Originally Posted by Belyavor
Originally Posted by Elebhra
Originally Posted by Stabbey
By definition, you would not have to use floating ability scores. They would start out as the default, and you could choose to swap them, or leave the ASI's where they were. It would not affect you, but it would allow for say, a Halfling Wizard to exist without being mechanically penalized. That would allow more players to play how they want while not affecting players who wanted to keep the default.

Is a halfling wizard actually penalized though?

Lucky trait is amazing. It's worse than +1 to attack rolls, but not by much. Not to mention ability, saving throw checks, concentration. And you should have either +1 to dex or +1 to con compared to high elves or humans.

You lose 1 DC on your spells that's for sure, but your constitution score should be higher so concentration benefits.

And most importantly in 5e you can build your halfling wizard around the notion that you have lower intelligence to an extent that was not possible in previous editions. The amount of excellent spells that don't care about your int is astounding. And if you do focus on those spells a dwarf (due to proficiencies) or halfing are better choices than +int races.

Racial ability scores breed creativity while floating stat bonuses discourage it.
This is purely conjecture and it does not discourage creativity, it penalizes it. If I want to play a Tiefling Druid for the extra cantrip and spells, I'm penalized with my stat spread. Essentially I shot myself in the arm but was given a cool glove; what good is the glove if my arm has a bullet in it? It's a character that has spells for more options in gameplay, but will literally always be worse than another race/class combination. Same applies to Dragonborn when we see them, I got a cool breath weapon and resistance, but my spell rolls and save DC sucks compared to other options. If you're only option to point out the flaw of the above statement is to criticize the one specific example given, you don't have an argument, you have conjecture. We're talking about the concept in principle, not the character example provided.

1. Losing +1 modifier for main spell-casting stat is not "shooting yourself in a foot". You massively overstate the importance of having a +3 instead of +2. It's more visible for martials, but it's never character breaking. 16 int wizard being great and 15 int wizard sucking is just not true. In cases when it would made a massive difference you probably shouldn't rely on DC spells anyway (+1 to DC matters a lot when your chance of actually beating their save is low, meaning you probably should do something else). In 3.5e or Pathfinder the difference is a lot bigger since a lot of class features scale with your main stat, 5e is a different beast.

2. You could build Tiefling Druid that performs great (and Druid can be the least stat reliant class in the game). And the same goes probably for most classes. Some races might be tougher and some easier, but it's doable. I cannot possibly fathom all the race/class choices that one mind find massively underpowered, hence I used the example given.

3. Floating stat bonus doesn't really prevent you from feeling penalized. Why would you play a High Elf or Tiefling wizard when you could play a Shield Dwarf with the same stats and additionally use medium armor. Why would you ever play any other race than Drow as ranged character? That darkvision increase is incredible. Why would you play a frontline that is not Gold Dwarf for that toughness. Or Barbarian or Champion that is not a half-orc...
It doesn't fix a supposed problem while ruining race identity,