dhampir variants) with Stregnth bonuses and 25+ with Dex bonuses.
Out of them all, I can find 1 with both Str + Int bonus.
It's a shame really, since Str is already underrated and the selection of races do favour Dex builds.
Not necessarily. Getting a bonus to dex can simply save you on the point buy, letting you buy strength.
That is why I think +2 DEX/CHA, -2 WIS is so common- dump cha, save on dex, spend a couple points to get back wis (if you need to). It can give you a similar result to a floating +2 race, when you use a 15 or 20 point buy (which would be the usual assumption). Slightly worse, I suppose...but that lets you write off the rest of the race's abilities more easily.
A bit of a problem if you want to do a non-oracle/paladin divine caster. But very good as a bard...or...you know...the paladin or oracle. So options.
str + int would be very strong, str is already a good bonus stat, mix in int and you have the best stats for any gish build.
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str + int would be very strong, str is already a good bonus stat, mix in int and you have the best stats for any gish build.
Most 'gish' builds do better with Dexterity than Str, to be honest.
Also, Str/Int are the bonuses of male Lashunta, werecrocodile-kin skinwalkers, and probably a few other obscure variants, and thus available in Golarion officially (though those are all a bit obscure, admittedly).
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It gets especially weird to see every other race described as "nimble", "lithe", or "quick", especially when nothing about their description suggests it. Hobgoblins? I could see them having +STR/+CON, maybe +DEX/+CON at a stretch.
I can see an argument for it-- if all the races had unique stat bonus combinations, people would just pick whichever one fit their class the best. When there's a lot of overlap, and certain combinations are hard to come by, then people are forced to look at the other race traits to make their decision.
I suppose the writers of the ARG were kind of frustrated to think that all players want is a race with a baked-in stat boost to the stat they want to minmax, and will probably ignore everything else. Still, it starts to look like they couldn't come up with any ideas for new races besides "agility: more of it".
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It gets especially weird to see every other race described as "nimble", "lithe", or "quick", especially when nothing about their description suggests it. Hobgoblins? I could see them having +STR/+CON, maybe +DEX/+CON at a stretch.
"If everyone is nimble, no-one is." - Syndrome
But seriously, no-one seems to think of balancing out the available stat combinations when making races. It's one thing to make a race first then pick the stats, and that's fine, but after a few of those it's time to look at it from the other direction to avoid getting stale.